What is Zionism?

A Peace Now Vision

 

Gidon D. Remba[1]

 

“You shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.

Zion shall be redeemed with justice.”  Isaiah I: 26-27

 

What is Zionism?  Zionism is the belief that Israel has a right to exist as a democratic Jewish state—nothing more, nothing less.  It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.   Zionism, like any form of nationalism, has found expression on the left, right and center of the political spectrum.  All Zionists share the common denominator of commitment to the existence and flourishing of a Jewish state called Israel. 

Progressive Zionism is best expressed by three whose life and work reflect the balance of universal and particular, the love of Israel and the Jewish people, and the love of peace and justice, common to the Biblical prophets, representing authentic Jewish values:  Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, and Israel’s Chief Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak. Each embodies dimensions of our Zionism.[2] 

The Zionism of Peace Now draws on the progressive, humane outlook of Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism.  It was Herzl who urged in Old-New Land (1902), “Hold fast to the things that have made us great:  to liberality, tolerance, love of mankind.  Only then is Zion truly Zion.”[3]  Herzl foresaw a Jewish state in which Jews and Arabs enjoyed full equality as citizens.  The Zionism of Peace Now entails both a love for the Jewish people, a passion for its well-being, and a commitment to justice, equality, liberal democracy and human rights—cosmopolitan values.  “For Herzl the fortunes of Zionism and those of European liberalism were intertwined. Old-New Land was a … blue-print for a liberal New Society in Palestine.”[4]  We fight for Arab-Israeli peace and a more equalitarian society in Israel out of a recognition that a just and well-crafted political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the larger Arab-Israeli dispute, will enhance Israel’s security, fortifying it economically, politically and socially.  And we struggle to realize these ideals because they are at the core of our moral vision as Zionists.  In our Zionism there is no contradiction between our belief in the justice of a state which embodies Jewish culture and symbols in its public life, reflecting the heritage and needs of the Jewish people, and our embrace of universal moral values. 

 

Ahad Ha’am (which means “one of the people”), the pen name of Asher Ginsburg, founded what is known as Cultural Zionism, the idea that Jews should come together in the historic Land of Israel so that they can cooperatively build what will become the common cultural center of the Jewish people throughout the world, forming a collective space that is Jewish.   Herzl and Ahad Ha’am represented two contrasting approaches to Zionism in their day, the one focusing on state-building, the other on creating a Jewish cultural and spiritual center in the Land of Israel for all Jews everywhere, reviving Hebrew and the moral core of Judaism. But their ideas can be united, particularly now that political Zionism has achieved its primary goal of establishing a Jewish state.[5]  Ahad Ha’am sought to establish not only “a state of the Jews,” which he saw as Herzl’s goal, but a “Jewish state” animated by Jewish spiritual and moral values.[6] 

 

For Ahad Ha’am, Jewish national aspirations can only be realized “while maintaining respect for the feelings and rights of the region’s Arabs.”[7]  Jews, cautioned Ahad Ha’am, “should not forget that for the Arabs too, Palestine was a national home.”[8]  Indeed, in a famous essay titled “Truth from the Land of Israel,” written from Jerusalem in 1891, “he was the first Zionist…to raise the question of the Arabs” of Palestine.[9]  He made the “call for a decent treatment of Palestine’s Arabs” essential not only to the resurrection of Zion and the Zionist enterprise, but to the future of Judaism itself, which was to become “the civic religion of a future Israel.”[10]  Ahad Ha’am stresses that following the universal principle of love and respect for the other does not commit the Jew to self-abnegation—or what might be called today, self-hatred or self-denial.  On the contrary, because it commands the Jew to love himself, and to love others no less, it obligates him to fulfill his individual and national identity to the fullest extent that is consistent with the demands of justice.  The same idea is expressed in Rabbi Hillel’s maxim, from Pirke Avot, “If I am not for myself, what am I for; but if I am only for myself, what am I?”[11]  Ahad Ha'am also maintained that the most fundamental principle of Jewish ethics—"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18)—does not teach us to love our neighbor more than ourselves, but as much:  "The true meaning of the verse is: 'Self-love must not be allowed to incline the scale on the side of your own advantage; love your neighbor as yourself, and then justice will necessarily decide, and you will do nothing to your neighbor that you would consider a wrong if it were done to yourself'… Judaism cannot accept the altruistic principle; it cannot put 'other' in the centre of the circle, because that place belongs to justice, which knows no distinction between 'self' and 'other.'"[12]  Some critics allege that the Love Thy Neighbor Principle in the Torah strictly refers only to one's own countrymen, so that a Jew’s neighbors in a Jewish state would be his fellow Jews.  The text itself  gives  the  lie to this  thesis,  a  scant fifteen  verses later: (Lev. 9: 30 - 34): “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.  The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

 

It was Ahad Ha’am who spoke of the relationship between Jewish nationalism and Jewish ethics, both of which comprise our Zionism, in an essay called “The Character of Judaism”:

 

The Jewish law of justice is not confined within the narrow sphere of individual relations.  In its Jewish sense the precept ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ can be carried out by a whole nation in its dealings with other nations.  For this precept does not oblige a nation to sacrifice its life or its position for the benefit of other nations.  It is, on the contrary, the duty of every nation, as of every individual human being, to live and to develop to the utmost limit of its powers; but at the same time it must recognize the right of other nations to fulfill the like duty without let or hindrance.  Patriotism—that is, national egoism—must not induce it to disregard justice, and to seek self-fulfillment through the destruction of other nations.[13]

 

There are different forms of Zionism.  One form stresses Jewish national self-aggrandizement at the expense of the Jewish commitment to equality, justice and liberal values.  The other Zionism balances our duties to our selves and our own nation with our universal commitments, in the belief that one can love and give preference in special ways to one’s own people while also promoting equality, justice and respect for all, Jew and non-Jew alike, in Israel.  One such preference is Israel’s Jewish public culture, expressing the historical memory and national identity of its Jewish majority; another is the Law of Return which allows any Jew the right to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen.  Our pursuit of peace and justice arises not only from our embrace of Biblically-inspired moral imperatives, but from our own self-interest as a Jewish nation and people:  our well-being and security requires that we strive to live with our Arab neighbors in peace and justice, helping Israel and our fellow Jews there to work towards just and peaceful relations with them. 

 

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