The term Zionism
was entered into the public domain circa 1893. The Zionist movement
became current in 1897. Its goal was to create a homeland for
Jews, many of whom were being persecuted in other lands. In
1917 the Balfour Declaration endorsed the creation of a Jewish
state in Palestine. Israel was born in 1948.
Whether or not it
was a mistake to designate Palestine (Uganda was also on the
table) for a Jewish homeland is a matter of debate and tiresome
retrospection. I begin with what is given -- the entity of Israel
derived from its military power. If Israel’s enemies could
wipe it off the map and live to see another day, they would
do it on a dime.
That Zionism is
often equated with racism, and stands accused of being exclusionary
and anti-democratic, is a criticism Jews have not been able
to deflect, in part because they have not been willing to acknowledge,
much less sign on to, the universal impulse that underlies not
only Israeli zionism, but zionisms everywhere in the world.
Prior to any particular
zionism, and even prior to the word itself, the spirit that
would eventuate the term concerns itself with the instinctive
response of an endangered, territoryless people to save and
preserve itself.
Reduced to what
is universal in its objectives, zionism is the appeal of a people
(identified by either race, religion, ethnicity, language or
combination thereof) for a special territorial dispensation
necessitated by imminent
threat.
It asserts that
without recourse to sovereignty, the threatened group risks
obliteration through either annihilation or assimilation or
combination thereof. Throughout history, there have been many
peoples and cultures that have disappeared from the face of
the earth because they were not able to negotiate for themselves
that special territorial dispensation upon which self-preservation
is predicated. Thus, we speak of zionism as a threatened people’s
unalienable right – in practice rarely secured -- to selfhood.
Since no nation or identity is exempt from the vagaries of history,
we are all implicated in the zionist prerogative in that we
all recognize the legitimacy and right of an endangered people
to defend and preserve itself.
Generic or nonspecific
zionism does not concern itself with the nature or degree of
the barbarism that arouses it. While it recognizes that no two
barbarisms are the same (the Jews were systematically gassed,
the Tutsis unsystematically hacked), its function and expression
are sanctioned by DNA-deep, biological imperatives (that precede
given rights and guarantees) that reflexively kick in in response
to threat.
But the term zionism,
as it is employed today, like a child that has been stolen from
its mother and sold to the highest bidder, has been shorn from
its original meaning and intent. In theory, the zionist prerogative
should be championed by all nations concerned with the world’s
threatened (territoryless) peoples, but in perverse point of
fact it has been hijacked and redefined as a human rights abuse
by the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic horde, and then allowed to
wallow there consequent to Israel’s calculated refusal
to join the choir of voices that unites all the world’s
zionisms. Israel did not speak out against the horrors in Rwanda
and Srebrenica; it did not recognize their zionisms as the same
as its own.
From 1948 to the
present, Israel’s discombobulating silence in respect
to the plight of the Roma, the Tutsis, the Srebrenicans and
the Darfurians, to name a few, begs the question of why, when
it could have been so easily otherwise. Why has the nation of
Israel, born in the ashes of the holocaust, squandered one public
relations opportunity after another with which it could have
cumulatively ingratiated itself into world favour -- instead
of world scorn? Does the Israeli psyche harbour a masochistic
gene that invigorates its policies while betraying an apparently
insatiable appetite for getting beaten up and abused by public
opinion? Israel’s abdication in the field of public relations,
for which there is much to account for but no excusing, provides
its naysayers with a loaded gun that cannot fail to miss its
target. Is it the thick skin that informs thick-minded foreign
policy or vice versa?
One cannot help
but wonder if Israel, in refusing to share in the fear and trembling
that binds all the world’s threatened, territoryless people,
hasn’t been ‘stupefied’ by its narrow obsession
with its unique suffering. Freud, who understood that religion
and ethnicity would not be able supply the laws and formulations
that account for what is universal in human behaviour, would
accuse Israel of arrested development, likening it to the unempowered
abused child who becomes the empowered abuser adult, or the
unloved child becoming the empowered unloving parent. No one
cared about Israel during its holocaust; now, as an empowered,
sovereign nation, it doesn’t care about anyone else’s
-- an all too predictable response doubtlessly biologically
inscribed in the psyche of every abused people. But is this
how a nation goes about winning friends and influence? That
it failed to show any concern for its brothers and sisters in
Rwanda, Darfur, Srebrenica and Kosovo represents a failure the
dimensions of which constitute a work in reverse progress on
the part of those entrusted to provide for the nation’s
health and well being, presuming that world opinion, almost
seven billion strong and counting, is a wave any nation would
rather ride than have to turn aside. Whenever genocide happens,
Israel, having been there and survived it, should not only be
the first to speak out against it, it should send a contingent
of its own in common cause. And while lives will be lost in
the short-term, many more will be saved in the long run.
There are many legitimate
zionist causes that enjoy the sympathy and support of world
opinion. That the majority of the world’s threatened peoples,
usually from diasporic or indigenous backgrounds, will fail
to secure the territorial dispensation necessary for their survival
speaks more to the willingness of the world and nature of realpolitiks
than the cause itself.
The Roma, 600,000
of whom were holocausted by the Nazis, failed to negotiate for
themselves a territory with which they would have been able
to preserve their language and culture. Slowly but surely, they
are disappearing through assimilation. (We wryly note the Italians
are counting the days).
Tibet has been run
over by the Chinese and will probably disappear (its Buddhist
culture and institutions) in the next 100 years. The Uighurs,
in western China, are a Turkic speaking, mainly Sunni Islamic
ethnic group with a long history in the region. China, besides
imposing severe restrictions on freedom of religion, is in effect
depopulating the region by overwhelming it with a sustained
influx of Han Chinese migrants. Like Tibet, without a zionist
dispensation, the Uighur way of life is doomed to extinction.
But where the world
is willing and territorial dispensation is feasible, threatened
peoples can regroup and thrive. In the genocidal aftermath of
Slobodan Milosevic, Kosovo has declared sovereignty –
and enjoys the blessings of the world’s powers and world
opinion. First Nations people in Canada and aboriginals in Australia
and New Zealand have had some of their original territory returned,
and with it the means and motivation to begin their long day’s
journey recovering the self-esteem that was taken away.
Sometimes serendipity
plays a role in negotiating territory. During the early 1930s,
in what has become known as The Great Famine (Holodomor) or
Ukrainian genocide, the Soviet Union implemented policies aimed
at the destruction of the Ukrainian nation. Ukrainian grain
was shipped to the West while millions at home starved to death.
At the time, Ukrainian zionism was met with silence since it
would have meant a major confrontation between the East and
West. Then, in 1991, the Berlin Wall collapsed, and soon after,
Ukraine declared sovereignty and reinstated Ukrainian as its
official language.
Not all zionist
causes are clear cut. The Kurds, in southeast Turkey, have had
their language banned and media outlets ruled illegal. It is
Turkey’s wish to assimilate the estimated six million
within its borders. But in northern Iraq, with the ouster of
Saddam, the Kurds are enjoying more autonomy. Is there a zionist
case to be made for the creation of Kurdistan?
Other zionist ventures,
not to be confused with unauthorized terrorist activity, enjoy
the sympathy of world opinion but do not have a compelling argument
as it concerns special territorial dispensation. Basque culture
is not under threat in Spain, and closer to home, in Canada,
the province of Québec -- a nation within a nation surrounded
by a sea of English -- has been able to provide for itself sufficient
special legislative dispensations to guarantee the survival
of its language and culture.
But there can be
no waffling, that is picking and choosing among zionisms. If
you support one, you support them all since you have already
signed on to the notion that a people whose language, culture
and institutions are under imminent threat has the right to
defend and preserve itself. Which means if you are among the
legions that rage against Israeli zionism (distinct from its
day to day politics), you are either inadvertently or deliberately
attributing to zionism what might be your anti-Semitism. If
you’re Arab and support Kosovan zionism, you must support
Israeli zionism. For the same reason, if you’re Israeli
and support Kosovan zionism, you must support the cause of Palestinian
zionism.
Since zionism is
a natural first response of an endangered people to an imminent
threat, survival trumps all other considerations, which can
render the principles of democracy a luxury some zionisms cannot
afford if it means the disappearance of the people (culture
and institutions) the zionism was meant to safeguard. In Israel,
for example, if the Palestinian minority (the putative enemy
within), hostile to Jews and the state of Israel, were to become
a majority, they would terminate the Israeli state, undermining
the entire raison d’être of the spirit
which gave birth to the nation. That zionism may require the
implementation of anti-democratic measures is a highly delicate
matter of slippery slope proportions that will require diligent
and unrelenting international assessment and vetting of declarations
and decrees that will regretfully produce a second class citizenry.
But you don’t poison the well from which you drink. As
it rightfully concerns necessarily disadvantaged minorities
living in zionist begat nations, the individual will weigh the
pluses and minuses of remaining in a territory without the same
rights as the majority. In gender
apartheid free Israel, there is no demographic
evidence suggesting Palestinian women -- who can wear mini skirts,
enjoy the beach, drive cars -- are looking to pitch tent in
the West Bank or other Arab countries.
Palestinians
living in Israel enjoy most, but not all, of
the rights of the majority, and that includes religious freedom,
freedom of assembly and equal treatment under the law, which
is why they are choosing to stay. The same applies to Québec
immigrants, who, by law, must educate their children in French,
and not English – one of the official languages of Canada
-- but choose to stay. From 1100 to 1900, most Jews in Arab
and Persian countries (Iraq, Iran) stayed put as second class
citizens because the trade off was acceptable.
The term zionism
should be emblematic of what we most aspire to and admire in
a political outcome because its meaning links a people’s
raw instinct for self-preservation to the humanity of the redoubtable
other who recognizes in a threatened people their right and
the means to self-determination. Thus, zionism, in a perfect
world, in the movement it generates and hopes it gathers, reveals
itself as a gift that ennobles its enablers no less than it
inspires gratitude and humility in the people it succours.
But alas, ours is
only "half the perfect world," and on our watch, the
term zionism, its frame of reference, has been co-opted by the
hordes of the hating and turned into a bully pulpit, which makes
its rehabilitation everyone’s task, and a priority our
anxious and increasingly nuclear world ignores at its own peril.
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