Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel

By Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. Interlink, 1993,224 pp. List: $14.95; AET: $11.95 for one, $14.95 for two.

Reviewed by H. J. Skutel

"Out of the original sins of the world against the Jews, grew the original sins of Zionism against the Palestinians," writes Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi in a line that most closely conveys the conceptual framework of his latest book.

The author, who teaches psychology at the University of Haifa, has long been interested in the factors which have contributed to the development of Israeli political culture and condition that country's behavior within the global community. For example, in his 1987 book, The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, he describes the evolution and motives behind the Jewish state's support for some of the world's most repressive regimes.

Israel's supporters, in particular, will find Original Sins scarcely less unsettling as it constitutes an audacious assault on the totality of cherished assumptions and sacrosanct myths which undermine the entire Zionist enterprise. The fraudulent socialism of Israel's founders, the politicization of Israeli archeology, and the Holocaust "industry" are just a few of the topics covered. Its closely reasoned arguments, supported by some startling and unfamiliar documentation, are presented with luminous clarity.

The book commences with a superb synopsis of Jewish history from the period of the Biblical chronicles—which are reviled as mostly imaginary—to the 19th century advent of political Zionism. In 30 pages, the author depicts clearly the social, political and economic changes which precipitated the dissolution of traditional Jewish life in the modern era. This created a marginalized Jewish intelligentsia susceptible to the idea of a reconstituted Jewish national home, safe from the depredations of anti-Semitism.

Beit-Hallahmi dismisses as nonsensical attempts to portray political Zionism as a "colonialist conspiracy against Third World natives.'' At the abstract level, and as initially conceived, there was nothing, he maintains, morally reprehensible in its goal of alleviating Jewish suffering through the realization of "Jewish sovereignty and territorial concentration." Granted the erroneous proposition that Jews are a nationality, as the Zionists claim, this was no more than other nationalities were clamoring for in 19th century Europe.

The trouble with Zionism began, says Beit-Hallahmi, when it disembarked in Palestine. There it became an "intended colonialism," which has sought ever since to justify its "dispossession and victimization of a whole people." This has been accomplished, in part, by offering the world "the most original and unique defense."

Unlike colonialist settlers elsewhere, who were inspired by a "civilizing mission" or prospects of commercial gain, Zionist settlers depicted themselves as "true natives'' who were simply "returning home after an extended stay abroad." They therefore had to depict the indigenous Arab population as the "foreigners"!

Beit-Hallahmi regards as equally specious the more familiar claim that Zionism is the "national liberation movement" of the Jewish people. In a successful liberation movement, he explains, there should be only victors. The victims, if any, should be the oppressors who, having been defeated, are forced to relinquish their hold on the oppressed nation and return home.

In the case of Zionism, however, the victims—the Palestinians—are completely guiltless, having had no hand in the creation of the religious and racial anti-Semitism which necessitated the quest for Jewish liberation. More to the point, he asks why many Jewish academics who champion Zionism persist in living in New York, Princeton or Cambridge under the "oppressive conditions Zionism was created to liberate them from."

Convincing evidence of the colonialist character of Israel is found in what Beit-Hallahmi scathingly calls its "herrenvolk democracy." The need to preserve the myth of a unified "Jewish people" and ensure its predominance in the "national home'' precludes implementation of the fundamental precepts of a true Western style democracy. Instead, there is a "dual system of rights and privileges," these being assigned in disproportionate degree to a "select group of citizens" qualifying as both citizens and nationals of Israel—i.e., Jews. Indeed, Israel is the "only state in the modern world in which citizenship and nationality are two separate, independent concepts. "

The failure of Jewish Americans to denounce the inequities of Zionism and the repression of the Palestinians is attributed by Beit-Hallahmi to the crippling psychological dependency of American Jews on Israel. The decline of religious traditions, he argues, has left them feeling alienated and insecure, with little by which to define their Jewishness. Consequently, they look to Israel for the "ideological content" desperately needed to "fill the vacuum of their identity." In return, Israel obtains their "unlimited political support." The Jewish state, he declares, has "become the Jewish religion."

Particularly arresting is Beit-Hallahmi's discussion of the agonizing moral quandary into which, he contends, Israelis have been thrown by their roles as colonialist overlords. For those who have long empathized with the Palestinians and their suffering, his analysis of Israeli psychology may seem unduly charitable, if not apologetic. After all, voluminous evidence of Israeli brutality and systematic humiliation in the occupied territories has raised a reasonable doubt as to whether the majority of Israelis experience any pangs of conscience where Palestinians are concerned.

According to the author, however, the resistance of the Palestinians has forced Israelis to recognize that their "beloved home has been built at the expense of others" and that the "cost of domination is their own bondage to oppression.'' What's more, he submits, Israelis want the Palestinians to "forgive" them, but do not believe it will ever happen. On the other hand, Israelis fear that any acknowledgment of guilt for past crimes against the Palestinians will destroy the moral justification for Zionism, and result in their being deprived, by international consensus, of all rights in the present.

Hence, Israelis perceive themselves as being trapped in an impossible situation, tormented by the gnawing fear that they—the "last white settlers in Asia"—are following in the footsteps of the ill-fated Crusaders. It is this collective despair for the future which, the author warns, may lead Israel to seek refuge in a dangerous intractability.

"The Zionist vision," says Beit-Hallahmi, "promised an end to the tragic history of the Jewish people." But as time goes by it becomes increasingly clear "that Zionism has done nothing of the kind." Rather, the state of Israel has become "just another chapter in the calamitous history of the Jews."

Original Sins is arguably the most incisive and compelling critique of Zionism and Israel to appear during the past decade. It demonstrates once again that it is from within the oppressor's own camp that some of the most impassioned and articulate calls for justice and humanity toward the Palestinians are heard. It is this which offers hope, however faint, that the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians may yet be reconciled.

H. J. Skutel is a free-lance writer in Montreal with a special interest in Zionism and Middle East affairs.