An Israeli-American Journalist

PLO Agreement Reflects Israel's Coming of Age

By Leon T Hadar

As Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) move to implement their peace accords, and as Israel reaches similar agreements with several Arab states and finds itself on the way to integration in the Middle East, Israelis and their supporters abroad will need to re-think and redefine the ideological foundations and the long-term goals of the state of Israel, as embodied in Zionist ideology.

Classical Zionism, as a nationalist and collectivist movement, was predicated on the need to establish an exclusive Jewish state in which all members of the Hebrew faith eventually will settle. It had its roots in the chauvinistic and socialist ideologies of Central and Eastern Europe, and derived its political strength from anti-Semitic philosophies that flourished in those areas, and which gave birth to Nazism, and culminated in the European Holocaust. At the same time, "Zionism" has been used by Western media to refer in general terms to political and public support for Israel.

After the establishment of Israel, the continuing conflict with the Arab world helped to perpetuate the notion of Jewish separatism and a sense of Israeli-centered Jewish identity that transcended national borders. This was backed by the powerful American-Zionist "complex," with its goals of generating political and financial support for the Jewish state.

Indeed, Zionist governments in Israel and leaders of the organized American Jewish community helped to preserve each other's political power. American Jewish leadership helped to deliver U.S. congressional votes and American financial resources to Israel, so as to maintain Israeli military and economic power and preserve the political status of the ruling Israeli elites. At the same time, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the cause of defending Israel from the Palestinians, the Arabs, and "anti-Israel" and "anti-Semitic "journalists, politicians and bureaucrats has helped create administrative empires like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAQ and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA). These and allied organizations provide professional opportunities for many Jewish activists in the United States.

However, it is important to remember that both before and after the establishment of Israel there have been important political movements there that strongly oppose the tenets of Zionism and support alternative secular and territorial concepts of national identity to replace it.

The idea of a non-Zionist and secular alternative to Israel, including the possibility of separating religion and state and creating an independent Israeli nationalism that will not be identified with Judaism, has been very popular among young native Israelis.

The "Canaanite Movement," led after 1948 by Uri Avnery, the editor of the lively and popular weekly Ha'olam Ha'zeh and author of Israel Without Zionism, supported creation of a Hebrew-speaking Israeli nation in which state and religion would be separate and the exclusive Jewish identity of the state would disappear. The nation that is developing in Israel is separate politically from World Jewry and has its own independent cultural identity, which is more linguistic and territorial than religious, Avnery argued.

Judaism would remain an important cultural (not political) component of Israel, in the same way that Catholicism plays an important role in Polish or Italian nationalism. However, in the same way that Protestants can become legitimate members of the Italian or Polish nations, Christians and Muslims could become part of the new Israeli, Hebrew-speaking nation. One of the main goals of the "Canaanite Movement" was to work toward full and equal civil rights for the non-Jewish population. which would be stipulated in a written constitution (which Israel still does not have today).

Avnery and his followers also argued that the networks of political and financial ties with World Jewry, and especially with the American Jewish community, force on Western Jews the dilemma of dual loyalty, corrupt Israeli economic and social life, and prevent changes in Israeli security and diplomatic posture that could lead to a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and integration of Israel into the Middle East.

A corollary to Avnery's argument is that U.S. government and private American Jewish economic aid to Israel produce an unhealthy dependency on foreign aid and create disincentives for development of an independent and productive economy. This foreign aid also is helping to perpetuate a corrupt political system, including parasitic political and religious parties. At the same time, the aid, and American diplomatic support, also enable the Zionist leadership in Israel to avoid making political concessions necessary for peace with Israel's Arab neighbors.

Already in the late 1950s, Avnery was proposing establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and the creation of a federation between Israel in its then existing borders and a Palestinian entity in the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem serving as their mutual capital. While Israelis and Palestinians will continue to maintain cultural ties with World Jew and the Arab world respectively, the new federation, argued Avnery, will weaken both the Zionist and the pan-Arabist trends in both communities, and will create a basis for a new separate Israeli-Palestinian entity.

Avnery, who has devoted all of his public life to advancing the idea of Israeli separatism and to making peace between Israel and the PLO, has always been a man ahead of his time. Now close to 70, he may yet see his dream come true.

In many ways, the decision to reach an agreement with the PLO reflects the coming of age of a post-Zionist Israel. It is the victory of the Americanized, secular and consumer-oriented yuppies of Tel Aviv, in alliance with the non-ideological Russian-Jewish immigrants, with their vision of Israel as a Middle East Singapore. It is the defeat of the messianic religious forces of Jerusalem and the West Bank Jewish settlements, with their vision of Israel as a Middle Eastern Jewish ghetto.

Certainly the agreement with the PLO reflects a willingness on the part of the Labor Party leadership to begin modifying the concept of classical Zionism by agreeing to share the historical Land of Israel with the Palestinian people. That, in turn, reflects a growing sense of "Israelism" among native Israelis as opposed to the wider notion of Jewish nationalism.

Those who support the accord, writes Doron Rosenblum in Ha'aretz, see the state of Israel "as an independent national identity, with 'earthly' goals, which operates in the realpolitik dimensions, like other nations of the world." Those who oppose the agreement, argued Rosenblum, 11 see the Jewish existence as community-based, as a metaphysical entity, with no clear definition of space and time." With the exception of their military forces and holy places, there is nothing, according to this view, that distinguishes the Jews Of Israel from the Jews of Brooklyn. "Israel" as a separate identity does not exist. The "rejectionists" in Jerusalem and New York, wrote Rosenblum, "are worried that the peace agreement will remove the walls of the Israeli Ghetto and turn Israel into a 'normal' nation."

Indeed, it is this prospect of Israel turning into a "normal" nation, co-existing with the Palestinians and at peace with the other Arabs, that worries many members of the Zionist-American "complex." If the cure for polio raised questions about the raison d'etre of the March of Dimes organization, a move toward Arab-Israeli peace begins to pull the rug from under America's Israel oriented Jewish organizations and their leaders. These groups have thrived during Middle East crises, and in periods of tension in U.S.-Israeli relations.

The end of the Arab-Israeli conflict not only threatens the extremely well paid jobs of pro-Zionist lobbyists and fund-raisers in New York and Washington. It also makes it more difficult for them to make and keep commitments. Indeed, it already is more difficult to promise to "deliver" the Jewish vote, or the financial support of Jewish organizations for this or that presidential and congressional candidate in exchange for his or her support for restrictions on the PLO or for increasing aid to Israel.

On another level, the peace agreement and the possibility that Israel eventually will integrate economically into the Middle East means that in the long run Israel will be less in need of U.S. diplomatic and economic support-making American Jewish political and financial power less of a strategic necessity. It could also increase the distance between a more "normal" Middle Eastern Israel, increasingly integrated into its geographical and cultural environment, and a more "normal" American Jewish community, increasingly assimilated into the mainstream of American society and culture.

The prospect of the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the decline of Zionism, and a more "normal" relationship between Israel and American Jewry will make it necessary to redefine the American Jewish identity. The time has come for American Jews to follow the footsteps of the New Israelis, take advantage of the opportunities provided by the PLO-Israel agreement and move toward developing their own sense of separatism and independence from Israel. While maintaining their religious ties with Israeli Jews as well as with other Jews around the world, American Jews can begin now to take their own road toward post-Zionist "normalcy."

Leon T Hadar covers Washington and international affairs for several American and foreign media outlets.