The December 12, 2002 issue of the Globe and Mail, (Canada’s most widely read ‘national’ newspaper), carried a feature article by Gabor Maté - described as a ‘Vancouver physician and writer’ - entitled: “Zionism doesn’t define Jews - It divides us”.
The basic thesis of this article was the contention that there have always been Jews - although Dr. Maté admits they are a minority - who oppose what he calls “political Zionism” or “the confounding of Jewish identity with the Jewish state” created in 1948. He chastises those who consider people opposed to the existence of Israel as anti-Semites and asserts that the persistence of Zionists and the differences between them and anti-Zionists as to what constitutes Jewish identity has always been a lamentable source of division among Jews.
He concludes his argument with the expression of yearning for the time when “...Jews formed widely dispersed religious, cultural and ethnic groups whose commonality was not based on geography or politics” and Israel or ‘Palestine’, as he calls it, was merely the centre of Jewish religious practice and not any part of Jewish identity.
In the first three issues of Farshteinen, it was my contention that the State of Israel is inextricably tied to Jewish nationality and that its destruction or the will to destroy it is very much an expression of anti-Semitism and should be feared and dealt with as such.
What is the source of the anti-Zionism Dr. Maté lauds? How can people such as myself, who, like the vast majority of Jews, live and will continue to live outside Israel, assert that it is an integral part of Jewish nationality and its continued existence essential if Jews are to retain their recently acquired status as individuals deserving of equal status with other individuals and members of a nation having the right to respect equal to that afforded other nations?
In the two thousand years of the Diaspora, Jews everywhere sought equal status with their none-Jewish neighbours - not to mention an end to the brutal persecution that was so often their lot. Some, having integrated themselves and still finding equal status elusive, decided that such status would never be accorded so long as they harboured a ‘dual loyalty’ - i.e.., to the country in which they lived and its dominant culture, society on one hand and, to the Jewish nationality on the other. These were typically wealthy Jews who constituted a very small part of the society in which they lived. These were the "upper-class” Jews who feared that an influx of east European Jews whose Jewishness was not carefully hidden and rendered socially acceptable, would endanger their own status in nineteenth century Germany, France, Britain and, even, Canada and make they themselves appear so, so... Jewish.
Because they limited their Jewishness to religious matters, (as would appear to be the case with Dr. Maté), sought manfully to look and sound identical to their non-Jewish neighbours - more English than the English, more French than the French, etc. - they hoped that, with the coming of religious toleration, they too would achieve toleration and, finally, enjoy equal status.
The fact is, that day never came. Modern Zionism began when just such a Jew, from just such a society, Theodore Herzl, watched in astonishment and horror while a society that was more modern, (and therefore more tolerant of religious freedom, social diversity, etc.), and with an even smaller percentage of even more assimilated, Jews - ie., France - dissolved into a paroxysm of anti-Semitism when a single Jewish army officer, was falsely accused of treason.
Herzl’s reaction was not to immediately run off, grow pai’es, don traditional Jewish garb and renounce his atheism. Rather, he simply realized that so long as Jews, as a nation, are not recognized as being equal to other nations, then individual Jews, no matter where they live, no matter how well they assimilate into the surrounding society, no matter whether fervently religious or complete atheists - will not be treated as equals. And, should circumstances make it useful, they can and ultimately will, be subjected to the same persecution as the most “typical Jew”, in the largest ghetto, in the most socially backward and intolerant of societies.
On the other hand, creation of a Jewish homeland and its recognition by the international community as such and, (as I tried to demonstrate using the status of Jews in Canada before and after the creation of Israel as an illustration), would provide the basis for such equality. After two thousand years without recognition as a nation among nations, equality could not have been achieved over night but, the speed with which it was achieved - as all of us whose life spans both the pre-, and post-, Israel periods, can readily attest to - was remarkable.
By corollary, were such a homeland, once created, to be then subsequently destroyed by the action, or with the acceptance of, the outside world - then the return to unequal status and its attendant discrimination, persecution and ultimate annihilation would be highly probable.
The argument I have put forward applies to nations other than Jews. It applies to Kurds who are currently demanding recognition of a homeland in any future, re-structured Iraq. In Canada, it has been shown to apply to Aboriginals, (whether it be First Nations, Inuit or Métis), where achievement of recognition for their respective nationalities and establishment of some form of homeland has ended, or is being sought as the means of ending, centuries of persecution/discrimination and has, at the same time, resulted in the achievement of equality - both for the collectivity and the individual.
Imagine, if you will, what the status of Canadian Aboriginals were to be if the majority of Canadian society were now to reverse course and declare that First Nations are not be considered nations but to revert to the status of “natives” and their reserves or Nunavut to be forced to give up self-government and revert to mere ghettos. Imagine also, the fate of Kurds, if the international community continues to fail to recognize their nationhood and accord them either recognition as an independent state or some form of autonomous status with a new, federally organized Iraq. Jews may be among the oldest, continuously maintained nationalities to live without a homeland -but, they are not alone, nor are the sufferings they have endured qualitatively different from those of other collectivities in this situation.
Zionism does not mean that all, or even most, Jews must live in the State of Israel and, much less, that they must support the policies of any particular Israeli government. Rather, it means insistence upon recognition for the Jewish nationality and the belief that, such recognition, is an absolutely essential pre- condition for the achievement equal and secure status for individual Jews no matter wherever they may live and nor matter whatever other nationalities they may have allegiance to.
By corollary, the destruction of Israel would mean the opposite. And, those who advocate such destruction, whether through eradication of the State of Israel as successive Arab leaders have been urging for sixty years, or, the effective eradication as a homeland through the drowning of its population in a sea of returning, so-called “Palestinian refugees” - as now appears to be the tactic of choice for its enemies, are, in practical reality, as well as by behaviour and definition - anti-Semites.
To return to Dr. Maté’s original argument, Zionism is, of course, not the defining quality of Jews, (a nationality and a homeland would certainly precede any attempt to re-assert that nationality or homeland), nor, properly understood, is it a source of divisiveness among Jews anymore than its equivalent would be among Canadian Aboriginals, Kurds or other small nations. It means that those of us who are a part of this nation - whether secular or religious, whether domiciled in Israel or not, whether supportive of the policies of any particular Israeli government or not - can be Jews without having to answer the old bugaboo about “dual loyalties” and can hope to live in security as such.
As for the association of Jews with Israel, when my father immigrated to Canada from eastern Europe in 1921 to begin his life-long career as the most Canadian of Canadians, he was asked his “nationality”. Without hesitation, he replied “Israelite” - that, I would say, speaks volumes.
