Hollow Men
Why IsraelÂ’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals
By Lee Smith | Jul 14, 2010 7:00 AM TABLET MAGAZINE EXCERPT:
It’s nothing new for Western intellectuals to lavish attention and admiration on the resistance forces aligned against Israel, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah or even organizations like al-Qaida that are less interested in Israel than in killing and maiming Western civilians. Last week, when CNN’s former Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted that she respected the late militant cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the cards were out on the table for all to see. But usually the pro-resistance vibe is more subtle, as when Nasr’s defenders demanded a more nuanced understanding from knee-jerk Americans who were shocked by Nasr’s support for a suicide-bomb-sanctioning man of faith. After all, Fadlallah was a relatively pro-feminist radical Islamist cleric—and if his talk about Israel was genocidal, well, that’s just part of the package when dealing with a complex place like the Middle East. Media consumers in the United States are by now well aware that Hezbollah and Hamas provide “social services” for their communities. For the writers and television personalities who push such supposed palliatives on their audiences—“Yes, they do chant ‘kill the Jews!’ and they do act on their rhetoric, but they also educate poor kids in clean, well-lit schools (please ignore the slogans painted on the walls)”—respect for the resistance is a polite way of indicating one’s tolerance for murderous anti-Semitism. The issue is whether this attitude is in danger of seeping into the mainstream of the U.S. public. Poll numbers show that U.S. support for Israel is consistently high—in February Gallup found [2] that a near-record 63 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to the Jewish state than to the Palestinians. But ideas can change, and it’s intellectuals who often lead the way. Remember that Israel was a popular cause among the intellectual classes until the 1967 war. It is true that the American people and the bulk of their intellectual class are far apart on the subject of Israel, but all the massive and popular evil of the last century started among a small ideological elite.
A common explanation for the turning away of the intellectuals from Israel is that the Jewish state forfeited the worldÂ’s sympathy once it was no longer perceived as the underdog in its conflict with the Arabs. IsraelÂ’s sin, in this reading, is that it didnÂ’t lose.
<<SNIP>>
If Israel is portrayed as the Dirty Harry of nations, then its accusers are the tepid bureaucrats mistaking cowardice for compassion, who chide Clint EastwoodÂ’s Callahan.
In reality, of course, Israel isn’t all that heroic. No one and nothing is. Israel’s men and women of honor do not accomplish Homeric deeds in south Lebanon or Gaza to the beat of martial songs, like the resistance; instead they ride the bus home on the weekend to see their parents, go out drinking with friends, and pick up the wrong guy or girl in a smoky bar with awful pop music. “Our warriors,” says one former tank driver, “are Jewish boys who are bossed around by their wives.”
<<SNIP>>
Whereas the ancients believed the role of the state was to promote virtue, the moderns took a more realistic view of human nature. The United States is founded on the idea that men are mediocre when they are not murderous and that it is the role of the state to protect them from each otherÂ’s predations. For such an optimistic country like the United States, this is a very unpleasant picture of human nature, and quite a boring idea. Universal equality is not the kind of idea, in practice even more so than theory, that is apt to excite intellectuals.
Of course, intellectuals on the right and the left have been wrong about politics these last hundred years more than they have been right (or righteous). George Orwell, after all, is not a major figure who was right about communism; rather, he is a major figure because he was one of the few who was right about communism. Among the great names of U.S. and European literary modernism, it is difficult to number more than a handful who did not flirt with fascism or who were not openly anti-Semitic.
The same search for novelty and individual originality, the same disenchantment with democracy, the same desire to stand outside the mediocrity of mass culture that fueled the modernist revolution in the arts also gave rise to a dispiriting number of mass-murdering political cults, from communism to fascism and Nazism to a number of Western-inspired ideas that were realized elsewhere, from the genocidal regime of Pol Pot to Arab nationalism.
<<SNIP>>
You could argue that Israel is a nation of obvious appeal to the intellectual classes, even on their own terms. For instance, the rebirth of Hebrew as a living national language was the work of intellectuals. Zionism itself is an idea. If you were a person of faith, you’d simply take the restoration of the Jews as proof that God is real and acts in history. But as a man of reason, you’d see the rebirth of Israel as evidence of human progress: After 2,000 years of wandering and suffering, the Jews have a modern nation-state—things do get better. If you were a man of reason, you’d take Israel as proof that enlightenment is real.
But intellectuals are no more rational than the rest of us, and none of us are wholly rational in our politics. The attractiveness of the resistance takes place on an emotional level, for like all of the most intellectually captivating modernist grand concepts it is a rejection of the Enlightenment, the boredom and the mediocrity of regular politics. The Enlightenment did away with the blood, the magic and mysticism of the great leader, he who decides life and death with a word. And this is what is to be recovered in the resistance: the charisma and authenticity of the human being unrestrained by what Nietzsche called slave morality.
<<SNIP>>
Some journalists shed tears when Arafat died, others are smitten by the beauty of Islamist militants: The “green eyes” of Hezbollah’s deputy Naim Qassem “are framed by thick, dark lashes and he has long elegant hands.” Saddam Hussein, we are told , did much to advance the rights of women.
END EXCERPT
Why IsraelÂ’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals
By Lee Smith | Jul 14, 2010 7:00 AM TABLET MAGAZINE EXCERPT:
It’s nothing new for Western intellectuals to lavish attention and admiration on the resistance forces aligned against Israel, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah or even organizations like al-Qaida that are less interested in Israel than in killing and maiming Western civilians. Last week, when CNN’s former Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted that she respected the late militant cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the cards were out on the table for all to see. But usually the pro-resistance vibe is more subtle, as when Nasr’s defenders demanded a more nuanced understanding from knee-jerk Americans who were shocked by Nasr’s support for a suicide-bomb-sanctioning man of faith. After all, Fadlallah was a relatively pro-feminist radical Islamist cleric—and if his talk about Israel was genocidal, well, that’s just part of the package when dealing with a complex place like the Middle East. Media consumers in the United States are by now well aware that Hezbollah and Hamas provide “social services” for their communities. For the writers and television personalities who push such supposed palliatives on their audiences—“Yes, they do chant ‘kill the Jews!’ and they do act on their rhetoric, but they also educate poor kids in clean, well-lit schools (please ignore the slogans painted on the walls)”—respect for the resistance is a polite way of indicating one’s tolerance for murderous anti-Semitism. The issue is whether this attitude is in danger of seeping into the mainstream of the U.S. public. Poll numbers show that U.S. support for Israel is consistently high—in February Gallup found [2] that a near-record 63 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to the Jewish state than to the Palestinians. But ideas can change, and it’s intellectuals who often lead the way. Remember that Israel was a popular cause among the intellectual classes until the 1967 war. It is true that the American people and the bulk of their intellectual class are far apart on the subject of Israel, but all the massive and popular evil of the last century started among a small ideological elite.
A common explanation for the turning away of the intellectuals from Israel is that the Jewish state forfeited the worldÂ’s sympathy once it was no longer perceived as the underdog in its conflict with the Arabs. IsraelÂ’s sin, in this reading, is that it didnÂ’t lose.
<<SNIP>>
If Israel is portrayed as the Dirty Harry of nations, then its accusers are the tepid bureaucrats mistaking cowardice for compassion, who chide Clint EastwoodÂ’s Callahan.
In reality, of course, Israel isn’t all that heroic. No one and nothing is. Israel’s men and women of honor do not accomplish Homeric deeds in south Lebanon or Gaza to the beat of martial songs, like the resistance; instead they ride the bus home on the weekend to see their parents, go out drinking with friends, and pick up the wrong guy or girl in a smoky bar with awful pop music. “Our warriors,” says one former tank driver, “are Jewish boys who are bossed around by their wives.”
<<SNIP>>
Whereas the ancients believed the role of the state was to promote virtue, the moderns took a more realistic view of human nature. The United States is founded on the idea that men are mediocre when they are not murderous and that it is the role of the state to protect them from each otherÂ’s predations. For such an optimistic country like the United States, this is a very unpleasant picture of human nature, and quite a boring idea. Universal equality is not the kind of idea, in practice even more so than theory, that is apt to excite intellectuals.
Of course, intellectuals on the right and the left have been wrong about politics these last hundred years more than they have been right (or righteous). George Orwell, after all, is not a major figure who was right about communism; rather, he is a major figure because he was one of the few who was right about communism. Among the great names of U.S. and European literary modernism, it is difficult to number more than a handful who did not flirt with fascism or who were not openly anti-Semitic.
The same search for novelty and individual originality, the same disenchantment with democracy, the same desire to stand outside the mediocrity of mass culture that fueled the modernist revolution in the arts also gave rise to a dispiriting number of mass-murdering political cults, from communism to fascism and Nazism to a number of Western-inspired ideas that were realized elsewhere, from the genocidal regime of Pol Pot to Arab nationalism.
<<SNIP>>
You could argue that Israel is a nation of obvious appeal to the intellectual classes, even on their own terms. For instance, the rebirth of Hebrew as a living national language was the work of intellectuals. Zionism itself is an idea. If you were a person of faith, you’d simply take the restoration of the Jews as proof that God is real and acts in history. But as a man of reason, you’d see the rebirth of Israel as evidence of human progress: After 2,000 years of wandering and suffering, the Jews have a modern nation-state—things do get better. If you were a man of reason, you’d take Israel as proof that enlightenment is real.
But intellectuals are no more rational than the rest of us, and none of us are wholly rational in our politics. The attractiveness of the resistance takes place on an emotional level, for like all of the most intellectually captivating modernist grand concepts it is a rejection of the Enlightenment, the boredom and the mediocrity of regular politics. The Enlightenment did away with the blood, the magic and mysticism of the great leader, he who decides life and death with a word. And this is what is to be recovered in the resistance: the charisma and authenticity of the human being unrestrained by what Nietzsche called slave morality.
<<SNIP>>
Some journalists shed tears when Arafat died, others are smitten by the beauty of Islamist militants: The “green eyes” of Hezbollah’s deputy Naim Qassem “are framed by thick, dark lashes and he has long elegant hands.” Saddam Hussein, we are told , did much to advance the rights of women.
END EXCERPT
