Disproportionate

Last week Eva Peek wrote in NRC newspaper that she was disappointed by how little we have collectively learned from the Shoah. Nearly eighty years of commemorations and reflection on complicity and the ease with which the extermination of Jews could take place at the time, have not led to “a widely supported, refined knowledge of anti-Semitic stereotypes”. She is  disappointed, because that’s what she had hoped for.

I must say, I don’t completely agree with Peek. I am not disappointed with what I come across in national newspapers and news channels (so I am emphatically not talking about social media). Good journalists could stop at comparing the number of victims of Palestinian violence (around 1,600, including fallen soldiers) with the number of victims of Israeli bombs (more than 10,000), and then zoom in on the imbalance. That certainly happens, but there is also a remarkable amount of attention for the destructive impact of centuries of exclusion and persecution, culminating in the attempt at total destruction. The traumatization that has been built up over generations and has grown almost into a genetic predisposition, in its ugly depth, also represents an imbalance that we have to deal with. Not only Jews, but also, or especially, those (Western) societies that have fueled the traumas for centuries. The apparently felt need – at least in the better journalistic circles – to mention this can explain why a relatively large number of fairly in-depth articles have been published in the past month about (the history of) anti-Semitism, as well as nuanced interviews about Jewish fears and traumas that appear to pop up life-size from nothing these days.

By comparison: in 1940 I would not have wanted to vouch for the ‘better journalistic circles’ in terms of views on Jews, certainly not for the confessional part of those circles. Jewish stereotypes were accepted at face value, even by the ‘right-minded’ people of the time. It seems that decades of commemorations are now providing a broader perspective here. On the other hand, classic anti-Semitism is rapidly spreading to other parts of the world, partly due to current events.

If you want to see or give comments: click on Disproportionate and scroll down.

Two kinds of poison

Two kinds of poison bother me: CO2 in the air worldwide, and the anti-Semitism in the soil, traditionally the European-Russian soil but now steadily spreading to the Middle East and North Africa. The two poisons cause equal desperation, and I often don't know what to focus on. Around Dutch Liberation-day at May 4 of this year, confronted for the umpteenth time with the fathomless and inky abysses of the extermination camps, I wondered why actually I’m so concerned about the climate and a possible physical end of humanity. After all, wasn't humanity already morally bankrupt eighty years ago? Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly supported the occupation of the highway A12 and other disruptive actions by Extinction Rebellion (XR). Protesting against climate-threatening poison is always a good thing anyway, I thought.

At the moment the other poison concerns me more, mainly because of the speed and ease with which it is released. Our Dutch and European soil must be saturated to the brim with it, otherwise the eagerness with which anti-Israeli aggression flared up shortly after Hamas’ sadistic mass murder of Israeli civilians cannot be explained. As early as October 9, it was reported in one of the TV-shows that the mass murder was serious, but “that the Jews did ask for it to some extent.” On October 11, before the devastating Israeli bombings, the Palestinian flag was projected on the Rotterdam Eurotower by a department of XR. The obvious phase of understanding or compassion for Jewish Dutch people was virtually skipped, and (according to the Dutch paper NRC) “the switch was made immediately to a particularly aggressive form of solidarity with the Palestinians – often resulting in unadulterated anti-Semitism.” Katya Tolstoy, the outgoing National Theologian, says: “Because of the war in Gaza I feel a wave of anti-Semitism here, I know that from the Soviet Union.”

I knew that poison is in our soil – how could it be otherwise after hundreds of years of initially Christian-inspired and then secular anti-Semitic ideas? That is sunken socio-cultural heritage, so to speak. But that it is so flammable, in such large concentrations and so close to the surface, that scares me. And I also find it shocking that Extinction Rebellion is not the hygienic organization I thought it to be. Instead of fighting the anti-Semitic poison as it fights CO2, XR subsidizes its spread. Now that it appears that XR is just as blind to the social poison as the oil industry is to the greenhouse gas, the movement has become redundant for me. I think I know where my attention will be focused for the time being: on the anti-Semitic poison, that is, on the question of how the mechanism works by which one group can be blamed for literally everything, including the greenhouse gas.

By the way, I am of the opinion that the A12 should remain occupied. And the West Bank should not.

For another account of unconcerned anti-Semitism, see also Ironic. 

If you want to see or give comments: click on Two kinds of poison and scroll down.

Ironic

It is ironic, unreal and bewildering to read certain passages from the diaries of the German philosopher Heidegger, also known as the Black Notebooks, especially in these days when land and military action are at stake in the Middle East. The passages are presented as follows by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in his book The Banality of Heidegger:

► Uprootedness and therefore Bodenlosigkeit (lack of soil of one’s own) is a distinguishing feature of Judaism. The lack of ground consists in – or leads to – “being bound to nothing, making everything serviceable for itself (Judaism).” (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from‘Überlegungen VII-XI’, Schwartze Hefte 1938/39, p. 97).

► Because of this lack of a country of its own, Judaism writes itself out of human history because “groundlessness excludes itself”. (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from ‘Überlegungen VII-XI’ , Schwartze Hefte 1938/39, p. 97). Did Heidegger think, Nancy wonders, that Judaism could be helped in this self-destruction, for example by the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws?

► The contempt for the (then) lack of their own land is reinforced in Heidegger as, because of that lack, Jews do not know what it is to fight: “World Jewry(…)does not need to participate in military action, whereas we have to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people” (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from ‘Überlegungen XII-XV’, Schwartze Hefte 1939-1941, p. 262).

Heidegger would probably not have minded saying exactly the opposite in today’s situation. A bit like in the last century the anti-Semitic communists detested the Jews because of ‘their’ capitalism, and the anti-Semitic capitalists because they were all communists. 

Also see Heidegger and the Jews

If you would like to see or give comments: click on Ironic and scroll down.

Humanly spoken

Humanly spoken, in these difficult times one’s attention has to be with the victims of all this misery. And of course, with what we can do to prevent attacks. And fortunately, over the whole that attention is there.

But that does not prevent me to be interested in the underlying, almost philosophical shifts brought about by ever closer creeping terrorist violence.

Take this question of Leonie Breebaart in Trouw: “Is it really so bad that the Dutch sympathize more strongly with the victims in Brussels than with those in, say, Nigerian Maiduguri, where last week 22 worshippers were killed in a mosque?” And the sober reply from philosopher and ethicist Rutger Claassen: “What is close affects you more”.

That obviously has never been different, but for a long time we dared not say that aloud. From the sixties and seventies, at least for the progressive part of the Netherlands, solidarity with the oppressed was supposed to be limitless and global, without distinction as to geography, nationality or religion. Right now Breebaart asks: “Is not that a very abstract idea?”

Not so long ago it was considered unacceptably hypocritical to deplore one victim (eg a Belgian) more than another (eg a Nigerian). Right now Breebaart states: “But doesn’t it work just like that? Doesn’t there remain a tension between the idea of solidarity and the feeling that you have for people you know?” Say between thick and thin relationships.

As to me, these observations confirm an already very old Jewish truth. Namely that closeness and ‘the particularistic’ matter, and that relationships within your own community, or close in some other way, are of a different quality than the relationships you maintain beyond. Warmer, more intense, thicker. And that they are allowed to be so, without you being indecent to the rest of the world. That’s the way it may work indeed.

Until recently it was risky to formulate those thoughts, in a world where a noisy elite was universally oriented and put away all ethnocentrism and particularism as hopelessly outdated. That elite is resetting itself – and I hope it will not go into a neo-nationalistic direction but towards the recognition that charity begins at home. Because that seems to me an act of commendable realism.

What concerns me is that the spectrum is shifting in its entirety. For the West, I think that’s ok, it may very well return a bit of its haughty universalism. But Israel for a long time already is particularistic enough and could give some more attention to universal values. However, the recent Pew Report points into a different direction: a quarter of the Israeli population would want to trade democracy for theocracy and 48 percent of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement ‘Arabs must be put out of Israel’.

That does not feel right.

Also see Countries without borders

The whole world – or just a small part?

The relationship of Western culture to the bordercrossing and sometimes terrorist ambitions of Islam is more complex than is often thought. There is a strong inner relationship between the universalist orientations of the West and of Islam. That’s my conclusion after reading an enlightening article by the Arabist Maurice Blessing.

This conclusion is reached by the observation that 1. both the West and Islam start from a universalist, transnational ideal; 2. this ideal is not satisfied with less than global universalism; and 3. to achieve that goal the use of force is justified.

The presence of a universalist ideal appeared in the West since the time that Christianity got solid foothold there. From that moment it was its declared objective to from the West further Christianize the world. Think of the Catholic  and Protestant missionaries who certainly at the time of the 18th and 19th century imperialism, took it for their task (‘the white man’s burden’) to spread the Christian message to the farthest corners of the earth. When Christianity began to make way for the values of the French Revolution, such as democracy and human rights, the universalist fervor was no less.

In the case of Islam, according to Blessing, there is a religious commitment to ‘higher spheres’ that by its nature can accept no limits that prevent its spread. Because of that universalist orientation Islam can not but consider all national, particularistic borders as void and meaningless. Not only of non-Islamic countries, but also of Islamic countries, as evidenced by the change of the name ISIS (‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, so tied to a limited territory) in IS (‘Islamic State’). Loyalty should not be shown to human citizenship but to Allah. And Islam does not go for less than the whole world.

The conviction of having a universally applicable message was sufficient legitimacy for Christians to proceed to conversion under pressure. For example, of Jews in Spain, or of Indians in South America. And later, for the secular revolutionaries of the RAF and the Red Brigades to perpetrate their attacks. To the revolutionary Muslims it is sufficient justification for committing acts of terrorism around the world and for the destruction of national heritage.

Thus revolutionary fervor, stemming from the sincere belief to have a beneficial or even spiritual message for everyone, might point to greater affinity between Islam and the West then we usually tend to assume. A – not unimportant – contemporary difference is that the West has tempered the use of violence by attributing the monopoly of violence precisely to the national state. Such a concession to the national state radical Islam will not easily do, says Blessing. Indeed, Islamic terror is the very protest against this domestication of Islam and its binding to national borders.

But even with that difference the congeniality in universalist orientation between the West and Islam remains striking. Expanding your ideal all over the earth, as a necessary part of the ideal’s concept, appears to be an inseparable characteristic of both Christianity/Enlightenment and Islam. Could it have to do with a certain Greek conception of truth? That something called ‘truth’ only deserves the name if it has proven to be ‘universally valid’? Well, then you must first conquer the world.

Whatever you may say of the Jewish tradition – that it inspires people to discrimination against Israeli Arabs and encourages colonization of the West Bank –for roughly two thousand years it is a fact that Jewish attention is directed particularisticly, namely towards the welfare of the Jewish group. You might find that  narrow-minded, but maybe nicely modest as well.

In any case, the urge to missionate or conquer the world, including the immense brutality that goes with it, is foreign to the Jewish tradition. Except of course if you believe in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

Also see Borders and Countries without borders

Information is always good

Few things are as hard as to get insight into processes that take place stealthily. One way to somehow establish that insight is by having good information. Whether it comes to climate change, increasing or decreasing crimerates, or a social-economic split in society.

Or, to developments in Israeli policy regarding the West Bank. The gradual movement in that case is expressed in the terms that have been used in the course of twenty-five years to designate that area. Those designations have evolved from ‘occupied territories’ (around 1990), through ‘territories’, to (now), ‘Israeli regions’.

This – indeed stealthily unfolding – process can easily cause a feeling of impotence. The best weapon against it, also in this case, is detailed, precise (and of course correct) information that restitutes the possibility to choose. Allowing you, for example by whether or not buying certain products, to no longer stand completely powerless on the sidelines.

I therefore welcome the labeling of West Bank products. Not in order to boycott Israel but – on the contrary - the settlements. Because they are no Israel, right?

Also see The Green Line and the Red Line

Humiliation is never good

Last week I thought: this goes all wrong. I do not mean that we - the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France – accept too many refugees, because I do not know. Maybe we can handle it.

Nor do not mean that other countries - Hungary, Czech Republic, Israel - wrongly hold off the boat, because they may have their reasons.

I refer specifically to the reproaches made by the rich and developed West within the EU to the poorer and less developed East. Thus it is said that Hungary is “antisocial” and “inhumane”, and that the Eastern European countries in their opposition to mandatory quotas don’t represent “21st century Europe”.

Aren’t here the most deadly ingredients that can play in the interaction between people and states fully active again? The moral and cultural superiority of the West and the ‘primitiveness’ of the unruly countries are recurring themes. And therewith humiliation is the order of the day.

This is so bad because with a bit more historical look at our own cultural and social developments it may become well understandable that the East European countries do what they do. Don’t we ourselves wrestle with the integration of newcomers, while working on that already for fifty years. A couple of years ago Chancellor Merkel still considered integration to have “failed”. I did not agree with her, I think it goes well in many areas, but let’s not forget  that we needed fifty years for it. That experience Eastern European countries do not have. And Israel certainly not, because for such a development peace is a prerequisite for, including with Syria.

Furthermore, the seventy-year post-war peace and prosperity helped the indigenous Western European population to for the first time in world history think in completely different ways about faith, tradition, sexuality and identity. Remember the many shocks accompanied the process, at least in Holland, from the rebellion of the first prosperity-generation of in the sixties, through massive secularization, the revolt of Fortuyn and Wilders to the current debate about Blackface.

A suchlike cultural and social development apparently can only start to develop after a period of 20 to 25 years of peace and stability, the point where Eastern Europe is only now. Moreover, Hungary and Romania have had bad experiences with the difficult embeddable Roma. How ethical – or simply: wise – is it to demand of others something after twenty-five years that took us seventy years te reach?

Europe will have to deal with its member states in the way in which a state deals with its subjects. No state will oblige citizens to just take refugees into their homes. Those who can and want to do so may be encouraged. But those who are not ready to do so for whatever reasons – trouble in organizing their own life, trauma, poverty – can not be forced. And certainly not with an appeal to 21st century moral standards which originate in Western peace and prosperity and are suddenly thought to be universal.

The latter pretension can only have a humiliating effect. And does the pedantic West still not know what that means?

Also see Reluctance against the West, Half-grown and Plato disproved?

Not that bad

It is time for Europe to wake up from its decades-long sweet sleep, says Caroline de Gruyter in her column. She believes that for decades an immense allergy to power politics is the foundation of the EU. Foreign policy, according to the leading politicians, is mostly about trade, human rights and humanitarian development, while America takes care of our military protection. We must, according to De Gruyter, learn to understand again what True, Big Politics is: land grabbing and treasure hunting.

Measured by the standards of De Gruyter Israel does not do that bad. As to land grabbing it takes part even quite literally, although De Gruyter will not encourage that. What does fit into her vision is the sharp Israeli awareness of geopolitical threats, such as IS or Iran. Obviously, because their hostility towards Israel is no secret. But one of the results is that Israel does not make one step without a thorough assessment of the power political consequences. And it will continuously try to influence these effects. Failing to do so the country simply can not afford.

Well, de Gruyter tells us, no civilization can afford it, not even Europe. Continued neglect of the great political power game might once seriously break up Europe.

In terms of character and disposition I do not feel right at home with the approach propagated by De Gruyter. I do like peaceful sanctuaries, where art and culture and thinking can flourish. But she undoubtedly has a point. Paradise reserves don’t remain in position just by itself, and when you are realistic you will see that scary power political formations such as Russia and IS come closer. Without power thinking Europe will never find an answer.

It’s just very hard not to end up on a slippery slope, as Israel in the occupied territories. Or would appropriating them be a power-political and military necessity?

Also see I don't understand

Derailed ideology

What is worse? A Palestinian baby died in a fire bomb attack by Jewish settlers; or four stabbed participants in the Jerusalem gayparade, one of whom is already deceased and the others probably marked for their lives?

This is no kind of question, of course. For those directly involved this kind of suffering equation is not an issue.

And for us as spectators? Once more we find how dangerous ideologies can be. In both cases, it comes to political and religious ideas that run off with people. They turn them into criminals who in their ideological foolishness know no boundaries any longer.

That finding may encourage us to watch more critically the process of our thinking and to ask ourselves where we get unacceptably ideological. After all, precisely well-intentioned ideas – and at this moment I still want to consider most religious or political ideas as such – can get monstrously ideological.

Apart from that I think throwing the fire bomb is the most evil of the two crimes. Because this settlers action takes place within the framework of ideological infatuation which is not limited any longer to individuals. The desire – whether or not religiously motivated – to appropriate as much Palestinian land as possible is the ideological madness of an entire Israeli cabinet. With government-sanctioned lawlessness and outlawry of the Palestinians as a result. That is really very serious.

I hope this time the bombthrowers wil be identified and brought to court.

Also see Polyphony

The portable homeland

The Estonians are worried. They feel vulnerable because their big neighbor Russia, who in the past regularly walked them underfoot, seems to be aggressive again. What is happening in Ukraine frightens the Estonians, and so does the language that Russia uses lately.

“Because of that lunatic in Moscow, we are working on a concept to be able to survive as a country, even if we would for a while have no own territory anymore”, Taavi Kotka, the Chief Information Officer of the Estonian government, was quoted in NRC. “We not only make a digital backup, but also a mirror, a version that is always on call.” The content includes all information from citizens, communicationsystems and government systems.

The Estonians are digitally well organized for some time already. After gaining independence in 1991, Estonia was ready to work with digitization. In a relatively poor and sparsely populated country that was simply the most effective way to reduce costs and to offer services that could not otherwise be delivered.

But what began as a cost-saving operation has now also generated other benefits. For instance the time saved by citizens because they can fill all government forms digitally and do not ever have to repeat their medical history. Furthermore it leads, through export of digital knowledge and products, to economic success. And now this advantage is added: the guarantee of national survival in a situation without your own territory.

What does this make me think of? Indeed, of the codification of Jewish tradition in the Bible, Mishnah and Talmud, containing rules and agreements concerning liturgy, but also on matters of legal and administrative nature. Those writings have given Jews in the Diaspora for centuries so much structure and consistency that, in the formulation of Heinrich Heine, they could be referred to as the ‘portable Jewish homeland’. They made sure that, however much the Jews were scattered across the globe, a shared Jewish identity could survive.

So, what the CIO of Estonia has in mind, has been tried once already, and it appears to be managable, to some extent. Especially when it would concern the situation in which “for a while” there would be no own territory. But how do you know it will not last two thousand years?

Except that it is doable, something else may be learned from the Jewish diaspora. Namely that the exile was never able to take away the deep desire for a tangible state on a tangible territory. That’s why I don’t begrudge any nation, however digitized or marginalized, a private, secure, analog territory.

Also see The many dimensions of Ari Shavit

Numbers

Is it going to be a question of numbers?

I mean, are we witnessing a clash of civilizations à la Samuel Huntington? In the sense of a massive cultural conflict between Islam and the West, to be won by the largest and the strongest?

I don’t want to think along those lines. But sometimes – out of fear – I let myself be carried away by the idea. And for the duration of this piece I let that happen.

Because, what we experience, sometimes is quite similar to a battle of civilizations. Last week, in the News an imam was interviewed who made mention of the unbearable humiliations he and the entire Islamic community had to undergo. He was a gentle man, but he did not miss the opportunity to say that they together amount to 1.7 billion.

And Amsterdam Mayor Van der Laan repeated his legitimate message that we may well be afraid, but should not let ourselves be terrorized. There is no need for that, he added, because “we are with many more”, by which actually he was referring to a coalition of all those who are against terror.

But if numbers are that important, then prospectives for Jews are not so good. Because in that respect, we of course draw the short straw.

It’s true, we consider ourselves as part of the coalition against terror, and are usually considered by others to do so. You can even say that Israel - apart from the landgrabbing  Greater Israel supporters – is geographically in the frontline against barbarism.

However, It only takes something small to happen in the Middle East for the Western public opinion to believe that the Jews actually do nót belong in the partnership. For the Islamic public opinion this is already a foregone conclusion anyway, so then it’s going to be pretty cramped with those small Jewish numbers. You would be Greater Israel-fan because of it.

But that’s what I do not want to be.

Also see Incentives and Another Judaïsm?

Another Judaïsm?

I’m Jewish, but often I wonder whether I belong to the same tradition as those who emphasize they are the chosen people and therefore claim the West Bank; or who dream of a Greater Israel; or who want to ban Muslims from the Temple Mount and, says former Mossad chief Shavit, in order to achieve that even want to risk a new destruction of Jerusalem and a new exile.

Anyway, I strongly disagree with these positions, and I’m inclined to see emerge in them the worst of what religion can be. In contrast, I would like to emphasize the good of the tradition to which I belong.

For me, the core of its focus is on learning. But saying this is not precise enough because, precisely in view of the excesses that I note, it appears that some forms of learning can be oppressive and meaningless. The good form of learning that I have in mind is contemporary learning that has a life-giving impact.

In the formative years of the rabbinical tradition (say, from the second to the eighth century CE) learning did have that constructive character. Such learning took the form of study of the traditional oral and written texts, with the intention to derive direction for the way the Jewish people could exist in those days. And that worked extremely powerful, thanks to the passion and intellectual ingenuity that were invested by the then rabbis.

Learning had impact. That’s in my view hardly the case with the descendants of those rabbis who ruminate their texts in jesjiwot. For them, it’s less about the struggle to obtain new answers – so about a creative, life-giving process – but rather about honoring the founders of the tradition. Therefore in my eyes they are victims of their own sacred cows, and not much inspiration radiates from that.

If we want Jewish learning in our time to have the same impact as the former rabbinic text analysis and discussion in their time, we will therefore have to find and deploy our contemporary forms. But if learning can no longer rely on text study and interpretation, what does contemporary, creative Jewish learning look like?

I believe that will be about our history. In the way Simon Schama learns and tells of the exile and Zionism. Or Bart Wallet about Dutch Jewry, or Leo Mock about the Jewish Middle Ages. Or, indeed, Josephus about the destruction of the Second Temple.

I search into that direction because of the effect I notice emanating from historians who manage to place all existing stories in a broad, nuanced perspective. That is beneficent and  space-creating, and thus guiding in a way that is similar to the learning of the rabbis.

Besides, I think the a-historical, classic study of fundamental texts not only for the Jewish tradition has had its day. That certainly applies also to Islam and Christianity. A-historical thinking is no option any longer, the turn is to multidimensional historical thinking.

That requires learning a lot indeed. But has Jewish tradition not always been good at that?

David Pinto

If I were David Pinto I would have turned it around. Pinto wrote last week in Trouw: “Islam can learn something from Judaism”, and then wonders whether presenting the Jewish tradition as an example to Muslims would not easily go the wrong way.

It’s true: there are many punishments in the Torah which can be described as barbaric and which were abolished as a prescription. For example, the punishment of stoning of a Jew who does not respect the Sabbath, no Jew would get it into his head to apply that. Unlike the gruesome punishments that are actually executed by Muslims today, to fellow Muslims and others.

But a lot of the other things that Pinto designates as negative in Muslims are indeed also to be found in (ultra-)orthodox Jews. Think of gay hate, misogyny, or hatred of everything non-Jewish.

This makes Pinto's argument a bit weak. Apart from that, in fact it sounds rather pedantic to set your own tradition as an example to others, even though he’s partly right.

Therefore, I am inclined to turn it around. By this I mean that I would not in an offensive manner shout “Look at me!”. But instead I would keep ready the argument of the de facto abolition of barbaric punishments for the situation that bystanders put away the Jewish tradition as primitive and barbaric, for example, with reference to “all the violence and primitive laws in the Torah”. At such time, the answer is in place that Pinto gives: look how is dealt with it, that no longer exists in practice.

And if then someone says “But what about all the violence in Israel?” Then it is sufficient to let the Torah out because there are already enough ‘normal’ historical explanations for the tragic situation: two traumatized peoples colliding in the same region, an unequal balance of power, geopolitical interests.

But unfortunately – also for Pinto – we will also have to admit that unnecessary, additional hardening of the conflict is caused by a hard core of settlers who actually take their inspiration from the Torah.

Also see ‘Moderate’ is abusive language

Incentives

I do know Israel - for travel - and that pleased me. I do not know the country as a resident, and I wonder how I would like that.

At this time that question is triggered by my rereading passages from the book My promised land by Ari Shavit about which I previously reported. Especially tickling are the passages referring to the Israeli food giant Strauss, by the twinkling intensity of Israeli society that resounds in it.

Shavit: “Israel is a country that is quickly excited; Israelis therefore have need for more and more incentives. The Strauss-team understood that this also applies to the taste of food. They realized that the Israeli savory snacks had to be much saltier than American snacks and confectionery much sweeter than the European. Chocolate was to be much more chocolate-esque and vanilla much more vanilla-esque. Nuances in Israel were not appreciated: everything had to be powerful and extreme and caress the palate with strong aromas. For an example, the Israeli Milky contained twice as much cream as the German example. But the Israelis do not want just more, they also want continuously something new. They are quickly tired of something. For that reason, Strauss replaces its products much faster than its European sister companies”.

That this lust for excitement does not necessarily have to lead to flatness and insipidity, appears from the development of Israeli dance. Which also is largely driven by basic physical stimuli, but at the same time manages to achieve a high level of artistry. Israeli dance is not so much focused on beauty, it is more about gouge: impulses from the body, and bare feet instead of spitze.

Intuition and feeling, these are according to experts the basis of Israeli dance. The drive of the dancers, their great technique, the inner need that expresses the choreography – they are constants in Israel’s young dance history, which make Israeli dance at present internationally into a success story.

The choreographer Guy Behar explains the strength of this dance tradition from the social situation in Israel. “The context in which we operate is dynamic, turbulent”, he says. “You never know what will happen. Every moment the situation can change. If you have something to say, you should say it now. That inner necessity and immediacy can be seen in almost all the work”.

Yes, this artistic and communicative dynamics definitely does have something stimulating and that appeals to me. But at the same time I would find all that a bit too raw. Furthermore, I doubt whether I’m not too stress-sensitive to live permanently in a war situation. I actually think I cannot manage that. Rather, to me applies what the former CIDI Chairman John Manheim once said of himself: that his nervous system did not allow him to live in Israel.

But as great a problem for me would be that the provocative dynamics of cultural and economic life in Israel stands out quite shrill against the lukewarmness and indifference exhibited by the majority of the Israeli population when it comes to a peace settlement and the treatment of the Palestinians. An attitude that so perfectly, and not coincidentally, is embodied by the absolute-non-dancer Netanyahu. Actually incomprehensible.

Also see The many dimensions of Ari Shavit and Live to see

Levinas and Kahneman

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman had just graduated when in 1955 as a conscript into the Israeli army he was commissioned to set up a new interview system for the entire army. The interviews were meant to produce a picture of the recruits and to judge whether these were suited for the officer training.

The existing system did no longer satisfy, because it gave the interviewers freedom to do what they found most interesting, which was to learn about the dynamics of the spiritual life of the interviewee. Ánd because the overall assessment of the recruit by the interviewers was decisive for the final decision, while scientific evidence indicated that such assessments were unreliable.

Kahneman attacked both objections. Instead of free interviews he opted for standardized, factual questions. And instead of interview summaries he preferred statistical summaries of seperately assessed characteristics of the recruit. The final score for fitness for combat tasks would be calculated using a standard formula, without further interference by the interviewers.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman justifies his choices as follows. “By focusing on standardized, factual questions I hoped to fight the halo effect, whereby favorable first impressions affect judgments later on. I told the interviewers that they did not have to worry about the future adjustment of the recruit to life in military service. Their only task was to get the relevant facts about their past and to use that information to score each personality dimension. ‘It is your job to provide reliable data’, I told them. Just leave the predictive validity to me’, by which I was referring to the formula that I would draft to combine their specific scores”.

Then he continues: “Among the interviewers an uprising almost broke out. These intelligent young people found it hard to accept that they were instructed by someone who was barely older than they were, to turn off their intuition and to concentrate fully on dull factual questions. One of them protested by saying: “You make robots of us!” That’s why I came up with a compromise. “If you do the interview exactly as I have said, then I will satisfy  your desire: then close your eyes, try to imagine the recruit as a soldier and give him a score on a scale from 1 to 5.”

The new interview procedure proved to be a significant improvement with respect to the old one. The sum of the six ratings predicted performance of the soldiers much more accurately than the summary reviews of the previous interview method, although still far from perfect. They were advanced, says Kahneman, from ‘totally useless’ to ‘somewhat useful’.

At the same time Kahneman observed, to his surprise, that the intuitive judgment formed by the interviewers at the time of the closed eyes, also satisfied very well, even as well as the sum of the six specific scores. He tells: “A general lesson I took from this episode was that one should not just rely on intuitive judgments – either of yourself or of others – but also that one should not automatically reject them.”

The question I ask myself in this story of Kahneman is: does the blindfolded intuition actually  function as a sop? Doesn’t he actually believe it? Should employees just accept that formulas are used and that they can not develop their creative involvement?

Kahneman is skeptical indeed. He believes that we in general grossly overestimate our own intuitive skills and expertise and human knowledge. And that therefore sober observations and measurements which are laid down in algorithms and formulas are preferable. Regardless whether it comes to the assessment of recruits, the prediction of wine prices or valuation of a painting.

Such a view easily provokes the kind of resistance that we already encountered above: “We are made into robots!” What then remains of our highly personal individuality and creativity? Do not our lives become dull and impersonal?

I do understand the resistance, but yet I tend to share Kahneman’s view. The reason is that  I am sufficiently soaked in the skepticism which also Levinas displays opposite the euphoria of the highly personal thinking which is so pleased with itself but permanently produces illusions. However much the glorification of the creative individual fits into the romantic society we still are, Levinas’s and Kahneman’s skepticism thereabout is very much in place. So, let Kahneman use his sop, because we can do without a lot of our self-righteous euphoria.

What can nót miss is a different kind of vividness. Namely that of the authentic encounter with another human being or beings. I even think that fulfillment of that desire can make redundant a lot of overly focused attention on individuality in our society. When it comes to that deficit Kahneman leaves us, apart from the sop, empty-handed. Because he speaks little about such encounters between people.

Levinas even more.

Also see Levinas and Empathy

Live to see

What you hope, if you’re intensively involved in a particular issue, is that you and your generation may live to see things improve regarding that case. But sometimes you have to be realistic, and then you conclude that it can take longer than your life time, before things will be okay.

With regard to the two issues that I have been intensively busy with for a long time, I have to draw that conclusion now. By the way, in both issues the same concerns are at stake: it’s always about cooperation and trust.

One subject is Israel, or rather, peace between Israel and its neighbors. It’s clear that lack of trust was the big issue there from the outset, and still is. A traumatized people resettled on land that in the course of time had become the possession of others. Wars and terror ensued, and it may be feared that the most recent war in Gaza will not have been the last one.

In realizing this situation, for me nothing more remains than, like Rabbi David Lilienthal once did, try to imagine what the situation will look like if you do not take your own life as a reference but a much longer period of time. Could the situation be much better for example after another three hundred years? Could the Middle East then be like nowadays Europe? For that to happen, by that time obviously not only in Israel but also on the side of Isis and Hamas and kindred spirits some things should have changed.

The other subject is the dysfunctioning of the Amsterdam municipality, ie of its civil service. With that I have in mind employees and departments who refuse to talk to each other, stressed bosses and top-down pushed solutions for problems that are not really known. What happens there is not a war such as in the Middle East, but it sometimes indeed reminds me of it: I see a lot of deeply unhappy people, more than I think is necessary.

That yet cooperation in Amsterdam cán run well and smoothly, I also was allowed to experience recently. Last year, for a whole year, time and energy were invested, within the framework of the Amsterdam City Servicecounter, to accommodate divergent views in a focused and professional manner. Which was only possible – I contend – thanks to generous attention to the primary process, in such a way that everyone involved, from clerks to managers, knew what they could expect from each other. The accommodating itself was a form of cooperation.

But I was wrong about the seriousness with which a sequel was allowed to this successful experiment. It’s nice, cooperation and trust, but it is apparently not the intention to make that into something more permanent. The fact that the Board of Mayor and Aldermen puts, because of imposed budgetcuts, the entire device systematically under pressure now, does not make things better. The bombardment of political and strategic imperatives is so fierce that attention to the core business is smothered in pushed through solutions. Employees are on their guard against being driven crazy.

So here too I have to face the fact that – except during the past year – I will not experience utopia. It will take a while before trust and cooperation again have a chance here. Okay,  maybe not in three hundred years, but easily in a hundred years: then it must have become self-evident that organizations, regardless of the strategic demands that are imposed, do not for even a moment lose sight of their primary processes and core business.

Defeats? Sure, but fortunately still other opportunities are left for me to experience cooperation and trust.

Also see Trust

No longer

Gaza, it is a poignantly unequal battle.

But curiously desired by both parties.

By the victim, I don’t know why.

By the culprit, I knew why, but no longer now.








Also see Gaza

I don't understand

There are a number of things about Israel that I do not understand.

This number does not, to be clear, include the current military action in order to curb rocket attacks from Gaza for some time. Because I can understand it – however terrible the war suffering is. No country, democratic or not, can just let itself be shelled while it has the means to stop the shelling. Sooner or later it will deploy those resources. Nobody likes that, I can see that, but apparently at this moment fighting for both Hamas and Israel is worthwhile.

One of the things I do nót understand is the unconcearn with which Israel perpetuates the occupation of the West Bank, and even actively strengthens it. I can see it no different than that the illegality of it, combined with the humiliation of the Palestinians, is a serious threat to Israel’s future.

I’ve also never understood the light-heartedness with which Israel lets itself be supported by Christian Zionists such as American Evangelicals or Dutch Christians for Israel. From an opportunistic, short-term perspective I can indeed understand that. In a world with a lot of hostility directed against Israel, you welcome any support that is available.

But the question is whether is that opportunism is a wise position to take. I think not. First, because such support is fundamentalist inspired. Characteristic of the groups referred to is their belief in the authority of the Bible, which they explain in such a way that the state of Israel figures as willed by God, namely in preparation for the second coming of Christ on earth. This appears to me to be an alien motif within the secular-Jewish project that Israel essentially was and still is. If motifs are that far apart, you should be careful with close ties.

A second reason stems from the very same fundamentalism. Because it implies that the Christian Zionists are not primarily interested in the Jewish cause, but in an idea that is linked to their theology. In the absence of an intrinsic human concern a switch in that theology or exegesis may as easily lead to a switch in attitude. Enthusiasm for the Jewish state can then change into indifference or even hostility.

At present something like that seems to occur indeed in certain Evangelical circles. There is talk of a return to the good old ‘fulfillment theology’. Which implies that the Kingdom of God was established by Jesus on earth and history was then fulfilled. The Jewish people, according to that vision, for God has no meaning any longer, neither has the State of Israel. From this kind of theology a lot of trouble for the Jews emerged already earlier in history.

Before you trust the sincerity of your supporters, it is important to know who you are dealing with and what their motives are. Jews should understand that anyway.

Also see The many dimensions of Ari Shavit and Accurate enough

Accurate enough

“Of course I condemn all violence. This applies to violence by the Palestinian ánd the Israeli side. Nevertheless the commotion about the murder of three Israeli teenagers gives me a bitter aftertaste. When mid May two Palestinian teenagers in Ramallah without any reason were shot by the Israeli army, there was no one who expressed his outrage, not even the Dutch foreign minister, who in the case of the three Israeli boys had his judgement immediately ready. The three teens were Israeli settlers. They lived in an illegal settlement on Palestinian land. If their parents had just continued to live in Israel, they would be still alive”.

This letter to the editor sent in by Jan Ramaker from Tiel struck me somehow. But in what way exactly?

First, I was struck by an inaccuracy, namely the following: The three teens were Israeli settlers. They lived in an illegal settlement on Palestinian land.

That’s not right. Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaar lived in Modi’in, Eyal Yifrah lived in Elad. Modi’in and Elad are cities in the Israel Center District, both within the Green Line. One can not be enough accurate in these matters.

However, they went to school in occupied territory. Naftali and Gilad in Kfar Etzion, Eyal in Hebron. So they went to schools that do not respect the Green Line. One can not be enough accurate in these matters.

I also got caught by the statement If their parents had just continued to live in Israel, they would be still alive. That should, in view of the foregoing, be changed into the statement “When the boys were just gone to school in Israel, they would be still alive”. With the addition that this only applies since the separation wall was built, because before that time also within the Green Line your life was not safe on the way to school.

Finally, I am just touched by the bitter truth that When mid May two Palestinian teenagers in Ramallah without any reason were shot by the Israeli army, there was no one who expressed his outrage. Also in showing your outrage you can not be accurate enough.

Also see The Green and the Red Line, The new Middle East and A Palestinian State

The many dimensions of Ari Shavit

The sociologist and theologian Gied ten Berge, chairman of SIVMO, the Support Committee for Israeli Peace and Human Rights Organizations, wrote in the summer issue of the magazine Nieuwe Liefde a review of the book My promised land by Ari Shavit. The title of his review is well chosen: “Life on seven lines of fracture”, which refers to the seven rebellions that Shavit signals in Israel, and which just about sounds like ‘dancing on a volcano’.

But for the rest, Ten Berge missed a lot in Shavit’s book. Indeed, the book has much more dimensions than the review reflects. By that I have ia in mind the dimension of the history of Zionism, and the many aspects of Shavit’s vision of the Israeli peace movement.

For an adequate understanding of Israel and Zionism familiarity with their history is an absolute requirement. A long, loaded past must be taken into consideration, especially of centuries of Christian and secular anti-Semitism in Europe.

In one of her last columns journalist Eva van Sonderen makes clear how deep that kind of collective negative experiences can get fixed in the human mind. “I have experienced several workshops ‘Family Constellations’ and often the Holocaust emerged as a gigantic blockade, especially among young people, the third generation after, of which at first sight you would not think that. And sometimes, with Mizrahi or Sephardi participants, also there stories came up about the pogroms against Jews in North Africa or Asia”.

Shavit assigns an important role to that kind of blockages, and clearly shows to what degree they had their impact long before the Holocaust. In particular, the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews already at the end of the nineteenth century could no longer. They had nothing to lose anymore, Zionism was their last straw and Shavit reveals that well in his stories about the pioneers.

It is noteworthy that Ten Berge says nothing about this history, which is essential for the overall picture of Shavit. Just as for the Shavit the history of the expelled Palestinians is of great importance: they simply lived there already for generations. Which indeed Ten Berge does emphasize too.

Then there is the role of the Israeli peace movement. Shavit goes to great lengths to make clear that ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘peace’ are not as easily aligned as one might think. And certainly not in the brutal Middle East.

An average peace movement might cherish that illusion, and so did the Israeli peace movement. Shavit tells that, as a student and young journalist, he initially went along in that mood. He was a left-wing activist and protested against the occupation, in the belief that by ending the occupation peace would come within range.

“Only when I was thirty, and began to seriously listen to what the Palestinians actually had to say, I realized that this prospect for peace was unfounded. About this occupation the left was absolutely right: it is a moral, demographic and political disaster. But regarding peace the left was totally wrong. They counted on a peace partner that does not really exist. It was assumed that peace had to be feasible because it was needed. But the history of the conflict and the geo-strategic situation of the region involved that peace could not be achieved”. Yet, also from a kind of self-protection, that illusion of peace was hold on to.

The moral struggle that with a man like Shavit is accompanied by this type of analyses is palpable in his book. For my part, Ten Berge could have devoted a few words to it.

Instead, he believes that Shavit lacks a prophetic vision. Could there perhaps be something prophetic in the ruthless honesty and openness with which Shavit dares to face the situation?

Also see Right and Wrong