The Case for Israel

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

As most people who follow events in the Middle East know, the Jewish state of Israel is under increasing ideological attack by those who wish to delegitimize, and thus eventually eliminate, the country.

They claim that the Jewish people have no right to the territory, but are interlopers and imperialists who stole the land known to these opponents as Palestine.

Yet Jews are one of the most ancient historical nations in the world. And Zionism attaches Jewish “nation-ness” to a specific territory, that of biblical Israel.

But the Zionist movement was about more than just the reclamation of an ancient homeland. It asserted that Jews, like other nations, needed sovereignty in order to survive and not remain helpless victims.

Hitler’s was only the last of many attempts to wipe out Jewish communities in Europe, beginning with the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, when soldiers on the way to the Holy Land killed Jews in the Rhineland. Jews were perceived as just as much an enemy as Muslims.

In 1648-49, Bogdan Chmielnicki’s peasant army in eastern Europe massacred upwards of 300,000 Jews. And after the First World War, soldiers loyal to Symon Petliura in the Ukraine, murdered from 35,000 to 50,000 Jews in a series of pogroms.

Twentieth century Zionism was thus a form of nationalism, in response to these and other tragedies, in an era of nation-state building. It was no more “racist” than other versions. After all, anyone can, through conversion, become Jewish – even the leader of Hamas.

Whereas in truly segregationist societies, such as the old U.S. South or South Africa, neither Martin Luther King nor Nelson Mandela could have become “white.” These were ascriptive and immutable caste categories based on so-called race theories.

Historically, many Jews, especially on the left, had their own ideological reasons for opposing Zionism. The Jewish Labour Bund, the eastern European Jewish socialist party, had advocated instead its notion of do’ikayt (“here-ness”), which claimed Jews should focus on building viable communities in any place in which they lived.

And that opposition still holds true for some in today’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, who are against it on theological grounds.

But the Second World War demonstrated the weakness of these competing beliefs – 6 million Jews were killed despite the (half-hearted) efforts by the Allied countries to save them. Jews were not the top priority in the war effort.

Despite the claims of many of today’s multiculturalists, it seems likely that, in the long run, national groups can only survive if they have a territorial base. Can Germany depend on Germans who emigrated to the United States, or Poland on Canadians of Polish descent? The same holds true for Jews, who are rapidly assimilating in such countries.

Today, almost half of the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel, where they don’t have to “work” at being Jewish – even if they are totally secular.

As for those who propose a “one-state” solution to the current Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, they should be reminded that such a prospect is highly unlikely.

Anyhow, why not have two states, as was proposed by the United Nations in 1947? The issue of borders acceptable to both sides is a different matter.

No one suggests neighbours Portugal and Spain should unite, or Norway and Sweden.

And those nations are closer in terms of culture, religion, and language to each other than are Israelis and Palestinians, nor have they recently fought each other.