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Overcoming Impunity
by: Joel Kovel
January - March
2009
The Link - Volume 42, Issue 1
Page 9
• “Overcoming Zionism” has continued to sell modestly yet steadily, and indeed was helped by the attention aroused by its banning, which substituted at one level for an actual review by stating in effect that the work was important enough to warrant suppression. At another level, the lack of such a review, at least in the mainstream press, meant that the charges hurled at the book (none quoting, by the way, any actual instances of what I wrote) could not be substantiated. Those charges—hate speech, vituperative and aggressive rhetoric, anti-Israel propaganda, misquotes, discredited news stories, declared contempt for Judaism, wholly unscholarly, etc., etc.—are mere mud-slinging, though it must be added that sometimes mud can have considerable weight.
• UMP had indeed published a book highly critical of Israel and advocating its transformation, Virginia Tilley’s “The One State Solution.” This is an excellent work which I cite approvingly in “Overcoming Zionism.” What distinguished the two cases is that my book was attacked by the Zionist apparatus and Tilley’s, for reasons unknown, was not. The point is, that the director of UMP accepted the legitimacy of the Zionist inquisitor and revealed himself to be a soft Zionist for whom criticism of Israel is possible so long as it does not go “too far.” But what is too far? Is it that which arouses an irrational and vindictive panic in certain liberals? And who is to determine “too far?” The liberal Zionists? The hard Zionists who launch the attacks? Surely these are not adequate criteria.
• What we need is the realization that although all living beings have an inherent right to exist with dignity, ideas do not hold any such right. If an idea can be proven destructive to living beings then it should be combated and destroyed, as the idea of slavery and the innate inferiority of women have been destroyed. This is often not an easy matter to decide, whence we need to install the grounds for full and open inquiry, and honor and protect those ideas that run against the grain.
At the practical level, both fear and the desire for revenge have to be overcome. This happens to the degree that we reach out and achieve a universal, as against a tribal or chauvinist, perspective. For the critique of Zionism—the case at hand and, it may be added, a very bad idea—it is necessary to reach out to comprehend how we have gone astray and make it part of our being. The unity of the Christian West and Zionist Israel is given in their common history of eliminating indigenous people and using lofty and pseudo-spiritual values to justify this. The failure to confront and overcome this history is shown in racism and the foundation myths of conquering societies. Once we reach out beyond these limits, we can recover what has been lost. There is nothing to fear then. No need for impunity—just the taking of responsibility for what we have done and who we have become.
With this, we can begin to change. ■
Joel Kovel, a retired medical doctor, is Professor of Social Studies at Bard College in Annandale, N.Y.
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