Antinomy of Zionism
Antinomy of Zionism
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30taub.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Op-Ed Contributor
In Israel, Settling for Less
By GADI TAUB
Published: August 29, 2010
Tel Aviv
"WILL Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington.
"The secular Zionist dream was fundamentally democratic. Its proponents, from Theodor Herzl to David Ben-Gurion, sought to apply the universal right of self-determination to the Jews, to set them free individually and collectively as a nation within a democratic state. (In fact, the Zionist movement had a functioning democratic parliament even before it had a state.) "
Antinomy of ZION-ism -- Jewish religious nationalism represented by Israel -- glossed by Existential Token opposition to NAZI-ism
"This dream is now seriously threatened by the religious settlers’ movement, Orthodox Jews whose theological version of Zionism is radically different. Although these religious settlers are relatively few — around 130,000 of the total half-a-million settlers — their actions could spell the end of the Israel we have known. (Their primary point of unity is belief in a 'mystical link', as he puts it, between land and YHWH.)
"The roots of the problem have been there from the birth of modern Zionism. The relations between Herzl’s movement and Jewish Orthodoxy were uneasy from the start. After all, the Zionist movement sought to achieve by human means what Jews for two millenniums considered to be God’s work alone: the gathering of the diaspora in the land of Israel. Most rabbis therefore shunned Herzl, but not all. Some joined the movement, even formed a party within it, based on a separation of religion and politics. For them, secular Zionism was primarily a solution to the earthly predicament of the Jews; it was not so theologically laden. "
Herzl => secular democracy (<= will be defeat itself as the rising Arab demographic, will vote out Zionism), sacrificing democracy
West Bank/Rabbi Kook Settlers Alternative => Insisting that "Zion" links national identity to geography: The Holy Land to people of the Bible (<= Nazi Party/German dogma), sacrificing secularity.
This is Israel's Antimony of Zion. Both alternatives lead to dead end for "The Zionist State of Israel." Either it renounces its democratic ideal and goes theocratic; or, it sticks to its democratic ideal and loses the S* tie
But the path that will surely be followed, tacitly or openly, is hardly doubtful. "Ben-Zion" is Benjamin Netanyahu's father's first name. "He" (Freudian SuperEgo in Son's head) could hardly fail to be 'disappointed' (<= from Inception), were Israel not allowed to be called by the Father's Father's name. "ZION" betokens the Old Testament FATHER-SON Group-Fantasy. This, projected into the starry cosmos, provides transpersonal sanction for regarding the land as Holy. Without that, and all it means to People of the Book, "Israel" is just a tiny strip of soil wrested from Palestinians by force in '47-8 by Jewish remnants of Nazi genocide.
Powerful considerations work against this historical choice. First, the Old Testament God, often mispelled "G-d" by Zionist adherants, as if to reserve a hidden designatum for certified initiates -- the Real Name of what Gentiles call "God" -- is a transcendental illusion. "He" ain't out there, said Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Kant, each (and others) in their way. What remains as psychological fact, projected by hidden-and-overt names shuffled around through TokenSpace, predicated on by "believers", now comes tagged "not literally true" (not even cognitive, logical positivists point out). In short, it has become a token of the type known in street argot as "hype"; but of a particular, important sort. As Kant well argued, the particular kind of psychological fact "God" is, for those who 'profess' it's use as a name, functions to bring otherwise disparate content into conscious unity. He called this "the Transcendental Unity of Apperception". signifying that which "the Mind", catch-all term in Western philosophy from Greek nous, brings to "experience", as opposed to being (a content) experienced. The difference is categorical; that is to say, metaphysical. The ground of Unity of experience (consciousness under S*) is not one of the many passing, distinct contents (quality, qualia, intensities) it* unifies. (Can a hammer strike itself? Can grammar be grammatized?)
Immanuel Kant is sometimes called, and vilefied for being, "the Protestant's Philosopher". This translation of Transcendent (beyond experience) to Transcendental (preceding experience) explains why. It takes away the "as if externally transcendent God" as unifying token. This, in turn, re-establishes each individual's inner link to personal reality, in relating to whatever external reality might exist. Restoration of that link at the textual theological level of sign-use (S*vii) is the inner counterpart of consciousness of "incarnation" (of "The Heavenly Father"). This link Squares with German theologian Martin Luther's break with Catholicism over individual vs. priestky mediated faith-by-grace. It was the Age of Holiness descended into earth, then arising therefrom in human form as/in the Spirit of God in Man. That is what Italy's first great humanists foretold against the Papacy. It was an Idea/l that rolled inexorably through the psyche of peoples of North/East Europe: "Protestantism" (<= Catholic 'negative' name 'stuck' by its being accepted; cf. "anti-Semitism" by Zionists; "homophobia" by homosexuals). Whereas previously Holy Men of the Christian faith aspired to be Fathers unto Sons of succeeding generations, thenceforth, circa 1500, Holy Men aspired more humbly to be Worthy Sons. Sons worthy of the manhood of the First and Only Begotton. This is the post-enlightenment position of religious consciousness Kant's Critique establishes through Reason.
This, then, is the first major philosophical obstacle to Going Zionist. It wilfully perpetuates the pre-incarnation position of consciousness. This position is anti-historical (regressive). Taken literally, it is openly recognized as false. Therefore understood as a projection (<= subjective content taken as exernal). Now traceable to the psychic processes of Old Testament Bible believers backing West Bank Zionists.
The second is this. The psychosemiotic result of "ZION", the Idea/l, linked to "ISRAEL", the land, is reduction of theological content to "anti-NAZI": just that, and nothing more, except what can be spread abroad, everywhere from politics to daily life, by implicated alignment. But this is the essence of existential unfreedom, perpetually on the defence against charges of being pro-Nazi by even questioning the grammar of "Israel's right to exist".
(tbc more later on the 'diaspora humanist' position)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30taub.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Op-Ed Contributor
In Israel, Settling for Less
By GADI TAUB
Published: August 29, 2010
Tel Aviv
"WILL Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington.
"The secular Zionist dream was fundamentally democratic. Its proponents, from Theodor Herzl to David Ben-Gurion, sought to apply the universal right of self-determination to the Jews, to set them free individually and collectively as a nation within a democratic state. (In fact, the Zionist movement had a functioning democratic parliament even before it had a state.) "
Antinomy of ZION-ism -- Jewish religious nationalism represented by Israel -- glossed by Existential Token opposition to NAZI-ism
"This dream is now seriously threatened by the religious settlers’ movement, Orthodox Jews whose theological version of Zionism is radically different. Although these religious settlers are relatively few — around 130,000 of the total half-a-million settlers — their actions could spell the end of the Israel we have known. (Their primary point of unity is belief in a 'mystical link', as he puts it, between land and YHWH.)
"The roots of the problem have been there from the birth of modern Zionism. The relations between Herzl’s movement and Jewish Orthodoxy were uneasy from the start. After all, the Zionist movement sought to achieve by human means what Jews for two millenniums considered to be God’s work alone: the gathering of the diaspora in the land of Israel. Most rabbis therefore shunned Herzl, but not all. Some joined the movement, even formed a party within it, based on a separation of religion and politics. For them, secular Zionism was primarily a solution to the earthly predicament of the Jews; it was not so theologically laden. "
Herzl => secular democracy (<= will be defeat itself as the rising Arab demographic, will vote out Zionism), sacrificing democracy
West Bank/Rabbi Kook Settlers Alternative => Insisting that "Zion" links national identity to geography: The Holy Land to people of the Bible (<= Nazi Party/German dogma), sacrificing secularity.
This is Israel's Antimony of Zion. Both alternatives lead to dead end for "The Zionist State of Israel." Either it renounces its democratic ideal and goes theocratic; or, it sticks to its democratic ideal and loses the S* tie
But the path that will surely be followed, tacitly or openly, is hardly doubtful. "Ben-Zion" is Benjamin Netanyahu's father's first name. "He" (Freudian SuperEgo in Son's head) could hardly fail to be 'disappointed' (<= from Inception), were Israel not allowed to be called by the Father's Father's name. "ZION" betokens the Old Testament FATHER-SON Group-Fantasy. This, projected into the starry cosmos, provides transpersonal sanction for regarding the land as Holy. Without that, and all it means to People of the Book, "Israel" is just a tiny strip of soil wrested from Palestinians by force in '47-8 by Jewish remnants of Nazi genocide.
Powerful considerations work against this historical choice. First, the Old Testament God, often mispelled "G-d" by Zionist adherants, as if to reserve a hidden designatum for certified initiates -- the Real Name of what Gentiles call "God" -- is a transcendental illusion. "He" ain't out there, said Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Kant, each (and others) in their way. What remains as psychological fact, projected by hidden-and-overt names shuffled around through TokenSpace, predicated on by "believers", now comes tagged "not literally true" (not even cognitive, logical positivists point out). In short, it has become a token of the type known in street argot as "hype"; but of a particular, important sort. As Kant well argued, the particular kind of psychological fact "God" is, for those who 'profess' it's use as a name, functions to bring otherwise disparate content into conscious unity. He called this "the Transcendental Unity of Apperception". signifying that which "the Mind", catch-all term in Western philosophy from Greek nous, brings to "experience", as opposed to being (a content) experienced. The difference is categorical; that is to say, metaphysical. The ground of Unity of experience (consciousness under S*) is not one of the many passing, distinct contents (quality, qualia, intensities) it* unifies. (Can a hammer strike itself? Can grammar be grammatized?)
Immanuel Kant is sometimes called, and vilefied for being, "the Protestant's Philosopher". This translation of Transcendent (beyond experience) to Transcendental (preceding experience) explains why. It takes away the "as if externally transcendent God" as unifying token. This, in turn, re-establishes each individual's inner link to personal reality, in relating to whatever external reality might exist. Restoration of that link at the textual theological level of sign-use (S*vii) is the inner counterpart of consciousness of "incarnation" (of "The Heavenly Father"). This link Squares with German theologian Martin Luther's break with Catholicism over individual vs. priestky mediated faith-by-grace. It was the Age of Holiness descended into earth, then arising therefrom in human form as/in the Spirit of God in Man. That is what Italy's first great humanists foretold against the Papacy. It was an Idea/l that rolled inexorably through the psyche of peoples of North/East Europe: "Protestantism" (<= Catholic 'negative' name 'stuck' by its being accepted; cf. "anti-Semitism" by Zionists; "homophobia" by homosexuals). Whereas previously Holy Men of the Christian faith aspired to be Fathers unto Sons of succeeding generations, thenceforth, circa 1500, Holy Men aspired more humbly to be Worthy Sons. Sons worthy of the manhood of the First and Only Begotton. This is the post-enlightenment position of religious consciousness Kant's Critique establishes through Reason.
This, then, is the first major philosophical obstacle to Going Zionist. It wilfully perpetuates the pre-incarnation position of consciousness. This position is anti-historical (regressive). Taken literally, it is openly recognized as false. Therefore understood as a projection (<= subjective content taken as exernal). Now traceable to the psychic processes of Old Testament Bible believers backing West Bank Zionists.
The second is this. The psychosemiotic result of "ZION", the Idea/l, linked to "ISRAEL", the land, is reduction of theological content to "anti-NAZI": just that, and nothing more, except what can be spread abroad, everywhere from politics to daily life, by implicated alignment. But this is the essence of existential unfreedom, perpetually on the defence against charges of being pro-Nazi by even questioning the grammar of "Israel's right to exist".
(tbc more later on the 'diaspora humanist' position)
posted by Sid Thomas | 12:08 PM
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