A Zionist is someone who thinks a Jewish nation-state should be established in Mandatory Palestine. Can you use the present tense in that sentence, though, really? Shouldn’t it be that this is what a Zionist was?
Whether this made sense or not to have a Jewish country at all, and if yes, where to place it, was the subject of vibrant debate, among a population that because strangely less vibrant during World War II, during and after which point there was a practical matter of where Holocaust survivors would go. Yes I realize you read on your preferred social media platform that Jews always have Brooklyn, but yeah no. Lots of Jews ended up in what would become Israel for reasons that had squat to do with having spent the 1890s admiring Herzl.
Why there though? There were reasons, familiar to anyone with World Religions 101 behind them, but the relevant point here is that was no location a Jewish state might have been put that would not have displaced someone because everywhere habitable on the planet, including places (such as pre-Israel Palestine!) with Jews living in them also would have had non-Jews who maybe didn’t want to suddenly live in this “Israel” place. The clue is that there had not been a Jewish nation-state previously, so if there was going to be one, it had to go somewhere where there wasn’t one, and indeed where there was something else. This was bound to lead to problems. Jews having recently learned that nowhere on Earth wanted them, this was also a problem, and not one that was going to be solved by Jews being like, well, I guess we suck as much as they say, and heading for the nearest spaceship.
Back to the point of this: modern political Zionists were people who wanted a Jewish state, in Palestine, to happen. They had different visions for what it would look like, ones I once knew in depth but that wisdom has been (uh) displaced by an encyclopedic knowledge of British television imdb, so if you were to quiz me on the subtleties of Nordau vs Jabotinsky I would be like, did you know how many Midsomer Murders episodes the actress who plays Lord Grantham’s sister on Downton Abbey was in? (The answer is surprisingly low: just three!)
Back to the point, I swear: happen it did. Israel is there, whether you’ve personally seen it or not, and whether you’d have put it there or not if granted unilateral decision-making status about it in 1910 or 1944 or whichever other year you almost certainly weren’t alive and making policies. There are people, Israelis, who’ve only ever known it, and for whom this has been true now for multiple generations. Their ancestors since time immemorial didn’t speak modern Hebrew but they themselves do. When you hear someone speaking English in an Israeli accent, they aren’t putting it on as some kind of Orientalist gesture, such that underneath it all, they speak with an American accent. They aren’t culturally appropriating writing from right to left, or eating Levantine foodstuffs. This is it, this is what they are. It happened.
‘But what about Palestinians?’ There are also Palestinians. I think there should be two states. I don’t hold the keys to world peace, give me a break.
The point of this newsletter is that I am hearing incessantly about Zionists this and antizionists that and I have no clue what you people are talking about. Are Zionists people who support every Israeli military decision? Are Zionists people think Israel shouldn’t be dismantled, its Jewish population ethnically cleansed? Are Zionists people who think the Israeli government can do no wrong, or who have fond feelings towards the people and culture of the only Jewish state and indeed whose concern is sometimes at the root of frustrations to put it mildly with its government?
And who are antizionists when they’re at home? Are they critics of Israel? OK, then what does that mean? Do they want it radically redefined out of existence or to take a less deadly approach in Gaza? And what to make of the fact that plenty of critics of Israeli policies—among them many Israeli Jews themselves—are people you’d be hard-pressed to label as antizionists.
Truly who knows what anyone is talking about. I think it is ultimately a matter of accessories and emojis because I suspect most normal people (depends where of course; maybe normal isn’t the right word) would like to see far less killing in Gaza and also thought October 7 was evil and that what’s happening in the West Bank is a disaster and that Israel should get to go on existing. If someone didn’t want a ceasefire but changed their mind at a certain point in the war, when they thought the IDF had crossed a line, did they go from Zionist to antizionist or anti-Zionist or… I give up.
I would be delighted if I never once had to read the trite thing about how of course antizionism is not necessarily antisemitism, a word salad containing elements of truth and falsehood to which everyone exuding reasonableness nods along. The antisemitism is found not in antizionism but in even having this expression, “Zionism,” as though you’re some wingnut with an ideology if you think Israel should exist in any capacity. There is, as someone pointed out on Twitter earlier, and as I know they were not the first to observe, no -ism for thinking other countries that exist should get to go on doing so. So yes, “Zionism” is the problem, but not the way you think.
Phoebe, with your permission I’d like to cross post this post in the comments of Freddie’s most recent post about Israel/Palestine?
Thank you