Kudos to Andrew Caplan for sharing the idea of Zionism
in his article “The New Zionist” linked below. I have
been struggling with the usage of the word Zionism and
he has made good attempts to clarify this for me, who
and I, are engaged in interfaith and pluralism work.
Mr. Caplan has put everything on the table that is being talked about Zionism; he is honest in sharing two different points of view and I have made a similar attempt here. Jews have the same problem on understanding Zionism as others, they have a lot of work ahead of them.
Quotes from Theodore Herzl to Golda Meier to Benjamin Netanyahu are often in the news, and all point to an exclusive ideology. The net has plenty of those quotes floating around.
I am perhaps one of the first Muslims in the world to lead the commemoration of Holocaust in 2006 and again this year on January 25th, we pulled people representing different faith traditions. The idea was to build bridges and God willing it will continue, we have to mitigate conflicts and nurture good will. http://holocaustandgenocid
Obviously, I have faced criticism from Non-Jews, and pleasantly Jews who were equating Zionism with apartheid as exclusive racist ideology. They have thrown the statements in my face, made by the father of the nation of Israel and subsequent leaders, that amounts to annihilation of the Palestinians, getting rid of them from the land and other ugly sentences, and they add, what Hamas is saying about driving Israel into Ocean is nothing more than mirroring the same statements of the “Zionists”.
A few Jewish organizations and a few of my friends maintain that all Jews are Zionists, where as equal number of Jews, if not more say otherwise. In my conversations with a prominent Jew around the Holocaust and Genocides event this year, over the phone he was sharing, “ Mike, you need to see the movie Martin Bashir, I want to clarify that I am not a Zionist, as I believe in co-existence and social justice”… Another Jew shared that Zionism is an exclusive ideology. Leaders like Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Lerner and several others have stood up and spoken against the injustice meted out to the Palestinians and obviously they are discounted by the extremists among the Zionists as Jew haters. No one was discounting the terrorism from the few Palestinians and I want to make sure that you understand that I condemn it extensively. They were all talking about Justice to every inhabitant of the area. Please note that I have used the word "few" in case of Palestinians and Zionists, as only a few people drive the world into chaos, 98% of any group of people are moderates and want peace. Unless there is justice, security to Israelis, hope to Palestinians and peace in the middle east is a forlorn hope.
I continue to seek to understand what Zionism stands for “return of the Jews” or “exclusivist ideology”? I have talked with the church men and ordinary folks from Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and other places. Except a few, most don’t believe that Zionism is a noble thing.
The difference betwen Islam and Islamists, Christians and Neocons and Hinduism and Hindutva is crystal clear, and to most people Judaism and Zionism fall in the same category. I have avoided using it after hearing out from a few Jewish friends and acquintances and instead use extremists among Zionism to describe the extremism among a few Jews as with other groups.
I am using the word Neocon to describe all extremist; it is a word that will be used by me instead of Islamists, Hindutva, Neocons or Extremist Zionists.
The Jews have a lot of work to do in clearing the name of Zionism from exclusive and apartheid ideology in practice in Israel. Caplan's article is a good effort in this direction. The world sees it, but the extremists don’t, just as the case with all other extreme ideologies.
Mike Ghouse is a Dallas based writer, blogger, speaker and a thinker. A frequent guest on talk radio and local television networks offering pluralistic perspectives on issues of the day. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net.
# # #
The New Zionist
http://pulsereview.com/?p=
Yesterday I attended the first meeting for an interfaith dialogue group in Washington, DC. The group, comprised of several Jewish and Muslim members, is committed to exploring the similarities between our respective peoples amid the backdrop of the Middle East crisis. Naturally, we kicked off our first meeting by breaking the ice, and overtly establishing that we are all open-minded, human-rights loving individuals. As is always expected in a setting of “mixed company,” everyone made sure to couch his ideas in equivocal language – no one went too far towards admitting that he might naturally identify with one side of the conflict or the other.
After an hour or so of breaking the ice, one brave soul came out and admitted that she is in fact a Zionist – or in other words, a supporter of the Jewish State of Israel. This statement of truth abruptly punctured the formality, and led one of the Muslim members of the group to inquire about the definition of Zionism. This is where the trouble set in. As the few Zionists in the room (including myself) attempted to explain our proclaimed ideology, we came to the uneasy conclusion that participation in an interfaith dialogue group was somehow contrary to our perceived definition of Zionism. In specific, our definition of Zionism conjured up images of right-wing nationalism and individualist struggles; nowhere did interfaith compromise appear. The pivotal question then became, could we even call ourselves Zionists? The answer to this question requires a brief contextualization of Zionism itself, and an investigation as to where the ideology is (or should be) going.
Like any ideology, Zionism must be understood in its historical context. An antecedent form of Zionism can technically be traced back to 70 C.E. (A.D.), when Jews were expelled from their biblical homeland under the Roman regime of Titus. For almost two thousand years, the Jewish people survived as a scattered Diaspora, spread across a multitude of adoptive empires in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Unsurprisingly, this Diaspora way of life led to a Diaspora consciousness: imbedded in the Jewish psyche was a desire to return to the biblical homeland, as impossible as this goal often seemed. The latent desire of return finally found its expression amid the socialist rumblings of late Nineteenth Century Europe. Under the instruction of Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, Eastern European Jews began to organize themselves around the cause of returning to the Jewish homeland. This trend towards emigration continued right up through the wake of the Holocaust in 1945, when many displaced Jews found themselves returning to Israel not out of ideological conviction, but out of necessity. To this day, for a Jew to move to Israel is considered a great honor. The term used for moving to Israel, Aliyah, literally means to step up.
From its very inception, modern Zionism was founded on notions of struggle and conflict. The land upon which the Eastern European emigrants arrived had been laid to waist under the Ottoman Empire. The project of turning a desolate desert green was therefore one that required tremendous sacrifice for the newly arrived emigrants. Expatriate housewives and businessmen of Berlin, Budapest, and Riga, were handed shovels upon arrival, and immediately began plowing the fields under the hot Mediterranean sun. Alongside these inherent struggles to cultivate the land existed the all-too-familiar tensions with the Arab neighbors. From the moment that Zionism took root on Israeli soil, the bloody struggle for survival became part of Israel’s national psyche. It is no surprise then that Zionism is often cited as a hard-line ideology. As a result of this fact, Jewish Nationalism and Jewish-Arab Coexistence have seemed to become conflicting ideologies, not two sides of the same Zionist coin.
As history has shown us, this traditional way of defining Zionism has not led to the security and well being of the Jewish state. While it is true that Israel has continued to grow, despite her often-cited obituaries, a fourth generation of Israeli solider now finds himself engaging in a biannual war for survival. Furthermore, as Israel’s recent two wars have soberly indicated, neither domestic tranquility nor international support are won through clashes with Arab neighbors. On the contrary, the militant groups that Israel seeks to extinguish only gain more international legitimacy with each death that is reported on the international news.
Observing the failings of our past, it is time to adopt a new Zionist mentality. It is time for Israel’s leaders to understand that support for the Jewish state and coexistence are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are necessary components of the same Zionism dream – for Jews to live in peace and prosperity in the land of their ancestors. Jewish leaders can no longer afford to pretend that Zionism precludes cooperation with Israel’s Arab neighbors. The New Zionist leader must recognize that the end of Hamas and Hezbollah will not come through further military posturing. Instead, it will come through brokering a compromise that will give prosperity and statehood to the Palestinian people. Only when the Palestinians are offered the carrot of prosperity will they no longer be in need of Hamas, their true captor.
While I hope to see a New Zionist leadership taking hold of Israeli politics, the right wing Likud party has recently taken the lead in last Tuesday’s parliamentary election. Benjamin Netanyahu, a man of distinguished career and service, represents the old Zionist ideology that any show of compromise is a sign of Israel’s weakness. My hope is that Netanyahu, like those in my discussion group, will find the space to reconcile his passion for the Jewish state, alongside the need to compromise with our Palestinian neighbors. I am quite convinced that there is nothing un-Zionist about this.
Please contribute to the discussion in the comments section.
Andrew Caplan is a Juris Doctorate Candidate at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. Prior to attending law school, Andrew obtained his B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Andrew is a contributor to The PULSE Review, writing often on Law, Public Policy, and International Relations.
Mr. Caplan has put everything on the table that is being talked about Zionism; he is honest in sharing two different points of view and I have made a similar attempt here. Jews have the same problem on understanding Zionism as others, they have a lot of work ahead of them.
Quotes from Theodore Herzl to Golda Meier to Benjamin Netanyahu are often in the news, and all point to an exclusive ideology. The net has plenty of those quotes floating around.
I am perhaps one of the first Muslims in the world to lead the commemoration of Holocaust in 2006 and again this year on January 25th, we pulled people representing different faith traditions. The idea was to build bridges and God willing it will continue, we have to mitigate conflicts and nurture good will. http://holocaustandgenocid
Obviously, I have faced criticism from Non-Jews, and pleasantly Jews who were equating Zionism with apartheid as exclusive racist ideology. They have thrown the statements in my face, made by the father of the nation of Israel and subsequent leaders, that amounts to annihilation of the Palestinians, getting rid of them from the land and other ugly sentences, and they add, what Hamas is saying about driving Israel into Ocean is nothing more than mirroring the same statements of the “Zionists”.
A few Jewish organizations and a few of my friends maintain that all Jews are Zionists, where as equal number of Jews, if not more say otherwise. In my conversations with a prominent Jew around the Holocaust and Genocides event this year, over the phone he was sharing, “ Mike, you need to see the movie Martin Bashir, I want to clarify that I am not a Zionist, as I believe in co-existence and social justice”… Another Jew shared that Zionism is an exclusive ideology. Leaders like Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Lerner and several others have stood up and spoken against the injustice meted out to the Palestinians and obviously they are discounted by the extremists among the Zionists as Jew haters. No one was discounting the terrorism from the few Palestinians and I want to make sure that you understand that I condemn it extensively. They were all talking about Justice to every inhabitant of the area. Please note that I have used the word "few" in case of Palestinians and Zionists, as only a few people drive the world into chaos, 98% of any group of people are moderates and want peace. Unless there is justice, security to Israelis, hope to Palestinians and peace in the middle east is a forlorn hope.
I continue to seek to understand what Zionism stands for “return of the Jews” or “exclusivist ideology”? I have talked with the church men and ordinary folks from Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and other places. Except a few, most don’t believe that Zionism is a noble thing.
The difference betwen Islam and Islamists, Christians and Neocons and Hinduism and Hindutva is crystal clear, and to most people Judaism and Zionism fall in the same category. I have avoided using it after hearing out from a few Jewish friends and acquintances and instead use extremists among Zionism to describe the extremism among a few Jews as with other groups.
I am using the word Neocon to describe all extremist; it is a word that will be used by me instead of Islamists, Hindutva, Neocons or Extremist Zionists.
The Jews have a lot of work to do in clearing the name of Zionism from exclusive and apartheid ideology in practice in Israel. Caplan's article is a good effort in this direction. The world sees it, but the extremists don’t, just as the case with all other extreme ideologies.
Mike Ghouse is a Dallas based writer, blogger, speaker and a thinker. A frequent guest on talk radio and local television networks offering pluralistic perspectives on issues of the day. His comments, news analysis and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net.
# # #
The New Zionist
http://pulsereview.com/?p=
Yesterday I attended the first meeting for an interfaith dialogue group in Washington, DC. The group, comprised of several Jewish and Muslim members, is committed to exploring the similarities between our respective peoples amid the backdrop of the Middle East crisis. Naturally, we kicked off our first meeting by breaking the ice, and overtly establishing that we are all open-minded, human-rights loving individuals. As is always expected in a setting of “mixed company,” everyone made sure to couch his ideas in equivocal language – no one went too far towards admitting that he might naturally identify with one side of the conflict or the other.
After an hour or so of breaking the ice, one brave soul came out and admitted that she is in fact a Zionist – or in other words, a supporter of the Jewish State of Israel. This statement of truth abruptly punctured the formality, and led one of the Muslim members of the group to inquire about the definition of Zionism. This is where the trouble set in. As the few Zionists in the room (including myself) attempted to explain our proclaimed ideology, we came to the uneasy conclusion that participation in an interfaith dialogue group was somehow contrary to our perceived definition of Zionism. In specific, our definition of Zionism conjured up images of right-wing nationalism and individualist struggles; nowhere did interfaith compromise appear. The pivotal question then became, could we even call ourselves Zionists? The answer to this question requires a brief contextualization of Zionism itself, and an investigation as to where the ideology is (or should be) going.
Like any ideology, Zionism must be understood in its historical context. An antecedent form of Zionism can technically be traced back to 70 C.E. (A.D.), when Jews were expelled from their biblical homeland under the Roman regime of Titus. For almost two thousand years, the Jewish people survived as a scattered Diaspora, spread across a multitude of adoptive empires in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Unsurprisingly, this Diaspora way of life led to a Diaspora consciousness: imbedded in the Jewish psyche was a desire to return to the biblical homeland, as impossible as this goal often seemed. The latent desire of return finally found its expression amid the socialist rumblings of late Nineteenth Century Europe. Under the instruction of Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, Eastern European Jews began to organize themselves around the cause of returning to the Jewish homeland. This trend towards emigration continued right up through the wake of the Holocaust in 1945, when many displaced Jews found themselves returning to Israel not out of ideological conviction, but out of necessity. To this day, for a Jew to move to Israel is considered a great honor. The term used for moving to Israel, Aliyah, literally means to step up.
From its very inception, modern Zionism was founded on notions of struggle and conflict. The land upon which the Eastern European emigrants arrived had been laid to waist under the Ottoman Empire. The project of turning a desolate desert green was therefore one that required tremendous sacrifice for the newly arrived emigrants. Expatriate housewives and businessmen of Berlin, Budapest, and Riga, were handed shovels upon arrival, and immediately began plowing the fields under the hot Mediterranean sun. Alongside these inherent struggles to cultivate the land existed the all-too-familiar tensions with the Arab neighbors. From the moment that Zionism took root on Israeli soil, the bloody struggle for survival became part of Israel’s national psyche. It is no surprise then that Zionism is often cited as a hard-line ideology. As a result of this fact, Jewish Nationalism and Jewish-Arab Coexistence have seemed to become conflicting ideologies, not two sides of the same Zionist coin.
As history has shown us, this traditional way of defining Zionism has not led to the security and well being of the Jewish state. While it is true that Israel has continued to grow, despite her often-cited obituaries, a fourth generation of Israeli solider now finds himself engaging in a biannual war for survival. Furthermore, as Israel’s recent two wars have soberly indicated, neither domestic tranquility nor international support are won through clashes with Arab neighbors. On the contrary, the militant groups that Israel seeks to extinguish only gain more international legitimacy with each death that is reported on the international news.
Observing the failings of our past, it is time to adopt a new Zionist mentality. It is time for Israel’s leaders to understand that support for the Jewish state and coexistence are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are necessary components of the same Zionism dream – for Jews to live in peace and prosperity in the land of their ancestors. Jewish leaders can no longer afford to pretend that Zionism precludes cooperation with Israel’s Arab neighbors. The New Zionist leader must recognize that the end of Hamas and Hezbollah will not come through further military posturing. Instead, it will come through brokering a compromise that will give prosperity and statehood to the Palestinian people. Only when the Palestinians are offered the carrot of prosperity will they no longer be in need of Hamas, their true captor.
While I hope to see a New Zionist leadership taking hold of Israeli politics, the right wing Likud party has recently taken the lead in last Tuesday’s parliamentary election. Benjamin Netanyahu, a man of distinguished career and service, represents the old Zionist ideology that any show of compromise is a sign of Israel’s weakness. My hope is that Netanyahu, like those in my discussion group, will find the space to reconcile his passion for the Jewish state, alongside the need to compromise with our Palestinian neighbors. I am quite convinced that there is nothing un-Zionist about this.
Please contribute to the discussion in the comments section.
Andrew Caplan is a Juris Doctorate Candidate at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. Prior to attending law school, Andrew obtained his B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Andrew is a contributor to The PULSE Review, writing often on Law, Public Policy, and International Relations.