Why does so much of the liberal West seem to despise Zionism? Why has the term, which simply means the belief that Jews have a right to have a state of their own, become such a pejorative in progressive circles and some right-wing ones, too?
Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief of the daily online magazine Tablet, says it’s envy – not of the Jews per se but of the nation-state of Israel.
In a 6,000-word tour de force, Newhouse claims that a rudderless, identity-emaciated Western world sees the success of the Zionist nation-state and wants its societies to be more like Israel. But since those Westerners can’t articulate such longing out loud (and probably not to themselves, either), Zionism, as so often happens with the object of jealousy, has been twisted into a placeholder for all the evils of the world.
I know: To say that the world envies the Jews risks playing into age-old tropes of antisemitism – the Jews are smart and powerful; we control everything, including the US administration. Newhouse is aware of that, but her critique starts from a different place, thousands of years in the past, before there were even Jews.
As soon as human beings developed agriculture and began to settle into non-nomadic groups, the nation-state became the best way to defend against outsiders and, more importantly, to define a sense of belonging among individuals who might not have that much in common.
In that sense, a nation-state may be best described as a country or place “where political borders align with a shared sense of peoplehood, comprising identity, culture, language, or history.”
The nation-state has since become the defining structure for human society, through kingdoms and empires to the modern era, always providing a key tool for cohesion and coherence.
Then came the Holocaust, which, Newhouse claims, destabilized the existing order.“As the rebuilding efforts began, alongside them came an ideological and philosophical reckoning,” Newhouse quotes Swedish writer Annika Hernroth-Rothstein. Rather than accepting “that seemingly normal people under extraordinary circumstances can do terrible things, [instead] Europe decided that the villain was ideology itself.”
As a result, “thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, [and] Albert Einstein” began to describe the nation-state as a key cause for this moral and political danger and began “advocating for global humanism,” Newhouse writes. “And so, a war-damaged continent, having just come out of a global conflict over borders and identity, decided to do away with borders and identity altogether, assuming this would be the road to lasting peace.”
Gradually, Western societies lost confidence in their own particularism. Here’s where Zionism comes in: It has, against all odds, created a successful and lasting nation-state, one that is not disintegrating into postmodernist confusion.
As the West gives up the “privileges of self-determination,” Newhouse writes, it becomes possible for Westerners “to imagine that Israel is somehow getting away with what no one else can.”
Israel as the model the West rejects — and envies
There are four main pillars to why Newhouse calls Israel “a blueprint for human defense and flourishing.”
1. Israel maintains demographic continuity. Our child replacement rates are way above OECD countries, and Israel’s citizens still want to build a future here.
2. Israel has a strong sense of collective responsibility. When called to defend the country, nearly everyone shows up. Our soldiers may not like doing hundreds of days of reserve duty, but they still come.
3. Israel preserves identity and community. When they’re given a weekend at home, Israeli soldiers gladly gather together on Friday nights with family or friends.
4. Israel has produced a cohesive, capable population that looks to the future. We don’t pine for an imaginary past. There’s a reason there are so many game-changing start-ups in this small nation.
So, when the postmodern West looks at Israel, the nation-state, they see an outlier they subconsciously aspire to. Zionism has become “a target because it represents what Westerners on the Right claim to desperately want but are unable to attain, and what Westerners on the Left wish to define as impossible,” she writes.
In the midst of a confusing and fast-changing world, with hi-tech innovations fueling cultural and political instability, the world is at a pivot point. Yet, instead of grappling with those complex challenges, the public fixates on Israel and Zionism because they’re a simpler target: In the public’s warped thinking, there’s a clear villain and a clean moral narrative people can rally around.
Zionism has become the symbol onto which people project all their frustrations about their rapidly changing lived reality. Anti-Zionism gets bundled with anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-Americanism. It’s not about the Jews, Newhouse stresses. Israel has become a test case for delegitimizing the entire concept of national identity, which so many believe has failed them.
Newhouse largely downplays antisemitism as the primary driver for hostility to Zionism. She doesn’t deny that it exists, just that blaming anti-Zionism primarily on antisemitism misdiagnoses the phenomenon. The main cause, in her view, is structural, not prejudice.
The Zionism = antisemitism argument is based on the idea that hatred of Jews has shifted from religion and race to the nation-state of Israel. For Newhouse, Zionism has become a target because of what it represents, not because Jews are Jews. Attacks on Zionism are based on projection – blaming others for what’s being lost – and, again, envy: resentment of the non-functioning national models in their own countries.
So, when students on campuses chant slogans like “From the river to the sea,” it’s not about antisemitism; it’s about the West struggling with itself.
Newhouse’s analysis doesn’t include any practical steps for fighting anti-Zionism; it’s more a philosophical thought piece that contextualizes this fraught moment in Zionism as “a technology for national renewal that could, conceivably, be used by anyone.” In that respect, it has helped me better see why it’s worth living in Israel, especially when missiles fly and sirens wail.■
The writer’s book Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World has been published as an audiobook. It is available on Amazon and other online booksellers in print, e-book, and Audible formats. brianblum.com
Source:
www.jpost.com
