A century ago, the early Zionist ideologues promised the Jews that if a Jewish state were created, there would finally be one place on earth where Jews could be safe. It might not be big, it might not be beautiful, but it would be safe. Here, it was said, Jews would be able to defend themselves. Here, it was said, they would be spared the capriciousness of the world.Let's be clear. "Zionism is safism" was not a big theme of the classical Zionists. They never said that's what Zionism will do.
And let's be clearer. If Gordis is attempting to argue that Zionism has failed at this goal that he describes (that was never the oversimplified goal of Zionism to begin with) then Gordis is wrong by virtue of the facts.
One statistic - the number of Jews killed by acts of antiSemitism including wars and terrorist attacks. From 1900-1948 over 6 million were killed. From 1948 to the present about 20,000 were killed. Anyone who says that Jews are less safe throughout the world since the establishment of the Zionist state is creating alarmist rhetoric to serve his own agenda. Zionism hasn't failed. Jews are safer than ever before and more proud than ever before because of the Zionist State of Israel. Those are facts based on hard numbers and on the preponderance of evidence in the media of the world.
And one more fact. The State of Israel is beautiful.
Gordis: "It might not be big, it might not be beautiful, but it would be safe. "
ReplyDeleteTzvee: "And one more fact. The State of Israel is beautiful."
I hope you realize that Gordis is not saying "Israel is not beautiful". Rather, he is describing what the early Zionists, in their planning stages, might have said.
You can call it oversimplification or a strange kind of reductionism or mischaracterization or just plain ignorance. Gordis diminishes the Zionist dream into almost nothing - a hope that they can establish a safe traffic island. This is similar to what Jonathan Rosenbaum does for Judaism in general when he talks about how he knows the secrets to the goal of Jewish survival.
ReplyDeleteThe Zionist Israel is more than a safe place for Jews. The Torah true Judaism is way more than just a means of insuring Jewish survival. Pity the fools who think so little of our ideology and religion.
"Let's be clear. "Zionism is safism" was not a big theme of the classical Zionists. They never said that's what Zionism will do."
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe you're right: it wasn't a promise. But it was surely a hope. The following is from the Encarta encyclopedia:
To escape persecution, large numbers of Russian Jews migrated to the West, primarily to the United States. A smaller number, believing that Jews living in the Diaspora were destined for the eternal role of scapegoat, and that their only security lay in a homeland of their own, went to Palestine, which was then under Turkish rule. ..."