Kissinger is alive in the American Jewish world

Kissinger is alive. America's proxy war in Gaza, being fought by its IDF allies, has as its rationale the presumably only tragic idea that wars must be fought, theoretically against the ideological enemies that are factions in government in various other countries, as relatively powerful nation-states vie with others for control of resources and territories. In this 'Realpolitiks' logic, the loser are people, often, for this is quite the normal case in this framework, whole populations. They can be forced into displacement, or murdered in order, theoretically, to defeat the enemy government or the political faction ruling it. So Israel claims that it is fighting Hamas, and of course, that makes about 2 million people potential collateral damage. In other words, they are in the way. Though that actually is not an unfortunate consequence but was Israel's problem, and objective, from the outset.

The Gaza war follows the same logic as the Vietnam and Iraq wars. A system makes it possible, a way of thinking dictates it. Israel is not America's problem so much as America is that of the Jewish people, today.

The privilege of the former victim (and the potential victim all human persons are, especially in today's political and economic world) is not the ability to become strong enough to no longer risk becoming a victim. It is, thus, not to be willing to be an executioner. The victim who has made himself strong by becoming an executioner, or demonstrating that he is willing if necessary to be, remains a victim and morally a child. His courage is a mask for his cowardice, as his rage to win is driven by the desperate fear of loss. Banding together in a fighting brotherhood does not lessen this at all, though it seems to; such is the false courage and pride that is like living on the amphetamines that were popular with leading men in the German national-identity and health-purifying conquering military state. That the Jew is fundamentally a warrior for his or her uniquely special nation is a gross distortion.

The victim's privilege is his heightened capacity for humanity and justice. This was also the theoretical uniqueness of the Jewish people, set apart only by what is most demandingly universal, and given continuity and spiritual force by exile. Anyone can kill or be killed, and in the most horrible ways. That such a fate is not a destiny is among the greatest historical and political ideas. Israel has made the Jewish people largely captive of the idea that they may have to be executioners. The military "imperialism" of what is still the world's most dominant "capitalist" state is the principle cause of this. Maybe America should not abandon its fifty-first state as much as it should truly secede and move towards American and French universalistic forms of republican government instead of continuing the model acquired from the German and British reaction to the revolution that inspired so many.

I do not recognize as Jewish the idea of men and women who have withdrawn to the castle protecting their armed settlement and are determined to defend it to the death. Sure, the Psalms and even more the book of Joshua can be misread in this way, but it isn't Jewish, because it denies that Jewish particularity was only ever a way of being committed to universal values. That's why the Jews, and the Christians and Muslims after them, believed in one God.

The dominant conservative idea of a Jewish life ethically is to be like the American Puritan's "city on a hill": an exemplary community that will inspire others to emulate them, because of the moral rigor of their individual and collective lives. The dominant radical idea of a Jewish life is a commitment to changing the world we live in, to improving it, continuing the incomplete work of creation in which people are called to participate. The dominant American idea of Judaism and the Jewish people today is to take for granted all and any such notions, but to insist politically only on the defense of the particularity, and the liberty to cultivate and embody it, that they share as a 'community'. The ideas of community, and those of liberty, involved, are too little examined. (Then again, rabbis are not philosophers, either of the political or any other kind, which is perhaps unfortunate). We do not live in conservative times, in fact: even our right-wing is now quite anxiously polemical; it would be 'radical' in its way.

Israel's latest war should be a shofar sound calling American Jews to question Judaism's strong commitment in recent decades to communitarian identity politics or nationalism. This could have salutary repercussions elsewhere for American politics, help in the continuing revitalization in recent years of the American left, and lead to widespread invention of new ideas and changes in the religious region of the political landscape. For religion has always been political, especially for Jews, and especially for Americans. We need a different path.

Our cowardly government showed zero leadership in this crisis, except cosmetically. Most of America's Jewish leaders have been equally not just irrelevant, sadly, but complicit.