New Publication Examines Post Zionism: The Challenge To Israel

American Jewish Committee
Wednesday, 28 May 1997

"Radical post-Zionists go beyond criticism of the Zionist establishment and the policies of the State of Israel to question the Jewish right to national expression through a sovereign state. [They] exploit the dilemma Israel faces in reconciling Jewish nationalism with the values of liberalism and democracy…[They] reject a continued connection to the Jewish people of the Diaspora. They prefer improving relations with Israeli Arabs with whom they share a territory…[They] insist that Israelis must choose between a state reflecting liberal, democratic, and universalist values, on the one hand, and a state reflecting Jewish particularist values - defined as undemocratic - on the other."

This according to Rochelle Furstenberg, a prolific author, journalist and noted authority on Israeli culture, in a new publication just released. The 30-page booklet, entitled "Post Zionism: The Challenge To Israel," is the fifth in a series of papers published jointly by the Argov Center for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People, Bar-Ilan University and the American Jewish Committee's Institute on American Jewish - Israeli Relations (IAJIR).

In their foreword to the publication, Dr. Steven Bayme, AJC's Director of IAJIR, and Dr. Charles Liebman, Director of the Argov Center, note while certain aspects of post-Zionism are welcome -- such as challenging the myths of Israeli history and the educational value of some historical symbols -- carried to extremes post-Zionism "may be as threatening to Israel's future as the competing ideologies of radical nationalism and extremist Orthodoxy. Radical post-Zionism feeds the propaganda of Israel's enemies, who claim that the Jewish state was born in sin….Perhaps the most dangerous implication of post-Zionism is its denial of Jewish peoplehood."

In the booklet, Ms. Furstenberg offers various interrelated definitions of post-Zionism and looks at its main conclusions, primary proponents, its impact on the cultural and political life of Israelis and its implications for the future.

In its least controversial sense, she states, post-Zionism describes the current period in Israel's history. A second meaning assumes the security and prosperity of Israel and so the intensity of national purpose, self-sacrifice, and subordination of the individual to the collectivity are no longer necessary. Another expression of post-Zionism seeks to make the society more democratic.

But no matter how you define it, Ms. Furstenberg asserts that "Zionist commitment and fervor are in decline. The most recent expression of the trend is the growing number of Israeli youngsters who avoid enlisting in combat units, and the many adult Israelis anxious to avoid reserve duty."

The "new historians" espousing the post-Zionist philosophies have reevaluated the most significant events in Jewish and Israeli history including the Holocaust and Israel's War of Independence.

In looking at Israeli - Arab relations, these new historians seek to correct what they conceive as "the mistaken impression that Israeli behavior toward the Arabs has always been just and moral. That is, they want to undermine Jewish dominance in Israel, reinstate the culture of the Arabs that was replaced by Jewish culture, and de-Judaize and de-Zionize Israel, making it a country of all its citizens rather than a Jewish state."

Such post-Zionist assumptions are finding credibility and are slowly seeping into Israeli consciousness because they are espoused by an intellectual elite in academia, the arts and the media. For nearly a decade now, Israel has witnessed an abundance of books, journals, essays, lectures, and symposia devoted to post-Zionist sociology. One of the reasons for this emergence, Ms. Furstenberg states, is that over the past ten years "many Israelis came to feel increasingly uneasy, if not guilty, about the plight of the Palestinians," exacerbated during the occupation of the territories and coming to a head during the intifada.

In addition, she notes that while "the basic motivation for the establishment of Zionism was the physical and cultural preservation of Jewry, a new Israeli self-definition disconnects Israelis from the Jewish people and the Jewish heritage.

"While the Zionist pioneers rebelled against the traditional lifestyle of their parents, regarding religious life as an expression of the Diaspora, they remained grounded in the Jewish heritage, especially the Bible. But in the same way that many descendants of the Jewish immigrants to the United States lost their Jewish culture, Israelis have become increasingly ignorant of theirs, and without a common heritage, the sense of peoplehood dissipates.

"There has also been considerable alienation from Diaspora Jewry….there is less common ground and a sense of common destiny. Among the post-Zionists the sense of alienation from Diaspora Jews is reinforced by their assertion of 'Israeliness' over 'Jewishness.' If Jewishness becomes increasingly irrelevant, there seem little to stop the Israeli from feeling that the Jewish state should be superseded by a 'state of all its citizens.'"

In conclusion, Ms. Furstenberg writes: "In today's radical post-Zionism we find vestiges of Jewish self-hatred, the internalization of Gentile anti-Semitism, Marxism, which taught that the nation would fade away to be replaced by the brotherhood of man, and liberalism, which places the individual above the group. Israelis are particularly sensitive to the tension between universalism and particularism because of their country's Arab population.

"That is why the challenges raised by post-Zionism can only be addressed once there is some modus vivendi with the Arab world. As the Palestinians work out their own self-definition, Israelis will overcome their sense of guilt….Israel, then, will be freed to reassert its connection to its past and to its fellow Jews in the Diaspora."

In their foreword, Drs. Bayme and Liebman caution that 'one should not overestimate the current influence of post-Zionism. Most Israelis continue to identify with the collective Jewish historical enterprise, and support the preservation of a special status for Jewish tradition in the Jewish state. We worry, nevertheless, that the prestige of the post-Zionist intellectuals and their access to influential media may win greater acceptance for their views. This fear is heightened by the growth of relativism, the increasing political incorrectness of nationalism, and the invasion of western materialism in Israel, which together threaten to create an atmosphere of indifference toward Jewishness that can only feed into the more extreme elements of post-Zionism."

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org