Two days ago, the news was full of Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s recent decision to suspend Labour MP Naz Shah while her alleged antisemitism is investigated. Two years ago, before she became an MP and during the height of the most recent Israeli aggression in Gaza, Shah wrote a Facebook post suggesting Israel should be relocated to the US and that Israelis transportation costs would be minimal compared to the current military support provided to Israel by the US. Last week, the news was full of the election of Malia Bouattia, the new president of the National Union of Students. She, too, was accused by some of antisemitism for referring to \u201cmainstream Zionist-led media outlets\u201d and saying that the University of Birmingham was \u201csomething of a Zionist outpost\u201d. Yesterday, Ken Livingston was suspended from the Labour Party for appearing to suggest that Hitler was a Zionist. These incidents have been used as sticks by those who claim to speak on behalf Britain\u2019s Jewish communities (and others) to beat both the Labour Party and the NUS.<\/p>\n
In my view, Christian antisemitism runs deeply in England, but none of these statements by the Muslim women above are examples of it (although the media reference comes close). Suggesting that Israel be relocated to the US \u2014 what was clearly a facetious remark made in the moment \u2014 reveals an underlying ignorance about Israel pervasive on the left and the right (that it is nothing but a white, western nation) but it is hardly antisemitism (although the reference to \u2018transportation costs\u2019 could easily be read as such as the word \u2018transport\u2019 has a great deal of resonance in the Jewish psyche). As for Livingstone, well, Livingstone is Livingstone, he\u2019s been saying stupid remarks about Jews for years.<\/p>\n
What is clear from these recent incidents (and many others) is that the left\u2019s use of \u2018Zionism\u2019 needs some critical attention.<\/p>\n
For many decades, since I was a teenager actually, I thought of myself as a Jewish \u2018anti-zionist\u2019 because I was opposed to the creation of Israel, as well as to its subsequent practices and ideologies. Because of the contemporary left\u2019s deployment of Zionism, I now find I no longer want to call myself an anti-zionist. Let me explain why.<\/p>\n
Writing on the history of Jewish nationalist thought (zionisms) is enormous, and this is not the place to review the complexities and permutations of its origins and heterogeneous trajectories but Jacqueline Rose\u2019s careful study in The Question of Zion (2005) is one of the best. Rose discusses the messianic origins of zionism, arguing that \u201cZionism emerged out of the legitimate desire of a persecuted people for a homeland\u201d (2005, xii). Many strands of zionist thought however do not propose a \u2018homeland\u2019 in the here and now and others are actively anti-Israel in particular. Rose urges us to understand both the reality of antisemitism and the psychology of suffering in which zionism is rooted, while at the same time deploring the \u2018blood and soil\u2019 form that zionism eventually took in Israel. She writes: \u201cI am not happy, to put it at its most simple, to treat Zionism as an insult. A dirty word\u201d (2005, 11).<\/p>\n
Zionism has become a dirty word for many on the left. It has become synonymous with Israel itself, the racist practices of the Israeli state, \u2018apartheid South Africa\u2019, and necro- or thanatopolitics. However, it is not clear why the Jewish desire for a homeland is any worse than any other form of homeland thinking, be it rooted in ethnicity or religion. As Rose and others have explained, zionism is first and foremost a state of mind; some forms of it do not require (indeed, are opposed to taking) actual land \u2014 it is the spiritual \u2018home\u2019 that is more important than the \u2018land\u2019. Hannah Arendt, for example, could be described as a Jewish nationalist, but not one who thought Jews should \u2018return\u2019 to Palestine or have their own exclusive territory anywhere (2009).<\/p>\n
There is a stark reluctance amongst left scholars to engage directly with Judaism, or to take the history and psychology of Jewish communal survival seriously. Instead, scholars replace Jews and Judiasm with Zionists and Zionism, and label Zionism \u2018racist\u2019 or part of a \u2018racial contract\u2019 or \u2018apartheid\u2019. But zionisms, in theory, represent no more nor less than the utopian yearnings of people who identify with an ancient Middle Eastern faith community \u2014 Judaism is zionism\u2019s parent (with Christianity, ironically, being Israel-zionism\u2019s co-parent, but that\u2019s another story).<\/p>\n
That land-based Israel-zionism became ascendant, and took an authochonous, violent form in Israel is unsurprising and in keeping with most other postcolonial nationalisms (contrary to dominant left narratives, Israel\u2019s history is both colonial and postcolonial). If all forms of homeland thinking are dirty words, then zionism ought to be as well, but anti-Zionist critics do not treat all nationalisms equally. Indeed, many are supported by left scholars without equivocation, Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) Arab nationalism and First Nations ancestry-based nationalism, being just two of many examples.<\/p>\n
It should not be necessary, in order to condemn historical and contemporary racist practice in Israel, or even to argue that Israel should never have been created, to deny the legitimacy of Jewish spiritual yearnings (including national aspirations) in general, unless one denies all such aspirations or has a very good reason why Jewish ones are especially illegitimate. If \u2018Zionist\u2019 simply becomes another word for \u2018racist\u2019 then, arguably, that is in itself a form of racialized thought: \u201cThe idea of a total evil also is implied by the simple equation of Zionism with racism, as if there would be no remainder to Zionism once racism was subtracted\u201d (Cocks, 2014, 92).<\/p>\n
The identification of a generic Zionism with nothing but racist practice in Israel entrenches an understanding of zionism not just as a dirty word, but as a pariah form of thinking unrelated to any other (except apartheid thinking). However, as Balibar (2009), Asharwi (2003), and many others have noted, Jewish nationalisms need to be taken seriously. The left\u2019s wholesale intellectual rejection of an assumed monolithic Zionism does not assist such an endeavour.<\/p>\n
I suppose this post is, in part, a plea to the left to stop saying \u2018Zionist\u2019. Use \u2018Israeli nationalists\u2019 or \u2018Israeli fundamentalists\u2019 or better yet \u2018Netanyahu\u2019s regime\u2019 or, as a last resort, at least refer to \u2018Israel-zionism\u2019 and not \u2018Zionism\u2019 per se, as in \u2018media outlets that support Netanyahu\u2019s regime\u2019 or \u2018the University of Birmingham is a bit of an Israeli nationalist outpost\u2019. These alternatives won\u2019t provide an easy shorthand in the way \u2018Zionism\u2019 does, for example, \u2018Israeli nationalism = apartheid\u2019 just doesn\u2019t have the same ring to it, but I suppose that is my point \u2014 easy options often sacrifice understanding for rhetorical force. The Zionist shorthand is upsetting to many because it is a very old way of talking about \u2018Jewish conspiracy\u2019 (used by antisemites long before Israeli statehood), and no doubt more importantly, it harms the cause of Palestinian solidarity because it allows people with all sorts of agendas to attack the solidarity campaign, and with occasional justification. Of course Israel itself likes to messianically represent itself as the embodiment of a monolithic Zionism, but there is no need for the left to reproduce this erasure of all the other forms of zionism.<\/p>\n
Antisemitism in England is not a problem of the left or of the Labour Party, it\u2019s a problem of English history, law, and culture. Christianity is also deeply implicated in Israel. The early 20th century Christian conquering of Palestine, Protestant theological influence on the development of Israel-zionist thinking, Protestants continued involvement in propping up successive Israeli governments, and the orientation of Israel nationalist leaders and settlers towards northern European Christianity, have all had an enormous impact on the character and politics of Israel. It is not enough, in relation to Israel, to talk solely about \u2018settlers\u2019, \u2018race\u2019, \u2018apartheid\u2019, and so on, minus the Christian thinking and practices that infuse all of that and more.<\/p>\n
Didi Herman is Professor of Law at Kent Law School. Her monograph \u2014 An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English Law \u2014 was published by Oxford University Press in January 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Arendt, Hannah. 2009. The Jewish writings<\/em> Schocken Read Professor Herman’s\u00a0original article on the Critical Legal Thinking<\/a> blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n\u2014 Asharwi, Hanan. 2003. Peace in the Middle East: A global challenge and a human imperative<\/em> 2003 City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture CPACS Occasional Paper No. 03\/3
\n\u2014 Balibar, Etienne. 2009. \u201dGod will not remain silent\u201d: Zionism, messianism and nationalism. Human Architecture<\/em> 7 (2): 123-134.
\n\u2014 Cocks, Joan. 2014. On sovereignty and other political delusions<\/em> Bloomsbury Publishing.<\/p>\n