Jeff Halper complains of his treatment at the hands of some Australian Jewish organizations and newspapers. By his account, they didn't want his views heard by Australian Jews or at least didn't want to give him any help in broadcasting them. If his complaints are accurate, it is slightly puzzling why they should have been that bothered. Still, I don't agree with Halper that the episode 'raises disturbing questions over the right of Diaspora Jews to hear divergent views on Israel's conflict with the Palestinians held by Israelis'. Diaspora Jews, and more particularly Jews in Australia, certainly do enjoy this right, notwithstanding any of the obstructionist moves he reports. After all, on his own account of things the moves haven't succeeded in silencing him. And indeed here he is setting out his views in the Sydney Morning Herald.
One of the things you can learn from reading those views is that it doesn't follow from a person's having a right to say something that what he says is right. Halper makes a claim that is not only entirely unsupported by him with either evidence or argument; it is also a preposterous one on its face. This claim is that Diaspora Jewry needs Israel to be in conflict; it needs this as a way of shoring up its collective identity. Halper writes:
The problem seems to be that Diaspora Jewry uses Israel as the lynchpin of its ethnic identity, mobilising around a beleaguered Israel as a way of keeping the community intact. But this does not foster a healthy relationship. Israel cannot be held up as a voyeuristic ideal by people who, though professing a commitment to Israel's survival, actually need an Israel at conflict for their own community's internal survival.
That is why I, as a critical Israeli, am so threatening. I can both conceive of an Israel very different from the "Jewish state" so dearly valued at a distance by Diaspora Jewry - and I can envision an Israel at peace. Ironically, it is precisely such a normal state living at peace with its neighbours that is so threatening to Jews abroad, because it leaves them with no external cause around which to galvanise.
The note of self-aggrandizement here is hard to miss ('I... so threatening' etc). But more striking still is the empty and indeed self-defeating presentation of the claim itself. He, Halper, can 'envision an Israel at peace'; but for some reason not vouchsafed to his readers, other Jews can't, and they need an Israel at war in order to bolster their Jewish identity. It's not that they have nothing else that could do that; on the contrary Halper himself refers to 'the very liberal values that define Diaspora Jewry' and to 'its historical commitment to social justice and human rights'. Once again, if there are traditions of Jewish identity other than supporting an Israel in conflict and beleaguered, what according to him cuts Diaspora Jewry off from them while he knows how to make the benign link? Why may not Diaspora Jews take pride in Israel for its peaceful achievements? To these questions Halper offers no answers.
Above all, the idea that Jews are prone to will for other Jews continuing danger rather than peace, and on top of that to will the hostility generated towards themselves on account of hatreds thrown up by the Israel-Palestine conflict, is perverse. It suggests perhaps that Jews are an especially cantankerous people who do not value peace, but instead 'need' conflict, in order to subsist as who they are. Warped by millennia of prejudice and persecution (could that be?) into wanting not to be liked, wanting a fight. Shame on you, Mr Halper. (Thanks: IMc.)