REVIEW

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes In 2003, the body of the 65‐year‐old Muslim woman, Habiba Mohammed, was desecrated with bacon at the mortuary of Hillingdon hospital in west London. On 18 March 2004, 40 Muslim graves were vandalized in Plumstead, south‐east London. Several contributors mention the parallel increase in anti‐Semitic and Islamophobic incidents in Britain, though they do not say which has been more significantly on the rise. The conflict between the west and its Islamic opponents is most commonly understood through the “clash of civilizations” thesis. I remain unconvinced by this paradigm for it seems to me that the clash is as much religious as anything else. Nor is this simply a war between Islam and American evangelicalism, but rather a struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and what Jewish‐American scholar Harold Bloom called the “American religion” — a concoction of Emersonian individualism, market capitalism and the expansionist notion of “manifest destiny” (see Bloom Bloom Harold The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post‐Christian Nation New York: Simon & Schuster 1992 [Google Scholar]). Consulting the facts published regularly by Israeli organizations like B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), or Adalah (the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), as well as the coverage by prominent Israeli journalists of the left like Gideon Levi and Amira Hass, hammers home the harsh realities of 37 years of Israeli occupation. It also uncovers an Israeli (and more broadly Jewish) culture of denial with regards to the situation on the ground on both sides of the green line. There are a number of examples, such as Ronnie Fraser’s nostalgic description of Israel’s Zionist‐socialist past (p. 260), which fails to mention the present “reforms” in the Israeli welfare system, the privatization of most kibbutzim and widespread poverty amongst the Jewish population. No scepticism is employed in trying to understand the reasons behind the current Intifada. Douglas Davis writes of Ehud Barak’s alleged generosity, which places all responsibility for the failure of Oslo and Camp David solely on the Palestinians (p. 138). Israel is, then, subject to the classic (and not insignificantly gendered) binary entrapment of the Madonna/whore. Supporters say that Israel is a country like any other, neither a utopia nor a dystopia (see Ottolenghi 25 Ottolenghi Emanuele. “Anti‐Zionism is Anti‐Semitism” Guardian 29 Nov. 2003 25 [Google Scholar]). Pulzer is right to prod the liberal unconscious for its repressed anti‐Semitism. He is, in fact, providing a critique of liberalism in general insofar as all “liberal” hearts harbour the prejudices and hatreds their Enlightenment‐Humanist politics proclaim to have rationally exorcised — this is an important limitation of liberal philosophies. As an Israeli and a Jew, I was struck by another omission. Given the purchase of the “Israeli question” on the question of anti‐Semitism, an Israeli point of view would have been a welcome addition. Douglas Davis identifies himself as an Israeli, but he does not bring into play a specifically Israeli/Sabra sensibility alongside that of diaspora Jews. Another worrying invocation of the Holocaust needs to be cited. The far right Jewish website called the “Shit List — Self‐Hating and/or Israel Threatening Jews” (at: http://masada2000.org/shit‐list.html) lists over 7,000 Jewish names, from Woody Allen to Martha Nussbaum, Amos Oz and Shimon Peres, as well as countless lesser‐known Jews opposed to the Occupation. It refers to them as “Kapos” and “Juden rats”. It would be unwise to dismiss the website, as many on the Israeli left have themselves done, as mere freakishness. The website reflects the radicalization of Israel’s religious, Zionist right (see also Whitaker Whitaker Brian “Hate Mail: Jewish Activists Opposing the Israeli Government’s Policies Face Intimidation and Harassment via Email and on the Internet” Guardian 19 Jan. 2004 ⟨ http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/O,7792,1126294.00.html ⟩ [Google Scholar]). Linda Grant Grant Linda “A Tel Aviv Tragedy” Guardian 8 Apr. 2004 2 4 [Google Scholar], hardly unsupportive of Israel, spent four months in Tel Aviv in an attempt to engage with ordinary Israelis. Her impressions of current realities in the Promised Land and of the cancerous affects of the Occupation on Israeli society are far from optimistic. Grant’s latest piece tells of political corruption, apathy, a lack of political vision, and a hefty measure of Jewish/lsraeli persecutory paranoia.