Zionism? Racism? What Do You Mean?
by: L. Humphrey Walz
December - December
1975
The Link - Volume 8, Issue 5
The builders of the Tower of Babel, like the founders of the U.N., craved human unity. Their undertaking crumbled, however, when they could “not understand one another’s speech.”
After the November 10 resolution defining “Zionism” as “a form of racism,” it began to look as if a similar fate might be in store for the U.N. Defenders and opponents alike were denouncing each other as hypocritical, self-serving and morally bankrupt. Some, including branches of the U.S. government, were threatening others in ways that boded ill for the world body. Petulant voices were openly advocating “blackmail” (the current trigger-word for “economic sanctions”) against the U.N. itself.
Few, it soon became evident, had pondered deeply what they meant by either “racism” or “Zionism.” Even fewer were bothering to discover how their antagonists were understanding those words. Aristotle’s insistence that communication is impossible without definitions of terms was never more in order.
Asked to clarify whose definitions of “Zionism” and “racism” he has had in mind when using these terms at the U.N., U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan has so far declined to answer. Nor has he or his Zionist advisor (and reputed speechwriter), Norman Podhoretz, replied to the question: “Are there indications that some of the proponents of the 'Zionism-racism' resolution have different concepts that are complicating communication?”
Pending official elucidation by more responsive spokesmen from both sides of the fence, the following glossary may serve as a handy checklist for interpreting their terminology.
“RACISM”
What do you mean by “racism”? The American Heritage Dictionary answers simply: “The notion that one’s own ethnic stock is superior.”
That succinct definition can apply to the convictions of a lot of non-Zionists. It also flows over onto any Zionist who affirms with Ben-Gurion: “I believe in our moral and intellectual superiority and our capacity to serve as a model of redemption of the human race.” His use of “race” was all-embracing. His statement, however, illustrates the American Heritage understanding of "racism." (See Dimont, The Indestructible Jew, 1971, p. 438.)
UNESCO’s official definition covers a far more disturbing phenomenon. The “racism” it deplores consists of “anti-social beliefs and acts which are based on the fallacy that discriminatory inter-group relations are justifiable on biological grounds.”
Defenders of the U.N.’s “Zionism=racism” equation regard Israel’s basic 1950 Law of Return and 1952 Nationality Law as “discriminatory” since both grant to the world’s Jews rights which they withhold from Palestinian and other Gentiles. Among other Israeli practices so cited is the fact that “more than 90% of the inhabited areas of the State of Israel falls under the regulations of the Jewish National Fund, under which non-Jews cannot rent or buy a house or flat, or open a business” (American Report, Sept. 16, 1974).
But is that discrimination racial? A 1972 lawsuit in Washington said, “Yes.” In challenging the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal and its chief component, the United Israel Appeal, it charged that “Racial (or ‘ethnic') discrimination has been ingrained in the thinking of Zionism since the beginning.” On this basis, funds raised for Zionist and Israeli causes would be denied tax exemption under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Cf. N.Y. Times, Oct. 26, 1972.)
That lawsuit was dropped on procedural grounds before its evidence could be weighed in the U.S. District Court. However, Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, seemed to be thinking “racially” when he spoke of Jews not in terms of religious faith but as “Ein Volk” (one race or nationality or peoplehood) for whom he sought distinctive rights.
Golda Meir, an ardent translator of Herzl’s thoughts into Israeli action, used the ethnic term “Arabs” rather than the religious term “Christians” when on July 23, 1972, she persuaded all but four of her Cabinet to refuse the Catholic villagers of Berem and Iqrit the right to return to their homes. The Israeli army had evacuated them in favor of Jewish immigrants. Their appeal to the Prime Minister Meir for redress brought her reported response that it would be “an erosion of Zionist values to allow Arabs to return where Jews had been settled.” (Wright, A Tale of Two Hamlets, 1973, p. 6.)
This and a multiplicity of other examples are cited by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as “discriminatory inter-group practices.” PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat denounces them as a product of what he calls the “racist Zionist movement.” He does not see them as in any way an expression of “the noble Jewish religion” which, he asserts, “We consider as part of our heritage and ethos, the same as Islam and Christianity” (Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 10, 1975).
The State of Israel has yet to resolve the prolonged, bitter, internal dispute over the question, “What is a Jew?” Is it a “racial” or a religious term, or neither or both? Until an answer comes from the Israeli Knesset, the PLO and its supporters are likely to continue to use “Jew” with religious, and “Zionist” with political/ethnic connotations.
Meanwhile, whenever we hear anybody use the term ‘‘racism”, we should ask the extent to which it reflects the folk meaning: “Any discrimination by you and your people or by ‘them’ and ‘their’ people against my people and me!” (This would presumably help explain how both the native black Brooklynites and the Polish-immigrant Podhoretzes came to see each other in “racist” terms. Cf. World Authors: 1950-70, pp. 1147-8.)
Also, when emotions run high, we need to know the speakers’ standards for distinguishing between tolerable and “obscene” racism. Not long ago, for instance, Moynihan felt that aspects of American white discrimination against non-whites could be handled with “benign neglect.” However, as Uganda’s black President Idi Amin’s anti-white policies became increasingly aggressive, “Moynihan’s bluster” (a phrase I’ve taken from the Capital Times) denounced him as “racist” with a vehemence not customary in diplomatic circles. (See Christian Century, Nov. 5, 1975). This has led some non-whites--unfairly, others believe--to place Moynihan himself in a ‘‘racist” category.
Thus ‘‘racism’ can be seen to have a wide range of meanings from the bland to the criminal. The sophisticated propagandist may use the word in the American Heritage sense while hoping his hearers will understand it in UNESCO’s way. Persons concerned for problem-solving communications, however, will indicate their usage whenever they introduce it.
“ZIONISM”
Philip Potter, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, has declared that “Zionism...is subject to many understandings and interpretations” (Ecumenical Press Service, Nov. 11, 1975).
We’ll be going into some of these in a subsequent section. But first we’ll concentrate on the concept which is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli dispute: Political Zionism. This may be defined as “the Jewish nationalist movement, launched by Herzl in 1897, that has sought to create and maintain a Jewish State in Palestine and environs.” It has so far developed no uniform agreement on either the meaning of “Jewish” or the extent of territory claimed.
Herzl & Political Zionism
Speaking of this movement, ex-Israeli scholar Michael Selzer--who once believed himself to be a Zionist--stated in 1970 that “Zionism is a complex phenomenon, adequately understood by only a small percentage of its critics and by an even smaller percentage of its supporters.” What follows is only the sketchiest introduction to the subject which you can follow up with the help of encyclopaedias (under both “Zionism” and “Herzl”) and many available specialized volumes, pro and con.
The underlying assumptions of Herzl and his successors have been fourfold. While expressed in a variety of new forms, they continue to be strongly influential on the hopes, fears, plans and practices of present-day Israel. They are:
1. Jews and Gentiles are inherently (genetically?) incapable of living harmoniously in the same society. Anti-Semitism is an incurable Gentile affliction.
2. For self-preservation all Jews must settle together in the same country. Herzl was willing to accept 6,000 uninhabited square miles of Uganda offered by the British. However, the much more powerful emotional appeal of Palestine made that land the ultimate choice.
3. Non-Jews must either be displaced from the Jewish State or kept apart from the Jewish settlers by legal and psychological walls of separation.
4. Gentile cooperation is needed from two sources: Anti-Semites who will stimulate Aliyah (Jewish migration to Palestine), and at least one Great Power whose backing can make up for the relatively scattered smallness of world Jewry. Herzl sought the sponsorship of the Czar, the Kaiser, the King of Italy and the Turkish Sultan. His successors were more successful in enlisting first Great Britain and then (with a brief interlude of Soviet support) the U.S.A.
Herzl’s Zionism had limited appeal in its early decades. The 1841 Declaration by Charleston’s Jews that “this country (the U.S.A.) is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our Temple” had become the dominant view of most American Jews, particularly Reform Jews, and had its counterparts elsewhere.
Strictly Orthodox Jews reacted on a different basis. As far back as 1903 the Lubavitscher Hasidim were denouncing political Zionism as “rebellion against the Lord and denial of Torah.” To this day, Jerusalem’s Neturei Karta Jews call it blasphemy for preempting God’s role in the uniting of all Jewry. (Cf. Caploe, “Zionism: the Dream and the Reality,” Middle East International, Oct. 1975).
But events, especially the Hitler holocaust, were to conspire to make many people--Jewish and other--regard the Zionist political program in Palestine and environs as the only satisfactory ‘‘final solution of the Jewish problem.” To the resident Palestinians and to Arabs in adjacent countries, however, this spelled inevitable displacement or subjugation.
Israeli General Moshe Dayan has summed up the latter attitude quite candidly: “It is not true that the Arabs hate the Jews for personal, religious, or racial reasons. They consider us--and justly, from their point of view--as Westerners, foreigners, invaders who have seized an Arab country to turn it into a Jewish State” (Le Monde, July 9, 1969; cf. Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? p. 530.).
Other Concepts of ‘‘Zionism”
Both Dayan and Arafat have in mind the preceding section’s definition--complete with the fourfold underlying assumptions--when they speak of ‘‘Zionism”. To the extent that “peace can prosper and freedoms flourish only where words are precisely used and clearly understood,” that in itself is a hopeful sign.
Not that much more isn’t needed to resolve the tensions, claims and counterclaims that keep their peoples apart! But at least the fact that they’re focusing on the same realities, similarly understood can enable them, if there’s enough give and take, to make a start on the long, rocky road to a just and lasting peace. Such a start has been, to say the least, slowed down by the many persons who--however deep their sincerity--have, without feeling the need to say so, used ‘‘Zionism” in quite different senses.
The historic Christian use of ‘‘Zion” to mean ‘‘the Church” or ‘‘the Kingdom of God” still survives in such hymns as “O Zion, haste thy mission high fulfilling to...publish glad tidings...of peace....of Jesus, redemption and release.” And, interestingly enough, the only subject under the “Zionist” heading in the new Micropaedia Britannica is a churchly one. Nonetheless, this once-confusing difference seems not to have added to the recent ‘‘flustrations” at the U.N.
A view held among many ‘‘millennialist” Christians, however, has led to some perplexity. As presented in Hal Lindsey’s best-selling 1970 paperback, The Late, Great Planet Earth, the divine schedule of events paving the way for Christ’s Second Coming includes “the rebirth of Israel, an increase in natural catastrophes, the threat of war in Egypt and the revival of Satanism.” Since these are seen as inseparable from the ultimate conversion of the Jews, they are hardly in keeping with the aims of Herzlian Zionism, even though they hail the establishment of a Jewish state.
Three other concepts--none of which would necessarily find Herzl’s underlying assumptions palatable--have been dominant among many outspoken liberals. First of all, there are those Europeans and American who, since 1948, have slipped increasingly into the habit of using ‘‘Zionist” and ‘‘Jewish” as interchangeable adjectives. In this context, those Western Christians who have enjoyed bold, generous Jewish cooperation in combatting racism at home see the ‘‘Zionist-racist” label as libel, an offense demanding an immediate, energetic counteroffensive.
Again, there are those who regard Zionism as a “Jewish Liberation Movement” which, by guaranteeing a politically assured territorial haven for victims of pogroms, holocausts and other anti-Semite manifestations, is--in its purpose and function--anti-racist.
Lastly, there are those who seem to think that Martin Buber’s dream of a Zionism “friendly to the Arabs ... and opposed to all European imperialistic tendencies” is at stake in the current controversy. But the 1931 Zionist Congress slapped Buber down. And the 1956 British/French/Israeli Sinai-Suez incursion revealed how completely his ideals have been eliminated in Zionist practice. (See under “Buber” in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia and Macropaedia Britannica.)
Any definitions of Zionism you want to use are permissible. But whatever usage you employ that is at odds with the Herzlian Jewish nationalism at the heart of the current commotion ought to be labeled. Otherwise you’ll be adding to the confusion which so urgently needs clearing up.
As an example of how one person has done this with commendable clarity, I cite the following paragraph from an article on “Zionism and Racism” by David G. Gil in the Nov. 25, 1975, Brandeis University in-house periodical. Deploring the sloganeering at the U.N. and associating ‘‘Zion” with Jewish pursuit of all that makes for universal peace, Prof. Gil states:
“The Jewish people must overcome the racist elements of political Zionism and of the State of Israel which are a blatant contradiction of the true meaning of Zion and which threaten Jewish physical and cultural survival. To overcome these elements Jews need to recommit themselves to the original meaning of Zion, peace through justice and equality for all people including the Palestinians. In political terms this means affirming the equal rights of Jews and Palestinians to return to their common homeland and to live in a multi-ethnic commonwealth of self-directing, cooperating communities throughout the land of Zion-Palestine, with neither people dominating and exploiting the other.”
OTHER CONFUSING WORD-USES
In the course of the reactions to the November 10 U.N. resolution, other words have come up indicating that differences in “understanding one another’s speech” aren’t limited to the two controversial terms focused on above. ‘‘Democracy,” ‘‘religion” and ‘‘anti-Semitism,” so fuzzily used in other areas, contribute to the confusion by their imprecise use here.
‘‘Democracy”
Take ‘‘democracy’ first. Castigating “Third World Rhetoric at the U.N.”, the Christian Century (Nov. 5, 1975) characterized Israel as a “democracy ... which has a religious, not a racist base” and “cannot afford the luxury of debate over Zionism.” With a contrasting usage, Israeli Zvi Yaron wrote in the Jerusalem Post (Sept. 4, 1975) that “if we shall have full democracy, it obviously will not be a Jewish state.” He clearly claims the democratic right of debate to affirm that a Zionism which discriminates on either a religious or racial basis is undemocratic. (The other side of this coin is the conviction of some of his fellow Israelis that the “secular, democratic state in Palestine” plumped for by the PLO would be “the death of Israel.”)
‘‘Religion”
‘‘Religion’ is another of those words which, in general use, are more colored by emotions than clear to the mind. It can apply to a high spiritual-moral-ethical devotion. It also is used of exclusivist and prejudicial convictions and behavior due to rigid credal or institutional, even ‘‘ethnic”, loyalties. To gain perspective, let’s concentrate on usages outside the “Zionism=racism” controversy.
Are the tragic wars in Iceland and Lebanon ‘‘religious” or ‘‘irreligious”? Was the July, 1099, holocaust by ‘‘Christian” Crusaders in Jerusalem ‘‘religious”? Were the Israelites’ genocidal forays into Jericho (sparing only the family of a cooperative prostitute) and other Palestinian cities “on a religious, not a racial, base”? (See Josh. 6:21f, 8:2, 9-12; c.f. Deut. 7:2, 20:13, I Sam. 15:3) Was Moses being ‘‘religious” or ‘‘ethnic” when he selected members of just one tribe, Levi, to slaughter some 3000 Hebrews for worshipping a false god (Exod. 32:25-29)? And what did David Borac mean when he called the 1944 Zionist assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, “a religious duty”? (Jewish Press, Aug. 8, 1975).
On the current scene, let’s take just one example to balance the assertion above that Israel “has a religious base”: In the Christian Century’s neighbor publication, the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 25, 1975), Mike LaVelle viewed Zionism and Israel as “not a religion”. The extent to which these usages may seem to contradict each other reflects in no way on either writer. It can, however, cause confusion.
(A minor added reason for being extra careful in one’s use of ‘‘religion” in a controversy over ‘‘racism” lies in the fact that hymns like the Jewish “Rock of Ages” and the Protestant “All hail the power of Jesus’ name” sing of the religious community as a “race”!)
‘‘Anti-Semitism"
Another vague and ambiguous word was introduced into the confusion of November 11, 1975, when the U.S. Congressional joint resolution declared that the previous day’s U.N. action “encourages anti-Semitism.” So many have been the uses of that noun, some vicious, some remedial, that a whole Centennial Volume could well be produced in recognition of its first known use in print---by Wilhelm Marr in 1879.
In an article entitled “Anti-Semitism Redeployed” in Ma’ariv (Sept. 5, 1975), Ephraim Kishon revived the suggestion that prejudice against any Semites, including Arabs, should be so branded.
Herzl maintained in a different vein, that once the Jewish State was founded--any of the then 14,000,000 Jews who refused to migrate there should be classed as ‘‘anti-Semitic" (Herzl, The Jewish State, tr. Lipsky, 1947, p. 81).
Among the other definitions and redefinitions, the one being most vigorously promulgated today is “any talk of substance that is critical of Israel or Zionism.” Pres. Nahum Goldmann of the World Zionist Congress rejects this usage, but Forster and Epstein’s The New Anti-Semitism, 1973, fosters it by imposing that label-libel on the Quakers, Episcopalian Dean Francis B. Sayre, Senator Fulbright, Evans & Novak and the Christian Science Monitor! Ahab in denouncing Elijah (I Kings 18:17), and Amaziah in expelling the critical Amos (Am. 7:10-13) could have made handy use of such an epithet!
The persons whom this revised usage can downgrade are legion: There’s Harry Truman, for instance, when he wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt: “The action of some of our Zionists ... will eventually prejudice what they are trying to get done. I very much fear the Jews are like all other underdogs. When they get on top, they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.” There’s also Nahum Goldmann at whose 1970 article in Foreign Affairs Golda Meir snorted, “It’s the most anti-Zionist statement I’ve ever seen.” (Wright, The Great Zionist Cover-up, 1975, pp. 10,35). And, more recently, there’s Joe Alsop’s devastating “Open Letter to an Israeli Friend” (N.Y.Times Magazine, Dec. 15, 1975).
The trouble with this latter-day campaign so to redefine ‘‘anti-Semitism" is that it undercuts its important use to ferret out, expose and destroy the scourge clearly described by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. That source uses “the term ... to denote the movement to degrade Jews to an inferior position in all branches of life in the countries in which they live. Generally, it is applied to individual and group incitation and action aiming to circumscribe the civil, religious and political rights of the Jews; also to hinder normal relations between Jews and non-Jews.”
Just which anti-Semitism did the Congress have in mind on November 11, 1975! It would help to know.
- The Rev. I. Humphrey Walz, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (Scotland), concentrated on Eastern Mediterranean cultures in his college days and in four years of graduate study, including two at Oxford University. He is Communications Consultant to the United Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast in which he served until recently as Middle East Studies Chairman. In pastoral, governmental, ecumenical and denominational posts, he has rendered significant services to refugees from Nazism, Communism and Palestine.