The biggest flaw in Peter Beinart’s admittedly very important NYRB piece is his failure to recognize that Liberalism and Zionism are at root inconsistent. There are two reasons for this:
First, like all nationalisms, Zionism privileges the group over the individual. The rights and obligations of individuals derive ultimately from their membership in the collective. Liberalism, in contrast, is premised on the fundamental notions that rights and obligations exist primarily by virtue of the individual.
Second, while all nationalisms tend to have religious roots, Zionism is particularly heavily shaped by its religious content both in terms of the focus of its nationalist aspirations (the biblical land of Israel) and its definition of who counts as a Jew (matrilineal descent or Orthodox conversion).
Beinart is nostalgic for a golden age of Liberal Zionism, but like all mythic pasts, it is more complicated than his account suggests. True, the founding fathers of Israel were avowedly secular and talked a good game about equal rights for all in the new Jewish state. But the reality, as Israel’s New Historians have shown us, is that Ben Gurion and other early Liberal Zionists pursued a pretty aggressive nationalist agenda of conquest and ethnic cleansing and only begrudgingly respected the rights of non-Jews in the new state. Moreover, their secularism, while undeniable, hardly prevented them from conceding great power to religious authority from the get-go and did nothing to prevent the rise of messianic religious nationalism in Israel, particularly after 1967.
Given all of this, Beinart's call for a reinvigoration of Liberal Zionism seems quixotic. I am not at all surprised that young Liberal Jews, both here and in Israel, are moving increasingly in the direction of some form of post-Zionism.
Couldn’t have put it better myself. Expect Witty to come around eventually, to browbeat you and moan and do rhetorical contortions and, generally, validate your thesis completely.
Chaos, you’ll just have to ‘live and let live’. Whatever this means, I am sure Witty is formulating his response to this article.
He could always say that liberal in this instance means more to the left side of Zionism, and perhaps that what he always tries to explain.
Yes, move toward liberal democracy, not toward “liberal Zionism”. But be careful of “democracy”, too. Or is it “neoliberal”? Don’t want to live in a state of ANY size which is substantially run by and for its (or anyone else’s) corporations.
To Palestinians, ALL zionism is larceny and murder!
It’s stupid to intellectualize zionism. Zionism is base and barbaric and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, having already caused the death and dispossession of millions of innocents.
It is a fake cult with a fake history written by fake mideasterners. The whole thing is a fucking sham and should be immediately dumped down the stinking sewers of history, where nazism still buoys cracked and aimless and encircled with fat loud shit flies.
thank you micheal desch.
Liberalism and Zionism are at root inconsistent
no one has ever explained to me how they are consistent. furthermore the fretting over demographics would not ever be a concern if they were consistent.
i’m noticing a theme on phil’s line up this morning as i work my way down the page. ;)
from levy
zionism is inconsistent w/democracy.
Zionism is antithetical to democracy for the same reason the government of a communal society is antithetical to democracy.
can zionism be progressive?
ARe murder, theft and discrimination progressive, annie?
Big fat NO!
i suppose it was a rhetorical question taxi. liberal zionism is an oxymoron, progressive zionism is an oxymoron, and a zionist democracy is an oxymoron.
I know, annie – i just didn’t want your important question echoing lonely out there in colorless cyber space :-)
thank you taxi. i’m battling ‘progressive’ zionists on another site. progressively worse and worse each day is what it looks like.
Liberalism and nationalism complement each other.
Nationalism is a people having a body, rather than just being phantom. If you believe that there are no peoples, wonderful. But, that is a uniquely western cosmopolitan construct (even more particularly, North American), that very very few communities in the world subscribe to.
Palestinians don’t. Italians don’t. French don’t. Iranians don’t. Russians don’t. Inuit don’t. Chileans don’t.
Liberalism is the best of the methodology of political constitution. One-person one-vote within its jurisdiction, color blind equal rights for all.
Both features of nationalism (Zionism) and liberalism (democracy) are included in the Israeli basic laws, stated in equal proportion that is argued about in the Israeli parliament.
You’re not understanding how two features can co-exist in a state, is similar to someone that develops a product that can either be safe OR green.
Its possible to incorporate two characteristics into a life. Healthy and considerate.
nationalism- not racism… there is a difference… as we see in israel it is racism, not nationalism, thus it’s apartheid state..
Zionism is nationalism.
an ‘abnormal’ nationalism.
link to dissidentvoice.org
“The Zionists were determined to reenact in the middle of the twentieth century the exclusive settler colonialism of an earlier epoch. They were determined to repeat the supremacist history of the white colons in the Americas and Oceania. By the measure of any historical epoch, much less that of an age of decolonization, the Zionist project was radical in the fate it had planned for the Palestinians: their complete or near-complete displacement from Palestine. A project so daring, so radical, so anachronistic could only emerge from unlimited hubris, deep racial contempt for the Palestinians, and a conviction that the ‘primitive’ Palestinians would prove to be utterly lacking in the capacity to resist their own dispossession.”
Zionism is a form of communalism where all are required to believe the same things and where the government’s role is to enforce orthodoxy.
If Zionism is nationalism, the question remains : Is it a liberal nationalism?
All nationalisms are based on the concept of an in-group and an out-group; us and them.
In fact, it can be argued that nationalism is inherently illiberal by the very act of creating this distinction. Hence the need to differentiate between ethnic nationalism (originating in 19th century Europe) and civic nationalism (exemplified by representative democracies such as the United States and France).
We all have seen the consequences of ethnic nationalism when it becomes the ideology of a state. This is why most, if not all, of Western democracies have moved away from an ethnic nationalist definition of their political entity to a civic nationalist definition. In that context, the state affords equal rights, both in theory (its laws) and practice (its judicial system) to all of its citizens, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, language, race, creed, etc.
This is where Israel fails the test of liberalism. Where as it certainly cannot be denied the claim that Zionism is nationalism it certainly cannot be attributed the definition of a liberal nationalism. By its very own admission, Israel, the political entity, is defined a Jewish state, an ethno-religious identification. Jewish citizens, the in-group, are afforded special and privileged rights over the non-Jewish citizens, the out-group. This cognitive dissonance between liberalism and Zionism has simply been acknowledged by Peter Beinart.
This is a long comment to simply say that liberal Zionism is most definitely an oxymoron.
great comment Surcouf
zionism is racism…..
it gets expressed as an unhealthy extreme form of nationalism as well…
Incomprehensible blather. Cosmopolitanism is not North American, it originates with the Greeks and is probably older than that (remember they didn’t have nations or ethnicities as we understand that term; tribes and cities and city states). In other words, the concept predates the birth of both the United States and Israel by thousands of years. Additionally, the concept of civic nationalism is not peculiar nor is it particular to the Americas; France is not the state of the Gauls, and their concept of citizenship is not contingent on ethnicity any more than it is in the US.
I’d also add that Zionists were a small minority of European Jews before the Holocaust; perhaps as low as two percent. It is not without irony (nor by accident) that it was the climax of European ethnic nationalism and colonialism, the Second World War, that spawned a state for Jews in the Levant.
Anyway, if the UK were to declare itself the state of the English you can imagine what the reaction would be in Wales and Scotland. Zionism is nothing special; just a different form of ethnic nationalism, and only compatible with liberalism to the extent that Jews remain an overwhelming political majority.
Richard Witty: haven’t you missed the main point? *Ethnic* nationalism is incompatible with modern Western democratic values (as are religious nationalism and ethno-religious nationalism). Contemporary Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and the United States are not ethnic nationalist states (or religious nationalist or ethno-religious nationalist states). Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa *were* ethnic nationalist states, as is contemporary Israel.
Modern Western democracies do not provide special status or privileges under the law to particular ethnic or religious groups.
On what rational grounds would you disagree with these basic facts of life?
One-person one-vote within its jurisdiction, color blind equal rights for all.
the jurisdiction of the israel gov doesn’t have one person one vote. it may be color blind but it isn’t religious blind.
Palestinians don’t. Italians don’t. French don’t. Iranians don’t. Russians don’t. Inuit don’t. Chileans don’t.
are you trying to tell me that italy and france define what is italian and french (as in the french people or italian people) by gerrymandering out different ethnicities to define their ‘people’, or gerrymandering ‘in’ a select group which is more pure?
israel is not a country like france is a country because it’s nationalism is not determined by religion. what other nationalist countries define themselves thru religion? and please explain how that other nationalist state compliments w/their liberalism.
Israeli nationalism is not literally determined by religion but by ethnicity. That is how Noam Chomsky lived in and was invited to be an Israeli citizen in 1951, but was not religious.
Israel is Jewish like France is French. It is a nationalism.
And it is a liberal nationalist state that allows its citizens full civil rights (at least on the books).
There is NO inherent contradiction between nationalism and liberalism.
“Israel is Jewish like France is French. It is a nationalism.”
Every citizen of Israel is Jewish like every citizen of France is French.
See the comments for how Israel, unlike most states in the world, legally discern between citizenship and nationality.
link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
“There is NO inherent contradiction between nationalism and liberalism.”
This from the guy who just told us he favored ethnic cleansing in the other thread–specifically, he would not have allowed a Palestinian right of return in 1950 because Zionism was too fragile then. Now that many years have gone by, letting in some old people by themselves won’t pose a “threat”.
But once you accept a contradiction, you can prove anything.
Richard Witty wrote: “Israel is Jewish like France is French. It is a nationalism.”
Wrong: France does not organize its polity around French *ethnic* nationalism. There is an important distinction between modern Western democratic nationalism and ethnic or religious nationalism. Do you understand that distinction?
Would you object if the United States defined itself as an Anglo-Christian “democratic” state?
Israeli nationalism is not literally determined by religion but by ethnicity.
do you KNOW the definition of ethnicity witty?
as you cherry pick your way thru that common definition notice what you are NOT including ie “shared territory”. your definition also does not account for language, for we all know most jews entering israel don’t speak hebrew. what about “physical appearance”, no that would be incorrect also because most jews don’t share similiar physical attributes. notice how shlomo sand’s definition of what constitutes a people, israeli to be specific, is rejected by zionists. ‘nationality’, no..that would be right either because all israelis share the same nation yet you would not classify as the same ethnicity. the culture of zionism thrives in israel but israel’s own definition of state doesn’t define it as exclusively jewish, at all. in fact it made specific mention of respecting all religions. so i ask you: are the israeli’s who are not zionists part of the nation? are they part of israel nationalism?
no, your zionist nationalism is akin to white nationalists in this country. it carves out the minorities and doesn’t include them in their vision of israel. so if it is not ‘literally’ determined by religion but by ethnicity as you claim what are the other distinguishing features in the definition of ethnicity you are basing it on, if not religion?
And it is a liberal nationalist state that allows its citizens full civil rights (at least on the books).
Plus, Israel doesn’t have a constitution, so what books shmooks is he talking about? (rhetorical question).
Israel is Jewish like France is French
True statement:
1. Every French citizen is a Frenchman (or woman) and every Frenchwoman (or man) is a French citizen.
False statement:
2. Every Israeli citizen is a Jew and every Jew is an Israeli citizen.
Ergo Israel is not Jewish like France is French.
Sadly,
You folks are looking for reasons to deny Jewish self-determination, rather than for finding ways that Jewish self-determination can be humane.
I know you think that you are only speaking for justice, but in advocating for anti-Zionism, you are advocating for selective prohibition from self-governance only for Jewish (Zionism).
Actually,
Israel is French like France is French. A comparable minority of French citizens do not identify themselves as French.
But, they do regard themselves as citizens of France.
We’ve given Zionists sixty years to come up with a way of expressing so called “Jewish self-determination” that doesn’t involve ethnic cleansing, state-sponsored terrorism, and gross violations of international law.
You have failed. Hands down.
Witty, can you go to France, get declared French, and be shuttled out to occupied territory on Jews-only roads to live in government subsidized housing?
No.
But you can go to Israel and do exactly that.
Let the Jews found themselves a state where they don’t have to take it away from the native population, and they can self-determine their asses off. But the Zionists founded themselves a state on the ruins of the native population, and therefore they have no right to it, or to determine anything.
I believe fifteen out of a hundred Senators in the US Congress are Jewish. That’s a representation in excess of their percent population of around seven fold.
That isn’t enough Jewish self-determination for you?
A comparable minority of French citizens do not identify themselves as French.
What a self-serving oversimplification. In what sense and to what extent do they not “identify themselves as French”? Does the state not identify them as French? Do other French citizens not identify them as French? In any event:
1. They are French in their citizenship; Palestinan-Israelis are not Jewish in their citizenship.
2. They are immigrants or children of immigrants; Palestinian-Israelis are not.
3. France has a process of naturalisation for members of all ethnicities; Israel does not.
4. Members of all ethnicities are equal under French law; Israel has at least 20 laws that discriminate against non-Jews.
5. Those who are not culturally French may become so (and their children generally do – even in the Banlieues, despite de facto discrimination and alienation); Palestinian-Israelis can never become culturally Jewish, and to the superficial extent that they can, will still be segregated and discriminated against – both de jure and de facto – in ways that naturalised and integrated immigrants in France are not.
6. One can become French while retaining one’s religious identity; one cannot be a Muslim or a Christian Jew.
I could go on, but I think the above is sufficient to reject the patently false assertion that Judaism in Israel is merely nationalism, no different from any other liberal democracy with a distinctive national identity.
“You have failed. Hands down.”
My sentiments precisely Chaos. No responsible or humane form of zionism has emerged, just belligerency, killing and vast amounts of propaganda to convince us otherwise.
The experiment to create an artificial nation has failed. Either Israel has to clean up it’s act, quickly, or morph into something else more inclusive.
Thomas Jefferson was liberal but that business about “all men being created equal” did not include millions of slaves or women. It wasn’t until 100 years after the Civil War that the promise of equality for Black Americans began to be fulfilled, when they finally demanded it. It took even longer for women to get the vote. We still have a large minority who think American is a Christian country for native English-speakers only.
American nationalism ain’t perfect, Mike. Neither is Israeli nationalism or French nationalism or Iraqi nationalism. Most nationalist movements elevate the majority over the minority, despite principals stating otherwise. Fact is, nationalism is inconsistent with equality. Not just Zionism. With the right institutions, some level of equality and justice can be maintained. But look how fragile that is in most of the world. It’s a bad time in Israel now. But a resurrection of liberal Zionism could reverse that and deliver on more of the promises made by Israel’s founding fathers. Meantime, take a look at what is happening at Guantanemo under our first Black President and be afraid, very afraid. It’s not a great era for civil liberties here either.
take a look at what is happening at Guantanemo under our first Black President and be afraid, very afraid
ok, let’s take a look. we have possibly hundreds of people locked up in despicable conditions denied habeas corpus, torture..awful. compared that with israel..where literally millions have no rights and many many more are held in captivity in conditions equal to those at gitmo. are you very afraid of israel?
Most nationalist movements elevate the majority over the minority, despite principals stating otherwise.
we know that. but we don’t call them liberal. witty couldn’t answer this for me, maybe you can
what other nationalist countries define themselves thru religion? and please explain how that other nationalist state compliments w/their liberalism.
You mean Israel isn’t the only human rights violator in the world? We know that.
And Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite–gosh, never saw that one coming.
I’m trying to figure out your point–in the two posts I’ve seen from you you’ve mentioned a lot of other refugees and a lot of other human rights violators, so apparently you think–well, what? Some of us have said some pretty harsh things about the US and the Iraq War, mostly at other blogs,but also here, and some of us can go into detail about America’s role in supporting other human rights violators, not to mention our own violations. And it’s not exactly a secret that the US has an ugly history. Are you comparing modern Israel to 18th century America? I wouldn’t go quite that far–Israel is more like late 20th century South Africa.
No, it’s not a great era for civil liberties in the US, but this doesn’t effect our obligation, wherever we live, to oppose the violations of civil liberties in Israel.
I have never seen a “liberal Zionist” who wasn’t, when scratched, still all about Jewish exceptionalism. Who was willing to go all the way to restore justice to the Palestinians after they realized how it would erode the “Jewish character of the state.”
You can have justice or you can have a Jewish state. Pick one.
Beinart has done a great service by simply recognizing that a Jewish State necessarily discriminates against its non-Jewish citizens. Amazingly, this obvious fact has been well camouflaged by hasbara throughout Israel’s history. While Beinart himself is willing to make that “sacrifice” to his liberal ideals — he’ll tolerate inequality for Palestinians because it is necessary for the greater good of the Jewish State — hopefully there will be many who read his article, recognize the impossibility of equality in Israel, and come to the opposite conclusion. Beinart himself might eventually come around. Criticism of his ultimate opinion is well-placed and deserved, but the publication of his reasoning may be valuable nevertheless.
Isn’t the main idea of Zionism that Palestine is Jewish land, ie that there should be a sovereign power in that place whose overriding purpose are first to defend and maintain the rights of those people who are subject to it and who are Jewish and second to maintain the rights of Jewish people everywhere, particularly to migrate to the Jewish land.
By contrast, most sovereign power is justified, I’d say under both conservative and liberal theories, by the claim to defend and maintain equally the rights of all those subject to it. It’s a matter of sheer reason rather than of liberalism.
‘Britain for the British’! Fine, so long as we do not unreasonably discriminate among our residents and are fair to would-be immigrants. I do not see how Zionist theory permits anyone to say ‘Israel for the Israelis!’ rather than ‘Israel for the Jews!’. The only way to bring these two demands into harmony is to say that in Israel only Jews deserve the protection standardly delivered by sovereign power to the individuals subject to it. That is really what the people whom Beinart denounces are saying.
They are being more consistent than he is. They are questioning the assumption that he makes, that there is a way of reconciling special rights for one group with equal rights for all groups in the same space. Behind all his display of rather complicated information, his claims that Zionism was wonderful once and so on, there lies this stark assumption, whose falsehood to my mind is very easy to see. All this academic calm, judiciousness and fluent talk behind all this injustice and bloodshed.
The ‘Beinart exception’, whereby human rights give way to ethnic rights, is not so much illiberal as unreasonable.
from a different perspective, a reason why “Liberal Zionism” is innately destined for extinction as our moral evolution grinds inexorably forward.
link to youtube.com
is fairness hard-wired in us?
“all nationalisms tend to have religious roots,”
Eh? What are the religious roots of (e.g.) Australian nationalism?
The beginning of the modern state system was the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and began the era of modern nationalism which culimated in the XIXth Century. It was the Reformation of the the previous century that established the principle of Cuius regio, eius religio. While the modern nationalisms are mostly avowedly secular, they have religious roots, and most of them continue to have religious underpinnings of one sort or another (e.g., the church of England and English nationalism).
“I do not see how Zionist theory permits anyone to say ‘Israel for the Israelis!’ rather than ‘Israel for the Jews!’.”
Well, if all the Jews go to Israel, and all the non-Jews are driven out, those two might come to the same thing, and it would certainly fit Zionist theory.
And this is exactly the conclusion, a logical one, that the Israelis whom Beinart denounces, as if they were unthinking or misled in some complicated calculation, have drawn. It isn’t they who can’t see where their arguments point and I would even say that they deserve some credit for seeing and not flinching from what they really have to believe. Beinart desperately tries to pretend that there is some other possible conclusion from the premises of Zionism, producing an exercise in academic self-deception that is really quite frustrating to read. I’ve read that ‘non-exclusive Zionism’ was an academic movement as far back as the 1930s, but no one can make sense of ‘special rights for some plus equal rights for all’.
There is only one law that is essential to Zionism that constrains the rights of nonJews and that is the law of immigration. The national anthem, the flag are symbolic and certainly nonessential. Laws regarding ownership of land could be discarded. Laws that enable unequal distribution of funds and education and development should be discarded tomorrow. The problem is not regarding the essence of Zionism, but the facts are that the laws of Israel, particularly regarding land ownership and the lawmakers of Israel primarily regarding the distribution of funds are made by those who consider Arabs/Palestinians to be a threat. Maybe the laws regarding immigration and the demographic concerns that those laws embody ultimately mean that it is impossible to have a country of equality when there are concerns regarding what will happen if and when there is an Arab majority.
(I’m sure this will not satisfy anyone who wants to see Israel sink to oblivion and those who are Zionists would oppose it on other grounds, but: Personally, I think Israel should throw its gates open to Filipinos, Thais, Indians and other third world nonMuslims. Because of the higher standard of living millions would flock to Israel. This way a nonMuslim majority can be maintained.)
wondering jew wrote: “The problem is not regarding the essence of Zionism.”
How would you define and describe the essence of Zionism?
I would define Zionism as messianic Jewish ethno-religious nationalism, grounded in biblical tropes and themes of conflict with “the nations.”
So: how big a problem is any form of messianic ethno-religious nationalism grounded in themes of conflict with ethnic, religious and national outsiders? What does history tell us?
What history tells me is that such ideological movements strongly tend to self-destruct.