Most commentators on the Israeli-Arab conflict usually apply political, historical and/or sociological analysis in order to arrive at a meaningful argument. Although I appreciate the importance of these analytical fields, I will argue that there is another layer of reasoning that has been systematically or even intentionally ignored. I refer to the analysis of ‘Jewish understanding’. I suggest that uncovering the philosophy behind a number of fundamental Jewish precepts will clearly manifest the terrible truth that the Israeli-Arab conflict is conditionally unresolved.

For many years I have experienced deep feelings of disappointment and disenchantment with my own people. As we all know, identity can be a complicated issue. One does not have a say regarding one's parents, place of birth, gender, racial origin or even religious inheritance. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born a Jew or an Israeli. Nobody consulted me when I was just eight days old about whether I wanted to sacrifice a part of my body in order to determine my identity. When I was just over a week old, without proving any superiority or excellence in any given domain, I became ‘chosen’. I have to admit that most of the Jewish people I have ever came across are more than happy with their given identity and are proud to be Jewish. Unfortunately I am not. On the contrary, the older I get the more I find myself ashamed of my own people and this paper is about my shame.

First, I must emphasise the important distinction to be made between Judaism and Jewish Understanding. While Judaism is a religion, a collection of thoughts, laws, ideas and rituals, ‘Jewish understanding’ is what Jewish people make out of those concepts, what Jewish people make out of Judaism . The difference between Judaism and Jewish Understanding is similar to the distinction between ideology and praxis or Marxism and Stalinism or Christianity and the Inquisition.

I would like to address the concept of ‘choseness’. I believe that ‘choseness’ is one of the most fundamental characteristics of ‘Jewish understanding’. One can remove a substantial amount of religious law and ritual from Jewish life (e.g. the Reform movement) and one can even remove the whole of religious practice without really affecting Jewish identity (as we know there are many secular Jews). But whenever one removes ‘choseness’, there is very little left with which the Jew can identify. In other words, by removing ‘choseness’, the Jew, in effect, becomes converted to something else (converted into Christianity or, more generally, into an ordinary human being ) . The concept of ‘choseness’ is bound up with many Jewish concepts of self-alienation or even positive discrimination such as Kosher food, Minian as well as the process of conversion. These concepts share a common denominator that suppress any experience of social interaction with the Other. In other words, Jews are discouraged from assimilating with their non-Jewish environment (the Hebrew word for assimilation is Hit-bo-le-lout which comes from the root word Blil which is commonly understood to mean ‘mass’ or ‘confusion’, hence le-hit-bo-lel, to assimilate, means to get confused, to be one of the mass, to lose your authenticity ). The result of this is that the possibility of ‘loving thy neighbour’ is denied.

In general, as we shall see, ‘Jewish understanding’ (unlike Judaism) leads to ignorance of the Other. When I talk about the Other, I refer to that which is conditionally different from myself. The Other is the one with whom one can empathize because, and only because, he is different. An interaction with the Other tests one's tolerance. The Bible calls you to love the Other as much as you love yourself (Leviticus 19;18) but who is the Other? Can he be a black man? An Arab? A man in general? Can he be a goy (a gentile)? Should I empathize with the goy? Should I be tolerant of him? This is where we face a major distinction between Judaism and ‘Jewish understanding’. While Judaism can live peacefully with the general and broad concept of ‘loving thy neighbour’, ‘Jewish understanding’, in most practical cases, opposes it completely. As we know, Christ as a Jewish spiritual leader, interpreted the Jewish notion of the Other as friend or brother. We are all sons of God and equally loved by God. Hence, I should love my neighbour as if he is my brother. In other words, unconditionally (Jews, as we all know, never accepted Christ's interpretation of tolerance and equality ).

Nowadays, this concept of love of the Other is rejected by many Jews and if I am wrong please explain to me why it is so difficult for the goy to convert to Judaism? Why in the Jewish state, after more than 35 years of invasion and oppression, is there hardly any Jewish voice calling for compassion to be shown to the Palestinian population? Why is it that there is hardly any call from Jewish communities throughout the world to stop the racially motivated and inhuman attacks on the Palestinian civilian population? Why is it that the Jewish world hardly ever condemns Israel for its brutality? We must therefore learn to interpret the notion of ‘choseness’ in its common ‘Jewish understanding’ as anti-humanitarian.

Master Slave Dialectic

One way to reflect upon the concept of ‘choseness’ is through a deep understanding of the Hegelian concept of the ‘Master-Slave Dialectic’.

According to Hegel, attaining ‘self-consciousness’ (self-aware) is a process which necessarily involves the Other. How am I to become conscious of myself in general? It is simply through desire or anger, for example. Whenever I am angry it is ‘Me’ who feels angry. But unlike animals that overcome biological needs by destroying another organic entity, human desire is a desire for recognition.

In Hegelian terms, this is accomplished by directing oneself towards non-being, that is towards another desire, another emptiness, another I. It is something that can never be fully accomplished. "The man who desires a thing humanly acts not so much to possess the thing as to make another recognise his rightit is only desire of such recognition, it is only the action that flows from such desire, that creates, realizes and reveals a human, non biological I." ( Kojeve A., Introduction to the Reading Of Hegel, 1947, (Cornell Univ. Press, 1993), p. 40 ) Following this Hegelian line of thinking, we can deduce that in order to develop self-consciousness, one must face the Other. While the biological entity will fight for its biological continuity, a human being fights for recognition.

In order to understand the practical implications of this idea, let us turn to the ‘Master-Slave dialectic’. The Master is called the Master because he strives to prove his superiority over nature and over the slave who is forced to recognize him as a master.

At first glance, it looks as if the master has reached the peak of human existence but as we shall see, this is not the case. As we have learned already, humans fight for recognition. The master is recognized by the slave as a master but the slave's recognition has little value. The master wants to be recognized by another man but a slave is not a man. The master wants recognition by a master but another master cannot allow another superior human being in his world. "In short, the master never succeeds in realizing his end, the end for which he risks his very life". So the master faces a dead-end. But what about the slave? The slave is in the process of transforming himself since, unlike the master who cannot go any further, the slave has everything to aspire to. The slave is led to transform the social conditions in which he lives. The slave is the embodiment of history. He is the essence of progress.

A Lesson in Mastery

Now after such a philosophical introduction, let us apply the Hegelian concept to the ‘choseness’ mechanism. While the Hegelian ‘Master’ risks his biological existence to become a master, the new-born Jewish infant risks his foreskin. The chosen infant is born into the realm of mastery and excellence without (yet) excelling at anything. The chosen baby is awarded his prestigious status without facing any process of recognition by the Other. The title of ‘choseness’ is given to Jews by God rather than by the Other.

If we try to analyse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the Hegelian mechanism of recognition, we realise the impossibility of any dialogue between the two parties. While it is more than clear that the Palestinian people are fighting for recognition which they declare at every possible opportunity, the Israelis avoid the whole recognition issue completely. They are convinced that they are already fully recognized in the first place. They know who they are - they are born masters. Israelis refuse to join the ‘meaning transformation’ game and instead divert all their intellectual, political and military efforts into demolishing any sense of Palestinian recognition. The battle for Israeli society is to suppress any Palestinian symbol or desire, whether material, spiritual or cultural.

Strangely enough, the Palestinians are managing quite well in their fight for recognition. More and more people are starting to understand the just nature of the Palestinian cause and the injustice of continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The world finds the Palestinian people and spokesmen very easy to empathize with. The Israelis, on the other hand, are completely untrained in such manoeuvres. They are out of the game. The public finds them almost impossible to sympathize with. While a Palestinian will call you to share his pain and misery, talking straight to your heart in order to convert you, the Israeli spokesman, usually (but not necessarily) an army officer, will order you to accept his strange views. He will insist on selling you a ready-made historical scheme; a repetitive poem that starts somewhere around Biblical Abraham, continues with the Holocaust and leads towards more bloodshed. It seems as if the Israelis always present the same faceless (Can one imagine the faces of six million victims or the face of Abraham. Israeli propaganda appears to be an analytical argument built upon faceless characters ) story (Can Abraham and the Holocaust justify Israeli inhuman behaviour?).

Following Hegel, we learn that recognition is a dynamic process, it is a type of understanding that grows in you. While the Palestinians will use all their available resources to make you look them in the face, in their eyes, to carry you into a dynamic process of mutual recognition, the Israelis will try to convince you that there is no Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is no Palestinian history or culture.

My way of interpreting this bizarre ideological and political Israeli behaviour is based upon the Israeli lack of a ‘recognition mechanism’. The Israelis lack an understanding of history as a flux, as a dynamic process, as a progression towards ‘realizing oneself’, a meaning transformation game. Israel and Israelis view themselves as if they are external to history. They do not progress toward self-realization because they have a given, fixed identity. While the Palestinians see themselves as a nation progressing towards meaning and self-realization, the Israelis are struggling to fix meanings and to oppose any possible process of re-naming or re-writing. In other words, the Israelis will oppose any possible change. I assume that this kind of traditional Israeli fixing of meanings is inherited from the Jewish tradition of re-reading. Judaism is a culture based upon a continuous re-reading of the biblical text whilst obstinately refusing to engage in re-writing, criticising (Jews are more than welcome to interpret the Bible but not to re-write it. ) or reforming (As we know, Zionism, in its very origin, is not a religious movement. If anything, it is very much a secular movement. Zionism's confinement of Jewishness to an ethnic group enables the birth of a nationalist movement. Zionism takes out of ‘Jewish understanding’ different patterns of ‘mastery’ and ‘choseness’ ).

It seems that people who are not trained to recognise the other are unable to let themselves be recognised. The Israelis are not equipped with the mental mechanism needed to recognize the other. Why should they? They have done so well for many years without having to do so. According to Hegel, one becomes aware of oneself via the Other. However, the ‘chosen’ type is already self-aware to start with. He is born into mastery. Israelis are not practicing any process of dialogue since they are born masters. In order to be fair to the Israelis, I have to admit that their lack of recognition mechanism has nothing to do with their anti-Palestinian feelings. As a matter of fact, they cannot even recognize themselves - Israel and Israelis have a long history of discrimination against its own people (Jews of non-European descent such as Sephardi Jews are discriminated against by the Jewish elite, those of Western descent ).

Historic Materialism

If one cannot establish relationships with one's neighbour based upon recognition of the other, there must be another way of establishing a dialogue. If one cannot form a dialogue based upon empathy with the other and the rights of the other, one must pursue another mode of communication. It seems as if the alternative ‘chosen’ dialogical method reduces any form of communication into a materialistic language. Almost any form of human activity, including love and aesthetic pleasure, can be reduced to a material value. The Chosen People are well practised in using this method of communication.

Following the recent legal battle between major Jewish institutions and the Swiss Bank, I tend to agree with Norman Finkelstein ( ‘The Holocaust Industry’, Norman Finkelstein, Verso 2000, In the book Finkelstein discovers the terrible story of Jewish organizations who turn the Holocaust memory into an industrial act i.e. profit making ) that, these days, very little remains of the Jewish Holocaust apart from various industrial forms of financial bargaining for compensation. According to Finkelstein, it is all about profit-making. Without any criticism intended by me about financial compensation, it appears as if some people are quick to translate their pain into gold (it is important to mention that pain as well as being transformed into gold, can be transformed into other values such as moral or aesthetic etc). However, the possibility of transforming pain and blood into cash stands at the heart of the Israeli false dream - that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the refugee problem, is resolvable. Now we know where this assumption originates. The Israelis are fully convinced that if they were happy to come to a financial settlement with the Germans , the Palestinians must be equally happy to sell their lands and dignity. How do the Israelis arrive at such a strange conviction? Because they must know better than the Palestinians what the Palestinians really want. How? Because the Israelis are brilliant, they are the Chosen People.

When you talk to Israelis about the conflict, one of their most frequently used arguments is the following: "When we (the Jews) came here (to Palestine), they (the Arabs) had nothing. Now they have electricity, work, cars, health services etc." This is obviously a failure to recognize the Other. It is typical of Chosen Israelis to expect the other to share the importance they attach to the acquisition of material wealth. Why should the other share my values? Because I know what is good. Why do I know what is Good? Because I am the best. This arrogant and completely materialistic approach lies at the heart of the Oslo accords. The "new Middle East dream" shared by Shimon Peres and his blind assistants was about turning the region into a financial paradise in which Israel would stand at the very centre. The Palestinians (as well as other Arab states) would supply Israeli industries (representing the West) with the low cost labour they need. In turn, they would earn money and spend it buying Israeli (Western) goods. Israel has tried to establish a dual coexistence in the region where the Palestinian people would be the eternal slaves and the Israelis their masters. These ideas, generated by the most prestigious ideological leaders of the Israeli ‘Labour’ party, are quite surprising considering the fact that one would expect Labour ideologists to be familiar with the basic principles of Hegelian and Marxist thought. According to Hegel, it is the slave that moves history forward. It is the slave that struggles towards his freedom. It is the slave who transforms himself and it is the master who eventually vanishes. One way of explaining why Israel ignores this understanding of history relates to the conditional detachment of the ‘chosen’ state of mind.

Welcome to Cuckoo land

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian doctor who lives and works in the occupied West Bank, referred to Israel as "trying to be David and Goliath at the same time" (Dr. Barghouti was speaking at a debate at the House of Commons, 22 Nov. 2000 ). According to Dr. Barghouti, this is impossible. He also claimed that "Israel is probably the only state that bombs a territory it occupies". He found this very strange and even bizarre. Is it really strange to be David and Goliath simultaneously? Is it really strange to destroy your own property? Not if you are insane. Not if you are suffering from a disturbed mental condition or have lost contact with reality. The lack of mirroring (Again, seeing oneself through the other) can lead people and nations into strange dark corners. The lack of a framework which would allow you to discern your own image through the Other, the lack of a corrective mechanism, appears to be a very dangerous state of affairs.

The first generation of Israeli leaders (Ben-Gurion, Eshkol, Meir, Peres, Begin) grew up in the Diaspora, mainly in Eastern Europe. Being a Jew living in a non-Jewish environment forces one to develop a sharpened self-awareness and imposes a certain kind of mirroring. This was not enough to restrain those European leaders from aggressive acts (e.g.. Dir-Yassin, Nakbah, Kafer Kasem, the '67 war etc.) but more than enough to teach them a lesson in diplomacy. Since 1996, Israel has been led by young leaders who were born into the state of ‘choseness’. Whilst in their earlier years, they were imbued with an intense traditional Jewish anxiety, as they grew up this was overtaken by the legacy of the 1967 ‘miracle’, an event that turned some of the ‘chosen’ ideologies into a messianic mission. This fixation with absolute power exacerbated by Jewish anxiety coupled with ignorance of the ‘other’ leads to epidemic schizophrenia, both of mood and action; a severe loss of contact with reality that gives way to the use of excessive force. Israel retaliates with machine guns in response to children throwing stones, with artillery and missiles against civilian targets following a sporadic uprising and so on. This typical Israeli violence is a direct result of the complete ignorance by the ‘chosen’ of the Other's basic rights. This behaviour should not be explained by using political or sociological analytical tools. Much greater understanding could be gained by situating the conflict within a philosophical framework which allows a better understanding of the origins of paranoia and schizophrenia.

The Israeli Prime Minister, representing both ‘David and Goliath’, can talk about the vulnerability of Israel, Jewish pain and Jewish misery in one breath and about launching a massive military offensive against the whole region in the next. Such behaviour can only be explained by a form of mental illness. The funny/sad side of it is that most Israelis do not even realise that something is going terribly wrong. Being a born master leads to the absence of a ‘recognition mechanism’. This lack of a recognition mechanism results in a split psyche, being both ‘David and Goliath’ at one and the same time. It seems that neither Israel nor Israelis can any longer be a partner in meaningful dialogue.

Source:- http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/conflict.html

www.ety.com/HRP/jewishstudies/unresolvedconflict.htm

Posted Oct. 19, 2010