26 October 2004
“We cannot leave. We are Jews.” Avirama Golan, of Haaretz, takes issue with the new, highly loaded, slogan of Israeli settlers unwilling to evacuate the Gaza strip. The “We are Jews” argument, Golan writes, ignores any personal or political reasons for refusing to leave, instead reinforcing a dangerous messianism that draws a line “between a Jew and a ‘goy’ and permits Jews everything by virtue of their status as victims.” Golan continues: “This is also the code that led complete communities of Jews away from the families of nations due to their messianic faith, shut them off in ghettos, led them to turn their backs on modernity and humanism, and subjected them to an exclusive fate determined by the hands of God, stripping man of the freedom to choose and responsibility for his fate. …This ‘Jewish’ existence that the settlers are now trying to sustain defines life, in the framework of messianic thought, as being constantly shadowed by catastrophe. ….When this shadow of catastrophe fades, or when a chance appears to dispel this shadow — by means of diplomatic accords or other normal measures — the ‘Jewish’ settlers take pains to recreate it via refusal.”