Thank you very much for your comments on this thread. I feel that at this point both you and I are reiterating what we have said before so I will stop at this point. Thanks again.

I think you are being deliberately obtuse in claiming that Zionism is as old as Judaism. It just isn’t, as you know. It’s a modernist-secularist and ethnic-nationalist transformation of Zion concepts in Judaism. I’ve commented on that above. And what I’m saying isn’t even controversial. I’m not going to talk about that any more because I don’t think I need to.

As for ‘feeling’ what Zionism means to Israelis, you’re right, I don’t. But I do understand that the Zionist ideology has been tauught to generations of Israeli (and non-Israeli Jewish) children, that people identify deeply with Zionism, that Israeli Jews obviously attach to the concept because Zionism is what brought them to Palestine in the first place. I know that. I also know that 94% of Israeli Jews supported the Gaza massacre and that half think Jews were a majority in Palestine at the start of the 20th century. Fortunately, I am not so foolish as to imagine that this is going to be changed simply by dialogue. Israeli society has no need to change when it is so much more powerful than the Palestinians. South African whites changed when the power balance changed. I support a BDS campaign in the hope that this will really build into an economic and political power challenge to Israel. But it would be foolish to put all my hopes in the West. The change will come, if it does come, from the Arab world and the wider region.

Zionism certainly isn’t Israeli nationalism, as Sand reiterates. According to its own institutions, it is JEWISH nationalism. It does not include the quarter of the population (not counting the territories) which is not Jewish. It may not even include people like you, if you think about it. Sand talks about a person (of Jewish origin) who wanted ‘Israeli’ on his id card and wasn’t allowed.

The problem with ‘The two-state solution, if ever implemented, would restore Israel to its self-image of a predominantly Jewish democracy.’ is that the Palestinians still end up losing 78% of their country. I am saying, Israeli Jews could live in the country with the Palestinians, and let’s start talking now, while Israel is still in a powerful position, about how this could be arranged to the satisfaction of all. I don’t say it will be easy. And it may never work. But I don’t see a state which defines itself as a ‘Jewish democracy’, which has established itself colonially in the Arab and Muslim world, surviving long term. I don’t think the environment will accept, especially if the environment becomes more democratic. And I don’t accept it. Those Palezstinians who want to should be able to return to their families’ homes.

I am by no means an expert on DNA evidence, the Khazar people, or anything in this field. Sand, however, describes in some detail the argument about the DNA studies and their contradictory results. He also suggests good reasons why the ‘Ashkenazis’ may have forgotten their Khazar past.

Hi Robin,

Welcome back!

I didn’t think I made a compelling case with the European Muslims analogy, so I don’t want to dwell on it too much, except I found what you said here:

“If there were such a call, and if the ’state’ centred on a few urban areas with Muslim majorities, it would be problematic but no more so than the idea of an Ashkenazi state in a Jewish-majority area would have been in the early 20th c.”

Highly inconsistent with the rest of your expressed opinions. The Jews in Europe were a national minority which existed in Europe (mostly in Eastern Europe) for centuries if not millennia and were a majority in substantial swaths of Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. You are saying that their case for national minority rights (which, they did happen to negotiate over in the 19th century) is not stronger than that of recently-arrived work migrants from Muslim countries. That sounds very flawed to me but, OK. Let’s accept this logic for the sake of argument. At the same time, the then-recently-arrived Zionist settlers of Palestine of the first half of the 20th century, did not, in your opinion, have a case for self-determination in those areas in which they constituted a majority. e.g., in the area allotted for a Jewish state in the UN partition plan. Don’t you find that a little inconsistent?

Robin, I don’t want to sound condescending, but you really don’t have a chance at feeling what the word “Zionism” means to an Israeli. All of this discussion that we’re having, really has no applicability to how this word is experienced. You need to understand that, because your political plans (however personal they are…) include convincing Israelis that they need to renounce Zionism. This will not happen. The word Zionism is just a modern incarnation of terms such as “Ahavat Zion” and “Khibbat Zion” (both mean Love of Zion) that are as old as Judaism. The term, even though new, is deeply connected to Jewish spiritual roots as well as having a political meaning which, as Nethy has very accurately observed on my blog, is simply Israeli nationalism. The political meaning is intertwined with the religious strata of the term “Zionism” and Israelis in particular and non-assimilating Jews in general are deeply committed to both.

That is not to say that Zionism (that is, Israeli nationalism) is not taken these days into fascist and racist directions (check news for “Im Tirtzu”), as happened to German and Italian nationalisms, but that in itself doesn’t mean that Israelis will renounce their national identity once their fascism is curbed. And their immutable national identity is: Zionists. BTW, Israelis doesn’t say “Zionism” they say “Tziyonut” and a person is “Tziyoni” which simultaneously means Zioni (from the land of Zion) and Zionist (a supporter of Zionism). In other words, convincing Israelis that they should not be considered Zionists is akin to convincing Italians that they are not Italian.

I, for one, would be extremely surprised if Israelis all of the sudden realized that Zionism has been channeled to mean a supremacist ideology and that they need to renounce it and accept bi-nationalism. It’s much more likely that one side would be cleansed before that happened, or that a two-state separation solution would be implemented. It’s also very non-PC to say it, so you can’t, but I will, this tendency towards “exceptionalism” that is so central in Zionism is not an aberration of modern volkish Zionism—it’s part and parcel of Judaism. To fight the wrongs of Zionism, you’d have to force Jews to confront the exceptionalism that is strongly woven into our religion.

Again, the reasons I’m telling you all of this is (a) because you may find this useful and (b) it illustrates, to me at least, that the effort that you undertake to tarnish Zionism will not result in Israelis renouncing this moniker but rather identifying you as their mortal enemy. I would think that a dialectic move towards defining “New Zionism” in a manner consistent with robust democratic values has better chance of succeeding, but is also a long shot.

If you are interested, we can simulate you addressing an Israeli audience. This may help in framing your goals, your arguments and your language. We can try to get it translated and published and I could translate responses. Would you find that interesting to try? If not, I would maintain that the Hamas one-state vision, of coercion and Islamic supremacy, is more transparent and more realistic than yours.

While you travelled, the two-state/one-state debate picked up some steam in Israel, due to a piece in Haaretz by Meron Benvenisti which is translated here:

http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/8954/pid/895

Some Zionism lefties tries to answer but didn’t really address the core of the issue: Israel is today and Apartheid bi-national state who wishes to believe otherwise. The two-state solution, if ever implemented, would restore Israel to its self-image of a predominantly Jewish democracy.

Alex Yakobson: A binational state? Here?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1146145.html

I regret you don’t read Hebrew as some of the most intelligent debates on these topics is in Hebrew only sites such as HaOkets (“the sting”) and Kedma (“towards the East”). In the latter, Sami Shalom Shitrit writes that anti-Zionism cannot be a constructive rallying point for the Jews of Israel because it says what it wants to destruct, but not what it wishes to build.

One final word, be careful with Sand, a lot of what he says about the history of the Ashkenazi Jews is highly improbable, although his analysis of recent history (which includes Zionist historiography) and current affairs is brilliant . In particular, the Kazaria theory of the origin of Ashkenazi Jews is extremely weak, both because this people doesn’t have a recollection of this assumed (glorious!) period in their past (despite them being “the people of the book”!) and because DNA evidence, despite what Sand says about it, does support their Mideastern ancestry.

Nathan Birnbaum was the coiner of the term ‘Zionism’. He wrote “The distinction of the people stems from the distinction of the race.” And this is not an ancient Jewish idea. It’s the product of the late 19th century, of Volkish nationalism and racial pseudo-science. ‘Zion’ is indeed a holy word in Judaism. It signifies a range of spiritual referents. But Zionism is something else again.

Shlomo Sand says “in Germany in 1914 Zionists accounted for less than 2% of Germans of Jewish origin, and in France even less.”

Just written an essay on Sand’s book, which will appear on my blog eventually. Much of it is relevant to our discussion. Particularly this:

For a fleeting moment in the Zionist enterprise the Judean origin of the natives was openly discussed. Some Zionists even argued for a unified homeland based on ethnic brotherhood with the Palestinians, but the 1929 Arab Uprising dashed their unrealistic hopes and the Judeans were forgotten again. “The inclusive concept,” Sand writes, “was based on the assumption that it would be easy to assimilate a ‘low and primitive’ Oriental culture, and so the first violent resistance from the objects of this Orientalist fantasy shook them awake.”

On Islamic political ideas and the Caliphate, I strongly recommend a book called Who Needs an Islamic State? by Abdelwahab El-Affendi. I like his idea of non-territorial statehood, and I wonder if this could not be adapted to the Israel/Palestine situation. I may get around to writing about that too.

If/when you get to this… yes, Netty explains correctly what I meant to say about Muslims in Europe. Generally, I don’t know too much about the Muslims in Europe, except I just read this

http://www.counterpunch.org/haenni01132010.html

and have been hearing about the occasional terrorist cell, or outrageous Imam. I also presume to know that almost all first generation immigrants came to Europe to find work and didn’t plan on staying there for multiple generations. I also heard that xenophobia against Muslims is on the rise. That’s the extent of my knowledge…

My point was that even given this largely non-colonialist and non-violent background (with a non-negligible modicum of exceptions), it would be hard to predict how the Muslim community will react to violent persecution from “aboriginal Europeans”.

The Palestinians don’t need to prove that they can build a democratic state in order to be released from apartheid and to exercise their right to return to the land they’ve been ethnically cleansed from. And I have never said that a one state solution will be easy to achieve. It does seem to me, however, that it is the only long term solution which has a possibility of working, and the only one which is just.

More on this later – I accept that not all forms of Zionism are as nasty as the state-obsessed apartheid and iron wall system which exists at present, but I do think that they are seriously misguided as soon as they identify the Jews of the world in any concrete way with the territory of Palestine, which was inhabited by other people.

I think you have misunderstood Yossi’s mention of European Muslims. I don’t think it was intended as an example of colonialism, or immoral in some other way.

It is an example of human migration with non trivial impact on the recipient countries or and the associated potential for escalating conflict & belligerence.

I think you have a lot of insight & a appreciate the level of though that has gone in to your discussion above.

I think you have an interesting mix of an insider and an outsider’s perspective. I think that your position on the one/two state solutions is a result of the latter, armchair perspective. It’s analogous to those on the left that supported the Iraqi invasion on the grounds that it would result in Iraqi democracy.

I have absolutely no moral quarrel with your description of a one man one vote state. But, I do not believe there is a path to it that results in a stable democratic state. That kind of cultural-political engineering is impossible at the best of times. Here, it stands an even worse chance. There are probably half a dozen insurmountable barriers.

It is not even obvious that Palestinians would, at the moment, be able to form an effective democratic government in the entire area even if Jews magically disappeared tomorrow morning. It is unlikely that they will be able to form a state in the Territories that is stable & functioning enough to make Arab citizens of Israel want to join them even if they take their land with them (this was recently suggested by an ultra right camp within Israel).

Your picture of Tel Abib is nice but the path to it is as hand wavy as it gets. I suspect that most of the intelligent insiders pushing for it are pushing for it with a concealed or semi concealed agenda. For many (as you both hint at), this is the two state agenda.

I have a lot or respect for what you write above. It seems abrupt to introduce myself with a criticism so I apologise, but this is perhaps the nature if this topic.