Zionism and the Jewish question

We return to the Jewish Question: what will become of the Jews? Man is not born, nor does he live, in isolation. We are born into families, and families in turn are subordinate parts of clans, tribes, and nations. At each of those societal levels, it is possible to have loyalties and common interests based on shared culture, language, religion, and experience. The political expression of a nation, essential for the fulfillment of its national identity and culture, is the nation-state. A nation which has no nation-state can perhaps survive for a while at the indulgence of the state in which it lives, but its ongoing survival as a distinct people is contingent. Examples include Kurds, Yazidis, and Roma (gypsies). They are nations without states; their cultural fulfillment is threatened by assimilation, and at times their very survival is threatened by extermination by the states in which they live and by the peoples who surround them. Their future is uncertain. We Jews are also a nation. We are not merely a set of co-religionists. The existence of the Jews as a nation has been beset by murderous antagonism since at least the Roman destruction of the Jewish nation-state in 70 C.E. Theodor Herzl and other early Zionists recognized that the Jewish nation could not survive without re-establishment of sovereignty in our historical national homeland. This prophetic recognition preceded the murder of two-thirds of European Jewry and the wholesale expulsion of 900,000 Jews from states under Muslim control. The essence of Zionism is the recognition that the Jewish nation needs a nation-state for its flourishing — for a living future. Israel is that nation-state. More than that, history has repeatedly demonstrated that the literal survival of the members of the Jewish nation is uncertain anywhere outside of a sovereign Jewish homeland. There is no country in the Old World, neither in Christendom nor the lands of Islam, not stained with Jewish blood. Even the liberal democracies of Canada, the United States, and Australia have seen a shocking resurgence of Jew-hatred in the form of harassment and ostracism of Jews, attacks on our institutions, and murder sprees. To claim that any nation or nationstate does or does not have a right to exist is a category error. Individuals have rights; nations and their nation-states simply exist. There is no supra-national judge to grant or deny them the right to exist. As Thucydides wrote, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” After two millennia of suffering because of exile and weakness, the Jewish nation has restored its sovereignty, and made that state’s ongoing existence an established fact not contingent on the indulgence of others. Zionism is indifferent, neither supportive nor antagonistic, to the aspirations of other nations, with one exception. Any nation or political movement which predicates its historic mission as the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish nation must be seen as an enemy, for it has so declared itself. Egypt and Jordan abandoned their goal of eliminating Israel 50 years ago; Israel has lived in peace with these neighbors ever since. In the 1960s Palestinian nationalism emerged as a movement distinct from pan-Arabism. Tragically, that movement adopted as a core tenet, not the adjustment of Israel’s borders, but the complete elimination of the Jewish state, and perforce, the Jews who live within it. That movement’s actions ever since have been completely and tragically consistent with this eliminationist goal. The slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been bowdlerized to appeal to American ears. In the earlier version prevalent during the First Intifada (1980s) the slogan rhymed in Arabic, and meant “From the water [Jordan River] to the water [Mediterranean Sea] Palestine will be Arab.” The chant “Free free Palestine” is also a call for the elimination of the “Zionist entity.” Neither allows room for the Jewish people or the Jewish state. The tragic circumstance and ongoing suffering of Palestinians is a direct result of their leaders’ refusal to allow Jews to live in peace and security. Until Palestinians abandon their goal of destroying the Jewish nationstate (along with destroying the Jews therein), there can be no two-state solution nor, sadly, peaceful co-existence. Zionism does not and should not preclude criticism of Israeli policy and its political leadership. But the root of the current wave of antizionism and Jewhatred lies elsewhere. Jew-hatred long preceded the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Israel. In the Arab world, the murderous pogroms in Hebron (1929), Baghdad (1941), and Tripoli (1945) preceded the re-establishment of the Jewish state. The widespread demonstrations against Israel and in support of Hamas began the very day after the October 7, 2023 massacre, long before the Israeli military response to the slaughter. Rather, the Zionist movement arose, and has reason to persist, because of millennial-old Jew-hatred. If there ever arises a political force among the Palestinians which renounces their eliminationist raison d’être, and when a new Iranian regime renounces its long campaign of “Death to Israel,” peace could be established on those fronts too. Zionism is the answer to the Jewish Question.