Saturday, October 30, 2010

Rotten Greens

The original post on the Greens Engage site announcing the adoption of the European Union Monitoring Committee on Racism and Xenophobia/Fundamental Rights Agency Working Definition of Antisemitism appears below the two updates here:

Update 1: Update – we have just been notified that the copy of the statement we have is subject to some minor corrections and other amendments. We will post these once they are completed.

Update 2: Update – we have just been notified that the copy of the statement we have is subject to some minor corrections and other amendments.

We have been asked to take it down pending these, and a consensus has emerged that we should do that. We will post the guidelines once they are completed.

The guidelines reproduced the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)’sWORKING DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM, which you can read yourselves meanwhile.

[So Greens Engage website have now removed the main body of the post that appears below. They don't say who has asked them to remove the post]

GPRC statement on the use of antisemitic language

with 2 comments

The Green Party is an anti-racist party. At our Autumn 2008 conference, the Green Party passed policy to oppose antisemitism. Policy has continued to improve since. This week, the Green Party Regional Committee (GPRC) approved a Statement on the Usage of Antisemitic Language. The guidelines do not forestall robust criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli government, but do serve to draw lines beyond which this ceases to be criticism. We feel that these guidelines are sufficiently sensitive and specific to serve the Green Party well.

We reproduce the statement below.

GPRC statement on the use of antisemitic language

16th October 2010

The Green Party places equality and lack of discrimination at the heart of all its policies. Within the Green Party everyone should engage in discourse with others in a language of mutual respect.

Following an investigation of antisemitism by GPRC in early 2009 it was agreed that a working party should prepare guidance on the use of antisemitic language. The specific recommendation from the report of 13th March 2009 is set out below.

2. A working party should be set up to establish guidelines on appropriate and inappropriate language for use in online and other discussions, so that unintentional racism and antisemitism is avoided.

Following some difficulties in the working group at its meeting in June 2010 GPRC asked two members to look at existing guidelines with a view to producing guidelines for the next GPRC meeting. These guidelines are intended to inform the party for the future.

It must be realised that even top academics disagree about what constitutes antisemitic language and it is clear that the issues have become more complicated and nuanced, in particular in relation to criticisms of Israel’s actions and the so-called ‘new antisemitism’.

The Green Party uses the precautionary principle in general to respect people and the planet. In applying the precautionary principle the definition of racism most applicable is that of the MacPherson report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

It is not acceptable for an individual to say ‘I am not a racist’ if his or her words or acts are perceived to be racist.

However in the area of antisemitism one of the most difficult and contentious areas is the dividing line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel and whether accusations of antisemitism are used to stifle criticism. Any guidelines must enable robust criticism of Israel, in the same way as if it were applied to any other country. More careful use of language has the potential to produce a much better quality of debate on the genuine issues of concern.

Considerable research has demonstrated there is no perfect definition. A suitable definition should be able to be applied to any country or cultural group. This holds true of the EUMC definition. Like all definitions it has its limitations however it is a practical document which if used throughout Green Party discussion will enable good quality debate without giving rise to unnecessary offense. We recognise that it may need to be revised in light of the recent Citizen Act/Nationality Act in Israel. The Green Party holds itself to the highest standards of fairness and must do everything it can to avoid offensive and discriminatory language.

European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)

WORKING DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM

The purpose of this document is to provide a practical guide for identifying incidents, collecting data, and supporting the implementation and enforcement of legislation dealing with antisemitism.

Working definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.

Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:

  • Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
  • Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
  • Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
  • Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
  • Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

  • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  • Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.


2 Responses

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  2. Bialik commenting at Engage links to an interesting article related to this sentence of the above statement:
    “We recognise that it may need to be revised in light of the recent Citizen Act/Nationality Act in Israel.”

    http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2010/10/if-it-was-reported-it-must-be-true-or.html

    Raphael

    October 26, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    Reply

The original Engage post

Green Party adopts careful policy on antisemitism

October 25, 2010 — David Hirsh

See their new thinking on Greens Engage.

Posted in antisemitism. 16 Comments »

16 Responses to “Green Party adopts careful policy on antisemitism”

  1. Brian Goldfarb Says:
    October 25, 2010 at 8:42 pm

    Better, but I do notice that it leaves out the bit of the EUMC report and definition which states that the person who gets to decide (or at least is entitled to make a reasoned complaint about) whether antisemitism has occurred is the potential victim, and that it is not up to the alleged perpertrator to deny that this has happened. That is up to a disinterested third party.

    Ditto racism.

    I wonder why not? Does omitting that let certain highly placed Green Party individuals off the hook? Or am I just being my usual paranoid self?

    Reply
    • Chris Fox Says:
      October 25, 2010 at 11:03 pm

      As far as I can tell, the EUMC draft definition included in the GPRC report is an accurate reflection of the version published on the web, which does not appear to mention the issue of who gets to decide, or the onus of proof.

      I think the adoption of this definition is a very positive step. Of course, having a policy is only part of the story; there also needs to be a commitment to implement it effectively, and consistently, without prejudice.

      Reply
  2. Absolute Observer Says:
    October 25, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    Mira and Raphael,
    What are your views on this?
    More generally, Lucas’ notorious comment that you cannot criticise Israel without being labelled antisemitic? Would it fall under this policy? And, if so, should not the “leader” of the party be setting an example for what is acceptable, rather than what may now be deemed unacceptable?

    Reply
  3. Raphael Says:
    October 25, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    I don’t know what is the rational for this omission as I was not in the meeting which endorsed this. But this has to be recognized as a major move in the right direction by the Green Party.

    And the issue of unintentional racism is addressed upfront before the EUMC definition:

    “The Green Party uses the precautionary principle in general to respect people and the planet. In applying the precautionary principle the definition of racism most applicable is that of the MacPherson report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

    It is not acceptable for an individual to say ‘I am not a racist’ if his or her words or acts are perceived to be racist.”

    Reply
    • Mira Vogel Says:
      October 26, 2010 at 11:52 am

      Like Chris and Raphael I think this is very positive. I have since been informed that the circulated statement is not finalised, and there are some small corrections and other amendments. We are now waiting for a final version, as well as an indication of its status, how it will be disseminated at grass roots level, and how it can be implemented.

      I think the language of the EUMC statement is highly qualified and does not shut down debate. It does imply careful, responsible, substantiated arguments that do not reveal particular animosity. This is only good politics.

      Reply
  4. Inna Says:
    October 26, 2010 at 4:06 am

    It’s definitely a move in the right direction but we will see what happens when (as we say here) the rubber hits the road. And that will happen when (not if; when) a Green Party member (possibly elected) uses anti-Semitic tropes to “criticise” Israel and, when called on it, says something to the effect, “You’re only saying that because the Zionists (Jews–I mean only Jews are ever Zionists, right?) told you to and the Jews control the media.”

    What happens then? Will this individual be suffered to remain in the Green Party or not?

    The words are a good move in the right direction. Let’s see how (or if) they are implemented.

    Regards,

    Inna

    Reply
  5. Curious Says:
    October 26, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    I find it truly amazing that in 2010 a political party’s commitment to an anti-racist commitment is seen as particulalrly worthy of praise. Surely it is no more than a basic assumption that a party would not be or condone or articulate anti-Jewish hostility.

    Maybe one needs to wonder how it got to the stage that this issue needed to be “dealt with” in the first place.

    Reply
  6. Bialik Says:
    October 26, 2010 at 1:48 pm

    “We recognise that it may need to be revised in light of the recent Citizen Act/Nationality Act in Israel.”

    What is all this about? The ‘oath of loyalty’ proposal? It is not now and may never become an Act – see Lozowick on the matter.http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/

    Or are the Greens alluding to something else? Can anyone explain?

    Reply
  7. Winston Says:
    October 28, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    This is proof positive that political interventions against antisemitism do, in fact, work. The EUMC definition, excoriated by some at the time of its adoption as a pro-Israel smokescreen, has slowly become a benchmark. This process was aided in no small measure by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism and its report in 2005 – itself a significant political intervention. If one strategy for countering antisemitism is containment, developments such as these need to be properly – and positively – evaluated.

    Reply
  8. Deborah Fink Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 2:55 am

    The Green Party has NOT adopted this intellectually dishonest definition.
    The GPRC does not have the power to implement something that is not policy, and something that has not been passed at conference, is not policy.

    Many of us in the party, including Jews, are up in arms over this ridiculous statement which was approved in naivety and with a lack of understanding of the issues. Rest assured, that we will not let the Green party adopt it.

    Reply
  9. INT Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 10:11 am

    This is the bit that the anti-zionists object to. It seems to me to be a very careful outline of criteria as to how we might judge the boundaries between criticism and antisemitic demonziation. It makes itself clear that one would still have to use judgment to apply the criteria, that it doesn’t legislate against anything automatically… I can’t see what this definition excludes which anybody reasonable might want to say. It makes extremely clear and harsh criticism possible:

    Examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

    * Denying the Jewish people right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.

    * Applying double standards b requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

    * Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

    * Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

    * Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

    However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.

    Reply
  10. Absolute Observer Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Mira and Raphael,

    Could you clarify something for me?
    Deborah argues that many in the Green Party, including Jews”, etc.
    Is it the case that, on matters relating to Israel and the antisemitism that can attach to it, members have one vote and Jewish members two votes (one for their general membership) and one because they are “Jewish)?
    Or is it simply the case that Deborah is exploiting her being Jewish for purely rhetorical purposes in her fight against the opposition to antisemitism within her adopted party?
    Thanks,
    AO

    Reply
  11. Screaming "Fascist" in a Megaphone Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    “with a lack of understanding of the issues”.

    Like the way Zionists use antisemitism to stop debate?
    Like the way one cannot criticise Israel without being called an antisemite?
    Like the way one cannot make a comparision between Israel and Nazi Germany without being labeled an antisemite.

    No wonder Deborah FInk opposes it. It would mean that she is left with nothing other than the resources of rationalist argument. Never the best weapon for articulating an obsession.

    Reply
  12. Fr. Edwards Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    But isn’t that exactly the anti-zionist view – that Israel is a racist endeavour? And they want to be able to say so.

    And if other countries are compared to “Nazis” the last paragraph permits the charge to be levelled at Israel?

    Reply
  13. INT Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    Deborah Fink:

    “Happy Birthday to you,
    I’m ashamed as a Jew,”

    Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker on false pretences – it is supposed only to be awarded for a work of fiction.

    Reply
  14. Mirror Man Says:
    October 29, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    I knew the video of Finkster reminded my of something…….

    http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/israeli-troops-settlers-clash/6sh0f52

    Same tactic, same obsession.

    Reply

Brian Goldfarb Says:
October 30, 2010 at 11:25 pm

Now this _is_ interesting. Deborah Fink says “Many of us in the [Green] party, including Jews, are up in arms over this ridiculous statement which was approved in naivety and with a lack of understanding of the issues. Rest assured, that we will not let the Green party adopt it.” So, she knows that “many” in the party “including Jews” are against the proposed policy on antisemitism for theGreen Party. In her usual manner (see numerous comments over the last 5 years of this website’s life), she presents no evidence, but merely asserts this. This report has been up for 5 days, and she might have known of this a day or two before it was posted. Clearly, time enough for her not only to poll party members, but also to determine their religious affiliation/ethnicity.

So, Deborah Fink, how about your evidence for this assertion? If you don’t know us by now, then you are a _really_ slow learner: we expect evidence to go with statements like this, but I don’t expect any. What I expect (on past performance) is a repetition (possibly more than one) of the original statement, probably somewhat varied in language, plus attempts to introduce unrelated topics, in the hope that we won’t notice that no evidence has been produced for the first assertion.

Secondly, Ms Fisk finds that fighting antisemitism is a bad thing. We know this, because she says so: she tells us that the proposed policy adopting the EUMC policy on antisemitism is a “ridiculous statement”. So now she knows better than the all-party committee (of both Houses of Parliament) on antisemitism, which recommended to both Houses that such a policy should be adopted. Note that there was no opposition to this recommendation.

She also knows that the EUMC definition is plainly nonsense, because her assertion of ridiculousness must cover the EUMC definition contained within the policy document.

Deborah Fisk, if she is serious about her ludicrous statement, thus wishes to become that rather uncommon creature: an antisemitic Jew who cannot be punished, because her party won’t punish her, if she has her way, because she will make sure that it doesn’t adopt a policy on antisemitism. And if she thinks that my statement is nonsense, she should ask herself why she wishes her party _not_ to adopt a policy on antisemitism, unless it is to allow her and others to be antisemitic with impunity.

Now it is one thing to propose a boycott of Israel, in whole or in part: that doesn’t _have_ to be antisemitic (although there are all sorts of arguments about that that she has never answered, even when these arguments are aimed directly at her); it is also one thing to be anti-Zionist, with the same caveat as just above, that doesn’t _have_ to be antisemitic. However, to wish to stop one’s party adopting _the_ agreed antisemitic policy raises interesting issues. It puts such a person in bed (an unfortunate but appropriate analogy) with open and admitted antisemites, such as the BNP, the EDL (despite their protestations to the contrary), Hamas, Hezbollah, the government of President Ahmadinejad or Iran, among many others.

I’d think far more than twice before being willingly labelled alongside such people, but this clearly doesn’t bother Deborah Fink – assuming she’s even thought about it.

Would she propose such a course of action against a proposed policy on racism? Do we need an answer to such a question?


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Sunday, May 16, 2010

My name is Mark Elf

I am posting this to try to establish who owns this blog. It is me, Mark Elf. I use the screen name Levi9909.
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Heaps upon Heaps


Jenny Diski


Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson by David Grossman [ Buy from the London Review Bookshop ] · Canongate, 155 pp, £12.99

Look at Chapters 13 to 16 of the Book of Judges, and what do you see there? Is it Samson the hero, Samson the lummox, or Samson the poster boy for gang moronics, for self-destructive, incommensurate revenge? According to David Grossman, all Jewish children when they first hear the story learn to call him Samson the Hero. He is wrong about this, but then my Jewish childhood was not in Hebrew or in Israel. I recall the Samson story mainly as an early introduction to the power of three. ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson,’ Delilah says three times (just as, probably in the same Ladybird series, God called Samuel from his sleep three times before Eli the priest realised Who was on the line). The Samson story fitted comfortably into the familiar format of traditional tales and myth I was reading then (and I suppose too that it readied me for the present-day storytelling of ‘education, education, education’ and suchlike sorry political rhetoric). A grown-up reading of Samson a few years ago (the same King James Version that is offered at the beginning of Grossman’s translated essay) left me initially bewildered and remembering a large, blandly handsome boy of very little brain at school who, when I was 11, was my first boyfriend for about three weeks before he dropped me, and I experienced my first guilty relief at escaping the boredom between the trial-and-error French kisses, even as I smarted at the insult and missed having a hunk for my own to flash at my far more glamorous sisters-in-prepuberty.

Samson: the very occasionally touching knucklehead who hasn’t the faintest idea what he is doing or why, and has all the muscles of Superman and all the insight of a brick. You could imagine him doing what he’s told in an army patrol, or hanging out at a loose end on a street corner with some equally dim-witted friends, except that Samson doesn’t seem to have any friends. He has parents, he has a wife for a while, he has relations with prostitutes and he has a girlfriend who finally does for him, but almost invariably he acts and walks alone. Well, it’s not surprising: he hasn’t had a haircut since birth and he’s given to acts of viciousness generally out of all proportion to any insult done to him. On the strength of an early one-man massacre he judged Israel for twenty years, which is surprising until you remember that Arnold Schwarzenegger is governor of California. Samson, though, on second thoughts, is more psychopath than gangbanger or lovable dolt. One thing I wouldn’t call him, then or now, is hero.

The thing about the Bible, though, particularly the Hebrew Bible, is that it provides a surface story into which the reader can dive and come up with all manner of interpretations. There can’t be very many books in the world with which a reader can have such fun. Like a playground with all the right equipment but not too much of it, it offers the imagination as much scope as it can use for speculation. Jump in anywhere and read the empty spaces, the unspoken, the roaring silences, repetitions and patterns with as much care as the words (especially in a good modern translation that is true to the laconic language of the original), and you’ve got a narrative wonderland at your disposal. The old rabbis understood well enough about the gaiety of conjecture. Ambiguities throughout the Torah caused and permitted them to speculate and then to argue with previous (and even forthcoming) speculations, building an enchanting dialogue of maybes and what ifs. Worried about the problem of fish when God decided to destroy all life by flooding the world? The rain that fell for forty days and forty nights was hot and the fish in the sea were boiled to death, one commentary argues. Oh no, says Rabbi Yaakov Culi in the 18th century: ‘The only creatures that survived the flood were the fish. The Torah informs us that “everything on dry land died,” specifically to exclude the fish, which did not die. The fish survived even though the water of the flood was boiling hot. They were able to escape to the depths of the sea, where the water remained cool.’ This is the delight of poetry and riddle, which reading at its best – coupled with writing at its best – produces. And the Bible, of all writings, even for those of us who can only read it in translations, provides unlimited possibilities for close, quirky readings that lurk in the crevices of the language.

What I find very hard to see in the Pentateuch is any suggestion of the transcendental. After a couple of beginnings of the world where geography and biology are set in motion, and the bad behaviour of Adam and Eve, Genesis describes life starting over with Noah, who is a disappointment, and then once again with Abraham, in the search for an individual to stand as founding father for the people called the Hebrews. The God seeking out his people offers only posterity, never an afterlife, just like any secular leader. But then it’s a story told by the Hebrews themselves to account for themselves. A history, you might say, or a myth, if you will – anyway, a story. The Pentateuch is the narrative of the developing nationhood of a small group of people who came from Mesopotamia and settled in the south on the land of other already established nations: Midian, Canaan, Moab, Amon and Philistia.

At the time of Judges, the Hebrews are divided into 12 tribes who live with different amounts of tension between themselves and their neighbours in the land they call Judea. In Judges, the Jews tell themselves why they have not been welcomed with open arms by those who were already there. It was, the biblical narrator explains, not because people object to incomers taking land that is already inhabited, but because the Children of Israel repeatedly sinned against their sponsor, Yahweh, and with each sin the Lord arranged punishment in the form of conquest by the strangers on the Israelites’ borders. Geopolitics will not do for Yahweh’s People: only their own solecisms can account for loss of territory or sovereignty. Once you have a god on your side, nothing can go wrong unless you activate his anger and he strengthens the Philistines against you. Consequently, the Israelis repent and Yahweh has to find a way to expel the outsiders who are oppressing his now forgiven people. In turn Gideon, Jephthah, Ehud, Shamgar and Deborah become the nation’s warrior liberators and then judges. Samson’s turn comes, but he is an anomaly who can’t be said to have chosen to liberate his people by his actions so much as kill a lot of Philistines because they happen to annoy him: ‘Strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.’ God seems to have forgiven the Hebrews again so he obliges Samson and ‘the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’ An unintended national liberation on Samson’s part; a somewhat casual attitude to life on the part of God.

Some modern commentators, though, write Samson up as a ‘tough Jew’, one who strikes back at his enemies and nails the calumny of Jewish victimhood. When his fellow Judeans, cowering under the yoke of the oppressing Philistines, are prepared with a shrug of apology to give Samson up to them as they demand, he allows himself to be led into the enemy’s midst and smites them good and proper. He lets rip with a handy jawbone. ‘And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.’ But this is only the middle of a long inventory of smitings. First Samson killed 30 men of Ashkelon for their clothes to pay off a bet made with his wedding guests who had wheedled the answer to his riddle out of his Philistine wife. Next, after he went home to his parents to sulk and his wife went off with someone else, he set fire to three hundred foxes tied tail to tail and burned all the growing and stored foodstuff of the Philistines. When they retaliated by burning his wife and her father for bringing the disaster on them, Samson in response ‘smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter’ and then, in a brief spasm of wisdom, went to live up on a hillside out of the way. At which point the men of Judah come to him and tell him that he is causing too much trouble for them, they only want a quiet life – who doesn’t? – and could he please give himself up. Certainly, Samson says, and a thousand men, heaps upon heaps, pay the price.

David Grossman situates the ancient image of Samson the hero, and his modern interpretation as the tough Jew (how could he not?), in modern Israel. Those who would see Samson as a tough Jew, Grossman explains, ‘esteemed . . . his ability to apply force without any restraints or moral inhibitions, an ability which history withheld from the trod-upon Jews for millennia, until the establishment of the state of Israel’. ‘Samson’s Foxes’ fought in the 1948 War of Independence; a ‘Samson’ unit was created during the first Palestinian intifada in the 1980s; Israel’s nuclear weapon programme was once known as the ‘Samson Option’. Samson’s shadow, the suicide bomber, is noted. Clearly, Samson doesn’t represent the same thing to an Israeli Jew as he does to a Jew from the Diaspora.

But Grossman is equivocal. He acknowledges ‘a certain problematic quality to Israeli sovereignty that is also embodied in Samson’s relationship to his own power’. But it isn’t a case of not knowing one’s own strength: the problem arises from a lack of practice. ‘The reality of being immensely powerful has not really been internalised in the Israeli consciousness, not assimilated in a natural way, over many generations.’ It leads to giving ‘an exaggerated value to the power one has attained; to making power an end in itself; and to using it excessively; and also to a tendency to turn almost automatically to the use of force instead of weighing other means of action’. Grossman’s discomfort as an Israeli is clear, but he is still apologising for Samson’s and Israel’s excesses by suggesting that they are victims of victimhood. Tough Jewry but with mitigating circumstances. The fault lies with history and always and for ever Jews can be no more than their reaction to what has happened to them.

The essay dissolves into a distressing mixture of popular psychoanalysis and sentimentality: a plea for understanding that pulls out all the emotional stops. Samson’s thuggery is a result of his extraordinary experience, ultimately a lack of maternal love that leaves him a stranger in the world, who will never find his place and settle. At the heart of it is a notion of the family and how it ought to be. It’s a recognisable image but as mythic as the Samson story itself. Manoah, his father, is weak, vacillating and suspicious. His mother, who is not given a name, is visited either by a messenger of God or has an affair with (could it be?) a Philistine, and although barren becomes pregnant. She tells her husband that the child is to be a Nazarite, dedicated to God: no alcohol, no haircuts. Manoah exhibits disbelief and demands to see this messenger for himself, though when he does, he stops arguing, overpowered by the power of the man/angel. A bad beginning. A doubtful origin and different from the other kids.

But the true centre of Samson’s problem, according to Grossman, is his mother (of course) who tells Manoah of the special role of the forthcoming child with the words: ‘For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ In Grossman’s view, this is a child who will not truly belong to his mother and her realisation of this causes her to freeze emotionally. No woman, apparently, can contemplate the natural death of the foetus within her. It is, says Grossman, against the ‘natural instincts of parenthood’. The formerly barren wife of Manoah knows ‘with a deep womanly intuition’ that the child is to be a public event and therefore she distances herself from it, ‘something inside her is blocked, stunned, frozen.’ He imagines her thinking: ‘Will I be able to give him the bountiful, natural love that for so long I have yearned to give a child of my own?’ This ‘will not be a child who can be raised according to one’s natural instincts alone’ (though for that you might think any child would be grateful). As a result Samson ‘will always lack the capacity for simple human contact that comes so naturally to most people’. The pages are filled with such unexamined social and psychological expectation, with the assumption of what must be normal and what the consequences must be of a falling short of this picture of family harmonics.

Grossman is entitled to his interpretation of the text like anyone else, and the notion of the strangeness and loneliness of Samson and his inability to understand it is intriguing, but the normative assumptions and their presentation are as cloying and unconvincing as the saccharine family moment Grossman imagines when, on the way to his wedding, Samson scoops the honey from the belly of the lion he killed. The biblical text reads:

And, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat; but he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion.

Grossman says:

They say nothing, do not ask, he doesn’t tell, and nevertheless it is so appealing to imagine Samson waving his hands high, and his parents, doubtless smaller than he is, jumping at him with their mouths wide open and tongues hanging out, and Samson howling with glee, playing with his parents, touching them and dancing for them and laughing with them like any normal person, with the honey dripping, flowing down a cheek, sliding to the chin, being licked up, as the laughter swells to the point of tears.

It is Grossman’s contention that Samson is the emotionally disfigured child who becomes the frustrated artist (the honey episode, the killing of the 30 men for their coats, the tying and burning of the foxes’ tails all a kind of performance art), whose work turns murderous when he cannot receive love, desperate as he is ‘for the embrace of a caring, compassionate parent’ and betrayed always by the women in his life. And somewhere in all this is the state of Israel. The Samson state, not properly born and nurtured and therefore given to violent tantrums and excessive – though hardly artistic – behaviour to those it feels unloved by.

And, liberal though I am, I come up against the thought: what about behaving decently to others? Just that. Even if you’ve been unloved. Or especially if you’ve been unloved. What about making an art of empathy, or simply an elementary human choice not to cause suffering just because you’ve suffered, or because you figure it’s a good enough excuse to behave just like everyone else? Perhaps Grossman would say that the unloved Samson can’t help himself and is not in control of his emotional responses. He is probably right. Many people aren’t and clearly Samson wasn’t capable of control, but the individual Samson and the state of Israel are actually not bound by the same emotional imperatives. We ought perhaps to try much harder to keep separate the lives and passions of individuals and the behaviour of nations. But analogy is apparently irresistible, though the Palestinians might be forgiven a hollow laugh at Grossman’s conclusion that Samson’s final act, killing three thousand partying Philistines and himself into the bargain, set a precedent:

There is no escaping the thought that Samson was, in a sense, the first suicide-killer; and although the circumstances of his deed were different from those familiar to us from the daily reality of the streets of Israel, it may be that the act itself established in human consciousness a mode of murder and revenge directed at innocent victims, which has been perfected in recent years.

Jenny Diski’s On Trying to Keep Still, a travelogue and memoir, appeared recently. She is the author of Only Human, about a patriarch and his wife, among other novels.

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