User:RK/A Liberal Defense of Zionism

Zionism and Its Cultural Adversaries

Dr. Steven Weinberg

I write about Zionism as one who has no interest in the preservation of Judaism (or, I hasten to add, any other religion), but a great deal of interest in the preservation of Jews. There always were two different ways that Zionists viewed the return to Zion: as a duty for all Jews, imposed by their religion, or as an opportunity for those Jews who want or need to live in a Jewish nation. As an unreligious American Jew, I feel no desire or duty to change my nationality, and I am in no position to deplore the fact that few other American Jews want to become Israelis. But I very much hope that the land of Israel will continue to provide an opportunity for Jews to flee oppression in any country, as it has since 1948. This refuge was needed in the twentieth century far more than could ever have been expected in 1897, but because of Arab and British opposition it was tragically not available at the time of greatest need, in the 1930s and 1940s. Zionism today in part reflects the determination that Israel will be available as a refuge the next time it is needed.

Zionism also represents the intrusion - by purchase and settlement rather than conquest, at least until Arab assaults made military action necessary - of a democratic, scientifically sophisticated, secular culture into a part of the world that for centuries had been despotic, technically backward and obsessed with religion. For me, it is this essentially Western character of Zionism that gives it an attraction that goes beyond its defensive role. It will be betrayed if Orthodox zealots succeed in making Israel a theocratic state, but I can't believe that this will happen.

It is in part the Western character of Zionism that makes it so hateful to many others - not just to Muslims, but also to Westerners who for one reason or another find it comfortable to line up with the adversaries of Western civilisation. By attacking Zionism, it is very convenient to express solidarity with the poorer non-Western people of the world, without having actually to make sacrifices to help them. In this way, anti-Zionism has come to play the role of a gutter multiculturalism.

Of course, this is not the whole story. Anti-Zionism also serves to give vent to deep-seated anti-Semitic feelings, and helps in maintaining Middle Eastern oil. Out of this tangle of motivations came the hysterical anti-Zionism of the last decade of Stalinism; the resolution of a 1975 world congress on women at Mexico City that Zionism is oppressive to women; the infamous resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations that same year equating Zionism with racism; and the continuing one-sidedness of international opinion regarding the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

As a liberal I especially deplore a peculiar evenhandedness on the part of many fellow liberals, an evenhandedness that sees no moral difference between the efforts of Israel to preserve existence in a fraction of a fraction of the original Palestine mandate, and the attacks of those who wish to destroy it, and that views the building of housing projects in Jerusalem as being on a moral plane with the firing of machine guns at school buses. Do I need to say that there is in fact a great moral distinction between the democratic secular Israel created by Zionism, whose long-range aim is simply to be left in peace, and the enemies that surround it? It is a distinction that ought to make liberals see Zionism again as they used to, as a natural part of the liberal agenda.