Those Who Forget the Past by Ron Rosenbaum Page B

to boycott the Zionist state, just as South Africa was boycotted? One does not boycott a state merely because of some objectionable policy or other. Nobody boycotts Turkey because it mistreats the Kurds, nor Egypt because it drove out nearly its entire Jewish population.
    But if a state is racist by nature, if racism is its founding principle, as was the case in apartheid South Africa, then a boycott might well be justified, with the hope of abolishing the state entirely. Now, Judt cannot possibly regard Israel as any more comparable to apartheid South Africa than he does to French Algeria, given his concern that Israel continues to exist. Still, he does note that a new movement is, in fact, afoot to boycott Israel. He writes, “The fear of seeming to show solidarity with Sharon that already inhibits many from visiting Israel, will rapidly extend to the international community at large, making of Israel a pariah state.” Do the “many” who feel inhibited from visiting Israel merit applause for their moral consciences? Or should those people be seen as so many José Saramagos, smug in their retrograde bigotries? Judt refrains from comment, but his tone implies that he regards the “many” as more reasonable than not.
    He does say about some future resolution of the conflict, “There will be no Arab right of return; and it is time to abandon the anachronistic Jewish one.” That is a curious comment, in the context of these other remarks. The Arab “right of return” means the right of Palestinians to return to their original, pre-1948 homes in Israel, a right that, if widely exercised, would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish state. That is why, if Israel is to survive, “there will be no Arab right of return. ” But what is the Jewish “right of return”? That phrase can only mean what is expressed and guaranteed by Israel’s Law of Return, to wit, Israel’s commitment to welcome any Jew from around the world who chooses to come.
    What would it mean for Israel to abandon that commitment? It would mean abandoning the Zionist mission to build a shelter for oppressed Jews from around the world, which is to say, Zionism itself. It would mean abandoning Israel’s autonomy as a state—its right to draw up its own laws on immigration. Judt cannot be in favor of Israel doing any such thing. But those throwaway remarks and his choice of comparisons and analogies make it hard to know for sure.
    VI.
    His essay, all in all, seems to have been written on two levels. There is an ostensible level that criticizes Israel, although in a friendly fashion, with the criticisms meant to rescue Israel from its own errors and thereby to help everyone else who has been trapped in the conflict; and a second level, consisting of images and random phrases (the level that might attract Freud’s attention), which keep hinting that maybe Israel has no right to exist. It is worth looking at the religious images and references in Judt’s essay. There are two of these, and they express the two contradictory levels with a painful clarity.
    In his very last lines, Judt urges the Israelis to treat the Palestinian public with dignity and to turn quickly from war to peace negotiations. And, in order to give a pungency or fervor to his exhortation, he concludes by quoting a famous rabbinical remark, “And if not now, when?” He ends, that is, on a warm note of Judaism, which is plainly a sympathetic tone to adopt—a call for Israel to adhere to Judaism’s highest traditions of morality and good sense. Yet, at another point he strikes a Christian note, and of the weirdest sort.
    Judt wonders about Sharon, “Will he send the tanks into the Galilee? Put up electric fences around the Arab districts of Haifa?” Judt complains that Israel’s intellectuals are not mounting a suitable opposition to this kind of aggression. He describes the intellectuals and