"During that time [in the Communist Party], I fell hopelessly in love with Jews. No, not with Judaism. With Jews. It was a consequence of realising that a remarkable number of people I most liked and admired were secular Jews. And I met a great many in the Communist Party... By now I was writing for The Bulletin... And I began to realise that without the Jews the Victorian Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Theatre Company would have found it hard to survive. For the Jews were central to Melbourne's culture - to its music, its literature, its theatre. The tiny community of Jews made a disproportionate contribution to the arts, literature, science, philanthropy and the nascent civil rights movement everywhere I looked. At the age of 16 I found myself wishing I'd been born Jewish." ('I am proud that', Phillip Adams, October 1998, jmm.aaa.net.au)
What follows is an extract from Phillip Adams' 25 minute interview with Saree Makdisi, nephew of the late Edward Said, professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008), on Adam's "little wireless program" Late Night Live on 16/9/09. Adams just doesn't seem to get it:
Makdisi: My understanding is that, for there to be genuine reconciliation between the 2 peoples, there must be one state where all its citizens are treated as equals. What that means for Palestinians is that they would not have an independent Palestinian state, which is what they've been struggling for for the past 60 years. What it means for Jewish Israelis is that there would be no more Jewish state as such...
Adams (alarmed, interrupting): But they would see this as demographic suicide, would they not, given the population patterns?
Makdisi: But the point is that one people achieving what it wants at the expense of another is unworkable. Reconciliation has to happen when both peoples realise that they're both there to stay and that they have to find a way to live and find self-expression, and even self-determination, with an understanding that they have to do so equally and with each other rather than against each other.
Adams (surprised, as though hearing the one state idea for the first time - despite Ali Abu Nimah's conversation with him last year): A singular... single secular state with Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side with what? equal rights?
Makdisi (incredulous): Yes, which is not that (laughing) difficult to imagine. Most countries in the world do work like that. That's what the basis of the modern liberal state is...
Adams (interrupting): Saree, let me ask you a question. Could it be called Israel?
Makdisi: Israel has constituted itself legally and officially as a Jewish state. That's why, legally speaking, there's no such thing as an Israeli nationality, it's only Jewish nationality [indistinct] So can that state become truly democratic? I don't think so. It understands itself, defines itself, not just juridically and institutionally as a Jewish state - even at the expense of its own Palestinian citizens. I think the path to peace and reconciliation is one where such exclusivist claims have to be abandoned and equality has to be embraced.
Adams: How long would it take before the Jewish Israelis were a minority in Israel?
Makdisi: I don't know. I don't even know that that question really matters. The whole question of minorities...
Adams (interrupting, testy - for the avuncular Adams): It sure as hell matters to them.
Makdisi: It may, but does it really matter in terms of the way a state is constituted? Should a state be constituted to guarantee minority rights at the expense of the majority? I don't think so. I believe in a state where everybody's equal. That's certainly the state I grew up in in the US. It's the model that the American constitution enshrines. That's the kind of polity I personally believe in.
Adams (divert! divert!): Can we look at another state in the time we have together, which needs a solution, and that's California?
Unbelievably, the remaining 5 minutes of the interview was devoted to the troubles of California and Obama. Saree Makdisi deserves a medal for his patience and forbearance.
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3 comments:
interesting about the 1998 article. good digging, merc. now adams makes more sense to me. let's alter his words just a little to make them sickeningly crystal-clear:
"During that time [in the Communist Party], I fell hopelessly in love with the Boers. No, not with Dutch Calvinism. With Boers. It was a consequence of realising that a remarkable number of people I most liked and admired were secular Boers. And I met a great many in the Communist Party... By now I was writing for The Bulletin... And I began to realise that without the Boers the South African Symphony Orchestra and the Johannesburg Theatre Company would have found it hard to survive. For the Boers were central to Johannesburg's culture - to its music, its literature, its theatre. The tiny community of Boers made a disproportionate contribution to the arts, literature, science, and philanthropy. At the age of 16 I found myself wishing I'd been born a Boer."
if one doesn't like that, one can substitute in "White English" or whatever racio-ethnic group one likes and his words are immediately decoded: it's 'positive' racism.
some people on the old left - despite their formal ideology of anti-racism - were able to be utter, open racists. adams was on the tail end of this phenomenon - the rise of the new left and the dying of the old. the former frowned on the latter's backward moral conservatism. adams had obviously been weened on the natural acceptability of racism, but had learned that it was not something that one could openly spout anymore. thus, it was driven underground - into the subconscious.
it also helps to expain his embarrassing mothering, hand-wringing paternalism about aboriginal australians and the east timorese. seen aright, it is the 'complimentary racism' of the well-intentioned colonialist: we successful, sophisticated, powerful whites must - just must - give these poor, backward, pathetic, impotent dark people the rights WE think they should have.
Spot on. Unfortunately, we're no longer able to access his earlier 2008 interview with Ali Abu-Nimah, but I seem to remember Adams raising the same racist objection of Jewish 'demographic suicide' re Abu-Nimah's advocacy of the one state solution back then. This is quite a blind spot for someone who'd have no truck with it if it were raised in this country by, say, Pauline Hanson in relation to Asian immigration.
yes, re the abu-nimah interview. when adams pointed out that a one state solution would be unacceptable to jewish israeli's because they would then be a minority, and that therefore there was a legitimate concern about there being 'too many' palestinians, abu-nimah shot back with: what if people were to say there is a problem of there being too many jews in australia? what we call it? adams then quickly backtracked. the point is not that he backtracked on this ocassion. the point is that UNLESS he is challenged with the obvious analogy, he DOESN'T backtrack.
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