It is important to note that, according to this prevalent interpretation of Zionism, the status of the Arabs in the Land of Israel is far more grievous than the status of a piece of shrapnel in the Jewish rear end. For it follows from this interpretation that the Arabs living in the Land of Israel are plunderers, or at least holders of stolen property that rightfully belongs to the Jews. This was stated explicitly by Ben-Zion Dinur, a member of Mapai, the forerunner of the Israeli Labor party, which was the longtime ruling party in the country. As a professor of history in the early days of the Hebrew University, he established the Zionist historiography of Judaism, and as one of Israel’s first education ministers, he planted the Zionist consciousness that most of us share today. “The Jews,” he said, “were never in the condition of a nation without a land, of a nation lacking a homeland. Even during their period of exile, they were always a robbed and dispossessed nation whose land was plundered and stolen and never ceased to plead and complain about its dispossession and to demand the return of the plundered property.” Dinur backed up this argument with a project in which he sought to document Arab history in the Land of Israel as a history of the plundering of Jewish property. It is thus not surprising that the settlers have usurped private Arab property, or that the Israeli public supports governments that continually expropriate land belonging to the Palestinian state. Those who believe that the meaning of Zionism is merely the physical realization of a preexisting right of ownership would not consider such acts of claiming land to be acts of plunder. Rather, in their eyes, they must be considered redemptions. Zionist Hebrew adopted this approach at quite an early stage. We all remember the title given to the Zionist activist Yehoshua Hankin (1864-1945): “Redeemer of the lands of the Jezreel Valley.” The truth is that this interpretation of Zionism is shared not only by the Israeli majority, including fanatical settlers, people like Naftali Bennett, Uri Elitzur, Housing Minister Uri Ariel and Temple Institute Director Yisrael Ariel, and spineless pragmatists such as Benjamin Netanyahu, Eldad Yaniv, Lapid Sr. and Lapid Jr, but it is also held by the post-Zionists. As the quote at the beginning of this article shows, it is espoused by the sociologist Yehouda Shenhav. There are many others like him, such as the sociologist Uri Ram, the historian Shlomo Sand, and the political scientist Yoav Peled. The difference between the Zionist majority and the post-Zionist minority living in its midst is not in the way they interpret Zionism. They interpret this ideology in the same way, but differ in what they regard as the practical implications of this interpretation. The majority adopts Zionism because of this interpretation. In contrast, the post-Zionists reject Zionism because this is how Zionism must be interpreted, in their opinion. The Zionist majority facilitates the realization of this interpretation of Zionism, with all the evils it commits on a daily basis. And it is because of this same interpretation that the post-Zionists slander Zionism. The majority condones a settler Zionism in the Land of Israel today, in the 21st century. This form of Zionism deprives the Arabs of their rights, excludes them as a collective from the public sphere and continually oppresses them as individuals. In contrast, the post-Zionist aspiration for the Jews in the Land of Israel of the 21st century is identical to the vision expressed by Count Clermont-Tonnerre for French Jews in 18th-century post-revolutionary France: “The Jews should be denied everything as a nation and granted everything [only] as individuals.” ... Most nations claim a right to self-determination, and most of them realize this right (one way or another) in their homeland. However, the majority of the members of the other nations are concentrated in one place and share a history and culture in that particular place, which is also the birthplace of all the members of the group and indeed of the group itself. This was not the case with the Jews at the time of the inception of Zionism, and today it is only partially the case. More importantly, the particular place in question is the homeland of another group and the birthplace of the members of this group. To overcome this difficulty, the Zionist movement and Israel’s Declaration of Independence emphasized the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust, which created an urgent necessity. This was used in addition to the Jews’ historical ties to the Land of Israel in order to justify the choice of this particular place for the purpose of realizing Jewish self-determination despite the fact that it was inhabited by Arabs.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 03:47:34 +0000
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