A few tips about my book, for my English-speaking friends.
Some English-speaking friends would like to know more about my latest book, Israël peut-il survivre ? La Nouvelle Règle du Jeu (Can Israel Endure ? The New Name of the Game).
My starting point is : how come Israel, one of the most successful and democratic countries in the world, is on trial at the UN, the EU, the Department of State and the world media ?
My assumption is that there are in fact two intermingled trials. One is the ‘lawyers trial’ : ‘Is Israel a colonial State ? What about the refugees ? UN resolutions ? Etc.’ I believe Israel can win that trial. Quite easily. I devote about ten chapters to explain why. One point I attempt to make, among many others, is that if one is to give any heuristic value to the concept of Naqba (‘the dislocation of a society’, to quote President Barack Obama, through mass expulsion or otherwise), it applies not just to the Arab Palestinians but also, and in a much more relevant way, to the Jews and Christians from the Arab and Islamic countries.
The second trial is of a completely different order. For religious, metaphysical or just societal reasons of their own, many nations or civilizations just resist the very idea of a restored Jewish State. Islamic countries oppose Israel for religious and nationalistic reasons. But what may be even more relevant in their case is ‘ochlocracy’ – the rule of the masses, ‘the Arab or Islamic street’ -, i. e. the fact that legitimacy derives in these countries from unanimity, or pretending to be unanimous.
Evidently, other religious, metaphysical or societal reasons can play for Israel as well. One of Israel’s best geopolitical assets is obviously its special relationship with America. Whatever the importance and influence of the American Jewish community, the Israeli-American bond has to do primarily with the non-Jewish Americans proximity to the Biblical heritage : a nation that was deliberately created on Old Testament myths, symbols and ethical views, and still largely sees them as national fundamentals, is prone to have much sympathy or empathy for the Old Testament nation itself. Successive American administrations may or may not have supported Israel, but they have had to take in account that special situation.
Which leads me to the Obama question, to which I devote two whole chapters. From Obama’s autobiographical writings themselves (Dreams of My Father), it is crystal clear that the present American president was raised outside American mainstream culture as a child and a preteen, and that his encounter with real America at the age of 11 was a trauma, from which he recovered only by embracing a radical project, the remodeling of America as a non-Judaeo-Christian nation. Indeed, this has remained Obama’s inmost thought and design to this day.
Technically, Obama’s day to day politics have neither been wholly pro-Israel nor anti-Israel. But what matters is the Obama spirit : the present president’s policies lead to a change in the religious and cultural DNA of America that may, in turn, loosen the symbiotic relationship between America and Israel, and endanger Israel in a dramatic way.
Israël peut-il survivre ? La Nouvelle Règle du Jeu. By Michel Gurfinkiel.
Hugo & Co, Paris, 2011. 304 pages.
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