Explaining the Long — and Largely Untold — History of Jewish Opposition to Zionism »

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A THREAT FROM WITHIN: A CENTURY OF JEWISH OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM,
by Yakov M. Rabkin,

While many in Israel and in Jewish communities in the U.S. and other countries now promote the idea that Zionism and Judaism are, in effect, the same and that opposition to Zionism constitutes “anti-Semitism,” the historical fact — largely untold — is that, for most of its history, Zionism has been a decidedly minority movement among Jews throughout the world.

Since its inception as a political movement in 1897, both Reform and Orthodox Jews rejected Zionism’s basic premise of creating a Jewish state in Palestine and having Jews either emigrate to it or, at the very least, consider it “central” to their Jewish identity.

An overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, unwilling to accept the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine by means other than divine intervention, considered Zionism a false messianic movement. Most Jewish liberals and socialists, having accepted the faith of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on optimism, reason and progress, rejected Zionism as a reactionary philosophy. ....

... In the forward, Joseph Agassi, professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, notes that, “The author raises questions about the myth that Israel protects the Jews around the world and constitutes their natural homeland. This book rightly shows that this myth is anti-Jewish. ...

... Zionism gained support in areas where social and political conditions were unfavorable to Jews, particularly the Russian Empire. Indeed, Rabkin argues that Zionism has far more in common with the emerging nationalisms which swept Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries than anything to be found in Jewish tradition. ...

... This instrumentalization of religion, writes Israeli historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell, is not specific to Zionism but can be found in many varieties of organic nationalism propagated in Europe from the mid-l9th century onward. Rabkin declares that, “While keeping intact the social function of religion in order to unify the people, Zionism eliminated its metaphysical content. In the same way religion became a vital element of many varieties of nationalism; for example, neither the Polish variant nor 1’Action Francaise made any efforts to disguise their Catholic traits, Sternhell defines this trend as ‘religion without God,’ religion that has preserved only its outward symbols.” ...

Zionist leaders took as their model the nationalisms which emerged in largely undemocratic societies and seemed to have little understanding of the dynamics of free, open societies such as France, England and the United States. .... But few Zionists were aware of a countervailing reality, such as that of France, where in a slow and deliberate process, the state made use of an existing legal and political framework to create a nation. They had never experienced the kind of tolerant nationalism that could allow for a clear distinction between nation, religion and society — the model that enables large Jewish communities to thrive in France, England and the U.S. today (and where a substantial number of rabbinical critics of Zionism can be found)....

In Israel itself, the gulf that separates the secular from Judaism in all its forms has widened. Israeli newspapers are full of caricatures of Orthodox Jews, not unlike the anti-Semitic stereotypes current in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Israeli historian Noah Efron declares: “This kind of hostility is not novel. Nowhere are Haredi Jews as feared and hated as in Israel. ...

The use of violence, Rabkin points out, was to be found among Zionists from the very beginning, against both indigenous Arabs and Jews who dared to challenge the emerging Zionist consensus..... Albert Einstein was among the Jewish humanists who denounced the Betar youth movement in 1935, describing it as being “as much a danger to our youth as Hitlerism is to German youth.”....

Terrorism has frequently reared its head among extremists within the ranks of Zionism. The bombing of the King David Hotel, the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte and the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are well known. The political assassination of Jacob Israel De Haan (1881-1924) is less well known... Rabkin laments that, “... the sad tale of De Haan reminds us that the terrorism the Zionists brought with them from Russia to Palestine in the early years of the 20th century would ultimately be turned against their descendants in the closing decades of the century ... Indeed, aside from the Hagganah, which was responsible for the assassination of De Haan, several armed organiz¬ations — such as Lehi and Irgun — perpetrated terrorist acts. Their leaders, Itzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, went on to become prime ministers of Israel. What united these military organizations was the conviction that it was necessary to inculcate fear and to terrorize the adversary, all in the name of establishing a nation. Ironically, the same approach was later to be adopted by the Palestinian terrorists.” .....

... Fortunately, Rabkin shows, more and more prominent Jews are rejecting such efforts at thought control. A veteran of American Jewish organizations who has taken a critical distance from his institutional past, Henry Siegman, regrets what he calls “Jewish community McCarthyism” and has said that for many Jewish organizations, “if you do not support the government of Israel, then your Jewishness and not your political judgment will be called into question.”
Professor Rabkin has written a scholarly work which brings alive for the reader a complex history which has been largely ignored. No one who reads this book will ever again believe that Zionism and Judaism are the same, or that Zionism enjoys the level of support among Jews in the United States and elsewhere in the world which it claims.