it's all fantasy to me

I said this in the comments to my previous post, but it's worth pulling out and repeating: this is all hard for me to discuss because none of it-- loyalty to nation state, loyalty to religion, loyalty to ethnicity-- makes any sense to me, for Israelis or Americans or Iranians or anyone else. I am an internationalist and an egalitarian, and I reject artificial divisions between broad groups of people. Because of the unique history of Judaism and Israel, these issues come up more often, but that doesn't mean the contradictions aren't there for America or any other country. I happen to think that what we butt up against in these discussions is an inevitable tension between the liberal ideal of equality across difference and the dividing lines of national identity.

The issue of divided loyalties rests on assumptions I simply don't hold. As near as I can figure out, the complaint about divide loyalties stems from the assumption that loyalty to one's home country and country of citizenship must always and necessarily be the first and most important loyalty. Suggestions that any individual has loyalties that trump those to the nation state are, in this reading, insulting to that person, and in the case of superior fidelity to Israel, anti-Semitic. Even within the context of nationalism, this does not make sense to me. I don't understand why it is impossible that someone could feel greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States, or why this greater loyalty to Israel would be so horrible. This, after all, is what Ackerman was saying. My commenters yesterday fixated on the term "Israel firster," insisting that the point was whether the term has a bigoted history. But that is not at all what Ackerman said. His entire piece insists that any consideration of a conflict between loyalty to America and loyalty to Israel is prima facie anti-Semitic. It has been pointed out that some people have said quite straightforwardly that loyalty to Israel trumps loyalty to the United States. This observation has been met with total silence.

Set that all aside for now. What use is any of this if we don't assume that loyalty to one's home nation state trumps all? I am an internationalist. I recognize no loyalty to the United States beyond that of personal self-interest. I am legally prohibited from undertaking actions that oppose the security interests of my country, forcing me into a loyalty that I never chose (and thanks for that, nation state). More immediately, there are innumerable advantages to being an American, and I'm thankful for them. But loyalty, against principle or family or friends? I have none at all. I categorically reject any notion that I am duty bound to my country. The nation state is a fantasy, and an explicit one. The founders of the modern nation-state were perfectly frank: they devised it to make militarism and imperialism easier. I find the mythology of patriotism just as disqualifying as the mythology of religion.

Abandon the pretense that loyalty to America is an assumed good, and the whole case against dual loyalties falls to pieces. Nationality, religion, and ethnicity are all constructs, and ones totally incompatible with an egalitarian, liberal political ethic. That the world has not caught up to this fact is irrelevant to me. My distaste for national identity is equivalent whether we are talking about the United States or Iran or Israel or whomever. But in the case of Israel, the embrace of nationalism, and my democratic polity's considerable investment in same, is leading us toward regional war. (In contrast, my democratic polity is investing considerable sums in undermining the nationalist desires of Iran.) For that reason my duty to speak is clear. I can't be accused of "alleging" dual loyalty because I find the assumed loyalty to America unsupportable to begin with.

Perhaps, in the tangled, anachronistic competition between dueling loyalties to country and religion and ethnicity and principle, there are those conventional liberals who express anti-Semitic accusations of dual loyalties at Jewish writers. If so, that's a problem, a very big and very unfortunate problem. But it is most certainly not my problem.

The discussion of the term "Israel firster" has gone almost completely off the rails. Most discouragingly for me, it does not appear to be tied to any coherent attempt to demonstrate that the people accused of using it are actually animated by anti-Jewish hatred. I've never used the term myself. If the etymology of the term is indeed linked to a bigoted past, I think that's a good reason we should all avoid it. Surely the profound issues that confront us are how to speak fairly and constructively about Israel, whether critics of Israel's policies are in fact anti-Semitic, and whether they are motivated to speak by anti-Jewish animus. Glenn Greenwald has been writing online about foreign policy and social justice for half a decade. Has he been motivated by anti-Semitism the whole time? Isn't the purpose of our inquiry here to determine whether Israel's critics are in fact guilty of anti-Semitism? I ask and have asked none of my questions rhetorically. The silence towards simple questions asking for simple answers to simple inconsistencies and contradictions says everything.

How are we to righteously discuss Israel, when Israel's defenders constantly invoke Israel's status as a Jewish state? In that same (execrable) story from yesterday's Times magazine, Ehud Barak insisted that his responsibility included "in a very direct and concrete way... the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people." As long as Israel's defenders speak this way, Judaism and the Jewish race will be present in the conversation. Are we not adults? Is it really not possible to discuss these issues with enough nuance and care that we avoid saying bigoted things?  Yes, of course, absolutely: anyone who evinces suspicion or antagonism or criticism towards Israel because it is a home to Jews is an anti-Semite, and such people should be treated accordingly. But plenty of people are not doing that and yet are dismissed as bigots regardless. When Norman Podhoretz says straightforwardly that "the role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and general press is to defend Israel," he makes Ackerman's rules nonsensical and impossible.

One day, there will be no nation state. No America, no UK, no China, no Iran, no Israel. Until that time comes, liberals who delude themselves into thinking that they can maintain their ties to exclusive categories like nationality while embracing egalitarianism will struggle with these discussions. Israel simply throws them into sharper, more immediate relief. When an American liberal flails about, trying to define why he should care more about someone born five miles north of the Mexican border than someone born five miles south of it, he is running into the same elementary contradictions that this discussion reveals. The truth is that only with the abandonment of useless, agitating inventions like country or religion or race or people will we find true enlightenment and true justice.