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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
PHILOSOPHIC DIALOGUE
Dialectics and Israel-Palestine conflictby Eli Messinger Can dialectical philosophy help us comprehend the mutually destructive, intractable conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinian movement for self-determination? Can dialectical philosophy provide a beacon light for those seeking a way forward toward a humane society in the Middle East and globally? This discussion takes off from the editorial, "Israel-Palestine crisis at boiling point," and Raya Dunayevskaya's "Stop the slaughter of the Palestinians," written in 1982 in response to the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, both of which appeared in the April, 2002 News & Letters. TRANSFORMATION INTO OPPOSITE There is abundant evidence that the barbarism of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the current military operations in the West Bank, indicate a transformation of what Israel meant at its birth into its opposite. As many as 20 years ago, Dunayevskaya was compelled to ask "Does Israel wish to imitate the Nazis and translate 'Deutschland über alles' as 'Eretz Israel über alles'"? There are even specific behaviors on the part of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which are reminiscent of what was done to Jews in the concentration camps. It was reported all men from 15-45 were rounded up, blindfolded, stripped to their undershirts, and had identification numbers written on their arms. From a psychodynamic viewpoint, this behavior represents an identification with the aggressor. This is a defense mechanism, originally pointed out by the child psychoanalyst Anna Freud, in which the frightened child takes on the character, or mimics the actions, of the child's tormentor. By the child taking on the role of tormentor, the child expiates the aggression it once endured and seemingly fortifies itself against another attack (The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, Anna Freud, The Hogarth Press, 1937). While not a "final solution" in the sense that the Nazis attempted to physically exterminate the Jews, the recent IDF military incursions are attempts to eradicate the cultural infrastructure of the Palestinians. The Palestinian Ministries of Education, of Health, of Civil Affairs and the Central Bureau of Statistics were deliberately ransacked. As the N&L editorial stated: "The plain fact is that Sharon is trying to rid the minds of Israelis and Palestinians of the very idea that they can ever live in peace with one another." Lenin in his "Abstract of Hegel's Science of Logic," delineated the concept of transformation into its opposite. Lenin wrote, "Briefly, the dialectic can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites." Dunayevskaya used this concept to account for the transformation of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution into its opposite—not a worldwide proletarian revolution but the ideology of socialism confined to one country; not the emancipation of the worker but continued dominance by state capital; not a realm of freedom but of totalitarianism. The broad idea of Zionism has similarly seen a sharp about-face. There have been competing ideological currents within Zionism throughout its history. Liberal-socialist Zionism, originally the most popular current, has its roots in Enlightenment ideas of universalism and humanism. In its view, morality consists in transcending personal and group egoism to secure universal and equal suffrage. In contrast, fundamentalist Zionism sees the purpose of the nation as securing maximum strength and unity against external foes. It sees a powerful, mystical link between peoplehood, statehood, and territory. The paradox is that fundamentalist Zionism has triumphed although its rival current consistently had the upper hand in numbers, resources, votes and, at a later stage, control of the state machinery of Israel. The key to understanding why the liberal-socialist tendency largely transformed itself into the strident, exclusionary nationalism which now holds the upper hand lies in the acceptance by the liberal-socialists of the strategic primacy of exclusively Jewish interests and aims. The subsequent inconsistencies in its positions were conceptually bridged by a theory of stages; universalist aims and ethics were held in principle but temporarily suspended until after the creation of an independent, secure Jewish state. But once the liberal-socialist tendency compromised, it was easy for the fundamentalists to utilize very real threats and wars to gain adherents for its more exclusionary policies. BARE OPPOSITION VS. TOTAL UPROOTING Dunayevskaya's article condemning the Sharon-Begin invasion of Lebanon was subtitled "The Need for a Total Uprooting" because she also criticized the narrow nationalism of the PLO. The PLO circumvented the class struggle of the indigenous Lebanese Left against its opponents, the neo-fascist Phalangists, and instead focused solely on Israel. Dunayevskaya refused to equate a nationalism void of working class character with legitimate national liberation. She added, "This does not mean that we give up the struggle for self-determination, Palestinian especially. It is that we do not narrow our vision of the revolutionary struggle for a totally different world..." Bare opposition to one or another destructive force typically leads to a "half-way house" position. Two principles of dialectical philosophy are involved. The first is that of totality. Georg Lukács in 1923 wrote, "Dialectics insists on the concrete unity of the whole....Only in this context which sees the isolated facts of social life as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality" (History and Class Consciousness, MIT Press, 1968). In more explicitly political terms, the total character of a movement for national liberation, especially its working class character, needs to be assessed. This comprehensive vision of a new world in the making is at the heart of Marxist-Humanist philosophy. THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION The second, related principle is that of the negation of the negation. This principle insists that mere opposition to a retrogressive force such as the Sharon regime does not by itself lead to a total uprooting which is necessary for a new beginning on new grounds. We are now in the philosophical realm of Hegel's Notion in his Logic, what he considered the realm of freedom. In this realm, the active subject plays a determinative role. Who might be the subjects seeking for a new beginning on new grounds? First and foremost we have the Palestinian masses. By initiating the intifada a decade ago, they declared themselves to be full and active participants in the drama concerning their fate; before then, they had been considered merely the passively suffering casualties of the 1948 War temporarily tucked away in refugee camps. The intifada involved virtually every man, woman and teenager in battles against the Israelis. While the recent host of suicide bombers does continue that trend of active participation, it signals desperation and a failure of the masses, Palestinian or Israeli, to transform the situation through rational means. Until recently suicide bombing was a tactic reserved for the most reactionary and religiously-fundamentalist tendencies in the Palestinian movement. Many Palestinians agree with Nuha Khouri, a woman from Bethlehem who has said, "We lose some of our humanity with each bombing" (The New York Times, May 4, 2002). This kind of negation, while understandable, is retrogressive. In these bleak times, some hold any form of "resistance" to be a negation of tyranny even when its very substance blocks forward movement towards freedom. It is important to recognize that some forms of first negation, rather than leading to a second negation, instead block the path to it. Hegel had confidence that the spirit of liberty was powerful because it springs from our very essence as human beings. In his Philosophy of Mind, he said: "When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and that as its very actuality." The tenacity of the Palestinian people in their more than half-century struggle for independence and statehood bears out Hegel's words. Indeed the spirit of Palestinian resistance has become a rallying point for all opposed to the U.S. juggernaut which insists that Apache helicopters are the ultimate determinant of history; that U.S. imperialism rules the world; and that permanent warfare is the natural condition of humankind. It is fitting that the Palestinian cause figured prominently in the April 20 demonstrations in Washington, D.C., against globalized capital and the U.S. war machine. Within Israeli society, too, the forces of freedom are small but tenacious. These include the Refuseniks, reserve officers and men whose numbers have increased almost tenfold in the three months since the movement was launched, and Women in Black who stand for mutual respect between the two societies. Of special interest is the new role played by internationalist peacekeepers who have taken upon themselves the task of mediating the crisis without relying on any state structure including the UN. The New York Times carried an extensive, favorable article entitled, "Only Label for American in Ramallah is 'Human Being.'" It described the humanitarian aid carried out by a Jew from Brooklyn and his Palestinian-American fiancee for the besieged West Bank Palestinians. When Jewish critics vilified him for betraying his people, he answered, "I don't think I'm crossing any line. The cause is justice and freedom—these are human causes." They and others in the International Solidarity Movement use tactics drawn from the militant pacifist tradition to resist the Israelis. This is a moment when we need to transcend the binary logic which defines so much of the response to this crisis—as if recognizing the rights of Israelis to live in peace trumps Palestinian self-determination, or as if supporting Palestinian self-determination means denying Israel's right to exist. It is crucial that we project a total view. This necessitates a dialectical philosophy. |
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