Michael Anbarae

I had an interesting discussion with a Jewish friend. He considers himself a Zionist. He supports the Jewish State in many ways - he visited the country a number of times, he contributes to several fund raising drives, he bought Israel bonds, and so on. When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, he laments about the failure of Camp David. He hates Arafat for not accepting the far-reaching concessions offered to him by President Clinton and endorsed by Ehud Barak, including establishing a Palestinian capital in part of Jerusalem. When I asked him why should Arafat have accepted those offers, he answered that Arafat should have understood that the Jews are there to stay, because they have no other place to go. �After all,� he said �the Israelis do not ask the Arabs to leave, just to share their land with the Jews.� �What about the right of return?� I asked. He looked at me and said: �This is impossible. There is no room for them. Israel must remain a Jewish state. It is the only independent state the Jews have. Having an independent Jewish state has always been the goal of Zionism.� �Is that so?� I asked �Then why not have a Jewish independent state in Uganda?� You are nuts�, he said �Just imagine living under Idi Amin or falling a victim to tribal warfare, they would kill all the Jews, look at what is happening in Kenya these days.� �Well, then why are you surprised by the Arabs killing Jews in Tel Aviv?� �This is different.� He said �Tel Aviv is a Jewish city. Besides, the State of Israel was recognized by the United Nations.� �So why should Jerusalem become the capital of an Arab state?� �We don�t want more trouble with those Arabs,� he answered �There are whole quarters of Jerusalem populated with Arabs. Who needs this headache?� �Then why not declare part of New York City a Jewish capital? There are more Jews in some quarters of New York City than in Jewish Jerusalem.� �You don�t know what you are talking! Lets stop talking nonsense.� So we stopped.

We got into this absurd discussion because my friend does not understand what Zionism is all about. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding, which is quite common, justifies the hostile position of the Arab and their sympathizers. Genuine Zionism is aimed at reestablishing sovereignty of the Jewish people over their ancient homeland. Deeply ingrained in Jewish culture is the craving of Jews to regain sovereignty over Jerusalem their ancient capital. This is true �Zionism�. This term has been adopted by a political movement established by the turn of the 20th Century, aimed to meet this goal.

Zionism is not a political movement aimed at establishing a homeland for homeless Jews. It is not setting up a Jewish �reservation�, no matter on which continent (Grand Island, Uganda, or Tasmania). To fully understand the cultural meaning of Zionism, without knowing Jewish history, may not be trivial. Even Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who came from a secular assimilatory background and was moved by the urgent need to find a home for Eastern European Jewish refugees, did not understand this early on. It became clear to him only when he needed popular Jewish support for his new movement.

Zionism was not invented in the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. Psalm 137 �Besides the streams of Babylon we sat and wept at the memory of Zion � Jerusalem, if I forget you, may my right hand wither, may I never speak again, if I forget you!� is a twenty-five hundred years old Zionist expression. Nehemiah, who came to Jerusalem about 440 BCE, giving up a high position in the Persian court, was a Zionist and so was Hillel who emigrated from Mesopotamia four hundred years later. So was Judah Halevi, the philosopher-poet who wrote: �My heart is in the East and I am in the depths of the West� How can I fulfill the pledges and vows, when Zion is in the power of Edom and I am in the fetters of Arabia? It will be nothing for me to leave all the goodness of Spain. So good it will be to see the dust of the ruined sanctuary.� Halevi immigrated to Israel in 1141 AD. The hundreds of Jewish Rabbis who immigrated to Israel in 1211, followed by Nahmanides is 1267, were all Zionists. And so were hundreds of other Jewish spiritual leaders and scholars and thousands of their followers who came to the Land of Israel over hundreds of years, way before the modern political Zionist movement was even conceived. The 1878 establishment of Petah Tikvah, the first �modern� agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel, preceded Herzl�s political Zionism by more than a decade.

While modern political Zionism is of secular nature, its origins are deeply rooted in traditional Judaism. The traditional Jewish Passover Seder has ended with �Next year in Jerusalem�probably since the destruction of the Second Temple. Zionism is a characteristic manifestation of Jewish culture and not a political movement to solve the �Jewish problem.� Zionism is definitely not looking for territory to settle displaced Jews, as claimed by the Arabs and even by some socialist Israeli �modern historians�.

Socialism, as a political movement, has considered Zionism an anachronistic ideology because Zionism is rooted in religion, disdained by �true� socialists. Even today, you find members of the Israeli political left who hardly care if Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Jewish People, would become a capital of an Arab state. They may even realize that the Arabs� demand to divide Jerusalem, is just the first step in eventual banishing the Jews from their ancient capital (the historical existence of which Arabs openly deny). Still the leadership of the Israeli leftists is ready to accept such a humiliating political solution because adherence to biblical or Rabbinic Judaism, to which Jerusalem is central, has religious connotations, and these do not suit �pure� secular socialism. In this context one can understand why socialistic Israeli youth movements in the 30�s replaced �Hatikvah�, Israel�s Zionist national anthem by �Tehezakna�, a poem that glorifies agricultural work. Since the national anthem refers to the two-thousand-year-old Jewish yearning to be a free nation in the Land of Zion, it had to be replaced.

My friend considers himself a liberal, i.e., a secular socialistic Zionist. However, these two ideologies do not harmonize. True cosmo-political Socialism and genuine Zionism do not mix. My friend sees the presence of five and a half million Jews in Israel as a wonderful solution for all those Jewish refugees, who came from Europe, the Arab countries, former Russia and South America. He gladly supports them materially. However, religious American Jews who immigrate to Israel for genuine Zionist ideological reasons, many of whom settle in the �disputed territories,� might trouble him. �These are not refugees.� he thinks, �Why are they doing this?� Moreover, �Why do they cause political trouble over there with their �zealous� ideas?�.

�Socialistic Zionism� is full of internal contradictions. Like in the dialog I had with my friend, one can reach absurd conclusions. Some of these conclusions match the Arab claims that Jews have no special right to the Land of Israel, that they are racists by arbitrarily giving priority to Jewish immigrants, that they even encourage such a biased immigration, that they do not implement �affirmative action� to prefer impoverished Arab workers in the job market, etc. Socialists in Norway and the rest of Europe, who are �enlightened� by their Israeli colleagues and look critically at the situation, readily discover these contradictions. They then try to �straighten out� the �confused� Israelis by putting economic and political pressure on the more conservative but deeply divided �National Unity� government of Israel. What is even worse, the Israeli �socialistic Zionists� now look at the Camp David concessions as an ideal political solution, in spite of their suicidal shortcomings from a traditional Zionist standpoint. After more than 600 Israeli fatalities, victims of indiscriminate Arab terror, they seem to be ready again to reward the Arabs by giving up their exclusive right to the Jewish capital, which they might lose altogether in a few years in a renewed wave of terror. If Jerusalem has no historical-religious value for the Jews, why should it not become an Arab city?

There is just one kind of true Zionism imbedded in Jewish national culture. Zionism does mandate sovereignty over the Land of Israel, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, including Jerusalem its capital. In any political settlement, the Palestinian Arabs and Arabs in the neighboring countries must recognize the Land of Israel as the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, with Jerusalem as its capital. This is what true Zionism is all about.

The creation of a demilitarized independent Arab state in parts of the Land of Israel, in order to alleviate conflicts between Arabs and Jews, is not in variance with Zionism, as long as Jews have the right to live anywhere within the Arab state as its citizens, just like Israeli Arabs have now the right to live anywhere within the Jewish state.

Coming back to socialism and liberalism, a Zionist state can readily adhere to the basic premises of equality and social welfare irrespective of religious affiliation, which are socialistic fundamentals. It can also implement separation between synagogue and state, like in practically all modern democracies, without giving up the historical ties to its homeland (personally, I hope this happens soon). Let us remember that biblical Judaism has often denounced institutional religion and religious hypocrisy; unfortunately, we have a lot of it in Israel today. Biblical Judaism established the foundations of social welfare and equal treatment of resident aliens. Christianity, secular democracy, and later Marxism and socialism, emulated those originally Jewish basic principles of social behavior.

For the sake of survival of the Jewish people worldwide, I hope that genuine Zionism, based on the historical yearning of Jews for their homeland, prevails in the one and only Jewish state. Accepting these tenets of Zionism by all people, Jews and non-Jews alike, is the only guaranty for long-term peace and prosperity in the Middle East.