Deconstructing Jewishness

Deconstructing Jewishness

-Refutation of Alan Dershowitz’ Case for Israel


Part I. Introduction of Material* (*with settings – communication situation -- for the sign-uses analyzed)

Document 1.
http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/05/20040506_b_main.asp

Yahoo blurb under website address:
Alan Dershowitz, America#039;s most famous litigator, hits back at European and American criticism of Israel. We ask an American Jew to make the case for U.S. Foreign Policy in Israel. ... that is reasonable, comparable and contextual" America's most famous defense attorney makes The Case for Israel. ...


Dershowitz's Case for Israel



Alan Dershowitz

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Three weeks ago, President Bush stood beside Ariel Sharon and gave America's blessing to the Israeli Prime Minister's plan to keep some West Bank settlements, and deny Palestinian refugees the right of return to Israel. In the turbulent weeks since then, another Hamas leader was assassinated, and Sharon's own Likud Party rejected his plan to withdraw from Gaza.

U.S. diplomats sent a letter scolding President Bush over his support for Sharon, saying that he has "proved that the U.S. is not an even-handed peace partner." Alan Dershowitz says this criticism is part of a trend, wherein, as he puts it, the cacophony of unreasonable, double-standard and extreme condemnations of Israel drown out any criticism that is reasonable, comparable and contextual" America's most famous defense attorney makes The Case for Israel.

Document 2
Overview: from on-line review (right-wing Jewish)
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/sep03/shapiro.htm

Reviewed by Bernard J. Shapiro
Excerpt 1. Alan Dershowitz is widely respected as one our nation's most brilliant Professors of Law (Harvard University) and defense attorney. His has a resolute and unshakable belief in the liberties granted to Americans in the Bill of Rights and is ready to defend them. These qualities make him an ideal defender of Israel.
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“Dershowitz concludes with a concept that the Israel is "the Jew among the nations." In other words the anti-Semites look at Israel as a macrocosm of "the Jews" they hate, fear and wish to destroy. Other writers have used this analogy, but Dershowitz carries it much further with his astute analysis and historical presentation.
Part II Analysis

The statement “Israel is the Jew among the nations”, as a sign-use construction is a “doubling” of references to “the Jew”, taken once from its (background, pre-conscious) use as the extreme Nazi-hate perjorative (“What the Jew was in Hitler’s Germany”); then taken again, by stretching its application to the ‘nation.’ What is carried over is re-application of the Nazi-hate background, thus staging a communication situation in which the reader is brought to observe themselves predicating whatever they personally associate with “the Jew” from the earlier context, to the contrived (by word and deed) refuge. That is Dershowitz’ “Case” in a nutshell, right there. Why shouldn’t it be called “the Jew among nations”? It is officially called “the Jewish state”. Why should dropping the “-ish” and changing “state” to “nation” raise such hackles? Because it evokes the revulsion all right-minded men, especially including all Americans whose families fought Hitler’s Germany in WWII, are assumed to feel – with reaction-formation. “Not!” “Never!” The revulsion evoked by stacks of starving, emaciated humanity outside Aushwitz goads this reaction. “No one could accept that!” Reaction-formation, Freud found, is the reversal of a strongly cathected instinctual impulse when it is mechanically turned back (repressed) by the person’s own ego-ideal. This inner agency, later called “super-ego” is acquired during the Oedipal stage of psychosexual development when the child learns to say “No! NO! I don’t hate him! I love Him” – in reaction to felt revenge impulses toward an abusive father, when instinctual expression invites severe punishment. But this ‘love of father’ based on reaction-formation is actually driven by hate, the quasi-quality that replaces cathexis of libido (spontaneous love) toward the Father in conditions of abuse. This comes through in sadistic-compulsive behavior (cf. picture of the facial expression of a masochist enjoying himself; or Pat Robertson’s face as he says the words “assassinate”, or “take him out” in re Venezuelan President Chavez.)

And THAT – reaction-formation toward hatred of Jews -- is the emotional basis of Dershowitz’ case for Israel. “Don’t even think (It*) (*killing the Children of Israel; killing God the Father Himself… not supporting Israel …wishing the final solution). The effect is to elicit, then turn back, death wishes toward Jews.

Note: John Lennon singing “Women are the niggers of the world” compares with this analysis of “Israel is the Jew of nations.” Use of the Southern perjorative, “The ‘N-‘ word” became a token of the wish-impulse to lynch blacks men who were fantasized as wanting to screw white girls; as such, since this entire CS evokes a feeling-tone complex all its own, it* (*the sign-use “nigger”) was suppressed, then repressed to the point of evoking a reaction-formation of its own; at which juncture it is fit to be used in a secondary manner, the way Dershowitz uses “the Jew”, as a reversal mechanism. Wouldn’t want to be thinking of our women as black folks themselves, now would we.

Dershowitz’ representation, then, on this interpretation, says: “Look, here’s how it is. If you are among its prejudiced, one-sided critics, then how you feel about Israel as a nation is the way Germans felt about the Jews. That is who and what you are.” His “case”, carried out to 32 points, consists in correcting the starting point of any who show bias measuring ‘Israel’ by one stardard, as if it were different, and other (real) nations by another standard. Leaving it up to the jury of his peers and public opinion, to weight his facts and arguments, and add the hate component.

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Part 3. Generalization

It is my contention here that: 1. The case Dershowitz makes is ‘loaded’ – first, by stacking tokens of uniquely powerful particular associations in sentences (“Israel”, “the Jew”), then extracting token-tautologies from the posited S* by appeal to the latent passions they invoke. Insisting, all the while, on playing the language games (inference, argument, entreaty, etc.) as if the dice were not loaded. 2. Israel is NOT a “nation” except by generous extension of that term to entities with the unique historical particularity it’s name carries. It is not “a” nation among the “set” of nations, because it is named for a particular people with a particular history. This figures into the logic of the question “Does Israel have the right to exist?” (And ungenerous critic might see in this Dershowitz’ cunning manipulation of equating a “No” answer to this to signing on to Hitler’s “final solution”, whereas, in fact, it might be a point of sign-use insisted upon.).

A common trait marked “Jewishness” emerges from consideration of Dershowitz’s “case.”

Roughly: Preaching the Universal (as theory), while hewing to the particular (in practice).

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They represent themselves as BOTH the Same – as you or I, individually; or as any other group, as nation – and Different: individuals and nation with a very unique historical narrative (shaping the inner as well as manifest outer particularity). The assumed unity of both appears in different points in their rhetoric, the universal or inclusive “we defenders of Free Speech Americans”, above, coming in at one real-politic juncture; the other, exclusive, “minority rights” rhetoric kicks in when Menorahs and Hannakuh fade the Christmas season celebration, or “anti-semitic hate laws” are passed in order to chill criticism of U.S. policy toward Israel. A psychodynamic whip-saw effect is achieved, wherein a context calling for identification-with-empathy, as the human response toward Jews suffering in the holocaust, is followed by an anti-cathectic, “them-only; you* only if approving” marker. What must be recognized is that BOTH POSITIONS, SIDE BY SIDE YET LOGICALLY DISTICT, IS AN ESSENTIAL TRAIT OF THEIR RHETORIC (Jewishness).

However, the claim of both (two) as a unity (one) is self-contradictory.

The Same and the Different are categorical distinctions, resoluble into a single unity only through consciousness itself as the ground of transcendental unity: that which is the Same in the Many of all S* given to individuals (the sum of a Kantian “I think”, under a single memory-connected set of sign-uses). This cannot be identical with Jewishness as a particularity, because as a particularity, Jewishness is only one among other strain of individual conscious life.


Reply to Dershowitz’ central contention:

Excerpts: from Introduction to The Case for Israel:
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8461


“Thomas Friedman of the New York Times got it right when he said, "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction -- out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East -- is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest." A good working definition of anti-Semitism is taking a trait or an action that is widespread, if not universal, and blaming only the Jews for it
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“This book will prove not only that Israel is innocent of the charges being leveled against it but that no other nation in history faced with comparable challenges has ever adhered to a higher standard of human rights, been more sensitive to the safety of innocent civilians, tried harder to operate under the rule of law, or been willing to take more risks for peace. This is a bold claim, and I support it with facts and figures, some of which will surprise those who get their information from biased sources. For example, Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military even during wartime. It is the only country in modern history to have returned disputed territory captured in a defensive war and crucial to its own self-defense in exchange for peace. And Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war. I challenge Israel's accusers to produce .
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Comment: this demonstrates the grammar of persistently subsuming “Israel” under the general heading of “a nation”. To be favorably predicated on -- one of the best, objectively considered. He has the comparative data to prove it. But – the point cannot be repeated enough – this ignores What Israel IS: i.e., = what Israel* communicates. (see footnote) He thinks he can intellectually master control over that? It is using him, not vice versa. He can’t even predicate with any assurance on what Israel, the nation, is predicating of itself these days. Some official and many pundits now speak openly of it as a “Zionist state”. Rudolf Giuliani has declared to Europe, summer of ’04, that there has been an escalation of anti-Semitism to include anti-Zionism, telling those dudes to get off their asses and combat it. Dershowitz avoids the term, and skirts the unconscious associations the eliciting of which largely neutralizes any serious emotive content his text so meticulously summons up. Based on facts and arguments, you understand. (And: particular sign-uses, we are obliged to add.)

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Further remarks show consciousness of being on the other side of twisted, pernicious reversal:

“I prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that a pernicious double standard has been applied to judging Israel's actions: that even when Israel has been the best or among the best in the world, it has often been accused of being the worst or among the worst in the world. I also prove that this double standard has not only been unfair to the Jewish state but that it has damaged the rule of law, wounded the credibility of international organizations such as the United Nations, and encouraged Palestinian terrorists to commit acts of violence in order to provoke overreaction by Israel and secure one-sided condemnation of Israel by the international community.”

This passage brings together the two sides of the “twist” most succinctly. “Even when Israel has been the best or among the best in the world, it has often been accused of being the worst or among the worst in the world.”

How can that be? – one is obliged to wonder. The answer here is: because there is a self-contradiction in what “Israel”’s existence stands for: as a nation that is both the Same and Different from others. That draws a logical line of total exclusion or inclusion. Which side one comes down on depends, I think, on the way the reaction-formation is cathected. That is why Dershowitz’ formula “Israel is the Jew among nations” is so apt. It focuses clearly where the seam splits.

Perhaps if it were to be called something else?

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Footnote: What Israel* is. (=*What the word “Israel” communicates, divided accorded to 7 Metaphysical Categories – where the seventh reverts to the first as textual connection of conscious content):

1. The name of a person – the Biblical Patriarch Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. Abram/Abraham (Sumerian-cum-Semitic form). The narrative of the man to which it applies.

2. The children of Jacob (“Father Israel” he became known as). Descendents of the 12 sons according to Mosaic law, through the mother’s line (of DNA)

3. The tribes dispersed in the later parts of the 1st millennium B.C., then after 70 A.D., known to each other across boundaries as “people of the book”; that is, followers of texts written long, long ago on scrolls about the remarkable history of Israel’s tribes.

4. The name of what is currently regarded as the “nation of Israel’, as above.

5. In addition: “Israel” is a token of the theological idea uniting those who are members of its recognized citizenry: the state as a mental content communicated among them as a group. In this use it is mainly a political token.

6. Further: It is synonymous with the group life of those who follow religious observances in rituals tracing back through the texts to early times. They can perhaps feel, with some justification, as if they are “Israel”, or are instrumental in “keeping Israel alive.”

7. Finally: “Israel” can be used, or misused, in the sense of a blood-based metaphysic: As the title of strain of congenital Jewish supremacy, as if it were an essential being-ointment that flowed directly from The One into Head through bodily fluids.

This last is the most hard-core esoteric use, mostly encountered only among scholars of the Talmud, and should succinctly addressed as a fall-back, default position in case others fail.

It can be refuted from the standpoint of the Christian John Calvin, and the ‘atheistic’ existentialist John Paul Sartre.

According to Calvin, each man stands under judgment by God responsible for what he chooses to be, to do, to become. These result from free will, not because God or anything else ordained it in advance.

Sartre’s doctrine of freedom goes further and says the denial of that – Calvin’s creed, refusing to lay the blame for one’s destiny on outside, occult sources – is false consciousness. Calvin says “You have to decide for yourself”. The philosopher adds: “To deny this is to lie to oneself, in the act of denial .”

To which a third voice, Freudian psychoanalysis, might well add: “The denial of responsibility, if mechanical and compulsive, is the result of the psychodynamics of repression; the refusal of entry to consciousness of an instinctual wish.

This argument applies to claims by (some) homosexuals that their sexual orientation is genetically determined (perhaps for some it is).