The Jewish Federations are the leading communal body in Jewish life in the US. Last month it released this report, “Israel: Jewish and democratic,” which aims to counter “the concerted assault on Israel’s legitimacy” and on the “moral and legal right of the Jewish people to national self-determination in its historic homeland” from anti-Zionists.
The report is by two people who don’t choose to live in Israel: Gil Troy, professor of History at McGill in Canada, and Martin Raffel, an executive at the Jewish Center for Public Affairs.
The report begins by explaining that Jews are a “people,” both a religious and a national group. Then here’s an excerpt from pp. 3-4, explaining Zionist ideals for that people:
Zionism, quite simply, is Jewish nationalism, or, more elaborately, the Jewish movement of national liberation,
first to build and now perfect a Jewish democratic state in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland….[I]n his visionary 1896 book “The Jewish State,” [Theodor] Herzl dreamed of the Jewish state as a liberal model for the world. “We shall live at last as free people on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die,” Herzl wrote. “The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all humanity.”
In this passage, Herzl articulated the essential Zionist message that still holds true, and that echoes in the liberal nationalism of most Western nation states — that only through self-determination can utopian ideals be achieved, that a community first must unite and protect itself before it can become a force for good.
Nationalism posits that the community is the best structure through which to implement high ideals — sometimes out of broad conviction, sometimes out of sad necessity. There is, of course, a rich, ongoing debate about how to balance universalism and particularism. But it is very odd that often the same anti-Zionist forces that go out of their way to celebrate Palestinian nationalism insist on negating Zionism. Mutual respect for each people’s collective sense of self is a better approach.
This is obviously a strongly-nationalist tract. But is it true that a “community first must unite and protect itself before it can become a force for good”? The ADL was formed 100 years ago after the Leo Frank case in Georgia, to combat anti-Semitism. It didn’t need a Jewish state to do that. Was American Jewish participation in the civil rights movement or the antiwar movement predicated on our community “having” a state in our name 5000 miles away? Kurds don’t have a state. Does that mean they can’t do good?
Update: This piece originally stated that the report came out in August. It was evidently turned in then, published in September.
” “The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all humanity.”
In this passage, Herzl articulated the essential Zionist message that still holds true”……
We’re better than you. That’s the message.
the tide of history is stirring and it will wash away this propaganda – jews have been around nearly 6000 years (as long as the Chinese) and zionism just over 100 … the nationalist movement is the biggest threat to jews today
Israeli jews do f%$& all good when set against the work of the idf. The balance is skewed heavily negative. Israel as a role model is laughable.
Come on guys, a little serious please. I don’t know who the people are that cooked up this blatant nonsense, but I wonder why anyone should take this as a serious effort. Any high school student would be ashamed for this rubbish.
This statement makes me sick. Such awful enforcing party-line propaganda.
FIRST: The nonsense of the spurious do-good claim (“that a community first must unite and protect itself before it can become a force for good”) is plain to see. Are they saying (these American do-goodsters) that they themselves (Americans) can DO NO GOOD until Israel is finished with its self-inflicted endless conflict? In that case, why should anyone support them for the purpose of doing good NOW or EVER? And if they care to distinguish themselves from the community of Israel — which I doubt — then what has Israel and its successes and failures got to do with THEM?
SECOND: the mention of “moral and legal right of the Jewish people to national self-determination in its historic homeland” is also spurious.
In the history reported in the Bible, there were two Jewish kingdoms, not one, and neither was (territorially) ALL of Palestine. and even together they were not all of Palestine (tho they contained parts of Jordan, etc.) (see also here) showing that the two kingdoms did not contain Acre, Ashdod, Ashkelon.
Also, “IN” seems more akin to “WITHIN” “INSIDE” “IN BUT NOT ALL OF” than “CONSISTING OF ALL OF” — compare: the moral and legal right of the Jewish people to national self-determination on a territory CONSISTING OF ALL OF its historic homeland” .
THIRD: Since when do ONLY Jews have a right to a national home in their historic homeland? Don’t the Palestinians have the same right? where does the JEWISH PRE-EMINENCE come from?