An Interview with Scholar/Activist
Joel Kovel
Human Liberation: What does human liberation mean to you? What are its basic elements? What does it mean in the context of Palestine?
Joel Kovel: To me, liberation is a process of self-realization, where the person moves through and beyond the various traumas imposed by life to achieve a position of universality, that is, connection to the Whole. This is a spiritual process, broadly conceived, in which we should not separate spirit from matter, nor the individual from the community, nor the human community from the whole of nature. Specifically, the path of liberationfor it is a pathway and not any definite endpoint--is determined by historical circumstances that have to be concretely overcome, by struggle, in each instance, this being why I would speak of various traumas. In no sense, then, is liberation a private or internal matter; indeed, the private, fragmented self is a generic deformation of the modern era, imposed by capitalism, which itself has to be liberated into a more fully realized, and associated, human being. Broadly speaking, the notion of liberation may be conveyed by the exercise of self-determination, where the self is seen as striving for universality and is fully sociated.
In this regard, the core elements of the struggle for liberation in the context of Palestine would be, from the side of Palestinians, achieving the Right of Return; and for Israelis, being freed from the chains of Zionism, which harm the Jewish people by constricting them into tribalized chauvinism. Neither side can become whole otherwise; and since this is one of those situations where the two sides co-determine each other, a single unified framework is essential within which liberation can occur. This defines the essential goal of a "One, Democratic State" resolution as the locus within which the liberation of all can take place.
HL: Many Zionists have claimed that there is disproportionate criticism levied against the state of Israel due to globalized anti-Semitism. However, anti-Zionists point out that the struggle against Zionism is a fulcrum point for human liberation worldwide. What do you think?
JK: Anti-Semitism has been made into an all-purpose justifier for anything aggressive done by the State of Israel. A very powerful and well organized ideological effort lies behind this, which has resulted, for example, in having a leading dictionary include criticism of Israel as a part of the definition of anti-Semitism. However, the manipulation of anti-Semitism shows the same kind of logic as anti-Semitism itself. In both cases something is regarded as an essence and taken out of the reciprocal and dialectical relations that enter into real history. Thus the anti-Semite regards the Jew as essentially this way or that, for example, conniving, conspiratorial, mercenary, irrespective of whether it is the case, or if so, what has determined such traits. This is a kind of demonization. But the same obtains for Zionist demonizing of the rest of the world as congenitally anti-Semitic, and especially that part which, along with Judaism, has followed the Abrahamic religious modelChristianity and Islam.
In this latter case, no allowance is made for any behavior of Israel that might stir up hostility; rather, everything done by Israel becomes an automatic and justifiable defense against the essential hatred evinced by Christians and Muslims for Jews. This mechanism is aggravated in context of the Holocaust, which has been played upon by Zionist ideologues like Elie Wiesel as a completely unfathomable and hence incomparable phenomenon. Standing alone, the Holocaust, worked over by Israel and the international Zionist establishment, becomes a permanently switched-on alarm bell to inhibit any criticism of Israel. The matter is further elaborated by the ascription of congenital terrorism as the means by which Arabs and Muslims express their innate hatred of the Jews and their state. The final resting place of the uses of anti-Semitism becomes therefore a great clash of civilizations, the Crusades carried forward in which Western Freedom battles Oriental despotism and Islamic fundamentalism for the future itself.
A genuinely historical reading will reveal that indeed, great world-historical forces are drawn into the struggles in Israel/Palestine, but that the deployment is rather different from that depicted by Zionism. The real issue is imperialism and its limits (see next question for more on this), and control over the oil-rich and strategically central region of South-West Asia and the Middle East. In this sense, Zionism becomes a much larger question than the competition of two peoples over one piece of landthough it is that, to be sure, and also the largest unresolved refugee problem in the world. But because of its larger meanings, both geo-strategic and political in the relation to US imperialism, it can be said with certainty that a just resolution of the question of Israel/Palestine is essential to any real peace in the Middle East as a whole, and wherever one party to a territorial question is Islamic or Arabic. Just as the mutual hatred of Zionism and Political Islam generates perpetual war of civilizations, so is resolution of the Israel/Palestine question an absolute essential for world peace.
HL: How does Western imperialism relate to Zionism? What role does capitalism play in the geopolitics of the Middle East?
JK: Zionism is mystified as a purely national struggle, but in truth it has always been an imperial struggle, in two major and interrelated senses. First of all, the dominant tendency within the Zionist movement always regarded itself as a branch of Western civilization, and strategically exploited this sense to gain support, first from Britain, and subsequently from the United States, and indeed, Europe as a whole. And secondly, Western imperial powers, beginning with Britain and now especially, the United States, have used Israel as a cats paw in their expansive strategies in the Middle East, and indeed, elsewhere, for example, Central America or Africa.
Since the first Iraq War an even more powerful consolidation has arisen between the United States and Israel, cemented by the fact that the leading neoconservative architects of US foreign policy and the present Iraq war are largely ardent Zionists, some of whom, Perle and Feith in particular, have also been consultants to the Likud Party. So profound and entangled is the link that the apportioning of Iraq War strategy between Israel and the United States is very hard to determine.
As for capitalism, imperialism is unthinkable without the notion that it represents a violent form of the expansive power of capital itself, superintended by the state. The Israeli economy is densely interwoven with a number of blocs of global capital, and its external relations depend very heavily upon arms sales. Capital was the original source of the money used to legally buy up Arab lands and assets in Palestine; and capital still pours into the country through union pension plans and diasporically purchased bonds, as well as through great transfers of money from the US Treasury, at times direct, at times through the intermediary of US commodities like Caterpillar bulldozers that knock down Palestinian homes and kill people like Rachel Corrie. There is no doubt that global capital regards Israel as a strategic asset, though given the vagaries of oil politics, this link cannot be taken for granted. The last fact accounts for a lot of the zeal with which Israel pursues its Western ties. It is hard to remember that the Zionist movement was once considered a force for socialism, though as Ze'ev Sternhell shows in The Founding Myths of Israel, this was always compromised by nationalism and eventually liquidated.
HL: What are the similarities and differences between the state of Israel and the previous minority white-controlled state of South Africa? Besides the strong ties between the governments of the US and Israel, are there additional difficulties in overcoming Israeli Zionism perhaps not present in the context of apartheid South Africa?
JK: The great similarity is that both are instances of a state-structured racism, in which racism is formally inscribed in the social contract itself and where it is manifest as a ruthless ethnic cleansing carried out by all possible modalities, violent as well as legalistic, and resulting in vicious reduction of the conquered people to subhuman status. In both societies, powerful ideological forces are mobilized to secure the racist arrangement. Both societies have Herrenvolk mythologies, in which the dominant group sees itself as a suffering, wandering people that establishes a sacred bond with the land. And this also reflects a common history of settler-colonialism. Finally, both societies used the same Old Testament justifications, seeing themselves as messianically endowed by a special covenant with the divine principle.
Of course, no two societies can be alike in all respects. One important distinction is that Israels legitimating myths are accorded a great deal more validation by the Western world than those of Apartheid South Africa, which was always something of a pariah state. In part this is because the mechanisms of separation in the case of Israel involve a great deal less overt segregation within the homeland itself, while the gross instances of this, such as the "Apartheid Wall", are successfully rationalized as defenses against Palestinian terrorism. Zionism has brilliantly beaten back the notion that it is in fact racist, in part through the extraordinary deception that it is a "democratic-Jewish state", one of the all-time oxymorons, in part by cynical exploitation of Western guilt over the Holocaust, and in part through its patronage by the United States. Not just the government of the United States is involved, needless to say; a remarkably powerful and far-reachingindeed, globalnetwork of Jewish civil society patrols the defenses of the Jewish state, in the process, disciplining the US Congress to an amazing degree.
But there are countervailing tendencies. South Africa was, when all is said and done, an economic powerhouse, with huge mineral reserves and an industrial base. Israel is basically a parvenu economy, and despite its prowess in manufacturing armaments, much more dependent upon the good will and tolerance of others. South Africa was hurt by sanctions; Israel would be much more hurt and likely collapse, especially if the stream of funds from the Diaspora would dry up. Thus what is a strength from one anglethe deep pride and affection felt for Israel by the Diasporacould turn into a liability should serious questioning ever be allowed of the seamy side of Zionist history.
Similarly, the very close relationship with the United States conceals, in my opinion, a number of potential threats. First of all, considerable hostility to Israel exists among sectors of the "permanent government", especially the intelligence community, still rankling over the Pollard case. Furthermore, the protection of the United States is always questionable given the brutal logic of geopolitics. There is always the danger that the overwhelming preponderance of Arabic/Islamic numbers in that part of the world will dictate some kind of shift within United States policy. Viewed dialectically, the very extremity of Zionist influence over Congress and large swathes of the Executive can be viewed as a sign of just how much work needs to be continually expended in order to shore up the defenses of Zionism.
Finally, the emergence of Amir Peretz may signify a major shift within the internal dynamics of Israeli society. We will have to watch this closely, but there is no doubt that this is potentially a powerful force for basic change, of a kind simply not possible within the much more rigid and closed South African apartheid state.
HL: Marx wrote that humans relate to nature as social beings; if we are alienated in our social relations, we will relate to nature as alienated beings. As a scholar of environmental ethics, how do you believe the current state of alienation inherent in transnational capitalism contributes to ecological degradation?
JK: I cannot do justice to so large a question here, but to put it briefly and schematically, I see this in several dimensions.
First, insofar as capital is inherently expansive, it is compelled to place ever widening sectors of the earth under the sign of the commodity. This entails the imposition of the exchange principle as the manifestation of value alongside the use values that comprise the linkages of the commodity to nature and the material world. Exchange and use values are incommensurable, and capital is that regime in which the former continually must prevail over the latter. What this means in practice is that the whole of terrestrial nature is invaded by a quantifying principle, the insertion of which necessarily breaks the connective tissue of ecosystems and degrades them. Thus capital has an intrinsically eco-destructive moment, irrespective of whatever measures are taken to mend the ecological crisis, through environmental actions of one kind or another.
These measures themselves are rendered ineffective because capitalism is a society in which human bonds are also fragmented, dissolving community. Widening differences between rich and poor make impossible the application of rational means to control ecological degradation. The bourgeoisie are maddened by the logic of accumulation which they serve, and are blocked at the most fundamental level from an eco-centric regard for nature.
Meanwhile, the great mass of working people are systematically alienated through the essential feature of capitalist production: the separation of the producer from the means of production. Thus the worker is estranged from her own nature (as pointed out in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844), at the most basic level, through the very creation of labor power as a commodity. One measure of the estrangement of our society is the blind and passive acceptance of the mutilation wrought by this. From another angle, the ecological crisis cannot be mended except from below by freed human beings in possession of their own nature and hence free to recognize themselves in nature and nature in themselves. It will never yield to technocratic measures that ultimately reproduce the alienation that is the crisis itself in its most fundamental aspect.
HL: Finally, what did your experiences in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution teach you about human liberation?
JK: I learned two interconnected lessons in Nicaragua in the early to mid-1980s. First, that it is thrilling to be part of a process in which hitherto oppressed people are discovering their humanity and sociality, where they sense themselves as the subjects of history rather than its objects. For me, as for many others, this greatly outweighed the often-miserable material circumstances of the country. Associated with this was a very profound sense of the centrality of the spiritual element in revolution, here mediated by the theology of liberation and my acquaintance with the radical priests. I was less taken with the Directorate of the revolution, none of whom came close to the stature of a Che, and who were gradually worn down morally by their burdens.
One could also see the recoil from these great forces. Internally, the liberation of some provoked bitterness and hostility from others. This was especially marked in the domestic and family sphere. The incidence of sexual violence actually rose during these years, owing to the violence of men who felt dispossessed from their positions of power over women. And then there was the reaction of the superpower. I wish I could forgive the United States for what it did to the Sandinista revolution, but I am far from being able to do so. In any event the experience settled once and for all the question of how much evil there was in imperialism. I had arrived at the idea during the Vietnam era, but this was the moment at which I myself was active, in however insignificant a role.
Although I have been unable to bring myself to return to Nicaragua, there is a postscript to the story worth noting. And this is that though the revolution was defeated and will not be reproduced, nonetheless, many individuals were elevated by the struggle. Before 1979, Nicaragua had the least developed civil society in the hemisphere; after 1990, however, many have continued in the path of good works and have built the elements of a good life for their people.
Dr. Joel Kovel is currently completing a work, Overcoming Zionism, to be published by Pluto Press. His most recent book was The Enemy of Nature (Zed), and he is also Editor of the quarterly journal Capitalism Nature Socialism. His email address is jskovel@earthlink.net.
