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Report Back From Anti-Zionist Conference
For more interesting articles by myself and others, please check out http://www.israelshamir.net.
Lausanne - One Democratic State Conference
Informal report
By Israel Shamir
'In Lausanne we have established One Democratic
State of Palestine/Israel; today people would
laugh when we say so, but in ten years it will
become an obvious fact.' I would like to start
with this paraphrase of Herzl's famous
declaration, mutatis mutandis - for him, it was
nearby Basel and a Jewish State, - but we did not
go that far. Still, the Conference in Lausanne was
an extremely interesting and stimulating exercise:
for a first time, supporters of One Democratic
State solution get together and discussed the
strategy and the ideology of transforming the
Apartheid Jewish State into a state of equality
and democracy. Names and emails on the screen
turned into human beings with faces, in our minds.
Sami Aldeeb, a small wiry tweed-clad
bicycle-riding grey-goateed Professor of Law in
Lausanne University, native of Zababde, Palestine,
and an elder brother to the Catholic Father Raed
of Taybeh, was the engine of the Conference - I
doubt it could take place in this format without
his efforts. He was assisted by efficient
Christine Menétrey, a stunning slim and blue-eyed
French Swiss beauty fit for a James Bond movie.
The setting was nice: the placid shores of Lake
Geneva, green campus of the University, mountains
on the other, French side, descending to Evian,
the white triangle of Mont Blanc, and the very
example of prosperous and democratic Swiss
Federation were supposed to help us to concentrate
on our initiative. In order to forestall envy, we
stayed in a youth hostel (bunk iron beds, one
shower on a floor, groups of schoolchildren on
their way to the mountains) and ate lasagne in the
student canteen. Not for us were the five-star
hotels and media attention of the futile 'Geneva
Accords'. However, a few journalists from the
Middle East and local papers broke through
information blockade imposed by the adversaries.
Indeed, the initiative of One Democratic State is
equally unwelcome in the Israeli government
circles, in the PNA elite, and among rich and
powerful Jews abroad. In such situation, even
get-together was a success, nay, miracle.
Indeed, the municipality of Lausanne demanded from
the organisers to avoid using the name of their
city in connection to our conference - they prefer
to be remembered as the location of the disastrous
Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that dismembered the
Ottoman Empire, gave Cyprus and Palestine to the
Brits, Rhodes to Italians and legitimised
'transfer', or ethnic cleansing of Greeks and
Turks. They were right - we should be called
Anti-Lausanne Treaty, for our purpose is exactly
opposite: to let people live together without
mutual transfers.
On other hand, we could be called Post-Lausanne
Conference, for we intended to undo the last
Ottoman legacy - 'millet', or self-governing
religious associations of citizens, that Israel
(and Lebanon) are based upon. Millet system is
basically a system of privilege - Maronites are
(or were) privileged in Lebanon, until their
privilege was undone to great extent; Ashkenazi
Zionist Jews are still the privileged millet in
Palestine.
One Democratic State in the whole of
Palestine/Israel is antithetical to the idea of
Jewish privilege that lays in the foundation of
the Jewish state. We prefer to be positive, that
is why we speak of positive values of democracy
and equality; but if one wants to be negative and
contrarian, one may speak of a Conference against
Jewish Privilege, for creation of a state where
Jewishness provides no social or legal status,
exalted or otherwise, where it is private business
of a citizen whether he considers him/herself a
Jew or not. Probably it is fair to notice that a
Conference with such a title would not be able to
convene at all.
Indeed, the one-man-Jewish-Liberation-Organisation
Eibie from Montreal already issued the call "to
have our own conference, that is the Jewish
anti-Zionist community together with those Arab
activists and/academics who are anti-racist," in
other words, a bi-national state conference. It re
peats an old discussion between Lenin and Bund,
where Bund, like Eibie today demanded
bi-laterality, while Lenin agreed to have Jews
only as individuals, not as a group.
Our Conference was NOT a meeting of two - Israeli
or Jewish and Palestinian - delegations, and that
is a good thing, for the last thing we wished was
to reinforce the dichotomy in our land. It was a
meeting of individual supporters of One Democratic
state from a few countries, people united by one
idea - up to a point. Not everybody understood it,
and there were some attempts to smuggle the binary
approach through back door.
Samah Jabr, young chador-wearing psychologist from
Jerusalem and Paris, insisted on having 'parity' -
equal presentation of Israeli Jews and
Palestinians - on the committee. 'Parity' sounds
like 'equality', but it is just an opposite of it.
In my view, and in view of our friends, all
dwellers of Palestine/Israel are Palestinians (or
Canaanites, if you wish) like all dwellers of
France are French. They could be subdivided and
classified by language - Palestinian Arabic,
Mughrabi Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian,
English, French, Amharic speakers; or by
religion - Orthodox, Catholic, Uniate, Monophysite
and Protestant Christians; Sunni, Ahamadie, Alawi,
Druze Muslims; Bahai; Sephardi, Iraqi, Yemenite,
Ethiopian, Hassids, Litvak and Kook-Mafdal Jews,
or by their origin - native or adoptive citizens,
or by class, profession and income or by place of
residence. In the common body politic of united
Palestine, people will act and vote according to
their true interests, not according to their
'millet'.
In this connection one can view the unexpected
attack of Uri Davis, which was approvingly quoted
by Zionists. An old Israeli dissident, Davis was
politically active some thirty years ago, stayed
for many years in his native England, came back to
Palestine, recently republished his old book
Apartheid in Israel and generally tries to achieve
a political come-back. Surprisingly, Davis
attacked me and Ginette Skandrani for
'antisemitism'. He did it quite dramatically,
asking for a word out of turn, in the beginning of
the conference, and demanded to expel us. The
ground for his demand was prepared by a French
Swiss newspaper 24 hours: they published for a few
days in a row usual demagoguery of the organised
French Jewry against the Axis of Evil - yours
truly, Ginette Skandrani and Jean Brière. Davis
condemned me for comparing the persecution of
Palestinians with Crucifixion of Christ (I called
it Take Two, and if you haven't heard about it,
read Our Lady of Sorrows on my site). For him,
this comparison implies recognition of the Jewish
guilt in the Crucifixion. You know that my view is
actually different: the Jews as a spiritual force
do not regret Crucifixion and continue to reject
Christ; while Jews as individuals are not guilty
of anything they did not do personally. The Church
rejects collective guilt but is aware of
collective enemies. But such nuances were well
above Davis; he just heard 'Christ' and presumed
that he is accused in his death.
For some reason, these people can't stand
reference to Christ. And indeed none of us
referred to Christ or Allah. But as for glories of
Jewish faith, we received some six or seven
full-length lectures given by a Hassid, by a
Reform Rabbi, etc. The Reform Rabbi told us that
Jews are a-fearing to lose their privileged
position. A nice French immigrant living in
Galilee told us he admires Maimonides and studies
Talmud. A Canadian observant Jew, Jacob Rabkin
also preached to us Jewish critique of Zionism and
promoted his book; on its dustcover an Israeli
soldier in battledress stares at an Orthodox Jew.
The good Hassid told us that Judaism is not
Zionism, and that he left Israel for it was not
truly Jewish.
(I understand the value of Rabbis - Europeans can'
t have a conference without some Jewish
father-figure, preferably with side-locks, like
their grandfathers needed a priest to bless them.
They provide for great photo-opportunity, these
good men in big good hats; an alibi for doubters,
a kosher certificate for media. One can probably
manufacture such figures of papier-mache and
provide them for Europeans' comfort. Equally, ADL
of Abe Foxman can be replaced by a talking doll
that says 'this accusation reminds the age-old
canard blah-blah'.)
I could not figure out how their efforts to assert
their Jewishness were connected to the subject of
the conference. They try too hard to stress they
are not 'traitors to the Jewish cause' and it made
these good people somewhat shifty.
But if there is a choice between Judaism and
Zionism, I do not know what is worse. Zionism
indeed was a revolt against Judaism, but not
sufficiently radical. First Zionists were against
Judaism which they called Spirit of Exile,
galutiyut, as if there is any other Judaism in
existence. 'It is easier to move a Jew out of
Galut (Exile) than to move Galut out of a Jew'
laughed first Zionists. Israeli Jews experience
tension between their attachment to the land
(Israeli-ness) and their belonging to an
international world-wide network of Jewish people
(Jewishness, or Galutiyut, in Zionist discourse).
Attachment to the land can not win without
accepting the native people of the land, and here
Jewishness is a hindrance. The idea of One State
calls for intensifying of the attachment at the
expense of belonging, eventually to expurgating of
Jewishness - Galutiyut. In such a way it can be
considered as a corrected 'healed' Zionism.
Our Israeli participants were quite good - they
agreed that the declaration will have no reference
to 'Jews' at all, for in their correct view
Jewishness is a private affair of a citizen.
Rabkin offered us to include a reference to
positive role of Diaspora, but this idea was
removed; Remy Mendelzweig, a French Israeli Jew,
told me: "The best the Diaspora can do for us is
to forget about us", and I heartily agreed. None
of them supported Davis and his call to 'fight
antisemitism'.
The appeal to 'antisemitism' is actually a demand
for Jewish privilege, like 'anti-White hatred' is
a call for White privilege. We spent long time
trying to understand why Davis decided to utilise
this classic weapon of our enemies while attacking
me and Ginette. But he made it clear during the
committee session:
'If you want to be protected from accusation of
antisemitism, you should have a Jewish activist
like me on board', said he. A live
antisemitism-lightning rod, of sorts. Indeed, he
was after the good old Jewish privilege. Uri Davis
turned out to be a manipulative domination freak -
not enough that he joined the committee unelected,
and usurped the position of chairman, he really
pushed so much that for a first time in a lifetime
I had had a second thought about One State. Long
time ago, an Arab Communist Member of Knesset told
me, 'we need two states to have an escape from
Jewish domination mania'; and only after the
encounter with Davis I began to understand him.
'You are lucky that Davis is against you, for
nobody can stand this sanctimonious and
manipulative man' - a Palestinian delegate
whispered to me. Davis' talk was entirely
unimpressive: he concentrated on editorial faults
of the Libyan White Book - misspelling of Hebrew
names etc and offered himself as an editor for
future Libyan publications. This talk would be
perfectly at place as a letter to the Libyan
publisher, but it really had nothing to do with
our subject.
However I felt sorry for the old dissident with
his basically good views, long record of
anti-apartheid struggle, being led astray by
desire to control and dominate. And difficult,
unyielding, even irritating personality is but a
usual feature of dissidents.
Informal report
By Israel Shamir
'In Lausanne we have established One Democratic
State of Palestine/Israel; today people would
laugh when we say so, but in ten years it will
become an obvious fact.' I would like to start
with this paraphrase of Herzl's famous
declaration, mutatis mutandis - for him, it was
nearby Basel and a Jewish State, - but we did not
go that far. Still, the Conference in Lausanne was
an extremely interesting and stimulating exercise:
for a first time, supporters of One Democratic
State solution get together and discussed the
strategy and the ideology of transforming the
Apartheid Jewish State into a state of equality
and democracy. Names and emails on the screen
turned into human beings with faces, in our minds.
Sami Aldeeb, a small wiry tweed-clad
bicycle-riding grey-goateed Professor of Law in
Lausanne University, native of Zababde, Palestine,
and an elder brother to the Catholic Father Raed
of Taybeh, was the engine of the Conference - I
doubt it could take place in this format without
his efforts. He was assisted by efficient
Christine Menétrey, a stunning slim and blue-eyed
French Swiss beauty fit for a James Bond movie.
The setting was nice: the placid shores of Lake
Geneva, green campus of the University, mountains
on the other, French side, descending to Evian,
the white triangle of Mont Blanc, and the very
example of prosperous and democratic Swiss
Federation were supposed to help us to concentrate
on our initiative. In order to forestall envy, we
stayed in a youth hostel (bunk iron beds, one
shower on a floor, groups of schoolchildren on
their way to the mountains) and ate lasagne in the
student canteen. Not for us were the five-star
hotels and media attention of the futile 'Geneva
Accords'. However, a few journalists from the
Middle East and local papers broke through
information blockade imposed by the adversaries.
Indeed, the initiative of One Democratic State is
equally unwelcome in the Israeli government
circles, in the PNA elite, and among rich and
powerful Jews abroad. In such situation, even
get-together was a success, nay, miracle.
Indeed, the municipality of Lausanne demanded from
the organisers to avoid using the name of their
city in connection to our conference - they prefer
to be remembered as the location of the disastrous
Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that dismembered the
Ottoman Empire, gave Cyprus and Palestine to the
Brits, Rhodes to Italians and legitimised
'transfer', or ethnic cleansing of Greeks and
Turks. They were right - we should be called
Anti-Lausanne Treaty, for our purpose is exactly
opposite: to let people live together without
mutual transfers.
On other hand, we could be called Post-Lausanne
Conference, for we intended to undo the last
Ottoman legacy - 'millet', or self-governing
religious associations of citizens, that Israel
(and Lebanon) are based upon. Millet system is
basically a system of privilege - Maronites are
(or were) privileged in Lebanon, until their
privilege was undone to great extent; Ashkenazi
Zionist Jews are still the privileged millet in
Palestine.
One Democratic State in the whole of
Palestine/Israel is antithetical to the idea of
Jewish privilege that lays in the foundation of
the Jewish state. We prefer to be positive, that
is why we speak of positive values of democracy
and equality; but if one wants to be negative and
contrarian, one may speak of a Conference against
Jewish Privilege, for creation of a state where
Jewishness provides no social or legal status,
exalted or otherwise, where it is private business
of a citizen whether he considers him/herself a
Jew or not. Probably it is fair to notice that a
Conference with such a title would not be able to
convene at all.
Indeed, the one-man-Jewish-Liberation-Organisation
Eibie from Montreal already issued the call "to
have our own conference, that is the Jewish
anti-Zionist community together with those Arab
activists and/academics who are anti-racist," in
other words, a bi-national state conference. It re
peats an old discussion between Lenin and Bund,
where Bund, like Eibie today demanded
bi-laterality, while Lenin agreed to have Jews
only as individuals, not as a group.
Our Conference was NOT a meeting of two - Israeli
or Jewish and Palestinian - delegations, and that
is a good thing, for the last thing we wished was
to reinforce the dichotomy in our land. It was a
meeting of individual supporters of One Democratic
state from a few countries, people united by one
idea - up to a point. Not everybody understood it,
and there were some attempts to smuggle the binary
approach through back door.
Samah Jabr, young chador-wearing psychologist from
Jerusalem and Paris, insisted on having 'parity' -
equal presentation of Israeli Jews and
Palestinians - on the committee. 'Parity' sounds
like 'equality', but it is just an opposite of it.
In my view, and in view of our friends, all
dwellers of Palestine/Israel are Palestinians (or
Canaanites, if you wish) like all dwellers of
France are French. They could be subdivided and
classified by language - Palestinian Arabic,
Mughrabi Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian,
English, French, Amharic speakers; or by
religion - Orthodox, Catholic, Uniate, Monophysite
and Protestant Christians; Sunni, Ahamadie, Alawi,
Druze Muslims; Bahai; Sephardi, Iraqi, Yemenite,
Ethiopian, Hassids, Litvak and Kook-Mafdal Jews,
or by their origin - native or adoptive citizens,
or by class, profession and income or by place of
residence. In the common body politic of united
Palestine, people will act and vote according to
their true interests, not according to their
'millet'.
In this connection one can view the unexpected
attack of Uri Davis, which was approvingly quoted
by Zionists. An old Israeli dissident, Davis was
politically active some thirty years ago, stayed
for many years in his native England, came back to
Palestine, recently republished his old book
Apartheid in Israel and generally tries to achieve
a political come-back. Surprisingly, Davis
attacked me and Ginette Skandrani for
'antisemitism'. He did it quite dramatically,
asking for a word out of turn, in the beginning of
the conference, and demanded to expel us. The
ground for his demand was prepared by a French
Swiss newspaper 24 hours: they published for a few
days in a row usual demagoguery of the organised
French Jewry against the Axis of Evil - yours
truly, Ginette Skandrani and Jean Brière. Davis
condemned me for comparing the persecution of
Palestinians with Crucifixion of Christ (I called
it Take Two, and if you haven't heard about it,
read Our Lady of Sorrows on my site). For him,
this comparison implies recognition of the Jewish
guilt in the Crucifixion. You know that my view is
actually different: the Jews as a spiritual force
do not regret Crucifixion and continue to reject
Christ; while Jews as individuals are not guilty
of anything they did not do personally. The Church
rejects collective guilt but is aware of
collective enemies. But such nuances were well
above Davis; he just heard 'Christ' and presumed
that he is accused in his death.
For some reason, these people can't stand
reference to Christ. And indeed none of us
referred to Christ or Allah. But as for glories of
Jewish faith, we received some six or seven
full-length lectures given by a Hassid, by a
Reform Rabbi, etc. The Reform Rabbi told us that
Jews are a-fearing to lose their privileged
position. A nice French immigrant living in
Galilee told us he admires Maimonides and studies
Talmud. A Canadian observant Jew, Jacob Rabkin
also preached to us Jewish critique of Zionism and
promoted his book; on its dustcover an Israeli
soldier in battledress stares at an Orthodox Jew.
The good Hassid told us that Judaism is not
Zionism, and that he left Israel for it was not
truly Jewish.
(I understand the value of Rabbis - Europeans can'
t have a conference without some Jewish
father-figure, preferably with side-locks, like
their grandfathers needed a priest to bless them.
They provide for great photo-opportunity, these
good men in big good hats; an alibi for doubters,
a kosher certificate for media. One can probably
manufacture such figures of papier-mache and
provide them for Europeans' comfort. Equally, ADL
of Abe Foxman can be replaced by a talking doll
that says 'this accusation reminds the age-old
canard blah-blah'.)
I could not figure out how their efforts to assert
their Jewishness were connected to the subject of
the conference. They try too hard to stress they
are not 'traitors to the Jewish cause' and it made
these good people somewhat shifty.
But if there is a choice between Judaism and
Zionism, I do not know what is worse. Zionism
indeed was a revolt against Judaism, but not
sufficiently radical. First Zionists were against
Judaism which they called Spirit of Exile,
galutiyut, as if there is any other Judaism in
existence. 'It is easier to move a Jew out of
Galut (Exile) than to move Galut out of a Jew'
laughed first Zionists. Israeli Jews experience
tension between their attachment to the land
(Israeli-ness) and their belonging to an
international world-wide network of Jewish people
(Jewishness, or Galutiyut, in Zionist discourse).
Attachment to the land can not win without
accepting the native people of the land, and here
Jewishness is a hindrance. The idea of One State
calls for intensifying of the attachment at the
expense of belonging, eventually to expurgating of
Jewishness - Galutiyut. In such a way it can be
considered as a corrected 'healed' Zionism.
Our Israeli participants were quite good - they
agreed that the declaration will have no reference
to 'Jews' at all, for in their correct view
Jewishness is a private affair of a citizen.
Rabkin offered us to include a reference to
positive role of Diaspora, but this idea was
removed; Remy Mendelzweig, a French Israeli Jew,
told me: "The best the Diaspora can do for us is
to forget about us", and I heartily agreed. None
of them supported Davis and his call to 'fight
antisemitism'.
The appeal to 'antisemitism' is actually a demand
for Jewish privilege, like 'anti-White hatred' is
a call for White privilege. We spent long time
trying to understand why Davis decided to utilise
this classic weapon of our enemies while attacking
me and Ginette. But he made it clear during the
committee session:
'If you want to be protected from accusation of
antisemitism, you should have a Jewish activist
like me on board', said he. A live
antisemitism-lightning rod, of sorts. Indeed, he
was after the good old Jewish privilege. Uri Davis
turned out to be a manipulative domination freak -
not enough that he joined the committee unelected,
and usurped the position of chairman, he really
pushed so much that for a first time in a lifetime
I had had a second thought about One State. Long
time ago, an Arab Communist Member of Knesset told
me, 'we need two states to have an escape from
Jewish domination mania'; and only after the
encounter with Davis I began to understand him.
'You are lucky that Davis is against you, for
nobody can stand this sanctimonious and
manipulative man' - a Palestinian delegate
whispered to me. Davis' talk was entirely
unimpressive: he concentrated on editorial faults
of the Libyan White Book - misspelling of Hebrew
names etc and offered himself as an editor for
future Libyan publications. This talk would be
perfectly at place as a letter to the Libyan
publisher, but it really had nothing to do with
our subject.
However I felt sorry for the old dissident with
his basically good views, long record of
anti-apartheid struggle, being led astray by
desire to control and dominate. And difficult,
unyielding, even irritating personality is but a
usual feature of dissidents.
For more information:
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Zionist: Jews should have special privileges; apartheid is good in Israel (but nowhere else of course-- now that would be racist!); Israel should not have to abide by International Law or UN Resolutions (Israel has defied over 70 UN Resolutions); discriminating against others because they are not Jewish is not only OK but mandatory in the Occupied Territories, where Palestinians must pay taxes to Israel but are given no voting rights.
Anti-Zionist: In a true secular democracy there should be completely equal rights for all regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. We want the US to stop any aid to any country that is not a true secular democracy. Therefore we want our government to stop all aid to and end diplomatic ties with the ethnocentric, genocidal, ethnic-cleansing apartheid Jewish state of Israel NOW, since Israel is the number one recipient of US aid. We want the end to all US aid to Egypt too, in case you are wondering.
To you, lying is nourishment for the soul.
http://www.endtheoccupation.org
http://www.exposingisraeliapartheid.com
http://www.cactus48.com
http://www.electronicintifada.net
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/thelittlejew.htm
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0999/cotton.html
Just like Zionism is just the opposite of Judaism as per http://www.nkusa.org.
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
- Patrick Henry, American Patriot
“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord [i.e. Jesus Christ] one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names...”
- Article VII, US Constitution
For this reason, this website was created to try and stop one of the more vile and dangerous misuses of the Internet: using it to mock Our Lord Jesus Christ, His teachings, and His followers. And one site in particular stands out in need of stoppage: Landover Baptist.
Landover Baptist claims to be a church. Moreover, they claim to be the only church in America that understands the Bible! In fact, neither is true. Landover Baptist is a fraud. A joke. Their true purpose is not to spread the Gospel of our Lord, but to trick people - especially those who have not received the Word and Salvation or have been programmed by secular culture to distrust Christianity - into believing that Christianity is evil and rejecting it.
For this blasphemous atrocity, the Landover Baptist website must be removed from our Internet.
“Woe unto them that call evil good,
and good evil; that put darkness for light,
and light for darkness; that put bitter for
sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
(Isaiah 5:20)
BEWARE OF IMPERSONATORS!
Due to our recent successes in working towards the inevitable shutdown of the Landover site, certain elements in the anti-Christian movement have decided to launch a character assassination campaign against Jim Carlson and other OBJECTIVE: Ministries members. This campaign is being waged in the Landover guestbook, as well as forums on third party websites, and consists of impersonated messages involving all manner of obscenities. This is the sort of villainy that we have come to expect from the goons behind Landover.
Any message you read claiming to be from Jim Carlson or any other OBJECTIVE: Ministries member that contains vulgarities, sexual innuendo, bad poetry, or other un-Christian sentiments is to be considered a FRAUD and ignored. If you are the owner of a forum which has been drawn into this anti-Christian campaign, please delete those fake messages and forward the poster's IP number to our legal team.
We apologize for any misunderstandings that this unfortunate turn of events has caused.
Yours in Christ,
OBJECTIVE: Ministries
http://objective.jesussave.us/shutdown.html
http://objective.jesussave.us/godlyflag.html
Zionism IS Judaism.."Zion" refers to Jerusalem, which is mentioned 750 times in the Torah...never mentioned ONCE in the Quran...
By the Rivers of Babylon
Where we sat down
And there we wept
When we remembered Zion...
(no, marley didn't actually write that!!).
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/zionism.html
But, the concept originated during the Babylonian captivity...
1890 saw the rise , once again in European anti-semitism...
Seems like a very different concept. Using that definition it could go back to Egypt....
An upsurge in antiSemitism in Europe lead Herzl and others to promote the idea of a Jewish state but it wasnt even originally that tied to the Middle East (with Argentina and Uganda being other proposed locations). The upsurge in antiSemitism in the mid1800s could have been tied to the skapegoating of minority groups by governments trying to quell the revolutions that were springing up as a result of the industrial revolution and ideas propagated by the American and French revolutions. Herzl eventually saw Palestine as a good place to settle since it seemed like the Middle East was friendly towards Jews and didnt have the strong European history of antiSemitism. Many who opposed Zionism at Herzl's times saw the push to leave as giving up on gaining rights and safety in Europe and until WWII many Jews saw Zionism as similar to how African Americans saw the Back To Africa movement (a little crazy and tied to a defeatest idea of running away from bigotry rather than confronting it head on)
Actually it couldn't...jews hadn't built the Temple in ZION until after the Exodus from Egypt...
What brought modern Zionism into being was the 19th-century rise of the national liberation movements; the idea of the political self-liberation of anyone, let alone the Jews, was simply too modern to exist before the Enlightenment.
And the application of the idea of self-liberation to the Jews immediately encapsulated into Zionism the same ambiguities of identity that Jewish civilization had carried since the expulsion. The question "Is Zionism secular or religious or what?" can't be answered until you've answered the question "Is Jewish identity secular or religious or what?"
@%<
"At the start of the 20th century, Yiddish seemed to be emerging as a major Eastern European language. A rich literature was being published, Yiddish theater and film were booming, and it had even achieved status as one of the official languages of the Byelorussian S.S.R. Yiddish emerged as the national language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected Zionism and sought to obtain Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe. In mid-century, however, the Holocaust led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed."
http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/y/yi/yiddish_language.html
That perhaps not the best written description of the conflict but there was a significant number of Eastern European Jews in the early 1900s who disliked Zionism since it wasnt a movement that embraced all Jewish culture.
I'm also not sure about your statement regardung a desire to return to Israel being a major part of Jewish culture for thousands of years when Judaism in Europe in the Middle Ages had similar ideas about re-establishing a Jewish state to the modern day fundamentalist Jewish antiZionists. (Perhaps this just came from Europe being weaker than the Middle East for a lot of this period wth Zionsm emerging as the Ottoman Empire crumbled?)
Well, this is related to the problem of what I'd mentioned earlier about Zionism absorbing the ambiguities of Jewish identity. There were those who felt. for various reasons, that what they understood Zionism to be conflicted with what they felt Jewish identity to be. But Zionism was also -- and is now -- a "big tent," rather than a systematized dogma. The Yiddish/Hebrew split was initially a big and contentious issue, but Zionism evolved and Jewish culture evolved, and that battle's over. Similarly, the Zionist/Internationalist contention was once a major fault line, but again both Zionism and the issue itself evolved to the case where this is no longer so, where both sides recognize -- the occasional bit of insanity from Ariel Sharon notwithstanding -- that the international Jewish community and Israel complement each other rather than compete with each other.
I guess what I'm saying is that, like any major movement, Zionism (in the "big tent" sense) evolved and adapted with the times. (Just as Abraham Lincoln would find George W. Bush's GOP unrecognizable, and I think Herzl would be horrified by the current Likud.) Those who want to condemn Zionism here often tend to freeze-dry a given moment in Zionist history so they can hack away at it as anachronistic -- sorta like the ending of "Terminator II." That's not particularly fair, just as it's not fair to pretend that all forms of Zionism are inherently equivalent.
And I think it's also anachronistic to suggest that the Jews of medieval Europe consciously rejected the idea of political Zionism; that's a bit like saying that Beethoven consciously rejected atonal serialism. For the medieval, pre-Enlightenment Jews to create a Jewish state based in the historical Jewish homeland _would_ have required a miracle, so it's not so surprising they believed it. But new ideas entered the world, and some of those new ideas allowed for the fulfillment of a longstanding dream previously impossible.
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Secular Jewish opinion was also ambivalent in its attitudes to Zionism. Many argued that Jews should join with other progressive forces in bringing about changes which would eradicate anti-Semitism and make it possible for Jews to live in safety in the various countries where they lived. Before the 1930s, many Jews believed that socialism offered a better strategy for improving the lot of European Jews. In the United States, most Jews embraced the liberalism of their adopted country. Before World War II, at most only 20-25 percent of Jews worldwide supported Zionism, with most others either opposed or lukewarm to it.
The chain of events between 1881 and 1945, however, beginning with waves of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and the Russian controlled areas of Poland, and culminating in the Holocaust, converted the great majority of surviving Jews to the belief that a Jewish homeland was an urgent necessity, particularly given the large population of disenfranchised Jewish refugees after World War II. Most also became convinced that Palestine was the only location that was both acceptable to all strands of Jewish thought and within the realms of practical possibility. This led to the great majority of Jews supporting the struggle between 1945 and 1948 to establish the State of Israel, though many did not condone the violent tactics used by some Zionist groups, such as the Irgun Zvai-Leumi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
Not that ths has anything to do with Israel's "right to exist" but even in some modern statements (like Sharon's justification for his statement about French Jews) Zionism is still treated as something more than just Jewish nationalism.
"An Israeli official said that there is a fundamental misunderstanding between Israel and France over Jewish immigration. "What seems to us like a natural and proper realization of Zionism ... seems to them like an attempt to pressure French citizens to emigrate from their country, aided by enticements and threats of anti-Semitism," he said.
"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/453472.html
I would bet that a majority of the world's Jewish population disagree with Zionism if it were defined to include this belief that all Jews should move to Israel.
Before Israel was formed Zionism was a specific movement that almost by definition would disappear once the state appeared (since the focus of all forms of preIsrael Zionism revolved around creating a Jewish state) I mentioned things about Jewish views of Zionism in The Middle Ages to point out that Zionism isnt really a 2000 year old movement but was a movement that formed in the late 1900s (perhaps because it coudnt exist earlier but Im not sure if that really changes the argument).
Once Israel was created Zionism seems to mean different things to different people. Ignoring antiZionists, one has religious Zionists, those who believe Zionism demands encouraging all Jews to move to Israel, those who see Zionism as almost a form of Israeli patriotism, thoe who see Zionism as Jewish nationalism and those who see Zionism as the belief that Israel shouldnt be destroyed. You define Zionism in the last sense (Israel's right to exist asa Jewish state) but thats no more a correct definition that what Sharon uses or even what antiZionists use (since it was a word coined to represent a movement to create something that is now created).
When I said your definition reminds me of Evangelicals I mean that in the sense that you define Zionism to be good and then define anything bad to not be Zionism (and antiZionists do that in the opposite direction). What annoys me about most of these discussions (and much of the antiZionist discussion) is that the word Zionism is probably safest if its only used in the anarchronistic sense. It would be like modern Californians calling themselves supporters of Manfest Destiny and this causing arguments over whether the modern followers of Manifest Destiny are racist for supporting the killing of Native Americans or those opposing Manifest Destiny are racist since by opposing it they are demanding that all Californians be pushed into the sea (and for having an anti-immigration ideology).
I meant 1800s. I'm too busy to really be typing so I'll stop for now.
In fact, I'd argue that Zionism's success among the international Jewish community is now working against itself. As long as Sharon, national Jewish organizations, and the press are able to maintain the illusion that Zionism is inherently a right-wing thing, a "small tent" -- then they've distorted what Zionism is.
What it means, unfortunately, is that some people who reject Sharon -- an easy thing to do, given what an ogre he is -- _think_ they're rejecting Zionism itself, when they're actually only rejecting Sharon's "small tent" version.
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I _meant_: "MOST OF those who believe that only...."
I'm reacting against the stance -- often repeated by folks like Windy Wendy and nessie -- that Zionism is somehow some alien creature that came whistling in from outer space did an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" on Jewish culture. As I have often noted, a Zogby poll taken a year ago reports that literally 99.5% of American Jews accept the existence of Israel. (So do 95% of Arab Americans.) I don't think you could get 99.5% of American Jews to agree that the day after Tuesday is Wednesday. I don't think the tremendous success of Zionism in the Jewish community could be explicable if it did not speak to something far older than just Herzl.
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Yes, but that period is around half the period in which Zionism was used.
"after the idea had been around for two generations it wasn't that contentuous any more, and the majority of Jews had no difficulty accepting the idea of a Jewish homeland."
I'm not sure if this is true. Was the growth in popularity of Zioinism caused by it being around for awhile or because of antiSemitism in 1930s Germany...
"Those who believe that ony the Messiah is capable of ending the Diaspora also came to believe that building the Jewish state was a valid theological form of prep-work."
hmm... from what I have rad it seemed more that religious views changed rather than it fitting into pre-existing views. Its hard to find a good site detailing changes in Jewish thought through history but just trying to find stuff on the web it seems that the more common religious view was against a state before the early 1900s.
"If Zionism were really and truly alien to Jewish culture"
I dont know if I would call it alien. It was a new movement that had differences from previous thought. Opposition to antiSemitism could be seen as alien to organized European Christian thought since ideas changed the in late 1800s and eventually after WWII. Opposition to racism could be seen as alien to American culture since it was a cultural change too. Things change and changes dont require a belief that the change came out of a 2000 year old movement.
"it wouldn't have been able to succeed so broadly, so internationally, so quickly, no matter what reasons you use to explain that success."
Well there is an obvious reponse to that... the murder of millions of Jews during WWII changed how everyone saw things
"As long as Sharon, national Jewish organizations, and the press are able to maintain the illusion that Zionism is inherently a right-wing thing, a "small tent" -- then they've distorted what Zionism is."
Thats where I see you taking an Evangelical (nobody is really Christain unless they agree with me) line. As a term that was invented to define a movement (rather than just an idea) its really hard to say who has a correct definition since once Israel was created everything had to be redefined.
"What it means, unfortunately, is that some people who reject Sharon -- an easy thing to do, given what an ogre he is -- _think_ they're rejecting Zionism itself, when they're actually only rejecting Sharon's "small tent" version."
What this keep getting back to is the use of the term Zionism (which is vague and had many meanings) rather than using some new term. If you mean pride in Jewish culture (unrelated to Israel), I dont think anyone sees a conflict between opposing Sharon and being Jewish. If it means support for Israel existing as a state where Jewish culture is the national culture, I dont think anyone would see a conflict between that view and opposing Sharon either. The problem with the term Zionism is that the word is tied in people's minds to the modern expansionist religious Zionism behind the settler movement (which until recently was seen as being similar to the beliefs of Sharon). The problem with the term "antiZionism" is that the word Zionism is tied in people's minds to the Protocols and antiSemitic conspiracy theorists.
"A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel."
But "Zionism" is a word under an attack similar to the one Lee Atwater directed against the word "liberal." And like the word "liberal," the word "Zionism" is now so overloaded with extraneous encrustations that I occasionally find the need to remind people what it actually means once you knock off the barnacles and scrub away the molasses.
I certainly don't want to give the impression that I think Zionism is all some kind of shiny, happy Teletubby world. My analogy is, again, to the American political system. I am outraged at the Bush administration on dozens of different levels, _including_ my sense that they are fundamentally distorting the Constitution -- that you have to go back to Nixon to find similar disdain for Constitutional principles. But I don't blame the Constitution for what Bush is trying to do to it. Neither, however, does my respect for the Constitution leave me blind to Bush's manipulations of it. Similarly, I don't blame Zionism for Sharon, but I _do_ blame Sharon for damaging Zionism by pulling it in the direction of expansionism and racism, and the fact that Sharon is doing this in the _name_ of Zionism is not sufficient excuse.
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"99.5% of American Jews accept the existence of Israel. (So do 95% of Arab Americans.)"
So the other 5% dont accept Israel exists? What exactly does that mean, they oppose Israel or they have been out of the loop for ahwile and dont realize its exists?
Your dictionary definition has similar problems to the word "accept". Most people not filled with hatred want all countries and poeple to prosper so that would include a desire for Israel to prosper...
Perhaps showing my ignorance of history... isnt historical Israel mainly the West Bank? When some people talk of Zioism and mention 2000 years of Jewish history in the region etc.. that would be a little complicated in terms of how Palestinians see the word when historically the Jewish population was in what is now the Occupied Terrirtories (and Jerusalem). Isnt this why religious-Zionists are identified with settlers and the word Zionist came to be seen by Palestinians as meaning more than something just related to the modern state of Israel?