Adam Horowitz has a true back-of-the-envelope description of Zionism. I first heard it when I met Adam last May, in New York. Here's what he said then and reminded me of today:
led by European Jews looking for a refuge from European anti-Semitism
and guided by the mindset of European nationalism and imperialism of
the time, sought to colonize historic Palestine in order to create a
Jewish state. The indigenous people of this land, the Palestinians, resisted this colonization and continue to resist it to today.
Wow. Pithy. Now here is Mike Desch:
Zionism, in addition to the two important problems that you identify:
Zionists assumed, even before the Holocaust, that the Liberal assimilationist
track was a dead-end. They managed to persuade many people â Jewish
and Gentile â of this after the Holocaust with the argument that if
something like it could happen in Germany, which seemed to be the most
promising place in Europe in the Nineteenth Century, it wouldnât work
anywhere. Obviously, it did fail in Germany with the rise of the Third
Reich. But there is another major example of the Liberal assimilationist
experiment that seems to be a huge success. It is, of course, the good,
old US.
You,
me, and lots of other folks are impressed with how positive the Jewish
experience here has been, and weâre confident that it will continue to be
so into the future. It seems to me, however, that many/most Zionists do
not share our faith that America will continue to prove that the Liberal
assimilationist track is a viable alternative to Zionism. This is not
often made explicit but seems to me to be clearly implicit in Zionismâs
claim that Jews can never be safe without a Jewish state. It would be useful,
in my opinion, if we were to debate this premise openly.
My
own two cents worth on this is that many American Jews are deeply
conflicted: in their heads they know this is the promised land; in
their hearts/guts, they fear that âitâ (e.g., another Holocaust)
could happen here too. The solution is that they become
check-book/ballot-box Zionists: they wonât make aliyah and so they
compensate with unquestioning support of Israel, which is a problem when Israel
does dumb things like Lebanon in 2006 or Gaza 2008/9.
