In a world where nations and peoples increasingly intermingle and intermarry, where cultural and national impediments to communication have all but collapsed, where more and more of us have multiple elective identities and would feel constrained if we had to answer to just one, in such a world, Israel is truly an anachronism. And not just an anachronism, but a dysfunctional one. In today's "clash of cultures" between open, pluralist democracies and belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-states, Israel actually risks falling into the wrong camp.So I'm waiting for him to condemn this obvious example of nationalist racism in a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno-state."
There are a couple of good rebuttals of Judt's thesis in the LGF comment thread. One commenter points out that Judt doesn't seem bothered by Japan, certainly an ethnically homogeneous country which is literally racist by the standards of the USA, another points out that actually very few ethnic groups around the globe look favorably on intermarriage with other groups, another notes the obvious cases of every other state in the Middle East. Judt can certainly take whatever view of ethnic solidarity he chooses, but to single out Jews and Israel is - well, do I have to say it? We all know how the end of this sentence goes by now. Another commenter says
Judt is wrong about the viability of ethnically based countries. Look at Czechoslovakia, a country which included two major ethnic groups with the same religion, similar languages, and little, if any, history of interethnic violence. Yet they decided that they didn't want to be part of the same country, and so they split up peacefully.And read this comment in its entirety. This one too.
. . . still waiting . . .
UPDATE: And where's Ed Asner when we need him? asks Roger Simon.
UPDATE: David Frum responds. Yossi Klein Halevi responds. Melanie Phillips piles on. (There's no use pointing out this story to Tony. He'll just enthusiastically agree that, yup, Arabs can be bigoted to each other too, now that you mention it. But he will never write an op-ed about it.)
UPDATE: Apparently, Judt went bad some time ago and Paul Berman called him on it first.
Best summary:
Terrorist maniacs want to kill them, they shit their pants, and rather than make a stand and fight they think they can make the terrorists like them by throwing Israel to the wolves. Because this is too shameful stand to take openly, they try and rationalise it by doing academic backflips to "prove" that Israel is just as bad as those who want to destroy her, and therefore there is no moral obligation to come down on one side or the other. Just a sham to make naked self-serving cowardice more intellectually acceptable.It's a scary thing to be a Jew on your own, like a rolling stone, without any connection to home, especially these days. I'm not talking about going to shul necessarily, just hangin' with the homies. Every persecuted group has perservered by drawing strength from their community. (Speaking of which, I'd like to see Tony tell an assembled group of African-Americans that they are racist if they don't all want to marry white folk and melt into WASP culture. He wouldn't dare.) The problem with these Jewish academics is that they make their colleagues their family, and then they have no place to stand when their colleagues turn on them. Other ethnic academics don't make that mistake.
(many links courtesy of LGF commenters)
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