Prof. Eric Loomis, of the University of Rhode Island, is a labor historian and a blogger at the Lawyers, Guns, and Money site. One of Loomis’s most popular features is his “Eric Visits an American Grave” series, in which he posts his photographs of gravestones, accompanied by short biographies of the deceased. The figures Loomis chooses range from the famous to the obscure, and from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the stories are invariably interesting. Recently, in part 774 of the long-running series, Loomis posted the grave of Congresswoman and activist Bella Abzug.
In addition to her many accomplishments (more on those below), Abzug was a Zionist, which was hardly uncommon among progressive Jews who came of age in the 1940s. Here is what Loomis said about that:
As a Jewish woman, Abzug also saw Zionism as part of a civil rights movement, saying “Zionism is a liberation movement.” Alas, that is not and will never be true for the Palestinians violently ejected from their land to create a white settler state. Even Abzug had her blind spots, even if one can understand where she was coming from.
Israel’s mistreatment and oppression of Palestinians should never be denied. But it is a slander, though popular on the left, to call Israel a “white settler state,” or to deny that Zionism was in fact the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Holocaust survivors who sparked Abzug’s Zionism had not been considered “white,” or even human, by the Nazis who destroyed their culture and families. Nor were they really considered part of the white race by the Poles and Russians, nor by most of the British authorities who held the Mandate for Palestine (and who outlawed Jewish immigration). The same is even more true of the many Sephardic, Romaniot, Mizrachi, Ethiopian, South Asian, and Yemenite Jews of Israel, who comprise a solid majority of the Jewish population.
Far from a “settler state,” the Israel of Abzug’s time should more accurately be called a “refugee state,” populated by those who fled Russian pogroms, Nazi death camps, and Middle East dictatorships (where Jews were killed by mobs and Jewish property expropriated). The refusal to recognize Zionism as a national liberation movement is an erasure of Jewish peoplehood.
It should be entirely possible to support Palestinian liberation, either in an independent state or within a single, democratic state – or even to call for the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state – without calling Israeli Jews “white settlers,” which of course is meant to brand them as racially evil and illegitimate.
Loomis is hardly the only one to have picked up the “settler colonial” meme about Israel, which is intended to cut off discussion by placing Israel irrevocably on the side of imperialism. The real story is far more complex, and the conflict cannot be resolved by name calling.
Loomis says that Abzug had her blind spots. Well, it turns out that she was not the only one.
More on Bella Abzug after the jump.
Abzug’s story is pretty remarkable. Born to a Jewish immigrant family in the Bronx in 1920, her father worked behind a meat counter and her mother was a homemaker. Abzug was a lifelong rebel, insisting on saying Kaddish when her father died, working her way through Columbia Law School and graduating in 1944, and then practicing labor and civil rights law. One of her first cases was the defense of Willie McGee, a Mississippi Black man who was convicted and sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman, and ultimately executed despite Abzug’s exceptional efforts. Elected to Congress from the Upper West Side in 1970, Abzug served three terms, during which she introduced the first-ever federal gay rights legislation (it did not pass).
She gave up her seat in Congress to run in New York’s Democratic senate primary in 1976, losing narrowly to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She spent the rest of her life as a left-wing activist, concentrating on women’s and peace issues. She ran for office several more times, but never won. I met her briefly in Berkeley in 1971, when she was speaking at a fund-raiser for local candidates. Yes, she was wearing one of her famously large hats.
Abzug died in 1998, twenty years after the Sadat-Begin-Carter peace accord. As far as I know, and as far as a Google search can discover, she never spoke out for Palestinian rights. If so, that was indeed a blind spot, though not because she advocated “white settlers.”
Have any other refugees ever been so thoroughly slandered and disowned by the left?
[NOTE; This post has been slightly updated.]
"Have any other refugees ever been so thoroughly slandered and disowned by the left?"
I dunno. Have any other refugees expelled the current occupants from the land chosen as refuge, ghettoized many of those previous occupants in "occupied territories," then used "settlements" (none of these are my word choices) to steal that land, too? I guess the Puritans might fit–an example doesn't help you at all.
I understand and accept your point that white, European societies–American, too–did not see Jews as "white" until quite recently (or still don't), but Israel was created by European powers, largely to provide a home for European Jews. (A home outside of Europe, yes–I'm not denying European anti-Semitism in the least–but nonetheless a home to be "settled" largely by those who had previously lived in Europe.) Perhaps the racialized terminology is inappropriate, but pretending that the formation of Israel was not an act of settler colonialism misunderstands both 20th century middle eastern history and the processes of settler colonialism.
I'll add that the phrases you like to toss off as asides in your apologia for Zionism–"Israel’s mistreatment and oppression of Palestinians should never be denied"–are rather disingenuous. You spend a lot of time defending and supporting Israel and Zionism on this blog. I've yet to see a post from you dedicated to Palestinian rights, Israeli injustices, or the dangers of mixing nationalism and religion, in general.
Steve, I'll take your word that there's no site that explicitly points to Abzug's sympathy for the Palestinian condition. However, she clearly was on the far left first and a Zionist second. Prior to the 1967 war, there was no contradiction between these beliefs but afterward, the anticolonial, Third World obsession of the Left led to a situation where you couldn't be both any more (see Marty Peretz's movement away from far left politics in the late 1960s).
When she ran for the Senate, losing only because she split the far left vote with Ramsey Clark, she said she was a strong supporter of Israel, and in particular, had always been in favor of selling F-15s to the country, which many progressive groups opposed. After she lost the primary, Jack Newfield of the Village Voice, one of the journalistic lions of the left at that time wrote that he was ashamed to admit that he had heard her speak in opposition to that sale when she was only representing the west side of Manhattan but had kept quiet so as not to undermine her chances in a statewide race.
Having said that, I completely agree with your "white settler" comments. I'll continue to watch as you try to balance your beliefs about Israel and the unwillingness of progressive politics to even try to understand Israeli-Arab dynamics from the perspective of the former.
"Blind Spots All Over the Place" has to disregard the history of the 1948 war to cleverly opine about how a state created for refugees expelled and ghettoized its inhabitants. The 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution for partition would have created a workable two-state solution, designed to guarantee the minority population in both Jewish and Arab majority states, retain an international regime in Jerusalem, and a common market for both states with the same currency. Sadly, it was the Arab side that violently refused that bargain with an aggressive war that they lost, and (with a lot of history since, with wrongdoing on both sides) for which Palestinian Arabs have suffered ever since.
"…Israel was created by European powers, largely to provide a home for European Jews." This is a thoroughly Eurocentric and ahistoric reading, one that ignores a lengthy Mizrachi history in the pre-state Yishuv and Jewish antagonism towards British colonialism.
As for Bella Abzug, my father disliked her as a loudmouth whereas my mother, who admired Abzug, thought we needed many more loudmouths like her. On this point, Mother was right.
Fascinating that just as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reemerges (131K followers on Twitter!) comments right here in the FL repeat his talking points! I don't suggest that MA is anonymously posting in the FL of course: the Honorable MA has no need to post anonymously. Outlets like Twitter welcome his views with open arms! Well, for "refuge" I suppose we could always turn to the NYT op ed page for the "truth" about the Jews and Iran …
These days are really beyond belief. You can't make this stuff up. The left is in a post truth mode and that's that. There seems to be a hate industry in academia that just can't quit: and Jews and Israel are juicy targets. Hate on! Hate is coming! Hate is coming for us all!
Truly, the capacity of the left to demonize its opponents while never acknowledging the faults of its allies is stunning. When countries like Jordan, for example, get ready to help the "Palestinians" then their plight will be on the way to real change.
Do any of you care to comment on the way that the neighboring Arab countries have treated their "brothers" the Palestinians?
And, for those who love to kick Israel, can you EVER comment on the atrocities on Arab land? How about the death penalty for homosexual conduct?
From Wiki (tell us that this isn't true, please): "Male same-sex activity is illegal and punishable by imprisonment in Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and Syria. It is punishable by death in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. In Yemen or Palestine (Gaza Strip) the punishment might differ between death and imprisonment depending on the act committed."
All you leftists liking that? Wait, I haven't heard all the condemnation that is never ending with respect to Israel.
How about freedom of the press? Of religion? How are Jews treated in Arab countries? Oh, the hue and cry from the left! It is deafening (ly silent)>
That the left so studiously ignores these issues while condemning Israel endlessly for not agreeing to "go home to Europe" or die is, in a word, enough to tell any rational person all the person needs to know about the left.
Oh, and btw, won't you experts on Islam tell us all about the history of "stealing land"? Who, exactly, "stole" the land of which you speak, and when?
Sounds like Spain complaining that England stole its lands in North America.
This is a reply to Blind Spots All Over The Place.
"Perhaps the racialized terminology is inappropriate, but pretending that the formation of Israel was not an act of settler colonialism misunderstands both 20th century middle eastern history and the processes of settler colonialism."
It isn't a misunderstanding at all if one appreciates that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land, reclaiming their ancient homeland from those who had stolen it (and who had subordinated them, legally and otherwise).
Let's start with the terminology matter about race, though. Lubet is probably straitjacketed by PRESENT-DAY American political discourses and developments: who is and isn't "white" and how that relates to power. He wants to (publicly) defend his Zionism in terms of the Jews being non-white victims of racial discrimination.
"Whiteness" certainly is not the pertinent concept Europeans used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to understand their pertinent differences from others. The Germans in WWII didn't give a damn that Slavs were "white" when they wanted a Lebensraum and were willing to eradicate millions or all of them. Read about Hitler and Himmler on this. The program was to be about Aryan replacement of "Untermensch." Slavic and Russian hatred of Jews during the period in question wasn't in terms of "whiteness" either.
Nor, for the most part, were the British Empire's settler colonies for "white" people – not till after WWII, at any rate. Instead, they were for the British (and for the Irish, apparently, for reasons that will never make much sense). Australia developed a "white" policy after the War. While there was some Continental immigration beforehand (Germans especially), the prospect of importing millions of Slavs, Italians, Greeks, Jews, etc, before that time would have been deemed ludicrous. Canada, too. With insufficient British interest to move there, Canada dumped Ukrainians and certain other Europeans onto the prairies to settle that land, predominantly out of fear that the Yanks would come up and take it.
Furthermore, it's you, BSAOTP, who misunderstands the processes of settler colonialism. There are three key features which show why Israel doesn't fall within the category. For one thing, the people in control of the land were neither Jews nor Arabs. First, it was Turks, then it was the British. Under either regime, the settlers weren't coming from the colonizer "metropole". The Brits didn't settle the land with British people. Furthermore, the Jews, coming mostly from the Continent, weren't settling the land to advance British interests. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is why some famous Jewish Anglophiles throughout the empire were anti-Zionist: it would undermine British interests and alienate their Muslim allies – note that I say "Muslim," not "Arab" or "middle eastern". (More on the Left's blind spot for religious anti-Jewishness and religious anti-Zionism another time). Relatedly, Jewish immigration to Palestine was at times restricted, whilst Arab immigration there was encouraged and assisted by the British. (Were these Arab immigrants nonetheless "settler colonizers"? What percentage of their descendants claim to be "Palestinian" today?) Most importantly, the Jews were RECLAIMING land that had been stolen from them. This includes access to holy sites. Settler colonies don't do that. To be sure, certain conquests across history have been "justified" in terms of established claims of right, such as the Norman one. But settler colonies don't say: "we're taking back what you wrongfully seized from us." That is, unless you want to (mis-)construe the Spanish Reconquista as having been an illegitimate settler colonization project, stealing the land from the Moors…
Lubet says that Zionism is a "national liberation movement." Whether he admits it or not, that includes liberation of its historical homeland from Arab conquest and Islamic subordination. (You can thus deny that Israeli is a settler colony whilst still being anti-Zionist, if you really want).
Last point:
"I'll add that the phrases you like to toss off as asides in your apologia for Zionism–"Israel’s mistreatment and oppression of Palestinians should never be denied"–are rather disingenuous. You spend a lot of time defending and supporting Israel and Zionism on this blog. I've yet to see a post from you dedicated to Palestinian rights, Israeli injustices, or the dangers of mixing nationalism and religion, in general."
You understand that that's an example of the Argumentum ex Silentio fallacy, right?
BSAOTP "the dangers of mixing nationalism and religion, in general." Do you mean as in the State of Palestine and Hamas basic (constitutional) documents? Or the Islamic Republic of Iran? Or Pakistan? Or all the other Officially Islamic countries in the Muslim world? We could go on with the countries that have established Christian churches too, but maybe you get the point.
The author states that to call Jews "white settlers" is "of course is meant to brand them as racially evil and illegitimate." The author is correct. But this connection is lamentable. Being a descendant of white settlers should not make someone evil, any more than non-white settlers are evil. For example, the residents of modern-day Turkey are descendants of non-white settlers who violently invaded the country, but that hardly makes them evil. Even if Jews were "white," why should that make any difference?
But perhaps it's too much to ask that as we try to reverse the pernicious effects of colonialism that we avoid branding descendants of settlers as "evil."
ANON3, isn't fascinating how the Left has tried to turn the word "white" into a racial slur?
Perhaps the use of the word "white" is problematic. Given the role that British imperialism played in both the redrawing of the Middle East and the formation of Israel from Palestine, the correct term should be "European Settlers", thus eliminating race from the equation and relocating the over all animus to where it might belong, namely, western imperialism. (dare we forget Sykes-Picot, for example)
The term "European settlers" erases non-European Israeli Jews, who comprise a majority. Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to Palestine and abstained on the U.S. vote to partition Palestine and create Israel in 1947.
"Perhaps the use of the word "white" is problematic. Given the role that British imperialism played in both the redrawing of the Middle East and the formation of Israel from Palestine, the correct term should be "European Settlers", thus eliminating race from the equation and relocating the over all animus to where it might belong, namely, western imperialism. (dare we forget Sykes-Picot, for example)"
Because that "erases" non-Western imperialism, including Islamic imperialism, and the victimization and suffering of billions of people. It also entails that one couldn't adjudge certain Western actions as CORRECTIVES to it – including, perhaps, the Crusades.
Just like Western academics parroting the terms of (the literary theory) of "Orientalism," who are either blissfully unaware of the preponderance of the globe's viewpoints and experiences with middle easterners, or consciously ignore (or "erase") it in order to advance their own academic, legal, and political agenda for the world, e.g., to "explain" things to hoi polloi as merely being matters of "prejudice," "phobia," or "ignorance." Ironically enough, THAT ITSELF constitutes a form of Western imperialism.
Additionally, a conversation about the West's LEGAL imperialism, and so a desire by most of the Western Left to delimit the focus for the issue at hand to 20th century developments, to the "legitimate" and "just" norms of the international legal order, etc., is not something I'm sure Americans are willing to really talk openly about yet – not whilst you can still have the power to try to regulate and reshape the world on your terms, that is!
In 1946 alone, over 100,000 European Jews emigrated to Palestine. In 1948, there were approximately 800,000 people in Israel. In 1948 there were slightly in excess of 100,000 European or American immigrants to Israel and in 1949, 240,000 and so on. In 1948 there were approximately 156,000 Arabs living in Israel or roughly 20% of the population. Something like 25,000 Mizrachi Jews emigrated in 56 and more subsequently, My point is that the founding of the "Jewish State of Israel" in 1948 was heavily dependent on the influx of European settlers. The population before WW2 was relatively small and Jews did outnumber Arabs. It was really after the influx of those 100,000 in '46 that the population explosion took place.
Those who settled in Palestine and Israel after WW 2 were overwhelmingly European (or Americo-European. My point holds. European settlers is an apt description of this phenomenon. What one wants to do with that is up to others. My point is that I have eliminated the term white and replaced it with geography. This might go some distance in reassessing the 'racist' nature of the founding of Israel and place it in the history of the decline and end of the British Empire. Where I think it a. belongs and b. makes it more difficult for critics of Israel to fall back on anti-Jewish tropes.
It is very important to debate race and ethnicity. These are the key attributes of human beings, and, by all means, let's keep the discussion going! I really want to know if a Jew is "white" or a "European"! That's really important to the defenders of immigration, no?
Oh, and by the way, these considerations underlie the problem in "Palestine" don't they?
After all, who else could be said to belong in the sea, with no country.
Does ANYONE understand that the arguments above are almost word for word those used by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (why should we have to pay for Europe's atrocities in WWII)? In other words, why should any region of the world need to endure the presence of Jews?
Certainly not in the Arab and Iranian lands. And, why should these good people allow Jews to live NEAR them, if not with them?
Oh, and Jeff, because you are so interested in old numbers, as well as race and ethnicity, how about some contemporary numbers:
Population of the 22 "Arab League" countries: 420 million
Population of Israel: 9 million
Number of "Palestinians" living in "occupied territories" about 4.5 million
Number of "settlers" living in "occupied territories" about 500,000
Area of Israel: about 8,000 sq mi
Area of the "Arab League" countries: about 5,070,420 sq mi
It is certainly easy to see how hard it is to figure out the problem here.
Let's ask a question: we know Jews generally are not welcome in Arab countries and Iran.
Are the "Palestinians"?
Well, we have the comment above, which has not been taken down, like mine:
"academics parroting the terms of (the literary theory) of "Orientalism," who are either blissfully unaware of the preponderance of the globe's viewpoints and experiences with middle easterners …"
The preponderance of the GLOBE's viewpoints and experiences? Can anyone say what this statement is?
No, your description relies on an arbitrary cutoff date, which impacts the people falling within it. To be sure, there's a sequence, i.e., predominantly Jews from the West first, then from elsewhere. Cutting out the latter entails being incapable of describing or explaining the entire phenomenon. The process doesn't end in 1948. Till the post-Soviet Union immigration at any rate, the Ashkenazi were the minority.
Once more, if those "European" (and Americans) Jews are better understood as the displaced indigenous population, then the immigration patterns, Zionism, and the creation of Israel are best characterized as efforts to help people to reclaim their ancestral home – including when they can, and do, bring Jews from the rest of the world (e.g., the Muslim countries). As "Polish" and "Russian" Jews planned, and did, help hundreds of thousands of Mizrachi Jews come to live with them, it's inapt to style this as a "European settler" movement. (Again, to package this within the rubric of a settler colonial narrative more generally, you'd also have to characterize the Reconquistadors as "settlers," which would be ridiculous).
This in turn impacts the question of the proper locus of "animus," which is what my last post was about.
Now, one could also quibble about whether something counts as a "European settler colony": (a) just because the metropole is located there; (b) solely due to the immigrating population being from various places there, or just from just one or two places there; or (c) both. For example, imagine that a person thought the concept was covered solely by (a). Then imagine that the Brits moved hundreds of thousands of Indian laborers into Tanzania, completely replaced the indigenous population, and then granted the people there independence. Would the new Tanzanians constitute "European" settlers"? Would it be a European settler colony?
"The preponderance of the GLOBE's viewpoints and experiences? Can anyone say what this statement is?"
Surely you think that there are more viewpoints out there than just Western, let alone American, ones, no?
You mean, "viewpoints" of "Middle Easterners" based on "experience" shared by the "preponderance of the Globe"?
Forget about "American" viewpoints, A non.
Enlighten us, A non. Give us some examples of those "global viewpoints," please!
Honestly, I think a lot of us want to hear this.
You wrote: "You mean, "viewpoints" of "Middle Easterners" based on "experience" shared by the "preponderance of the Globe"?"
I wrote: "…the preponderance of the globe's viewpoints and experiences with middle easterners, or consciously ignore (or "erase") it…"
Don't misrepresent what I said, and do your own homework.
Albert Einstein once quipped: "If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew."
Actually, its not a quip. It is a statement on the world in which he and so many other lived. They were living in Europe for over 1000 years, yet not considered fully European. Especially not so in the Pale (Russia) or the east. Their predecessors had been killed in attacks on their communities and driven out of principalities and kingdoms such as England and Spain. So when we talk about colonization, white, or European settlement to the Palestine Mandate, and then to Israel, I would encourage people to understand that (1) it is nothing like the colonization efforts the anti-zionists make it out to be; (2) recognize that the human suffering has occurred – and continues to occur – with the Palestinians.
I've done my homework, A non.
I know exactly what you were saying.
Tell us about the "preponderance of the globe's viewpoints [based on] experience with Middle Easterners." Spell it out.
Tell us what those viewpoints are. Please.