In Israel, there is a growing number of initiatives – from official bodies and rabbis to private organisations and groups of local residents – to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a psychologist.
In 2008, the southern city of Kiryat Gat launched a programme in its schools to warn Jewish girls about the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video called Sleeping With the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an “unnatural phenomenon”. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu once told a local newspaper that the “seducing” of Jewish girls is “another form of war” and a religious organisation called Yad L’Achim conducts military-style rescues of women from “hostile” Arab villages, in co-ordination with the police and army. In 2009, a government-backed television advertising campaign, later withdrawn, urged Israeli Jews to report relatives abroad who were in danger of marrying non-Jews.
It is no wonder that, according to a poll from 2007, more than half of all Israeli Jews believe that intermarriage should be equated with “national treason”. Adding a note of ridicule late last year, Rabbi Ari Shvat, an expert on Jewish law, allowed for an exception: Jewish women are permitted to sleep with Arabs if it is in order to gather information about anti-Israel activity – but it is more appropriate to use unmarried women for this purpose.
The first thing that strikes one here is the gender asymmetry. The guardians of Jewish purity are bothered that Jewish girls are being seduced by Palestinian men. The head of Kiryat Gat’s welfare unit said: “The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab.” What makes these campaigns so depressing is that they are flourishing at a time of relative calm, at least in the West Bank. Any party interested in peace should welcome the socialising of Palestinian and Jewish youth, as it would ease tensions and contribute to a shared daily life.
Until recently, Israel was often hit by terror attacks and liberal, peace-loving Jews repeated the mantra that, while they recognised the injustice of the occupation of the West Bank, the other side had to stop the bombings before proper negotiations could begin. Now that the attacks have fallen greatly in number, the main form that terror takes is continuous, low-level pressure on the West Bank (water poisonings, crop burnings and arson attacks on mosques). Shall we conclude that, though violence doesn’t work, renouncing it works even less well?
If there is a lesson to be learned from the protracted negotiations, it is that the greatest obstacle to peace is what is offered as the realistic solution – the creation of two separate states. Although neither side wants it (Israel would probably prefer the areas of the West Bank that it is ready to cede to become a part of Jordan, while the Palestinians consider the land that has fallen to Israel since 1967 to be theirs), the establishment of two states is somehow accepted as the only feasible solution, a position backed up by the embarrassing leak of Palestinian negotiation documents in January.
What both sides exclude as an impossible dream is the simplest and most obvious solution: a binational secular state, comprising all of Israel plus the occupied territories and Gaza. Many will dismiss this as a utopian dream, disqualified by the history of hatred and violence. But far from being a utopia, the binational state is already a reality: Israel and the West Bank are one state. The entire territory is under the de facto control of one sovereign power – Israel – and divided by internal borders. So let’s abolish the apartheid that exists and transform this land into a secular, democratic state.
Losing faith
None of this implies sympathy for terrorist acts. Rather, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn terrorism without hypocrisy. I am more than aware of the immense suffering to which Jews have been exposed for thousands of years. What is saddening is that many Israelis seem to be doing all they can to transform the unique Jewish nation into just another nation.
A century ago, the writer G K Chesterton identified the fundamental paradox facing critics of religion: “Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church . . . The secularists have not wrecked divine things but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them.” Does the same not hold for the advocates of religion? How many defenders of religion started by attacking contemporary secular culture and ended up forsaking any meaningful religious experience?
Similarly, many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they will throw away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. Some love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture – the ultimate degradation of human dignity – to defend it. As for the Israeli defenders of Jewish purity: they want to protect it so much that they are ready to forsake the very core of Jewish identity.
Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and critic. His latest book, “Living in the End Times”, is published by Verso (£20)
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