The Jewish Power Blog: The Emergence from Powerlessness
In 1979, a leading historian of the Holocaust, Yehuda Bauer (1926-2024), published a small book based on three lectures, The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness. In it, he explored the ways in which powerless Jews nevertheless attempted to exert power through negotiation with and resistance to the Nazis, and ultimately through the creation of a state, which brought to an end two millennia of political powerlessness. Today, we seem to be stuck between two different interpretations of the “emergence from powerlessness.”
Bauer believed that acquiring political power through statehood – what others have termed “returning to history” – means “normalization.” The Jewish nation acquired a nation-state like other nationalities that attained self-determination as states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as multinational empires broke up; e.g., Greece, Italy, Hungary, Poland… Indeed, the efforts of the Jews to form a state were accepted by the United Nations as a legitimate aspiration to join the “family of nations” as an equal. Thus, the UN voted to partition Palestine into two parallel nation-states, and the Israel Declaration of Independence, six months later, proclaimed that “This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.” Thus, the Jewish emergence from powerlessness meant the Jewish nation’s becoming like “all the nations,” rooted in the underlying assumption of the United Nations – that nations’ power of and right to self-determination are valid only insofar as they recognize the parallel and equal power and right of other nations to self-determination. If we are not to descend into chaos and great suffering (which has occurred over and over again in the past 80 years, around the world), then all nations must accept limitations on their power. A “family of nations” implies denying, like in any healthy family, that just because you are the strongest, you can do whatever you want.
On the other hand, a different understanding of “emergence from powerlessness” — one which dominates Israeli government and culture in our day — sees Israel’s power not as the power implicit in a system of equal nation-states trying to live together in a harmonious family through mutual limitations on the exercise of power, but rather as the fulfillment of a divine promise to restore King Solomon’s empire. Thus, there is no need for Israel to limit the exercise of power over others in order to create a harmonious world order. The establishment of the state and the conquest of territory in 1967 – and all of Israel’s other military achievements – are to be understood as evidence that “God is on our side,” and that our power is just a manifestation of divine power.
Therefore, we don’t need to care about what other nations think, say, or do in response to our actions; we certainly are under no obligation to consider the Palestinians’ aspiration for self-determination – or even their basic human rights; we don’t need the approval and support of the anti-Semites of Europe or the bleeding heart liberals of the US Democratic party – or of diaspora Jews; and we have no reason to pay attention to the hypocrites in various multinational frameworks speaking of world order or peace or crimes against humanity. We are powerful enough to take care of ourselves and fulfill our manifest destiny. And if we lose this war, it will be – as it was when Joshua did not complete the full annihilation of the Canaanites – our own fault for not exercising our divinely sanctioned power to its fullest extent.
(They say that to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; so, to a nation with a powerful air force, it seems that every diplomatic problem looks like a target bank.)
Moreover, we are powerful enough to make sure that any threats to our exercise of power are suppressed. That’s why there are no journalists in Gaza, why anti-war protesters are arrested, and a Facebook post expressing sympathy for the children of Gaza can get you arrested too (especially if you happen not to be Jewish). That’s why it is important to neutralize the judicial system as a monitor and guardrail to determine the moral boundaries of government power.
Furthermore, since God promised us “from the river to the sea,” (Deut. 11:24, among other sources) and we have actually succeeded in restoring our sovereignty there, it behooves us to do whatever it takes to make it clear that “occupation” is a slander; our sovereignty, wherever God promised it to us, is ours by divine right.
So, the Jewish nation has emerged from the darkness of powerlessness into the bright light of power – but alas, it seems that the light has blinded us. And if we have indeed returned to history – and not transcended it – I find it hard to escape the fear that, sooner or later, its moral arc will bend toward our getting our comeuppance.
