First we have Philip Weiss's fascinating "Is anti-Zionism the new Zionism?" (a piece I first learned about via Xymphora):
Last night I was reading a biography of Walter Benjamin that described the excitement over Zionism in Berlin intellectual circles 90 years ago. Socialists and dreamers adopted Zionist ideas. In the U.S., too, many eastern European Jews who had lately escaped pogroms also signed on to Zionism, and they converted some privileged German Jews. I might have been a Zionist myself. For Zionism responded with hope to real world conditions: antisemitism in Europe, and European nationalism. Then the Holocaust showed Herzl to be prophetic, and almost all Jews became Zionists.(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
So Zionism can be seen as another redemptive belief taken up by Jews, in a history that includes communism, neoconservatism, Bundism, Trotskyism, Sabbatianism, assimilationism, neoliberalism. These ism's are ideologies not philosophies. They are rooted in history; and they are all undone as history moves forward. Communism ran up against man’s laziness, bureaucracy, and capitalism. Neoconservatism has been utterly discredited by Iraq. Those ideas ran their course.
That's why I wonder whether anti-Zionism is not the new Zionism. For it too is an ideology of hope that can be embraced by Jews, and that responds to today's realities. As for Zionism, it feels backward, and it belongs to a different ideological age.
Next, we have a piece in the Christian Science Monitor by Ali Abunimah, an advocate of the single state solution:
But while some see Israel as a miracle, many Israelis themselves recognize that the Zionist project has been far from a success: Today the number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians inhabiting the country is roughly equal at about 5 million each. Just more than 1 million Palestinians live as citizens of Israel, albeit with inferior rights, while almost 4 million live under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Their high birthrate means that in a few years, Palestinians will once again become the majority as they were prior to 1948.Until quite recently, Jews have always championed toleration, humanitarian ideals and the advancement of the intellect. When, when will they finally give up their doomed and unforgivably racist dream of a Jewish state?
To assert, as Israel does, that it has a right to be a "Jewish state" means to recognize that it has a right to manipulate demographics for the purpose of ethnic domination. This outlook violates fundamental human rights.
Palestinians, many of whom are already being forcibly displaced by the cruel wall that snakes through the West Bank, fear another 1948-like expulsion. At the last Israeli election, parties that explicitly endorse ethnic cleansing of Palestinians made major gains, including the one led by Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Palestine/Israel is as unpartitionable as was South Africa and Northern Ireland, where similar ethnic conflicts had also defied resolution for generations. In both places, it was only when the dominant group dropped its insistence on supremacy that a political settlement could be reached.
2 comments:
"The antisemites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the antisemites nations will become our allies."
Theodor Herzl in his journal.
By blurring the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, by labeling every critics as an anti-Semite, they are using the current backlash against Israel policies to strengthen Jewish nationalism and the support for the Zionist battle plan . In the current mindset, every criticism become an additional justification (as in "you see, they really all hate us ! Israel is alone ! a new wave of anti-Semitism is rising !") to pursue their supremacy objectives in the region by using their favorite tool : the US army.
In South Africa, it was impossible for us to see the white folk as the victims (even if they were surrounded by countries full of black people who hated them). In Ireland it was also impossible to see the British as the victims because we knew history of British domination over Ireland. Is it because of the holocaust and the "occidental guilt" that it's now impossible to criticize Israel ACTIONS without being accused of being an anti-Semite ? Are we anti-Persian when we criticize Iran ? are we anti-Arab when we criticize Saudi Arabia ? why then, am I an evil anti-Semite when I criticize Israel ? Because they were 60 years ago victims of the Nazi ?
Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance Through History
And by the same author
Desperation drives stepped-up efforts to stifle criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic"
Here is another angle on this issue.
Christian Zionism: An Egregious Threat to Middle East Understanding
by CNI
October 28, 2006
Christian Zionism, a belief that paradise for Christians can only be achieved once Jews are in control of the Holy Land, is gathering strength in the United States and forging alliances that are giving increasingly weird shape to American policy toward the Middle East. The nature of the movement and its detrimental impact on policy was the subject of the 22nd Capitol Hill public hearing presented by the Council for the National Interest yesterday.
A new Zogby International poll commissioned by the CNI Foundation shows that 31 percent of those surveyed in the national poll strongly believe or somewhat believe in the ideas behind Christian Zionism, defined as "the belief that Jews must have all of the promised land, including all of Jerusalem, to facilitate the second coming of the messiah." Other polls bear similar messages, that 53 percent of Americans believe that Israel was given by God to the Jews (Pew), and that 59 percent of the American public believes the prophecies contained in the Book of Revelations will come true (CNN/Time).
The international implications of such beliefs are profound, as an increasing number of Americans believe that God sets foreign policy goals. Rev. Robert O. Smith, Lutheran pastor at the University of Chicago, one of the speakers at the hearing, discussed the development of this belief that dates to the 19th century and how it has received a powerful new impetus with the founding this year of a new group of the Christian right called Christians United for Israel (CUFI). And yet while it works closely with Jewish Zionist organizations in the US, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to promote the continued occupation of Palestine by the Israel (land God has given the Jews), it works just as effectively in dehumanizing the original inhabitants of the Holy Land, both Muslims and Christians.
Another speaker, Rammy Haija, who teaches at Radford University, drew attention to the necessity in the Christian Zionist dogma for the Israelis to retain control not only of the whole of the occupied territory but also all of Jerusalem. Christian Zionists have pushed the militarist policies of both Israel and the U.S. in an effort to secure the Holy Land in preparation for the coming of the "promised land." As part of this strategy, the U.S. occupation of Iraq is deemed absolutely necessary.
The irony of the alliance between Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists is that the one ideology promotes the ultimate destruction of the other. As Smith pointed out, the "Christians United for Israel" is all about Israel, not about the Israelis, and only a little surface digging into Christian Zionism shows how anti-Semitic it really is. So much so that Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the ceaseless champions of Zionism in this country, has called the Christian right one of the direst threats to American Jews. This has not prevented top Israeli officials from paying homage to the Christian right, including Ariel Sharon (before he descended into a comatose state brought on by the withdrawal of the settlers from Gaza, Pat Robertson opined), the Israeli ambassador Daniel Ayalon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and a host of others. The ability of CUFI and other far right Christian religious leaders like Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson to raise money for Israel, including Israeli settlements, is well documented.
Christian Zionism, Smith concluded, has a fundamental lack of earthly concerns, is divorced from reality, and undermines the work of politics. Its practical impact is the killing of people in the Holy Land. The recent statement by the Christian religious leaders of Jerusalem that warned against Christian Zionism's policies of racist intolerance and perpetual war was much needed, but it should have come from America's religious leaders.
The Council for the National Interest is a non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization advocating a new direction for U.S. Middle East policy.
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