Zionism is an ideology that has fallen out of favor with the liberal establishment, the positions of which Fenson so articulately expounds. Why this discomfort with the proposition that Jews-on balance, the world's most consistently persecuted demographic-ought to have self-rule in their ancestral home? Fundamentally, this sense of doubt in Zionism's justice springs from a deep discomfort with the idea of nationalism of every stripe, one that glosses over fine distinctions and tars all national and ethnic pride with the stain of illiberal chauvinism. This prejudice, combined with a consistent misunderstanding of both the history and reality of the Middle Eastern situation leads many on the Left to mischaracterize Zionism as a colonialist, racist system of thought. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A common complaint that Fenson implicitly makes against Zionism is that as a set of nationalistic beliefs, it must be exclusionary and anti-democratic. This misconception derives from the miserable reputation that nationalism itself has garnered over the past century and a half, much of it deserved, some of it not. In the late 1800s, nationalism was a liberal cause, championing ethnically based democracy against corrupt, multinational empires. Out of this stream of nationalism grew Zionism as conceived by visionaries like Theodore Herzl. Obviously, as nationalism was co-opted by the Right, it became a monstrously destructive force, and no ethnicity knows more about the ravages that hyper-nationalism can cause than the Jews who founded Israel. Thus, it is ironic that in the post-World War II world, Zionism was among the few ideologies to buck the post-national trend and proudly assert that Israel was to be a national home for the Jews. Unlike liberal ideologues, they realized that patriotic pride in one's country and ethnicity was a positive good that ought to be encouraged, as long as it does not slip into racism and ethnic supremacism.
Today, Israel is a democratic republic that projects moderate Jewish nationalism. It touts itself as a refuge for the Jews while providing full political and civil rights to its Arab, Druze and Circassian minorities. As Fenson indicates, racism is indeed a problem in Israel, and the government does too little to counteract it. However, before they brand Israel with the mark of a nationalist oppressor, critics of Zionism like Fenson need to explain the following story: At the height of the 2006 Lebanon War, a friend of mine went on a solidarity trip to Israel. In Haifa, she bought a falafel from an Arab man. As she was leaving, he whispered to her which country in the Middle East he thought gave the most rights to Arabs. His answer? Israel. Those who decry Zionist nationalism as racist and intolerant must demonstrate why a member of what they see as a downtrodden minority would make such a comment of his own volition.
Unfortunately, critics of Zionism compound their blanket condemnation of nationalism with a profound lack of historical sensitivity. This misunderstanding of Israel's history clearly affects why anti-Zionists cannot justify the state's existence. An example of these misconceptions manifests itself early in Fenson's article, where she claimed that the U.N. "ceded pockets of land within Palestine" to create the Jewish state. This suggests that the partition effectively ripped the land out of the hands of the Palestinians. In fact, the U.N. only granted the Israelis the narrow corridor of land where they held majority status, as well as the relatively uninhabited (and uninhabitable) Negev Desert.
Such misconceptions must inform the reasoning of many of these well-intentioned people who simply cannot assert that the Jews deserve Israel for a homeland, those who-like Fenson-shy away from the idea that Israel is a "birthright" for all Jews. The Jewish people did not arbitrarily designate this land as their own. In the thousand years before Jesus' birth, a thriving Jewish civilization dominated the land of Israel. Even after Jewish sovereignty ended, great Jewish achievements such as the Talmud and the Kabbalah continued to emanate from such centers of culture as Tiberias, Safed and Yavneh. At no point over the past 2,000 years were Jews not the largest demographic group in the city of Jerusalem. Our ties to the land are nearly as old as the land itself.
Furthermore, the land is ours because we built it. In his writings, John Locke described a "labor theory of value," which held that people have a right to the fruits of their work. Before the Jews came to Palestine in the late 1800s, the land was desert interspersed with malarial swamps. Corruption and banditry were rampant. By 1948, when Israel declared independence, the settlers had turned desolation into a habitable and pleasant area. Those who sweated, worked and schemed to improve the land have a right to it, not those who sat indolently on it for a thousand years. Finally, Israel belongs to the Jews by right because Jewish soldiers earned it on the field of battle. Our soldiers died so that Jews might have a national home. There is no stronger claim than that.
Most importantly, though, those liberals who would decry Zionism for its nationalistic tendencies and Israel for its Jewish identity are substantially disconnected with reality. For those who are at all familiar with Israeli history, Fenson fell into this unfortunate fallacy with her accolades directed at Yitzhak Rabin's "revolutionary pacifism." Those who know the slightest bit of Israeli history know that Rabin was no pacifist. He was, rather, a hard-headed, pragmatic and deeply moral career soldier who knew when it was in the best interests of the Jewish people to reach a political accommodation with their neighbors, at the cost of hard-won territory if necessary. In many ways, Rabin and Ariel Sharon, the practitioner of what Fenson-judging Israeli policy from on high-called a "limited and somewhat belligerent diplomacy" were very similar. Both were committed Zionists, secure in the knowledge that troubles Fenson and many other progressive Jews-that Israel was meant as the rightful and eternal natural home for the Jews. While the bonds that tie us to former Palestine might be ethereal to some members of World Jewry, the Jewish birthright in Israel and its preservation was as real to warriors like Rabin and Sharon as the blood their comrades shed for its survival.
Israel is not a perfect country. No nation is. As Fenson stated, Israel is indeed a country where "I received more recognition than the watchful-eyed Arabs I passed in the street." Fenson has a point-Israel's Arabs are not as well-treated as her Jews-and this is a major failing of Zionism. Yet her willingness to condemn Zionism on these grounds reflects still greater misunderstanding of history, reality and ideology. She does not understand the mentality that leads Israelis to see their Arab neighbors in the suspicious light of a possible fifth column in a hypothetical war with an enemy that outnumbers the Jews 200-1. She and other liberal Jews seem unwilling to accept that the reason the unfortunate Palestinian refugees exist as such is that they fled Israel of their own accord before the 1948 War. Why? Not from fear of the Jews, as some Arab apologists have suggested. Rather, they wanted to let the Arab armies kill all the Jews before they came back to take possession of the land. Finally, Fenson and her fellow progressive, post-national utopians refuse to countenance the factual proposition that Zionist, nationalist Israel accords its minority Arabs more rights than any other Arab nation gives its citizens. Ultimately, through no fault of their own, liberals see Israel with blinders on. If they removed those impediments for a mere second, they would see a nation built on justice, progress and pride. Zionism is a work in progress, yes, but it is better than anything that the self-appointed prophets of the Left can offer the Jewish people.
Erik is a first-year who can't believe he still has his column. Emails: eschulwolf09@amherst.edu.