[Jointly written by Norman Geras and Eve Garrard.]
This post travels some distance in order to get you to a place you should already know. The place? Here: that the strength of a particular view, its validity, doesn't depend on who's putting it forward. The reason for the journey then? Familiar as this place is, a truism even, it is readily overlooked in one contemporary context.
There are people who seem to think that if a certain kind of view is held by a Jew, this gives it special authority. Hence the practice of some non-Jewish writers, when criticizing Israel, of citing in support of their criticism someone else who is Jewish and holds a similar view to their own. A particularly egregious example of this - because of the gratuitous charge it involves - may be found here. It's as if the writer wishes to demonstrate that, since even those who might be expected to have the interests of that country at heart make the same criticism as she does, there's no hostile intent in it - so strengthening its persuasive force. And it isn't only non-Jews who appeal to this assumption. There are Jews who do the same thing, invoking their Jewishness as somehow adding authority to what they say on Jewish-related matters. We have lately seen an organized, collective, case of this and of which the following is a handy example. It's Tony Judt, as quoted in The Observer after the launch of 'Independent Jewish Voices':
And now they [the IJVers] feel - and I would share this sentiment - a need to say, look: if it helps you understand just how bad things have got in the Middle East, I am willing to act not as a freestanding historian but as a Jew.Yet, affirmations of this kind, whether from Jews or from non-Jews, are extremely odd once you take a moment to think about it. The fact that someone happens to think something as a Jew, or to hold the same opinion as a Jew, is neither here nor there in establishing its cogency.
Not to dawdle over the point, the persuasiveness of a critical view will depend on such considerations as the evidence that can be adduced in its favour, whether it has overlooked material relevant to the issue at stake, the moral values it rests on, the consistency or otherwise with which these are deployed, the soundness or lack of soundness of the logical inferences it traces, and so forth. A judgement about its strength or weakness will need to be based on all the usual principles of intellectual enquiry and exchange. Even on Israel or some other Jewish-related matter your viewpoint might exactly replicate, or indeed be, that of a Jewish person, and still be misguided or wrong. To make the same point by a kind of reductio ad absurdum: if J's being a Jew or thinking the same thing as a Jew means that J is necessarily right, then K's being a Jew or thinking the same thing as a Jew means that K is necessarily right. So either all Jews must agree about everything or the law of non-contradiction no longer holds. Take your pick, but you've got a bum deal whichever way you go here.
Against this it might be said that our reasoning is too abstract. It ignores the fact that what the non-Jewish writer is doing in invoking Jewish support is citing not just any old Jewish opinion but citing Jewish opinion that is robustly critical of the Jewish state (Jewish community etc). And, equally, the Self-Appointed Jew (as we shall henceforth say here) is identifying him or herself not as any old kind of Jew but as one robustly critical of the Jewish state (Jewish community etc). Other things being equal, so the argument would go, we have reason to make a presumption in favour of the robustly critical view over the less critical or more supportive one, whenever the member of any collectivity (group, community, nation, organization) takes a position on the conduct of other members of that collectivity or its official representatives or institutions.
But this presumption has no general validity. It applies sometimes, and other times not. Here are two micro-examples. Everyone can understand the case of a parent unable to see a moral failing in her child where this is visible to a more distant family member. The former is blinded by the closer emotional attachment. But the following is equally possible: that the parent understands the child better than (let's say) an aunt does, this precisely because she knows the child better. The aunt merely thinks she has identified a moral failing in observing a particular episode, but the parent sees that it's nothing of the kind. Her child has made a mistake through misunderstanding the circumstances in which he was placed.
The same contrasting examples are available at macro level. Those in positions of authority within any large-scale outfit - university departments, hospital trusts, companies - can sometimes be less alert to how and why certain policies of theirs are failing, or to their own mistakes, than are others who are on the receiving end of these policies and mistakes. Such others may not have the same interest as the decision-makers in the successful outcome of earlier decisions, and they may have less reason than the decision-makers for desiring that success. At the same time, it is not unheard of for individuals within an organization who are least connected with its decision-making procedures to be most ignorant of the constraints under which decisions are made and sometimes to criticize these decisions in ways that are impractical or worse.
There's no automatic correlation, therefore, establishing that those belonging to a collectivity who are severely critical of it or of its representatives are invariably right against those who are less critical, more supportive, of it or of them. If there were, you'd have to say that Jews of the extreme right who dream of a Greater Israel in perpetuity and think that the Jewish cause is betrayed by withdrawal from the occupied territories (as took place in Gaza), and by any government that considers or implements a withdrawal, are right against Jews who support these moves. Wouldn't you?
There is, however, a more specific reason, to do with the history of the Jewish people, why one can't infer from insider-criticism to the likelihood, never mind certainty, of the criticism being valid. We approach this indirectly. The assumption that the Self-Appointed Jew (hereafter SAJ) is more likely to be right is itself premised on the notion that this person rises above considerations of group loyalty, a misguided attachment to what are thought to be Jewish interests, 'my people right or wrong'-style thinking and so on, to see clearly the problem at issue, the folly being committed, the injustice being perpetrated - whereas the minds of those Jews disagreeing with the SAJ's criticism are supposedly swayed, and their views distorted, by the same group loyalty, attachments, 'my people right or wrong'-style thinking. The premise, in other words, is that the thinking of these Jews is clouded by influences extraneous to the actual merits of the question, whatever it is, where the SAJ remains attentive to the empirical realities and moral values, the intrinsic considerations, relevant to deciding the case; he or she is unpressured by external interests.
Yet, thinking altogether free of extraneous influences, of the stimuli in one's social milieu, is a difficult business for everyone. Why should we suppose that SAJs escape this difficulty?
In principle, it is perfectly possible that on certain matters a Jew who is more defensive of Israel will achieve, on the basis of sober consideration of the issues, a clearer view than will a fiercely critical SAJ, because it is the latter whose thinking is occluded in certain ways by external influences within his or her social environment. What could these influences be? Well, it might happen that there's a strong consensus amongst non-Jews with whom our hypothetical SAJ generally identifies, identifies over a whole range of moral and political questions, a consensus which he or she doesn't want to fall foul of. This is an entirely familiar situation: people being swayed by the weight of ambient opinion, rather than thinking things out for themselves on the merits of the issue.
We anticipate a first reaction of distaste, if not outrage. What! You impute to the SAJ inauthentic reasons for his or her opinions? You impute, in fact, not genuine moral and intellectual reasons at all, but an impulse to get along, not to be at odds with others?
Three points in response to this, two quick and one not so quick.
First, we impute nothing to anyone in particular, since we don't have the power to probe the mind of anyone in particular, in order to conclude how it came to its conclusions. We only say this exists as a general possibility: that the SAJ may be moved by other things than pure moral and intellectual reasoning - exactly as the ordinary Jew, who doesn't necessarily agree with what the SAJ says, is often thought (including by many SAJs) to be moved by such other things.
Second, that - precisely that - is the starting context here. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Either the issues of the occupation of the West Bank, the obstacles to peace, whether an academic and cultural boycott of Israel should be supported, whether Israel is an apartheid state, are discussed on their internal merits, without reference to the identity of the discussants, and you remain on the level of what we've called, above, 'the usual principles of intellectual enquiry and exchange'. Or, you claim authority for your viewpoints on an SAJ-type basis: namely that you, even as a Jew, have risen above your Jewish attachments in a way other, ordinary Jews have not been able to. In this case, the responsibility for pitching the discussion off the level where it properly belongs - the merits of the issue, whatever the issue is - on to another, as it were lower level, the level of the social pressures on belief, lies with you, and you can have no complaint if other social pressures than those that you want to draw attention to also become part of the conversation.
Third, the Jewish people has been an object of prejudice, hatred and persecution for more than two millennia. Anti-Semitism, a hardy plant, has survived even the most calamitous event in this long history, and it is experiencing a new vitality. It is well-known in relation to every other sort of group or community than the Jews that, when it is subjected to hostile pressure - to prejudice, persecution or oppression - there will be some tendency within the group or community to try to fend this off or lessen the harshness of it by making an adaptive accommodation with it, appeasing it, displaying one's 'good' credentials to those of the hostile milieu and according to their definitions of what counts as being good. There are - again in relation to all other such embattled groups - various more or less insulting terms for those within the group who take this adaptive route. But never mind that; in the Jewish case, the term most commonly deployed - 'self-hating Jew' - is inapt. The Self-Appointed Jewish spokesperson is more often characterized by an air of righteous self-satisfaction than by any lack of personal confidence. We therefore prefer the SAJ idea.
We shall shortly - in section III - take up some further aspects of the issue of external pressures on SAJ belief. Before doing so, we simply reiterate that once the terrain of discussion is shifted from the questions in dispute themselves on to the social influences pushing, or inclining, the Jews who are disputing them towards this or that view, it is fair to point out that there are not only the pressures (for short) of attachment; there are also the pressures (again for short) toward placating hostile opinion - toward being a 'good Jew' rather than a bad one. Many of today's SAJs, announcing their Jewishness as if it were material to what they say, do exactly this - they shift the terrain of discussion. For what they announce thereby is that they can 'see clearly' despite being Jewish. And this is as much as to say that the Jews who do not 'see clearly' are too rooted in a certain social milieu, their view too dependent on it. But there are different kinds of rootedness, different kinds of milieu, different kinds of dependence. And the only independence that matters in this matter is the independence of the criteria of intellectual judgement from the identities and motivational impulses that may influence those who are engaged in conversation or dispute.
We have hypothesized as a possible external influence on those we are calling SAJs the desire not to be out of step with people they politically identify with, or whose hostility they want to placate. This may not seem a very elevated reason for adopting a political position, but one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's a very understandable reason. Most people want to be broadly acceptable to their political and intellectual peers, and if those peers are generally hostile to Israel, then it may be felt as an uncomfortable matter to maintain support for Israel, particularly in the face of covert or not so covert implications of ethnic bias. And some of the specific iconography of hostility towards Jews - accusations of clannishness and of readiness to use group power to protect members of the group - may naturally incline some Jews who care about the opinions of others (and who doesn't?) to attempt to demonstrate conclusively that such adverse judgements do not apply to them - that they're as ready to criticize their own kind as to criticize others, and as ready to criticize their own kind as are their hostile non-Jewish peers.
This brings into view another possible impulse towards becoming a SAJ, namely the desire to have, and to show that one has, clean hands in moral and political matters. This is, again, an entirely understandable desire - it's good to have clean hands in a murky world, and it's good to convince others of your probity also. If we aim explicitly and overtly for the highest moral standards, then we'll be able to display the morally cleanest hands. And those standards, it is sometimes thought, must be ones in which self-criticism plays a central role. Surely my hands are morally clean, surely I am in a condition of moral purity, if I criticize most harshly myself and my own kind?
There is, of course, nothing wrong with the project of aiming for the highest moral standards, and we could all do with more of it. But this particular construal of the project, in terms of the supposed cleanliness produced by self-criticism, is seriously deficient. For a start, it makes the Jewishness of the critic of Israel (or other Jews, etc) a crucial factor in the production of the desired cleanliness and moral purity, and so the critic's own Jewish status must be repeatedly asserted, the audience's attention be drawn to it again and again. This recurring self-reference can have the unfortunate effect of making the critic's status and moral condition, rather than the actual arguments which she is deploying, appear to be the centre of attention. (It's worth noting here that this way of thinking about high moral standards is by no means exclusive to SAJs - it can also be found in those parts of the European and American cultural left that feel it to be obligatory to engage in constant excoriation of the West, and it tends to produce a similar effect there.)
But in any case the inference from self-criticism to moral probity is not a safe one. It is well-known that, at the level of the individual, single-minded self-criticism, when allied to resolutely ignoring the difficulties faced by, and the positive features of, the criticized self, is not a sign of moral excellence but of self-absorption of a kind that systematically distorts judgement. (Here as elsewhere, the pursuit of purity is full of moral pitfalls.) The same is true in political matters. Selectively deploying universal moral principles to produce harsh criticism of one side of a conflict - the side whose ethnicity the critic shares - while extending to the other side a sensitive understanding of their view of the world and the particularities of the context in which they make their decisions, is no more productive of impartial justice than is the bias in favour of one's own group that SAJs are so anxious to avoid.
If a non-Jew looks at Israel and sees only the (real and genuine) faults and crimes, and fails to see the (equally real and genuine) pressures under which that country exists, the needs and rights of its people, the constant threats (and worse than threats) from its enemies, then that person's judgements will fail to be just. Exactly the same is true for a Jewish observer. Justice isn't one thing for non-Jews and another for Jews. A Jew who fails to acknowledge the rights of other Jews, and to recognize the threats and dangers under which they have to live, is exactly as unjust as a non-Jew who makes the same partial and prejudicial judgement.
We now meet two objections that might be raised against the idea of SAJs being subject to external pressures influencing their political standpoint. First, it could be argued that Jews are no longer an oppressed or persecuted group: they are affluent and successful in many different countries and spheres of activity, and Israel is manifestly a powerful country militarily. The objection fails to give due weight to the effects of more than two thousand years of hatred, including of genocidal scope, and to the rise of anti-Semitism in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this context, it would be remarkable indeed if Jews in the 21st century, however successful they may be, showed no susceptibility whatever to external pressures of the kind we have discussed here.
The second objection is an interestingly self-defeating one. It would claim that having a special concern for your own kind is fine, but we mustn't be too narrow in thinking about the sort of groups people identify with or are concerned about. These needn't be ethnically defined. A group of people who are like-minded in moral and political matters can be a perfectly appropriate locus of individual loyalty. And many SAJs are members of just such a group, the group of those people on the liberal-left who share a sharply critical attitude towards Israel; so there is nothing to object to in SAJ loyalty to the shared ideas of this group. We, however, don't deny this. Of course not all social influences are bad ones; but they can sometimes be bad - in the sense of affecting judgement for the worse - and indeed this is implicit in the SAJ's own criticism of those Jews who, allegedly blinded by ethnic loyalty, support Israel to a greater extent than the SAJ approves of. The second objection is a two-way street: if an SAJ may be legitimately influenced by the views of the part of the liberal-left to which he or she belongs, then so may any other Jew be legitimately influenced by other and different affiliations. And either, equally, may be led astray by them.
Everything, therefore, depends on the moral and political content of the views that result from these influences, and there is no getting away from the substantive arguments that are in practice evaded by emphasis on the Jewishness of the Self-Appointed Jew. We are back, as we warned we would be, at the place where we began.
(Norman Geras and Eve Garrard)