Israeli Nationalism: Creating the New International Anti-Semitism, and (briefly) Conflating Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Introduction
"Israeli Nationalism" is not a commonly used term. But I think that it is a useful one. It conflates the Expulsionist Zionism that has been central to the policies of the Israeli Right since the post-World War I days of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, with the "One State Solution" which is the policy of the current Netanyahu-led coalition (of the Rightist and further-Rightist) Israeli government. In re Zionism, modern political Zionism, which began in late 19th century Europe, was a direct response to the development of political anti-Semitism which began at the same time. The modern State of Israel, created as is well-known by a UN resolution, exists primarily because after World War II no nation wanted to take "all those Jews" (who had somehow survived the Holocaust) just as no nation had wanted to take them before the War (see "The Evian Conference").
The Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Plan that was provided for by the United Nations in November 1947. The Six Arab Nations surrounding the UK Mandate did not. Those events, plus the geographical results of the Six Day War, is why Israel looks like what it does today. The "Oslo" process of the 1990s, which was intended to lead to a "Two-State solution," could have worked. But the Israeli Right made sure that it did not. What is going on now in Gaza is a continuation of the long-term policy of Expulsionism (of which, by-the-way Israeli Nationalism never openly speaks) and of cultural genocide (as originally defined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944). It is being intensified by the Israeli Nationalists in Gaza and the so-called "Settlers" (better called "dis-possessors/occupiers") in the West Bank.
But the focus of this column is not on the history/events as summarized briefly above, on which I have written several recently. It is rather on what Israeli Nationalism has done to reignite Global anti-Semitism and how it has put it, for the first time, on a factual basis, that is on a description of something that "Jews Have Done," that is on something that Jews have really done this time around, as we shall see just below. For all of the previous forms of International Anti-Semitism have been centered on made-up stories-plots-conspiracies describing events/plots that did never actually existed. The ultimate tragedy here is that the previous fictional "Jewish plots/conspiracies" were gradually fading away from common usage in many parts of the world. Now however, based on what Israeli Nationalism is actually doing in Gaza and the West Bank, International anti-Semitism is being given a new lease on life, to repeat, for the first time in history with a factual basis.
Anti-Semitism has a long history, reaching back to before the Common Era. In the Roman Empire it did not appear to have a common historic-theological basis. It was St. Augustine, around the turn of the 5th Century C.E., who gave it its first common, programmatic, center: "The Jews Killed Christ." Indeed, that would become a common doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church until, under the leadership of Pope John XXIII, it was formally revoked at Vatican II. (A U.S. Rabbi, Mark Tanenbaum, played a major role in the final formulation and pronouncement of the policy.)
Political anti-Semitism, that is the use of anti-Semitic propaganda for electoral political purposes was first developed in Austria and the Prussian Empire beginning in the late 1870's. It included a strain of Jew-expulsionism, which, as it happened, led directly to the development of early political Zionism, under the leadership of Theodor Herzl. "Zionism" had been in Jewish religious lore, "Next Year in Jerusalem" concluding the Passover Seder text, for many centuries, but it had never been an active poltico-historico-force, until the development of late 19th century European anti-Semitism.
It must be understood that Herzl's concept of modern, active, we-have-to-leave, Zionism was a direct response to active, poltico-expulsionist European anti-Semitism. It is likely that most European Jews, if they could not get to the United States, would have been at least content to stay in Europe, were it not for this growing political-anti-Semitic/expulsionist force rising against them. It is clear, then that political Zionism, that is promoting the emigration of the Jews (at least the European ones) to the "Holy Land," was a response to intensifying European political anti-Semitism, and nothing else.
Of course, as it happened, as is very well-known, (very inconveniently) the "Holy Land" to which European Jews were to emigrate, happened to be, first, part of the Ottoman Empire, and then part of the UK Palestinian Mandate following the dissolution of that Empire at the end of World War I. Further, it also happened to be very inconvenient, to say the least, that that land was already occupied by another people, who just happened to have been there for a very long time. It is one of the great ironies of history that current Israeli anti-Palestinian Expulsionism is a direct descendant of European anti-Semitic Expulsionism.
As it happens, early in the days of the European Jew-Expulsionist movement there was developed a new organizing theory for it. It was called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." It happened to be a forgery, concocted by a unit of the Czarist Secret Police. Revelations on its true authorship began appearing as early as 1921. Nevertheless, it remained a powerful organ zing force for political anti-Semitism for decades. Today, widely debunked in the Western World, it is still circulated to some extent in the Muslim one. But indeed, the Protocols, around which first European, then global anti-Semitism, has been recently organized, and the "Jews Killed Christ" doctrine as an organizational focus going back to the Fifth Century, are/were both myths. Jews in particular have been very happy about these two developments, as have any peoples who want societies built upon tolerance and mutual respect.
Anti-Semitism will likely always be with us, especially for its political utility (see the "George Soros" trope common among the rhetoric of certain Republicans.) But now, all of a sudden, courtesy of the Israeli Nationalists, there arises a new organizing trope for Internationalist anti-Semitism, one which, most horrifically, is based on fact. That is the Expulsionist/Cultural Genocide which is being committed against the Palestinians by the Israeli Nationalists. It is real. Around the world it is being seen, underway, live. And the Israeli Nationalist government under Benjamin Netanyahu, has created this scourge on humanity and continues to carry it forward. (It is an interesting historical note that Netanyahu's father was a staffer for the originator of Palestinian Expulsionism, Jeb Zabotinksy, in his latter days.) The doctrine has yet to be formulated by the Anti-Semites into something like the equivalent of "The Jews Killed Christ" or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." But again, the ultimate historical irony is that the former two were based on myth. The new Israeli Nationalist, formalized, Palestinian Expulsionism is based on fact. It is real policy and the far-Right "Settler Ring" in the West Bank is very much formulating it, in fact and in words: "This Land is Ours," regardless of what International Law might have to say about the matter.
Post-script on Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
As noted, organized anti-Semitism goes back to before the Common Era. Political anti-Zionism is a product of the late 19th century European anti-Semitism that produced modern political Zionism. To repeat, it is highly unlikely that the original Zionism-in-reality of Herzl would have come into existence if it had not been for the development of European Expulsionist anti-Semitism. Then, in the 1930s, as was clearly seen in the refusal by the United States (following the prejudicial Immigration Act of 1924) to accept European Jews (for the most part), and by 1938 and the Evian Conference, the refusal of all but a tiny handful of nations around the world to open the doors to Jews who wanted to flee Hitler and the Nazis, to the immediate post-World War II period where once again "nobody would take the Jews" (even those relatively small numbers who had managed to survive the Holocaust), that the modern State of Israel was not the creation of multitudes of Jews who for religious reasons wanted to go there, but rather created by Jews who had no place else to go.
In brief, Zionism had and has to do with the creation and preservation of a modern state, in response to anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere (like the pre-World War II United Sates). It just happens to be a Jewish one. Anti-Zionism in modern times is based on opposition both to the existence of the State of Israel, and to the policies of Israeli Nationalism, an opposition (that is, anti-Zionism) that is held in different forms and to different degrees by Jews and non-Jews alike. Anti-Semitism is prejudice, personally, institutionally, and politically held against Jewish individuals and the Jews as a people.
I for example, am anti-Zionist in the sense that I am opposed to, and have always been opposed to, the policies of the Israeli Nationalists. That hardly makes me (and I happen to be a Jew), an anti-Semite. However, what the Israeli Nationalists and their allies elsewhere, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have managed to do, and have done very effectively, is conflate the two. So that, in the terms that AIPAC has managed to broadcast far-and-wide in the United States, if you are an "Anti-Zionist" of any stripe, you are automatically labelled as an anti-Semite. I will be coming back to this topic at some time in the future.