The following column is part of a series. For more, go to Liberal Zionists Speak Out.
What kind of Zionist? I have been a fervent Zionist, a disappointed Zionist, a proud Zionist, a rebellious Zionist, a fatigued Zionist, a post-Zionist, a pristine Zionist. There are, as I reflect on it, only two kinds of Zionist I have not been: I have not been a disillusioned Zionist, because I have never and still do not regard the highest hopes of Zionism as illusions. And I have not been a Zionist who has cast his daily physical lot with the citizens of Israel, unless we count -- I don't -- vicarious casting as a sort of ersatz aliyah. No, as involved as I have been since roughly the age of 11 in Israel's triumphs and its crises, as considerable the time I have spent defending and protecting Israel from afar, I remain a Zionist who has been present not at the center but at the periphery.
My father was skeptical of Zionism. He saw no reason to assume that the Jews would do better with nationalism than all the others had. Yet he winced only weakly when I joined Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement, which became for the next 10 years as much my home/family as my family home was. So I became, few questions asked, a Zionist.
In the mid-1960s, soon after I finished my book on Israeli politics, Zionism stopped making usable sense to me. It was a doctrine that had been developed in an entirely different time under entirely different circumstances, to address problems quite unlike those that now confronted us. So I stopped thinking of myself as a Zionist; Zionism, having won the Jewish state it had sought, could now be retired.
But when the United Nations, in 1975, declared that "Zionism is racism," my sense of honor revived my Zionism. And a Zionist I have remained, and will. Mine is in the end a simple Zionism: Jews are entitled to a national home -- a sovereign state -- and the only place such a state makes sense is in what was Palestine and has become Israel. That is by no means all there is to Zionism, as I argue below, but those are its twin axiomatic essentials.
I am a proud Zionist. What Israel has accomplished in many spheres -- in agriculture, in hi-tech, in music and theatre, among others and, in particular, in providing refuge and home to Jews from Iraq, Yemen, the Former Soviet Union and dozens of other difficult and often menacing places -- is breathtaking.
I am as well a disappointed Zionist, a troubled Zionist. There is no peace process. Israel's incumbent government energetically pursues a settlement policy that will, before long, render a two-state solution impossible. Israel's status -- and stature -- as an (imperfect) democracy is threatened by a Knesset cadre of Know Nothings with little regard for democratic norms, as also by the decidedly unholy alliance between religious zealots and the political echelon. Democracy and Jewish seems increasingly problematic. Nor was all this foreordained. Israel is in the unhappy place it is these days because flesh and blood human beings (Jews and Palestinians) have made catastrophic choices, again and again. Sovereignty, it turns out, comes with its own set of problems.
Ironically, Zionism offers solutions to some of sovereignty's problems. For my "simple" Zionism, the essential Zionism, came in its mainstream expression with rich amendments, amendments that spoke not merely to statehood per se but to the nature of that statehood. Many of those amendments are contained and others implied in Israel's Declaration of Independence, still others in the ample documentary history of Zionism. All these speak, and eloquently, to the two commitments of the Jewish people -- a commitment to the particular structure and interests of the Jews and a commitment to the universalist ideology of the Jews. These days, the insistent motto of the State is "Never Again." But "never again" tells us only what to avoid; it does not tell us what to embrace. Zionism -- humane, liberal, pragmatic Zionism -- does.
So my battered Zionism remains intact. As against those who want to move beyond Zionism, I believe that to recite Kaddish for Zionism is politically premature and morally spineless. I am a Zionist because Israel is the most important project of the Jewish people in my lifetime, and I will do what I can to help make it work, no matter the odds. And what seems to me needed to make it work is a revival of Zionism's earlier aspirations.
Plus: I know too many -- not enough, but more than a few -- people in Israel who see Zionism and Israel as I do, as an opportunity for the Jewish people to refute my father's skepticism, to develop and embody a different kind of nationalism, and these comrades deserve to be embraced.
The revival of a humane and pragmatic Zionism has immediate political implications: Here in America, we contribute more to Israel's safety and to our own sense of dignity if we let go of the excuses and alibis, put an end to the tradition of endorsing every benighted action of the Israeli government, speak truth to power as best we can and speak truth to our fellow Jews as surely we are able to. In Israel, fatigue cannot be permitted to cripple nor futility be allowed to smother determined, sustained, vocal and visible truth-telling. To speak truth means to assert, again and again, that the settlement enterprise endangers the safety and security of the Jewish State. It means explaining, again and again, that the conventional alibi that Israel has no partner for peace is not persuasive despite its endless repetition, and is in any case not more true than that the Palestinians also do not have a partner for peace, so jingoistic has Israel's government become.
The fact that Zionism these days appears to have been hijacked by expansionists and maximalists, that it too often reduces to thuggery, does not induce me, not for a minute, to abandon the effort. To the contrary: Because the effort is now faltering, because I still believe in the seriousness of the promises made in Israel's Declaration of Independence, because I believe that a state that is both Jewish and democratic, no matter the evident tension in seeking to preserve and extend both those goals, is a worthy and urgent challenge, I remain -- and will remain -- engaged.
Tikkun olam -- the pursuit of social justice -- matters, and Jewish music matters, and Jewish literature, and Jewish prayer, and Jewish language and literacy, too. There are endless points of access to Jewishness. But once on the inside, it is cowardly to evade and avoid the issue of Israel -- of its welfare, of its safety, of its rectitude.
That, in my view, is why this set of essays is potentially so important.
An abridged version of this essay appears in the Forward on May 4. See www.forward.com.
Leonard Fein, editor of this series of essays, is a writer, teacher and social activist. His books include "Israel: Politics and People" (Little, Brown 1966) and "Where Are We? The Inner Life of America's Jews" (Harper & Row, 1987). He has served on the faculties of MIT and Brandeis University, has won diverse prizes, including the JCPA Chernin Award for lifetime contributions to social justice and the first National Foundation for Jewish Culture for achievement in Jewish scholarship. He was the founding editor/publisher of Moment magazine, which he served for 12 years, and he is the founder of Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger.
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Israel at 64: Love is Complex
At liberal advocacy group's gala dinner, former PM says return to pre-1967 borders, coupled with land swaps only way to achieve peace. On Iran: Let global powers lead anti-nuke campaign
WASHINGTON - "Don’t tell me there is no partner. There is a partner. (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) wants peace with Israel," former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a J Street gala dinner on Monday.
The former Israeli premier said Abbas was against terror during the Yasser Arafat era and was in favor of peace negotiations during Ariel Sharon's tenure as prime minister, as well as during his own.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4208585,00.html
If Abbas wanted peace, why didn't he respond to Olmert's offer.
For 6 months, he refused to respond to it.
Its very simple, cause Abbas cant accept the fact, their will be a Jewish state not controlled by the Arabs.
Show me where Abbas has said he supports 2 states for 2 people.
He's never said that.
All he's said is, he wants a state free of Jews and to flood Israel with millions of Arabs.
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/11/mahmoud-abbas-brags-about-his.html
November 11, 2010
Mahmoud Abbas brags about his intransigence
At a rally commemorating the anniverary of Arafat's death today in Ramallah, PA president Mahmoud Abbas spoke to the crowd.
Abbas bragged that the fundamental demands of the Palestinian Arab leadership have not changed at all since 1988, implying that they never will. this would include the 1949 armistice lines, the "right to return," Jerusalem and all the other conditions that the so-called "moderates" have been insisting on.
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I already did. I suggest you re-read my comment and the article it comes from about Olmert's recent speech.
Olmert clearly disagrees with you.
It is people like you who attack moderates like Abbas who are the greatest impediments to peace and the greatest threat to Israel's well-being.
nothing to do with judaism. Liberal zionism what the heck is this, so liberal now is like a topping
everything becomes more delicious when you put it on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ZiVRedU-4&feature=related
"There is no peace process. Israel's incumbent government energetically pursues a settlement policy that will, before long, render a two-state solution impossible. Israel's status -- and stature -- as an (imperfect) democracy is threatened by a Knesset cadre of Know Nothings with little regard for democratic norms, as also by the decidedly unholy alliance between religious zealots and the political echelon...."
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From this article by Fein.
Israel has its own version of the Taliban and Christian Fundamentalism a la Falwell, Robertson and Franklin Graham
You guys are funny, looking in the trash to find excuses to back up any thing that Israel does. I would like to see that Israel makes it find and ok, but not this way.
This mentality really is the problem. A religious state was imposed (based on a presumed entitlement) on people who had been living for thousands of years in the territory now called Israel. Such an imposition is just plain wrong wherever and whenever it occurs. It is a particular feature of this mentality to see the extant residents of that territory as mere specters of humans... not real somehow... a "contrived people" as many Zionists prefer to call Palestinians today --as though somehow they are not real human beings at all. You see, there is no moral trespass when the people tresspassed against are not real people at all! The knot that cannot be undone is the nature of Israel's "founding", i.e, the imposition upon the then-existing residents of that land of a religious state. To impose a religious state on people not of that religion --and to lay claim to such a state unequivocally-- is what, Mr. Fein? Your life's ambition?
isn't that like saying "a liberal colonist"
depends if you think colonising another people's land is good or not. do you think that europeans taking the native american indian's land was a good thing? (oh wait, they never had a country... so it's okay to force them off the land!)
If you want to explore colonialism, you might want to explore why 98% of the Middle east is controlled by Arabs/Muslims/Persians and why Israel is such a tiny sliver of land.
Please tell me one Palestinian leader who calls for two states for two people.
The reason you dont hear this, is because the Palestinians want two Palestinian states and no Israel.
A Palestinian state which is free of Jews and to flood Israel with millions of Arabs for the 2nd Pal state.
Nabil Shaath the rejectionist made it very clear this year.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/11/voices-of-palestine-nabil-shaath/2/
The story of two states for two peoples means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this.” In other words, the Palestinians want two Palestinian states.
Shalom.
never forget Rachel Corrie !!
About four years ago a middle aged MA student named Teddy Katz, submitted a masters thesis to the University of Haifa that had been prepared under the supervision of Israels most extremist and anti-Zionist academic, Ilan Pappe. Pappe likes to describe himself as Israels most hated person and I suspect he may be on to something there.
He spends his days addressing anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rallies and conferences around the globe and likes to write Israel-bashing pieces in the PLOs journal. He appears in al-Ahram. He has openly called for Israel's destruction - to be replaced by a Palestinian state with Sharia law as its religion
He ran for the Knesset on the slate of the Arab Stalinist party HADASH.
Pappe's student Teddy Katz claimed that a platoon of the Alexandroni brigade of the Hagana had in 1948 conducted a massacre of Arabs at the town of Tantora near Haifa in Israels 48 war.
It was of course, as it turned out, a complete fabrication based on some Arabs suddenly recovering from repressed memory syndrome after 50 years and claiming there had been a massacre when they were infants. Except when the tapes of interviews with these folks were checked out, it turned out even these Arabs had never said there was any massacre but rather that the Hagana had been very nice about helping the civilians.
Katz and Pappe had simply invented the story.
When word hit the press, the Hagana vets organization sued Katz and the University of Haifa for libel. Eventually the matter reached a court settlement in which Katz agreed to admit publicly he had lied, publish a retraction at his own expense, and apologize to the vets. Katz was represented in all this by ultras-leftist lawyer Avigdor Feldman, who took time off from his usual passion for representing Arabs who have murdered Jewish children.
Feldman was present when Katz signed the court settlement.
But a few days after that, Katz tried to back out of the settlement, probably under encouragement to do so by Pappe, who continues to insist the massacre really took place even though not a shred of evidence has ever been discovered by anyone that there had been one. (Even Arab journalists and reporters who had been present at the battle never claimed there had been any massacre.) The judge refused to allow Katz to back out of the deal. When Katz refused to publish the retraction, the vets successfully sued Katz to recover their costs. Pappe and the communists then organized a campaign to try to raise cash to help out Katz with this.
But that’s not all. He wants the Palestinians to accept hundreds of thousands of heavily armed and violent Israeli settlers in enclaves carved deep into the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine. These settlements are connected by roads only Israeli citizens and foreigners can use. How does Friedman wants these roads to be portrayed on his map?
He wants Palestinians to give up a huge part of East Jerusalem. He might think he is being magnanimous when he says Palestinians can have “all Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem,” but the corollary to this is that Israel gets to keep all of the neighborhoods it ethnically cleansed while installing 200,000 colonists."
http://electronicintifada.net/content/tom-friedmans-latest-advice-palestinians-accept-farce-state/11201
The reason why is very simple, cause their would be a Jewish state not controlled by the Arabs.
Only when the Palestinians extremist/rejectionist/supremacist attitude changes will peace really be possible.
THE REAL ESSENSE OF ''MIDEAST'' CONFLICT''
Arabs want to destroy Israel, but Israel doesn't want to be destroyed.
I have seen the videos of Hamas and Fatah fighters grabbing children off the street to use as human shields. Their use of ambulances to transport arms and terrorists and the use of mosques, schools and hospitals as military installations.
The Arabs continually initiate the violence. The Israelis have not fired the first shots.
Do the Palestinians expect not to be fired back on? Its ok for them to blow up school children and civilians intentionally? Someone please explain to me how the Israelis could possibly live next to such a violent people. I personally don't see how it can be done at this point. All I see is the Palestinians provoking war and using any method they can to get all of Israel.
But what about the Palestinians? Don't they deserve to stay? Your new ethnocentric revival of Zionism is very vague, as an American Jew, I've abandoned it a long time ago and I urge my people and the Palestinians to share a state. You should work towards this to.