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Viewpoint - October 28, 2010

Zionism: Two Deficits
by: M. Shahid Alam

The following is excerpted from Israeli Exceptionalism
(Palgrave, 2009), with permission from the author.

"We do not fit the general pattern of humanity..."
? David Ben-Gurion

"...only God could have created a people so special as
the Jewish people."
? Gideon Levy

The fecundity of the Zionist project in producing claims
of exceptionalism is not in doubt. Anyone who scans the
voluminous Zionist literature will be suitably impressed
by its repeated resort to claims of Jewish and Israeli
exceptionalism. There is scarcely any aspect of Israeli
or Jewish history that has not been embellished with some
claim to uniqueness.

Israeli exceptionalism has many uses. It defends, obscures,
explains away the 'abnormal' character of the Zionist
nationalist project. When the Irish sought national liber-
ation, their goal was straightforward. They wanted to
regain national control over their lives and their country
from a foreign power. No one had to convince the Irish
that they are descended from the gods; that they possessed
a unique essence which set them apart from all other
peoples; or that their history, religion, race, language,
morality or culture set them above their colonial masters.
Occasionally, driven by exuberance or hubris, nationalists
have advanced exceptionalist claims, but the success of
their movement has not depended on their acceptance. The
Irish claimed sovereignty because they knew that they are
a nation with their own territory. In order to create
their own state, they did not have to establish that they
are exceptional.

The Zionists confronted two handicaps that Irish national-
ists did not face. The diverse and scattered Jewish
communities of Europe ? and even more so, the world ? did
not constitute a single people. Instead, the Jews of the
world were loosely united by their religious heritage, but
they shared their languages, cultures and genes with their
neighboring communities. Moreover, no Jewish community had
its own country, a substantial and contiguous territory
where it formed a majority of the population. Despite
these twin Jewish deficits ? the absence of a nation and
a national territory ? the Zionists were determined to
'liberate' the Jews of Europe and endow them with their
own state.

The Zionists would remedy the first deficit by denying its
existence. They knew that the Jews were not a nation, but
it would be unwise to begin their 'nationalist' movement
with the admission that a Jewish nation did not yet exist.
They also did not think that this deficit was a serious
hindrance to their movement. With help from anti-Semites,
whose attacks had been growing in recent decades, the
Zionists were convinced that they could quickly convince
enough frightened Jews that they are a nation. Instead of
constructing a nationalism based on a common religion,
however, the Zionists chose to cultivate a racial basis
for Jewish nationalism. They embraced the anti-Semitic
accusation that Jews of Europe are an alien race, not
Germans or Russians, descended from the ancient Hebrews.

A racial identity offered the best hope of inculcating
nationalism in culturally diverse Jewish communities.
Only an identity, based on the myth of a common descent,
could unite peoples who were as different ethnically and
culturally as the Jews of Portugal, Britain, Germany,
Greece and Russia. Only the myth of racial unity, only
the conviction that they are a single family, descended
from Abraham and Jacob, could unite orthodox, conservative
and reform Jews into a nation. Once the Jews were convinced
of their racial identity, preserved over hundreds of
generations in exile, this would also endow them with
pride in their ancient pedigree and their unique ability
to survive and preserve their racial purity through
difficult conditions. This was sure to engender a strong
sense of their distinctiveness, superiority and destiny,
rooted in Jewish traditions and the Jewish Bible. With
confidence, the Jews could see themselves as a unique
nation, both ancient and divinely blessed.

The Zionists were more candid about their 'land deficit;'
this was not something they could fudge. Indeed, their
land deficit defined the 'abnormal' condition of Jews;
they were an abnormal people because they did not have
a country they could call their own. Conceptually, the
land deficit was easier to fix. The Jews only had to
stake a claim to Palestine as their country: there were
two ways of doing this. Jews of secular persuasion could
claim that they had a historical right to Palestine,
since they were descended from the ancient Israelites.
In addition, it would be easy to reclaim this land because
? according to early Zionist rhetoric ? 'this was a land
without a people.' No one had claimed Palestine during
their absence. The religious Jews had a simpler and ?
for them ? more irrefutable claim. Their God had promised
the land to their ancestors for keeps. All they had to do
was invoke their divine right to this Promised Land.

It turns out, after all, that the Jews are a people with
their own land. Once the Zionists had made their case,
there would be nothing abnormal about their national
project. This was the official rhetoric of the Zionist
project of national liberation for the Jewish people.
On the back of this rhetoric, the Zionists would
succeed in convincing the Western world to support their
exclusionary colonial project in the Middle East.

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