Israel's new eugenics
Israel's new marriage law amounts to a genetic purification ritual, argues Todd May*
"Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or some related blood are forbidden. Such marriages contracted despite the law are invalid, even if they take place abroad in order to avoid the law."
-- (Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, 1935, Section 1.)
In late July, the Israeli Knesset voted to enact a law denying citizenship to Palestinians from the occupied territories who marry Israeli citizens. The most shocking aspect of the law was that it did not surprise anyone.
We must be clear about what this law implies. People who are Dutch, Indonesian, Cambodian, Uruguayan or Canadian will receive Israeli citizenship if they marry an Israeli citizen in accordance with Israeli law. Of all the peoples in the world, only Palestinians are barred Israeli citizenship through marriage.
We are told, of course, that this law is designed to prevent terrorism. Palestinians, we all know, are terrorists, particularly when they are in a matrimonial mood. We were also told that Operation Defensive Shield, which destroyed the educational, municipal, economic, and political structure of the occupied territories, was designed to prevent terrorism. We were told the same about the recent attacks on Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership, even though their effect was, as everyone predicted it would be, to promote terrorism.
While nobody can take the stated reason for the new law seriously, few have asked what the motivation would be for such a law. It is, seen soberly, not a form of protection. It is a form of eugenics. What Israel wants to do is prevent, within Israel's borders, the addition of people of Palestinian descent. People of other descent can be accommodated. People of Palestinian descent cannot.
That this is a eugenic rather than political programme is proven by the fact that there are no laws barring citizenship to people of Dutch descent who favour Palestinian rights, or Palestinians who think that Israeli policy is just and fair. There is only one factor that bars such citizenship: having the wrong blood.The new law is a genetic purificaion ritual. Under its strictures Palestinian Israelis are discouraged from marrying many of those with whom they share historical ties. Of equal moment is that Israel as a society is kept pure. The country will not be tainted with Palestinian blood, except for the unfortunate continuation of the blood it already contains of those who remained after the exile of 1948. It will keep its lineage, such as it is (the Who Is A Jew debate still being unresolved), hygienic.
We are all aware of the historical resonance of such a programme. In projects of extermination, whether they be physical, cultural, or geographic, it is important to ensure that the object of extermination be seen as a disease, a malignant growth threatening the body politic. Israeli politicians have long referred to the Palestinian people as less than human. They have often been demoted to the rank of insects and rodents. Now they are an impurity that needs to be cleansed. The Israeli legal structure has reverted to Nazi eugenics.
This analogy offends people. Many will say that there are important differences between Israel's law and Nazi eugenics. There is no Joseph Mengele. There are no extermination camps. Even the Nuremberg laws are stronger than the law Israel has passed. After all, the Nuremberg laws forbid marriage to Jews; the Israeli law only forbids citizenship to Palestinians who marry Israelis. Such an argument mistakes the purpose of historical analogy. Analogy is not identity. No two programmes of eugenics will ever be the same. When history repeats itself, it is not through exact replicas.
The question is not what historical programmes Israel repeats term for term. It is rather what category Israeli laws and policies fall under. Israel's politics are not democratic; even within Israel Palestinians are not granted equal rights. They are not colonial; the people of the occupied territories are no longer exploited -- they are dispossessed, starved, geographically suffocated, exiled, and murdered. Israel's politics, rightly seen, are eugenic. So were the Nazis, and in much the same way.
That is why there was so little surprise when the recent law was enacted. There are many individuals who support Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. My own country, the United States, does as a matter of official policy. The new law, as much as any single Israeli action, reveals to those who are willing to look the character of what it is that is being supported. One can only wonder, and dread, what similar strictures will be imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Israel continues its pursuit of Lebensraum.
* The writer is professor of philosophy at Clemson University and co-editor of Operation Defensive Shield: Witnesses to Israeli War Crimes (Pluto Press, 2003).
