Howard Jacobson: Independent Jewish Voices can carry on talking to themselves. I don't want to know
Its fantasy of itself as a doughty band confronting the might of official bias is self-indulgent
Saturday, 10 February 2007
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How is it that people you admire individually look considerably less admirable the minute they become signatories to a public letter? Why is it that a list of prominent names embracing a cause - any cause - invariably adds up to less than its constituent parts, that what was beautiful as a single bloom looks preposterous in a bunch? I am only pretending not to know the answer. The answer smacks you in the face. It is because you have admired them individually for their individuality, and the minute they sign up to something, they agree to think alike.
The particular consensus of folly I'm referring to - which contains people I know and like personally as well as people whose work I would go so far as to say I revere - calls itself, oxymoronically, Independent Jewish Voices and has been declaring its guiding principles left, right and centre, though mainly left, all week. These principles bear, of course, on the Middle East and are, on the face of it, unexceptionable. Human rights indivisible, Palestinians and Israelis have same right to peaceful and secure lives, no justification for racism, etc etc. To which your response, like mine, will be: There needs no letter, come from Stephen Fry and Janet Suzman, to tell us this.
Ask what more specific need Independent Jewish Voices serves, however, and you get the small print. The IJV, as I fear we now have to call it, since it appears to be seeking a quasi-formal legitimacy, is a response to a conviction that "the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole".
One's ears prick to talk of a "broad spectrum of opinion" in a manifesto since that usually means "whatever the manifestees happen to think". In this case, whatever they happen to think is wrong with Israel and the unquestioning support it receives from English Jews. From which you could be excused supposing the IJV to be a voice crying in the wilderness, a David taking on the Goliath of pro-Israel orthodoxy.
In fact the exact opposite is the case. In so far as there is an orthodoxy regarding Israel in this country, the IJV with its "ashamed" and "disgusted" signatories is indubitably it. True, you might not hear the ideas of Professor Jacqueline Rose or Dr Brian Klug discussed with enthusiasm in the far reaches of Radlett or Borehamwood, but elsewhere, on platforms, in universities, in debates, on radio, in the columns of most of our newspapers and journals, in short wherever intellectuals and opinion formers congregate, theirs are the prevailing views. Try finding a public forum on Zionism outside Radlett that doesn't have a Rose or a Klug speaking at it; then try saying half a good word for Israel and you will quickly discover who the heterodox one is.
It is no sin to want your views to prevail. And the IJV is entitled to hope to carry all before it. But the idea it already has of itself as a doughty band confronting the might of official bias is self-indulgent fantasy.
This is not to say that Israel does not command support from Jews in this country. We have a Board of Deputies and a Rabbinate, and from these issue the sort of statements of condolence and anxiety you would expect. The idea of a national home is intrinsic to Judaism and dear to many traditional Jews, so it would be surprising if there were no expressions of alarm when that home appears to be in jeopardy. Hence the rally convened last summer when the war with Hizbollah was raging. Hence the Chief Rabbi's affirmation of solidarity and pride.
Though they believe in a broad spectrum of opinion, the IJV does not believe in pro-Israel rallies. I let the question linger whether they would approve a rally calling for the destruction of the Zionist Entity and chanting "We are all Hizbollah". As for expressing "pride" in Israel, you might as soon drop a nuclear bomb on a schoolyard. Professor Susie Orbach fesses up, the rather - for there is something of the confessional about all this - to being "ashamed" of Israel, and fellow signatory Sir Geoffrey Bindman to being "disgusted and appalled". I see why the IJV might find the Chief Rabbi's "pride" too uncritically familial, but they must see that their "shame" is nothing but its obverse. Too close, too psychologically on the line, too much about shedding embarrassing allegiances - too much about them - to be trusted.
Myself I don't recall being proud or ashamed last summer. As the pictures of the carnage and confusion were relayed to us, and charges of provocation were pitted against charges of disproportion, I took my guidance from the Israeli writers Amos Oz and David Grossman, neither of whom is uncritical of Israel and its military, but both of whom, whatever they thought of the conduct of the war as it unfolded - tragically for Grossman - understood its necessity, arguing persuasively from the first day that Israel had a right to defend its northern borders.
No mention of such a right, of dangers faced or injury sustained, mars the smooth surface of IJV's enunciation of its principles. The only harm done is to the Palestinians and the only people doing it are the Israelis. No appeal, either, of the sort Oz and Grossman have been making to the Israeli government, to risk a leap of faith, to gamble on negotiations with Hamas, to put aside the rights and wrongs of an ancient argument whose consequences for everybody are unseeable. No talk of this sort from IJV because it would imply that Israel has enemies to fear - enemies not necessarily of its own making - and rights to put aside.
The broad spectrum to which IJV appeals turns out to be a narrow political sectarianism uninterested in conversation or the subtleties to which conversation might expose them. Hence the narcissism of its statements, as of a group talking only to itself.
None of which is much help to Palestinians or Israelis. But then this is gesture politics, not politics proper. If you wonder why statements such as IJV's are always signed by a disproportionate number of theatre people and academics, that's because they are members of the play professions, with time on their hands and the licence to pretend. I am paid to play myself and value the activity highly. In play we can go where politicians and soldiers cannot. In play we hypothesise the world. But we shouldn't go confusing it with the real thing.
