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June 9, 2006
Let us start with this official account of Zionism by Benyamin Neuberger.He states that:
Political Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, emerged in the 19th century within the context of the liberal nationalism then sweeping through Europe. Liberal nationalism usually aspired to two basic goals: liberation from foreign rule, (as in the case of Poland, Greece and Ireland) and national unity in countries which had been partitioned into many political entities (Italy and Germany). Its motto was "A state for every nation, and the entire nation in one state." Zionism synthesized the two goals, liberation and unity, by aiming to free the Jews from hostile and oppressive alien rule and to re-establish Jewish unity by gathering Jewish exiles from the four corners of the world to the Jewish homeland.
Neuberger usefully connects Zionism as a poiltical movement to a critique of the Enlightenment.
The rise of Zionism as a political movement was also a response to the failure of the Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment, to solve the "Jewish problem." According to Zionist doctrine, the reason for this failure was that personal emancipation and equality were impossible without national emancipation and equality, since national problems require national solutions. The Zionist national solution was the establishment of a Jewish national state with a Jewish majority in the historical homeland, thus realizing the Jewish people's right to self-determination. Zionism did not consider the "normalization" of the Jewish condition contrary to universal aims and values. It advocated the right of every people on earth to its own home, and argued that only a sovereign and autonomous people could become an equal member of the family of nations.
Talking in terms of 'Jewish unity through gathering Jewish exiles from the four corners of the world to the Jewish homeland' and 'a Jewish national state with a Jewish majority in the historical homeland, thus realizing the Jewish people's right to self-determination' does point to Israel as Jewish state, does it not? It does suggest that the nationalism underpinning Zionism is less a liberal nationalism and more an ethnocentric nationalism.
The establishment of a Jewish state implies a rejection of a binational state based on social and political parity of Jews and Arabs.
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"It does suggest that the nationalism underpinning Zionism is less a liberal nationalism and more an ethnocentric nationalism."
Sir,
When the French, the Irish, and the Italians established their respective States it was due to pure ethnic nationalism. This claptrap about "liberal nationalism" is for the naive or the stupid.
The establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 explicitly recognized two States - one Israeli and one Arab. No one, except devious Arabs or western fools, calls for a Binational State because the result of that is the destruction of the Jews through political means when the sword fails the Arabs.
Let Australia become a Binational State with Indonesia. Then you can make similar suggestions to other people.