as real genocide proper could not be more strongly associated with it, to call Israel's policies "genocidal" has unique rhetorical force. There is, I admit, a certain conscious historical irony in calling Israel's crimes by the word that was coined to describe the Shoah. But this is - in my view - neither accidental nor malicious. If there is a 'rhetorical force' to calling Israel genocidal, it is simply a product of what the Jewish state has become. A nation that is founded on a mythology of genocide cannot be anything other than genocidal. A state that chooses a narrative of redemptive violence as an escape out of a history of violence will inevitably turn eradicative violence on its enemies. Maybe Israel didn't have to be this way - maybe it could have chosen a different foundational story. Zionism, after all, is much older than Hitler, and the dream of a God-given land (Jewish or otherwise) is not by any means inescapably murderous. But a nation consciously born of horror and terror will have no moral resources available to it other than horror and terror. A national community that sees itself as a child of genocide will inevitably give birth to genocide. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. |