About The Magnes Zionist

Zionism — Jewish nationalism — was a noble cause until the Political Zionists, in great haste, and with the best of intentions, founded a state in 1948 that was neither substantively Jewish nor democratic. The declaration of the state provided the casus belli  between the Arab countries and the Jews, but the war between the Jews and Palestinians was inevitable, given the statist nationalism of both peoples. Within a few years of victory, the nascent state proceeded to wipe Arab Palestine off the map.

1. Israel is not democratic in any serious sense of the term because it is the only putative liberal democracy that distinguishes nationality from citizenship. You can be a citizen of Israel for generations and yet not be a part of the nation it represents. This is the small crack in the windshield of Israeli democracy that has caused more of it to shatter over time. I simply don’t see how any American who believes in democracy can accept Israel as essentially democratic. Even Latvia is better in this regard.

2. Israel is not Jewish in any serious sense of the term because the three forms of Judaism that have developed there — secular Judaism, haredi Judaism, and religious zionism — are either devoid of Jewish content (secular Judaism), bigoted parochial, and isolationist (haredi Judaism), racist and ultranationist (religious zionism), or a combination of the above.

Of course, I am painting in broad strokes. Some of my family and best friends belong to one of these groups. And there are good aspects of all these ideologies. But on the whole, they have failed.

Political Zionism brought us the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land by the young Israeli government, when it prevented the return of the refugees to their homes, and destroyed around five hundred Arab villlages. In effect, the Political Zionists declared war against the Arab inhabitants of Palestine when they declared their intention of founding a Jewish state, and when they worked to make it a reality.

Some will call this another Israel-bashing blog. But the truth is that I am Israeli. and I love the state of Israel. I love its people and its culture. I want Israel to be Jewish and democratic. That is why I am bothered that it is neither. For it to be democratic the nation it represents has to be constituted by its citizens, and only its citizens. For it to be Jewish, it needs to preserve and foster its foundational cultures, both of its majorities and its minorities. 

And finally, it has a historic responsibility to help the Palestinian people create a homeland of their own in Palestine with the same strength and security as Israel.  “Neither to rule over, nor to be ruled over, ” to use the slogan of the Zionists. Ending the Occupation is the necessary first step, but to avoid neocolonialism and one-way dependency, Israel must go further. In fact, Israel’s responsibility will end only when the Palestinians feel as safe in their own state, and as secure in their own pursuit of happiness, as Israelis do in their own.  Federationalism, binationalism, or whatever — there must be parity between the peoples.

It is time to set aside the political Zionist, Ben Gurion, and return to the cultural Zionist, and proponent of binationalism and federationism, Judah Magnes. Not that Magnes wasn’t a creature of his age — at the same time that he was negotiating with the Palestinian Arabs he called them “half-savage” — but at least he realized that the founding of a Jewish state in the way it was founded would be a terrible injustice and would involve the loss of life of tens of thousands of people.

Jerry Haber