Post-Zionism and
Democracy
Raya Epstein
Post-Zionism as Ideology and Reality
Post-Zionism is not just an
ideology that seeks to replace the preceding, prevalent ideology, or a new
theory that analyzes previous theories that it regards as myths. It is not
just a new view that aspires to represent more humane, moral, and democratic
values than Zionism, which it sees as reactionary, anti-democratic, and
immoral. Post-Zionism is also the reality in which the State of Israel
functions and in which its citizens live and face the threat of being murdered
by Arab-Palestinian terrorists. This terrible fact is closely and directly
related to the emergence of the post-Zionist reality.
The assertion that post-Zionism
is a reality, and not just a point of view or a particular ideology, in no way
contradicts the fact that it is also a point of view and an ideology. It is
only important to note that the post-Zionist ideology and views seek to
replace Zionism. Clearly, Israeli Jewry confronts a deep ideological struggle
that has, and will have, palpable effects on its social and political life.
From the democratic standpoint,
the debate is entirely legitimate. The problem, however, is that the defense
of post-Zionism usually involves denying the democratic legitimacy of Zionism.
The devotees of post-Zionism do this by attempting to identify their own view
with the essence of democracy, while often presenting Zionists as
anti-democratic and even as fascist nationalists.
The New Democracy as Post-Zionism and
Post-Judaism
The following passage by Eliezer Schweid (1996)
addresses the point made here:
In the wake of the Six Day War, a trend arose in Israeli society
of the return to Jewish roots, and its varied manifestations lasted longer than
the manifestations of nationalist enthusiasm that were awakened during the
war... However, a counterprocess also began that intensified in the 1980s and
finally succeeded in overcoming the yearning for Jewish roots: the
polarization of the conflicts surrounding religious Zionism and “religious
coercion”, and the polarization of the debate surrounding the “Greater Land of
Israel” led to granting liberal democracy and its scale of values the status
of a comprehensive worldview that forms the personal identity and way of life
of those on the secular Left. This was an alternative response that fights
against the religious Jewish identity on the one hand and the national Jewish
identity on the other.
Schweid characterizes the change in terms of
the fact that previously
Israel was a national democratic state that was designed
according to the European national model. The Left has now posited an
alternative definition of democracy in the spirit of American liberalism:
civil rather than national democracy, with religion consistently separated
from the state (Schweid, 1996).
We wish to add, however, that
the change effected by post-Zionism is more profound than the replacement of
one model of liberal democracy with another. In the United States, the
Democratic party does not play the role of representing the unquestionable
ideology of the state, as a one and only truth that requires the existing
political parties to act according to it. It is inconceivable that in America
one party calling itself “Democratic” that defines its ideology as liberal,
would try to impose its views on the Republicans, and, even if the latter won
the elections, would actually force them to act and run the country according
to the Democrats’ ideology, and abandon the positions that brought them to
power. No political party in the United States would dare arrogate to itself a
monopoly on democracy and propagate the notion that the other party or parties
should bow to its imperatives or else be denounced as a danger to American
democracy. If it would do so, its own democratic legitimacy would immediately
be denied.
Israel’s Left has done exactly
that. It has done so not only regarding the Likud and the religious parties,
but indeed regarding Israel’s Jewish character and its Zionism: “Liberal
democracy has now been presented not only as a structure and normative basis
of the nation’s government, but as a comprehensive worldview and way of life”
(Schweid, 1966). The Left has not settled for liberal democracy
as merely “a worldview that forms its personal identity and way of life”. Not
for that unavailing purpose did it devise its ingenious method aimed at
permanently neutralizing the hated national side of the Israeli political map,
the old Zionism, and the new spirit of Judaism that arose in the wake of the
Six Day War. The transformation that it effected did not merely replace the
patriotic and collectivist Israeli values with neo-liberal, individualist
principles, but rather with the demand that its principles and values alone –
whatever their conceptual content1 – be
presented as the embodiment of democracy and that “the religious and national
values be subordinated to them”.(1) (Schweid, 1996). In other words, “the aim
is that democracy (as the Left, and only it, interprets it) should dictate the
public socio-cultural way of life in the state of Israel... Thus emerged
radical secular post-Zionism that is a manifestation of the essence of
post-Judaism. On that basis appeared the new version of the Israeli
identity: not a national realization of the Jewish identity but rather its
comprehensive replacement” (Schweid, 1996).
In other words, after the Six
Day War, the Israeli Left did not replace one model of liberal democracy with a
model of its own. It replaced liberal democracy, whatever its shortcomings,
with a ideological democracy that can be defined as an “ideocracy”, or as
totalitarian democracy. Talmon (1952) saw the basis of this trend “in the
assumption that there exists a one and only truth in politics”. Ironically,
this truth was formulated according to a liberal conception. The one and only
truth of totalitarian democracy that took control in Israel following the Six
Day War is a complete antithesis of religious Judaism, of nonreligious Jewish
identity, of liberal democracy, and of Zionism.
Totalitarian Democracy
The last devotees of socialist
Zionism who try to defend themselves against the post-Zionist attack by
accusing post-Zionists of replacing “the old, patriotic and collectivist
Israeli values with neoliberal, individualist values”, fall into the trap that
was prepared for them in advance. They confirm (without being conscious of it)
the post-Zionist claim about the existence of totalitarian characteristics in
the old Zionism and give retroactive legitimization to those characteristics
without discerning those very characteristics in post-Zionism. Hence they are
unable to reconcile Zionism with anti-totalitarian principles. They try to
return Israel to a socialist-collectivist Zionist path that no longer exists,
rather than striving to develop a renewed, revised concept of Zionism based on
the conservative Anglo-Saxon model of liberalism, instead of the French model
with its pronounced totalitarian tendencies (Hayek, 1944; Talmon, 1952). The
classical liberal model and Judaism are not contradictory. On the contrary, to
a large extent classical liberalism has its roots in the Jewish biblical
foundation of Protestant Christianity. Socialist Zionism, however, just like
its post-Zionist enemy, is anchored in the totalitarian French model, which is
hostile to Judaism.
There are ideologies that exist
alongside the given reality, reconcile themselves with the existing order, aim
only at improving and amending it and not at destroying it completely. The
followers of these ideologies favor developmental-reformist activity that does
not shatter the spontaneity of ordinary life. They are not in a hurry, and
have the tolerance and patience to wait until their corrective activity bears
fruit. That may not happen in their lifetimes, but rather in future
generations.
There are, however, other
ideologies and views whose authors and implementers are not satisfied with
amending the existing order gradually. They are fueled by a messianic energy
that has enormous religious power, even if their ideas and beliefs are
completely secular. The followers of these secular religions are not at peace
with the given reality (Mannheim, 1936) which they perceive as totally
evil. They do not see any possibility of amending it via gradual-evolutionary
change. They are not reformists but, rather, revolutionaries. These utopians
want a “brave new world” here and now, and they aim at utterly destroying the
“old world”.
This utopianism was not born in
Russia at the time of the 1917 revolution, nor did it disappear with the rise
of postmodernism that sees itself as the incarnation of democracy that has
finally defeated its rivals and foes. In a seemingly paradoxical manner, it is
precisely those ideologies that regard themselves as mostly democratic that will
likely be the ones to destroy the implementation of democracy in the real
world. This phenomenon is already familiar from the days of Jean Jacques
Rousseau (2) (Avineri, 1992) and has appeared in our time as well.
Yaacov Talmon (1952) referred
to this phenomenon as totalitarian democracy. He also called it by a number of
other names that constitute the basic tenets of his theory, such as: political
messianism, secular religion, totalitarianism of the Left, and of course,
utopia. This trend in its modern form first emerged in the French
Enlightenment movement of the 18th century, in the course of that
movement’s bold, uncompromising, and militant struggle against the Christian
Church and against any religion whatsoever. Its followers championed values
that were emphatically liberal-humanist, while in actuality they justified the
imposition of ideas and political tyranny as a necessary and inevitable means
to achieve their lofty objectives. The first attempt to implement utopian
liberalism in this form was made in the Jacobin republic of Robespierre.(3)
After this mode of thought underwent certain changes, though not major ones,
in the doctrine of Karl Marx and in the Russian version of Marxism, the
totalitarian communist regime made its attempt at implementation, which lasted
more than 70 years.
Regarding the phenomenon of
totalitarian democracy, it is highly significant that the communist regime
collapsed not primarily because of economic or political circumstances but
rather because of a gradual process of the demythologization of Soviet
society, namely the disintegration of the public’s blind faith in the utopia
on which the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union based itself. There still
are some who believe that this inhuman regime was a product of the specific
circumstances of Russia alone. Peter Berger wrote with some sarcasm yet in
full seriousness, that Western intellectuals will stop being deeply impressed
by the socialist myth only when Western societies are taken over by socialist
regimes (Berger, 1977). He was referring to the enormous influence of leftist
ideas over the West throughout the modern era. In the 1970s and 1980s it
seemed as if this influence had finally waned, and the victory of conservative
liberalism would never again be questioned. It soon became clear that this was
an illusion, and that Western societies are indeed being conquered if not by
socialist regimes then by a uniform regime based on renewed leftist tenets
that constitute a transformation of the old socialist myth. As always, within
the trend of totalitarian democracy the renewal, however apparently dramatic,
is expressed in ideas only, while the totalitarian pattern of thought, which
the ideas that replace each other sometimes display, remains stable and
unchanging.
After World War II, a rich and
varied critical literature was written in an attempt at theoretically
addressing the phenomenon of totalitarianism and finding a way to prevent its
realization in the future. Most thinkers deal with the totalitarianism of the
Right, while relatively few focused on the totalitarianism of the Left. One
reason for the lack of interest in the ideas underlying that kind of
totalitarianism is that the inquiries are conducted by Western intellectuals
who are susceptible to the influence of those very ideas, as we know not only
from Berger’s insights. Another, no less important reason for that lack of
interest lies in the magical, enchanting name that refers to and conceals the
most dangerous phenomenon of leftist totalitarianism, the name “democracy”.
Two Errors of Yaacov Talmon
Totalitarian democracy, as
Talmon showed, emerged from the French Enlightenment movement of the 18th
century, and has continued to exist in its different incarnations throughout
the modern era. It manifested itself not only in the visions or abstract
theories of Western intellectuals but also in murderous regimes, such as the
Jacobin democracy and the former Soviet communist state. However, Talmon erred
in his optimistic conclusion that political messianism, a later incarnation of
the trend in question, “ceased to be a danger after it failed to become a sort
of world church whose followers, in various countries, would be inspired to
form a revolutionary army that takes orders from a supreme war headquarters”.
He erred both in regard to the general intellectual aspect of the issue and in
regard to its specific Israeli aspect.
The World Church of Totalitarian Democracy Has
Not Died
On the international level,
Talmon’s conclusion may seem to be justified, but only if it is applied to the
internationalist orientations of Marxist ideology and the far-reaching
programs of the former communist bloc, which is precisely what he originally
intended. His error stems from his paradoxical failure to take into account
what his own theory asserts about the nature of totalitarian democracy. Talmon
claimed and demonstrated that democracy of this kind is not characterized by
belief in a certain idea (for example, the communist idea). He maintained that
its uniqueness lies in the fact that it rests on one exclusive truth, in the
belief in a single pre-eminent idea, whether a communist, social-democratic, or
ostensibly liberal-capitalist idea. “Ostensibly” because true liberalism, as
he defines it, cannot at all be reconciled with belief in a sole, exclusive
idea even if it is the liberal idea itself. True liberals, as they define it,
cannot at all demand that the rest of society believe in what the liberals
believe. Anyone who mandates such a thing, and further claims that those who
do not heed his behest constitute a danger to democracy, in fact has a
pronounced totalitarian mindset, even if he regards himself (or is regarded by
those with a totalitarian mindset like his own) as an enlightened liberal.
Currently it is discernible
that the new secular world church is arising not in Russia and Eastern Europe
but, rather, in the West. Its followers in various countries are supposed to
toe the line that no longer issues from Moscow but rather from Paris,
Brussels, or Bonn. The obedient soldiers of its army do not take orders from a
war headquarters but, rather, from a peace headquarters. Talmon could not have
predicted that after the dissolution of the communist bloc, a new totalitarian
church would arise in enlightened Europe that, like the old one that expired,
would conceal its totalitarian nature under a guise of putative democracy. The
new church inherited from its predecessor the total identification with the
PLO murderers and adopted the same anti-Semitism behind the mask of anti-Israelism.
It is the very same anti-Semitism that was championed by the former communist
church.
The Roots of the New World Church
It is also worth noting that
even though this new world church began to form after the fall of the
communist regime, its earlier roots were in the “student rebellion” against
the existing social order that arose in Europe and America in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. This protest was led by movements called the New Left in
English-speaking countries, and referred to as “leftism” (Gauchism) or
“extreme leftism” (Extreme Gauche) on the Continent. These movements
espoused revolutionary-totalitarian ideologies (Trotskyism, Maoism,
neo-Marxism, anarchism, etc.), and they fulfill Talmon’s (1960) criteria of
“political messianism”. Members of these rebellions were self-declared
nonconformists who lived at the margins of society. Subsequently it emerged
that their influence on Western society was profound. Many of the former
leftist rebels eventually assumed key positions in the Western world in
commerce, academia, politics, the organizations of the United Nations, and so
forth. There is not enough space here to provide a detailed demonstration of
that claim. We will suffice by pointing to the blatant similarity between the
stances of the United Nations, which once served to extend the influence of
the world communist bloc, and the policy of the European Union. This unholy
resemblance is most clearly manifest in the common pro-Palestinian and
anti-Israeli stance, which is a clear-cut continuation of the anti-Israeli
policy of the former Soviet Union, even though initially the place of the
now-irrelevant communists was taken by Arab countries. Clearly, even if there
is an element of economic-pragmatic benefit in this stance (trade relations
with the Arab states, etc.), it plays only a relatively small role compared to
the political-ideological aspect. The goal of today’s utopians is the
establishment of a global society in which, similar to the “communist society”
that was the objective of Karl Marx’s messianic vision, all differences
between nations and national cultures are erased and what emerges instead is a
united, undivided humanity that enjoys social justice, social equality,
affluence, humaneness and morality.
Another parallel with Marxism
is the fact that the devotees of the EU and other internationalists regard the
wish to maintain national uniqueness as politically incorrect. That is not to
say there is no difference at all between the old model and the new one.
The countries of the former
Soviet Union, where Marxism was implemented and who have not yet developed the
elegant and efficient dissent-silencing system of political correctness
adopted various methods to achieve the same goals that were not as refined and
liberal as those of today’s enlightened Europe.
It is only natural that the
question of the Jews can be resolved as well in the context of the future
postmodern humanity, which is already being established more or less in the
same form as the old Marxist vision proposed, except that in the role of the
wandering Jew who cannot be entirely assimilated, there appears instead the
Jewish nation-state. One European Union leader commented about Israel that
“the world does not know whether to swallow it or vomit it.” Both literally
and metaphorically, Europe forged an alliance of blood with the Muslim world
that is fighting a war to the death against the State of Israel and the entire
Jewish people. From Europe’s perspective, the nation of Israel and the Jewish
People have no right to exist in the “brave new world” that it is building. It
is worth remembering that Karl Marx’s futuristic vision was exactly in this
spirit, though not regarding the Jewish state that did not yet exist, but
“only” regarding the Jews such as they were. The matter has not at all ceased
to be relevant.
The resemblance here, however,
is not only to the Marxist position. The common EU-UN stance of virulent
anti-Semitism toward the Jewish state, adds the new, brutal anti-Semitic
elements to the Marxist ideology and the attitude of the already-defunct
communist bloc, all of which brings it to the verge of resembling Nazi
anti-Semitism.
After the breakup of the
communist bloc and Western democracy’s great victory over it, why is Europe
reverting to the Marxist model in an altered form and succeeding to do what
the communists were unable to do? In my view the main reason, albeit not the
only one, is that after World War II the world conducted a process of de-Nazification,
and later even went so far as to identify nationalism with chauvinism, racism,
and Nazism. Any national, particularist matter, whatever its nature, became
entirely illegitimate. This attitude essentially accords with the communist
attitude and is considered to be very successful in coping with the
totalitarian-rightist danger and a way of preventing its realization in the
present and the future.
History, and especially in the
20th century, has clearly proven that the danger of totalitarianism
is not limited to the Right. The danger of leftist totalitarianism is no less
grave. It is only to be expected that both the European and Israeli Left,
which control public awareness, preferred to ignore the second kind entirely.
No “decommunization” was ever performed in any country. The universalism of
Marxist doctrine is abstract and devoid of all nationalism or particularism.
Not only did Marxism not lose any of its previous legitimacy but even became
the one and only, unquestioned ideology, the credo of the religion of
totalitarian democracy, in its renewed, though no less fundamentalist, form
that emerged in the current purportedly “post-ideological” era.
The European “leftist”
generation, formed in the turbulent rebellion of the 1960s, have outgrown and
replaced its Maoism or Trotskyism with views more fashionable and relevant
to the present, but it has not succeeded in changing its previous mode of
totalitarian thinking. It is not at all accidental, then, that the Gauchist
generation with its totalitarian thought patterns, could undermine the old
liberal democracies of the West and replace them with totalitarian democracy
under a renewed disguise. It is the same, familiar totalitarian democracy of
the past, with a change of outward form only. In all its various versions the
great and glorious utopia remains its essence. Along with the 18th
century Enlightenment in France, and with Marx and Marxists in the 19th
and 20th centuries, the leftist globalists of the early 21st
century aim at building a new world order, a “brave new world” that is to rise
on the ruins of the old world. The difference is that in today’s renewed
version, achieving the sacred goal and fulfilling this supreme idea requires
not just individual human victims, but entire nations as victims. The first
among them is the Jewish people.
The Local Church of Totalitarian Democracy:
Post-Zionism
Talmon also erred in regard to
the internal Israeli aspect of the problem by concluding that totalitarian
democracy had “ceased to be a danger”. His error on this level is less
surprising than his error on the external level, since in Israel the
self-declared liberals in the Western sense of liberalism often end up taking
part in entirely non-liberal processes, often unaware that they are doing so.
Talmon did not ignore the less
than democratic aspects of the Ben-Gurion socialist regime. It seems that he
applied his general conclusions about the necessary link between utopia and
totalitarianism to Zionism, which he viewed as a utopia. In this regard, one
can dispute or accept his claims, but the real problem lies elsewhere. In the
course of criticizing the totalitarian aspects of Ben-Gurion’s rule, Talmon
did not devote sufficient attention to the totalitarianism of Ben-Gurion’s
critics to his left. Although Talmon disparaged the Jewish nationalist
movements that were founded after the Six Day War as a manifestation of
totalitarian political messianism, he did not seem to see the pronounced
political messianism and utopian nature of the left-wing peace movement.
Indeed, Talmon himself was in the forefront of those seeking a utopian peace.
Moreover, there is a paradox in Talmon’s stance: He was a classical liberal,
intensely critical of the totalitarian Left. Yet, in the local Israeli
context, he was no less leftist than some of the most prominent totalitarian
leftists in the country. Talmon’s position on Israeli issues faithfully served
those opposed to the Land-of- Israel movement. Eventually, this opposition
emerged as the group that prepared the ground for post-Zionism and
post-Judaism (Schweid, 1996). On the one hand, this movement bore out Talmon’s
main insights about a necessary link between political messianism and
totalitarian democracy, between utopia and totalitarianism in practice,
between totalitarianism of the Left and Jews who repudiate their Jewishness.2
The movement bore out these insights when, thirteen years after Talmon’s
death, the secular messianic religion established the Oslo regime, a regime
whose terrible totalitarianism has not freed the Jews of Israel from its
utopia of blood to this very day.
Talmon did not live to see the
appalling Israeli proof of his conclusions. Would he have agreed with the
assertion that the world church of postmodern Europe, whose establishment he
could not have predicted, and the Oslo regime that embodies a post-Zionist
ideology to which he made a significant conceptual contribution, essentially
constitute the same totalitarian phenomenon? Would he have reached the
conclusion that an international totalitarian regime of the West has emerged
that cooperates with Arab-Muslim terrorism in its war against the Jewish
people? Would he have realized that the Oslo regime, whose essence is to
replace the Jewish identity of the citizens of Israel with a Western-abstract
identity, is an organic and central part of this totalitarian war against the
Jewish people? Would he have been prepared to apply his profound theory of
totalitarian democracy to our existential struggle against totalitarian
post-Zionism, which has become post-life, a justification for the murder of
the Jewish people?
Post-Zionism in the Modern and Postmodern
Contexts; The Jews and Democracy
The Universalist Utopia in the Modern and
Postmodern Eras
According to Talmon, the
totalitarianism of the Left as opposed to that of the Right, rests on the
belief in liberal values and principles of freedom, individualism,
rationalism, and universalism. Both his theoretical doctrine and concrete
historical reality show that the secular universalist utopia, which lies at
the basis of totalitarian democracy, has recurred throughout the entire modern
era. It began with the French Enlightenment of the 18th century,
and continued in the political-messianic movements of the 19th
century, in the Russian communist regime, and, today, in the vision of a new
world order that is taking shape in the postmodern era. To repeat: The element
common to all of them is the unrestrained, essentially messianic, yearning for
the unity of peoples, or even their utter erasure within the totality of
humanity. The individuals who constitute that totality, like the totality
itself, are nothing but an abstract idea of abstract people who are not
dependent on anything.
The issue of the Jews as a
particular people, by definition and by nature, is linked to the history of
the universalist utopia, both in the modern and postmodern eras, almost no
less tragically than it was linked to the history of the nationalist
mythology, which, at the end of the humanist, modern, enlightened, and
rational period, fostered a Holocaust. The true name of the story is venomous
and murderous anti-Semitism. What differentiates the postmodern era from the
modern one is that the current anti-Semitism wears the guise of anti-Zionism
and of the struggle against “the occupation”, together with the notion of
extending the boundaries of the “unity of peoples” in the universalist utopia.
There is, indeed, a bit of a problem here, namely, that it is hard to believe in
the possibility of unity when one component is the postmodern International
of Europe, and the other component is national-Islamism (Ye’or, 2002), clearly
the heir of German national-socialism. But when there is a common enemy, even
absolute opposites can unite. Needless to say this common enemy is the State
of Israel, and along with it, the Jewish people as a whole.
Auto-Anti-Semitism in the Modern and Postmodern
Eras
Within the State of Israel
itself, the forces of destruction linked to the universalist world utopia of
our times are very vigorously active. The ease with which they were able to
become part of the utopian anti-national trend without relinquishing the older
“modern” universalist utopia of the socialist ideology is itself evidence of
the common foundation of the two. They share a common nature in the fact that
the communist and socialist universalism of the modern era and the struggle
against Jewish nationality are but manifestations of a single universalist
utopia.
The universalist forces of
destruction in Israel are driven by a tremendous messianic energy that again
aims at building a “brave new world”. As in the old days of the
Marxists-communists, these circles believe without question in the sacred
principle of the utopian international religion. Their motto is, “We will
destroy the old world utterly” (i.e. the Zionist entity). Most significant of
all, Israeli post-Zionist ideology is a version of the universalist utopia of
the postmodern era which is virulently anti-Semitic (Sharan, 2001), similar to
the doctrine of the anti-Semitic Jew Karl Marx.
However, both then and now, it
is not a case of the “primitive” anti-Semitism of the masses who are fueled by
xenophobia, nor of the Nazi right-wing anti-Semitism that draws its dark power
from the appeal of ancient myths. Here we are speaking of an intellectual
anti-Semitism of the Left: The self-proclaimed progressive, enlightened, moral
and rational Left. In fact, the Left regards authentic Jews and Judaism as the
primitive and reactionary forces of darkness, who disrupt progress and form an
obstacle on the path to fulfilling the purpose of history. The inevitable
result of this messianic approach is the striving (conscious or unconscious)
to erase Judaism as a particular identity from the map of history. In other
words, the “brave new world” of the universalist utopia in its two versions is
a new world without the Jewish people.
Just as in the building of the
new Jew-free world by the Marxists, so also in the building of the new,
Jew-free world by the architects of the postmodern era, the participation of
the Judaism-hating Jews is essential. What makes the current situation
different is that this time the Jews have a nation-state of their own, in
which Jews who are devotees of the universalist utopia can finally fight
against Judaism and make their fine contribution to creating a Jew-free world
much more effectively than at any time in the past. Furthermore, the struggle
to eradicate Judaism is now waged under the guise of democracy. The Marxist,
postmodern and post-Zionist pseudo-liberal views on democracy lead back to
the totalitarian democracy of the French Enlightenment, in which anti-Semitism
formed an essential ingredient.
Anti-Semitism as a Benchmark of Affiliation with
Post-Zionism
In a seminal article, Aharonson
(1997) discussed the structural anti-Semitism of post-Zionism and the
worldview of the 18th-century French Enlightenment, as well as the
link between the two. During those days of the growth of the Oslo utopia, it
was not yet known that Israel would face an eruption of the anti-Semitism of
peace, the combination of Arab and Western anti-Semitism that hardly bothers
anymore to don its guise of anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism.
In one regard only should
Aharonson’s article be amended in light of recent events. It has emerged that
the real post-Zionists are not only those people who have written and
published books and articles that openly espouse this position. The al-Aqsa
intifada exposed an important benchmark to determine whether a given
individual is actually a post-Zionist. That benchmark is the overt or covert
justification of murderous anti-Semitism. That anti-Semitism is revealed in
the European-Muslim alliance that seeks to eliminate the Jewish character of
the State of Israel (Ye’or, 2002). Finally, it is manifest in the manipulative
use of the concept of “liberal democracy” in both the European and Israeli
contexts, when in fact it is the system of totalitarian democracy that is
being implemented to accomplish the goal of annihilating the State of Israel
and, thereby, the Jewish people as a whole.
Similarly, using the benchmark
of anti-Semitism that was revealed against the background of the Oslo war, one
may distinguish between real post-Zionists, i.e. auto-anti-Semites, and those
whose completely legitimate purpose was (and perhaps still is) the criticism
of Zionism, not the annihilation of the Jewish state. Indeed, one of the first
post-Zionists in history, Benny Morris, has done some stringent soul-searching
and “repented”; whereas political intellectuals who never vocally took
post-Zionist stances, and even proclaim at every opportunity that they are the
real Zionists, now reveal their actual post-Zionist views via covert and overt
cooperation with the anti-Semitic crusade being waged against the State of
Israel and the Jewish people in and outside Israel. As only one example of the
latter, one can cite the recent participation of some Jewish-Israeli
professors in the European initiative to exclude Israeli scientists from
research grants offered in Europe, from scientific conferences, and so forth.
The Common Denominator Between Socialist Zionism
and Post-Zionism
Auto-anti-Semitism is central
to the post-Zionist ideology. Aharonson (1996) sums up its basic premises and
conceptual definitions. “Post-Zionism means the negation of Jewish
nationality, the abrogation of its ties to the Land of Israel, or casting
grave doubt on their legitimacy...” Some of the post-Zionists are
characterized by the wish “to get rid of what is bad in Judaism, particularly
the notion of the election of the Jewish people (The concept of “The Chosen
People”). Some even “go further and envisage a society in which Jewish
nationality will disappear, since it stands no chance within the Arab spatial
domain.” Aharonson also notes that post-Zionist anti-Semitism has deep roots
in the history of Jewish society in the Land of Israel and in Europe: “To be
sure, all these assertions are not new, and were closely tied to Zionism
almost from its birth, and now have been adjusted to the current prevailing
language and conditions. Furthermore, it was a historical criticism of Judaism
itself, and hence was implanted and passed into Zionism...”
The question that remains is, to
what extent can the critics of post-Zionism among the old Zionist Left in
Israel allow themselves to be truly objective and immobilized, and to avoid
willfully or unconsciously ignoring the undeniable points of continuity
between the socialist-Zionist establishment that ruled Israel without
challenge up to the arrival of post-Zionism, and post-Zionism itself? That
kind of continuity indeed exists, and is linked to the universalist utopia
that was already discussed above. Socialist Zionism was based more on this
utopia than on the concept of Jewry’s election. It aimed more at making the
Jews a nation like all the others than at developing the particular Jewish
nationality grounded in authentic Judaism. It was concerned more with
satisfying the need to establish a country of refuge for the persecuted Jews
than with profoundly connecting the Jews who came here to the Land of Israel.
That is the real reason for the seemingly strange fact that the liberation of
the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and parts of the historical Land of Israel in the
Six Day War prompted the socialist Left immediately to adopt the goal of
“returning the territories” to the Arabs “for peace”. It is also the reason
for the seemingly no less strange fact that the liberation of the land
underwent an immediate verbal transformation, both by the ruling establishment
Left and the oppositional radical Left, into the unchallengeable, unofficial
term “occupation”. Although everything did not occur at once, the fact is that
today, during the cruel war that the “partners in the peace process” are
waging against us, we are still blaming ourselves (“One must not rule over
another people”, “Occupation corrupts”, and the like), and whoever questions
this self-blame and instead blames the enemy is almost certain to be perceived
as an extreme rightist, fascist, messianist, enemy of democracy, and enemy of
peace.
It was not the post-Zionists
but in fact the socialist Zionists who invented the mendacious “occupation”
code word, though by now it has penetrated so deeply into the collective
consciousness that apparently the general public, too, believes its
veracity. All the post-Zionists did was to logically and consistently extend
this notion, and proclaim that Zionism and the State of Israel as a whole are
“occupied territory”. It was not the post-Zionists, but in fact the Zionists
of the ruling establishment who provided our Arab and Western anti-Semitic
enemies with this pernicious weapon of defining the Jewish presence in the
Land of Israel as “occupation”. The post-Zionists, of course, have done well
in riding this Trojan horse toward achieving the essentially anti-Semitic goal
of negating the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
Transforming the Jews living in
Judea and Samaria into enemies of the people is also a totalitarian project
primarily of the Zionist Left, and only subsequently of the post-Zionist Left.
One can accept or criticize Gush Emunim and its ideology, but the Jewish
people’s links to the Land of Israel are not artificial ideological links.
They do not exist by virtue of the Yesha (Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) Council or
of any other official body for that matter. Rather, Jewry’s tie to the Land of
Israel consists of real historical links, both existential and spiritual. They
are non-instrumental links that touch the soul of every Jew no matter who he
is, via the historical memory of every one of us, and hence via the collective
soul and memory of the Jewish people.
An Alternative to Post-Zionism – Returning to
Ourselves
The key slogan in
demonstrations of the “peace coalition”, which has been the standard-bearer of
post-Zionism and post-Judaism during the Oslo War, is the passionate call to
“return to ourselves”. Even though, not only apparently but actually, there is
at present a divide between the Zionist Left that fights the enemies of Israel
and the radical Left that cooperates with them, this call expresses a profound
common denominator between the two. Hence it may well be that at some other
time, when the illusion of a utopian peace emerges once again, the differences
will vanish. Even today, the difference is not clear-cut, since neither group
wants to take part in the “war of occupation”, though one views the operations
called Defensive Shield or Determined Path in that light, whereas the other
sees them as a “war to defend our homes”.
Stock phrases such as “return
to ourselves”, “war of occupation”, “war for our homes”, “war for the
settlements”, and so on may seem to be casual slogans without value or
meaning. In fact, they are likely to serve as components of the Orwellian
language of the totalitarian utopia, which gives them an inverted meaning and
uses them as tools of a perniciously powerful mental coercion. First and
foremost, we must clarify to ourselves the positive or negative, tacit or
manifest meaning, of the post-Zionist position. Failing to do so, we will not
comprehend and confront the common denominator of the views expressed by
Leftist Zionists and by the post-Zionists. That confusion will prevent any
attempt to come to grips with the existential problems of Israel and of the
Jewish people as a whole.
Does “return to ourselves” mean
to return to the beautiful, small, liberal Israel announced from the stage by
the once-popular singer Yaffa Yarkoni that fits neatly with the stance of
Prof. Zeev Sternhell regarding the legitimacy of the armed struggle of the
Palestinians in the “territories”? (Sternhell’s view leads directly to the
conclusion that it is permissible for the Arab-Palestinian “freedom fighters”
to murder Jews, be they civilians or soldiers in the Israeli “occupation
army”.) This slogan will not help the Jewish people become more moral and
humane, perhaps even the opposite. Nor will a “return to ourselves” help us
live and survive. Moreover, the essential justice of the struggle for our
existence cannot be based on a “return to ourselves”, which means a return by
Zionism to a renewed Uganda Project, the settling of the Israelis, i.e., the
former Jews, in a self-administered prison in a gray expanse without name,
roots, history, or identity, in short, anywhere except in the Land of Israel!
If we do not know how to arrive
at this not-so-simple truth by ourselves, the enemies of Israel are there to
rise up against us and murder us. It is the mendacious blaming of “the
occupation”, a term that Israeli Jews invented and invigorated, that serves as
a justification and goad to the genocide of the Jewish people by the Arabs and
their political associates. They murder us not just as individuals, but as a
people. That murder is not physical only, but is moral, spiritual, and
existential as well. This lie of ours murders our soul. Yet, the murderers of
hundreds of Jews (at the beginning of January, 2003, the number stood at 694)
over the period of less than two years alone (2000-2002), not to speak of the
past few decades, are still regarded by many left-wing and right-wing
Zionists, and not only by post-Zionists, as our potential allies with whom we
must make peace.
The real meaning of “returning
to ourselves” cannot be flight from the Land of Israel, from our identity, from
Judaism. “Returning to ourselves” means returning to the land that is the
historical cradle of Jewish identity, including Joseph’s Tomb, Hebron,
Rachel’s Tomb, to our historical memory. It means returning from the Orwellian
utopia of the Zionism of universalist normalization, to Jewish Zionism that
strives for the national-cultural rejuvenation of the Jewish people.
An Alternative to Post-Zionism – Returning to
Ourselves: A Nonpractical View
To a large extent, universalist
anti-Semitism is rooted in the first universal religion that sought to replace
particularist Judaism, the religion of Christianity. Yet even the cruelest
Christians were no more anti-Semitic than secular anti-Semities of the
enlightened modern era and of the tolerant and pluralist postmodern era,
whether they are anti-Semites of the Right or the Left. On the other hand,
there were Christians who spoke and even acted against anti-Semitism with
courage and integrity that not many Jews could muster. One of them was Sergei
Bulgakov (1991), an influential Russian intellectual who emigrated from
Bolshevik Russia to France in 1923 and served for 20 years (until his death in
1944) as professor of theology and dean of the Russian Christian Pravolsby
Institute in Paris. This intellectual priest very sharply criticized the Jews
who participated in the Bolshevik Revolution. His explanation for their
utopian-messianic radicalism was that, having essentially religious souls,
they found in Marxism a quasi-religious substitute for their authentic
religion that they had abandoned and betrayed. He was regarded by many
assimilated Jews as one of the fathers of Russian intellectual anti-Semitism.
That is a gross misconception.
Bulgakov viewed the Jewish
people as a special people constituting a mainstay of general human history.
He devoted the last years of his life to analyzing the nature of German Nazism
which he called “ontological” and “metaphysical” anti-Semitism.
In his view, this manifestation of anti-Semitism differs in purpose from the
ordinary, routine kind. The anti-Semitism of the Germans, he maintained,
constituted the essence of Nazi racism. It displayed the Nazis’ envy of the
Jews as a special people, as the people chosen by God, as a particular people
with a world-universal mission. The Nazis, because of their envy of the chosen
Jewish people, built their concept of their alternative chosenness on a
materialist-pagan-racist basis. The notion of the German people as a people
chosen on a racial basis entails negating the existence of the Jewish people.
Bulgakov saw the Nazi rebellion
against the Jews as a total rebellion against the God who had chosen the
people Israel to be a special people to Him. Hence, he argued, dealing with
the problem of Nazi anti-Semitism was a struggle for Christendom no less than
it was a problem for Jewry. As a believing Christian, Bulgakov linked the
Jews’ mission and their future salvation with the coming of Jesus-the-Messiah
and not with redemption in the Jewish sense. Yet his Christian messianism was
less hostile toward Jews than the political messianism of the secular utopias
that emerged in the modern period, of which Marxism was only one.
Bulgakov’s perspectives on Nazi
anti-Semitism offer a means of understanding the Muslim-Arab anti-Semitism of
today, derived primarily from Muslim religious tradition and history, and
significantly influenced by Nazi anti-Semitism. That influence has been felt
through the years since the Nazi period up to, and including, the present day.3
The metaphysical, ontological, and existential envy of the Jewish sense of
their national election by God, as Sergei Bulgakov interpreted it in regard to
the Germans of his time, is no less relevant to the national-Islamism of our
time. It is evident in Islam’s claim of a historical right to the Holy Land
instead of the Jews, in the claim of a historical and religious right to
Jerusalem instead of the Jews, and in Islam’s claim of a religious right to
the Temple Mount instead of the Jews.
Arab anti-Semitism is evident
in the national and religious myths whose clear purpose is to totally
eradicate the Jewish presence from the Land of Israel and thereby to totally
eradicate the Jewish people from the world in general (Ye’or, 2002). To
achieve this goal, an artificial entity known as “the Palestinian people” is
being constructed here, in the Land of Israel. According to the Torah (The
Five Books of Moses), the Land of Israel was given to the people of Israel as
a people chosen by God. The Palestinian entity serves ascendant nationalistic
Islamism as a tool for replacing and annihilating the Jewish people.
At this juncture, we must
recall the important, perhaps even decisive role of the post-Zionist
intellectuals, the new historians and sociologists, in building myths on
behalf of an entity that constitutes a weapon aimed at destroying us by
rewriting Jewish history according to the needs of the new Palestinian
mythology (a rewriting of history that is called “shattering the myths of
Zionism and Judaism”). In the context of this appalling trend, envy and hatred
toward the Jews who remain faithful to the principle of Jewry’s election in
its highly moral rabbinic sense, appears to characterize not a few of the Jews
themselves (Aharonson, 1997). Nor is that phenomenon new in history. Although
almost one hundred years have passed since the days of the Bolshevik
Revolution, Bulgakov’s insights into the motives for the Jewish
revolutionaries’ destructive participation in Bolshevism can help to
understand this phenomenon as well. Bulgakov drew a quite dismaying parallel
between the “bestial racist chauvinism” of the Nazi anti-Semites and the
anti-religious savagery of the Jewish commissars in the Russian Revolution. He
attributed the latter to the fact that in the minds of the Jewish
revolutionary intellectuals, the faith of their forefathers had been expunged.4
under the influence of radical socialism and humanism.Yet because every Jewish
person has an essentially religious soul, Bulgakov claimed, even the savage
activity of the Jewish revolutionaries was a manifestation of their
religiosity. This was, however, a negative and perverse religiosity in regard
to the authentic Jewish religion, as reflected in the cruel war waged by these
people who were doing the opposite of what their religion wanted.
Bulgakov indeed speaks of the
terrible sin of the Jewish revolutionaries against the Russian people, a sin
common to both the Jewish and the Russian revolutionaries. It especially took
the form of deliberate and monstrous desecrations of sacred Jewish and
Christian buildings and artifacts, of systematic anti-religious hooliganism
driven by the goal of humiliating the believers and “occupying the temple in
place of God”, of anti-religious coercion that revealed “religious envy of an
intensity previously unknown in history”. However, the even more dreadful and
appalling sin, Bulgakov emphasizes, was the one the Jewish revolutionaries
committed against themselves as members of the Jewish people, “against holy
Israel, the people chosen by God”.
All this happened to the Jewish
people, in Bulgakov’s view, because “in the mystical depths of Israel there is
no room for religious apathy and spiritual emptiness, so that there is a
constant struggle over its soul.” Thus the inverted and terrible religiosity
that emerged in Russian Bolshevism does not express at all the true
spirituality of Israel. Rather, it is an abominable mask that covers its true,
holy face, a situation of terrible spiritual crisis in Israel, a “Jewish
pogrom” that Jewish commissars perpetrated mainly against their own people,
against the Jewish people as a special people. They dealt
a terrible blow...against Judaism, a blow without precedent in
history...a historical suicide of Judaism, except that it involved only that
part of the Jewish people that had betrayed its mission. But even in that part
the holy remnant is always preserved, the eternal-immortal, because of which
the entire Jewish people will be redeemed.
Of great interest is Bulgakov’s
direct treatment of Zionism that is surprisingly relevant to the concerns of
this article. Bulgakov wrote the following passage in his article “Zion” in
March 1915:
The possibility that the powerful nations of the world will
enable the Jews to establish a stable national center in Palestine and develop
a full national life in it [einen nationalen Kristallisationskern schaffen]
need not be perceived as a way of finding a solution to the “Jewish question”
in the internal affairs of the countries of Europe, since even Zionists
themselves do not believe they will succeed in attracting the large majority
of their people to Palestine... However, sooner or later, Jews will realize the
need to solve a much more important and essential problem than what is known
today as “the Jewish question” – namely, the problem of their spiritual
nature.
This problem cannot be solved without a national center, and
the sole sacred center of Jewry is Palestine, the land that was given to the
Jews by God. The existence of such a center will help the Jews do the required
soul-searching, overcome the tragic dualism, and win the spiritual struggle
that has always been waged in the soul of the Jewish people. Zionism’s
greatest difficulty at present is its inability to restore the ancestral faith
that is disappearing, so that it is forced to rely on the national-ethnic
principle alone. However, on such a principle no truly great nation can be
based, let alone the Jewish nation. Dostoevsky was indeed correct when he
wrote: “It is not possible even to imagine the Jews without God.”
Yet history has furnished this holy name – Zion. There are
signs that “the Jewish question” is again intensifying, that its tragic nature
in the Diaspora is again being felt with great force. And just at this moment
there shines a ray of light toward the future, a possibility emerges of a
completely different solution to this eternal question. I pray that this great
hope will not prove illusory!
As noted, when Bulgakov the
Christian writes about the redemption of the Jews, he does not mean redemption
in the Jewish religious sense. With due repect to his Christian faith, we
should not forget that Jewry has its own interpretation of our redemption in
Zion. Not Christian Zionism of spirituality without matter, nor the
materialist Zionism of normalization and flight from ourselves. Not
anti-Semitic post-Zionism that reverts to a war by Jews against their
Jewishness. Not totalitarian democracy that serves this despicable war and not
postmodern relativism that erases the distinctions between truth and
falsehood, between good and evil, between human and bestial, between darkness
and light. Only loyalty to the truth, to clear moral discernment, only
restoring to words their lost meaning, only lighting the candle that will
illuminate and expel the darkness. Only a return to ourselves, to Judaism, to
the Land of Israel, to true Zionism.
Bibliography
Aharonson, Shlomo (1997)
“Zionism and Post-Zionism: The Historical-Ideological Context”, in Y. Weiss
(Ed.) Between Vision and Revision, Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center,
pp. 291-309 (Hebrew).
Avineri, Shlomo (1992)
The Rule of the Masses, Tel-Aviv: Sifriat Poalim (Hebrew).
Berger, Peter (1977)
Facing up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics and Religion,
New York: Basic Books.
Bulgakov, Sergei (1991)
Christianity and the Jewish Question, Paris: YMGA Press (Russian).
Elbaum, Jason (1998) “The
Decline of Democracy in the Global Village”, Tchelet, 5, pp. 11-23
(Hebrew), English Edition: Elbaum, J. (1998), “Global Pillage”, Azure,
5, pp. 118-144.
Hayek, Fredrich A. (1944)
The Road to Serfdom, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kasher, Asa (1998) The
Democratic Imperative to Strive for Peaceful Settlements, Peace: Legal
Aspects, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University.
Mannheim, Karl (1936)
Ideology and Utopia, New York: Harcourt and Brace.
Orwell, George (1945)
Nineteen Eighty-Four, New York: Penguin Books.
Popper, Karl (1945) The
Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schweid, Eliezer (1996)
Zionism in a Post-Modernistic Era, Jerusalem: The World Zionist
Organization.
Sharan, Shlomo (2001)
“Zionism, the Post-Zionists and Myth: A Critique”, Sha’arei Tikvah: Ariel
Center for Policy Research, Policy Paper 134.
Talmon, Jacob (1974) In
the Age of Violence, Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, pp. 135-136 (Hebrew).
Talmon, Jacob (1960)
Political Messianism: The Romantic Stage, London: Secker and Warburg.
Talmon, Jacob (1980) The
Myths of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological
Polarization in the 20th Century, London: Secker and Warburg.
Talmon, Jacob (1952) The
Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books (1986 edition).
Talmon, Jacob (1957)
Utopianism and Politics, London: Conservative Political Centre.
Ye’or, Bat (2002)
Islam
and Dhimmitude, When Civilizations Clash, Teaneck, New Jersey: Farleigh
Dickinson University Press.
Endnotes
1 |
It has been suggested that a
democracy has the “Obligation of democracy…to strive for peace…” Kasher
(1998), p. 343. |
2 |
-
For
about two hundred years, this faith has seethed in the hearts of
millions...since the 18th century the world has been full of
prophets, philosophers, flag-bearers, cliques of fighters, members of
the underground, mass parties, that in one form or another anticipate
and prepare themselves for the same end, for a revolution in the world
order. In this camp, the Jews played a huge role, and in some ways and
certain situations – even a decisive one...[This faith] was a lifeline
for those of our people who had lost or severed the link to the ancient
and all-encompassing heritage of the people, and who did not succeed or
were not able to attach themselves to a different culture. There were no
revolutionary internationalists among the Gentiles like Karl Marx, Rosa
Luxembourg, Trotsky, Karl Radek, Zinoviev, and the Jewish prophets of
the New Left of our time. And one also should not overlook the fierce
passion to act, to influence, to demonstrate power, and also to rule,
which knowingly or unknowingly drove Jewish young people as such a wide,
enchanting field of activity opened before them... (Talmon, 1974. Tel
Aviv: Am Oved, pp. 135-136 [Hebrew]).
-
For
Rousseau, activity by a group that does not accord with the principles
of majority rule does not negate that rule but it is nevertheless
legitimate. Such a group claims that in a given situation, majority rule
is not capable of making rational decisions, and hence it appropriates
the majority’s right of decision. The said group should regard itself as
a tool for implementing the “real” desire of the people, assuming
responsibility for the perfection of virtues and the purity of morals of
the nation’s institutions. Of course, such a group actually negates
those virtues and empties the nation’s institutions of their functions.
This claim in the name of democracy ultimately destroys the democratic
framework and the practice of real political rule. The Jacobin democracy
of Robespierre must be understood against this background (Avineri,
1992).
-
The
premise of Jacobin tyranny and theories of totalitarian democracy is the
belief that the enlightened members of society possess absolute truth
and have the right to force the rest of the citizens to take one path
only dictated by that truth. “The question is not, therefore, what the
people desire but rather what is desirable for the people and who is
qualified to make that decision. It is clear that Rousseau and his
followers, and particularly Robespierre, saw that as opening the
possibility of dictatorship by the individual or individuals they
believed to represent moral perfection…and to embody what everyone would
aspire to if everyone would be wise.” (Avineri, 1992,
p. 124).
|
3 |
The
Hebrew-language journal Nativ has published many studies on this
subject. |
4 |
Ibid., p.
76. |