Thoughts on Zionism

I've previously mentioned in passing on this here blog that I consider myself a Zionist, but I've never really gone into what I mean by that. Recent events in this country have got me thinking a lot about the nature of Zionism, so forgive me as I blogasm (in copious amounts) all over your screen.

Let's start with what I don't believe. Many of those who call themselves Zionists believe in the absolute historicity of the Torah. As an originally secular movement, Zionism didn't identify with the religious law set down in the Talmud, but they considered the stories of the Torah - Abraham leaving Ur, Jacob settling in Canaan, the Hebrews' subsequent enslavement in Egypt, the Exodus, wandering through the Sinai, the conquest of the 'land flowing with milk and honey', Kings Solomon and David building a kingdom that nowadays would have included land belonging to both Israel and Jordan (known to these people as 'Greater Israel'), the splitting into Judah and Israel, Babylonian conquest and enslavement, the story of Esther, reconstruction of the temple, Greek and subsequent Roman conquest, etc. - to be historical fact. They assert that the Jews maintained their identity for two thousand years in exile and now were returning to their land.

I believe quite the opposite; that the Israelites were never one monolithic people that moved from Ur to Canaan to Egypt to the Sinai back to Canaan off to Babylon back to Canaan and then DISPERSAL! Not at all. I believe rather that thousands of years ago a prominent family in Canaan, via military and economic means, created the kingdom of Israel. This kingdom was full of different peoples from all over who for whatever reason came to think of themselves as a single people, with all of their different myths and stories merging into one version that survived as the Torah. The version of the Torah that has survived is almost certainly not the only one.

As an example of what I mean by myths merging into one, let's look at the Exodus. With all that we know about ancient Egypt there is absolutely no evidence supporting the legend of Moses. There is some evidence of a small group of Semitic people being used as labourers in the lower Nile delta within 500 years of the time the Hebrews' enslavement is supposed to have taken place, but that is all. But, that small group integrated into the people living in Canaan and their story became to be believed in by almost everyone. The same thing presumably happened with Babylon, Noah's Ark, etc.

The much-vaunted kingdom of David - a supposed Jewish regional power that inspires the Greater Israel idea is almost certainly a fallacy. In reality the Israelite kingdom probably covered much the same territory as Yehuda and Shomron (Hebrew names for the two areas that make up the West Bank - Yehuda=Judah whence 'Jew' and Shomron is where Samaritans come from) do/does today, which makes it little bigger than the Powys region of Wales. Hardly a regional power, considering the size of Egypt, Babylon and Persia.

After being conquered by the Romans 'Iudea' was their most annoying province, constantly revolting and generally being uppity. So they crushed it, kicked out all the Iudeans, and renamed it after what they considered to be the Jews' worst enemies - the Philistines. The Jews, whose religion had by this time had several thousand years to coagulate, went and lived in other countries, but retaining their religion and therefore their culture. This is the time of the bizarre rise of Christianity and the invention of Islam.

Skipping ahead a bit, Jews in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries underwent the Enlightenment and suddenly thought 'Oh my stars (of David)! We can be secular! Emancipation!' and the idea of self-determination of the Jewish people was born.

I'm not going to bang on too much about the founders of Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel, but basically they reckoned that the Jews suffered the horrendous discrimination they did because they didn't have a nation-state backing them up (see: Nationalism), and so they wanted to found a state of the Jews (note that I do not say 'Jewish state', more on that in my next post). So they started looking around for somewhere to put this state of theirs. Uganda was suggested by the British and seriously considered, but the Zionist Movement decided that they only real Jewish home was in Palestine.

As is known, new immigrants to Palestine generally believed that they were a people without a land moving to a land without a people. Close, but not quite. Palestine was not, at the time, called Palestine. It was part of the Ottoman Empire, divided into various vilayets and sancaks (basically just 'areas'). If anything, it was a bunch of city-states centred around Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus and perhaps Nablus that fell under the authority of Istanbul. The people living in Nablus, Ramallah and Jerusalem weren't 'Palestinian', they were Nablusite, Ramallan or Jerusalemite. And their families had been since the 7th century. Ironically it was Zionism that forced the creation of Palestinianism as a reaction to what many of the people in the region thought of as an invasion.

Where does all this leave me? Well, let's save that for the next post. If I've not been clear on anything I can clarify in the comments.