Somewhat OT, but interesting: Zionism as a nationalism of 'no choice':
Only the Zionist gate remains open
By Amnon Rubinstein
Some 100 years since the Zionist gates opened, Jewish nationalism of the secular - not religious - variety is facing a deep crisis. The strength of Muslim-Arab hatred of Israel and its Jews is disheartening. When Arafat said "no" to Barak and Clinton's proposal, and began his bloody intifada, he first and foremost struck at secular Jewish public which believed, for the most part, that a two-state solution would create peace and security for both peoples. Secular national Jews consider peace essential not only because of all that peace promises, but also because it allows them to adhere both to their Jewish nationalism and to their universal beliefs.
The crisis of secular national Jews is a genuine crisis. Its echoes can be heard in the media, in academia, and in every forum where Israelis meet - and particularly during traditional Friday night gatherings - and it is wrenching. Radio producers can testify that the faxes and calls they receive from listeners don't divide into right or left, but rather into religious and secular. The beliefs of the first group have not been undermined by the terrorist threat, but secular listeners are deeply disheartened. The dispirited expression of the enlightened secular public raises thoughts that secular national Judaism - born in Odessa and Basel, in Baghdad and Katowice - is dying here, in this promised, desert land.
As in many other instances, one turns to history in search of answers to current events. In this case, there are three questions that need to be answered: Why were the pogroms against the Jews in southern Russia in 1881 considered such a historic and exceptional event? What was the connection between these pogroms to the farhoud - the big pogrom launched 60 years later against Jews in Baghdad?
The pogroms of 1881 in Russia had an impact on Jewish and general history. They prompted a mass exodus from the czarist, anti-Semitic regime and gave birth to the large Jewish community in North America. It also prompted many young people to join the ranks of the revolution, which in the end sealed the fate of the czar and his regime. Finally, the pogrom prompted the rise of a mass Zionist movement in a place where the vast majority of Jews lived at the time. Why did these particular pogroms have such a shocking effect? After all, before these pogroms, Jews were incredibly persecuted and harassed, thousands of Jewish children were kidnapped and forced into hard, discriminatory military service.
The actions against Jews prior to 1881 were the fruits of the regime of Nicholas I. The dividing line was clear, with Jews on one side, those who hated them on the other. By contrast, as Prof. Arthur Hertzberg has noted, the pogroms of 1881 were perpetrated, at least initially, by the progressive forces in Russian society and occurred after a very hopeful period of englightenment during the relatively liberal regime of Alexander II.
The Narodnaya Volya group - which represented most of the Russian intelligentsia - issued its famous declaration supporting the pogrom. Tolstoy and Turgenev stayed silent.
Overnight everything changed. Leon Pinsker was roused to write his "Autoemancipation" [in which he urged the Jewish people to strive for independence, national consciousness and a return to independent territorialism]. Until then, Pinsker had been a successfully assimilated Jew par excellence and had even received recognition for his heroism as a military doctor in the Crimean War. After 1881, at the age of 60, he suddenly understood that the door to assimilation had been slammed in the face of the Jews. They wanted to be like everyone, but could not be. From there it was a short road to the Jewish Congress in Basel 16 years later. Some doors were closed, others were opened and in the end only one remained - Zionism.
What happened to the Jews of Russia happened 60 years later to the Jews of Baghdad. The Jewish intellectuals of that community, like Pinsker and his friends, wanted to integrate and assimilate in the process of Iraqization, and they had succeeded in doing so far more than had Jewish intellectuals in Russia. These Iraqi Jews succeeded on every front: in the liberal professions, in commerce and finance, in integrating into politics and even in the regime (until 1925, a Jew, Sasson Yehezkel, served as finance minister in the Iraqi regime). And then one sad day during the holiday of Shavuot, on June 1, 1941, a pogrom, which became known as the farhoud erupted in Baghdad and Basra. It was led by Rashid Ali al-Kilani, with the go-ahead of the mufti of Jerusalem, a Nazi supporter. More than 100 Jews were killed - some of them were killed after they reached the hospital with their injuries - and more than 1,000 Jews were injured. Jewish property was looted. In this case too, the old and large Jewish community of Baghdad, the Jewish intelligentsia was shocked and disheartened. Quite rightly, Shmuel Moreh notes in his book "Sinat Hayehudim veparout beIraq" (Hatred of the Jews and pogroms in Iraq), "it was precisely assimilation that intensified hatred against them, exactly as happened in Nazi Germany."
Like in Russia 60 years earlier, the farhoud closed the door to assimilation and opened a new door. On the one hand, there were some who turned to communism, on the other, there were those who became devoted to Zionism. Said Cohen, now known as MK Ran Cohen, was only 2 years old when the pogrom erupted, but the memory of the event changed his life. As a result of the farhoud, his brother began taking part in Zionist activities, and at the age of 11 he decided to walk to the Land of Israel.
In Iraq, as in Russia, the Jews tried to be like everyone else and did not succeed. They were willing to forgo their uniqueness, abandon the idea of being a "chosen people," give up the symbols of their religion and distinctiveness. But something - either in themselves or others - did not allow them to be like everyone else. As they were waiting just outside the locked gates of the palace, other gates opened before them: the gates of a dawning world revolution in which the anguish of the Jews would disappear in the new world order of justice for all; the gates of the Bund which sought a Jewish national life in the Diaspora; the gates of national Judaism in the form of the Zionist movement. In the end, only the gate of Zionism remained open.
Why is all this important today? Because it indicates that the new secular Jewish nationalism, which was the foundation on which Israel was built, is a nationalism of no choice. It is true that on the basis of the lack of choice were piled on additional traditional national elements: the memory of the biblical past, the impact of the revival of Hebrew, the concept of a return to Zion, and the characteristic accoutrements of other national movements. But the major strength of Zionism stemmed from its sense that there was no other choice, from this inability to be like everyone else. Without the locked gate, the Zionist gate would not have opened very wide and the longing for Zion would have stayed in the prayer book.
This is how the birth of secular Jewish nationalism came about, constructed on a common hope and destiny for the Jewish people, not a common religious belief. This Jewish secularism - which almost all the heads of the Zionist movement adopted - was the one that created the miracle of the rise of Israel, of the renaissance of the Hebrew language and culture, of a state of Israel that defends and fends for its citizens.
Does this basis of "no choice" still persist? Have the Jews changed since the Holocaust? The truth of the matter is that from the extinguished crater - from the apparent volcano of anti-Semitism - a stream of seering lava occasionally erupts. But the hatred of Jews is not longer acceptable in a world where human rights and minority rights play such an important role. It is difficult to imagine not only a return to a murderous Nazi regime, but even to the sort of anti-Semitic regimes of czarist and Stalinist Russia, or of Romania and Iraq.
Nonetheless, there is a constant: Somehow the Jews, despite their wishes, can't seem to be like everyone else. The tremendous support for Israel to be found by Jews everywhere is clear evidence of this. Why does Israel play such an important role in the education of Diaspora Jews? Solely because Jews have not managed to assimilate and integrate completely. The legal gate is no longer closed, but instead there is a spiritual barrier, hidden from the eye, close to the heart.
It is now germane to return to the question of whether secular Israel will endure in the face of tremendous war of faiths that is raging around it at home and abroad. Will the prophesies of Herzl and Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky go up in the roaring and fanatical flames of the religious nationalistic zeal of the Muslim majority and the minority of Jewish zealots? It is hard to know and hard to guess, but it is worthwhile to remember that there is also a historic constant at work here: Just as the Jews of Russia in 1881 and the Jews of Iraq in 1941 felt they had no choice, now too, there is ultimately no gate to salvation open other than the Zionist gate. This is the truth that is becoming clear to the secular Israeli public. Alongside its battle to create a sane state, its efforts to reach a Jewish-Arab peace, and to create a just and liberal society, it has no alternative to the concept of a Jewish state for the Jewish people. Despite all the fashionable talk winning high ratings these days, the Jewish public in Israel, with its language and culture, has no choice but to exist in a Jewish democratic state, the national homeland of the Jewish people. To exist and to win. No other gate is open.
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