Daniel Boyarin's No-State Non-Solution

 

It is easy to dismiss most anti-Zionist Jewish activists as having little connection to Judaism. If your main involvement in Judaism comes when you say "as a Jew" before launching into a tirade against Israel, I feel perfectly comfortable in ignoring both the "as a Jew" and whatever follows about Israel. A notable exception among the anti-Zionists is Prof. Daniel Boyarin. Boyarin is a significant contemporary Jewish thinker, whose work on the Talmud and the origins of the Jewish-Christian split I take seriously. As such, there is reason not to simply dismiss his anti-Zionism, particularly as his anti-Zionism is clearly connected to his understanding of Judaism as a people that transcends politics. 

In reading Boyarin's No-State Solution, I find it fairly unobjectionable in terms of what it says. I agree with him that it is important for Judaism to transcend crude ethno-nationalism. Jews living outside the land of Israel have an important role to play within Judaism and it is deeply problematic to claim that Judaism can only function within the borders of a political state ruled by Jews. Judaism is not merely a religion in the Protestant sense of a collection of beliefs held by an individual nor is Judaism simply a national group bound by blood. A properly functioning Judaism is one that can deal with the complexity that goes into the various ways that people live out a Jewish identity. 

If I were reading Boyarin in 1924, I would have few disagreements with him. If I had lived back in the 1920s, political Zionism would not have been one of my goals. I would have been trying to strengthen Jewish life wherever Jews lived. Granted, recognizing the value of Israel as a spiritual center as well as a physical refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, I would have had a particular interest in promoting Jewish non-political life in Israel. In pursuit of this aim, I would have been attempting to cooperate with the British and the local Arab population. The deal I would have been trying to make with the Arabs would have been that they should allow mass immigration to Palestine along with some measure of local Jewish autonomy with the assurance that Palestine would eventually become part of a larger Arab federation. (I recommend Oren Kessler's Palestine 1936, which argues that this position was very much part of the mainline of Zionism during this period.) 

My main objection to Boyarin is what is left out in his book. We are not living in 1924 but in 2024. This means that the Holocaust has happened. We know that there are people who wield the power of modern states who believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and that Judaism is a menace that must be exterminated. Whether Israel should have been established in 1948, the fact is that nearly half of world Jewry currently lives in the State of Israel. This state is surrounded by hostile Arab armies and terrorist groups, who have been influenced by the Protocols and desire to murder Jews. Saying that this is the result of the actions of Zionists does not help as it only makes it easier to believe that our opponents are serious about carrying out the mass murder of Jews. Back in 1924, it was easy to dismiss European anti-Semites as being delusional; what did the Jews ever do to them? If the Nazis could carry out the Holocaust based on pure fantasy, what might Hamas be willing to do if ever given the chance. 

To be fair to Boyarin, his book was written before October 7th. That being said, I have no reason to assume that this past year has caused him to adapt his views. Far more problematic than anything he says is how he completely ignores what should be the primary question regarding the State of Israel as if it does not matter at all. Boyarin's unwillingness to even entertain the question of Jewish safety in the contemporary world, in Israel or anywhere else, collapses his entire argument. Once we begin to consider Jewish safety then one has to consider whether a Jewish willingness to break the limbs of Palestinian children throwing rocks is merely the manifestation of a macho fantasy of Jewish toughness or whether it is a pragmatic solution to save Jewish lives.  

It is almost as if the lives of regular people do not matter to Boyarin. Even Palestinian lives only matter to him in the abstract sense of being victims of Zionism. He gets to live as an academic using trite truths that one should have no need of saying to hide moral monstrosities that no one should have the gall to defend. All this while claiming to care about human lives.  

The Moral Question of Gaza

Imagine if, on October 6^th, Benjamin Netanyahu had called you with the following dilemma. The wall surrounding Gaza, despite looking impressive, has the value of the French Maginot Line. Israeli intelligence knows that Hamas is planning a major assault but cannot say when. For all we know, it might happen tomorrow. The only way to stop this attack is for Israel to launch a preemptive invasion of Gaza and kill, take your pick, ten thousand, one hundred one-hundred-thousand, or a million Palestinians. Failure to commit such an atrocity means that Hamas will send thousands of fighters into Israel, kill twelve hundred people, and take 250 hostages. At what point do you say: “Prime Minister, I understand that this is difficult to hear, but there are certain things that civilized people cannot stoop to doing no matter the cost. You must hold back even though it will lead to an unimaginable tragedy for Israel.

This is the fundamental question that has faced Israel since the attacks of October 7^th. On October 6^th, it was a matter of debate as to whether Hamas could pull off an October 7th-style attack. On October 7^th, they proved that they could. As such, any agreement that Israel makes that allows Hamas to remain intact as a military force, inevitably means that October 7^th will happen again at some point. It does not matter that Israel will learn from its mistakes, so will Hamas and its Iranian sponsors. Most importantly Hamas knows that it can commit large-scale terrorist attacks without losing sympathy in the Muslim world or even with the Western left. As such, Hamas is not going to be held back by the main practical consideration that usually keeps terrorists in check, the concern that killing children will make the enemy more sympathetic.

Let us be clear about what the consequences of repeated October 7^th attacks will be. A state that cannot stop invaders from crossing its borders will cease to have the confidence of its people and will collapse. There will be a mass exodus of people fleeing Israel seeking safety. Refugees are a vulnerable group under the best of circumstances. Combine this with traditional anti-Semitism and the fact that much of the world already thinks that Israel is the equivalent of Nazi Germany and you have the making of a second Holocaust.  

Presumably, there is some moral outer limit to what Israel can do even if the alternative is the Holocaust. The anti-Zionists have a point when they argue that having a State of Israel in the face of Arab opposition requires being willing to do terrible things to the Arabs. At what point do we say that it is not worth it even if we say that it is the Arabs who have brought this calamity upon themselves? To kill people, even bad people, means to be a murderer. This applies to the soldier who pulls the trigger as well as Jewish civilians outside of Israel like me in whose name this killing is being done.  

What if the only way to save Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people was to launch nuclear weapons in a first strike against Arab capitals? I can imagine not pressing that bottom and agreeing to be passively led, along with the rest of those Jews deemed not sufficiently anti-Zionist, to the gas chambers. Better a Final Solution to Judaism than Judaism being responsible for nuclear Armageddon, maybe.

Part of the dream of Zionism is that, in a world in which people want to do bad things to Jews, we should be able to plausibly threaten to do bad things in retaliation. It is a fair question whether the moral cost is worth it. What should not be in doubt are the real-world consequences of not having the power to do those bad things. Part of what I admire about Tolstoy’s pacifist writings was how honest he was about the consequences of his ideas. He was open about his willingness to set murderers free to repeat their crimes. Tolstoy did not believe that one should care about this world, certainly not at the price of destroying one's soul through violence. Like most people, I am too much a pragmatist to follow that path, but I can respect people who do as long as they are being honest about it and are willing to apply this principle to everyone and not just Israel. If oppressed people have the right to resist their oppressors then Israel has the right to storm Gaza.    

Thinking in terms of preventing the next October 7^th, allows us to have an honest conversation about Israel’s actions. A common argument against Israel is that Hamas cannot be destroyed and that Israel has no plan for what to do the day after in Gaza. These arguments sidestep the critical point. Israel certainly can wipe out Hamas. It is less obvious that it can do so without killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. As for a day after plan, it is the international community that lacks a plan for allowing two million Palestinians to remain in Gaza while guaranteeing Israel that October 7th will not happen again. If you believe that Israel should allow another October 7th in order to save Palestinian lives, be honest about that. Make no mistake. The choice is between tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths as well as their likely mass expulsion and another October 7th.  

One of the things that shock me about the pro-ceasefire crowd is how open many of them are about wanting another October 7^th. It is not that they want to save Palestinian lives, they want Israelis to die. The charge of genocide serves a similar role. If Israel is guilty of genocide then the Palestinian people have the right to resist with October 7th-style attacks. Obviously, saying that you want a ceasefire to protect Palestinian children from being slaughtered in an Israeli genocide sounds a lot more humanitarian than you want to butcher Israelis.