Zionism and Its Discontents: Radical Currents in Israel/Palestine
by Ran Greenstein
Pluto Press, 2014
Kol Yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh. This assertion, that “All Jews are responsible for each other,” has the crux of the situation. How are Jews to work out their relationship and “responsibility” to the “national home of the Jewish people”? To act decently, we must face what happened, face what the “return to Zion” led to.
Zionism and Its Discontents by Ran Greenstein reviews opposition to the Jewish nationalist state project in Mandate Palestine and after the State of Israel was proclaimed, May 14, 1948. Israeli-born Greenstein’s focus on Israel/Palestine is enriched by his study of South Africa’s liberation from Apartheid ideology.
Reading of pre-State opposition — from Arabs, non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, and Zionists who rejected the “Jewish state” goal — reminds us that the consequences of making a Zionist state, consequences of perpetual conflict and injustice, were foreseen.
As I found, while researching a book on the American Jewish establishment and Zionism, the records of Jewish organizations are full of predictions of disaster that would come from taking possession of Palestine as a matter of right, over the interests of residents of that land.
Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, Henrietta Szold, and Albert Einstein all saw inevitable disaster borne in the prioritizing of the human rights of Jews over other people. Hannah Arendt and Hans Kohn saw a chauvinist, militarist Jewish Sparta as the inevitable end.
Greenstein describes how the Jewish “national” concept interfered with efforts to organize labor or civic interests in Palestine across ethnic boundaries. Creation of Jewish unions and trade cartels to develop “Hebrew Labor” worked against a bi-national or multi-ethnic Palestine later. An obvious point, but worth remarking is that Jewish settlement in Palestine was particularly keen to develop apart — linguistically, economically, and socially.
Dr. Nelson Glueck told the American Jewish Committee in May 1948, “As one who has lived in Palestine I think one of the sorriest records of Jewish endeavor there has been the long and continued and, on the whole, absolute failure to integrate Jewish life there with Arab life and to make the economy of the country one integral and indivisible part.”
Assertion of “Jewish” sovereignty above all other values has brought us to this moment. “The doctrine of ‘established fact’ has been entirely vindicated against that of ‘prior consent,”’ Abba Eban wrote in 1949, celebrating Zionist leaders’ dismissal of negotiating a Jewish place in a shared Palestine. This doctrine is followed today in creating West Bank “facts on the ground” under IDF protection.
What is a commonplace in Israel advocacy — that Israel has done no worse than settler-colonial states Canada, the United States, or Australia — has become a guilty admission. The multiple histories written by the “New Historians” generation detailing Israeli design and actions in the Nakba have stripped naked the creation myth shrouding Israel.
Historian Alon Confino recently spoke of the 1948 forced expulsion of coastal city Tantura as “a microcosm of the expulsion of the Palestinians.” He scorned the Israeli fantasy, “so prevalent,” of “the ‘deserted’ Arab village.”
Just as whites in South Africa lost their authority to rule in part due to changed international views, the world’s recognition of Palestinian Arabs’ human rights is now a force. Challenges to Israel’s “Jewish” identity are emergent and credible, while Israelis indulge more deeply in the ideology of a Jewish right of conquest and what Ali Abunimah calls the belief they have a human right to be a Jewish majority.
In Israel today, there is a reversion to Zionist concepts of “Hebrew Labor” as a selling-point for businesses —”No Arabs employed here” — and a sickening slide into incidents of communal violence.
Shameful government projects “Judaizing” the Negev, Galilee, Yehuda, Shomron, and East Jerusalem are advanced. Israeli politics seems a horror show of what Greenstein identifies as the Israeli “superhero/victim duality,” alternating boasts of might and cries of vulnerability.
By their actions and policy, PM Netanyahu and previous Israeli government have clarified that the 1948 Partition is dead, which simplifies the situation. The “two-state” dust thrown in our eyes can be ignored, as they ignore it. The Partition is undone and the choices of 1947 are back again.
Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani states that for Israel/Palestine to reach its “South Africa moment,” Jews of Palestine will have to accept the ANC Freedom Charter idea that Palestine, like South Africa, “belongs to those who live in it.”
Dissident Israeli historian Udi Adiv proposed that there is a delusion in Israeli historiography; the Jewish community of Palestine thinks of itself as The Jewish People. It’s not able to have a realistic view of its relationships to non-Jews in Palestine or to Jews elsewhere.
A passage in a speech of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the Arab village of Kfar Kassem demonstrates this:
“Accordingly, the Arab population of Israel must be brought to internalize and accept that State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish People. As long as there exists any aspiration to eradicate the Jews from this land, there will be no chance of building a true partnership.”
His two alternatives are Jewish statehood or Jewish eradication — the Manichean vision of militant Zionism in Palestine. Rivlin echoes Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923 that Arabs would resist “as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel.'”
A recent Brookings Institution survey shows a large majority of Americans, and American Jews, favor democracy over “Jewishness” if two states are no longer possible. One-third now favor one state in Palestine with equal citizenship for all residents, up 10 percent from last year.
That idea — of negating the UN General Assembly partition vote — is an alternative to “peace” built around that November 1947 Jewish nationalist victory.
The torment of non-Jews under Israel’s control is a proving ground for today’s nightmares of drone attacks and surveillance. A major export of “The Start-Up Nation” is technology and training for surveillance, interrogation and suppression of populations by their governments.
The Zionist project, what was meant at the beginning to be a communal agrarian renewal of Jewish people, has become an arms and “security” industry supplier worldwide. The siege mentality that Arendt warned would develop has created an Israeli, not Jewish, nationality, in its isolation what she foresaw as “an entirely new people.”
Since Henrietta Szold observed the swagger of “shomerim” organized to fight Arabs in the Galilee in 1915, Jewish identity in Palestine has been fused with besting Arabs and making them outsiders.
“The problem,” former Jerusalem deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti says, “is the privileged condition of the Jewish ethnic group over the others, those defined as the ‘enemies,’ the ‘terrorists.'”
Kol Yisrael areivim zeh ba-zeh.
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Abba A. Solomon is the author of The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews,” Given to the Baltimore Chapter, American Jewish Committee, February 15, 1948. www.abbasolomon.com.
Why is there such an effort to dismiss the right of Jews to have a sovereign state? Are Jews less equal than others with their own state?
Jack, the issue was the “disaster that would come from taking possession of Palestine as a matter of right, over the interests of residents of that land.”
The bases of your question is not what is in dispute. There is no question by the Palestinians, nor most of the world about the Jewish people having their own home land. I am sure you must know that, so why are you asking it in this form? Its very close to the misleading argument by Zionist Israel defenders that the Palestinians want to kill all Jews, and the world hates Jews. The Palestinians would never had much issue- beside the norms of people living in the same space, when 3 to 5% of Palestine were of the Jewish faith- with Jewish home. The problem that most Zionists and dishonest Israelis keep ignoring, that the Zionists came with the full intention to dispposses and the dispell the Palestinians from their homes and land, and kill those who would resist. All the facts today from those years indicate that clearly without dispute as in some parts of this article. Having Israelis do the just and right thing does not mean the end of Israel and all the Jews, as many Jewish, Zionists and Israelis keep promoting to stire the fears and emotions of most Jews and the constant threat of annihilation. I don’t deny the threats through history to some of the Jewish people in different parts of the world, but the truth should not be denied , if there was a real threat by the whole world and all nations with the intent to murder all, I believe that could have happened as it did to other people and races. Jews lived in many parts of the world and survived, may I say very well and well off too, so where is that full hate and ill intention of all those Billions of people against few millions? This feeling of persecution and victimhood needs to stop and change, not by occupation, murder and theft, nor by few Nuclear bombs, but by becoming part of the nations and humanity, no more no less of rights and obligations towards each other, and not by excelosivity and Choseness ! if Jews being able to live all over the world , Have any right of a home land, so do the Palestinians too! Israel on the path it has taken is not improving the future and stability of the Jews of the world, its living by the gun and all those who lived by the gun, history told us will die by the gun, and I hope that’s is not what we all want! Making peace with the Palestinians and restoring their rights and dignity is the best ticket for Jews and Israel peace ,ligitmacy and security.
I’m thinking that Monir ignores the goals of Hamas intentionally. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, it became a launching pad for rockets. Whose to say that the same would not happen o the West bank. Oh I want to se withdraw but when the time is rights, not under pressure from the international community or Holocaust deniers lier Monir (yes, he denied the Holocaust occurred in a response that was removed)
Jack, what are the goals of Hamas that differ from your goals , settlers, and most Zionist goals for over 66 years? Stop labeling people for the sake of silencing and intimidation . Just for the record, I can’t deny nor confirm what has happened then specially if no one is allowed to debate , speak of nor question? What difference is to you if one or a hundred want to deny that? When did you see all people from all walks of life conform on event or another agree on one subject or another? Again and again your old tools of debating are very rusty and need some refreshing, by legitimate debate, discussion and questioning. I don’t need to deny anything that i did not make a claim on, if its a pro or con! And what difference would that or should that make to you of you are so confident about it?! As an observations for your psyche and sanity, the Holocaust is over and we need to rise from its ashes, and become decent functioning human being , not victims nor victimizers. There is something very wrong happening and it looks like its getting worse , we all need to speak up about it and try to make it better. Denying the justice and humanity is danger to all!
History is littered wit Palestinian mistakes. The Palestinians has a golden opportunity in 1948 if they accept partition. According to President Abbas, the Palestinians and the Arab world made an mistake rejecting the UN partition plan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-palestinians-israel-abbas-idUSTRE79R64320111028
Arafat missed a gone opportunity to create a Palestinian sate in 2000 when he walked out of Camp David and started 2nd intifada that produced an epidemic of suicide bombings. Suha Arafat acknowledged that Yasser Arafat planned the intifada:
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Suha-Arafat-admits-husband-premeditated-Intifada
After the 2nd intifada and several conflicts with Hamas, few Israelis trust Palestinian leadership even though most want to leave the West Bank. No one wants a terror state next store.
As for your Holocaust denial, many saw it. That s not what is called “debate” . You also have blamed Jews for any Semitism over the course of centuries. These attitudes frame your argument. These posts were removed seeing as they were quite vile.
Monir, your sweeping generalizations about Zionists and Jews reveal a deep seated hatred that will never find acceptance outside a small group on the extremist fringe.
Even the extremists of Tikkun had removed Monir’s posts
Jack and Laurn, I just don’t see your sweeping love for the Palestinians nor the Arabs as a must, who said any one of us has to be loved by all ? why do you assum my dislike or love to all Zionists, Israelis is a must?what does that have to do with your religion? The way you behave is what you are judged by, not my likes or dislikes , Nor who you pray to! Zionists intentions and Israel behavior is enough to come to such conclusion. you both, not likeing it ,is a different story. If I generalize, as you claim, its not because i fall under your lable( the lables are only to comfort yourselves and dont effect me) , its the full support or silence of most Zionists and Israelis to the crimes that are carried out against the Palestinians by Most Zionists and Israelis for Over 66 years and still going ,that makes that , generalizing or not. If crimes are committed and you support them, if deception ( no real peace was ever the goal of Zionists )is carried out and you support it, if you claim the innocence of Israel and the guilt of the Palestinians is what you believe in, so how else should you and most Zionist/ Israel defenders be viewed? I am not including those who don’t and speak out with honesty. So stop the Hasbara name calling and labeling to distract, its pathetic as your argument ! You are hurting ,not helping.
You questioned the Holocaust and it was deleted from here. You are dishonest
Of course, there is one major difference between 2014/2015 and 1947: Before the State of Israel existed the prophecies remained merely that — prophecies. Now, because of the actual existence of the State of Israel, and that the prophecies have so tragically come true, the situation is much, much harder to deal with. The too-simple idea that the Israelis could say, “Okay — We made a mistake; let’s start over again,” is too late. The world, including the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews, must figure out a way to come to terms with the actual present situation, taking into account all the problems that the existence of Israel has caused. This will not be an easy task, even given good will on both sides, which doesn’t at all exist now.
While it might be helpful to examine what happened in South Africa, the two situations are not analogous. First of all, the black population of South Africa was the overwhelming majority; largely because of the expulsions, the Palestinians are far from a majority in Israel/Palestine. Second, Israel has, and has always had, the backing of the United States, in a way that South Africa never did; this makes the Israeli leadership much more resistant to world pressure than the leadership of Apartheid South Africa. Third, the turmoil in the region far exceeds any equivalent turmoil in the areas near to South Africa, despite the internal armed opposition in several of those countries; this turmoil impinges negatively on the Palestinian/Israeli situation. But, above all, the past Israeli victories over the various Arab states and Israel’s current overwhelming military superiority in the region (much of it a result of U.S. backing and financing) and, of course, over the Palestinians as well, make the Israelis pretty much immune to seeing the mess they are in.
So it is quite understandable that Abba Solomon offers us no way out of the impasse. While it is true that Israeli isolation is increasing, so far the reaction of its (Jewish) citizenry seems to be “we’ll have to go it alone, as we always have”: as its problems grow worse, Israel becomes more intransigent. I don’t see any likelihood of that changing in the near future.
So I myself cannot see any way out than disaster, though I would be more than happy to be shown that I’m mistaken — that there is a way out which would be acceptable to all relevant parties to the conflict.
Gene, I have news for you: Israel ain’t goin’ anywhere. Any attempts at abolishing the Jewish state (be they by boycotts of Jewish Israelis, terrorism, or war crimes) are doomed to fail. The choice is two states for two peoples (and without unlimited “refugee return” to Israel) or the status quo for eternity. Thoughts of abolishing Zionism and Israel are not grounded in reality. Get over it.
I agree with your thinking here, Mr. Solomon. If the dire situation in Palestine/Israel continues as it seems to be headed for, it will be another disaster for the Israeli citizens who deserve their own homeland after all these millennia. Too bad they keep electing the wrong leadership – and continue to adopt a strict Zionist philosophy, armed conflict and eventual total genocide of the Palestinian people.
The neighborhood seems a bit treacherous at the moment. Yes,i would love to give up most of the West Bank but not of it turns into another Gaza
Genocide? Palestinian people? No and no.
Even Tikkun has found some of MOnir’s response vile and removed them.
Ir is one of the great shames of the age that the Jewish people with their tragic history do not have it in them to assure the displaced Palestinians of a substitute state for what they lost.
I guess the Palestinians along with the Arab League should not have rejected partition.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-palestinians-israel-abbas-idUSTRE79R64320111028
Or reject opportunities for their own state at Camp David in 2000.
Between Israel’s rightist Likud governments since 1978, + the international reaction to the criminal actions of that regime (including today’s BDS movement), Israel is fast losing its legitimacy as a state. This change is well underway in Europe, & beginning to accelerate in the U.S. I believe that the Jewish people have the same right to their own nation-state as do all other peoples – including the Palestinians – under terms of Wilson’s post WWI 14 Points. I therefore fully support a Two-State Solution based on Israel’s 1967 borders. But Likud believes in a Greater Israel, not a Two State Solution. This position is chipping away at Israel’s legitimacy, and no state that ultimately loses its legitimacy among the vast majority of the world’s population can survive for long, Israel included. Let me propose therefore that the Jewish community, in the U.S. & worldwide, needs to begin considering what it will mean to live in a post-Israel world. First, as it will affect all of us: what must our strategies be for surviving, once again, as a stateless people? Second: what will happen to the Israeli Jews – all or most of the 6.1 million currently living there – who will want to leave as soon as the Zionist project – the state of Israel – collapses? Historical precedents regarding the willingness of many countries to accept a mass influx of Jewish refugess are not encouraging. Terrifying as these questions are to contemplate, I believe we better begin thinking about them now, while there is still time to plan.
Here’s one vote for the next Holocaust by allowing a state the only Jewish state to disappear and Here’s to someone replacing one refugee problem with another refugee problem. It’s 1939 all over again according to this response.
Just an FYI, the Palestinians have walked away form a 2 state solution 2 times, 1948 and 2000.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-palestinians-israel-abbas-idUSTRE79R64320111028
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Suha-Arafat-admits-husband-premeditated-Intifada
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