Zionism was, from the first, a secular movement, largely opposed by the religious authorities, until after the Second World War. Weizman did not say that Israel should be as Jewish as England is Anglican, but as England is English, that is, it was no more than ethnic nationalism, intermixed, to be sure, with historical religion. This same ethnic nationalism caused the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire, fueled the Easter Rebellion, lead to the Arab rebellion against the Ottomans, and inspired Mussolini. In other words, it had effects we would consider liberal, and effects we would consider illiberal. But it was a prime mover against imperialism, and for democracy, since at least the mid- nineteenth century, despite it potential for virulent forms, like fascism.
Jews had an historical homeland, and the desire to escape the looming rise of European anti- semitism. It was the shock of the Dreyfuss affair that inspired Herzl. He saw that no amount of assimilation would cure the disease of "racial anti- semitism", and that if Jews would not be accepted as Frenchman, Germans, Poles, etc., then they must have a haven as Jews. In the Jewish view, the Arab population of Palestine had a couple of dozen homelands, as it were, places where they belonged and would be accepted. Indeed, at the time, the Arabs regarded Palestine as being part of Greater Syria, and therefore Palestinians had homeland centering around Damascus. No one, at the time that Israel was established, thought that there was a Palestinian people. For one thing, too many Palestinians were themselves immigrants to the area, in some cases going back a generation or two, but still, not "indigenous".
The original Zionist idea was actually perfectly workable: establish a Jewish majority state, favoring Jewish immigration, and eventually buy out the Arabs. There was no reason for them to think that the majority of Arabs would not be perfectly content to be bought out, if they had property, or given a resettlement stipend if they were propertyless. (There was a Zionist faction which promoted a binational state, by the way, but Arab hostility finally discredited that idea). After all, they had any number of Arab homelands, including Syria, and, towards the end of the period, Jordan, which had taken the bulk of the historic territory of Palestine anyway.
Palestine had no independent existence as such. It went from being a Roman colony to being a Byzantine colony to being an Ottoman colony to being a mandatory territory under British administration. The last independent state to exist in that territory was Judea. Additionally, throughout the long period after the Diaspora, Palestine had no indigenous culture. It always was a manifestation of a larger cultural group, such as the Arabs. The last time there was a distinctive indigenous culture was when it was mainly inhabited by Jews under the Roman occupation. The only group of people whose identity was tied to the territory were the Jews, whose constant refrain during the High Holidays was "next year in Jerusalem".
Far from being a colonialist venture, the restoration of the territory of Judea to the Jews cured an historical enormity, that is, the expulsion of the Jews from their homeland. One of the early victims of imperialist exploitation was to have matters made right.
Of course, the practical objection to such attempts at righting historical wrongs is that there are those not party to the original dispute, even by proxy, whose interests will be harmed, and therefore restoration would create a mare's nest of problems. But to the Zionists, the policy of acquiring land peacefully, one parcel at a time, seemed an ideal solution.
Initially, the Arabs in the area were not very hostile. Eventually, they became so, to the extent that many Arabs admired Adolf Hitler. Invoking "colonialism" is a simple- minded way of dealing with the change. It is more likely the rise of Arab nationalism, and the idea that the high point of Arab civilization (under the Caliphate) should be the model to emulate. In other words, "Palestinians" were invented as a proxy for Arab aspirations to rule the contiguous territory from the border of Iran to the end of North Africa, if not Spain itself. Remember, this was the time that the Ba'athist Party, which took its inspiration from fascism, arose. In the period immediately following the establishment of the state of Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq attempted to start a "United Arab Republic" on Ba'athist principles, although it broke down, and pan- Arabism was all the rage.
In addition, the history of Arab- Israel conflict has caused a huge problem in the Arab world, which is an honor based society. Arab nations generally stagnate compared to Israel, which is a flourishing modern state, and despite numerical strength, the Arab states have been routed by the tiny IDF. It is very humiliating, and exacerbates the trouble.
Finally, the rise of fascistic Islamicism as an evil twin of Ba'athism has done no one any good, not the mostly secular regimes of the region, and certainly not Israel. |
