Think of the different kinds of
Zionism, or commitments to establish a national home for Jews in
Palestine. What Naftali Bennett,
the rising star in Israeli politics, represents is, in his words, "a
handover of the baton from security-based Zionism to Jewish-based
Zionism," and David Remnick, the writer who quotes him in the latest New Yorker (1-21-13), makes sure we know
what that Zionism is: an expansion into Palestinian territory justified by
Jewish Scripture. Bennett is the
latest and most threatening (or promising) in the line of spokesmen for the
settlers, the fundamentalists who establish enclaves in the West Bank (in Scripture,
Judea and Samaria) with a view to recovering all of it. Over the years, from Tzvi Yehuda Kook,
mentor of the first group to put "facts on the ground," to Moshe
Feiglin, leader of a presently significant Likud faction, the justification of
expansion is exactly Bennett's to Remnick: "The land is ours." Any less blunt answer would
misrepresent Scripture, where God gave the land, the Promised Land, to the
Jews.
The evidence Remnick cites, the
interviews he conducts, the history he reviews, all make it very hard to come
to any other conclusion than that this is where Israel as a state is
going. The religious academies set
up by one of Rabbi Kook's disciples for students who would soon enter the army
have been so successful that the Army's officer corps is now
"immensely" more religious than it was. Their higher birthrate continues to raise the proportion of
religious families in the population.
And, weighing most heavily on the future, many in the moderate middle
class seem to have joined the fundamentalists. "Much of Naftali Bennett's support seems to come from
mild-mannered suburbanites on both sides of the Green Line." No wonder that each day Bennett is
"climbing in the polls, skimming off votes from the Likud and
Netanyahu." No wonder Bennett
speaks so confidently of a handover
Security-based Zionists avoid
saying, "This land is ours."
They say, "This land is needed for our safety." They won over Americans like me (secular,
skeptical) very early, and my own history on their team — a track team, in
Bennett's metaphor — is possibly typical.
I picked up their baton right after World War II, as soon as the
Holocaust made clear to me that the Jews of Europe needed a place of their own
where they could be secure. My
grip on it improved when I read Theodor Herzl, who saw where European
anti-Semitism was heading and laid out the rationale for a new, safe Zion. (He was as secular as you could
get. According to his biographer,
he "dismissed all
religion.") The more Jews I
saw the firmer my grip got. In the
colleges I went to they led the way in skepticism about religion. About the kind of religion I was
used to, Midwestern evangelism, they were scathing.
All right, coach, I've got a
problem. And it's killing me. There are the Israelis, handing over
their baton to the fundamentalists.
What now, what, do I do with my baton? Hand it to our fundamentalists,
the evangelicals? (Accept red-state government, red-state foreign policy.)
Throw it down? Quit the team?
Neither of those alternatives is
acceptable to me, but what will keeping the baton (that is, continuing to
support Israel) mean? First it
will mean running with no ground under me. I could really dig my cleats in (urge my Congressman to vote
aid, back moves in the UN, speak well of Israel in forums) when the base was
land where Jews could be safe.
Change that base to land given them by God, a base that I, as an
academic, could never recognize, and I have no base at all. I'll be running on thin air.
Second, it will mean not knowing
who I am running for, something I used to know well. I was running for Jews. And I thought I knew what the words "Jewish" and
"Jew" meant, though I realize now that it was mainly personal
experience that provided that meaning.
By my ostensive definition Jews were skeptical thinkers like me, only,
most of the time, quicker and more thorough. They saw through Midwestern fundamentalism long before I did
and, I assumed, had penetrated Jewish fundamentalism well before that.
But those intellectual grounds for
a definition are too narrow. There
are gut feelings and (here I really have to get personal) mine got my notice
when I first stepped inside Israel.
It was in the customs and immigration building, after a stay among
Egyptians. After a few razzy words
with the last clerk I stepped out into the neat, green streets lined with
finished buildings and my internal voice just burst out: "These are my
people."
That, of course, is only an
occasion when such feelings get articulated. I'm sure that I had had them earlier many times — getting
back to my most congenial colleagues, hearing the kind of jokes my funniest
uncles told, discovering that my mother, though Scottish, was a thoroughly
Jewish mother. This may not have
established much, but it established at least one, though negative, thing: that
"a Jew" is not defined as
one who to whom God gave Judea and Samaria.
But that, apparently, is the way
it's going to be defined in Israel, with too many consequences for me to sort
out. I can, however, make a start
with a small one, a linguistic one.
The expression "Jewish lobby." Use it now and you will properly be rebuked by any number of
organizations (as Chuck Hagel, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense,
recently found out). You are
guilty of inaccuracy (there is no such thing) and prejudice (suggesting the
kind of conspiracy anti-Semites have suggested for years). It's an Israel lobby.
But with Bennett they're the same. If I say "Jewish lobby" after
"Jewish" has taken the victorious fundamentalist's meaning
("believer in the Scriptural gift") there's no way I can be
rebuked. There is a Jewish lobby. "Jewish" and
"Israeli" mean the same thing.
Labels: Chuck
Hagel, David
Remnick, Israeli
lobby, Israeli-American
relations, Jewish-based
Zionism, Naftali
Bennett
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