The New York Times’ coverage of Israel often reads as if were written of Zionists, for Zionists and by Zionists, and a news analysis by Steven Erlanger last weekend titled, “Who are the True Heirs of Zionism?” was in that tradition. The piece said there is a “fierce battle” in Israel between good Zionists and bad ones. The good ones wanted to set up a model democracy. The bad ones are trying to have the entire biblical land of Israel and to hell with world opinion.
Are [the true heirs of Zionism] those who hold to the secular and internationalist vision of the nation’s founders, or are they the nationalist religious settlers who create communities beyond the 1967 boundaries and seek to annex more of the biblical land of Israel?
The piece all-but-openly adopted the point of view of liberal Zionist Bernard Avishai that Israel was a miraculous Jewish rebirth.
The largely secular founders of Israel, the generation of David Ben-Gurion, had a dual vision of Israel as both “a light among nations” and a state like others, part of the international community of nations, outward looking and socially just.
The settlers ruined that. Uri Dromi, former spokesperson for Yitzhak Rabin, tells Erlanger:
Rather than trying to be a nation among nations, “today, without saying it, by what we are doing, we are a people that is alone.”
But don’t end on a down note! At the end, Erlanger expresses the fond hope that everything’s gonna work out:
Still, the older Zionism is not dead yet and continues to create “facts on the ground,” noted Mr. Avishai. Every high-tech start-up, every new Thai restaurant and every successful film — and the very existence of a Hebrew-speaking, pluralistic, thriving Tel Aviv — speaks to the success of traditional Zionism and its continuing importance in Israeli life.
The article is so narrowminded it is hard to read. It mentions Palestinians twice. It quotes Zero Palestinians, even though it begins with the bold admission that
Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies. The return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty there have always carried within them the displacement of those already living on the land.
Erlanger would seem to believe in that romance — the return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland — sufficiently that he refuses to entertain any serious critique of Zionism here. Those critiques are taking place across the Israeli world and the Jewish world and they include these ideas:
The fierce battle Erlanger wants readers to believe in has been resolved. Israel is dominated by a Jewish settler government that was reelected emphatically last March. Even the alleged liberals, the Zionist Camp, are scared to oppose settlers openly. This is the endpoint of the blessed “Jewish sovereignty” in the same way that dictatorship and bureaucracy were the endpoint of Communist ideology. This understanding of Israeli political culture is expressed best lately by Ayman Odeh, an Israeli political leader who has made the terrible mistake in the eyes of the New York Times of not being Jewish and of representing 20 percent of the country’s population, so he won’t be quoted; and by Max Blumenthal, who is Jewish (and American, like Avishai) but made the terrible mistake of being an anti-Zionist, so he can’t be quoted.
The issue is how long the Times and the other long-distance runners of Jewish sovereignty are going to marginalize these critiques as irrelevant– when other people want to talk about them, including many Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans and even young Americans (at Bernie Sanders rallies). Bear in mind that Erlanger also deemed Ghada Karmi’s story of how her Palestinian family lost her house in West Jerusalem to be not newsworthy–when Karmi thought it so relevant that she wrote a whole book about her family’s life in that house. In this article, Erlanger acknowledges Karmi’s story with his opening indictment– “the displacement of those already living on the land” — but after that it’s right back to the real work of ignoring Palestinians and anti-Zionists.
Of course I don’t think those critiques are irrelevant, but are absolutely vital to an understanding of Zionism in the 21st century. Writing an article about Whither Zionism and leaving out its countless victims, would be like writing, Whither Communism and ignoring the gulag. And as to the point, Who are the true inheritors of Zionism? — let’s assume this is a parochial, Jewish question– the answer is, anti-Zionists. Zionism arose as a fervent minority belief inside European Jewish life 120 years ago as a real answer to real historical conditions; and today anti-Zionism is burgeoning as a minority belief inside Diaspora Jewish life, and inside Israeli life too, as a real answer to real conditions. Zionism once was able to draw Franz Kafka and Bernie Sanders because it was an idealistic ideology of Jewish deliverance. Today Zionism’s life as a movement that can attract others is over: it has resolved itself in colonial oppression, despite all of Avishai’s Thai restaurants. Anti-Zionism is a growing movement inside Jewish life, aided by many Palestinian friends. How long it will take the Times to deign to notice is anybody’s guess. But these days more and more readers are aware of the coverup.
Amherst college, named after (or later) than Lord Amherst, a soldier who recommended using smallpox to kill American Indians, is rethinking (and rejecting) its association with the genocidal commander.
Will Israel rethink anything it did, in the brave old days of yore (1948), even as more and more reports of 1948 slaughters come out?
Will Israel ever admit to itself, to world’s Jews, and to the world, that it came into being (1920-1950) not as an entity being attacked (for there was no Israeli entity until it manufactured itself) but as an entity with quite dirty hands attacking another which had done it no wrong?
“as a real answer to real conditions”
I just can’t agree. If it were actually that, it might be a bit more credible. But it’s not. It’s just a leftist cause du jour, and most of the Jews involved are either completely secular and have little interest in the religion or in its perpetuation, or they’re openly hostile toward their faith. There are a few who don’t fit that mold, but most do. Additionally, anti- isn’t a movement. It’s simply opposition to another idea. I can find no coherent set of ideas that characterizes anti-Zionism.
Also, what real conditions are you talking about? Zionism came about in a world where Jews were discriminated against, and often harshly persecuted. And it came after more than a century of Jews attempting to live as equals in European society, failing, and then being murdered en masse. And it was a Jewish movement, one of a number meant to deal with . Anti-Zionism isn’t a Jewish movement. It’s a movement where the vast majority are not Jewish, and in many cases, openly hostile to Jews. It arose in the aftermath of World War II (and not recently), the ultimate argument against placing faith in European Christians to protect their Jewish populations. It’s a thoroughly discredited idea, historically, politically, and morally.
Phil – I think you are being unnecessarily harsh on Communism – if it had been practiced in other places than Russia, China and Cuba, it might have been an entirely different species. Nevertheless, I concede that had Zionism been practised in Argentina, Canada or France it could have been an entirely different species, and undoubtedly the world would have been a happier planet.
Is Erlanger a journalist? A reporter? Someone who discovers some fact, makes sure it’s true, puts it in context and reports it? He refers to,
“The return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty …”
What’s he talking about? A Biblical story of the United Kingship of Judea and Israel? Is this the sovereignty that has been resumed? It’s a story. One with very little historical evidence. We may as well be talking about Atlantis. Ditto for the Roman expulsion. But even if the story resembles in some vague way what happened, it’s about eighty years of sovereignty. Add the years after the Maccabee revolt (restricted to Judea), another one hundred. Is this journalism? Does any of this justify the phrase, “… the resumption of Jewish sovereignty?”
The return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty there have always carried within them the displacement of those already living on the land.
—————
“Those already living on the land”– a people that cannot be named.
A people on “the land“–not their homeland .
A people just living there, along with the rest of the native flora and fauna–not building, not making the desert bloom, not aspiring to the majesty of “sovereignty” or the magnificence of restored Biblical greatness.
A people subject to displacement –like an object blocking the highway that must moved.
A people without history.
A people with no name.