Two Words, One Answer.
Nationstates
 Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights (Israeli History, Politics and Society) $140.00 I ordered this book from Amazon after reading a timely review in the 23 Oct 2008 issue of "The Economist": "Jewish and Democratic - Two Israeli Academics offer a robust and timely defense of the Zionist Idea". I have not been disappointed. Ever since first learning about the Nazi Holocaust as a child in school, I have sympathized with the Jewish plight. However, for quite a long time--essentially from the 1980s onwards--I have also asked the question, "If it was Germans who murdered six million Jews, why should Arabs pay the penalty for the sins of European Christians?" Even after I have begun to read this book, this is still a difficult question to answer; however, it is no longer as difficult an answer for me to reach as it has been in the past. This is not a question which Yakobson and Rubinstein directly answer; but since their arguments help me to answer the question, this will be the context in which I review their work. To state that perhaps a Jewish state should have been established in a portion of Germany after World War Two, ignores several facts. First, as of 1947, the British Mandate of Palestine--distinct from Transjordan, a separate entity after the end of the First World War--was already one-third Jewish. Second, over 95% of the Jews who were still "Displaced Persons" in Europe--primarily in camps in Germany, did not want to remain in Germany or in Europe. They wanted to emigrate to Palestine. Finally, this argument seems to suggest that were it not for the Nazi Shoah, there would have been no need for the State of Israel. However, this denies the national aspirations of the Jewish people. Yakobson and Rubinstein squarely address the national aspirations of the Jewish people. They point out that the origins of this nationalism were very similar to those of other nationalist movements in the nineteenth century. The only difference from French, German, or Italian nationalism was that the Jews were not already resident in a state of their own. However, in this sense, their nationalism shared some similarities with Greek or Armenian nationalism, which also had worldwide diasporas. In the nineteenth century, Greece was ruled by the Turks, and the Armenians were ruled by the Turks and the Russians. As for territory, perhaps one could have suggested that Poland with nearly 3 million Jews was the logical choice for the Jewish nation-state. Yet that would have denied the aspirations of the Polish people whose territory had already been divided between Germany, Russia, and Austria. Furthermore, Jews around the world were not merely the followers of a religion. They maintained genuine literary, cultural, and other traditions beyond the worship of God which were all elements of a distinct national identity. And on top of all this, let us not forget that wherever they were, particularly in the Christian world, they were persecuted for their alleged crucifixion of Christ, even though Jesus died at the hands of Palestine's Roman rulers for the political threat he posed. In the same chapter where the authors address the question of a national identity, they also clearly refute the argument that Zionism was colonialism. Zionists were largely refugees, not colonizers. They settled in Palestine to escape persecution in their home countries. They were not sponsored by any particular imperial power; instead they came from a number of countries. And even after the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine at the end of World War One, Britain's imperial interests often led the British to favor Palestine's Arab inhabitants. It is worth noting here that the opening chapter of the text deals with the debates in the United Nations leading up to the Partition Plan. The Arabs did not favor a binational state. They only wanted an Arab state in Palestine, with Jews as a protected minority. This would have deprived Jews of a state in which to realize their national identity. The Arabs rejected partition. But they also rejected a federal state comprised of Arab and Jewish sub-entities. This latter position probably resulted in the necessary votes in the UN General Assembly for a two-thirds majority to favor partition, since many nations that would otherwise have been queasy about partition saw no other choice, given Arab opposition both to partition or to a state with autonomous sub-regions. The second half of the book, which I admittedly have not yet read, deals with questions surrounding whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic. The answer is, "Of course it can." Facts on the ground may fall short of this ideal, due to human nature; but there are numerous other democratic nations, particularly in Europe but also elsewhere in the world, where the dominant identity is that of one cultural group, yet where minorities also enjoy full equality under the law. Many of these nations also have specialized provisions for citizenship for immigrants of the dominant national group, much as Israel has a Law of Return for Jewish immigrants to Israel from anywhere in the world. "Israel and the Family of Nations" is a serious work authored by two pre-eminent Israeli scholars which provides powerful arguments for Israel's right to exist as a nation that is both Jewish and democratic. This text is must reading for those who criticize Israel on intellectual grounds, and for defenders of Israel who wish to be able to successfully rebut such criticisms.  Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state $14.95 Davidson's starting point is that colonialism caused a profoundly negative impact on African societies, and this impact is evident in the dysfunctional African states of the modern era, wherein governments struggle for legitimacy while civil unrest and low living standards are commonplace. Overall, the writing style is very agreeable, the volume is a little more than it needs to be to impart his message, and the conclusion is poorly supported by the main body. Davidson's ambition is to describe an elegant model wherein the colonial importation of the nation-state model for political organization so distorted African societies that they became structurally locked into a path towards failed statehood. The explanation is that the colonials uprooted traditional institutions that had governed societal behavior. European bureaucracy took their place and created a situation whereby Africans competed with each other for government jobs and the attendant elevated social status and revenue stream. A gap between urban elites and rural peasants developed. Independence only exacerbated the divide and the environment of opportunism. African nations were thus predatory states, as elites jousted for political power while ignoring, at best, or exploiting the rural majority. The response to the lack of state security was creation of "kinship corporations" that became patron/client networks. Western excuses often (incorrectly) blame this and the associated corruption on primitive practices of "tribalism." Ultimately Davidson is unsuccessful in his broad explanatory goal; the various regions of Africa had sufficiently different colonial experiences to resist a unifying explanation for modern Africa's malaise. His argument focuses on West Africa but largely sidesteps northern and southern regions. He spends a good deal of effort trying to show (eastern) European parallels to African difficulties in making the nation-state work. On one hand he decries the nation-state as alien to Africa and untenable, yet he acknowledges the existence of African states before colonialism and external factors after independence that would be difficult for ANY developing people to deal with, nation-state or not. The conclusion section comes across as dated and rather illogical. It seems to be tinged with the post-Cold War spirit of democracy ascendant, most famously expounded by Fukiyama's "End of History." The solution to the alien imposition of nation-state is an equally alien commodity: Western democracy (with an emphasis on federation, as in Germany). Never mind that Western democracies are ensconced as nation-states to begin with. However, Davidson's attempt is worthy in that it provides the serious reader on Africa many quite valuable insights about the colonial-African experience, including the slave trade from West Africa, the trajectory of early African intellectuals, lasting European efforts at neo-colonialism, tribalism as a manufactured tool of Western "divide and rule" strategy, and a close look at the die hard end of colonialism with the Portuguese. He deserves particular credit for at least mentioning intertwined ecological problems ahead of the greater Homer-Dixon wave. A final caution: Davidson was an elder statesman of African studies by the time he published this book in 1992. He provides little in the way of academic references in the text; basically he tells the reader that he's studied Africa for 40-plus years, and take his word for it. Perhaps this is suited to a former British military officer who served during WWII and has "been there and done that."  Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging $19.95 This is not a good book. No contextual background is given for Butler and Spivak's theoretical dialogue on statelessness, and the dialogue itself is at turns pedantic (see Butler's punning on the word "state") and banal (see both critics' comments on the EU). The dialogue's alternating obfuscation and dullness may be accounted for by the fact that it appears to be a staged "conversation" between Butler and Spivak at a conference or symposium. Even on those terms, however, the book is a bit of a waste -- the pomp of the dialogue's tone is simply not matched by the critical points made in it. If you're looking for a much more engaged theoretical work on these issues, see Etienne Balibar's *We, the People of Europe?* |
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