Israel and globalisation

From sunset on 5 October, Jews observe Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. The need for atonement is more evident in Israel/Palestine, where the suffering of Israeli and Palestinian children is so great, than in almost any other region that the western media deigns to notice.

What does any of this have to do with globalisation (whatever that is)? Well, as a wise man recently reminded me, how others see you is an important part of your identity. And for the global justice movement, the activities of the Israeli government are a lightning rod for indignation and anger. Here, goes the narrative, is a wealthy, advanced industrial society (generously subsidised by the capitalist hegemon) grabbing the resources and the very future of some of the poorest and most oppressed people on earth, fencing them in and driving them from poverty to penury and below.

Rachel Corrie, a young American peaceworker killed by an Israeli bulldozer in an act that at the least was shockingly reckless, was a graduate of the 1999 ‘Battle of Seattle’ against the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and one who saw a direct connection between Israeli power and a global land and property grab by the already very rich.

Naomi Klein, an icon of the anti-globalisation movement, is another. She makes the connection in a recent article, Free Trade is War. (It is characterised by a typical mixture of moral outrage and huge confusion. Yes, Chile went through blood and fire, but it is now a democracy, and Latin America’s most prosperous country; in Argentina, the anti-globalisation poster child, voters rejected the far-left radicals – trounced and routed would be putting it too mildly – and embraced a Peronist – a nationalist party with authoritarian origins – in its battles with the now discredited Washington Consensus.)

Klein, who is herself Jewish, has also – with some bravery – identified the lurking danger of anti-Semitism in much opposition to Israel's policies. Her conclusion, in my view correct, is that “it is precisely because anti-Semitism is used and abused by the likes of Ariel Sharon that the fight against it must be reclaimed [by those who term themselves progressive]”.

Anti-Semitism is some demon. An explosive and toxic danger lurks behind a superficially plausible face like David Irving or a supposedly careful compilation of evidence, interspersed with distortions and outright lies.

So what to do? An effective response to anti-Semitism must not ignore the prominence of people of Jewish ethnic, cultural or religious background in the rich industrial countries and Russia, and the way that can foster insecurity and resentment.

In Russia, where only a tiny fraction of the population is Jewish, several of the ‘oligarchs’ – the handful of men who have come to control Russia’s vast wealth since the Soviet meltdown – are from Jewish backgrounds.

In the US, where the falling Jewish population is under 2% of total, Jews have achieved economic, political and cultural leadership in disproportion to other groups. Some prominent advocates of the neo-conservative approach in American foreign policy (Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser and William Kristol) are of Jewish origin.

(Such connections have been vigorously debated within the United States by, for example, Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal, Patrick Buchanan in The American Conservative, Michael Lind (of the New America Foundation), and Alvin Rosenfeld of the American Jewish Committee.

It is also worth pointing out that many prominent figures in opposition to the neo-conservative approach are of Jewish background, such as Michael Lerner of Tikkun, Robert Reich of The American Prospect, the civil society philanthropist George Soros, and the late Democratic senator Paul Wellstone.)

But angry, dislocated minds can build a picture of a vast conspiracy from such fragmentary facts. More uncomfortably, ugly night thoughts do cross the minds of many people who consider themselves fair and reasonable.

Leading neo-cons like Wolfowitz have been swift to rebuke this anti-Semitic undercurrent. He is right to do so. But is the ‘sunshine warrior’ himself falling into another, very different trap?

Central to the declared neo-conservative philosophy is a mission to spread liberal democracy. Neo-cons would like to transform the ‘Near East’, for example, into a region of liberal regimes where Jews thrive as they do in the US or contemporary Germany. Is this for real? In a forthcoming openDemocracy interview with Danny Postel, Shadia Drury – scholar of one of the neo-conservatives’ intellectual gurus, Leo Strauss – argues that deception (‘the noble lie’) is at the very heart of neo-con philosophy.

There is also the possibility that the consequence of this philosophy is not (as its advocates claim) deception of the masses for ‘noble’ ends), but rather self-deception. This would be both ironic and tragic if proved true.

Where is Israel going?

On the ground, the question of whether Israel can remain both democratic and Jewish in its turbulent neighbourhood is being tested in the extension of Israel’s security fence. Views are of course sharply divided. Ahmad Samih Khalidi suggests that a unitary state, which will ultimately grant equal rights to non-Jews, is inevitable.

Another view, convincingly argued by Geoffrey Aronson, is that Sharon has won. For William Safire, the ‘Ariel salient’ is a test case of whether, with the right mixture of force and concessions, Israel will be able to subdue the ‘natives’ altogether.

The economic forces that underlie its ideology give grounds for hope that Israel will gradually become a more ‘normal’ country, in the conventional sense of that word as used by pro-globalisers – that is, more prosperous, democratic and open to the flows of people and goods.

It’s likely that in the near term the Israeli government will be able to continue to spend heavily on settlement programmes, despite its budget deficits.

But in the medium to longer term, prosperity – and therefore a viable Jewish state – depends on more openness to the outside world. As the historian Bernard Wasserstein shows in his recent work Israel and Palestine: Why They Fight and Can They Stop?, Israel’s success in the 1990s depended in large part on the open nature of its economy.

Leaving aside the Arab ‘problem’ for one moment, the Israeli economy has, for example, become increasingly dependent on foreign, non-Arab, non-Jewish labour. Eager recruits have flooded in from Romania, Thailand, the former Soviet Union, Turkey, Ghana, Malaysia, the Philippines and China.

Theoretically, foreign workers enter Israel for a year or so at a time before returning home. But Israel, like many other countries, has found that short-term guest workers evolve almost imperceptibly into long-term residents. They are the most rapidly growing social group in Israel today and, counted together with supposedly temporary foreign workers, number around half a million – around one in ten of the population.

It is just possible that the changing nature of Israel’s population may lead to a more open and tolerant society where, in the words of Britain’s chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks “forgiveness means searching for a new way together”.