Strenger than Fiction / To a Martian, Zionism could be confusing
Imagine an anthropologist from Mars sent to earth to compile a report on Israeli political culture, and to understand the distinction between Zionism and anti-Zionism.
By Carlo Strenger Tags: Israel news ZionismImagine an anthropologist from Mars sent to earth to compile a report on Israeli political culture. His government is particularly interested in understanding why there is such a raging campaign against people who are called anti-Zionists and post-Zionists in Israel, and they want to understand what threat they constitute.
As a good Martian anthropologist, he first collects empirical material. He looks up the term ‘Zionism’ and finds out that it is a "Jewish political movement that, in the broadest sense calls for the self-determination of the Jewish people and a sovereign Jewish national homeland." He makes a note that he doesn’t understand why people should call themselves Zionists, when such a country already exists.
So far his research has shown that once national sovereignty has been achieved, national liberation movements cease to exist. So he comes to the conclusion that maybe there are people who threaten this national sovereignty.
And indeed he finds that there are Jews called anti-Zionists who live in Israel. He feels he finally has a lead, and tries to find who they are. Searching the internet, he is lucky enough to find a website called Isracampus, which tracks anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli activity.
Fortunately this site even contains an alphabetically ordered "gallery of rogues", and he takes a random sample from it: Bernard Avishai (who has written an excellent book showing how Israel can flourish as a Jewish State), legal scholar Chaim Gans, whose book A Just Zionism tries to show how Zionism and international law can be combined; Law Professor Kenneth Mann, who served as Israel’s first Chief Public Defender; Avishai Margalit, last year’s Israel Prize recipient for philosophy; Israel Prize recipient Zeev Sternhell, who was injured in a bomb attack at his home, and Prof. Yuli Tamir, a political philosopher who served as minister of education in Olmert’s government.
Encouraged, he goes on to check on these anti-Zionists, who must obviously be against Jewish self-determination (which, he now knows, is the definition of Zionism) and checks their background.
But the results are utterly confusing. They all claim that they are in favor of maintaining the Jewish character of Israel. What unifies them is the belief, that in order to do so, Israel must withdraw from the West-Bank to preserve a Jewish majority. So he wonders: if Zionism originally meant that the Jews should have a sovereign state, why are these people called anti-Zionists?
Trying to find out what it means to be a Zionist, he checks into what those who accuse people of anti-Zionism really want. Looking for representatives he finds out that the current Vice Premier of Israel has said a number of times, that Jews have an eternal right to all of the land west of the Jordan River. He also finds that a leading Zionist thinker named Moshe Arens has recently argued that there should only be one state west of the Jordan River.
Our anthropologist is thoroughly confused: his first results, after all, have been that Zionists are people who want Israel to be a Jewish state. So why are those who make every effort to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel described as anti-Zionists, whereas those who make every effort to create a state in which Jews don’t represent a majority are defined as Zionists?
Here, then, is the executive summary that the Martian sends to his government: “Israel today is a very strange country. There is a large group of people who insist on calling themselves Zionists, even though the Jews have a state. Even more strangely, they pursue a policy that seems to be leading to the annexation of a territory primarily populated by Palestinians. From what I gather, it would be close to impossible to run such a state, because Jews and Palestinians have lived in great enmity with each other for decades, so I don’t understand why Zionists want to have such a state.”
“They also claim that there are Jews in Israel who are anti-Zionists or post-Zionists who are very dangerous, because they undermine the country’s Jewish character. This is very strange, because these so-called anti-Zionists seem to have only one goal: to preserve the Jewish character of Israel by democratic means.”
“Because the so-called anti-Zionists seem to be so obviously right, the so-called Zionists must be making a sophisticated joke when they say: ‘If you want a country that is Jewish and democratic, even though it doesn’t have a Jewish majority, it is not a dream.’ That would make a lot of sense, because Jews are supposed to be smart and to have a special sense of humor”. Aren't they?
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A boy peering out from under an Israeli flag in April, 2010. |
| Photo by: Reuters |
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stake in Israel, you've never done anything that benefits Israel, so why do think you have a right to criticize Israel? The Israelis are no less smart than you are and they know themselves what is good for them.
Carlo Strenger is Chair of the Clinical Graduate Program of the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University. In which country does your armchair sit?
Timeism, is the original tenet of Judaism. When Time constituted the Theory Of Everything as instated in the word of God - Yahweh, which in itself means: past present and future, thus Time id God, and God is Time.
What a misguided article again with half truths which is worse then full lies as people believe what u write this way!! The so-called anti zionist and post zionistic camp does not believe in a Jewish homeland no they claim Jews and Arabs should have one state dominated by Arabs in the end!! This sir is unacceptable to zionism and moderate decent Jews and you shame those moderate peace lovers by painting those traitors as peaceloving innocent prophets rather then what they really are unpatriotic boycot promoters!!
That's such a typical "Zionist" answer. Basically "That's a very good point Mr. Strenger. My response is to talk about issues totally unrelated to the article and hope everyone forgets about it". Those "Zionists" who say they want a Jewish democratic state from the Mediterranean to Jordan where Jews would be a minority can never tackle the obvious flaw in this idea.
History. The Martian would land at a moment in a stream of time. The Martian would receive echos of the past and sounds of the moment. Zionism, which was created because some men thought that Jews caused Anti-Semitism simply because they existed, and only the existence of a 'Jewish State' could ensure Jews had somewhere to go to escape anti-Semitism, has changed drastically over the last century. Israel, the nation founded by Zionists in 1948 is the FACT that fulfilled the original dream of Zionism. The neo-Zionists have another vision. A vision of Israel as an imperial nation controlling what they see as the God Given lands of Israel. In the purely Revisionist form, that includes ALL of the League of Nations Palestine and Trans Jordan Mandate. In the more Secular Likudnik vision, it includes everything between the Med and the Jordan. In the most extreme vision, it includes everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. Of course the Martian would be confused. He would have to learn about four things before he could make sense of it all. He would have to learn history, he would have to learn about greed, he would have to learn about religious fanaticism, and he would have to learn about megalomania.
To a Martian Ha'aretz would be confusing. They would be hard pressed to explain why those confused are trying to explain their confusion, only to confuse things more, and confuse themselves even more. The Martians, of course, would end up attributing this state of affairs to imagined moral superiority, and dismiss the whole thing from their minds.
Zionism was a 19th and 20th century national liberation movement, and in achieving its goals, it DID redirect its energies, to nation-building (well, that and crackpot socialism). The term "Zionist" would have mostly died out (like "Yankee") except that "anti-Zionism" came to be adopted by anti-Jewish hatemongers as a code word for "Jew", since Hitler gave "anti-semitism" such a bad name. In the same manner, "Palestinian", which before the mid-1950's referred only to the Jews of Ottoman and British colonial Palestine (Moshe Dayan's Brit army dogtags stated his nationality as "Palestinian"), was hijacked by the Arabs of the area as a propaganda tactic (in about 1957-8) to create the illusion that THEY were the owners of all the land - since the Jews of the area had stopped calling them selves "The Palestinians" and now were "The Israelis". Use of "The Zionists" to refer to Israeli Jews is exclusively an Arab practice - note that they never call Israeli Arabs "Zionists" - because the word means "Jews". A Martian would quickly figure this out; Haaretz writers, not so much.
would wonder why the rest of the world, which had recently suffered so terribly under regimes designed to deny rights to others based on their religion or race, would support a state that was doing exactly this and calling it "Zionism."
The anthropologist would find out that the Jewish homeland is neither wanted nor accepted by many citizens and even whole governments of neighboring countries. He would do the math and assume that the Jewish population might prosper to develop and maintain a majority even in the West Bank / Samaria and Judea area. Not now .. but possibly in a couple of generations. Things like that ..
To a martian, humans are confusing! What's your point? However to a human, who knows the familiar tale of nationalism, Zionism is nothing new.
After ruining Mars they came to Earth to start all over again. Zionists are the ones with the most Martian genes. Shalom in martian means blow them to bits. Really truly !
This is a good analogy. As a non-jew living in israel I was often confused at this very aspect. To this day I have not found anyone who can tell me if being jewish is a religion or a ethnicity. The whole idea of an ethnic or religious state is somewhat ridiculous to me, but then again I do not have the same life experiences that many of you may have. One thing I am sure about though, the zionist "plan" for Israel is completely impossible.
Strenger is Jewish professor in Jewish university in a Jewish city who thinks Zionism is about real estate in Ariel or Izhar. He makes believe that none of his Zionist Jewish neighbors are willing to compromise for peace. Strenger is a stranger among his own people. He could as well be a professor in Buenos Aires or New York, and he would be mor at home there.He doesn't know what Zionism is about and he doesn't know that ant-Zionism and post Zionism are intent on taking away the right of self determination from the Jewish people, Strenger pretends that before 1967 there was no conflict. No problem. Give back some territory and the problem will go away. The Martian, unless they also have self-important Jews there, would read the rhetoric of PACBI and the PLO, of Ilan Pappe and the JVP and understand perfectly what is at stake. But then, the Martian would not be Jewish probably and would understand what is "homeland" and "nationality." Try to take away a chunk of anyone else's capital city and see what they will say. Will the French or the English, who think nationalism is old fashioned, consent to a building freeze in London or Paris?? Will they allow the establishment of a state bent on destroying their own country?? Only a Jew, a real Jew who is a stranger every where could write this article. An Arab Palestinian would surely understand a concept such as "national rights."
People forget that Zionism has many different wings. The current power in the Zionist movement is right wing, and therefore draws criticism from the left wing. This article makes fun of Right wing Zionism, also known as Imperial or Religious Zionism, but fails to separate other forms of Zionism from Right wing'ism. Labor Zionism, for example, is a progressive and peaceful form of Zionism, and I think its great. Zionism is a very large and broad ideology, which can be applied for the right wing and the left wing. Zionism is just an 'isim, like all other 'ism's, it will affect different people in different ways. To classify all Zionist movements as right wing, as was done in this article, shows a very large lack of knowledge of Zionist history.
Strenger has exaggerated the paradox of the right-wing Zionists. They do not actually admit that annexation of the West bank will bring about a majority of Arabs among Israeli citizens, hence they don't say ‘If you want a country that is Jewish and democratic, even though it doesn’t have a Jewish majority, it is not a dream’, as Strenger imagines. So how do they see the situation developing? It depends on which group you are dealing with. 1. The religious believe that settlements hasten the coming of the messiah, in which case there is nothing to worry about. Israel will have a King, a few Shabbos Goys, and that's all you need. 2. Those who can see the Arab population problem (but only when it is very near), like Ariel Sharon, have departed from Likud and are no longer called right-wing. 3. The less "humanistic", like many in Likud or the Russians, will not offer the annexed Arabs Israeli citizenship. And since they are not looking far into the future, they don't see that this solution will lead to classical Apartheid. When the problem gets closer, they will worry about it. 4. The "humanist" right wingers, like Arens, will give the annexed Arabs citizenship, but they MINIMIZE the number of Arabs. I believe Arens mentioned that there are 1.5 million Arabs or so in the West Bank. Palestinians claim 2.5 mil, but they must be propagandizing. Now that Sharon has left Gaza, one need not worry about the Gazans, so we are not dealing with any serious problem today. And as all right wingers say, if a problem develops we will take care of it.
Shlomo Sand,Pinkelstein,Avram Burg are zionist? they run the world that the jewish people is an invention, that there no archeologic proof of his presence on this land.... Come on it's not so simple
For the life of him, the little green guy can't figure out why an Israeli newspaper calls itself Haaretz (The Land), though it's obsessed with retreating from it.
This is how this dream of Israel can be achieved. They do not think Arabs have right to life. Not at all. In this, it is very hard to separate Zionism from facism, in theory. It is all about one race dominating other races. OK, right-wingers, scream now.
...Martian that he can forget all his scholarly data-digging and just look at it this way: The word "anti-Zionist" is sort of an update on the time-tested accusation of "self-hating Jew"--and, as such, can pretty much apply to anyone somebody feels like hurling it at.
a good way of pointing out how ridiculous the right wings arguments are..
on the way back from the raid on the police station to get the medicine turns to the brother and says facism communism zionism what difference does it make.
From what I've seen, the term "Zionist" is misused far more by left-wingers than right wingers. (Not to say it is misused by both.)
Strenger - as an anthrolpologist (if not from Mars), I appreciate your appreciation of my profession, as well as your very enlightening analogy. "May Peace reign in her citadels!"
I laughed so much, it really makes Zionists sound sooo stupid
I once asked a "Zionist" who wants the full territory for Jews what would happen to the Palestinians. His reply that is never said out loud is that they will either emigrate or we will massacre them. I, being from Mars and naive, asked how he expecte to get away with this. The reply, Hashem, their all powerful and just deity, will find a way. Only faith is needed. Good luck to us all.
The IDF would either shoot his space ship down, or he wouldn't get a visa !
Even for the most challenged of people. Now lets see how some will come up with complex convulsed arguments to try to confuse everybody, or resort to personal bashing in order to make us forget the basic simple argument being made.
People who like this article behave like those they disparage. Right or wrong, left or right you propagate the cycle of anger, frustration and intolerance.
Do you think the Martians would be any less interested in the blood, savage rift between Sunnis ans Shiites? Sri Lankans and Tamils? Iraqis and Kurds. Blacks and Whites in America? Native Americans and "Americans?" Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland? It is an excellent premise for an article, but as usual, your too-narrow focus on the "evils" of Israeli society makes this article too one-dimensional and biased.
Ohh, come off it. If this were a story about Catholics and Protestants in N Ireland there's rare chance you would call it one-dimensional and biased. WHen speaking of conflict - ethnic, political, religious etc. - the last thing you want to do is over generalize. Even academics focus on one conflict or one area - it doesnt make them biased. Your comment's just another example of an Israeli pity-party
no onje else does
nice little story with the martian but are you aware that outside of israel next to nobody gives a hoot about such selfabsorbed meanderings ?
We all know what Zionism is now this is what anti zionism tastes: The roots of Anti-Zionism are varied. They stem from Anti-Semitism, from Nazism, Communism, The Reform Judaism movement, Jewish assimilationism and reactionary portions of rabbinical Judaism. Anti-Zionism, while popular today among some "progressive" circles, has unsavory roots in several disparate ideologies. These are largely unrelated to history of Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine and Israel. They all preceded the creation of Israel, and in some cases they preceded the rise of the Zionist movement. Some of these were Jewish reactions to Zionism, some were socialist and communist reactions to Judaism, often the brain child of Jews like Moses Hess. In modern times, Stalinism, Jihadism and Fascism have been perhaps the most important influences. There are basically three roots of anti-Zionism, that rely on each other and draw on each other for inspiration: Jewish anti-Zionism Classical Anti-Semitism Arab Anti-Semitism The above gave birth to the following different ideologies and movements: Reform Jewish anti-Zionism anti-Zionism of Orthodox Judaism Marxist anti-Semitism and Early Anti-Zionism The Jewish Bund and Anti-Zionism Stalinist and Post Stalinist Soviet Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism ("Zionology") Nazism Islamist Extremism Third-World Anti-Zionism - the "Zionism is Racism" movement. Post-Zionist anti-Zionism Judeophobia ('Anti-Semitism') - A History and Analysis of Jew Hate General History of Zionism - Zionism and the Creation of Israel General Resources on the History of Israel, Zionism and the Jews
"he roots of Anti-Zionism are varied. They stem from Anti-Semitism, from Nazism, Communism, The Reform Judaism movement, Jewish assimilationism and reactionary portions of rabbinical Judaism." - Chafeeka You are curiously limited in your view Chafeeka. Anti-Semitism goes far back. It goes to a time when Christianity was adopted as the State Religion of the Roman Empire. Then it became necessary to blame someone other than the Romans who crucified Jesus for his death. Another root of Anti-Semitism, though one which was very minor in nature compared to Christian anti-Semitism, was that vestige of the time when most Arab Jews sided with the enemies of Muhammad and one of them went so far as to try and poison him. Anti-Semitism was no, despite your litany of sources, a product of the 20th century. It is a product of religious bigotry.
Why? Doesn't it fit your deceitfilled Hasbara?