by Dr. Asaf Romirowsky
Today, the idea of Jewish statehood is no longer a unifying principle but a wedge issue for American Jews.
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| Peter Beinart speaking at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle, Washington, May 23, 2019 at an event sponsored by J Street, image via Wikimedia Commons |
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,445, February 10, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The necessity of a
Jewish nation state was a foundational premise for the founding fathers
of Zionism, no matter what their political persuasion. That
understanding was once shared by most American Jews, particularly in the
aftermath of the Holocaust. Today, however, the idea of Jewish
statehood is no longer a unifying principle but a wedge issue for
American Jews.
In his address to the Zionist Congress in London on August 2, 1900, Theodor Herzl said:
Zionism demands a publicly recognized and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people. This platform, which we drew up three years ago, is unchangeable. It must have responded to a very deep necessity, a very old longing of our people, otherwise its effects would be inexplicable. There is no need of my enumerating these effects at the present day. Everyone knows them, everyone sees and hears them. Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being thought ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation. A glance at this hall, where our people is represented by delegates from all over the world, suffices to prove this.
The Zionist enterprise has evolved over the past
120 years but has always been predicated on the reestablishment of
Jewish statehood in the ancestral homeland. The collective memory of
Jewish statelessness and powerless was vivid during the early decades of
the Jewish State. Left, right or center, the founding fathers of
Zionism were all motivated by the imperative of Jewish statehood as both
a manifestation of the Jewish People’s right to national
self-determination and a means of lessening Jewish vulnerability and
increasing the likelihood of Jewish survival.
This foundational axiom was also widely understood
by American Jews, particularly in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Statehood was seen as the necessary extension of the shared sense of
Jewish nationhood that had existed for millennia, a sense of unity and
even destiny that went beyond culture or even religion.
Today, however, among an increasing number of
American Jews, the idea of a Jewish state is no longer a building block
but rather a wedge issue.
The very idea of nations and nation states may be suspect in the 21st
century, but no other national movement evokes so uniquely visceral a
reaction as does Zionism. No other term for a national movement has been
infamously defined by the UN as “a form of racism and racial
discrimination”—an epithet assigned to it by a bigoted coalition led by
the Soviet Union. And no other definition has caused so much anxiety
among a movement’s putative supporters and rendered them so unwilling to
stand up for their cause. Too many American Jewish supporters of Israel
live in fear of being declared racist by enemies of Zionism, or by
those who purport to be so “enlightened” that they can see through the
façade of Israeli democracy.
Those individuals take it upon themselves to
distinguish between the “good” and the “bad” parts of Israel and avail
themselves freely of the all-purpose evil of the “occupation.” Today’s
left and progressive circles use the 1967 “Green Line” as a red herring
in their representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the
American Jewish community. Journalist Peter Beinart, one of the driving
forces behind this trend, claims “the American Jewish establishment and
the Zionist establishment [render themselves] morally corrupt by
defending the indefensible, for defending an occupation that holds
millions of people occupied”.
Beinart, J Street head Jeremy Ben Ami, and others
believe a “Zionist BDS” directed only against Israeli West Bank
neighborhoods (or “settlements”) is fair game. Like many post-Zionists
and revisionists, they propound a false reality that puts the entire
onus for the Arab-Israeli conflict on Israel. This distorted narrative
maintains that Israel is almost exclusively to blame for the collapse of
the Oslo “peace process” and the failure to revive it, rather than Arab
rejectionism or Yasser Arafat’s web of lies to his people, Israel, and
the US.
Cognitive dissonance—the discomfort caused by
carrying conflicting beliefs or values simultaneously—applies to many
aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is an especially apt
description of the emotions produced by the difference between
historical fact and the Palestinians’ view of their national narrative.
The notion of “occupation” has become the defining
lens through which everything about the Palestinians’ self-conception
is explained and justified. This is exactly the myopic view taken by
Beinart and his colleagues. The only difference is that unlike overtly
anti-Zionist bashers like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe, and others,
Beinart claims to be a lover of Zion—just one who is having a difficult
time grappling with the “harsh” Israeli reality.
American Jewish intellectuals have placed other
Jews in the class of people who cannot be debated or remain unpunished
for where they live or for their views. Moreover, a strict double
standard applies: Jewish organizations like Hillel must include
anti-Israel voices or be deemed intolerant or racist, but Palestinians
and their supporters should never be expected to reciprocate. Jewish
intellectuals must engage in dialogue with BDS representatives or other
Palestinian advocates who demand the ethnic cleansing of Israel lest
they be called cowards or worse. Leading American Jewish intellectuals
have themselves adopted the rhetoric and methods of BDS, to be applied
to Jews only.
This strategy has been mostly local up to this
point, but individuals like Beinart and Ben-Ami now feel empowered to
attempt to hijack the World Zionist Congress and steer funding away from
anything related to the “settlements”. The legislative authority of the
120-year-old World Zionist Organization helps determine the fate of $1
billion in spending on Jewish causes. Beinart contends that “Israeli
settlements in the West Bank are institutionalized expressions of
bigotry. The American and Israeli politicians who legitimize them are
the moral equivalent of those politicians who legitimized Jim Crow”
because “Jewish settlements are Jewish-only settlements.” J Street has announced a
new campaign to pressure 2020 Democratic candidates into opposing
Israel’s presence in the West Bank, with the goal of getting the party
to include a formal opposition to the “occupation” in its official
platform.
There are countless unresolved questions regarding
the territories and “settlements,” all of which should be decided by
Israelis and Palestinians. American Jews imposing their conceptions,
based on a palpable lack of understanding and sympathy for their Israeli
cousins, is patronizing and foolish. Hijacking Zionism’s most important
institution to demand that Israelis follow the dictates of Americans is
far from what Herzl and his successors intended.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/jewish-statehood-american-jews/
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