What Jews Have Come to Understand About Zionism’s Necessity
Jews have come to understand that we have nowhere else because without self-reliance in a land, there is no counting on the good graces, whims, good intentions, politics, temporary boom economies, what-have-you…that there is no choice for Jews, if we’re to survive, but to have a homeland to defend because no place else has been a secure home.
After the ’30s and 40s, if others don’t understand or want to understand, that’s alright but we understand, we will do what’s necessary to survive as a people and that cannot happen dependent only, in nations that see themselves as benign, even welcoming “hosts-nations” to Jews because it’s an unreliable plan, proven over and again wholly unreliable.
Zionism’s a necessity if Jews are to survive and the raw knowledge of that lends strength.
Now, some may not wish Jews to survive, and they are many, but this, the history of Jews in “host nations”, is why Jews must have a homeland, and if a person argues against Jews surviving, s/he need just be straight about it. Those who think we don’t understand that they don’t want Jews to survive while they tell us they’re fine with us, just not with Zionism…they may be kidding themselves…they’re not kidding us. There’s no need to bother with criticism of this or that Israeli PM or government, because anti-Zionists never care who the PM is (although I do): anti-Zionists want no Israel…and in every practical way imaginable, that means, given the “host-nations fallacy” and how swiftly and capriciously Jew-hating moves from idea to action regardless of which party is ‘in’ in Israel and in other countries, Zionism, despite the vagaries and policies of particular political parties or governments, is, in part, a survival manual.
If a person thinks Jews need not survive, that person should have the sac to say it.
If a person honestly believes s/he can support Jews’ survival and be anti-Zionist at once, acknowledging history, s/he must offer practical alternative solutions that include Jews’ (and others’) survival.
Criticism of particular Israeli policies is not a call do do away with Jews. But anti-Zionism, absent an articulate practical alternative, is. That’s the lesson of the last century, the lesson of the “host-nations” fallacy. Pretenses must drop like rotted fruit. There has not been nor is there yet a practical, consequential difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
07/12/2019 @ 9:34 am
So you obvious support kicking all whites out of the eastern seaboard so that it can become a “self-reliant” Black nation, all of the straight people out of California so that it can become a LGBTQ “homeland” and everything else in between should become “a secure home” for Indigenous Americans, right?
If you believe anything else then you are a Black/LGBTQ/Indigenous American hater. If you don’t think Blacks/LGBTQ/Indigenous Americans deserve the right to survive as much as Jews, you should have the sac to say it.
07/12/2019 @ 9:39 am
I know I am dull, but pls translate this into Esperanto.
07/12/2019 @ 9:41 am
…and of course the piece makes clear that others have the right to survive…”s/he must offer practical alternative solutions that include Jews’ (and others’) survival.”
(…as if that map is somehow ‘fake-news’….)
07/12/2019 @ 1:00 pm
Her point stands in English and deserves a more detailed answer than a dismissal. How do these other minorities differ from us?
The LGBTQ minority differs from us in that it is not ethnic, and the reason this makes a difference is that it doesn’t concentrate in families, but living does. An LGBTQ nation wouldn’t be tenable because the concept ignores family ties in where and with whom people live. This is not to say that that minority doesn’t have a parallel problem to ours; what it doesn’t have is a parallel feasible solution.
The Native American community has homelands. As of yet they don’t have the resources they need or deserve and, frankly, they often don’t have sufficient land or land in the right historical places. Whether they should get an actual separate nation is a different question and is also not feasible because it wouldn’t be one nation, it would be a whole lot of small nations. There’s nothing monolithic about the Native American population; in fact, one of their complaints is the degree to which they are treated in an inappropriately monolithic fashion. Culture isn’t consistent, even treaties aren’t consistent. And I don’t know what the majority of that population would want in this regard, whether they’d want actual separate nations.
The nature of what the Black community faces and has faced here is different. They haven’t faced mass expulsion or mass extermination here. They have faced pogroms. If the issue is strictly that they want there to be a place on Earth where they are guaranteed not to be persecuted for being Black, there are a lot of majority Black nations. However, this answer treats them as a race rather than as an ethnicity and, from an ethnic standpoint, that solution doesn’t work because they’d just be a different kind of minority if they went anywhere else. As to whether there should be a Black homeland within the US, that’s not a question I think I can answer. Depends who you ask. If you were to ask Louis Farrakhan, probably.
How we differ is that, firstly, aside from the LGBTQ minority which functions very differently, it has been a far longer time since we were a majority anywhere than since any of the other populations in question were. We’ve given it two thousand years for the guest in other peoples’ countries thing to work consistently and it consistently hasn’t.
The second way we differ is that, generally speaking, the arc of history has for the other minorities curved toward justice. Not always quickly but there haven’t been too many major reversals along the way. Both the Native American and slave descended Black populations are American populations, so a worldwide perspective doesn’t fit like it does for Jews. A worldwide perspective fits for the LGBTQ community but the same solutions don’t work, though the arc of history internationally in this case has obviously not been without extremely significant reversals. Jews overseas have seen many, many reversals. Over the centuries, places that have been hospitable to Jews have not tended to stay that way. We know the guest in other peoples’ countries strategem cannot be counted on. We’re even seeing a bit of a reversal in safety here and, given the recent propensity for large parts of the population not to believe actual news, conditions favorable to further reversals are increasingly dangerous. I don’t predict a problem but I recognize a risk when I see one.
07/12/2019 @ 1:03 pm
Kosh you always have far more patience w people than I do. Thanks for your full reply.
07/12/2019 @ 1:07 pm
…nor did, ten years back, Jews living in Europe predict what’s now, quite arguably, re-emerging.
07/12/2019 @ 1:09 pm
I wouldn’t attribute my response to patience. If the topic is to be discussed properly, this is how. The question of why other persecuted minorities should not be entitled to equivalent solutions is a valid one and is a valid response to the post.
07/12/2019 @ 1:11 pm
Your tack is wholly valid, Kosh.