T. Belman. Not all nationalisms are alike. Nationalism can be a good and productive thing (Israel) as opposed to an evil and destructive thing (Nazism)
“I trust particularistic Zionism more than universalistic do-goodism to bring good into our still tribal, familial, preferential-love based world.”
Many liberal American Jews feel caught in a contradiction. They love the American phenomenon of civic nationalism, inviting everyone from everywhere to join the great American adventure. This E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one – ideal unites this nation of immigrants, all cherishing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of race, color, or religious creed. By contrast, they associate ethnic nationalism with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and blood feuds in Ireland. How then can these cosmopolitan Jews love Israel, which they consider a self-imposed Jewish ghetto, provincial not pluralistic, exclusive not expansive, intolerant not tolerant, offering further proof that intense, identity-based nationalism yields violence?
First, a consistency check. Why is Israel’s ethnic nationalism problematic but Palestinian nationalism – which is equally ethnic – is sacred? Canada and the US are exceptional. Most Islamic countries are heavily ethnic and frequently religion- based theocracies. Most European countries are particularistic too, with crosses on many flags and the ethno-religious glues to particularist nationalism you see at shrines like the Tower of London. Now, American campus speech-fascists are labeling the phrase “melting pot” hostile to African-Americans, Hispanics and others.
Nevertheless, Jewish nationalism, meaning Zionism, is politically incorrect.
The Zionist response goes beyond the “look at what the other guy does” defense.
While cherishing the openness of civic nationalism as implemented in North America’s Promised Lands, we also can champion the rootedness of ethnic nationalism thriving in the original Promised Land, the land, now state, of Israel.
In his charming, cascading, compelling “philosophical rampage,” John Lennon and the Jews, Ze’ev Maghen endorses “the kind of love that means the most to me … preferential, distinguishing love.” When you woo your spouse, you don’t say “I love you as much as I love everyone else.” Love only really works when it is special, focused, preferential, among people and peoples.
“The world,” he writes, “should optimally resemble a tapestry of distinctive families, or groups, or people, or nations.” Because, he insists, “to love all people equally is really advocating the removal of all love worthy of the name…. No one gets turned on by universal love.”
Being honest, Maghen admits that what he finds most special about the Jews is that he belongs. He doesn’t consider Jews better or Judaism better. He just likes his community. Asked “why the Jews,” he replies, “I don’t know – it’s emotional not rational. I am smitten.” Again constructively blurring family and community, he says: “You are my family and you mean everything to me.”
Maghen and other Zionists also recognize the benefits of this particular form of ethnic particularism. Rejecting “Imagine,” John Lennon’s song evoking modern America’s great delusion, that you can live without heaven or countries or religion, Maghen says being Jewish “cures” the resulting “affliction” of “living for today” and just for yourself.
A more grounded, practical, yet equally compelling writer, Seth Siegel, demonstrates the tremendous power – and universal good – resulting not just from particularistic love but from ethnic nationalism, specifically Jewish nationalism.
Siegel’s delightful, informative new book Let there be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World, traces Israel’s transformation from a water-have-not to a water-have nation, now helping more than 100 countries cope with water shortages.
Clearly, the story involves science, technology and business acumen, as Israelis apply the smarts lionized by Dan Senor and Saul Singer in their blockbuster, Start- Up Nation, to conserving water and finding new water sources. But Siegel, Senor and Singer understand that this concerns a particular culture, a particular nationalism.
Israel’s “water-conscious culture” isn’t just about the arid Israeli desert, it’s about the rich Jewish culture Zionists inherited, which for thousands of years developed a “reverence for water,” rain, dew. From the Hebrew Bible mentioning water 600 times to the Zionist folk songs and dances seeking water, water, everywhere, “this concern became ingrained and part of the Jewish communal world view.”
Zionists also conserved water as a national imperative. Siegel resurrects perhaps Israel’s greatest unsung hero, Simcha Blass. In 1939, trying to refute the British White Paper saying the Palestine could never support millions of Jewish settlers, Blass sketched a “fantasy water plan” that became “the nation’s water plan” – to this day. Once retired, Blass also helped develop the miraculous Netafim drip-irrigation system now conserving water worldwide.
Israel’s technology wasn’t unique; the “extent to which” Israel adopted these techniques and this mindset was. Building a National Water carrier, developing a culture of conservation and cooperating to solve the national water shortage inspired the young nation. Siegel writes: “Whether landing a man on the moon or rebuilding after a terrible hurricane, large infrastructure projects that are completed on time and on budget give the larger public a feeling of civic pride and enhance national identity. They also provide a widespread sense that other communal challenges can be overcome, and can unify a country.”
This intense expression of Zionism offers a textbook case of particularistic nationalism also redeeming the world. With water shortages menacing developing nations in Africa and sophisticated US states like Texas and California, Israel is leading in improvising solutions and implementing them. Here, Siegel notes, the motivation has been and remains “mostly altruistic and an outgrowth of Israel’s Zionist philosophy.”
My mother insulated me against John Lennon’s “Imaginism,” by warning: if you’re too open-minded your brains fall out. Israel’s amazing experiment in altruistic liberal nationalism shows that, sometimes, by closing in, by building your own community, your own culture, your own particular pride, you can nurture the closeness humans crave while also tackling some of the great challenges that vex us in this world. Ultimately, then, I trust particularistic Zionism more than universalistic do-goodism to bring good into our still tribal, familial, preferential-love based world – and Israel proves that it works.
The writer is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, just published by Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin’s Press.
He is professor of history at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar this fall at the Brookings Institution. Follow him on Twitter @ GilTroy www.giltroy.com.
http://zeevjabotinsky.com/blog/quotes.html
CuriousAmerican Said:
According to Wikipedia, “An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.”
This fits Jews to a “T”. Jews consider themselves to be both a people and a religion. Are you suggesting that I should have referenced Jewish nationalism?
Germans thought themselves a race, the Aryan race. I have never heard of the Jewish race. Jews are a people even if they are descendant of converts. Anyone who is born of a Jewish mother or converts to Judaism, is part of the Jewish people. Obviously since we fully accept converts, we don’t consider ourselves a race.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Thanks for the heads up on the text editor.
TED, your new text editor is problematic. It seems to be foreign made, with foreign letters.
But it seems to allow coding. PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript.
Right now, it is not executing that code, but if someone knows how to set up the correct implementation tags, you will have a disaster.
You cannot allow those options without being hacked and becoming a center for hackers.
There is a simple one line WordPress PHP statement which will give someone access to your site to take it over.
Right now, PHP is not executing, but your text editor seems to indicate there is a way to do it. There may be a real problem with that editor. Get rid of it before your lose your site.
No one should even hint at allowing code on a text editor for the public.
In 2005, MySpace allowed simple HTML coding on its website. Samy Kankar created the biggest virus in history. The SAMY Virus with a few lines of code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_(computer_worm)
Get rid of that editor.
I know how to code, and that text editor is not safe, even if the present PHP, CSS, Javascrip, and HTML options are turned off. If you ever accidentally turn them on, Israpundit will become ground zero for every hacker on the planet to insert code and run off of your site.
What I see as the problem here is that the Israeli Jews are despaerate that this problem end.
The Jewish people is desperate to get on with the redemption, and repair the world (tikkum olam), but the local Arabs are preventing this.
1) Right now the adjacent Arab states refuse to assimilate the Palestinians.
2) The Palestinians west of the Jordan refuse to assimilate (except for some notable Christian ones – that should be a clue)
3) Israel does not have the option of ethnically cleansing the Arabs from the land without become a pariah state.
4) To borrow a paraphrase from Rabbi Kahane, the world has set it up that the cancer cannot be excised – and this cancer, growing, will ultimately endanger the Zionist project.
May I suggest a casuistry in the Zionist logic. Maybe it is not for Jews to redeem the world, after all, to kadosh ha’aretz. This endeavor for a tikkum olam, by Jewish effort, is doomed to failure.
Maybe a redemption of sorts already occurred; and it is instead necessary for the Jewish people to admit it, in order to make the redemption take effect.
Hosea 5:15 I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their [error], and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.
You might respond, what has this got to do with Zionism, and the return of the Jewish people to the land.
The answer is: Everything.
Thought the goal be noble, if the method is improper, the project may be self-defeating.
Ethnic Nationalism?!
Are you sure you want to go down that route?!
We all know history’s chief exponent of ethnic nationalism. Blood and soil.
Wasn’t Germany all about ethnic nationalism?! Non-Germans, non-Aryans were second- and third-class citizens to ultimately be deported or ethnically cleansed or exterminated?!
The definition of ethnic nationalism being described in the article above is problematic.
Ethnic Nationalism – which you are advocating now for Israel – was abandoned in the West for a reason.
As for the Arabs, I despise Islam.
However, the Arabs do not advocated ethnic nationalism, but rather live by a tribal mentality. Like to admit it or not, they see the Jews as invaders. You and I may not see Jews as invaders; but they do.
Their opposition to Jews living among them goes back to recent history. They see a Jewish presence as a precursor to disposition. First it starts at 1% then 2% Jewish then 10% then 33% Jewish in the area (1947) then a Nakba.
I despise Islam, but if Israpundit is now to advocate an ethnic nationalism, it had better more tightly and narrowly define the terms.
Me?!
I do think there should be an ethnic root to any nation. This was the 19th century theory of the nation-state. However, that theory was taken to its logical conclusion by the Aryan theorists.
Obviously, Israel is NOT like the Nazis.
But ethnic nationalism has to be more tightly defined; or you will run into problems.
They can’t.
And they don’t.
It is therefore incumbent upon conservative Jews to love Israel more than liberal Jews hate Israel.
http://zeevjabotinsky.com/blog/quotes.html
That’s the great theme of the Hebrew Bible: G-d shows a special love for the Jewish people to the exclusion of all others. We know that kind of love ourselves with Him: the feeling we’re unique, we’re special, we are a gift to Him in a way others aren’t. And of course the love of a man and a woman and the love of a parent and child are a special love, too. We need to feel like we matter, that we’re not part of a madding crowd. Zionism fits in quite well with that viewpoint and Jews simply need to say a Jewish homeland makes Jews feel special in a world where they’re not considered special at all.