The Peace FAQ:
Post-Zionism, New Historians, revisionism
Israel is now a country - whether we like it or not - it is militarily and economically strong - Zionism has therefore fulfilled its purpose - Jews are safe and secure. Isn't it time to drop the defenses and begin to build a new Middle East? In this endevour, aren't antiquated notions like 'Zionism' nothing but an obstruction?
- A hundred years after Basel, fifty years after the founding of the
state, no self-respecting Jew should have to defend Zionism. The
argument from history was made a hundred years ago: Israel was our
sovereign land from which we were exiled and the claim to which we
never renounced; unlike the colonizers of, say, Australia, South
Africa and North America, we are returning to--not creating--our
patrimony. And the argument from necessity--that a people savagely
persecuted and denied refuge in every corner of the globe needs at
least one place of its own--was made fifty years ago, tragically and
definitively, in the wake of the Holocaust. Moreover, the last fifty
years of rebuilding the land with Jewish labor and genius, and of
defending it with Jewish blood, have made denials of the Jewish claim
unworthy even of reply. No one asks Australia to justify its right to
breathe. The time for justifying Israel's is long past.
This is not to say that the deniers are not there. Entire nations deny. Entire leagues of nations deny. Why, the United Nations, speaking for the mass of mankind, would still be denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state were it not so beholden to the United States. The war against Zion is, of course, the leitmotif of Arab international life. And not just of the Iraqs and Syrias. It infuses the discourse of post-Camp David Egypt and of the post-Oslo Palestinians. "We know only one word: jihad, jihad, jihad.... We are in a conflict with the Zionist movement and the Balfour Declaration and all imperialist activities." That was Yasir Arafat in Bethlehem three years after Oslo. (Balfour, no less.)
Arguing with anti-Zionists is not just pointless. It is demeaning. The intellectual battle to be fought today is not with the anti-Zionists, those who maintain that the Jewish state should never have existed, but with the post-Zionists, those who maintain that the Jewish national idea has outlived its usefulness, that it is obsolete, an impediment now both to individual self-expression and to entry into the post-sovereign world of the coming century.
Post-Zionism is the stance, the affectation of many on the Israeli and Diaspora Jewish Left. It sees Israeli nationalism, with its single-minded concentration on survival and the concomitant strictures it imposes on individual and societal life, as an anachronism. It longs for the rich normality of the West--for the individual: personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness; for society: the worldliness and sophistication that comes with the transcendence of mere patriotism. And for the world it sees the triumph of geoeconomics and multiculturalism over the geopolitics and nationalism of an age that has passed. Post-Zionism finds its most utopian expression in Shimon Peres's "new Middle East," a shining vision of not a mere Jewish Zion but an Arab-Israeli Benelux.
This is all very nice. And very crazy.
Weariness with a national idea begins with the conviction that the national idea has succeeded, indeed succeeded so well that slavish obeisance to it can only retard the higher human strivings. It rests on the conviction that Israel has made it. That it has such roots and power and weight that it is here, now and forever.
Many years ago, I had a private conversation with a man who later went on to serve in a high position in Israel's defense establishment. At the end of a discourse on what he planned to do when he came to a position of power, he, half-smiling, added a chilling throwaway line: "If there's still a country around by then." Israel is surrounded by countries arming themselves with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that could destroy Israel in an hour. Only Israeli deterrence holds them at bay. Nearer to home--indeed, at home-- Israel is living within the confines of mandatory Palestine with a population of over 3 million Palestinians bred on a hatred of Jews that beggars the imagination. The grand mufti of Jerusalem only last month--in a sermon!-- called Israeli settlers the "sons of monkeys and pigs." And, thanks to the Oslo agreements, his flock is quite methodically arming itself and its 40,000- man "police," preparing for Arafat's jihad.
It is tempting to think that because Israel escaped with its life in 1948, in 1967 and in 1973 that it is divinely ordained to escape with its life forever. But in that temptation lies ruin.
Milan Kundera once defined a small nation as "one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear and knows it." The United States is no small nation. Neither is Japan. Nor France. Large nations may suffer defeats, even occupation. They may even, for a time, lose their independence. But they cannot disappear. Small nations can. Israel is a small nation. That is the reason post-Zionism is so dangerous. It is dedicated to dismantling the Zionist fortress state. A noble end--but only when the mortal danger has passed. To do so when the danger is at the gate is suicide.
Israel is, of course, no longer a pioneer nation. But it is still a frontier nation. It is still an endangered nation. It is still a small nation. It can still disappear. And it is all the more likely to disappear when, with the anti-Zionists still ringing the walls, the post-Zionists counsel--in the name of all that is humane and progressive--taking them down.
- Charles Krauthammer, The New Republic, September 8, 1997
- And weariness with the national idea in Israel begins,
ironically, with the conviction that the national idea has
succeeded. How many times have we heard major Jewish political
thinkers say that "Zionism has succeeded." They claim with
pride that Zionism is the only "ism" of the twentieth
century that has actually attained its goals. But the conclusion that
they draw from the success of Zionism is that it is no longer
needed. These people think that Israel has made it, that it has
such roots and such power that it is here to stay forever.
There has been talk recently by certain "intellectuals" about radically changing the character of the state; to make it thoroughly secularistic by, among other things, doing away with Hativka as the national anthem, abolishing the Law of Return, and repealing all legislation that gives the state a Jewish character.
These people are caught up in the Post-Zionist illusion; they forget that Israel is surrounded by countries arming themselves to the teeth with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and with one goal -- to destroy Israel. And thanks to the Oslo Agreement, the PLO is sitting in our heartland, arming itself and its tens of thousands of terrorist "police," preparing the final jihad to destroy us.
- from ALL THE KING'S HORSES, by Jay Shapiro, Arutz 7, Feb. 14, 1999
- RELATED SECTIONS:
Anti-Zionism, Self-Hating Jews, Galut Mentality, Socialism, Leftism, Edenism, The Stockholm Syndrome
- WWW RESOURCES:
- BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul, by Yoram Hazony
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Fabricating Israeli History, by Efraim Karsh
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk, by Shlomo Sharan
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Rethinking the Middle East, by Efraim Karsh
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, by Edward Alexander, Paul Bogdanor
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - If I Am Not For Myself: the Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, by Ruth Wisse
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel, by William G. Dever
[VIEW BOOK HERE]
- The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul, by Yoram Hazony
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