In its September 2004 issue, the leftist American magazine Socialist Viewpoint published a ferocious attack entitled “Israel Shamir: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”, a personal libel against me by a Roland Rance. A minor British trade union functionary, Rance is a leading member of a leftish group Jews against Zionism. Despite their name, the group produces mainly complaints against “anti-Semitism” and indulge in apology of Judaism and Jewishness.
Rance’s article can be summarized in a few words: “Shamir is not a Jew”. He writes: “Shamir is a right-wing Russian who pretends to be an Israeli Jewish leftist. I am sure he was a Christian but found it useful to pose as a Jew”. This line is upheld by the editor in his introduction to the libel: “Shamir presented himself as a Russian Jew”. A non-Jew — worse, a Christian — does not deserve fair play, according to Rance, or according to the Socialist Viewpoint, the “revolutionary Marxist magazine” edited and published by Weinstein, Weinstein, Seligman and LeClair. The title of the libel carries the same racist message: A Russian Christian Wolf hides under a Jewish Sheep’s clothing.
I resent the insinuation of subterfuge, but this racist insistence on racial character of Jewishness is equally inadmissible. For the record: Following Marx and Simone Weil, I object (and objected) to perpetuation of the Jewish identity. In an interview published in the Socialist Viewpoint in 2001, I have said: “I am against existence of a Jewish state per se. In my opinion, Jews in Palestine should become Palestinians, while Jews of France should be French.” This attitude is not exclusively Marxist: Sir Carl Popper refused to be included in the Judaic Encyclopedia for, as he said, he “severed all ties with the Jewish religion and community”.
I willingly ceased to be a Jew when I entered the Orthodox Church of the Holy Land, but this is not the only way out: Hundreds Israelis petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel demanding their “Jewish nationality” being stricken out and replaced by “Israeli” or “Palestinian”. Two million Israeli citizens — Palestinians, Russians and Ethiopians — are not considered “Jews” by the Jewish state and do not wish to.
This is not an academic point. The Israeli soul is the scene of struggle between two forces, between two loyalties: That to the land and that to the worldwide Jewish people. The loyalty to the land can eventually form a basis for complete unity with the native Palestinian people. The loyalty to world Jewry (Am Israel) is the basis of our xenophobia, of the Wall, of the apartheid state. The Palestinians are denied equal rights in order to sustain the “Jewish character” of the state. The ugliest crimes of Zionism are perpetrated in the name of the Jewish People; “Jewishness” is the engine of ethnic cleansing in our country. Thus our struggle against “the Jewish character of the state” is an important spiritual element in the struggle for democracy in Palestine.
Rance is a foremost agent of Judaic influence; he wants us, Israelis, to be Jews. “Arabs” are a linguistic and cultural group of peoples who includes Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians of all religions; the Jews are a religious caste, “class-people” as Abram Leon has termed them. Roland Rance wants to perpetuate this caste; I want it undone. Rance wants Israelis to remain Jews and preserve their separateness, I want them — us! — to become Palestinians of whatever religion or of no religion at all; to renounce all connection to the Jewish people abroad, to cut off ties with Abe Foxman and Morton Zuckerman, and even with Ronald Rance. Israelis should be de-Judaized, or delinked from the Jewish people overseas in order to link up with the natives. There is a second reason for my hostility to “Jewishness” — this concept is used to frighten ordinary Americans, Brits and Europeans away from their support of equality in Palestine by attaching the anti-Semitism stigma to it.
The tide of pro-Israeli support led us, in my belief, to the destruction of Palestine and Iraq and will soon lead to an attack on Iran. This tide will abate only if and when Americans and Europeans begin to dismiss accusations of anti-Semitism in the same way that now they shrug off charges of lese majesté (disrespect to the Crown). That is why we, friends and lovers of Palestine, must struggle — not only against occupation, but for making Jewishness irrelevant and Jewry broken up. The break-up of Jewry will be a wonderful development for Jews, too. The vast majority will be able to become just Americans, or just Brits, or just French; a small Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community will remain with us like the Amish or other tiny observant minorities, never again to be disturbed by hatred or power struggle.
The third reason for my position is intra-Palestinian. Dwellers of our land can be classified by many criteria: By their height and weight, by their age or income, by their faith or land of origin. The criterion of Jewishness is the one that unites all immigrant communities in opposition to the natives. This gives huge power to the immigrant Ashkenazi elites. But if Jewishness will be as important as hair color, we shall find ourselves in a totally different situation — the native population, plus a plethora of middling immigrant communities from different lands. Instead of Palestinians versus Jews, there will be Palestinians — and immigrants from Poland and Germany, Russia and Morocco, Yemen and France.
Thus my position regarding Jews is not dictated by a whim or by religious considerations (as Rance claims) but by seeing that there is no other way to unite Palestine, to restore the native Palestinians to their natural position and to help the immigrants to strike root in the soil of the Holy Land.
— Israel Shamir is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist.
