Hillel Ben Sasson at Peter Beinart’s new Zion Square blog at Daily Beast is done with trying to resuscitate the term Zionism. “Zionism’s been stolen.” I like this piece because it shows the growing awareness inside Jewish life, and inside Zionism, that Zionism just hasn’t worked out well, whatever the idealism of its founders. This is why Jewish Voice for Peace eschews the word entirely and says that it includes Zionists and former Zionists. And also shows why American liberals and anti-Zionists are necessary to this conversation: to lift the curtain on the Nakba and interrogate the racist component of the original movement. Excerpt of the Ben Sasson (emphasis mine, and thanks to Peter Belmont):
In contemporary Israel, you can’t express values of human rights, tolerance, ideological pluralism, or critique the occupation or the militarization of Israeli society. If you do, leading public figures, Knesset members, and government officials will denounce you as undermining the existence of Israel. The anti-Zionist trump card is waived whenever a public figure of any color or denomination questions the hegemonic economy of hatred and fear towards Arabs, Europeans, Democrats, or anyone that doesn’t recite the mantra that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The fact that many founding Zionists would have strongly opposed such a narrow definition the term matters little to this loud and somewhat paranoid crowd of Jewish McCarthys.
As long as the word Zionism no longer refers simply to the right of a people to self definition, but rather to a means of determining who is on “our” side and who is a traitor, Zionism will not serve me as a useful component of identity. For me, the apologetic task of trying to defend (or re-conquer) the term is futile, because it necessitates endless ordeals; none of which could ever legitimize what could have been Zionism for me.
Good.
One of our commenters here, Danaa, has better than anyone described what is so destructive to Jewish outlook about being raised in Zionism.
One of the biggest mysteries to me is how American and other disapora Jews could support in Israel things that they would rail against in the democratic countries they live in.
Zionism is done, they need to let it go.
“…Jewish McCarthys.”
Good description. First time I’ve heard it. Term might work as an effective tool.
what could have been zionism
in palestine
a land with a people
palestinians
together with a people without a land
european jewry
become as one
Thanks to Mondoweiss we came to be informed that the orginal Zionists from Austria and Germany rounded up the sickly settlers in Palestine and sent them back home. It is the task of historians to look at origins to let us appreciate our not so nice roots that led to what and where we are now.
Israel was supposed to make a safe place for Jews to live as Jews. If the Israeli Jews must “circle the wagons” to the extent shown by recent events and described here, demanding (as some Americans do when PATRIOT ACT is criticized, for instance, with little flags on lapels and “American love it or Leave it” on bumper stickers), the new “Israeli expansionism and lawlessness, love it or leave it” described here is a proof — IMO — that (at a minimum) Israel is not a safe place (at least for democratically minded Jews) because the fascist tendency is a statement of fear of and attack against civil-rights-human-rights-style democratic tendencies in favor of strict-majority-rule-without-civil-rights-or-human-rights. Sad to see it happen anywhere.
As it does appear to be happening in Israel, and on the basis of grabbing and holding all of Mandatory Palestine in a non-democratic apartheid-style 1SS, dooming 2SS to the extent the matter is left to purely Israeli determination, it is clear that there is a need for international intervention, and not for I/P negotiation.
That clarity, and 5-cents will buy a 5-cent cigar.