The Anne Frank House Center says that, “Zionism is about the pursuit of an independent Jewish state.” That was accomplished in 1948, and affirmed in bloody wars in 1956, 1967, 1973 and in various attacks and battles since then. On October 7 the Zionist military apparatus, for all its impressiveness, failed because of hubris. Modern Jewish history didn’t start then. The post-World War I San Remo Conference of 1920 was the genesis for current dynamics, when the artificial boundaries of the Levant were created by the victorious Western empires.  

Zionism is abused as a social and religious cudgel by the Evangelical movement, and has become another tool of divisiveness for the American far-right. Evangelicals, not Jews, comprise a greater plurality of Israeli tourism now, as more American and European Jews reject this narrative of a “false idol,” in the words of author and activist Naomi Klein. She wrote in a recent ‘Street Seder Address’ published in The Guardian, that Zionism “is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide . . . . . a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.”

Netanyahu’s virulent Likud form of Zionism, which he has now allied with the openly racist and even genocidal Religious Zionism and Jewish Power blocs, has created an image of the movement that is anathema to many progressive and leftist activists, and it fuels anti-Semitism as less informed people on the right and left conflate this ruthless ultra-nationalism with Judaism. Just as marriages can run their course, leading to a necessary divorce, the time has come for Jews to divorce Zionism. Bibi has become a literal Pharaoh to Palestinians.  Klein adds, “From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.”

Democracy Now! Video: “Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Voices for Palestine, Oppose “False Idol of Zionism”

It’s important to remember that “Judaism and Zionism are two distinct terms often intertwined, in reality, they represent rather distinct concepts with different historical, cultural, and most importantly, political implications,” as noted in The Business Standard.  They add, “Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that continues to support the development and protection of the State of Israel. Zionism, at its core, can be understood as a manifestation of Jewish nationalism.”  Judaism is a religion, while Zionism is a political ideology.

 The original anti-Zionists were, “from fringe Orthodox sects and maintain that Israel can only be regained miraculously. They view the present state as a blasphemous human attempt to usurp God’s role, and many seek to dismantle the secular State of Israel. However, unlike many gentile anti­-Zionists, Jewish anti-Zionists usually firmly believe in the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, but only at the future time of redemption.”  Though the Neturei Karta were the most visible of observant anti-Zionists, most Haredim in Israel continue that tradition with their refusal to participate in the military or support the embattled state.

Klein asserts that the Zionist ideology, “. . .  is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children. Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked by the youngest child. . . . Including the love we have as a people for text and for education. . . .Today, this false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds of academics, of journalists, of poets.” She calls this “scholasticide,” which is parallel to the burning of libraries and synagogues by Nazis.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is one of many Western Jewish organizations that continues to promote the false idol narrative.  They argue that anti-Zionism means that Jews “do not have a right to self-determination — or that the Jewish people’s religious and historical connection to Israel is invalid.” The AJC also says that, “Calling for a Palestinian nation-state, while simultaneously advocating for an end to the Jewish nation-state is hypocritical at best, and potentially anti-Semitic.” The polemical problem is that the Jewish nation is a powerful “fact on the ground,” though threatened by hostile outside forces. Israel is a political reality. But Judaism and Zionism are also threatened internally by Bibi’s leadership record of self-destruction, as his primary aim is political self-preservation. Israel’s economy and security are also undermined by the refusal of the Haredim to support the state and serve in the military.

Not only can Israel remain secure without Zionism; it may become more secure, as the provocations towards Palestinians would cease. The Temple Sunday School narrative minimizes, euphemizes and marginalizes what Palestinians suffered in the Nabka, concurrent with Israeli independence. It’s time to correct that false narrative, and recognize that Zionism has run its course.

The outpouring of objection to American funding of the Israeli war machine is unprecedented in size and scope. In turn the size and scope of government efforts to quash these protests is also unprecedented, now becoming evocative of Kent State in 1970. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when anyone proposes placing National Guard troops on a US college campus. Doing so would be a provocation and incitement for escalation, and that game plan appears to be unfolding.

Judaism and its offshoots, Christianity and Islam, have all been plagued by departures from their spiritual ethics into orgies of violence. We see this phenomenon in Bibi’s brand of imperial Zionism, Hamas’ and other extremist groups’ violent perversion of Islam, preferring an ideology of hate and misogyny, and the White Christian Nationalist movement in the US, fueled by Trump. The religions of Christianity and Islam have struggled to come to terms with secular modernity, and have seen powerful and violent movements during that struggle. Judaism has the spiritual Reform movement, but no corresponding social-political movement. Judaism came first and has an obligation to take the lead in creating a new paradigm, of a monotheistic, biblically-rooted tradition that nevertheless stands for tolerance and human rights for all. Jews must recognize that the shelf-life of Zionism has expired. Also important is that Judaism is a religion, not a form of ethno-nationalism, despite former President Trump’s attempts to dragoon all Jews into the effort to censor free speech over Palestinian human rights.

From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait. And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience.

This often starts by learning to wait for a turn with a coveted toy. As adults, it becomes trying to remain patient with long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, misbehaving kids or the slow pace of political change. This hard work can have mental health benefits. It is even correlated with per capita income and productivity.

But it is also about trying to become a good person.

It’s clear to me, as a scholar of religious ethics, that patience is a term many of us use, but we all could benefit from understanding its meaning a little better.

In religious traditions, patience is more than waiting, or even more than enduring a hardship. But what is that “more,” and how does being patient make us better people?

The writings of medieval Islamic thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali can give us insights or help us understand why we need to practice patience – and also when not to be patient.

Who was al-Ghazali?

Born in Iran in 1058, al-Ghazali was widely respected as a jurist, philosopher and theologian. He traveled to places as far as Baghdad and Jerusalem to defend Islam and argued there was no contradiction between reason and revelation. More specifically, he was well known for reconciling Aristotle’s philosophy, which he likely read in Arabic translation, with Islamic theology.

Al-Ghazali was a prolific writer, and one of his most important works – “Revival of the Religious Sciences,” or the “Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn” – provides a practical guide for living an ethical Muslim life.

This work is composed of 40 volumes in total, divided into four parts of 10 books each. Part 1 deals with Islamic rituals; Part 2, local customs; Part 3, vices to be avoided; and Part 4, virtues one should strive for. Al-Ghazali’s discussion of patience comes in Volume 32 of Part 4, “On Patience and Thankfulness,” or the “Kitāb al-sabr waʾl-shukr.”

He describes patience as a fundamental human characteristic that is crucial to achieving value-driven goals, and he provides a caveat for when impatience is called for.

1. What is patience?

Humans, according to al-Ghazali, have competing impulses: the impulse of religion, or “bāʿith al-dīn,” and the impulse of desire, or “bāʿith al-hawā.”

Life is a struggle between these two impulses, which he describes with the metaphor of a battle: “Support for the religious impulse comes from the angels reinforcing the troops of God, while support for the impulse of desire comes from the devils reinforcing the enemies of God.”

The amount of patience we have is what decides who wins the battle. As al-Ghazali puts it, “If a man remains steadfast until the religious impulse conquers … then the troops of God are victorious and he joins the troops of the patient. But if he slackens and weakens until appetite overcomes him … he joins the followers of the devils.” In other words, for al-Ghazali, patience is the deciding factor of whether we are living up to our full human potential to live ethically.

2. Patience, values and goals

Patience is also necessary for being a good Muslim, in al-Ghazali’s view. But his understanding of how patience works rests on a theory of ethics and can be applied outside of his explicitly Islamic worldview.

It all starts with commitments to core values. For a Muslim like al-Ghazali, those values are informed by the Islamic tradition and community, or “umma,” and include things like justice and mercy. These specific values might be universally applicable. Or you might also have another set of values that are important to you. Perhaps a commitment to social justice, or being a good friend, or not lying.

“Nizamiyyah University Nishapur,” Digital imagining, Dall-E, 2024.

Living in a way that is consistent with these core values is what the moral life is all about. And patience, according to al-Ghazali, is how we consistently make sure our actions serve this purpose.

That means patience is not just enduring the pain of a toddler’s temper tantrum. It is enduring that pain with a goal in mind. The successful application of patience is measured not by how much pain we endure but by our progress toward a specific goal, such as raising a healthy and happy child who can eventually regulate their emotions.

In al-Ghazali’s understanding of patience, we all need it in order to remain committed to our core principles and ideas when things aren’t going our way.

3. When impatience is called for

One critique of the idea of patience is that it can lead to inaction or be used to silence justified complaints. For instance, scholar of Africana studies Julius Fleming argues in his book “Black Patience” for the importance of a “radical refusal to wait” under conditions of systemic racism. Certainly, there are forms of injustice and suffering in the world that we should not calmly endure.

Despite his commitment to the importance of patience to a moral life, al-Ghazali makes room for impatience as well. He writes, “One is forbidden to be patient with harm (that is) forbidden; for example, to have one’s hand cut off or to witness the cutting off of the hand of a son and to remain silent.”

These are examples of harms to oneself or to loved ones. But could the necessity for impatience be extended to social harms, such as systemic racism or poverty? And as Quranic studies scholars Ahmad Ismail and Ahmad Solahuddin have argued, true patience sometimes necessitates action.

As al-Ghazali writes, “Just because patience is half of faith, do not imagine that it is all commendable; what is intended are specific kinds of patience.”

To sum up, not all patience is good; only patience that is in service of righteous goals is key to the ethical life. The question of which goals are righteous is one we must all answer for ourselves.

Liz Bucar, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Northeastern University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Court’s decision was prompted by a petition filed by The Movement for Quality Government, the Brothers and Sisters in Arms and 240 other Israeli citizens. They object to exempting thousands of ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible people from military service. The government instructed the IDF not to draft the yeshiva students in June 2023, though the exemption had expired. The petitioners responded saying, “It’s very saddening that instead of understanding that something illegal is being done here – a government decision in violation of the law – the attorney general is enabling the continuation of the illegal situation and allowing the sinner to benefit. In fact, she is defending an illegal situation in court.”

In a gross act of hubris-chutzpah, Bibi promised his ultra-Orthodox parties that the legislation they want for extending exemptions will be passed. This would not be the first time Bibi has made promises to allies he doesn’t have the standing to keep, without cooperation from other parties unlikely to go along. He’s become well-accustomed to sacrificing Israel’s immediate and long-term interests for his own political survival, not unlike Donald Trump. And any such bill that might pass the Knesset will not pass the Supreme Court, judging by their recent actions.

 The exemption of yeshiva and rabbinical students from military service dates to the founding of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Most of the European and global rabbinate, libraries and scholarship history had been wiped out by the Nazis. The exemption was necessary to rebuild 20^th Century Judaism from the ground up to re-stock the synagogues, universities and yeshivas. By most accounts, that was amply accomplished by the 1973 War. The original exemption applied to only 400 yeshiva students, at a time when the comprised a small segment of the population. Ironically, the Haredim were some of the original anti-Zionist, who opposed the creation of the Jewish State, which they viewed as an impediment to the return of the Messiah. So in 1948, their opting out of military service was not significant to security.  Now they comprise roughly 14% of the Israeli population, as noted above, and is the fastest growing demographic, creating a drag on the economy and military. They remained exempt from the conscription pool when the nation has never been more embattled with wars on multiple fronts.

In 1998, the Court dispensed with the exemption, as a violation of equal protection law. Since then, a series of short-term agreements through the Courts and Knesset kept it in place. The most recent one in 2018 expired on March 31, after which, Bibi tried and failed to negotiate with the Court to extend the deadline; and pass a law to permanently enshrine it in Israeli law.

The Court’s ruling validated what many exemption objectors argued all along, that the government could not subsidize the yeshiva students, while exempting them from the conscription requirements of all other Israeli citizens. This was an application of the American “equal protection” concept, enshrined in the 14^th Constitutional Amendment. Israel had no such law until 2021.    

“How military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox divide Israel” | REUTERS Video

This Court decision has fractured the Israeli government, which has been a delicate balance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and far-right secular groups promoting illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. If PM Benjamin Netanyahu does not defy his own Court (again), the Haredim might leave the government prompting new elections. But if the decision is not honored, some secular politicians might prompt the collapse. The Likud government is dependent on two ultra-Orthodox parties to keep the government in power, Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Haredim or Haredi are the most observant Jews adhering to every one of the 613 laws in the Torah, Talmud, the Midrash and other formal commentaries. Unlike the Chassidic Chabad Lubavichers, the Haredim are rigidly exclusionary towards other Jews, and self-segregating; while Chabad engages in secular outreach and is accepting of Jews who are not as observant. The self-exclusionary nature of Haredi is fueled by the fact that, “They teach their children to despise secular Jews. They do not recognize the state, they are anti-Zionist; to them, we are simply a cash register that must be robbed,” according to Haaretz columnist Nehemia Shtrassler.

The Court had given the government the April 1 deadline to submit a new bill and until June 30 to pass it, when it ruled the exemption to be a violation of “equal protection,” and thus discriminatory. The war cabinet consists of Bibi, along with Ministers Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz. The latter two argue that Bibi’s proposal does not go far enough to meet the manpower needs of the IDF, and they want more Haredi men in the troops.  Most of the 287,000 reservists called up on October 7 have since been released, but will return to active duty soon. Many reservists resent being compelled to serve longer active terms, and want the Haredi men drafted.

The drama was elevated when Gantz, the former general, opposition leader and war cabinet member;  called out this untenable situation, and demanded new elections in September. Gantz suggested that early elections would provide Israel with international legitimacy, a direct reference to public comments by the US and other allies, over the growing objections to Bibi’s leadership, and the self-destructive nature of the far-right government. He said, “I believe Israeli society needs to renew its contract with its leadership, and I think the only way to do it and still maintain the national effort in fighting Hamas… is by having an agreed election date. ”  His comments elicited a harsh reaction from the Likud, dismissing the call as “petty politics,” claiming it would lead to paralysis, divisiveness and an impediment to freeing the hostages; as if they’re on track to accomplish any of this, and actually care about the hostages more than causing famine in Gaza. Bibi claimed that new elections would “paralyze the country,” as if he hasn’t already accomplished that. He follows the same double-speak playbook as Trump with the media.

But Gantz’s position also brought parallel, but different objections from fellow Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who insisted that Gantz’s centrist position does not go far enough. Lapid said, “Israel cannot wait another six months until the worst, most dangerous and failed government in the country’s history goes home. As long as we are a democracy, there is a tool that changes reality. It is called elections. Election now!” This places Israeli opposition leaders in alliance with Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. His dramatic Senate Floor speech last month called for new Israeli elections; and also called out Bibi for focusing more on his political survival than the security of his nation, or minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza. But it’s President Joe Biden’s move now to halt US aid to the Israeli war machine, to dignify Schumer’s rhetoric and legitimize his own.

The Bibi government is like to fall soon, a consequence of political over-reach for an untenable situation, and his own brand of hubris-chutzpah. After a series of inconsequential elections and back room bargaining, which yielded no majority; he managed to cobble a fractured government, composed of ministers with competing and conflicting agendas and interests. It was destined to fail from the beginning, and now they face a dilemma certain to bring it down. It’s a matter of time. Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party has declared that if new elections aren’t held by September, his party will leave the government.

Another sometime Nigerien spokesperson, Insa Garba Saidou, put it in blunter terms: “The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer.”

The announcements came as terrorism in the West African Sahel has spiked and in the wake of a visit to Niger by a high-level American delegation, including Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee and General Michael Langley, chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM. Niger’s repudiation of its ally is just the latest blow to Washington’s sputtering counterterrorism efforts in the region. In recent years, longstanding U.S. military partnerships with Burkina Faso and Mali have also been curtailed following coups by U.S.-trained officers. Niger was, in fact, the last major bastion of American military influence in the West African Sahel.

Such setbacks there are just the latest in a series of stalemates, fiascos, or outright defeats that have come to typify America’s Global War on Terror. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, U.S. military missions have been repeatedly upended across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, including a sputtering stalemate in Somalia, an intervention-turned-blowback-engine in Libya, and outright implosions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This maelstrom of U.S. defeat and retreat has left at least 4.5 million people dead, including an estimated 940,000 from direct violence, more than 432,000 of them civilians, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. As many as 60 million people have also been displaced due to the violence stoked by America’s “forever wars.”

President Biden has both claimed that he’s ended those wars and that the United States will continue to fight them for the foreseeable future — possibly forever — “to protect the people and interests of the United States.” The toll has been devastating, particularly in the Sahel, but Washington has largely ignored the costs borne by the people most affected by its failing counterterrorism efforts.   

“Reducing Terrorism” Leads to a 50,000% Increase in… Yes!… Terrorism

Roughly 1,000 U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors are deployed to Niger, most of them near the town of Agadez at Air Base 201 on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Known to locals as “Base Americaine,” that outpost has been the cornerstone of an archipelago of U.S. military bases in the region and is the key to America’s military power projection and surveillance efforts in North and West Africa. Since the 2010s, the U.S. has sunk roughly a quarter-billion dollars into that outpost alone.

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Washington has been focused on Niger and its neighbors since the opening days of the Global War on Terror, pouring military aid into the nations of West Africa through dozens of “security cooperation” efforts, among them the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, a program designed to “counter and prevent violent extremism” in the region. Training and assistance to local militaries offered through that partnership has alone cost America more than $1 billion.

Just prior to his recent visit to Niger, AFRICOM’s General Langley went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to rebuke America’s longtime West African partners. “During the past three years, national defense forces turned their guns against their own elected governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger,” he said. “These juntas avoid accountability to the peoples they claim to serve.”

Langley did not mention, however, that at least 15 officers who benefited from American security cooperation have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the Global War on Terror. They include the very nations he named: Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); and Niger (2023). In fact, at least five leaders of a July coup in Niger received U.S. assistance, according to an American official. When they overthrew that country’s democratically elected president, they, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors.

Langley went on to lament that, while coup leaders invariably promise to defeat terrorist threats, they fail to do so and then “turn to partners who lack restrictions in dealing with coup governments… particularly Russia.” But he also failed to lay out America’s direct responsibility for the security freefall in the Sahel, despite more than a decade of expensive efforts to remedy the situation.

“We came, we saw, he died,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked after a U.S.-led NATO air campaign helped overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan dictator, in 2011. President Barack Obama hailed the intervention as a success, even as Libya began to slip into near-failed-state status. Obama would later admit that “failing to plan for the day after” Qaddafi’s defeat was the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

As the Libyan leader fell, Tuareg fighters in his service looted his regime’s weapons caches, returned to their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that nation. Anger in Mali’s armed forces over the government’s ineffective response resulted in a 2012 military coup led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who learned English in Texas, and underwent infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, military-intelligence instruction in Arizona, and mentorship by Marines in Virginia.

Having overthrown Mali’s democratic government, Sanogo proved hapless in battling local militants who had also benefitted from the arms flowing out of Libya. With Mali in chaos, those Tuareg fighters declared their own independent state, only to be pushed aside by heavily armed Islamist militants who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, causing a humanitarian crisis. A joint French, American, and African mission prevented Mali’s complete collapse but pushed the Islamists to the borders of both Burkina Faso and Niger, spreading terror and chaos to those countries.

Since then, the nations of the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have evolved, splintered, and reconstituted themselves. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on motorcycles armed with Kalashnikov rifles regularly roar into villages to impose zakat (an Islamic tax) and terrorize and kill civilians. Relentless attacks by such armed groups have not only destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, prompting coups and political instability, but have spread south to countries along the Gulf of Guinea. Violence has, for example, spiked in Togo (633%) and Benin (718%), according to Pentagon statistics.

American officials have often turned a blind eye to the carnage. Asked about the devolving situation in Niger, for instance, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel recently insisted that security partnerships in West Africa “are mutually beneficial and are intended to achieve what we believe to be shared goals of detecting, deterring, and reducing terrorist violence.”  His pronouncement is either an outright lie or a total fantasy.

After 20 years, it’s clear that America’s Sahelian partnerships aren’t “reducing terrorist violence” at all. Even the Pentagon tacitly admits this. Despite U.S. troop strength in Niger growing by more than 900% in the last decade and American commandos training local counterparts, while fighting and even dying there; despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Burkina Faso in the form of training as well as equipment like armored personnel carriers, body armor, communications gear, machine guns, night-vision equipment, and rifles; and despite U.S. security assistance pouring into Mali and its military officers receiving training from the United States, terrorist violence in the Sahel has in no way been reduced. In 2002 and 2003, according to State Department statistics, terrorists caused 23 casualties in all of Africa. Last year, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, attacks by Islamist militants in the Sahel alone resulted in 11,643 deaths – an increase of more than 50,000%.

Pack Up Your War

In January 2021, President Biden entered the White House promising to end his country’s forever wars.  He quickly claimed to have kept his pledge. “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war,” Biden announced months later. “We’ve turned the page.” 

Late last year, however, in one of his periodic “war powers” missives to Congress, detailing publicly acknowledged U.S. military operations around the world, Biden said just the opposite. In fact, he left open the possibility that America’s forever wars might, indeed, go on forever. “It is not possible,” he wrote, “to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of United States Armed Forces that are or will be necessary to counter terrorist threats to the United States.”

Niger’s U.S.-trained junta has made it clear that it wants America’s forever war there to end. That would assumedly mean the closing of Air Base 201 and the withdrawal of about 1,000 American military personnel and contractors. So far, however, Washington shows no signs of acceding to their wishes. “We are aware of the March 16th statement… announcing an end to the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States,” said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. “We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification… I don’t have a timeframe of any withdrawal of forces.”

“The U.S. military is in Niger at the request of the Government of Niger,” said AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan last year. Now that the junta has told AFRICOM to leave, the command has little to say. Email return receipts show that TomDispatch’s questions about developments in Niger sent to AFRICOM’s press office were read by a raft of personnel including Cahalan, Zack Frank, Joshua Frey, Yvonne Levardi, Rebekah Clark Mattes, Christopher Meade, Takisha Miller, Alvin Phillips, Robert Dixon, Lennea Montandon, and Courtney Dock, AFRICOM’s deputy director of public affairs, but none of them answered any of the questions posed. Cahalan instead referred TomDispatch to the State Department. The State Department, in turn, directed TomDispatch to the transcript of a press conference dealing primarily with U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Philippines.

“USAFRICOM needs to stay in West Africa… to limit the spread of terrorism across the region and beyond,” General Langley told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.  But Niger’s junta insists that AFRICOM needs to go and U.S. failures to “limit the spread of terrorism” in Niger and beyond are a key reason why.  “This security cooperation did not live up to the expectations of Nigeriens — all the massacres committed by the jihadists were carried out while the Americans were here,” said a Nigerien security analyst who has worked with U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

America’s forever wars, including the battle for the Sahel, have ground on through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden with failure the defining storyline and catastrophic results the norm. From the Islamic State routing the U.S.-trained Iraqi army in 2014 to the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021, from the forever stalemate in Somalia to the 2011 destabilization of Libya that plunged the Sahel into chaos and now threatens the littoral states along the Gulf of Guinea, the Global War on Terror has been responsible for the deaths, wounding, or displacement of tens of millions of people.

Carnage, stalemate, and failure seem to have had remarkably little effect on Washington’s desire to continue funding and fighting such wars, but facts on the ground like the Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan have sometimes forced Washington’s hand. Niger’s junta is pursuing another such path, attempting to end an American forever war in one small corner of the world — doing what President Biden pledged but failed to do. Still, the question remains: Will the Biden administration reverse a course that the U.S. has been on since the early 2000s?  Will it agree to set a date for withdrawal? Will Washington finally pack up its disastrous war and go home?

Copyright 2024 Nick Turse

Tomdispatch.com

The minister’s report – and this anecdote – were well-received at the court. The Ottoman authorities were impressed by the openness and tolerance of the European universities they visited and as a result took steps to introduce educational reforms into their own educational system.  

The Hungarian Jewish scholar referred to in this anecdote was Ignaz Goldziher, the savant who pioneered the scientific study of Islamic languages and texts in the West. During his long career he produced books and articles that are studied by Islamicists to this day. His work had a profound effect on Western scholarship in the areas of comparative philology, religious studies, and the emerging disciplines of Semitic languages and comparative religion. His vast oeuvre includes over eight hundred scholarly articles. The titles of his major books, six of which are studies of various aspects of Islam, are familiar to all students of the Middle East. His earliest work, Mythos bei den Hebräern (1876), was influenced by Max Müller’s work on solar mythology and addresses the relationship between theories of myth and the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. From scholarship on the Bible Goldziher moved to the study of Islam. He translated Islamic classical texts into German and Hungarian and synthesized this material into surveys of Islamic religion and philosophy. He rose to prominence in his native Hungary and then throughout the West as the preeminent non-Muslim authority on Islam. Islamic scholars in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world recognized the importance of Goldziher’s accomplishments and considered him a valued colleague. Goldziher understood the political and social implications of his scholarly work. Throughout his life he strived to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding between Muslims, Jews, and Christians.  

Goldziher was not the only late nineteenth century Jewish scholar drawn to Islam. Many others were drawn to the study of what they deemed Judaism’s “sister religion.” As we shall see in the coming chapters, Islam held a strong appeal to European Jewish intellectuals in the nineteenth century, a period of intense ferment and change in Jewish life. This central European Jewish fascination with Islam was not limited to those engaged in the study of religion and philosophy. In the late nineteenth century, the anticipated full emancipation of the Jews was blocked by a resurgence of Christian anti-Semitism. Islam, as an abstraction, if not as a political reality, appealed to many Jews. The Golden Age of twelfth century Spain, the Convivencia in which the three monotheisms were imagined to have lived in mutual tolerance, was the model for a new era of religious tolerance and mutual respect. This aspiration was reflected in the Moorish architectural styles of German synagogues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.   

Among those fascinated by Islam were the early rabbis of Reform Judaism. First and foremost among them was Abraham Geiger. Geiger’s doctoral dissertation, presented at age twenty-four, asked the question “What had Muhammad taken from the Jews?” Geiger demonstrated that many stories narrated in the Qur’an had close parallels to narratives in the Bible and the Midrash, and he speculated that the Jewish narratives directly influenced the Qur’an. His later work focused on the development of Judaism, which he saw as an evolving faith, one that could be brought into line with modern European thought and practice. With this modernizing project in mind, Geiger shaped the emergence of Reform Judaism in the mid-nineteenth century.  

These German Rabbis and scholars viewed Islam as a ‘rational’ religion, a religion unencumbered by the magical and ‘superstitious’ aspects of Christianity, and of Orthodox Judaism. For reformers of Judaism, Islam offered a model of a ‘religion of reason.’ And in emulation of Jewish life in the Convivencia of Spain’s ‘Golden Age,’ a period idealized and romanticized by many scholars, European Jews would flourish. Goldziher was affiliated with the Neolog (Reform) movement. 

At the University of Budapest Goldziher studied Arabic and Persian with Arminius Vambery. Vambery’s birth name was Chaim Wamburger; and he had become both a Muslim and a Christian in pursuit of ‘Oriental Knowledge’ and a university lectureship. In his autobiography Vambery noted that his Orthodox Jewish education and its emphasis on the mastery of texts and languages prepared him for mastering Islamic texts and languages. In his six-year sojourn in Istanbul, Vambery mastered Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. For Muslims, as for Jews, Vambery noted, text study is a form of devotion.

H/t Memorial Website of Ignaz Goldziher

Like his teacher, Goldziher was educated in Orthodox Jewish schools and brought to the study of the Qur’an the same attention to detail that Rabbinic scholars brought to the Torah. Thus many, but not all, of the era’s Jewish scholars of Islam had a Jewish religious education rich in text study and analysis. With these tools in hand, they took on the study of Arabic and Islam.  

Thus, from the outset of the liberalization of European Judaism, the study of Islam, or more precisely, an idealized vision of Islam as ‘rational religion,’ played a significant role. That vision was based on the recognition that the two sister religions had similar, though not identical, approaches to the study of scripture, the development of law, and the practice of rituals. 

In the first half century of this modern Jewish engagement with Islam, (1870-1920), contact with actual Muslims was limited. Some of Goldziher’s teachers, colleagues, and students spent time in the Arab world and in the wider Muslim world. And they met with European Muslims, of which there were many in Germany. Goldziher himself studied at Cairo’s Al-Azhar, the great center of Muslim learning. But these contracts did not lead any of these Jewish scholars to convert to Islam.  

In the next stage of this Jewish – Muslim encounter, roughly from Goldziher’s death in 1920 to the outbreak of war in 1939, a number of European Jews became Muslims.  

From Budapest, Goldziher went to study in Germany, then the center of both Jewish studies and Islamic studies. At the University of Leipzig he was mentored by Heinrich Fleischer, the preeminent European Arabist of the day. Fleischer, who began his academic training in a Christian seminary, was unusual in that he accepted Jewish students into his doctoral program. Eventually some forty percent of his one hundred and thirty advisees were Jews. In his eulogy for Fleischer, Goldziher said “He was one of the few learned men of our time whose academic influence was inseparable from the moral beauty that adorns a man’s character.”ⁱⁱⁱ 

Excerpted from:

From Jews to Muslims: Twentieth-Century Converts to Islam by Shalom Goldman. Click here to order.

Much of Goldziher’s inspiration for this life long-commitment to scholarship derived from his 1873-74 journey to the Middle East. He was then twenty-four years old and at the end of a five-year period in which he had travelled throughout Europe and studied with the most eminent European Arabists of his day. When he arrived in Damascus in 1873 and then proceeded to Cairo, he was already fluent in Arabic, and this eased his entry into Muslim religious and educational institutions. The bulk of his time in the Mideast was spent in Cairo, where his language skills, intellectual acumen, and persistence gained him an introduction to the Shaykh Al-Azhar, the administrative and spiritual head of Al-Azhar, Islam’s oldest center of religious learning.  

Goldziher was the first European non-Muslim to attend lectures at this prestigious academy. He was allowed to do so only after the Shaykh gave him a rigorous examination. Of the four months that he spent at Al-Azhar Goldziher later wrote “Both the students and the teachers treated me as if I were one of them, although I never posed as a Muslim. These were four glorious months of spirited learning.” In his travel journal Goldziher wrote movingly of his period of study at Al-Azhar: “In those weeks, I truly entered into the spirit of Islam to such an extent that ultimately I became inwardly convinced that I myself was a Muslim, and judiciously discovered that this was the only religion which, even in its doctrinal and official formulation, can satisfy philosophic minds. My ideal was to elevate Judaism to a similar rational level. Islam, as my experience taught me, is the only religion, in which superstitious and heathen ingredient are not frowned upon by rationalism, but by orthodox doctrine.”^iv 

Note that though he was fascinated by Islam, and driven to master its texts and traditions, Goldziher did not feel drawn to convert to Islam. He remained within the Jewish fold. This was in marked contract to his teacher Chaim Wamburger – Arminius Vambery, who, in the course of his life converted first to Islam and later to Christianity.  

Goldziher, as events towards the end of his life would indicate, was deeply loyal, attached to the Hungarian language and people, and to its Jewish community – and this despite his constant complaints about his job in that community’s Neolog (Reform) Synagogue.  

Goldziher’s teachers at Al-Azhar gave him an Arabic title, Shaykh Zarawi. The Arabic document which the head of Al-Azhar wrote on Goldziher’s admission to the theological school reflects a more relaxed period in interfaith relations, in which a non-Muslim scholar, fluent in Arabic, could gain permission to study at an institution usually closed to outsiders. The document read: “There appeared before us the Hungarian talib Ignaz, a man of the ahl al-kitab (peoples of the book) with the presentation of his desire to delve into the sciences of Islam under the eyes of the wise and learned shaykhs of the mosque. . . .  He declares himself far removed from all pursuit of mockery . . . Thus it is the decision of God that this youth become a neighbor of our flowering mosque, and one must not obstruct the decision of God.”^v In later years, Goldziher’s pride in this affiliation remained. He signed his books with the title Ignaz Goldziher, the Magyar (Hungarian) Azhari, student at Al-Azhar.  

In Islam in its earliest form (c. 7^th century A.D.) Goldziher found a model for religious tolerance, a model that he felt could serve modern societies and religions well. In his Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, Goldziher wrote that “It is undeniable that, in this earliest phase of the development of Islamic Law, the spirit of tolerance permeated the instructions that Muslim conquerors were given for dealing with the subjugated adherents of other religions.” And speaking of the Islamic states of his own time, Goldziher noted that “What today resembles religious toleration in the constitutional practice of Islamic states goes back to the principle of the free practice of religion in the first half of the seventh century.”^vi 

But it was not only with the Egyptian religious establishment that Goldziher forged lasting ties during his sojourn in Egypt. He met with intellectuals, activists, and Sufis. Goldziher was also acutely aware of the political struggles then raging in Egypt and allied himself with progressive nationalist forces. He sympathized with the views of Egyptian nationalists opposed to both the Ottoman Turks and the European colonial powers. In Cairo Goldziher befriended the influential thinker Jamal ad-Din Al-Afghani, (1838-1897) who called for Egyptian independence from all foreign powers. Al-Afghani, who lived in Egypt from 1871 to 1879, had a profound effect on Egyptian politics in particular and on Arabic political thought in general. The mid 1870s, when Goldziher was in Cairo, were a formative period in Al-Afghani’s political development. His charisma and oratorical ability had attracted many followers. Visiting European intellectuals were eager to meet with al-Afghani, and he with them. Among the Europeans, it was Goldziher with whom he formed the closest association. The friendship with Al-Afghani and the other social and intellectuals ties that Goldziher formed during this 1873-74 visit had a profound effect on his understanding of Islam as it is lived. As Lawrence Conrad noted in an important series of articles on Goldziher, the full import of this trip must be understood in the context of the times. For Goldziher arrived in the Near East in the heady early days of the nahda, the great revival of Arab political and cultural awareness that influenced the intellectual and social life in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Middle East. 

Among the aspects of Islam that Goldziher investigated and explained to a Western audience was Sufism, the mystical tendency and tradition within Islam. In Egypt, Goldziher met with Sufis and observed their rituals. He wrote extensively about Ibn Arabi, the great thirteenth century scholar who interpreted the Qur’an in a mystical manner. In his Lectures on Islam Goldziher dedicated a full lecture to Ibn Arabi and the Sufis. His essays about Sufism helped popularize its teachings in the West – and those teachings were the background for the resurgence of Western interest in Sufism in the early twentieth century. In this book’s accounts of Jewish interest in, and conversion to, Islam, an attraction in Sufism is a major factor in some individual’s decision to convert.^viii This was particularly true in the United States and Western Europe, where mystical forms of ‘Eastern’ religions held great appeal to the young and unaffiliated. 

Though the necessity for religious tolerance was a theme that emerges from Goldziher’s oeuvre, he himself was the victim of intolerance throughout his life. The breadth and depth of his scholarship on Islam was recognized by experts throughout the world, yet despite his international stature as a scholar, the state-controlled University of Budapest would not grant him a regular university appointment. A Jew, even one educated within Hungary’s own university system, was not a suitable candidate for a professorship. In predominantly Catholic Budapest, Protestant candidates too were often rejected. A contemporary of Goldziher’s, the Jewish linguist Bernard Munkacsi, in writing of his own travails at the hands of the university’s administrators, described the fate of Jewish scholars who aspired to university professorships in late-nineteenth century Hungary: “The honors degree, Ph.D. and academic achievements were all in vain! Where teacher’s posts were given, certificates of baptism were required. Teachers-to-be of Jewish origin had to settle their ‘religious status’ before being employed by the state. Many of my attempts to acquire a secular job have failed.”^ix  

Goldziher, while bitter at rejection by the system that educated him, did not vent his spleen at the Hungarian authorities. Rather, he reserved his most caustic remarks for his Jewish co-religionists. When Goldziher, in his mid-twenties, realized that admission to the regular university faculty would be denied him, he accepted an administrative job with the Neolog (Reform) Budapest Jewish community. As secretary of the Israelite Congregation, the Reform Synagogue with the largest membership in Europe, Goldziher was responsible for the religious, educational, and social activities of the congregation. As Raphael Patai noted, “A man without Goldziher’s intense scholarly drive, and more important, with a thicker skin, could have found at least some measure of satisfaction in occupying this influential position.”^x But Goldzhiher, though he served in an influential position for thirty years, did not. 

Goldziher found no satisfaction from his work as a community official. In his diary, and in his letters to friends, he complained bitterly about his fate as a synagogue administrator. Early on in his period of service he wrote “It was decided that I become a slave. The Jews wanted to have pity on me. This is the misfortune of my life.” Even though he expresses his feelings strongly, it is remarkable that Goldziher did not succumb to these bitter feelings and sink into inactivity. On the contrary, he persisted in his studies of Islam and developed a work ethic that enabled him to produce scores of books and articles over the thirty years he served the congregation. During the working year Goldziher would read Arabic texts at night, translating and taking notes, and this after working eight hours in the congregation’s office in which he supervised a staff of ten employees. On his six-week summer vacation he would take these books and notes (and later, when he married, his wife and son) to the mountains and write a complete monograph in one sustained effort. Among the magisterial works written in this manner were: Islam: Studies in the Religion of Mohammad (1881), a long German-language monograph on the Zahiris (1884), and the authoritative Introduction to Islam (1910).  

While engaged in mastering a vast corpus of Islamic texts, Goldziher did not neglect the study of Judaism. In many of his essays he compares Jewish and Islamic beliefs and practices. As Alexander Scheiber noted, “The Bible and the Talmud were Goldziher’s favorite studies in his youth. He remained a good Hebrew stylist and retained his interest in Jewish learning until the end of his life.”

It was only in 1905 that Goldziher, then aged 55, received a regular university appointment in Budapest. During his thirty-year tenure at that city’s Reform Jewish congregation, he had turned down job offers from the most important European and Middle Eastern centers of the study of religion and culture. Among the offers: In 1893 the University of Heidelberg, at the urging of the great Semitist Nöldeke, offered him a professorship. A year later Cambridge University invited him to occupy the chair left empty at the death of William Robertson Smith, the eminent philologist and historian of religion. In the first decade of the twentieth century Goldziher received offers from the Khedive of Egypt to teach in Cairo – and from Zionist leader Max Nordau (who was Goldziher’s childhood friend) to teach at the newly envisioned Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Surely he was the only person who received job offers from both Muslim and Jewish institutions. 

Senior Zionist leaders, including Max Nordau and Nahum Sokolow, sought Goldziher’s involvement with the Zionist cause, and Sokolow hoped to “entrust Goldziher with the mission of improving relations between Arabs and Jews.”^x Though Goldziher wrote that “he wished that persecuted Jews would find a home in the Holy Land and live peaceably together with Christians and Muslims,” he was not an active political Zionist and declined the invitation to teach at the planned, but not yet established, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which opened its doors in 1925. 

Goldziher remained within the Jewish community, he never was a committed Zionist. We noted earlier that his teacher Armin Vambery – who professed the Protestant faith after his youthful conversion to Islam – actively supported “the Return to Zion.” A decade before Zionist leaders asked Goldziher to take on “the mission of improving relations between Arabs and Jews,” Vambery met with Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, and agreed to arrange a meeting between Herzl and the Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid.

To all of these offers of university professorships at foreign institutions, tied to Budapest and his family, friends, and regular employment, Goldziher said no. His refusal to consider teaching positions outside of Hungary – coupled with his continuing bitterness and anger at the Jewish community for “enslaving” him in his administrative position – are congruent with the general psychological picture we get from reading his correspondence. Despite his accomplishments and worldwide acclaim, he felt trapped in a work situation in which his worth as a scholar was not recognized. And from that trap he could see no way to free himself. Too, his loyalty to Hungary and its community of scholars made him reluctant to leave his native land. This was the way that Raphael Patai, the anthropologist whose father was a student of Goldziher’s, viewed Goldziher’s psychological makeup. A more recent study and analysis by Lawrence Conrad, sees Patai’s reading of the diary as flawed. For along with Goldziher’s stridency and occasional emotional outbursts, there is much in his correspondence with colleagues that is positive and affirming. To use Goldziher’s emotional outbursts as the basis for an interpretation of his life and work seems to Conrad, and to me, an unreasonable assumption.

Robert Simon, Goldziher’s biographer, noted that “he transformed correspondence into a veritable cult.” The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has preserved a good deal of correspondence, and as one observer put it, “the mere quantity of these letters is astounding: 45 boxes containing 13,700 letters from 1,650 people.” Goldziher clearly followed his own advice about staying in touch with colleagues. A letter from a valued colleague or student was joyfully received. He told A.S. Yahuda that “if I receive a letter from Nöldeke or Snouck I feel as if I were given a precious gift. A happy and solemn mood descends upon me immediately.” And these were not mere missives of politeness. Scholars who have studied his correspondence noted that these letters, and Goldziher’s detailed replies, could pass for scientific papers, in that they convey more ideas and scientific value than many other scholarly articles of the time. Joseph de Somogyi, a student of Goldziher’s who emigrated to the U.S. and taught Arabic at Brandeis University, quoted his teacher as exhorting him “to do two things if you want to prosper in life: answer every letter or card you receive, even if your answer be negative; and give lectures at the Orientalists’ congresses. This is as important as literary work.”

The outbreak of World War in 1914 was a great blow to Goldziher’s spirit, and to his hopes for world peace. His ability to travel, and to receive visiting scholars in his home, was severely curtailed by the hostilities. Hungary, one of the belligerents, was severely destabilized by the war, in which it was on the losing side. At times, Goldziher’s personal concerns about the war emerge in his correspondence, though for the most part his letters are concerned with matters philological and textual. Some of these letters served as drafts for his academic papers. Goldziher also kept a diary and in it he allowed himself greater freedom of expression. Portions of these diaries were published in the 1970s. William Montgomery Watt, in an essay on the diaries, noted that they contained a startling revelation about Goldzhiher: “His apparently effortless mastery of his subject and the even tenor of his scholarly expositions suggest a placid existence in the groves of academia. The publication of the diary shows such a suggestion to be completely erroneous. All these works of serene and profound scholarship came from one who was engaged for over thirty years in an intense spiritual struggle against forces which made his daily life almost unbearable and threatened to destroy all his confidence in himself.”This ‘spiritual struggle’ referred to here was Goldziher’s experience of his synagogue job as oppressive and his scholarly work as liberating, life-affirming.  

Goldziher’s literary legacy of books, articles, letters was vast. His other great contribution to scholarship was mentoring of students. He taught and inspired a generation of Islamicists, Comparative Semitists, and students of religion. These students, in turn, founded scholarly lineages of their own. During World War Two, many of his Jewish students were murdered by the Nazis. Others fled Europe and survived. They taught, wrote, and inspired a new generation of scholars in New York, Boston, London, Moscow and Jerusalem. As Noam Stillman wrote in an essay on “The Mindset of Jewish Scholars of Islamic Studies”: “Goldziher’s holistic approach to Islam as religion and civilization, to Hadith, law, theology to practice – both orthodox and heterodox, high and popular, historical and actual – and to belles lettres, shaped succeeding generations of scholars, Jews and Gentiles alike.”

 German-trained Jewish scholars of Arabic and Islam explored many facets of the historical relationship between Islam and Judaism. One of them, Jacob Goldenthat, explored “the influence of Islamic culture on medieval works in Jewish philosophy and Hebrew Grammar.” Another German-trained Jewish scholar of Arabic and Islam, Joseph Horovitz (1874-1931), continued and expanded on the legacy of Goldziher. Horowitz sought to forge ties between Jewish and Arab scholars of Islam. In 1928, in his argument for establishing a School of Oriental Studies at the recently established Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Horovitz wrote that, “The idea was to create a school for the study of the East, its languages and literatures, its history and its civilizations especially the Arabic and the Islamic worlds, were to be considered. It was hoped that the work to be undertaken would be such as to be appreciated by the learned world in general and more especially by savants of the Arabic speaking countries; and that in its own way, i.e. by showing that there was a ground of intellectual interest common to Jewish and Arabic scholars, the institute might also help to promote the good feelings between these two communities.”^xix But for many reasons, this institute was never established. Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine, and to what the Arabs saw as British support for Zionism, broke out into violence in 1929 and to a full-scale rebellion in the Arab Revolt of 1936-9. Horovitz’s proposal that academic cooperation would lead to a lessening of tensions no longer seemed relevant to the faculty and directors of the Hebrew University. 

As some scholars have noted, Goldziher’s life and scholarship flatly contradicts the assertion of post-colonialist scholars that the study of Middle Eastern cultures is inextricably tied to imperial designs of power. For Goldziher’s work is itself a critique of Orientalism. It is an attempt to present Islam as it is understood and interpreted by its followers in its own textual tradition and not as it is presented by its antagonists. Goldziher sharply attacked Renan and other European scholars who denigrated Islam and repeatedly sought to disprove his negative view of Islam and Muslims. Goldziher’s Cairo friend al-Afghani also produced a trenchant critique of Renan’s Orientalist views. One might imagine the young Hungarian Jewish Orientalist and the older Muslim religious and political thinker critiquing Renan’s views as they walked through Cairo in the winter of 1874.^xx 

The reader will recall Goldzhiher’s youthful declaration, at age twenty-four, that “Islam was the only religion which can satisfy philosophic minds.” Goldziher and his colleagues saw early Islam as a ‘religion of reason’ and as a model of how Judaism might be integrated into European civilization, and in the decades after his death the appeal of contemporary Islam as an alternative to ‘Western’ faiths grew, especially among Jews. In the mid-1920s, a few years after Goldziher’s death, a small but significant number of German and Austrian Jews converted to Islam. Among them was Leopold Weiss of Berlin, who, as Muhammad Asad, (1900-1992), dedicated his life to presenting Islam as a religion of reason, and arguing against what he saw as extremist tendencies within the Islam of the late twentieth century. Similarly, twentieth century Western interest in Sufi teachings and rituals was informed by the scholarship of Goldziher and other late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars of Islamic mysticism.   

Excerpted from with the author’s permission from: From Jews to Muslims: Twentieth-Century Converts to Islam.

(The Conversation) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that Israel’s military will soon launch an invasion of Rafah, the city in the southern Gaza Strip. More than 1 million Palestinians, now on the verge of famine, have sought refuge there from their bombed-out cities farther north. Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning against the move, Netanyahu appears, for now, undeterred from his aim to attack Rafah.

The attack is the latest chapter in Israel’s current battle to eliminate Hamas from Gaza.

But it’s also a reflection of an ideology, known as the “Iron Wall,” that has been part of Israeli political history since before the state’s founding in 1948. The Iron Wall has driven Netanyahu in his career leading Israel for two decades, culminating in the current deadly war that began with a massacre of Israelis and then turned into a humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s Palestinians.

Here is the history of that ideology:

A wall that can’t be breached

In 1923, Vladimir, later known as “Ze’ev,” Jabotinsky, a prominent Zionist activist, published “On the Iron Wall,” an article in which he laid out his vision for the course that the Zionist movement should follow in order to realize its ultimate goal: the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, at the time governed by the British.

Jabotinsky admonished the Zionist establishment for ignoring the Arab majority in Palestine and their political desires. He asserted the Zionist establishment held a fanciful belief that the technological progress and improved economic conditions that the Jews would supposedly bring to Palestine would endear them to the local Arab population.

Jabotinsky thought that belief was fundamentally wrong.

To Jabotinsky, the Arabs of Palestine, like any native population throughout history, would never accept another people’s national aspirations in their own homeland. Jabotinsky believed that Zionism, as a Jewish national movement, would have to combat the Arab national movement for control of the land.

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as
long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised,” he wrote.

Jabotinsky believed the Zionist movement should not waste its resources on Utopian economic and social dreams. Zionism’s sole focus should be on developing Jewish military force, a metaphorical Iron Wall, that would compel the Arabs to accept a Jewish state on their native land.

“Zionist colonisation … can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach,” he wrote.

Jabotinsky’s heirs: Likud

In 1925, Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist movement, which would become the chief right-wing opposition party to the dominant Labor Party in the Zionist movement. It opposed Labor’s socialist economic vision and emphasized the focus on cultivating Jewish militarism.

In 1947, David Ben Gurion and the Zionist establishment accepted partition plans devised by the United Nations for Palestine, dividing it into independent Jewish and Palestinian Arab states. The Zionists’ goal in accepting the plan: to have the Jewish state founded on the basis of such international consensus and support.

Jabotinsky’s Revisionists opposed any territorial compromise, which meant they opposed any partition plan. They objected to the recognition of a non-Jewish political entity – an Arab state – within Palestine’s borders.

The Palestinian Arab state proposed by the U.N. partition plan was rejected by Arab leaders, and it never came into being.

In 1948, Israel declared its independence, which sparked a regional war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. During the war, which began immediately after the U.N. voted for partition and lasted until 1949, more than half the Palestinian residents of the land Israel claimed were expelled or fled.

At the war’s end, the historic territory of Palestine was divided, with about 80% claimed and governed by the new country of Israel. Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip.

In the new Israeli parliament, Jabotinsky’s heirs – in a party first called Herut and later Likud – were relegated to the opposition benches.

Old threat, new threat

In 1967, another war broke out between Israel and Arab neighbors Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It resulted in Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. Yitzhak Rabin led Israel’s military during that war, called the Six-Day War.

From 1948 until 1977, the more leftist-leaning Labor Party governed Israel. In 1977, Menachem Begin led the Likud to victory and established it as the dominant force in Israeli politics.

However in 1992, Rabin, as the leader of Labor, was elected as prime minister. With Israel emerging as both a military and economic force in those years, fueled by the new high-tech sector, he believed the country was no longer facing the threat of destruction from its neighbors. To Rabin, the younger generation of Israelis wanted to integrate into the global economy. Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, he believed, would help Israel integrate into the global order.

In 1993, Rabin negotiated the Oslo Accords, a peace deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The two men shook hands in a symbol of the reconciliation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The agreement created a Palestinian authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as part of the pathway to the long-term goal of creating two countries, Israel and a Palestinian state, that would peacefully coexist.

That same year, Benjamin Netanyahu had become the leader of the Likud Party. The son of a prominent historian of Spanish Jewry, he viewed Jewish history as facing a repeating cycle of attempted destruction – from the Romans to the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis and the Arab world.

Netanyahu saw the Oslo peace process as the sort of territorial compromise Jabotinsky had warned about. To him, compromise would only invite conflict, and any show of weakness would spell doom.

The only answer to such a significant threat, Netanyahu has repeatedly argued, is a strong Jewish state that refuses any compromises, always identifying the mortal threat to the Jewish people and countering it with an overwhelming show of force.

No territorial compromise

Since the 1990s, Netanyahu’s primary focus has not been on the threat of the Palestinians, but rather that of Iran and its nuclear ambitions. But he has continued to say there can be no territorial compromise with the Palestinians. Just as Palestinians refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state, Netanyahu refuses to accept the idea of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu believed that only through strength would the Palestinians accept Israel, a process that would be aided if more and more Arab states normalized relations with Israel, establishing diplomatic and other ties. That normalization reached new heights with the 2020 Abraham Accords, the bilateral agreements signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain. These agreements were the ultimate vindication of Netanyahu’s regional vision.

It should not be surprising, then, that Hamas’ horrific attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, took place just as Saudi Arabia was nearing normalization of relations with Israel. In a twisted manner, when the Saudis subsequently backed off the normalization plans, the attack reaffirmed Netanyahu’s broader vision: The Palestinian group that vowed to never recognize Israel made sure that Arab recognition of Israel would fail.

The Hamas attack gave Netanyahu an opportunity to reassert Israel’s – and Jabotinsky’s – Iron Wall.

The massive and wantonly destructive war that Netanyahu has led against Hamas and Gaza since that date is the Iron Wall in its most elemental manifestation: unleashing overwhelming force as a signal that no territorial compromise with the Arabs over historical Palestine is possible. Or, as Netanyahu has repeatedly said in recent weeks, there will be no ceasefire until there’s a complete Israeli victory.

Eran Kaplan, Rhoda and Richard Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies, San Francisco State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Michigan Advance ) – Without equitable data systems, governmental policies will always come up short of fairly representing all of the people they are intended to serve. 

It is with that in mind that we at the Michigan League for Public Policy and many of our partners have long advocated for the inclusion of racial and ethnic groups that are currently left out of data collection, including, but not limited to individuals with origins in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The MENA region includes several countries, such as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Yemen; many Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking groups, as well as ethnic and transnational groups.

For far too long, MENA has been excluded as a separate race category in federal data collection — such as the decennial census — here in the United States, but is instead collapsed into the white or “other” categories. This means no federal agency has established an understanding of MENA Americans or their lived experiences. It also means the MENA-American experience has been systemically unaccounted for in federal data and has, therefore, long been excluded from the design and implementation of policies and programs intended to address civil rights and racial equity. 

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

This has had significant impacts on many aspects of the lives of MENA Americans and masked many pressing social concerns, like barriers to quality healthcare, limited opportunities for success among MENA small business owners and entrepreneurs, and a lack of understanding by federal agencies regarding health disparities, child well-being, and other social and economic disparities in MENA communities. 

Having complete, disaggregated federal data that provides more visibility for MENA Americans is especially important here in the Great Lakes State, as the state’s population becomes more diverse and the MENA population rapidly grows. 

In fact, Michigan has the second-largest MENA population in the U.S. at 310,087, second only to California, according to data collected through a new write-in option under the white category in the 2020 Census that specifically solicited MENA responses. 

While this data is valuable, it’s incomplete and does not provide a full, accurate and reliable picture of the MENA population. And, the decennial census write-in option continues to fail to recognize that many of the people in MENA communities do not identify as white and have very different lived experiences from white people with European ancestry. 

The good news is that we may soon see MENA added as a minimum reporting category in federal data collection thanks to one of several recently proposed, important updates to Statistical Policy Directive (SPD) 15. SPD 15 was developed in 1977 in order to collect and provide consistent, aggregated data on race and ethnicity in every area of our federal government, including the decennial census, administrative forms and household surveys. It serves as a crucial element in the oversight and administration of policies and programs that address racial and ethnic disparities and, yet, since its development, it has only undergone one update — in 1997. 

Recognizing the need to keep up with population changes and the evolving needs and uses for the federal data collected, a work group was established in 2022 to develop several new, proposed updates to SPD 15. And early last year during the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) public comment period on the initial proposed updates, we at the League were proud to formally voice our support for the proposal to add MENA as a new minimum reporting category.

The League also made sure to include a policy recommendation in the 2023 Kids Count in Michigan Data Book calling for investment in more robust and equitable data systems — specifically pointing to the lack of a MENA reporting category in the U.S. Census.

By ensuring that MENA Americans are included in federal data collection moving forward, we can ensure that they receive the representation, resources and programmatic support they need to thrive, support their families and make a stronger impact in their local communities. Changes to our current data systems are long overdue and must be made in order to lift up and address the needs of racial and ethnic groups that have been long overlooked. 

We at the League are continuing to follow the status of the proposed SPD 15 updates closely and are hoping to see the OMB make changes — including the addition of the MENA reporting category — this year. Community members are welcome to follow the League’s website and social media for updates on this issue as they become available. 

 

Simon Marshall-Shah

Simon Marshall-Shah is a state policy fellow at the Michigan League for Public Policy. He previously worked in Washington, D.C,. at the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP), providing federal policy and advocacy support to nonprofit, Medicaid health plans (Safety Net Health Plans) related to the ACA Marketplaces.

 

 

 

Michigan Advance

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Jewish tradition as shaped by Rabbinic Judaism abhors literal reading of the Torah all the while considering it the holiest object in existence. This, in fact, is what distinguishes the Jews from the Karaims, who remain attached to literalism. One may offer different reasons for the rabbis’ insistence on interpreting biblical verses. They consider the text timeless, so in order to make it meaningful for future generations they must explain and decode it. This dynamic view of the eternal is reflected in the very term used for Judaic law, the halakha, which is derived from the root “move.” It may well be that rabbis felt uneasy with the literal reading and so offered their own understanding of a biblical verse. This approach rejects anachronism and fundamentalism and tries to make the Torah a living source of inspiration.

Violence is not rare in biblical texts. The Pentateuch and several of the books of the prophets, such as Joshua and Judges, teem with violent images. From the genocidal command to wipe out seven nations inhabiting the Promised Land to the obligation to blot out the memory of Amalek, there are quite a few episodes that appear to promote massacre. Biblical Israel was conquered under conditions that could hardly be described as peaceful.

But far from glorifying war, Jewish tradition decisively deemphasizes military prowess as the principal reason for the victories mentioned in the Bible. After the Romans’ destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, Jewish life underwent a transformation. Viewed in the context of Judaism, the annihilation of Jerusalem defined the normative attitude toward force, resistance, and the Land of Israel for nearly two millennia.

Rather than promote revenge, Jewish tradition encourages self-examination. After a calamity or a misfortune occurs, one is advised to examine and correct one’s own misdeeds (lefashpesh bemaasaw). This approach suggests that the Temple was razed by the Romans because of gratuitous hatred among the Jews, and that the first exile to Babylonia occurred because of illicit sex, murder, and idolatry.

The Roman siege of Jerusalem in the first century, like the Israeli siege of Gaza, sharply divided the Jews. The scholars of the Law tended to favor negotiated compromise, while the zealots organized a forceful response. Classical exegetes — such as the Italian Ovadia Seforno (1470–1550) — condemned the advocates of armed struggle in particularly severe terms: “If the Zealots had heeded Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai [a prominent scholar opposed to violence], the Temple of Jerusalem would not be destroyed.” Considering the central position held by the Temple in Judaism, the accusation is indeed serious and serves as a warning against any collective temptation to use force. The Mishna defines a strong man as someone who succeeds in controlling his own inclinations, passions, and urges (Pirke Avot, 4:1).

But what does Jewish tradition do with explicit violence mentioned in the Torah? The oral tradition interprets it allegorically: the sword and the bow used by Jacob the Patriarch against his enemies (Genesis 48:22) become prayer and supplication (Bereshit Rabbah 97:6); the victory of Benaiah over Moab (2 Samuel 23:20) now stands for Torah study (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot, 18b).
To some, Purim provides a model for conflict resolution. The story is as simple as it is prophetic. Haman, the Persian vizier, has planned a total massacre: “to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day” (Esther 3:13). The response of the Jews was to proclaim a fast of repentance, but at the same time to find a way to influence the king and thereby circumvent the vizier and his decree. Queen Esther intervened, revealed to the king her Jewish origins, and convinced him to stop the planned genocide. “But it did not occur to any of the Jews to use physical means against Haman,” noted Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman in his commentary on the history of Purim written at the end of the 1930s (Jewish Guardian 1977, 8–9). Yet, the massacre of 75 000 people at the hand of the Jews that is mentioned in the final chapter, albeit explicitly authorized by the king, causes anguish and calls for interpretation.

Edward Armitage, “The Festival of Esther,” 1865, Royal Academy of Arts 03/1188

One such initiative was undertaken by the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. A range of people wrote their own versions of the final chapter. Many were inspired by classical Judaic sources aware that violence can only beget more violence and cycles of revenge. One commentary suggests that Jews offered gifts of food to their erstwhile enemies, which dovetails with the Purim custom of mishloah manot, sending each other edible items. Moreover, such behavior would be considered heroic. Avot de Rabbi Nathan, an 8th century source, defines a hero as someone who can turn an enemy into a friend (23:1).

Yet, quite a few followers of National Judaism (or, in Hebrew, dati-leumi), including members of the current Israeli government, revere a different kind of a hero. They erected a shrine to commemorate Dr Baruch Goldstein (1956–1994), a US-born physician, who massacred dozens of Muslims praying in Hebron on the day of Purim. He had apparently been influenced by the biblical readings associated with Purim, calling for the extermination of Amalek. He saw Amalek in Muslims and Palestinians, which inspired his murderous mission.

The association of the Palestinians with Amalek seems to have become so common in Israel that it encourages unbridled cruelty from IDF soldiers sent to Gaza. They chant with joy about how they are destroying Amalek. The direct link between the biblical texts and the challenges facing Israel encourages violence as has been graphically shown at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in January 2024.

Jews have long associated their enemies with Amalek. Among others, Zionists have been often portrayed as Amalekites by those Jews who oppose the Zionist colonization of Palestine. But they would never resort to violence in their struggle against the modern Amalek. Rather, some rabbis called on the faithful to resist the internal Amalek and fight off the emotion, in rabbinical parlance, the evil inclination (yetser har’a), which tempts some Jews to identify with Zionism and the state that embodies this ideology. The numerical value (gematria) of the letters constituting Amalek is equal to that of the letters in the word safeq, doubt. These rabbis argue that rejection of Zionism should brook no doubt.

Zionist settlement in Palestine and the unilateral declaration of independence by the state of Israel in 1948 challenged the tradition of non-literalism, certainly among the secularized settlers but only slightly less among those affiliated with National Judaism. From the beginning, Zionism has encouraged love of the land, a love that has taken political and ideological forms. The nature hikes with the Torah in the hand have been intended to impart an intimate knowledge of the terrain mentioned in biblical verses. This organic intimacy breeds literal rapport with the Torah recounting events that are believed to have happened mostly in that land.

But the events narrated in the Book of Esther are located elsewhere. Against the continuing massacres and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza we can celebrate Purim by transforming the violence it contains into a manifestation of empathy. We can write our own finales for the Book of Esther. After all, Purim is a holiday of radical transformation. Haman thought he would be the one to be honored by the king, but it was his worst enemy, Mordechai, whom Haman was forced to praise and parade. Jews were facing a genocide, but then the tables turned, transforming a day of anguish into festivity. The Torah is eternal precisely because it is not immutable and allows for time-sensitive interpretations, including those of the Book of Esther.

Madrid and State College, Pa. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In a statement from March 12, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced the suspension of Professor Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, an internationally renowned Palestinian scholar and a faculty member in the Law School and School of Social Work. The drastic and unprecedented move came after Shalhoub talked in an extended podcast interview about the October 7 horrors and the ensuing devastating war and mass killings in Gaza. Two sentences that were taken out of context dominated the public conversation. First, “And of course, they will use any lie. They started with babies, they continued with rape, they will continue with million other lies every day with another story.” Second, “Only by abolishing Zionism, we can continue. This is what I see.” The public outrage, of course, ignored her comments, conveying sympathy to the victims of October 7. In fact, she said, “My reaction to the stories on October 7th was horrified…I will never allow anybody to touch a baby, to kidnap a child, to rape a woman”, adding, “all our lives, we fought for the dignity, for life, for the wholeness of a human and not the opposite.” 

In its statement, the Hebrew University rejected “all of the distorted the statements of Professor Kevorkian”. Emphasizing that the University “is proud of being an Israeli, public, and Zionist institution. As in the past, the heads of the university repeated their call for Professor Kevorkian to find another academic home that suits her position. In this stage, and in order to maintain a safe climate on campus for the benefit of our male and female students, the university decided to suspend her from teaching.” 

But what does it mean when a central institution of higher learning defines itself as Zionist? What does it mean for the non-Zionist or anti-Zionist faculty and students? What does it mean for the Palestinian national minority of seventeen percent that has been victimized by Zionism for years that this institution is Zionist and that any attempt to criticize this ideology faces the strongest possible reaction in the university toolbox? To be clear, Jewish professors have been able to criticize Zionism openly. As a state ideology, it is fair or even necessary to question the value and substance of this ideology. Few Jewish professors–to date– faced suspension or demands to find a new academic home for their critique of Zionisim. At the same time, faculty members at the Hebrew University who have been publicly defending war crimes and cheering on genocidal acts faced no disciplinary actions.

Democracy Now! Video: “”Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof on Her Suspension from Hebrew University”

Just recently, the International Court of Justice ruled that the allegations that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention are plausible. Too often, the commission of international crimes is made possible through aggressive attempts to silence dissent and punish dissenters. The suspension of Professor Shalhoub by the Hebrew University is only one example of the relentless efforts on the part of Israeli institutions to silence dissent, making the university itself complicit in the atrocities that are being committed in Gaza. The witch hunt against Professor Shalhoub did not start with the decision to suspend her. In fact, it reached unprecedented levels months ago after she signed and circulated a petition accusing Israel of committing genocide. The publication of an official letter by the university accusing her of incitement and sedition not only contravened basic tenets of academic liberty, but it also put her life in real danger, given the rising violence of extreme right-wing activists against Palestinians. If this could be done to an internationally renowned scholar, we can only imagine how easy it would be to intimidate and target junior Palestinian scholars and students. 

Needless to say, the establishment of the state of Israel and the ensuing Palestinian Nakba were marked with attempts to destroy the Palestinian cultural and intellectual life to disorient Palestinians who remained in their homeland. The crackdown on Palestinian academics and Palestinian students in Israeli universities is a continuation of this policy, and it aims at thwarting any attempt on the part of the Palestinian citizens to fight for their national collective rights. Using such coercive measures against the Palestinian intellectual community could have a devastating impact on the Palestinian citizens as a whole, who are already deprived of their right to self-determination under the Nation-State Law.

These disciplining attempts are prevalent in all public spaces. About the same time as the Hebrew University issued its statement, the Israeli Football Association announced it was going to put Bnei Sakhnin (the senior Palestinian football club in the Israeli premier league) in a disciplinary process because its fans cheered loudly during the playing of the national anthem, therefore, not honoring it. This, too, joins the effort to suppress and limit Palestinian voices.   

Israel has long imposed a regime of racial supremacy on Palestinians, the last months have proved that it is willing to escalate in its resort to coercive measures to maintain this regime and to eliminate any meaningful opposition to it. When leading academic institutions become the arm of the state in enforcing such policies, the international academic community should respond promptly and loudly.   

Sonia Boulos is an Associate Professor of international human rights law at Nebrija University and the Co-editor of Palestine/Israel Review

Lior Sternfeld is an Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Penn State University and the Associate Editor of Palestine/Israel Review