The 60 year success of Zionism

Paul Greenberg:

Why the mixed emotions, the divided mind? The cheers should have been unreserved. A state that shouldn't have lasted 60 days by any reasonable expectation had now endured for 60 years. And not just endured but grown, prospered, flourished by all the usual measures - cultural, political, military, scientific and technological.

Through it all, and perhaps most impressive, Israel has remained not just a democratic outpost in a sea of authoritarian regimes, but one that is always questioning its own ways - far more profoundly than either its hateful critics or reflexive defenders. Now that's something to celebrate.

Yet the Israelis, though stronger than ever, seem more uncertain than ever. Maybe that's because, though Israel is still there, so is the existential threat.

What a contrast with May 14, 1948 - the 5th of Iyar, 5708, by the Jewish calendar. Even as the Jewish state was declaring its independence in a Tel Aviv art museum, the first bombs were falling on the streets. Egyptian columns were invading from the South, the Syrians from the North, the Iraqis and Jordanians from the East.

At least five Arab armies were converging on the newborn state, not counting the homegrown Arab militias that had been engaging a rivalrous collection of Jewish ones for months now. Jerusalem's old city, King David's citadel, was cut off and would soon be lostŠ.

Yet there was no uncertainty that first independence day. Even those with reservations about declaring independence put them on hold and joined in the celebration. The joy was unbounded. The first Jewish commonwealth in 2000 years had materialized, the dream was fulfilled.

This was the formal moment of triumph for Zionism, which Martin Luther King Jr. once and best defined as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. To listen again to those old broadcasts from Tel Aviv, the songs resounding even while the air raid sirens wail in the background, is to hear joy.

And why not celebrate? The British blockade that had kept the remnant of Europe's Jews from entering was no more; the blockade had ended with the British mandate. There was no longer any need to smuggle in arms and Jews; both could now enter openly. Never again would there be Jewish refugees with no place to go. The survivors of the Holocaust were pouring in, hollow-eyed and ravaged, yet exultant. Here they could fight back.

These people had nothing left to lose, which is the purest definition of freedom. Nothing left to lose, that is, but their lives, and many would lose those soon enough. Untrained, unprepared, they would be thrown into gaps in the lines and cut down at places whose names they scarcely knew. Their corpses would be strewn along the road to Jerusalem, the antique Enfields they'd been handed useless in the heat of battle as John Glubb Pasha's well-trained, well-armed Arab Legion seized the West Bank and old Jerusalem.

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Bill Kristol also notes the founding of modern Israel.

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On Dec. 10, 1948, Winston Churchill, then leader of the opposition, took to the floor of the House of Commons to chastise the Labour government for its continuing refusal to recognize the state of Israel. In his remarks, Churchill commented:

“Whether the Right Honourable Gentleman likes it or not, and whether we like it or not, the coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years. This is a standard of temporal values or time values which seems very much out of accord with the perpetual click-clack of our rapidly-changing moods and of the age in which we live.”

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What Eric Hoffer wrote in 1968 seems even truer today: “I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.”

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I don't think Israel will perish anytime soon. It is much more likely that Ahmadinejad's version of Iran will perish than Israel. His weird religious beliefs and his smelly insults of Israel cannot detract from a very successful country and people who have demonstrated what intelligence and industry can do in a hostile land with hostile neighbors.

If Ahmadinejad and the other religious bigots of Iran would give up their hate and let the industry of the Persian culture free as the Hews have done in Israel, there is not telling how much more prosperous his people would be and how much more at peace they would be with their neighbors.