Not so long ago, neoconservatives were splenetic about an academic left which presumed that ethnic or gender identity was the ultimate, immovable premise of knowledge and the foundation for all values, and that denial of this premise was nothing more or less than a mask for privilege, generally of the straight white male variety. Surely, argued the opponents of identity politics, enlightened moderns had to understand that there were universal values; that they trumped all time-bound, space-bound values, whether national, tribal, racial, sexual, or what have you; that serious thought must free itself of parochial attachments. Some who took this position called themselves liberals, most called themselves conservatives, but all agreed that a person thinks with an individual mind, and that it was presumptuous—also philosophically untenable—to think as a representative of a group. I was one of several who wrote a book on this subject, and was excoriated not only by leftists horrified by my embrace of what they called—intending an insult—a “neo-Enlightenment project” but by so-called conservatives who found me insufficiently appreciative of the horrors of affirmative action and the wonders of contemporary American capitalism’s contributions to equality.
That was in another century, and besides, the debate is (almost) dead. But I think of identity politics again as I read the text of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last month to the U. S. Congress. The one that was interrupted by bipartisan applause 60 times. The one in which Netanyahu declared that the
path of liberty is not paved by elections alone. It’s paved when governments permit protests in town squares [which the Israeli occupation government on the West Bank often doesn’t do], when limits are placed on the powers of rulers [as long as those placing the limits are not Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem], when judges are beholden to laws and not men [fortunately this is sometimes the case], and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule.
This was the gauntlet that Netanyahu and his Congressional enablers flung down before Barack Obama, the one that affirmed that “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers” and built up to this peroration:
I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state when I say to you, representatives of America: Thank you.
And I’m waiting for the diehard opponents of identity politics to carve out a moment of criticism for this man who affirms that he speaks for the entire Jewish people—who have not voted on whether the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah and Hebron are in fact being occupied by foreigners.
Sauce for goose, meet gander.