Hyphenated Israelism
Op-ed: The civil right movement ushered in a wave of tolerance throughout America that has largely stifled suspicions of dual loyalty. American Jews have reaped the benefits. What will it take for Palestinian citizens of Israel to experience a similar revolution?
The past three years had seen the formation of Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, which was vainly used to return him to the Oval Office in 1912. Battered but unbowed, the progressive leader stood before the largely Irish Catholic, Knights of Columbus and unapologetically called for an end to what had been known as Hyphenated Americanism.
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism," Roosevelt began in front of the cheering crowd of 2,500. "…For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic."
While the US would not be dragged in for another year and a half, World War I had broken out over a year beforehand; and Roosevelt’s words likely reflected the nationalistic sentiments of the time. Hyphenated-Americanism implied dual loyalties –a concept that even the leader of the Progressive Party could not accept.
But not every analysis of America’s condition during the Great War arrived at the same conclusions. For Louis Brandeis, the World War was creating opportunities that could solve the "Jewish problem," as he saw it. The Zionist movement was gaining strength, and Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine was increasing. While Roosevelt felt that the loyalties of a US citizen were limited, Brandies delivered an address at a conference of Reform rabbis that suggested quite the contrary.
"Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with Patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent." Brandeis went even further, saying: "Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine…will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so."
To Brandeis, a "hyphenated American" meant multiple loyalties that did not necessarily have to conflict. Just six months later, he was nominated by Woodrow Wilson to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Theodore Roosevelt held a zero-sum understanding to the notion of loyalty. Allegiance to one nation did not leave room for other commitments. But this once majority-held philosophy has proven itself to no longer be presumptive in the US – the growth of the civil rights movement being the prime example of this. Shattering the notion of a standardized American identity of the hegemonic culture, the civil rights movement proved that Roosevelt’s brand of hyphenation no longer had to be perceived as threatening. Conversely, Brandeis’s words remain unscathed and as relevant as ever.
No organization better demonstrates this relevance than the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC supporters lobby for a strong US-Israel relationship because to them, there is nothing more American.
American-Jews have been able to flourish because they live in a world where the Brandeis philosophy rules. This transformation from the Rooseveltian worldview where Americans were forced to choose between conflicting dual loyalties to the Brandeisian embrace of multiple loyalties is what AIPAC still utilizes to make it the effective lobby that it is.
However, this transformation has not occurred in all countries. For a variety of reasons, the State of Israel and its Arab citizens still view the concept of loyalty through Roosevelt’s trademark monocle. Given the prolonged bloody history of this conflict, the current distrust between Israel and its Arab minority is to be expected. But perhaps more than any two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians would have much to gain from a philosophical evolution similar to the one that took place in the US.
Two minorities – both with a profound connection to a country in which they do not reside; both with no plans to emigrate. While there is a great deal that differentiates Israeli-Arabs and American Jews, dual loyalty seems to be an accurate sensitivity felt by both. One seems to have thrived while the other for various reasons is stagnate. Could a Roosevelt to Brandeis transformation be the push that Israeli-Arab society needs to get out of the mud?
America’s winding path towards Brandeis
Even American Jewry, though, once held serious doubts regarding the ability to express allegiance to another nation. It is likely that Brandeis’s words initially fell upon deaf ears. The Reform rabbis to whom he spoke represented a denomination that, at the time, placed itself quite outside the Zionist tent. Its platform specifically opposed a Jewish return to Palestine, stating: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore (do not) expect…a return to Palestine."
This disassociation from Jewish nationalism allowed the Reform movement to project itself as being American first and last. It took Judaism’s most popular denomination in the US 52 years to revise its policy to how it reads today in the Columbus Platform, where aiding the upbuilding in Palestine is an "obligation of all Jewry."
Slowly, the American Jewish community began organizing around the acceptance of the Brandeisian philosophy. In 1951, Isaiah "Si" Kenen founded AIPAC, a lobbyist organization that would not have existed under Roosevelt. Then known as the American Zionist Council for Public Affairs (AZPCA), the organization was small and lacked substantial influence. President Eisenhower even ordered Kenen and the rest of the AZPCA leadership to register as "agents of a foreign government."
The success of the civil rights movement, however, tilted the rest of the country in a more progressive direction. African-American enfranchisement ripened the American landscape, readying it to accept the lobbying for which AIPAC was established. Civil rights advances, coupled with what Jews saw as an inspiring Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War, allowed AIPAC to begin gaining the level of influence for which it is notorious today.
More so than the Adolf Eichmann Trial was for Israelis, the 1967 war was a turning point for Holocaust discourse in America; and the impact extended to the Jewish perception of loyalty to Israel as well. The 1967 war jogged the collective memory of American Jews with regards to the Holocaust. It provided a triumphant epilogue to the genocide of over 6,000,000, giving American Jews a context with which they could comfortably speak about the calamity.
Previously, the feeling had been that the fixation on a tragedy that befell co-religionists implied a strong connection to a narrative that was not American. The decisive victory of 1967 gave American Jews a newfound sense of pride, allowing them to overcome this anxiety and proactively support Israel as a matter of political philosophy.
Herzl and Roosevelt
There are a host of geopolitical differences between the US and Israel that have allowed for Roosevelt to still maintain relevance in Israel. Primarily, Israel is a much younger country that might require more time to evolve before substantial reform in majority-minority relations can be addressed.
While established with the goal of ensuring "complete equality…to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex," that ambition has yet to be fully realized. Palestinians citizens struggle to fully integrate into Israeli society with large discrepancies in funding allocated to their communities in areas such as infrastructure and education.
But youth is not the only factor holding Israel back from accepting the Brandeisian philosophy. Theodor Herzl founded the political Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century in response to what he saw as systematic, government-sanctioned anti-Semitism that was spreading across Europe.
He understood this anti-Semitism to be a response to the Jewish Emancipation of the 18th century, and believed that the fall of the Jewish ghetto walls created a void – a void that could be filled with the realization of a common Jewish ethno-nationalistic identity. This would require a state to save Jews from the oppression that was marginalizing them throughout Europe and beyond.
While the religious yearning of a return to Palestine had always existed for Jews, it was pre-modern in essence and did not collide with modernity until the Emancipation and the birth of the concept of nationalism where their common identity became much more than simply religious. Just 50 years after the first Herzl-led Zionist Conference, the State of Israel was established; an accomplishment that takes many nations sometimes hundreds of years to achieve. However, this accelerated process of nation-building ensued, forcing the Jewish pioneers (who happened to be Ashkenazi) to create a very clear sense of who belonged and who did not. This led to an intense other-ing of not just the Arab inhabitants of the land; but Jewish immigrants as well from Mizrahim, to most recently, Ethiopian Jews.
Zionism’s goal of a normalized Jewish homeland where Jews could be first-class citizens was fulfilled, warts and all. Jews became first class citizens. But those pioneers also created doormat second-class Jewish citizens in the process. This rough, Sabra attitude developed by Israelis in response to their threat-filled history made the adaptation and retention of Roosevelt’s suspicious interpretation of dual loyalty all the more natural.
What further complicates this seemingly ethnocentric expectation for Israelis to implement an American-style Brandeisian evolution, are the clear differences in nationalistic motivations that led to the establishment of the two democracies. While both countries consist of highly nationalistic peoples, Americans see their nationalism as driven by values and political ideas whereas "Israeli nationalism" (Zionism) is based on ethno-cultural dominance. An attack on the US is depicted as an affront to American values, while Israelis often portray its deligitimizers as having assaulted their very biological makeup.
Director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College, Minxin Pei, argues that Americans see their values as universal in nature, fueling their efforts to "promote democracy abroad." American nationalism can be characterized as forward-thinking, rather contrary to ethno-cultural nationalism which is more reflective and less forgiving.
Passover, the holiday commemorating slavery of the Israelites in Egypt, continues to be celebrated as a national holiday in the state of Israel. There is no all-encompassing Israeli nationality according to the Ministry of Interior that provides Israeli citizens with ID cards, which list each citizen’s nationality as being either Jewish, Arab, or Druze – effectively creating the Palestinian ethnic minority in an ethnic state. This all breeds an atmosphere where implementing loyalty reform would pose as a lofty task.
Neglecting to acknowledge that Jewish-Israeli suspicions stem largely from years of terrorism, committed even by Palestinian citizens of Israel would be disingenuous. But the perpetuation of those suspicions even after levels of violence have been reduced to a simmer does little to prevent the flames from rising once again.
This is a problem that even the Israeli government recognized needs addressing. Appointed in 2003, the Or Commission concluded that "Israel’s Arab citizens live in a reality in which they are discriminated against as Arabs." Israeli pioneers set a goal to extend equal rights to all in their Jewish state, so as the condition of Palestinian citizens of Israel deteriorates, it is imperative that the fulfillment of this goal once again be made a priority.
While many of these same Palestinians might prefer their current minority status as opposed to some rather unattractive alternatives in the Middle East, this neglected sector of Israeli society is growing increasingly frustrated with a government that continues to perceive its very identity as an inherent threat.
The other inhabitants of the land
But little is done to discredit that perception when politicians such as Hanin Zoabi speak on the Palestinians' behalf. A fiery member of the Knesset’s Balad party (now part of the Joint Arab List), Zoabi has done her share to irk the Israeli public with comments like the ones she made this past June, arguing that the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli students in the occupied West Bank was not an act of terrorism. Those remarks earned her a six-month suspension from the Knesset.
Zoabi has used her free speech not to lobby the Israeli government on behalf of the Palestinian people, but solely to attack the Jewish state. This may have won her many appearances in the tabloids, but the stagnating condition of Palestinian citizens in Israel suggests that the strategy is not working. "Sometimes we have the feeling that an Arab MK or representative goes up to the podium, shouts, goes down and nothing happens."
This growing frustration was described by Mika’il al-Hawashla, a member of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages in the Israeli Negev. Palestinian citizens of Israel have made clear their preference for Arab representatives to focus more on domestic issues rather than the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ayman Uda, the leader of the newly formed "joint list" of Arab parties, seems to have heard the call of his constituents, having campaigned aggressively in the recent Israeli elections, promising to address the concerns of his voters. The strategy paid off, earning the Joint List a respectable 13 seats in the 20th Knesset. Speaking and working as one, this bloc can better represent a fractured minority that has long been neglected on the Knesset floor.
This union can rebrand what it means to be pro-Palestinian for both their own constituents and Jewish citizens of Israel as well; that the betterment of Israel’s Palestinian citizens is in fact an Israeli interest, that being pro-Palestinian is, in fact, pro-Israel as well. Granted, this redefinition will be difficult to stomach if the blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank carry on.
However, Palestinians need their own Louis Brandeis – a native who has the ear of all sectors of Israeli society. One who can frame the Palestinian narrative in a manner that does not threaten Israelis to recoil in denial of its existence, but who is also sincere enough to be effective. Such a leader may, in fact, currently reside in the United States.
Disillusioned by the stagnation corroding Palestinian sectors of society in contrast to the highly regarded Jewish ones, Sayed Kashua has vowed to leave Israel "and never come back." He recently completed his first sabbatical year, teaching at universities in Illinois in addition to a speaking tour across the United States. Prior to his abrupt departure, Kashua had risen to Israeli fame, with award winning novels that brought to light what it was like being a misfit in one’s own home. His award winning sitcom, "Arab Labor," had remarkably become a favorite in Israeli households, mocking the existence of substantial cultural divides that exist between Jews and Arabs in Israeli society.
Whether his work has ushered in an era of coexistence is difficult to prove, but Kashua’s success has gained him a degree of respect that few Arab citizens of Israel have been able to obtain. He may not don the personality of one remotely interested in taking on such a leadership role, but his accomplishments mitigate his weariness. Kashua has yet to make a decision on whether or he will be returning to Israel with his family, but doing so would send a powerful message that it is not time for Israel’s Arab population to pack their bags.
The work left to do on this issue seems ever-daunting following a now-infamous election-day panic video by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pleading his constituency to head to the polls because Arab citizens were "coming out in droves." A rather strong argument could be made that Bibi’s fear-mongering tactic struck a chord with voters as they ushered him into a fourth term with a landslide victory that no one predicted. The election disturbingly highlighted just how wide the gap between the two largest sectors of Israeli society has become.
Connecting back to the conflict
But perhaps Israelis need their own civil rights movement that shatters the standardized Israeli identity of the hegemonic culture in order to make headway on the Palestinian issue.
The recent protests by Israel’s Ethiopian citizens, sparking international headlines, suggest that such a movement may have finally arrived. While Ethiopian Israelis are not suspected of having compromising loyalties to their native home, their intentions for immigrating have been questioned. To those suspicions, Ethiopian immigrant Dana Sibaho responds: "They didn’t bring us here. We came because of Zionism, not like others who came for economic benefits."
The demonstrations began after the April 26 beating of an Ethiopian IDF soldier by Israeli Police, but they are in response to much more than just police brutality. Israel’s inability to fully integrate this minority has let to discrimination plaguing all facets of society for Ethiopians, including the education and economic systems. President Rivlin admitted that the protests have "revealed an open and raw wound at the heart of Israeli society."
To be clear, the current state of Ethiopian Israelis far surpasses the conditions faced by America’s blacks in the 1950s and 60s. But Israel’s ability to confront this issue may be indicative of whether or not the country will be able to mend relations with its Palestinian minority as well.
Eradicating loyalty suspicions when two parties are in conflict requires the leadership of giants. Absent a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish Israelis are unlikely to reverse a growing trend in their sector that considers Palestinians citizens to be a fifth column.
In many ways, Brandeis had his work cut out for him despite the deplorable status of minorities in the United States at the time. It is therefore up to all sectors of Israeli society to decide when they are ready to seriously commit to the lofty task of showing Teddy Roosevelt the door.
Jacob Magid is an undergraduate at the University Maryland majoring in Arabic studies and Political Science. He has served as a research assistant at the American Task Force on Palestine and the Shalom Hartman Institute. Follow him on Twitter @JacobMagid.
