Zeev Sternhell Where Is the Intellectuals’ Revolt in the Face of the Nation-state Law?
In 1927, Julien Benda published his book “La
Trahison des Clercs” (“The Treason of the Intellectuals”), which soon
became a classic. In it, he was scathingly critical of intellectuals,
mainly French intellectuals but Germans and others as well, who, from
the time of the Dreyfus affair through World War I and the crises that
followed it, betrayed their raison d’être: defending universal values.
At the time, fascism was already in power in Italy; Germany’s Weimar
Republic was on the brink of collapse; and in France an incitement to
hatred campaign against Jews and – how not? – leftists was being waged
against the country’s liberal heritage, culminating with the
anti-Semitic Vichy government’s “National Revolution.”
Ninety years ago,
Benda’s manifesto was directed at intellectuals – writers, artists,
professors, journalists – as creators of culture. Today the circle of
intellectuals includes consumers of culture too. An intellectual is any
thinking person who has absorbed culture and is therefore not prepared
to uncritically swallow propaganda, demagoguery and lies.
These are the people
who should be the first to rise up against the erasure of the principle
that all people are entitled to the same rights to liberty and equality.
Those who refute this principle are formally turning Israel into an
apartheid state. And such a situation calls for revolt. The time for
analysis is over. All that can be said about the nation-state law has been said, and now the time has come to prepare means to combat it and start putting them to use.
There
are two fronts in this battle: On the domestic front, every person,
every group, every organization, every political party that is aware
that this law changes the face of Israel, must be ready to play a part
in a broad, bold and open protest. If we were truly an open society
imbued with universal values, we would have already seen a general
uprising encompassing the universities and colleges and National Academy
of Sciences, as well as teachers’ organizations and parents’ committees
and youth movements. If we really felt this was a burning issue, Rabin
Square would have been filled with protesters long ago.
When basic universal
values, which are the lifeblood of a healthy society, are trampled, the
usual inhibitions and traditional rules of self-restraint and neutrality
are no longer relevant. Academic institutions cannot become completely
insular, because they do not exist solely to supply knowledge, but to
fight for this country’s future. The National Academy of Sciences does
not only exist to serve as something like a House of Lords that produces
biannual reports on the state of the sciences here, but also to fight
to shape this society. It would be appropriate for the Israeli social
sciences and humanities professional associations to express a protest
and to urge their international counterparts to follow suit.
Experience
has shown us that the right does not abide by the rules of the game, it
respects only power. The nation-state law is a crude use of power to
deny the human rights of non-Jewish Israelis. It is therefore
illegitimate and resistance is called for. Every opponent of this
apartheid law who has connections abroad must use them to ring warning
bells. The international front also requires an immediate investment of
energy and resources: writing articles for newspapers, making media
appearances, holding open conferences in places like Brussels and other
EU capital cities, as well as intensive activity at universities. The
world expects people who have earned renown in their fields to use it
for the general good as well, and not only for self-promotion.
Zeev Sternhell
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