Beyond Innocence and Redemption (review)

Book Reviews 201 In the chapter on "The Outside Response," while generally showing a respectable knowledge of Israeli government and politics, Hunter really doesn't grasp the most central reason why Israeli society does not push the government harder on some kind of political settlement: the security issue and serious problems involved in defending a geographically very small country if and when substantial territories might be evacuated. Hunter has cited thejerusalem Post often enough that he should be familiar with the numerous analyses by military officers and others on the security issue. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has done likewise. "Half of the total area of the West Bank and three-quarters of the Gaza Strip were to be kept by the Jewish state." The endnote reveals that this quotation comes from Meron Benvenisti. Is he to be taken as tbe definitive authority on this? The reviewer concurs with Hunter, however, that Israelis see and hear what they want to see and hear, and indeed, more could have been made of this point. Hunter does well in dealing with options possibly available to the Palestinians, and generally concerning prospects for ~a movement he sees as having suffered a series ofmajor setbacks byJune of 1990. Asserting that "Palestinians are great survivors" who take a long-range view of things, Hunter argues that "Whether the Intifada slows down, speeds up, or comes to an end, they will continue to struggle in one form or another" and that "Sooner or later, Israel will be forced to confront directly the Palestinian quest for self-determination." (The reviewer is reminded, however, of Abba Eban's observation that "The Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.") Despite some points of critique raised (and others left out) Professor Hunter has brought forth a first-class study which should be of real value to general readers and academicians who are interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For those particularly interested in the Intifada and the Israeli response it should be seen as an essential book. Scott D. Johnston Department of Political Science Hamline University Beyond Innocence and Redemption, by Marc H. Ellis. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. 214 pp. $21.95 (c). Ellis calls Judaism to a confrontation with the state power of Israel and with the legitimating force of that power-Zionism and Holocaust theology. He holds that what Jews have done to Palestinians since 1948 is 202 SHOFAR Winter 1993 Vol. 11, No.2 wrong and that they have duplicated what has been done to them over the last two millennia. Only in confrontation with the state power in Israelcan Jews move beyond being victim or oppressor. His critique is aimed at the Holocaust theology of Elie Wiesel, Emil Fackenheim, and Irving Greenberg. This theology has focused on the significance of suffering and has sought sufficient empowerment of the state of Israel so that Jews would never again be subject to massive suffering. The Six Day War served for these theologians as a sign that an innocent people was on the verge of redemption-this time the Jews would prevail. Since 1967, and particularly since the intifada, this theology has asked how power is to be exercised, or normalized, now that Israel is a nation-state. In his judgment, Holocaust theology expresses the suffering of the Jews without acknowledging the moral costs of state power. Zionism, too, substituted a secular self-identity of the Jews as a nation for the traditional and orthodox self-identity in religious terms. Ellis wants to move beyond innocence and redemption and to realize the cost of Jewish empowerment . The task of Jewish theology is to lay the groundwork for solidarity with the Palestinian people; any theology that does not seek this legitimates torture and murder. Ellis detects a precedent for his position in the ..hidden tradition" advocated by Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, and Walter Benjamin. According to the hidden tradition, one stood exclusively neither inside nor outside one's Jewish or European heritage, but as a pariah one used both heritages as a platform to gain insight into the other. A combination of Jewish suffering and Jewish empowerment-Holocaust theology-brought the European phase of the...