The Miracle of Zionism

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

—ostensibly Mark Twain

There is a surprising amount of fiction out there about ‘the eternal cycle of history’ or something similar. The Mass Effect games, the Wheel of Time series, Mr. Nobody (starring Jared Leto), Cloud Atlas, and on ad infinitum. What has happened before will happen again, barring some completely unforeseen deus ex machina sweeping in to smash the cycle (like Commander Shepard, for example).

It’s not hard to see why this is the case. As human beings, we seek out patterns. It’s in our nature. Fiction of this type plays to the idea that humanity (or people of a different species, anyway) will fall into the same traps of history as they always have. And this has been true for a remarkable amount of events throughout the great and tragic existence of life on this planet.

Which is why it does not particularly shock me to see such a blatant misunderstanding of Zionism in the 21st century as we see right now. The misrepresentation of Zionism as some sort of “imperialist”, “colonialist”, “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing” campaign is pulled straight from mid-20th century Soviet antisemitic propaganda and informed from a much earlier Russian fabrication of a “Jewish conspiracy” called the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, published first in the early 1900s after decades of pogroms had already swept across Eastern Europe and forced many Jews to seek refuge elsewhere. The reason why the Soviets turned on their once-allies in the Jewish nation likely stems from the fact that Israel did not ‘toe the party line’ and become a full-fledged second world country like the Soviets hoped would happen with the communal communities of the kibbutzim. Thus, they invented the idea that “Zionism is racism” and relentlessly pushed it among communist bloc countries and in the wider world wherever they could spread their influence.

Their “anti-Zionist” propaganda is, of course, a total fiction. Anyone that has thought about it for a single second understands the ridiculousness of the idea that “Jewish supremacy” is a threat to the world today. History informs us that antisemites always try to convince us that Jews pose a threat to “our way of life” and we must “oppose them” or risk losing everything. It’s a nonsensical farce from the get-go, and made even more foolish when compared to what Zionism actually means and represents.

At its core, Zionism is a movement for Jewish survival. Theodor Herzl lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the mid-to-late 1800s and witnessed the rise of nationalistic sentiments across Europe. He knew that this would eventually lead to catastrophe yet again for the Jews. He knew this because the Jewish people like the Roma could exist in a multi-ethnic empire without too much trouble from any single ethnicity or identity pushing against them; only when the rulers themselves decided against them would there be life-threatening danger. But when a nation state is formed with the explicit focus of national identity, the Jewish people are in trouble indeed. For what kind of room would there be for non-Germans in Germany, non-Poles in Poland and so on?

Herzl never explicitly predicted the rise of the Nazis, but he came pretty close. Thus, during the late 1800s he and others formed the movement of Zionism. Zionism was established to create again a national home for the Jews, after being stateless for almost two millennia. Their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel eventually became the focus (then Ottoman-controlled provinces of the Levant) and they began purchasing land even as they were driven out of their homes in Russia, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere. The Ottomans were mistrustful of the Jews fleeing from Eastern Europe specifically because they were citizens of the Russian Empire, their longtime rivals across the Black Sea. They eventually placed restrictions on their migration, which stemmed the flow from the ‘First Aliyah’.

World War One saw the collapse of the Ottomans after centuries of existence and their empire taken over by the ‘Triple Entente’. Britain gained the territory of ‘British Mandate Palestine’ along with the rest of Ottoman Middle East, and in deciding what to do with the massive amount of land and how to divy up all the territory promised to allow the creation of a sovereign Jewish nation in the Jews’ ancient homeland of Israel (a relatively tiny portion of the now-dead Ottoman Empire).?

But the British never followed through with their promise to the Jews. Two decades later in 1939 Chamberlain would issue the ‘White Paper’ and renege on the promise of a Jewish state and also virtually close Jewish immigration into the Mandate. This action indirectly funneled the Jews of Europe into Hitler’s ghettos, concentration camps, and gas chambers. If Britain had allowed the indigenous peoples of Israel their nation when they promised it to them, the Holocaust as we know it could not have happened.

World War Two came and went (along with more pogroms against the Jews like the Farhud in Iraq), and the British decided they would not be sticking around anymore. They handed the Mandate off to the United Nations to divy up between the Jews and Arabs, which they did. The Jews accepted the partition plan, and the Arabs rejected it and launched a civil war in 1947, eventually joined by the full Arab League in 1948 when Israel officially declared independence and its re-emergence into the world after two millennia of slumber. However, despite all odds against them, the Jews won (partially aided by arms shipments from Soviet-aligned Czechoslovakia; interestingly, the United States had an arms embargo against Israel at that time). The fact that the Jews actually won caused a massive uproar and pogroms erupted across the Middle East, forcing almost every Jew in the region to abandon their homes and move to Israel. The Mizrahi Jewish population was not as decimated as the Ashkenazi of Europe were—precisely because they had somewhere to go this time to escape the violence of hatred towards their very existence.

And this is the core of Zionism. This is what so many do not understand. Zionism at its heart is about ensuring the safety of all Jews across the planet. Hatred of the Jewish people is the oldest hatred known to humanity. Jews need a ‘safety valve’—they need somewhere to go in case the cycle of history repeats yet again. And it has repeated. We see it repeating in front of our very eyes today. The difference this time though is that Israel exists. The Jewish nation exists again. And it is not going anywhere.

Zionism does not exist as some sort of “colonialist enterprise”; it is the exact opposite of such. It is an indigenous reclamation of a nation thought lost to history. The same people on the same land and speaking the same language as three thousand years ago. Where else in the world do we see this today? It is a historic miracle on par with Babylon springing back to life and speaking ancient Akkadian.

Put simply, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland of Eretz Israel. If you support this very basic notion, then you are a Zionist. And we see that the fruits of the Jewish nation are plentiful. The only democracy in the Middle East. Equal rights granted to all citizens. Freedom of speech, expression, religion unparalleled in the region. The ‘Startup Nation’ has contributed much to the world, and will continue to do so. The world will simply have to accept them for who they are.

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