Looking down the wrong end of the telescope
JVL Introduction
Both Tony Greenstein and David Miller have, in their very different styles, been comrades in arms in their stringent critiques of Israel and Zionism. That makes Tony’s pungent dissection of Miller’s recent series of tweets something to take note of. When Tony says that “I don’t believe that you are consciously anti-Semitic” it is obvious there is a “but….” coming.
When David Miller was outrageously sacked from his post at the University of Bristol JVL found this to “open up a grim prospect for British academia”. We supported him in his fight to contest Bristol’s action, and congratulated him on his success at the Employment Tribunal. But we have for some time been troubled by the increasing tendency of his statements to focus not on Israel, Zionism and settler colonialism but on Jews, their characteristics and their power.
JVL will return to a fuller analysis of what we see as David Miller’s dangerous and distorted simplifications. For now Tony Greenstein’s article sketches out the issues.
JR
This article was originally published by Tony Greenstein's X account on Mon 21 Oct 2024. Read the original here.
Reply to David Miller
Loading article text…
“Israel exists as the West’s unruly watchdog in the Middle East”
Nail on head, and lets not forget thats a role some of the Gulf states, Jordan and Egypt play as well.
Tony knows more about Zionism than practically anyone else, including I suspect, most Zionists. However it is reasonable to assume that Zionists such as Starmer, as head of our government, along with other LP Zionists, skews some decisions in favour of Israel, even if those decisions do not favour Britain. In that respect it can be argued that Israel controls our government, and if the quote linked to Ariel Sharon can be believed, then Zionists also believe that they control the USA. Or, are the USA and UK just going along with Israel for their own perceived benefit?
It’s highly probable that because most of those who now call themselves Zionists know little about the history of Zionism, they express their support as in ‘Israel right or wrong’. If these people manage to get themselves into positions of power, often with the help of Israel, it’s easy to see how David Miller can view that as Israel having control.
I think this is an argument at cross-purposes – there is room for analysis of imperialism and Zionism. Both exist, and we should be able to weigh up the evidence for Miller’s focus on Zionism – he tends to make an empirical account in any case as do others especially in the US.
My view is there symbiosis between imperialism and Zionism and the latter has become more overtly apparent as Israel has made its expansionist strategy plain.
David Miller says “the war in the Levant has no borders, because Zionism has no borders”. No. The war and much of the non-war political action in “the Levant” has no borders because a) imperialist and other Great Power interests have no borders and b) because more links the territories over which these borderlines are traced than divides them.
I agree that much of this particular conspiratorial call to arms by Miller is bonkers and alarming, but he is bang-on when he mentions the teaching of ‘British values’ . This paragraph, like much else he’s written (don’t let’s forget) is absolutely right . The sad futility of well-funded NGOs, that have been appealing to such values for decades, is patent.
David Miller is right when he says the imposition of ‘British values’ is to curb political dissent, especially among Muslims, but he is wrong to then say that ‘That’s the price of existence the State of Israel seeks to extract from Muslims globally, from the Gulf to Europe.’
Are we to understand that the wave of attacks on Muslims in the wake of 9/11 wouldn’t have happened but for the Israeli state? That capitalism in Britain and the US would have been perfectly nice and fair to Muslims but for Israel? That Israel is therefore the responsible agent for European racism and the growth of fascism?
And what are we to make of the suggestion that ‘the soldiers of Zion have penetrated the security establishment of your state to make its policy; penetrated the media to make you a public enemy; and penetrated political parties to create extremist footsoldiers’. In other words capitalism in the West would be lovely but for Israel.
David abandons any class analysis or indeed any analysis of imperialism. Instead of analysing the relationship between Israel and the West, he instead reverses the relationship. Israel controls British and US foreign policy. How has it managed to do this? One can only guess but we have to winkle out any Zionists we find in the Foreign Office.
This is David’s idea of anti-Zionism. By his own admission he doesn’t know what it means to be pro-Palestinian. This is sheer utter lunacy. It absolves imperialism of any responsibility. Indeed David doesn’t seem to recognise such a term.
Of course Israeli politicians rubbed their hands at the ‘war on terror’ but racism in the US and Europe was very much home grown.