It is no surprise to say Netanyahu's speech at the annual AIPAC meeting this week contained his usual boisterousness. Embattled new U.S. Congressional Representative Ilan Omar, who I have consistently defended for her recent remarks, took one line from the speech personally, as well as she should. Her response was proper, in my view, but, contrary to the implication in part of her response, Netanyahu did mention Charlottesville and Pittsburgh events in his crescendo against anti-Semitism, as the linked-to article reveals. One may argue Netanyahu should have spoken more about anti-Semitism in the United States, seeing as he was speaking in the United States. However, that type of response fails to understand the history of particular strains within Zionism and anti-Semitism, and how the Zionist movement, from the start, was one where there was an acceptance of anti-Semitism, which forms the basis for why Jews everywhere on the planet should move to first Palestine, now Israel. This is something many American Jews do not like to admit as it is against the grain of "our" core belief that America is at least another land of Milk and Honey, meaning a place where Jews have been fundamentally "safe." It is why the American Jewish Reform denomination was so hostile to Zionism from the 1890s through the end of the 1930s, as American Jews in the Reform Movement would say, "The Promised Land is America. Why go bother with desert and Arabs?"
For me, if I had to pick one line to quibble with from a historical standpoint, it is Netanyahu's belief that Herzl would be on Netanyahu's side about the meaning of the phrase "the Jewish state." I have long believed the writer, Yarom Harzony, made a solid point nineteen years ago in countering those who want to change the title of Herzl's first Zionist book, "The Jewish State," into "The State of the Jews," showing why they were and are wrong to do so. But Harzony's famous essay--among Jewish-Zionist intellectuals anyway--tries to push away, in a footnote (footnote 5), Herzl's second book, written six years after Herzl's publication of "The Jewish State" in 1896, "Autneland (Old-New Land)," where Herzl assumes the creation and existence of what looks much more like a secular state in Palestine, in which there would be special protections for Jews as Jews, but in which there would be no undermining of rights of non-Jews, particularly Arabs. Harzony does not want to admit Herzl's change in this regard, even as Harzony's essay shows how Herzl began his push for a Zionist idea as a Jew in name only, who lit Christmas trees in his home, to being one where he became more convinced Jews needed to return to Judaism, though not at all restricted to any particular variant in the Jewish philosophy. Harzony wishes to downplay, through his use of a footnote, the very clear thesis behind Herzl's 1902 novel, which shows a recognition that Arabs are present in Palestine, and a requirement for an ethno-religious-equality which the current formulation of a "Jewish state" from Netanyahu/Likud and right wing parties in Israel would not necessarily countenance. Thus, when Netanyahu invoked Herzl, as if Herzl speaks for Netanyahu in 2019, is precisely where I find myself mostly isolated from the majority of Israeli Jews who Netanyahu and the right wing parties represent.
Harzony's essay, which is wonderful reading, inadvertently shows us two things: (1) there has always been a connection between anti-Semitic Christian European politics with Zionism, where the latter simply invert the anti-Semitism to say, "Okay, then, help us get rid of 'your' 'Jews' and send them somewhere else, whether in Africa or Palestine," in a similar way the African-American Marcus Garvey often spoke in his quest to have African-Americans leave the United States; and (2) Herzl was, above all, a secular oriented person, who was trying to build as large a coalition of Jews in Europe as possible, and was still somewhat blind to the imperialism inherent within his request for European powers' "help" in establishing a "homeland" for the "Jews."
I read Harzony again, in light of Netanyahu's speech, and I thought again how much I revere Isaac Deutscher's short, but powerful parable about two victims: The man (Jew) who jumps out of the burning building (Europe) and lands on a person (Arab) who is walking by the burning building and minding his own business. Both men get up after the fall, both with broken bones, but still able to stand, and, instead of recognizing the circumstances, and finding a way to care for each other's injuries, they begin to fight, and scream blame at each other. I adore this parable as it speaks to common humanity, the recognition of attenuating and particular circumstances, and the importance of not overstating one's victimhood.
I once heard a critique of Deutscher's parable that the man jumping out of the building aimed at the person walking along the sidewalk so as to break the fall. One could make that argument based upon some statement or statements of Zionists from Herzl to Ben-Gurion and beyond, I suppose. However, the fact remains Jews such as Herzl (and Moses Hess before him) were already identifying the trends of extreme nationalism in Christian-dominated Europe were going to eventually lead to a catastrophe befalling the Jews of Europe in what we now call the Holocaust. For as Harzony says, the original title for Herzl's first book was "A Solution of the Jewish Question," which shows the defensive and reactive nature of Herzl's Zionist project.
Some may wonder why I only sound anti-Israel when talking about Netanyahu, but become pro-Zionist when confronted with those who are, to my view at least, too hostile to even the idea of the State of Israel. Well, wonder less, if not no more.
