Next-stage Judaism and Zionism: An Emergent Middle East
posted by Isaac at 10.10.05
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It is often difficult to uncover the truth when one is dealing with such hotly contested topics as peace and war. Nowhere is this more true than in Israel/Palestine. It is frequently hard to even define the two opposing groups in this conflict. Such complexities as the sizable Arab population with Israeli citizenship, the view of Zionism as heresy by many of the ultra-orthodox Jews, and the growing numbers of anti-Zionist Jewish Israelis make the picture of two warring peoples much more blurry and confused upon closer examination. Perhaps the closest approximation of a definition of the opposing sides would be Zionism versus anti-Zionism. However, this definition is disorienting to many passive observers who may be unaware of the actual meaning of the term “Zionism.” This division, like the others, is shown to be false after closer consideration. Zionism is not racism, as the increasingly popular slogan “Zionism equals racism” would suggest, nor is it a messianic national liberation movement, such as that supported by branches of conservative Christianity and the relatively few messianic Jewish settlers.
What Zionism used to mean is very different from what it has come to mean today. Zionism is erroneously defined as Jewish nationalism that seeks to establish and maintain a Jewish nation-state modeled after the various European ethnic nation-states of the 19th and 20th centuries. The major challenge faced by Jewish nationalists of this variety was that Jews were not a majority in any significant territory. In order to establish a nation-state, they would first have to occupy lands already inhabited by others. This was and continues to be a major source of conflict which, in this case, has led to the occupation of Palestinian lands and the creation of millions of Palestinian refugees. Of course there are some Israelis who support a more moderate form of statist nationalism, honestly attempting to make an equitable and lasting peace with the Palestinians. Such views are held by many members of the social-democratic political parties Havodah and Yachad. However, there are also those who envision a more aggressive, expansionist approach to Jewish nationalism, such as the members of the Gush Emunim settlers’ movement and Ariel Sharon’s ruling right-wing Likud party.
It is important not to single out Israel in a world filled with many much larger conflicts, and criminals that receive very little attention from would-be critics, but rather to remember that this is a conflict involving about 12 million people over a piece of land smaller than Vancouver Island.
However, we must not be afraid to criticize unjust actions and dream of what could be. My dream for the Israelis, and for the Palestinians is neither a one-state solution, nor a two-state solution of any type. I reject all nation-states, and all statist nationalisms, from the rather dovish variants to the more militaristic varieties. I envision a cooperative society based upon the integration of all segments of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Many of you may not understand what I mean, or may view this as a total repudiation of Zionism. In reality this vision of cooperation would have been accepted within the Zionist mainstream about 70 years ago.
Zionism prior to the Second World War was generally defined as a movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A homeland was not understood to be a nation-state, but rather a land in which Jews could be a normal part of the human geography, no longer treated as aliens, spies and subversives to be persecuted, but as natural inhabitants of land, free to practice their own religion and culture free from oppression. Many segments of the Zionist movement saw Zionism as more than a cultural homeland, but as a quasi-spiritual project to build a new society from the ground up, a society in which the individual would have autonomy, community, culture, economic independence, and a connection to the land of their ancestors as farmland and natural beauty rather than borders to be defended.
The principle forms of this eutopic project were the commune, the collective, the workers’ bank, the schools and the general labor union of agricultural and industrial workers. There was a great variety of dreamers in the Zionist camp at the time, from anarchists inspired by Gustav Landauer and Leo Tolstoy, to Marxists and Leninists, to proponents of bourgeois collectivist projects supported by such luminaries as Louis Brandeis. During the years of the British Mandate, the Jewish community in Palestine had very few conventional power structures, but instead a wide assortment of social and economic experiments, many of which were quite successful.
Much of this occurred without the participation of the Palestinians. They were in some ways threatened by the influx of Jewish immigrants, and in other ways they benefited from improvements in the country’s health and transportation structures initiated by Zionist activity. However, the largely conservative agrarian fellahin peasants of Palestine remained mostly unaffected in the pre-state years, and were regarded by many Zionists as merely a passive backdrop. While few Zionists were
openly hostile to the Palestinians, many failed to consider ways to integrate them into the new society they envisioned, so sowing the seeds of future conflict. A minority actively sought to include the Palestinians in their activities, this included David ben-Gurion, later Prime Minister and a prominent labor leader who sought to extend union membership to the Palestinian workers. The co-option of the Labor Zionist movement by more revisionist, statist forms of nationalism has many causes, notably the Zionist movement’s inability to formulate any place in the new society for Palestinian participation. This same lack of consideration was a major contributing factor to the growing anti-Zionist and at times anti-Jewish feelings within the Palestinian community. The future of the Middle East may indeed rest upon the revival a Labor Zionism that not only seeks to treat the Palestinians fairly, but to engage them in a new society as well.
What would this revived Labor Zionism look like? To many it would look like anti-Zionism, opposing the entire notion of the nation-state. Although this seems like a radical stance, this reawakened Labor Zionism would be entirely consistent with Jewish values. To many Orthodox Jews the idea of a modern Jewish nation-state is a contradiction in terms, for the Jewish religion recognizes no legitimate authority over the individual other than that of God. Likewise, the highly localized collectivist projects of the Labor Zionists would not be found objectionable by the more conservative segments of Jewish society, but would harken back to the traditional concept of the kahal, or local community as the primary unit of decision-making. Thus, it is no stretch to say that Jewish values are actually not served, but contradicted by the Israeli state, and that the Labor Zionist project is well within the Jewish tradition, in addition to the norms of historical Zionism.
Any attempt to revive Labor Zionism would do well to draw upon the concepts rooted in Cultural Zionism, a nonterritorial form of Zionism which arose during the early 20th century that aimed to renew global Jewish culture. The initial program of Cultural Zionism, as endorsed by Ahad Ha’am, Aharon David Gordon and the Bialik, was to revive spoken Hebrew, and to establish a Hebrew university in Jerusalem. A committed core of dedicated Jews would immigrate to Israel to rejuvenate Jewish culture and autonomy through academic scholarship, communal life, and labor on the agricultural communes called kibbutzim, drawing inspiration from the land and its history. This community in Israel was to serve as the base for a global Jewish renaissance. Jews everywhere were to return to Israel as a mental state rather than Israel as a nation-state.
Essential to the Cultural Zionist project was maintaining good relations with the Palestinian community. The 20th century Jewish scholar and Cultural Zionist, Martin Buber, advocated that the Zionists use cautious immigration policies to avoid threatening the Palestinian people. More than this, he advocated that the Jewish community actively embrace the Palestinians, overcoming what he termed “the modern crisis of trust,” embracing those with whom they were expected to be in conflict, and providing an example to the world of human cooperation. This concept of a quasi-spiritual revolution to create a more just society resonates with the Labor Zionists’ idealistic quest to reconstruct society.
The key concept of value Cultural Zionism has to offer is an awareness and consideration of the Palestinians as more than enemies, or backdrop, but rather as human beings with their own culture, history, aspirations and fears. Unlike Labor Zionism, which was co-opted by statist nationalism in the wake of the Second World War, Cultural Zionism opposed the creation of a Jewish state, instead favoring the formation of a binational Jewish-Palestinian confederation based upon smaller units of local administration similar to the kibbutzim of Labor Zionism. Cultural Zionists worried that a Jewish nation-state, like any nation-state, would be based upon conquest and violence. According to Jewish tradition, justice is the only acceptable means to a righteous end. Therefore, conquest of any kind whatsoever is never justified. Interestingly, during the nearly 2,000 year interlude between Biblical Israel and modern Israel, there were never any Jewish conquests of any other peoples. With this in mind it is easy to see why Buber, and others viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a step backward in Jewish history. The Cultural Zionist objection to the state was joined by similar objections made by Tolstoyan anarchists and pacifists within Labor Zionism.
During the 1940’s many abandoned notions of Tolstoyan pacifism and were unable to envision ways of maintaining good, or at least neutral relations with the Palestinians, who opposed the rapid influx of Holocaust refugees to the region. Following the Second World War, those Jews not murdered in the Holocaust attempted to return to their homes, but could not. All of their property had been seized by the Nazis or others during their imprisonment. Many Jews remained in refugee camps in Eastern Europe, while others struggled to survive in the shadows, awaiting visas to the United States or for the British to end the general ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. Few countries were willing to accept Jewish refugees after the war. If the establishment of a state is ever justified, this would be such a case, making it difficult to find fault in the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
However, it is important to remember the tragedy suffered by the Palestinians as well. In wars fought in 1948, and again in 1967 numerous Palestinians were killed or forced to flee their homes. Perhaps had the Second World War not happened, or had other countries been willing to accept Jewish refugees this tragedy could have been avoided. Additionally, the Palestinian leaders were recalcitrant in their demands that Jews be given sovereignty over no land in the former British Mandate and that the tide of immigrants be held back. Even so, the Israelis failed to do what they could have done to avoid conflict, namely, Zionism never gave the Palestinians much thought, and behaved in separatist ways that ran the risk of creating a violent resistance.
Now statists Zionism is taken to be the only form of Zionism that ever was. Jews are afraid to give up their nation-state, and Palestinians are unwilling to give up hope that they may someday be able to have their own nation-state on the same piece of land. Each has dreams that do not include the other. Statism, Jewish and Palestinian has left us in this deadlock with little hope of peace in sight.
Not only does statist Zionism fail the Palestinians, but Jews as well. All I see in statist Zionism is fear. Its supporters have given up hope. They no longer seek to transform the world and make it new. Instead they have abandoned this essential Jewish ideal and resigned to live within the current paradigm of domination and exploitation. They no longer hope for anything more than national normalcy. They have adopted the worldview of the fascists from whom they and their family members fled. In so doing they have given up Judaism, Jewish cultural values and original Zionism in response to anti-Semitism. They believe that the world is by its nature harsh and anti-Jewish. The only way they think the next Holocaust will be avoided is if Jews join the world of nation-states and militaries, and play the game of war the best that they can.
But I don’t want to defeat the world; I want to live in it. I’m unwilling to give up Judaism and Jewish cultural values. I won’t let anti-Semites force me to do so. Jews of my grandparents’ generation are thrilled by the sight of Jewish soldiers wielding machine guns and riding in tanks. I am sickened by the thought of a Jewish military. I don’t want to see rabbis, poets and dreamers replaced by generals and politicians. I don’t want to become the macho, pessimistic militarist that many so-called Zionists have become in response to anti-Semitism. We should be able to be who we are without trying to change ourselves to counteract anti-Semitic stereotypes of us. It's time that we stop seeing ourselves and the world through gentile eyes, and start seeing through our own eyes. Statist Zionism doesn’t see with Jewish eyes. Cultural Zionism allows me to see myself through my own eyes, and Labor Zionism lets me see the world my way, and encourages me to actively shape my future and the future of the Jewish people, without regard to the pessimism of others.
What future do I see for the Holy Land? I see a radically democratic society that engages and involves each Palestinian and each Israeli to work to build new societal structures that are egalitarian, and that respect individual, cultural and communal autonomy in all spheres of economic and political activity. I see a revival of organizations like those of original Labor Zionism, including a reinvigoration of the kibbutz movement, a redemocratization of banking and financial institutions, and a reemergence of the Cultural Zionist vision of binational confederation and integration. Of course there will be challenges such as overcoming the language barrier and the perhaps greater challenge of incorporating conservative religious communities into the general secular society.
Already there is progress in this revival and renewal of the worldview of original Zionism, as is visible in such organizations as Ta’ayush, a nonviolent binational anti-occupation organization, and in such places as Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, a binational intentional community for peace, and Kibbutz Samar, an anarchist kibbutz that, unlike many other kibbutzim, has held onto it’s experimental practices, and the binational left-wing political party Hadash. With all these indications of a creative and growing movement for a better future for the entire region, there is reason to hope that Ariel Sharon’s proposed pullout of the Gaza Strip, and Mahmoud Abbas’s gestures of peace will only be the start of sweeping change in the region, change that may result in the realization original Zionist aspirations. The creation of a just society must be founded upon the common dreams of all its members, for this it will be necessary for there to be many more dreamers, more Palestinian dreamers, more Israeli dreamers, and more dreamers all around the world. And we, the dreamers and visionaries of the world must act.
10:18 PM
Cool blog and cool message
6:14 AM
I know that this is idealistic and far off.
Background: To "make aliyah" means "to ascend" in Hebrew. This phrase is frequently used to describe the process by which a Jew from the Diaspora becomes an Israeli. Such an immigrant is called an oley. To "make yeridah" means "to descend," and is used to describe both moral lapse and emigration from Israel. One who makes yeridah is called a yorod. Mainstream Zionism considers aliyah to be an integral part of Zionism, and is valued in the demographic war with the Arabs. Making yeridah is discouraged and considered an unpatriotic betrayal of Zionism.
In recent years many of the young, intelligent and motivated Israelis have been making yeridah, leaving Israel for the USA, Canada and Germany, seeking professional/educational opportunities, cultural experiences, the thrill of the big city, safety from terrorist attacks and distance from "the situation." Many yordim don't consider themselves to be anti-Zionist or unpatriotic. They carry their Israeliness with them and feel as if they are liberated from Diaspora oppression by their state of mind regardless of the fact that they do not live in Israel. Most Israelis, and yordim in particular, are not religious. Their sense of Jewishness is secular and very refreshing, reinvigorating the cultural life of the Diasporic Jewish communities with which they come into contact. I like the yordim, and feel that their presence in the American Jewish communities is very valuable.
Perhaps if the Israeli government weren't so absorbed in HaMatsav, "the conflict," it would be able to see this, encouraging young Israelis to make yeridah to bring the "new jew" mentality to the Diaspora. They are casual, argumentative, energetic, intelligent and knowledgeable about practical things, combining Germanic technical competance, Mediterranean verve, and a Middle Eastern sense of historical context and purpose.
Possible Vision: Having Israel as a cultural base from which to spread this way of being Jewish would be in keeping with Cultural Zionism, maintaining a small Israeli population (maybe 1-2 million) to support academic and artistic institutions along with the kibbutzim (which I wish weren't dying). Such a place would not necesitate Israeli political control, only equal rights and access to visit, live in and travel across the land. Tel Aviv would be a major Jewish city. Jerusalem would continue to be home to the Haredi orthodox. Jewish college students from around the world would come here to study, and some would make aliyah, and then yeridah to carry the values back to the Diaspora.
[In Haifa maybe a new identity could be formed. Palestinians and Israelis could intermingle to make a new sabra identity. Sabra means cactus, and is used to describe native-born Israelis. I think it should be applied to Palestinians as well. No longer Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Christians, or Druze, the people of Haifa and the Galilee could all become sabrot, speaking a mixed Hebrew-Arabic language, intermarrying until they can't be untangled. Seeing as the land is small and short of water, it may be best for many of the Palestinian refugees to join in this yeridah movement. While I can now only clearly see this applying to Israeli Jews, it may some day be that there could be "new sabrot" in Israel/Palestine and the Diaspora who could also follow this aliyah-yeridah formula.]
Yeridah is the highest manifestation of Cultural Zionism.
Now I have the problem of how I could someday make aliyah for the purpose of making yeridah. I have a feeling that it would be very difficult to become an Israeli as a conscientious objector. It would be hard to become a citizen without serving in the military or paying taxes that are used for the fighting (militarism is the single biggest problem with the Israeli culture; I'd have to be careful to make sure they don't sink their hooks into me and militarize me or dissuade me from making yeridah). There may be ways around it though. I may have to settle for continually renewing visas for as long as it takes for me to feel that I have Israelified myself well enough to make yeridah. Although, I don't know if I'll want to return to the USA, if the wars are still going on, and I'd have to pay taxes to that. I might go to Spain or Canada. If that all works out, there is proposed legislation that would allow me to vote in Israeli elections even as a yorod.
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5:01 PM
Hey man,
Haven't been blogging for a while. Will try and be motivated to do so soon. Agh.
Just noticed something I think you got wrong - Hadash aren't binationalist. Their party slogan explicitly states "Shtei Medinot L'Shnei Amim" - I'm sure you understand that, but for readers who don't, it means "Two states for two nations/peoples."
My understanding is that Hadash's official stance is for a democratic Israeli state (not a Jewish-Zionist one) next to a democratic Palestinian state. I'm not sure what their stance is with regard to Palestinian nationalism. I don't think they're particularly hot on it, but still...
A point of contention I have with some of the (supposed) left is the fact that they have a vehement opposition to Zionism and the harm that has been done by those who claim to be Zionists, but a much milder response to other forms of nationalism, even to the point of supporting Palestinian nationalism despite the destruction that it has in turn wreaked.
Two states between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river are two states too many, as shout the Anarchistim, but humanity needs to make a few more giant leaps before that can be a reality.
From what little I've skim-read, your writing is fantastic... I need to give this article a proper read soon!
8:29 AM
...and you might want to turn on word verification for your blog. Those pesky married_women are at it again!
8:30 AM
remind me to look into visiting kibbutz samar when i get back from germany.
3:03 PM
Samar is amazing! A functional anarchist mini-utopia... the kind of place that made me never want to leave Israel.
Say hi to the Ginat family from me if you go there!
7:05 AM
Hey. Thanks. I haven't been blogging here in so long that I can't login even. I'm working with http://jewsagainstwarinlebanon.blogspot.com now. The page isn't real active because we're mostly on facebook and will shift to organize more on the ground on campuses this fall. We have 600 members, yay!
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