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Diaspora, Kinship and Loyalty: the Renewal of Jewish National Security

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Diaspora, Kinship and Loyalty: the Renewal of Jewish National Security Diaspora, kinship and loyalty: the renewal of Jewish national security YOSSI SHAIN AND BARRY BRISTMAN The beginning of a new round of Palestinian–Israeli violence in September 2000 and the complete collapse of the Oslo process brought to an end, at least for the time being, Israeli and diasporic Jewish expectations of peace and a transformation in their relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds. These developments also, by extension, brought about an apparent end to Israeli and Jewish hopes for a permanent release from both a perceived sense of isolation internationally and a persistent preoccupation with existential questions of security and, indeed, survival. The war of attrition that has followed the initial outbreak of riots has also ‘resecuritized’ the relationship between Israel and the Jewish diaspora, just as the events of 11 September 2001 took the subject of º Jewish kinship and security dilemmas one dramatic step further. The Israeli–Jewish diaspora relationship had been evolving in different directions during the Oslo years. For almost a decade, many Israelis and diaspora Jews believed that a comprehensive Middle East peace would alter funda- mentally both Israel’s Jewish character and relations between the sovereign Jewish state and Jewish existence in the West. Peace would have enabled Israel to achieve a level of normalization that would have loosened the bonds of involvement with and responsibility for the diaspora, while releasing the diaspora from burdensome entanglements with Israeli security issues that had overshadowed their lives in their countries of domicile for over a generation. Until very recently many American observers remarked upon this process of growing detachment, called by one writer the ‘waning of the American Jewish love affair with Israel’.1 This redefinition of relations between the two com- munities was indeed most noticeable where the link between Israeli security and the diaspora had been the strongest in terms of identity formation and community mobilization: in the United States, whose political system facilitates ethnic involvement in foreign policy. Jewish Americans clearly have the strongest voice among US-based diasporas. In the west European context, Jews 1 Steven T. Rosenthal, Irreconcilable differences? The waning of the American Jewish love affair with Israel (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001). International Affairs 78, () ‒ 69 INTA78_1_04/ShainBristman* 69 19/12/01, 11:07 am Yossi Shain and Barry Bristman expected peace to produce a further decline in anti-Semitism and improve relations with the European Union’s growing Muslim population, confirming Jews’ successful integration in European society. Notwithstanding conflicting assessments of European Jewry, as a ‘vanishing diaspora’ or as revitalized ‘new Jews’ with a prominent role in a new Europe, the fact is that the new mani- festations of the Middle East conflict and the September attacks on the United States have returned the question of Jewish security to the heart of Jewish communities worldwide, and to the core of diasporic relations with Israel. In this article we assess the new thinking on Jewish security, both inside and outside the State of Israel. To what extent are diaspora voices and concerns being heeded in Israel, and how are new manifestations of anti-Semitism being addressed in this context? What is the new role that Israel ascribes to the diaspora in its redefinition of itself and its security environment as a consequence of events during the second intifada? Also, how is the diaspora responding to these new challenges and how is it defining its own role? All of these elements will be examined in the different contexts of Israel, western Europe and the United States. We argue that the terms of the Israel–Jewish security nexus and the security dilemmas faced by Jewish communities are being expressed differently in western Europe and in the United States, for several reasons. The historical experiences and the power structures of the two diasporas, the political and foreign policy environments in which they exist, and their respective positions vis-à-vis Israel and Zionism determine the unique dilemmas each faces and the way they are viewed in the new understanding of Jewish security. The power of American Jewry in international affairs is well documented. On the other side of the Atlantic, despite greater EU integration, the west European Jewish community remains divided by language differences and by national boundaries across which it is still very mobile. Western Europe’s Jews are fragmented organizationally, far smaller in number than the west European Muslim population, and more vulnerable to anti-Semitism than those of America. They have a far weaker tradition of political lobbying, and are often still reluctant to declare themselves publicly as Jews. All of these elements militate against Jewish political strength, especially in a political atmosphere less conducive to ethnic involvement in foreign policy. In fact, many west Europeans are very critical of the ethnic dimension of American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, and see it as a problem in west European–American relations in general. There are those who claim that the EU tends to take a less favourable line towards Israel as a way of opposing US foreign policy and asserting an independent voice on the world stage. In a leading article in Foreign Affairs in the spring of 2001, William Wallace branded US Middle East policy as irrational, claiming that west European governments seeking to influence US policy are ‘blocked by Washing- ton’s insistence that Middle East diplomacy is an American preserve and by the 2 attention that U.S. policymakers pay to domestic audiences on the subject’. At 2 William Wallace, ‘Europe, the necessary partner’, Foreign Affairs 80: 3, May/June 2001, p. 23. 70 INTA78_1_04/ShainBristman* 70 19/12/01, 11:07 am Diaspora, kinship and loyalty the same time, however, Wallace welcomes the growing Muslim influence on west European domestic politics and foreign policy, suggesting, interestingly enough, that somehow certain domestic influences are more legitimate than others. These arguments appear under a new light in the wake of the recent attacks on the United States, as anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have become further entangled. The large differences between the American and west European diasporas, and between the different positions of the United States and the EU, affect Israel’s perceptions when it considers the diasporas’ roles in its new security posture. Israel now perceives the American diaspora as a normalized and permanent centre of Jewish existence and identity, whose importance approaches that of Israel itself. This vision motivates Israeli elites to be more attentive to issues of anti- Semitism, and to articulate a desire to expand the security role of their Jewish kin in the United States in ways that may empower diaspora voices on the most fundamental issues of boundaries and sovereignty. This development challenges the traditional perspective on security, which stresses the critical role of Jewish independent state power in contrast to Jewish weakness in the diaspora. While the expanding role of the American Jewish community in Jewish security dilutes the original content of Zionism, the west European context provides new nourishment for traditional Zionist claims of endemic Jewish insecurity and the absolute centrality of Israel as the answer to that insecurity. For this reason, we have recently witnessed, even before the September terror attacks, a growing Israeli focus on anti-Semitism as a core issue of security and foreign policy—in contrast with the previous decade at least, during which bilateral state relations frequently suppressed Israeli involvement in issues of anti-Semitism abroad. Israelis are latecomers and not as fully committed to an endeavour long dominated by American Jews, who have for decades cham- pioned the cause of threatened Jewish communities throughout the world. Israel still privileges the health of its bilateral relations with other countries over the interests of Jewish communities resident there, though it certainly does not ignore them. In the same way, while Israel denounces anti-Semitism worldwide as a dangerous phenomenon in general, it is selective in its particular con- demnations, hesitant when interests it perceives as more important are at stake. So, for example, while Israel withdrew its ambassador to politically and econo- mically marginal Austria to protest against the inclusion of Jörg Haider’s party in the governing coalition, it refrained from criticism of the inclusion of neo- fascists in Italy’s new government, which promised to take a more pro-Israel line in its foreign policy. Similarly, Prime Ministers Begin and Barak asked the Anti-Defamation League chief Abraham Foxman to refrain from attacking widespread anti-Semitic rhetoric in Egypt’s press and official statements at times when Israel sought Egyptian political cooperation or understanding on regional security matters.3 In July 2000 Foxman characterized the new wave of Arab anti-Semitism as unprecedented in its depth, venom and utter lack of restraint. 3 Information given by Abraham Foxman to Yossi Shain, after lecture on 29 July 2001. 71 INTA78_1_04/ShainBristman* 71 19/12/01, 11:07 am Yossi Shain and Barry Bristman The virulence of Arab/Muslim anti-Semitic propaganda was particularly evident after the September attacks on New York and Washington, when Israel and ‘the Jews’ were blamed throughout the Islamic world for committing these acts, and for allegedly ensuring that Jews working at the World Trade Center were given prior warning so they could spare themselves.4 Although these accusations were especially harsh, their subject matter was not new. Over the last few years, [for example,] the Egyptian press has announced ‘Jewish con- spiracies’ to spread a deadly virus to eradicate the Arab world’s crop of date palms, and to export to the Arab world both Israeli-made belts that cause impotence and Israeli- made chewing gum that drives women to debauchery.
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