by Cornel West
The moral outrage provoked by the arrogant militaristic policies, pro-rich tax cuts, and authoritarian excesses of the Bush administration arise out of this deep well of democratic commitment and are a hopeful sign that a democratizing resurgence may be under way. And it is neither naive nor quixotic to talk about a democratic awakening in the face of the corruption shot through our political and economic system. Our history shows that stirring the deep commitment to democratic values and mandates does make a difference. But we must not confuse this democratic commitment with flag-waving patriotism. The former is guided by common virtues forged by ordinary citizens, the latter by martial ideals promoted by powerful elites. Democratic commitment confronts American hypocrisy and mendacity in the name of public interest; flag-waving patriotism promotes American innocence and purity in the name of national glory.
As we embark on a bold and questionable endeavor to implant democracy in the Middle East, the vital perspectives and admonitions about the painful limits and sometimes brutal arrogance of our own American democracy offered by these profound democratic voices—themselves inspired by and in rich communion with the prophetic voices of the American democratic tradition—must guide us to strive to appreciate the cultural and political complexities of the societies we are so brazenly trying to reshape. The profound insights into the ways in which American democracy has itself condoned disenfranchising practices and created space for brutal suppression of the democratic rights not only of blacks but of Native Americans, Asian and Latino laborers, and European immigrants, and the painful insights into the devastating long-term material and psychic effects of that treatment, must inform our approach to the goal of spreading democracy around the globe. We will likely stoke more resentment in the Middle East than fires of democratic passion if we are not sensitive to the special characteristics out of which democracy must evolve there.
We should not be seduced by the simplistic and self-serving statements from the Bush administration about the commitment to instill democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq—with grand references to spreading democracy throughout the rest of the Middle East—as though democracy is something that can be so easily imposed from the outside, not the least by an arrogant superpower with dubious motives. That is not the true voice of the American democratic tradition; that is the voice of the American imperial tradition. But just as there are powerful voices for democratic progress in the American tradition, both past and present, so there are powerful voices of wisdom and dissent within the Middle East. The need for democratic identities in the Jewish and Islamic worlds looms large, and one of the most urgent questions for democrats in America who oppose the arrogant militarism of the Bush administration is, how can we take back our country so that the deep democratic tradition in America can help forge these democratic identities abroad and be a force for peace and justice in that troubled part of the world?
4
FORGING NEW JEWISH AND ISLAMIC DEMOCRATIC IDENTITIES
Among the peoples of the world, we [the Jews] were the only ones who separated what lived within us from all community with what is dead. For while the earth nourishes, it also binds. Whenever a people loves the soil of its native land more than its own life, it is in danger…. The earth betrays a people that entrusted its permanence to earth.
—FRANZ ROSENZWEIG, The Star of Redemption (1921)
The American Jew, if I may say so—and I say so with love, whether or not you believe me—makes the error of believing that his Holocaust ends in the New World, where mine begins. My diaspora continues, the end is not in sight, and I certainly cannot depend on the morality of this panic-stricken consumer society to bring me out of—: Egypt.
—JAMES BALDWIN, The Price of the Ticket (1985)
If we come to realize that, as many scholars have recently noted, Islamic doctrine can be seen as justifying capitalism as well as socialism, militancy as well as fatalism, ecumenism as well as exclusivism, we begin to sense the tremendous lag between academic descriptions of Islam (that are inevitably caricatured in the media) and the particular realities to be found within the Islamic world…. But underlying every interpretation of other cultures—especially of Islam—is the choice facing the individual scholar or intellectual whether to put intellect at the service of power or at the service of criticism, community and moral sense.
—EDWARD SAID, Covering Islam (1981)
The good society is one that is based on three equalities: economic equality, today known as socialism, or the sharing of wealth; political equality or democracy, or sharing in political decisions which affect daily life; and social equality which, to some extent, results from socialism and democracy, and is characterized by a lack of social classes and discrimination based on color, faith, race or sex. In the good society, people are judged according to their intellectual and moral character, as reflected in their public and private lives and demonstrated in the spirit of public service at all times and through every means. Social equality aims at removing social classes and differences between urban and rural life by providing equal opportunity for cultural refinement.
—MAHMOUD MOHAMED TAHA, The Second Message of Islam (1987)
The bloody conflict in the Middle East is too often viewed in terms of an interminable clash between the Israelis and the Palestinians or Israel and the Arab world. Rarely do we acknowledge the role of imperialism run amok in having set the conflict in motion. The roots of the conflict go back to the shadows cast by the British empire, the cold war struggle between the Soviet empire and the American empire, and now the central presence of American imperial support for the Israeli state as well as the Egyptian and Jordanian states. In fact, the very term “Middle East” was coined in 1902 by a leading American imperialist, the U.S. naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan, to name the geographical space between India and the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire in an article he wrote about the interests of the Great Powers in the region. In the past, terms such as “Western Asia” or “Turkish Asia” had been used. With the collapse of the Ottoman empire after World War I and the popularizing of the term “Middle East” by the London Times, it caught on, and we seem now to be stuck with it.
The popular understanding of the conflict, especially in the United States, has been grossly simplified, and it is rarely viewed through the democratic lens that brings the dire plight of ordinary Israelis and Arabs, Kurds and Turks, Iranians and Iraqis into focus. The very terms of the debate have been disproportionately shaped by the most zealously driven power players, be they in the U.S. government, Islamic states, or Israel. These elites engage in a willful disregard for uncomfortable facts, both historic and current, as well as outright distortions of crucial subtleties of the arguments made by their foes. If there ever was a place and time for the unleashing of deep democratic energies in the region, it is now.
We must begin with the primary concern of all elites in the region—the quest for access to oil. The conflict cannot be understood without acknowledging this fundamental fact. And the crisis cannot be solved without keeping track of the effects of the elites’ power plays to secure oil. These effects hamper efforts to put forward deep democratic identities in both Israel and the Islamic countries. Yet there are gallant voices in Jewish communities in America and Israel and in the Islamic world that call for just such democratic identities and practices, and they have yet to be heard with the force they deserve. Democracy matters require that we hear these courageous voices and help them to become more prominent here and on their home turfs.
The legacy of the imperialist quest to secure access to oil in the region is threefold. First and foremost, as the Achilles’ heel of U.S. foreign policy in the region, the need to procure oil drives a shameful disregard of the radically undemocratic character of oil-rich autocratic Arab regimes, which remain hostile to Israel’s very existence. Second, the ugly thirty-seven-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and subjugation of Palestinian peoples violate international law and any code of humanitarian ethics. T
he linchpin to any resolution in the region is an end to this unjust and ineffective occupation. Third, the wholesale guarantee of Israeli security against barbaric Palestinian suicide bombers that murder innocent Israeli civilians is necessary. These three fundamental challenges—lack of democracy and presence of anti-Semitic bigotry in oil-rich Arab states, justice for Palestinians, and security for Israel—rest upon promoting deep democratic identities in the region.
This cannot be done with the prevailing American attitudes and policies in the region. For example, in the deeply flawed planning for the postwar period in Iraq, the Bush administration has revealed an appalling lack of either understanding of or concern for the internal situation in the country. The administration has also shown an irresponsible lack of commitment to the regime it set up in Afghanistan. A more genuine approach to inspiring and nurturing democracy in the region will require the United States to resolve deeply hypocritical contradictions in our dealings with Middle Eastern regimes. We tend to prop up some tyrants while deciding to take out others unilaterally. We look the other way about hypocrisies in Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, and display an inexcusable lack of understanding of Palestinian views in our efforts to design a peace plan. We helped install and sustain Saddam Hussein himself, and before him the tyrannical shah in Iran. These unprincipled U.S. power plays backfired when they produced not only regimes hardened against us but also a more general anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. Because of our undeniably crucial role in the region, efforts to forge more authentic democracies and to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must start with the U.S. government and public developing more enlightened views of the complexities of public opinion versus elite power players’ positions in the region. At the moment both Israel and the Arab world are currently under the thrall of extremist thinkers and power players. Hence, instead of making deals with these myopic elites, the United States must respect and encourage the democratic voices being stifled in both worlds.
Just as the arrogant, unilateralist views of the Bush administration have marginalized the deep democratic voices in America in the view of the rest of the world, so have the corrupted and extremist elites in the Arab world and in Israel thwarted the democratic energies within those societies. But democratic energies are there, and we must learn to appreciate and support them in helping to forge new democratic identities in the region. These identities must not only cut through all forms of tribalism and parochialism but also cast a limelight on everyday Israelis and Arabs who shun bigotry, desire peace, and yearn to be more than pawns in the power games of Israeli, Arab, and American elites. This goal may seem quixotic because the polarized situation in the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is so intransigent and may even seem intractable. Surely, loosening the constraints to peace will require a herculean effort, but enlightened U.S. policy conjoined with the energy of democratic social movements committed to peace and justice must be stirred. Within Israel and the Arab world, there are strong traditions to spur this change of the prevailing consciousness.
Let us begin with the long and rich prophetic tradition among Jews, past and present. There has been a long struggle within the Jewish community, both in the American Jewish community and in Israel, about the moral hypocrisies of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, with progressive Jews arguing that the Jewish prophetic tradition requires a more robustly compassionate and democratically just approach. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine writes in his powerful book Healing Israel/Palestine (2003):
Jews did not return to their ancient homeland to oppress the Palestinian people, and Palestinians did not resist the creation of a Jewish state out of hatred of the Jews. In the long history of propaganda battles between Zionists and Palestinians, each side has at times told the story to make it seem as if the other side was consistently doing bad things for bad reasons. In fact, both sides have made and continue to make terrible mistakes…. As long as each side clings to its own story, and is unable to acknowledge what is plausible in the story of the other side, peace will remain a distant hope.
Those of us who are both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, who truly believe in the validity of the state of Israel and truly believe in the decency of the vast majority of the Palestinian people, and who will not accept the crude distortions that go for analysis in American media and politics (e.g., that the Palestinians were offered a great deal by Barak, or that the Palestinian people will settle for nothing less than the full destruction of Israel), are systematically excluded when the media represents the sides of the conflict.
The barbarity of the terrorism launched against Jews in Israel first by the Arab states and now by the suicide bombers is real and should never be explained away—as the zealots on the Palestinian side do—but the dominant Jewish stance has become so hardened by the pain of this suffering, and by the feeling of being so reviled by enemies, that the Jewish community has been losing touch with its own rich prophetic tradition.
We recall that the Jewish invention of the prophetic, to be found in the scriptural teachings of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, not only put justice at the center of what it means to be chosen as a Jewish people but also made compassion to human suffering and kindness to the stranger the fundamental features of the most noble human calling. The divine covenant with Abraham, the divine deliverance of enslaved Jews from Egypt, the divine pathos against injustice in Amos, and the divine promise of salvation in Isaiah all speak to the core of the prophetic: the distinctive Jewish refusal to allow raw power to silence justice or might to trump right. At the heart of the prophetic in the Hebrew scripture is an indictment of those who worship the idol of human power. According to the scripture, since human beings cannot be divine—and often act quite devilishly—prophetic voices must remind Israel of what God requires of them: “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). The very covenant—not contract—between God and Israel is predicated on God’s love for justice and Israel’s charge: “To keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19). The prophetic figures in Israelite history—Jeremiah, Micah, Amos, Isaiah, and others—give voice to divine compassion and justice in order to awaken human compassion and justice.
Prophetic witness consists of human deeds of justice and kindness that attend to the unjust sources of human hurt and misery. It calls attention to the causes of unjustified suffering and unnecessary social misery and highlights personal and institutional evil, including the evil of being indifferent to personal and institutional evil. The especial aim of prophetic utterance is to shatter deliberate ignorance and willful blindness to the suffering of others and to expose the clever forms of evasion and escape we devise in order to hide and conceal injustice. The prophetic goal is to stir up in us the courage to care and empower us to change our lives and our historical circumstances.
The Jewish prophetic tradition is central to democracy matters because the perennial question for any democracy, especially for imperial nations, is always, how is the public interest informed and influenced by the most vulnerable in our society? The Jewish invention of the prophetic put a premium on this query in an unprecedented manner. Rabbi Michael Lerner, following his teacher, the great Abraham Joshua Heschel, is representative of this Judaic prophetic tradition.
How sad it is to move from this grand Judaic insight of the prophetic to the bloodshed and bigotry, myopia and idolatry of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both peoples are currently led by such arrogant and stubborn leaders—Sharon and Arafat—locked together in escalating and reinforcing spirals of violence. Both lead principally because of their manipulation of the deep fear and paranoia of their respective peoples—and an understandable fear and paranoia it is. But that paranoia has been used by the nihilistic xenophobes on both sides. On the Jewish side are zealous colonial settlers who envision a greater Israel that entails a full-blown apartheid condition for Palestinians, and on the Pal
estinian side are suicide bombers who call for Jewish annihilation. It is clear that this seemingly intractable impasse cannot be settled by the Israelis and Palestinians acting alone. Sharon’s government refuses to substantially dismantle Israel’s imperial settlements or give up colonial occupation. Arafat’s government refuses to stop the barbaric suicide bombers or punish in any consequential way those who work to push the Jews into the sea. Anti-Arab racism and anti-Jewish racism delimit the democratic possibilities among both peoples. The only hope for a peace with justice is either for the autocratic Arab states to intervene by ensuring Israeli security and accepting Israeli legitimacy or for the American empire to wed its indispensable diplomatic and financial support to democratic and anti-imperial ends.
The major obstacle to peace in the region is the autocratic rule of Arab elites and their support, whether explicit or implicit, of anti-Jewish terrorism—the heinous terrorism of suicide bombers has dealt a devastating blow to peace—but the special relationship between the United States and Israel and Israeli violence against the Palestinians have also played crucial roles in the deepening of the conflict.
There is no doubt that the relationship of the American empire and the Israeli state is a special one. It was not always so. Nor will it likely forever be so. Most American political elites supported the Arab states in the late 1940s and early 1950s owing to oil. In 1956 President Eisenhower ordered Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, which it had invaded and occupied, along with oil-hungry Britain and Nasser-hating France. Israel complied. The present U.S.-Israeli alliance did not emerge until the mid-1960s. Soviet ties to Egypt and Syria pushed President Johnson closer to Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s fear of Arab threats to eliminate the Jewish state made it eager for U.S. support. The first U.S. offensive weapons systems sale to Israel—the A4, Skyhawk jet deal—was approved in 1965.
