I told my friends the other day that I don’t believe in a two-state solution; our Peoples, cultures, economy, ‘borders’ and identities are intertwined, and we can’t separate them. One friend responded by asking what I do believe in. I am still formulating my idea of end to the conflict and a political solution, but I believe in some form of a one-state solution.
Yet, I haven’t given up completely on Zionism.
People in Israel rarely ask if you are a Zionist because it is assumed that, if you live here, you are one. Abroad, however, I have been asked that question many times, especially after I express my left-leaning opinions. I am never quite sure how to answer because they are usually asking if I believe in the validity of the Jewish state as it is structured today. I don’t. However, that doesn’t mean I am against Jewish self-determination.
Pre-state Zionist thinkers had a plurality of views on how Zionism could and should be carried out. Some believed in the creation of an autonomous Jewish state, which is what we have today, but many actually saw the potential perils of such a plan. Martin Buber, Asher Hirsch Ginsberg (Ahad Ha’am) and, of course, Theodor Herzl did not plan or imagine the Israel we know today. While Herzl would have been happy to settle another land, Ginsberg preferred to stress ‘cultural Zionism’ over an autonomous state and promoted the gradual building of a state. He also warned early settlers not to mistreat the local population.
In essence, Zionism as we know it, in the form of the State of Israel, is only one path that Zionist ideology could have taken. It is, I believe, the most oppressive path.
Over the years, I have come to realize something greater: I don’t believe that nation-states are a sustainable form of governance. They exist right now, but they will not exist forever, nor do I think that they are the best way to organize societies. Israel, as nation-state, is no exception.
Even so, as long as nation-states exist, I do believe that Jewish self-determination is just as legitimate as other peoples’ desire to self-determine. However, a legitimate need for self-determination and a belief in the sanctity of the land of Israel does not necessitate the creation of a Jewish state on this land. Even so, since we are already in Israel and since many Jews came to pre-state Israel after the Holocaust, with Europe and other nations closing their doors on them, I do see value in the realization of Jewish self-determination here on this land. It’s 2016, and the reality is that millions of Jews live here. Where would we go? Nations aren’t exactly opening their doors to refugees.
Jews did not come to an empty land. When we created the state in 1948, we kicked people out of their homes and villages (and yes, some fled on their own accord, but they were still not allowed by Israel to return). This event in known in Palestinian history and society as the Nakba, and Israeli government officials have discouraged teaching about it and have removed the word from some textbooks in the Israeli school system (though some officials have supported adding it to the official curriculum). I can’t ignore this history, and I can’t support a state that exiled hundreds of thousands in order to build itself and to create a majority.
But I can believe in a place that allows for semi-autonomy for the Jewish people, as long as the same system and rights are in place for the Palestinian people and other minorities living on this land. I believe in free movement between what is currently Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Both peoples consider Jerusalem to be holy, and so both people should be able to freely move within its city limits. In essence, I believe in a bi-national state, which could allow for both people to live on this land but to enjoy semi-autonomous representation. Today, we live in a state in which a different set of laws apply to Israeli citizens (mostly Jewish) and Palestinians. A Jewish person with citizenship and a Palestinian from the West Bank who both live in Area C (Israeli-controlled West Bank) are subject to a completely separate set of laws and judicial procedures. In order to create a just bi-national state, both peoples would need to be subject to the same laws and rights.
So no, I don’t believe in Zionism as it exists in the State of Israel today because it favors Jews over others. But yes, I believe in the possibility of Jewish self-determination that exists in partnership with Palestinian self-determination on this land. That is not the Zionism most people discuss, but it is my Zionism.
“Jewish self-determination is just as legitimate as other peoples’ desire to self-determine…”
The idea that “Jews” are the same as “Americans” or “British” is not true. British is a descriptive of people living in Britain. It includes people of any faith or no faith. It includes people of any ethnic identity. It includes people of any culture. A person who is British is a person from Britain. Jewish self determination effectively denies the right of some people to be American or British. It also denies people to join “Jews”, hence Israel’s denial of the existence Israeli citizenship.
“A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognized as “Israelis,” a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state.” https://electronicintifada.net/content/lawsuit-challenges-israels-discriminatory-citizenship-definition/8767
Jewish self-determination is not just as legitimate, and the supreme court of Israel agrees. Jewish self-determination is a mix of ethnic, religious, and cultural expectations, and is not a description of location. It is a combination of the white South Africa and Saudi Arabia – an attempt at all of racial purity, cultural purity, and ethnic purity. That is not the foundation of western nation states. Jewish self-determination demands conformity of the younger generations. In that sense those who jump up and down and scream antisemitism whenever someone criticizes Israel are more correct than you are. Jewish self-determination comes at the price of individuality. You can’t have a cohesive ethnic, racial, and religious state and have an open vibrant multi-ethnic multi cultural state at the same time. The crimes of Israel are absolutely necessary to the foundation of Jewish self-determination. More crimes of similar nature will be required to keep the dream on track.
If your vision of Jewish self-determination is a community center and weekly pot-lucks then go for it. Otherwise, it is not the same as other people’s desire to self-determine, and it is no more legitimate than any other theocracy or racist state.
The invasion of North America started off as a desire of people of various religious groups to self-determine. Over time the extreme oppressive nature of this stance has given way to what we hope is a post colonial world founded on the notion that religion, culture, and ethnicity are private matters of no interest to the nation state. That is what makes Trump so deeply offensive.
Maybe Ms Strober could go back to Philadelphia. She wouldn’t be displacing a soul there, and could concentrate on other forms of activism.
Very interesting! But I don’t entirely see what rights Zionism as you believe in it ascribes to Jewish and to other people. Is self-determination the right to be subject to laws made with the general consent of people of your own kind (however defined) without having to involve, except perhaps as members of a recognised minority, people of other kinds? And for those laws to govern the armed forces used to defend the territory where you live?
However, the idea of semi-autonomy seems to limit the scope of the laws made by this procedure: would the military and diplomatic affairs of all the semi-autonomous groups have to be conducted in common, so that no one group was fully self-determining in these respects? Ought Zionists to be content with what might be a minority voice in these matters? I have always thought that one of the motivations of Zionism is the belief that people who are Jewish cannot reasonably be expected to trust others with their defence and security.
Who made you write this BS? Even by MW relatively lax standards, this was a thoroughly pointless article of little intellectual merit. You think there is this magical connection between black Jews from Ethiopia, white Jews from Russia and Persian Jews from Iran, based on I don’t know what, that calls for them to unite and struggle for their collective self determination. Where have you been in the past 50 years, to still believe in such Zionist myth?
Why would an Arab Jew want to forsake his culture, language, ancestry and his familial ties with fellow Christian and Muslim Arabs, to join forces with a bunch of East European Jews who don’t even acknowledge his Arab identity? Instead of just admitting Zionism was an all around bad idea made worse by bad circumstances, you come up with this nonsense. Even weirder is you doing this in a time where people including those who had fought wars for Israel, are steadily coming out to speak against Zionism.
The proper name for an endeavor by which one people occupy a native people’s homeland, rename it & cleanse it of its natives is settler colonialism, not self-determination. Self-determination is what Palestinians have been struggling for – that along with freedom and independence – ever since their homeland was taken over by European Jews. It’s nice that the author visualizes Jewish self-determination co-existing in partnership with Palestinian self-determination, but he should realize by now that such an arrangement has to be up to the native (ie Palestinian) people. Anything less will amount to handing colonialism a lifeline.