Zionism
After 115 Years, It's Time for Zionism to Retire
Haaretz: The national liberation movement's time came and went. Now we have a state. Neither good citizenship nor misdeeds have anything to do with Zionism anymore.
Zionism is already 115 years old; it should have retired long ago. If on Independence Day we're concerned about the future of a state approaching retirement age (presuming it's a man, not a woman, who would have retired two years ago ), then we should call for the replacement of Zionism with something younger, more energetic and more relevant. Zionism should have become a rank-and-file pensioner shortly after the state was established or, at most, when the movement turned 62 or 67.
A state does not retire, but a national liberation movement must, like every elderly citizen - knowing when its time has passed. It must be consigned to history. These things are even more true if the movement has already fulfilled its mission, achieved its goals and now everyone is beating up on it, misusing it, decking themselves in its feathers and taking its name in vain.
In 2012, the 64th year of the state, no one even knows for certain what remains of it, what the role of Zionism is and how it is defined. That's how it is when one doesn't have the sense to retire at one's peak - and that peak was long ago.
Who is a Zionist? All the answers are wrong, even if they are more plentiful (and more ridiculous ) than the answers to the other existential question of who is a Jew.
The truth is that there is no answer. Not because Zionism was not a just cause - it was, even if it was tainted by unnecessary injustices, and not because it didn't succeed. It was the greatest national success story of the 20th century. But that century is over and its greatest success story has been established. The national home arose, and now it is a regional power. Anyone who wanted to - about one-third of the Jewish people - has joined it, and the door remains open to the rest.
All the remaining, disturbing questions and all the challenges are matters for the state and the society that have arisen, as with every state and society. Their connection to the founding movement is no longer relevant. Yes, Zionism is no longer relevant, and its place is in the history books alone.
But the Jewish people lives, as they say, and therefore Israel has tried to invent a new Zionism for itself, far more totalitarian than its predecessor. Alongside the religion of security, Zionism has become the state's second recognized religion, forcing itself recklessly on all its subjects. We have room only for "Zionists."
Anyone who serves in the Israel Defense Forces is a "Zionist"; anyone who settles far from Tel Aviv is also a "Zionist"; anyone who volunteers to help the other, the poor, the weak, the blind, the sick and the lame - a "Zionist"; anyone who donates something to someone - a "Zionist"; anyone who sings the national anthem and hangs the national flag, and anyone who stands to attention when necessary (and when it's not necessary ), anyone who settles and unsettles, anyone who justifies every state injustice, anyone who immigrates and even emigrates is a Zionist. Anyone who tyrannizes another people and anyone who looks away is a Zionist and a son of a Zionist. All of us are Zionists; well, nearly all of us.
All the positives also lead to negatives, and that negative is illegitimate, traitorous, hated and a hater of Israel. Anyone who doesn't do any of the things mentioned above is post- or anti-Zionist. In Israel 2012, a pursuer of justice and human rights is by definition not Zionist. Even to talk about morality, law or international law is blatantly "not Zionist."
We have given world Jewry grades in Zionism. Anyone who donates to settlements - Zionist; anyone who donates to human rights organizations - anti. Anyone who belongs to the nationalist, rapacious, right-wing Jewish establishment - Zionist. Anyone who seeks a fairer, more enlightened alternative - post. Anyone who blindly supports all of Israel's misdeeds - Zionist; anyone who dares to criticize it - anti-Semites, even if they are Jewish. A former Israeli who lives in Vegas and gambles on his former country's future, urging it to blow up, bomb, crush and destroy - Zionist. Anyone worried about its justice - post-Zionist.
The world, too, has invented some new Zionisms for itself. In the eyes of the Arab world, every Israeli is a Zionist; in the eyes of most of the Western world, any supporter of the Israeli occupation is a Zionist. Both of these see Zionism as negative epithet and a mark of shame. The new Zionism has only acquired a bad international reputation.
Zionism's way has been lost to us. That was inevitable, because it has completed its task. Once the State of Israel arose and became a national home nearly at the retirement age of the movement that engendered it, once it became established, strong and powerful, and brutal and impervious, its flag should have been folded, stored in the repositories of history as a souvenir, and Zionism should no longer have its name taken in vain. The old order of Zionism is over and the campaign over the character and appearance of the state should begin, as happens in every healthy state.
Anyone who contributes to the state is a worthy citizen and a decent patriot. Anyone who contributes to its institutions is a philanthropist - this has no connection to Zionism. Anyone who is required to serve in its army, exactly like anyone who is supposed to pay taxes to it, is fulfilling his legal obligations. This has no connection to Zionism or to values.
Anyone who supports the state's misdeeds is a traitor, and anyone who remains silent defiles himself. Anyone who settles in remote parts of the country is perhaps a pioneer, anyone who contributes to its economy, science, creativity and art is also a good citizen, and this too has no connection to Zionism.
Anyone who steals land is a thief, anyone who denies rights to a minority is a racist. Anyone who believes in a just Israel is a patriot; anyone who is secular, is secular; and anyone who is religious is religious; anyone who is Jewish, is Jewish; and anyone who is not Jewish, is not Jewish. What connection does all of this have to Zionism? All are citizens of the state.
Zionist as an adjective has passed from this world, and no one is entitled to hand out grades for Zionism anymore. Anyone who lives here is an Israeli. Anyone who doesn't live here is not Israeli. Period.
Nor should the relationship with the Jewish world pass through this prism of Zionism: We may invite any Jew here, anyone born in this country or his descendants. Anyone who wants can contribute from outside, just as other expatriates contribute to their home countries.
The campaign to strengthen the State of Israel and make it a more just and secure place also has nothing to do with Zionism. Such campaigns are taking place nearly everywhere. Let us not boast vaingloriously.
Am I a Zionist? How shall I answer? If Zionism is settling in the territories then I am anti-Zionist. If Zionism is continuing the occupation then I am non-Zionist. And if Zionism is the Jewish people's right to a state, just like the Palestinian people's right to a state, including at least partial correction of the injustice done to them in 1948, then I too am a Zionist. If Zionism is striving for a democratic state, then in that case too I am a Zionist, son of a Zionist.
A concept as confusing and misleading as Zionism is today does not belong to the state that arose for the Jewish people gloriously (or not ), and therefore it should have ceased to exist long ago.
'Until here'
On the eve of Independence Day this week, a flock of dark gray crows hovered over Nahal Lakhish in the Ad Halom Park in southern Israel. Ad Halom means "until here," and that's where the Egyptian army was stopped in the summer of 1948. Here the State of Israel was saved, about two weeks after its establishment.
"All of us are tired. The Egyptians are in Ashdod but they may advance on Tel Aviv if we do not stop them. Despite the exhaustion and for the sake of our families, we will also go out tonight," commander Aryeh Kotzer told his company shortly before he was killed.
Kotzer should have been considered one of the last Zionists. Those who came after him were Israelis, for better or worse. As we stood near the memorial to the Givati fighters who died in the Ad Halom battle, sophisticated air force planes thundered through the skies to their base nearby. A foreign worker cultivated an orchard, and an avenue of oleander bushes blossomed in pink. The hills surrounding this memorial park still bear the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages, whose thousands of inhabitants fled or were expelled in that war that left not a single Palestinian home inhabited on the coastal plain between Jaffa and Gaza.
Now these lands are full of moshavim, some of them flourishing. One of them, called Emunim, which was founded in 1950 by immigrants from Egypt, has a circular plaza called the Plaza of Mercy. At the center of the village is a twinkling electronic signboard, in place of the bulletin boards of yore, calling upon the owners of farming plots to attend a general meeting on May 1 and inviting residents to come collect planks for the Lag Ba'omer bonfires. One home has solar panels on its roof. The radio announces that Check Point Software Technologies reported higher profits. And a large iron gate at the edge of the moshav bears a painting of a large Israeli flag, in honor of Independence Day. On top of the flag hangs a large poster for a charity, Amutat Hasei Ayala, succor and aid to the needy. Not far away you can see the prefab temporary homes of Nitzan, housing settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Zionism is already 115 years old; it should have retired long ago. If on Independence Day we're concerned about the future of a state approaching retirement age (presuming it's a man, not a woman, who would have retired two years ago ), then we should call for the replacement of Zionism with something younger, more energetic and more relevant. Zionism should have become a rank-and-file pensioner shortly after the state was established or, at most, when the movement turned 62 or 67.
A state does not retire, but a national liberation movement must, like every elderly citizen - knowing when its time has passed. It must be consigned to history. These things are even more true if the movement has already fulfilled its mission, achieved its goals and now everyone is beating up on it, misusing it, decking themselves in its feathers and taking its name in vain.
In 2012, the 64th year of the state, no one even knows for certain what remains of it, what the role of Zionism is and how it is defined. That's how it is when one doesn't have the sense to retire at one's peak - and that peak was long ago.
Who is a Zionist? All the answers are wrong, even if they are more plentiful (and more ridiculous ) than the answers to the other existential question of who is a Jew.
The truth is that there is no answer. Not because Zionism was not a just cause - it was, even if it was tainted by unnecessary injustices, and not because it didn't succeed. It was the greatest national success story of the 20th century. But that century is over and its greatest success story has been established. The national home arose, and now it is a regional power. Anyone who wanted to - about one-third of the Jewish people - has joined it, and the door remains open to the rest.
All the remaining, disturbing questions and all the challenges are matters for the state and the society that have arisen, as with every state and society. Their connection to the founding movement is no longer relevant. Yes, Zionism is no longer relevant, and its place is in the history books alone.
But the Jewish people lives, as they say, and therefore Israel has tried to invent a new Zionism for itself, far more totalitarian than its predecessor. Alongside the religion of security, Zionism has become the state's second recognized religion, forcing itself recklessly on all its subjects. We have room only for "Zionists."
Anyone who serves in the Israel Defense Forces is a "Zionist"; anyone who settles far from Tel Aviv is also a "Zionist"; anyone who volunteers to help the other, the poor, the weak, the blind, the sick and the lame - a "Zionist"; anyone who donates something to someone - a "Zionist"; anyone who sings the national anthem and hangs the national flag, and anyone who stands to attention when necessary (and when it's not necessary ), anyone who settles and unsettles, anyone who justifies every state injustice, anyone who immigrates and even emigrates is a Zionist. Anyone who tyrannizes another people and anyone who looks away is a Zionist and a son of a Zionist. All of us are Zionists; well, nearly all of us.
All the positives also lead to negatives, and that negative is illegitimate, traitorous, hated and a hater of Israel. Anyone who doesn't do any of the things mentioned above is post- or anti-Zionist. In Israel 2012, a pursuer of justice and human rights is by definition not Zionist. Even to talk about morality, law or international law is blatantly "not Zionist."
We have given world Jewry grades in Zionism. Anyone who donates to settlements - Zionist; anyone who donates to human rights organizations - anti. Anyone who belongs to the nationalist, rapacious, right-wing Jewish establishment - Zionist. Anyone who seeks a fairer, more enlightened alternative - post. Anyone who blindly supports all of Israel's misdeeds - Zionist; anyone who dares to criticize it - anti-Semites, even if they are Jewish. A former Israeli who lives in Vegas and gambles on his former country's future, urging it to blow up, bomb, crush and destroy - Zionist. Anyone worried about its justice - post-Zionist.
The world, too, has invented some new Zionisms for itself. In the eyes of the Arab world, every Israeli is a Zionist; in the eyes of most of the Western world, any supporter of the Israeli occupation is a Zionist. Both of these see Zionism as negative epithet and a mark of shame. The new Zionism has only acquired a bad international reputation.
Zionism's way has been lost to us. That was inevitable, because it has completed its task. Once the State of Israel arose and became a national home nearly at the retirement age of the movement that engendered it, once it became established, strong and powerful, and brutal and impervious, its flag should have been folded, stored in the repositories of history as a souvenir, and Zionism should no longer have its name taken in vain. The old order of Zionism is over and the campaign over the character and appearance of the state should begin, as happens in every healthy state.
Anyone who contributes to the state is a worthy citizen and a decent patriot. Anyone who contributes to its institutions is a philanthropist - this has no connection to Zionism. Anyone who is required to serve in its army, exactly like anyone who is supposed to pay taxes to it, is fulfilling his legal obligations. This has no connection to Zionism or to values.
Anyone who supports the state's misdeeds is a traitor, and anyone who remains silent defiles himself. Anyone who settles in remote parts of the country is perhaps a pioneer, anyone who contributes to its economy, science, creativity and art is also a good citizen, and this too has no connection to Zionism.
Anyone who steals land is a thief, anyone who denies rights to a minority is a racist. Anyone who believes in a just Israel is a patriot; anyone who is secular, is secular; and anyone who is religious is religious; anyone who is Jewish, is Jewish; and anyone who is not Jewish, is not Jewish. What connection does all of this have to Zionism? All are citizens of the state.
Zionist as an adjective has passed from this world, and no one is entitled to hand out grades for Zionism anymore. Anyone who lives here is an Israeli. Anyone who doesn't live here is not Israeli. Period.
Nor should the relationship with the Jewish world pass through this prism of Zionism: We may invite any Jew here, anyone born in this country or his descendants. Anyone who wants can contribute from outside, just as other expatriates contribute to their home countries.
The campaign to strengthen the State of Israel and make it a more just and secure place also has nothing to do with Zionism. Such campaigns are taking place nearly everywhere. Let us not boast vaingloriously.
Am I a Zionist? How shall I answer? If Zionism is settling in the territories then I am anti-Zionist. If Zionism is continuing the occupation then I am non-Zionist. And if Zionism is the Jewish people's right to a state, just like the Palestinian people's right to a state, including at least partial correction of the injustice done to them in 1948, then I too am a Zionist. If Zionism is striving for a democratic state, then in that case too I am a Zionist, son of a Zionist.
A concept as confusing and misleading as Zionism is today does not belong to the state that arose for the Jewish people gloriously (or not ), and therefore it should have ceased to exist long ago.
'Until here'
On the eve of Independence Day this week, a flock of dark gray crows hovered over Nahal Lakhish in the Ad Halom Park in southern Israel. Ad Halom means "until here," and that's where the Egyptian army was stopped in the summer of 1948. Here the State of Israel was saved, about two weeks after its establishment.
"All of us are tired. The Egyptians are in Ashdod but they may advance on Tel Aviv if we do not stop them. Despite the exhaustion and for the sake of our families, we will also go out tonight," commander Aryeh Kotzer told his company shortly before he was killed.
Kotzer should have been considered one of the last Zionists. Those who came after him were Israelis, for better or worse. As we stood near the memorial to the Givati fighters who died in the Ad Halom battle, sophisticated air force planes thundered through the skies to their base nearby. A foreign worker cultivated an orchard, and an avenue of oleander bushes blossomed in pink. The hills surrounding this memorial park still bear the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages, whose thousands of inhabitants fled or were expelled in that war that left not a single Palestinian home inhabited on the coastal plain between Jaffa and Gaza.
Now these lands are full of moshavim, some of them flourishing. One of them, called Emunim, which was founded in 1950 by immigrants from Egypt, has a circular plaza called the Plaza of Mercy. At the center of the village is a twinkling electronic signboard, in place of the bulletin boards of yore, calling upon the owners of farming plots to attend a general meeting on May 1 and inviting residents to come collect planks for the Lag Ba'omer bonfires. One home has solar panels on its roof. The radio announces that Check Point Software Technologies reported higher profits. And a large iron gate at the edge of the moshav bears a painting of a large Israeli flag, in honor of Independence Day. On top of the flag hangs a large poster for a charity, Amutat Hasei Ayala, succor and aid to the needy. Not far away you can see the prefab temporary homes of Nitzan, housing settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Four Key Myths of Zionism
By Ralph Schoenman (The Hidden History of Zionism Chapter 1 The Four Myths)
It is not accidental that when anyone attempts to examine the nature of Zionism – its origins, history and dynamics – they meet with people who terrorize or threaten them. Quite recently, after mentioning a meeting on the plight of the Palestinian people during an interview on KPFK, a Los Angeles radio station, the organizers of the public meeting were deluged with bomb threats from anonymous callers.
Nor is it easy in the United States or Western Europe to disseminate information about the nature of Zionism or to analyze the specific events which denote Zionism as a political movement. Even the announcement on university campuses of authorized forums or meetings on the subject invariably engenders a campaign designed to close off discussion. Posters are torn down as fast as they are put up. Meetings are packed by flying squads of Zionist youth who seek to break them up. Literature tables are vandalized and leaflets and articles appear accusing the speaker of anti-Semitism or, in the case of those of Jewish origin, of self-hatred.
Vindictiveness and slander are so universally meted out to anti-Zionists because the disparity between the official fiction about Zionism and the Israeli state, on the one hand, and the barbarous practice of this colonial ideology and coercive apparatus, on the other, is so vast. People are in shock when they have an opportunity to hear or read about the century of persecution suffered by the Palestinians, and, thus, the apologists for Zionism are relentless in seeking to prevent coherent, dispassionate examination of the virulent and chauvinist record of the Zionist movement and of the state which embodies its values.
The irony of this is that when we study what the Zionists have written and said – particularly when addressing themselves – no doubt remains about what they have done or of their place in the political spectrum, dating from the last quarter of the 19th century to the present day.
Four overriding myths have shaped the consciousness of most people in our society about Zionism.
The first is that of “A land without a people for a people without a land.” This myth was sedulously cultivated by early Zionists to promote the fiction that Palestine was a remote, desolate place ready for the taking. This claim was quickly followed by denial of Palestinian identity, nationhood or legitimate entitlement to the land in which the Palestinian people have lived throughout their recorded history.
The second is the myth of Israeli democracy. Innumerable newspaper stories or television references to the Israeli state are followed by the assertion that it is the only “real” democracy in the Middle East. In fact, Israel is as democratic as the apartheid state of South Africa. Civil liberty, due process and the most basic human rights are by law denied those who do not meet racial, religious criteria.
The third myth is that of “security” as the motor force of Israeli foreign policy. Zionists maintain that their state must be the fourth largest military power in the world because Israel has been forced to defend itself against imminent menace from primitive, hate-consumed Arab masses only recently dropped from the trees.
The fourth myth is that of Zionism as the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust. This is at once the most pervasive and insidious of the myths about Zionism. Ideologues for the Zionist movement have wrapped themselves in the collective shroud of the six million Jews who fell victim to Nazi mass murder. The bitter and cruel irony of this false claim is that the Zionist movement itself actively colluded with Nazism from its inception.
To most people it appears anomalous that the Zionist movement, which forever invokes the horror of the Holocaust, should have collaborated actively with the most vicious enemy ever faced by the Jews. The record, however, reveals not merely common interests but a deep ideological affinity rooted in the extreme chauvinism which they share.
Shlomo Sand on the dangers of Zionism's racist mythology
Shattering a national mythology
Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.
According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century)...
[Sand] argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
Q: If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?
A: "No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"
Q: And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?
A: "The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions - pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all."
Q: How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?
A: "I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina's Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism."
Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria - a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear...
But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
Q: Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
A: "It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
Q: Is there no justification for this fear?
A: "No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."
Q: In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.
A: "I don't recognize an international people. I recognize 'the Yiddish people' that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation..."
"I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done..."
According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.
In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century)...
[Sand] argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
Q: If the people was not exiled, are you saying that in fact the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah are the Palestinians?
A: "No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don't leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, 'the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.'"
Q: And how did millions of Jews appear around the Mediterranean Sea?
A: "The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions - pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all."
Q: How did you come to the conclusion that the Jews of North Africa were originally Berbers who converted?
A: "I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina's Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism."
Sand argues that the most crucial demographic addition to the Jewish population of the world came in the wake of the conversion of the kingdom of Khazaria - a huge empire that arose in the Middle Ages on the steppes along the Volga River, which at its height ruled over an area that stretched from the Georgia of today to Kiev. In the eighth century, the kings of the Khazars adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the written language of the kingdom. From the 10th century the kingdom weakened; in the 13th century is was utterly defeated by Mongol invaders, and the fate of its Jewish inhabitants remains unclear...
But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
Q: Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
A: "It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
Q: Is there no justification for this fear?
A: "No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."
Q: In effect you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.
A: "I don't recognize an international people. I recognize 'the Yiddish people' that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddishist civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty. But Zionism and also Arab nationalism over the years are not prepared to recognize it.
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation..."
"I am not hiding the fact that it is very distressing for me to live in a society in which the nationalist principles that guide it are dangerous, and that this distress has served as a motive in my work. I am a citizen of this country, but I am also a historian and as a historian it is my duty to write history and examine texts. This is what I have done..."
Take a Lawyer's Advice - Visit the Occupied Territories
"…those who consider that stories of systemic breaches of human rights under the occupation are an anti-Israel myth are deluding themselves."
By David Middleburgh, January 16, 2014
I have just returned from a three-day tour of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, organised by the pro-Israel, pro-peace organisation, Yachad. The participants were all passionate Zionists and, were it not for some grey hairs and wrinkles, we could have been a youth group. In fact, we were all senior lawyers or individuals with a particular interest in the rule of law.
The purpose: to understand the legal context to the occupation. The centrepiece, a unique visit to the IDF military courts that maintain law and order (for Palestinians only) in the West Bank, unique in that we were the first organised group of British Jews to visit the courts. In the course of the tour we met a very broad spectrum of people from representatives of Israeli NGOs, a senior employee of the Yesha Council, which represents settlers, and a senior adviser to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
My conclusions? First, there is no substitute for finding out what is really happening on the ground by visiting and asking difficult questions. I had made numerous assumptions from both Jewish and non-Jewish media, which were simply wrong.
Secondly, those who consider that stories of systemic breaches of human rights under the occupation are an anti-Israel myth are deluding themselves.
We spent a morning at the military courts observing young Palestinian boys, aged 13-17, being processed, and speaking to their mothers. It is clear that children are invariably arrested in night raids by the army at gunpoint, cuffed and blindfolded and held, often for hours, in that condition, denied access to food, water and toilet facilities, interrogated without being advised of their rights, without a lawyer and without their parents.
Military Court Watch, an Israeli NGO, has carried out a detailed forensic review and they found over 50 per cent of children were arrested in night raids and 83 per cent of children blindfolded. All of the children we saw in court were in leg shackles.
There was a shocking passivity of the Palestinians we observed at court. Parents and detained children smiled and joked with each other and we did not see a single case of anger. That’s not to say parents did not care that their children were being imprisoned.
But conviction rates are 99.7 per cent. The passivity bespeaks a people who have become resigned to their reality. They recognise there is no longer any point in fighting for basic rights. I felt that the court system was clearly a figleaf for a system of arbitrary justice where the guilt of the child is beside the point. The courts are part of a system that effectively keeps Palestinian society in a state of constant fear and uncertainty.
So why do the authorities bother with the expense of maintaining the pretence of justice? The answer is that without scrutiny it is possible to pretend that the system is fair. So, defendants are legally represented and proper rules of evidence apply.
Scrape away the veneer, and the charade is exposed with convictions routinely obtained based upon forced confessions and defendants facing remand without bail pending trial for periods in excess of sentences when pleading guilty. No sane defendant would plead not guilty in this Catch 22 situation.
I would argue that diaspora Jews who are true friends of Israel have a duty to visit the territories to understand the problem, and then to lobby friends in Israel to strive for a just end to this situation.
If we do nothing, can we complain if we awake one day and Israel has sleepwalked into the status of a pariah country?
David Middleburgh is a partner in the London firm of Gallant Maxwell solicitors
"…those who consider that stories of systemic breaches of human rights under the occupation are an anti-Israel myth are deluding themselves."
By David Middleburgh, January 16, 2014
I have just returned from a three-day tour of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, organised by the pro-Israel, pro-peace organisation, Yachad. The participants were all passionate Zionists and, were it not for some grey hairs and wrinkles, we could have been a youth group. In fact, we were all senior lawyers or individuals with a particular interest in the rule of law.
The purpose: to understand the legal context to the occupation. The centrepiece, a unique visit to the IDF military courts that maintain law and order (for Palestinians only) in the West Bank, unique in that we were the first organised group of British Jews to visit the courts. In the course of the tour we met a very broad spectrum of people from representatives of Israeli NGOs, a senior employee of the Yesha Council, which represents settlers, and a senior adviser to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
My conclusions? First, there is no substitute for finding out what is really happening on the ground by visiting and asking difficult questions. I had made numerous assumptions from both Jewish and non-Jewish media, which were simply wrong.
Secondly, those who consider that stories of systemic breaches of human rights under the occupation are an anti-Israel myth are deluding themselves.
We spent a morning at the military courts observing young Palestinian boys, aged 13-17, being processed, and speaking to their mothers. It is clear that children are invariably arrested in night raids by the army at gunpoint, cuffed and blindfolded and held, often for hours, in that condition, denied access to food, water and toilet facilities, interrogated without being advised of their rights, without a lawyer and without their parents.
Military Court Watch, an Israeli NGO, has carried out a detailed forensic review and they found over 50 per cent of children were arrested in night raids and 83 per cent of children blindfolded. All of the children we saw in court were in leg shackles.
There was a shocking passivity of the Palestinians we observed at court. Parents and detained children smiled and joked with each other and we did not see a single case of anger. That’s not to say parents did not care that their children were being imprisoned.
But conviction rates are 99.7 per cent. The passivity bespeaks a people who have become resigned to their reality. They recognise there is no longer any point in fighting for basic rights. I felt that the court system was clearly a figleaf for a system of arbitrary justice where the guilt of the child is beside the point. The courts are part of a system that effectively keeps Palestinian society in a state of constant fear and uncertainty.
So why do the authorities bother with the expense of maintaining the pretence of justice? The answer is that without scrutiny it is possible to pretend that the system is fair. So, defendants are legally represented and proper rules of evidence apply.
Scrape away the veneer, and the charade is exposed with convictions routinely obtained based upon forced confessions and defendants facing remand without bail pending trial for periods in excess of sentences when pleading guilty. No sane defendant would plead not guilty in this Catch 22 situation.
I would argue that diaspora Jews who are true friends of Israel have a duty to visit the territories to understand the problem, and then to lobby friends in Israel to strive for a just end to this situation.
If we do nothing, can we complain if we awake one day and Israel has sleepwalked into the status of a pariah country?
David Middleburgh is a partner in the London firm of Gallant Maxwell solicitors
