[wvns] Ariadna Theokopoulos: Downfall of Zionism
Now that the throng of Zionist ideological 'conversos' is growing, how
do we sort them out? Should we check their testimonials, IDS and CVs
to certify sincere conversion to universal, traditionally accepted
morality?
Downfall of Zionism
By Ariadna Theokopoulos
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
We had become used to muted differences and polite disagreements over
one Israeli policy or another presented as proof of a vibrant debate
in the Zionist discourse, pictured as a far from monolithic
ideological group.
Seen from without, however, the taxonomy of Zionism encompassed one
family, "divided" into one genus that had one species. The species had
multiple subspecies, difficult to distinguish from one another and
often morphing from one into another. There are the Avnerites who fear
Israel's potential loss of "soul" (after 1967, that is, not before):
"In the Faust legend, Mephistopheles pays for the soul of the learned
doctor with every imaginable kind of pleasure. Something like that
happened to us in June, 1967. The chain of events directed by a
superior being, a temptation deliberately put in front of us in order
to test us. What looked like a gift from God was actually a temptation
from Satan, an attempt to buy our soul. Did he succeed? Did Israel
lose its soul? I hope not."
There are the followers of Israeli historian Benny Morris, who broke
the taboo and acknowledged Israel's genocidal campaigns against the
native Palestinian population from 1948 onward, but rationalized its
"necessity."
There are Zionists who decry all of Israel's crimes yet admit to
having a soft spot for the concept of a "Jewish state" and think it is
still possible for it to be a democracy with justice for all.
Whatever their squabbles, alignment along basic principles (Israel's
"right to exist," Israel's "security needs," denial or downplaying of
the impact of the Jewish lobby on the US foreign policy) had always
been as irresistible for all Zionists as the magnet pull on iron filings.
There might have existed sincere doubts about Zionism, long dormant
and deeply buried in the Zionist Jews' consciousness, invisible to the
naked eye and certainly to the outside observer, but as Ortega y
Gasset taught us, for the depth to become visible it must first become
surface. And now it has.
Judging from interviews, articles, rebuttals and re-rebuttals in this
venue and others, Zionism's solid ideological front has been fissured,
and many Zionists' ability to hold the contradictory concepts of
"Israeli democracy" and "Jewish state" tightly wrapped together has
been seriously impaired.
There are disillusioned Zionists who pine for the days of yore, the
golden pioneer days of the early "idealistic" kibbutzim. They yearn
for the glory that was Israel (once the unquestioned representative of
eternal victims of superior morality) and the power that was Israel
(before the recent ignominious failure of the mighty IDF in Lebanon).
"Zionist" has always been a badge worn with defiant pride
(successfully marketed outside the genus as well; see "Christian
Zionists"), as "anti-Zionist" was a warning label to Israel's critics
prior to being condemned without the possibility of parole as
"anti-Semites."
Yet now some Zionists reject the Zionist identification and wave their
IDs ("Member since…") of sympathy with the Palestinian plight and past
criticism of Israel. The acrimony that occasionally erupts into a
veritable ideological sectarian violence is violating the old
primordial rule of engagement—"Pas devant les Goyim"—which held that
any public criticism of Israel (let alone of its cornerstone—Zionism)
would open the field to anti-Semites dressed in Israel critic clothing.
Avram Burg, an Israeli politician with strong Zionist credentials and
lineage, now former Israeli citizen recently self-diasporized in
Europe, went so far as to urge Israeli Jews to cast aside their
Israeli passports and leave Israel because Zionism is irretrievably
morally bankrupt—a "scaffolding" that has long outlived its usefulness
and betrayed "the dream. The elites are leaving, he warned Israeli
Jews, and "without an elite there is no nation." If only the Israeli
hoi polloi would have enough Groucho Marx sense to know that they
should not wish to be citizens of a state that wants them (and only them).
An admirer and supporter of pragmatic Barak and of beleaguered but
essentially good Olmert, as he sees them, Burg says he now has an
identity conflict between his Jewishness, his Israeliness and his
Zionism, the last of which is responsible for his psychological
discomfort.
As a former Speaker of Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency, Burg
commands far more attention when he writes or is being interviewed
than some shlemiel being contrary and provocative on his own blog. The
outrage he provoked among the hold-the-fort Zionists is illustrated by
Leibler's hysterical call for punishment in the Jerusalem Post: "Today
in Israel the greatest threat facing us does not emanate from our
vicious Palestinian enemies. It is from within. Surely it is time for
Israelis to express their outrage to their government and call on them
to end their impotence and indolence, and in the name of democracy
itself, legislate red lines, which if crossed, constitute crimes
against the security of society."
Self-rehabilitated Zionist Jews are even rehabbing Diaspora, described
by South African Tony Karon, a recovering Zionist, as the best milieu
for Jews:
"Ironically, despite the dark predictions of the Zionist ideology of
my youth, as many as 750,000 Israelis have left to live in the
Diaspora. A Jew's place is in the world. It's only anti-Semites, and
die-hard Zionists, who insist otherwise."
This is a momentous change, and if being a diaspora Jew is preferable
to being an Israeli Jew or a Zionist Jew, who is to tell what the
future may hold? Maybe even a further mind-boggling transformation
from a diaspora Jew "in the world" to a citizen of one's own country
who happens to be a Jew?
Perhaps the change has been brought about by the pressure of external
factors like the humiliating failure of Israel's war on Lebanon, the
increased international media exposure of Palestinian suffering,
ratcheted up by the Wall, all of which as Burg noted, contradicts the
"Light Unto Nations" Jewish/Israeli self-image, or maybe the stigma
placed on Israel's academia by the British academia-initiated boycott.
Perhaps the polls of European public opinion that overwhelmingly
depicted Israel as "the greatest threat to world peace" jolted them.
Perhaps it was a collective subconscious revelation brought about by
Sharon unconsummated death. Who better personifies Israel and Zionism
than Sharon? Unbridled greed, brutality and violence, arrogance,
racism, and single-minded tenacity in grabbing all of Palestine's land
(and then some) and emptying it of its native inhabitants. Israel,
like Sharon is clinically dead and its death, like his, remains
unacknowledged.
"We are already dead," Burg said. "We haven't received the news yet,
but we are dead. It doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work."
If this is the final limbo, the breath holding before the letting go,
it is easy to see the extraordinary "life"-support measures that keep
Sharon in his undead state as a metaphor for Bush's recent pledge to
dramatically increase Israel's "aid" by $10 billion. If this
administration and the US Congress are cognizant of Israel's multiple
organ failure they do a good job of pretending no such awareness exists.
Perhaps the fragmentation of the Zionist ideological front and the
scramble to disavow one's essential support of Israel is due to the
flight of Burg's "elites" and the increased numbers of newcomers of
suspect Jewishness: the "New Jews" and the openly porcophagous
non-Jews from the former Soviet Union; the "QuickJews" like the
Peruvian Indians quickly converted on the side of the mountain path by
settlement fodder-recruiting rabbis; or the undesirably pigmented
Ethiopians. These newcomers have been steadily eroding the Jewishness
of the State for Jews Only. Ironically, the "demographic bomb"
fearfully believed by Zionists to reside in Palestinian women' wombs
turns out to be an IED mass produced by Israel's "absorption" policies.
It has been observed before that that the downfall of Zionism was
contained in its very success. Like a gluttonous python that swallowed
a large herbivore very fast, Israel has given itself a case of lethal
indigestion.
Now that the throng of Zionist ideological 'conversos' is growing, how
do we sort them out? Should we check their testimonials, IDS and CVs
to certify sincere conversion to universal, traditionally accepted
morality?
I propose letting bygones be bygones and administering a simple
questionnaire aimed at assessing present restoration of clear vision
and moral health.
If a person's answer to any one of the questions below is "Yes" then
the candidate's moral health and capacity for unbiased thinking
warrants continuing quarantine.
1. Do you believe that Israel has an inherent "right to exist"?
2. Could the establishment of a Palestinian state (or two or three)
next to Israel ever lead to peace and to the solution of the
"Palestinian problem"?
3. Should the Palestinians' right of return (and any other human
rights of the Palestinians) be "balanced" against Israel' "security
needs"?
4. Is Israel a democracy and is it possible to have democracy in a
"Jewish state"?
5. Would there have been (and is there now) a chance for peace for all
and justice for the Palestinian people if only Israel had withdrawn
(or would do so now) from the Palestinian lands it occupied in 1967?
6. Was Zionism at any point in its history a luminous dream pursued by
"idealists" capable of compassion and justice?
7. Is Israel a "tiny nation surrounded by enemies" who wishes to live
in peace but is meekly doing the US bidding, valiantly defending the
Western world's vital interests in the ME?
More questions easily spring to mind but seven deadly sins of moral
turpitude and blind tribal allegiance should suffice for a reliable test.
- Ariadna Theokopoulos is a regular contributor to PalestineChronicle.com
*********************************************************************
WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
NEWS ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
Need some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.com for instructions.
To leave this list, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:wvns-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:wvns-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
No comments:
Post a Comment