The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders Edited by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor - Transaction 283 pp.; $39.95

The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews By David Mamet - Schocken/Nextbook208 pp.; $19.95

If the time is long past, as is argued by the editors and authors of two very different volumes on a similar subject, for the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism to still hold much water, then Jews who attack the very idea of Israel have as much of a problem as those embarrassed to be Jewish

Inevitably a mixed bag, the collection of 17 essays that comprises "The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders" - eight previously published, the rest freshly minted - is at its best timely, stimulating and credible, at its worst heavy-handed and desultory. Unfortunately, the book's subtitle imparts ambiguity: In its pages, "Defenders" refers to Jews who turn the tables on a gallery of Israel's most notorious Jewish "Accusers," accusing them, in turn, of the sins of self-hatred, omissions and flagrant distortions of the truth.

Israel's Jewish antagonists, the likes of Noam Chomsky, Marc Ellis, Seymour Hersh and Norman Finkelstein, constitute an assemblage of intellectuals ranging from scholastic superstars to flickering novas. Some are depicted here as self-deceived, neurotic or deeply ambivalent; others as intellectual charlatans or roguish defectors from communal norms or people who, exploiting their heterodoxy to their own advantage, have shrewdly parlayed anti- Semitism into career moves. One after another, each gets scrutinized by a band of Israel's "defenders," all competent polemicists, some, like Alan Mittelman, Edward Alexander and Benjamin Balint, quite brilliant. Broadly speaking, this collective J'accuse is directed by writers and academics associated with neo-orthodox Zionism, many of them counter-reformationists of the Jewish right, against bellwethers of the post-Zionist Jewish left, who are depicted as malefactors.

At the outset, this formulation raises a distressing question: Does being a Zionist necessarily situate one on the right? A personal digression: In years past I found to my chagrin that anti- Zionism, initially at worst a tangential leitmotif of the "New Left," gradually conjoined with anti-fascism and anti-Americanism to become an integral part of its logo. If once I thought that making aliya might reconcile political dissonance, I soon discovered I was mistaken. A significant segment of Israel's academic elite, purchasing the Palestinian narrative, has to all intents and purposes discarded Zionism's primal mythos. On the other hand, the Jewish state is the only place where, either consciously or unwittingly, anti-Zionism does not inexorably translate into anti- Semitism. This distinction gets obscured when the editors of "The Jewish Divide," too readily, I think, lump the likes of Amos Oz and Meron Benvenisti, whose critiques are generally informed and worthy of close consideration, with the frenzied self-righteousness and tall, malicious tales typically recounted by the Noam Chomskys and Norman Finkelsteins. But I anticipate.

The most absorbing and authoritative of these essays are not necessarily those focused on the sleaziest malefactors. Rather, they are the contributions by accomplished stylists capable of crisp writing and nuanced thinking. The opening essay, by Cynthia Ozick, sets the bar very high. In "The Modern 'Hep! Hep! Hep!," Ozick draws salient parallels between them and contemporary "progressive Crusaders," modish Diaspora intellectuals such as writer Ian Buruma and literary critic Judith Butler who obsessively vilify Israelis as oppressors, usurpers and, yes, latter-day Nazis.

Are Ozick's aspersions justified? Buruma's short essay "On the West Bank" (New York Review of Books, December 5, 2002) urges Diaspora liberals, for whom "the Zionist enterprise is an embarrassment, a nightmare that gives Jews a bad name," for their own good, to support their Israeli, anti-Zionist confreres, such as, one gathers, Baruch Kimmerling, Ilan Pappe, and Avi Shlaim, because "...once the [Israeli right-wing] crazies take over, we will feel the consequences." Notwithstanding the actual merits of Israel's intramural debate, is not such an appeal nauseatingly craven?

But then the verve of Ozick's robust denunciation is inimitable and warrants full citation: "It is long past time (pace Buruma and Butler) when the duplicitous 'rift' between anti-Zionism and anti- Semitism can be logically sustained. Whether in its secular or religious expression, Zionism is, in essence, the modern flowering of a vast series of diverse intellectual and pietistic movements, all of them steeped in the yearning for human dignity - symbolized by the Exodus from slavery - that has characterized Jewish civilization for millennia. Contempt and defamation from without have sometimes infiltrated the abject psyches of defeatist Jews, who then began to judge themselves according to the prevailing canards. Such Jews certainly are not what is commonly called self-haters, since they are motivated by the preening self-love that congratulates itself on always 'seeing the other side.' Not self- haters, no; low moral cowards, rather, often trailing uplifting slogans.

Starting in the 1930s, "Modern Jewish Intellectual Failure," the ensuing essay by Indiana University Jewish studies professor Alvin Rosenfeld, also spotlights instances of moral cowardice and a passing parade of preeners among American Jewish intellectuals too clever by half to grasp the self-evident elegance of Ozick's Zionist theorem: Not only are love for the Jewish people and love for Israel one and the same but, alas, the converse is all too true. Less tonic than Ozick, Rosenfeld's serviceable overview links the pallid response of the myopic Yiddish press, the New York Times and spineless Hollywood moguls when faced by the gravity of the Nazi threat, to the blindness of contemporary post-Zionists for whom not merely the actions but the very existence of the state of Israel constitutes a standing embarrassment. All too typical is feminist poet Adrienne Rich, a self-described "Jew without borders," who argues that a "Zionism... so incendiary, so drenched in idealism, dissension, ideas of blood and soil, in memory of victimization and pursuant claims of the right to victimize... needs to dissolve."

Rosenfeld's verdict initially sounds a naive or over-indulgent note: "The full effects of their efforts may or may not be clear to these Jews, for they couch their ambitions in the high-sounding terms of 'peace,' 'justice' and 'reconciliation,' and may not recognize how reckless they really are." Yet, regularly in the pages of The New York Review of Books, writers like historian Tony Judt and journalist Amos Elon make a habit of just such recklessness. They know not what they do? Yeah, sure.

Where Rosenfeld temporizes, Edward Alexander's powerful, across- the-boards assault on Israel's domestic critics ("Israelis Against Themselves") strikes this Israeli as unduly harsh. To be sure, in our charged political, cultural climate, one may well side with novelist Aharon Megged and right-wing intellectual Yoram Hazony, who reprove leftist literary icons for flamboyant rhetorical flourishes. One recalls Amos Oz accusing Gush Emunim of "crimes against humanity" (at a Peace Now rally in Tel Aviv in June 1989) or David Grossman impugning the Israeli right not merely as "fundamentalist" but as fundamentally "racist" (The New York Times, May 31, 1996). Yet while the currency of public debate within Israel is highly inflated, few here would maintain that they have crossed beyond the threshold of legitimacy.

The same cannot be said, however, of some of Israel's professoriate who, one can only conclude, anticipate the eventual defeat of Israel on the battlefield and the subsequent carnage with undisguised relish. Somewhat unjustly, however, Alexander links figures like Pappe and Kimmerling with Benny Morris, who has repeatedly dissociated himself from the anti-Zionist posturing of the other "New Historians" with whom he is often lumped. In another essay ("Antisemitism-Denial: The Berkeley School"), Alexander's censoriousness rests on a firmer basis. University of California Jewish academics Judith Butler and Martin Jay disingenuously deny being self-hating Jews. In spite of her prominence in the UC- initiated divestment from Israel campaign and later espousal of the disestablishment of the State of Israel (London Review of Books, August 21, 2003), Butler disavows any anti-Semitism. As for Jay, a Berkeley history professor, he strongly advocates the psychologically corrosive and often debunked notion that Jews themselves are responsible for anti-Semitism (Salmagundi, Spring 2003). These academics convict themselves of a half-baked but egregious variant of anti-Semitism.

After the overkill of British writer Paul Bogdanor's two essays of relentless demolition of Israel-bashers Noam Chomsky and the late Israel Shahak, which almost inspires one to sympathize with their lying, distortion and, yes, downright wickedness, the deftness and wit exhibited by Prof. Jacob Neusner in discussing the "Stockholm Five" is a welcome antidote. Neusner employs Socratic technique and sardonic temperament in considering what to make of the stark, absurdist comedy starring American Jewish "leaders," representing no one but themselves, who in 1988 held discussions with PLO officials as to how best they might achieve legitimacy in American and Israeli eyes. "Stock-holm," Neusner observes, "presented the spectacle of citizens of one country negotiating with a second country about the vital - the most vital - concerns of a third country... that seems to me simply unprecedented."

In an effort to make sense of the mentality of "the Five," Neusner spotlights one of them, Jerome Segal, a research scholar at the University of Maryland who dubbed himself "the PLO's Jewish adviser." In 2002 Segal "indulged his political passions to the extent that he drafted a 'declaration of Palestinian independence' on behalf of the PLO." His warrant? Precisely that he is a Jew who, having determined to his own satisfaction that the precondition for "a humane and safe Israel" is an independent Palestinian state, decided to devote his energies to serving Israel's long-time enemy. Even if it were clear that most Israelis actually concurred with Segal's premise, the presumption of an American Jewish academic trespassing "for Israel's own good" into such a delicate affair is mind-boggling.

I have saved for last my favorite contribution to "The Jewish Divide": Menachem Kellner's "Daniel Boyarin and the Herd of Independent Minds." Over and above the razor-sharp keenness with which the Haifa University professor dissects the shallowness, inconsistency and bloody-minded maliciousness of Berkeley professor Boyarin's anti-Semitic rhetoric, what warms him to me is the tremor of recognition. Both emerging from a liberal Democratic, Zionist milieu, Kellner and I became anti-war activists in the 60s, subsequently made aliya, and are now religiously observant academics. Moreover, we both have generally voted left-of-center, supported Oslo, and belatedly came to the reluctant realization that, in Kellner's words, "the Palestinian leadership... was using the war [the 'Al Aqsa Intifada'], not to reverse the results of 1967, but to reverse the results of 1948. The Palestinians were not seeking to create a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state... but a 'free and democratic' Palestine which is meant to replace Israel." Others may pronounce our learning curve excruciatingly flat, but in the end, we both finally got it.

As for Boyarin, a respected Talmudist and erstwhile Zionist, in a recent article ("Interrogate My Love," 2003) he accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and proposes that it transform itself into "a state of all its citizens." Boyarin, who shares much the same intellectual origins as Kellner and myself, has now so cloaked himself in the platitudinous straightjacket of the American academician that he has apparently lost the capacity to respond to the suffering or bouts of despair of his former brethren. Only Palestinian suffering weighs on his scales of justice.

Collectively, the essays comprising "The Jewish Divide" make a significant statement about the lacerating effects of Jewish self- hatred. Indeed, the greater Jewish divide may, I think, be profitably viewed less as Jew against Jew than as Jew against himself. "Divide" deserves a larger audience than it is likely to get. Not only is the list price prohibitive, but even though a number of the contributions are elegantly composed, the strident, polemical tone of many entries is unlikely to ingratiate the book to readers not already committed to their point of view.

Meanwhile, for half the tariff, playwright David Mamet's "The Wicked Son" deals in quite another fashion with much the same issue. His title refers, of course, to the wicked Second Son at the Seder, whom Mamet associates with Jews who envied the Black Power movement in the 60s, the PLO in the 90s, "whose favorite Jew is Anne Frank and whose second-favorite does not exist, who are humble in their desire to learn about Kwanza and proud of their ignorance of Tu B'Shvat..." The book consists of some 40 short, some exceedingly short, wide-ranging chapters with titles like "Well-Poisoning" and "Jewish, but Not Too Jewish."

Primarily a freewheeling analysis of the psyche of the anti- Semitic Jew, Mamet's book paints a portrait of a pathetic figure who, out of his despair and loneliness, seeks in the Other the self- validation and inner fulfillment he mislaid when he abandoned his own people and heritage. Much of the argument consists of anthropological and psychological musings, some apt, some amateurish. Mamet's primary sources include Eric Hoffer, Karen Horney and Lawrence Kushner (his rabbi). Sometimes, it's difficult to determine whether an idea originates with the author, as when, for example, he twice heuristically links the akedah and infanticide to his version of the Santa Claus myth - a stranger, arriving by night, stuffs the bad children into his sack and, leaving an empty stocking, steals away into the darkness.

In the end, Mamet addresses Jewish Israel-bashers and apostates directly, urging them to reconsider their faulty premises and to return to their people. For two reasons, few if any are likely to respond to his invitation. First, for purposes of persuasion, a more open-minded rhetorical strategy would have been more politic. Throughout "The Wicked Son," Mamet's tone is unremittingly declarative, his voice spits pellets from a know-it-all's shotgun. Second, Mamet takes little account of what Ozick identified as "the preening self-love" that reinforces his target audience's "low moral cowardice." It is not likely to respond well to badgering. Which brings to mind a final matter: Aside from George Bernard Shaw, I can't think of another English-language playwright recognized for his prose style. Although the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist is obviously bright and is (by my lights) generally right, compared, for example, to Ozick, he is rhetorically flatfooted. For shame, indeed.

Haim Chertok's most recent book is "He Also Spoke As a Jew: The Life of James Parkes" (Vallentine Mitchell).

(Copyright (c) 2006. The Jerusalem Report)