Zionism Unsettled Creates Zionist Demons
Michael Aronson

The central fault of Zionism Unsettled, the Presbyterian Church’s recently published teaching and discussion tool on the Israeli-Palestinian occupation, is the lofty goal it sets for itself. In trying to answer the question, what are the problems of Zionism, it finds itself trying to answer another, fiercely difficult question, what is Zionism, in absolute terms in order to back up its claims. The problems are conflated with the phenomenon such that the phenomenon becomes the problem.

The book attempts to present multiple Zionisms in its introductions of Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion, Begin, and Netanyahu in its early chapters. The later parts of the book, however, read as if these people and the world-views that they bring are all part of the same cabal, as if Zionism is a single monolithic form evolving in time. As early as chapter 2, the text asks “How, why and when did Zionism, a secular nationalist movement, become a religious movement?” (p.15). That religious and secular-political ideas informed each other in Zionisms’ formative years, and that religious and secular forms of Zionism continue to dialogue with each other, is recognized, but this hardly justifies the hard identification between religious and political Zionisms implied by the question. Later, radical Zionist movements such as Gush Emunim are largely treated as part of a largely homogenous Zionist phenomenon. While there is only so much space in a 73 page book to address nuance, the problem is that the idea of a linearly developing monolithic Zionism is just not true. A perfunctory look at the Israeli political system makes this clear, but Zionism Unsettled does not prevent this confusion.

The periodization of monolithic Zionism is further reinforced by the book’s contention that Zionism is “Constantinian” Judaism, that is, Judaism wedded to state power. While Zionism is a Jewish phenomenon, equating it with Judaism in this manner is problematic. First, Israel is only partially governed by Jewish religious law. This state of affairs is itself a complicated political compromise, and it looks more and more likely that this influence may shrink within the next few decades. Second, political use of and regard for religious ideas notwithstanding, many of the architects of Zionism, and all of those seriously addressed by the book, were or are not religious. A state Judaism was not their dream; a national home and identity for Jewish people was. Any claim that Zionism is Judaism politicized must rest on more than anecdotes, and any attempt to explore the relationships between the religious and political movements must critically distinguish between religious expression, emotional outpouring and political pragmatism. Third, that Zionism gave birth to a new secular Israeli nationality and consciousness, distinct from Jewish consciousnesses as they exist in the United States and elsewhere, contradicts the claim that Zionism is state Judaism, not to mention ongoing Zionist negation of the Diaspora and even denial of continuity with a Jewish religious past perceived as weak and anemic, in some quarters.

Zionism as religion is made crucial to the book’s case that treating the Bible, a religious document, as a land deed is wrong. It seems to me that if Zionism Unsettled wants to be taken seriously on these points, the Presbyterian Church must make a serious and public accounting of the Puritans’ behavior towards the American Indians, as well as Manifest Destiny, including the possibility of leading the charge on making reparations that are long overdue. In any event, while the interactions of Jewish religious, cultural and political feelings that create diverse Zionisms is a difficult subject, distinctions must be made, but Zionism Unsettled does not formally make them. Some Zionists and the Greater Israel movements may ground their claims in the Bible, but others do not. Some Zionist expressions are religiously motivated. Others are starkly secular.

Something that Zionism Unsettled does very well is it gives voice to the Palestinian minority, and sheds light on conditions to which many in the United States turn a blind eye. There is a lot of information here about conditions in the occupied territories, ostensible non-Jewish Zionisms, as well as Israel’s position relative to international law and human rights that should raise unsettling questions for everybody. But while all of this is commendable, this information is introduced by trading uncritical support for Israel with uncritical condemnation of Israel, and in the process, some of the worst anti-semitic calumnies, including but not limited to Jewish world organizations attempting to control peoples’ minds, find renewed if unintentional expression. The book attempts to balance this by airing dissenting opinions of diaspora Jewry, but in a way that directly questions whether the diaspora is really a diaspora at all, and obliquely questions whether Israel should be a Jewish homeland, or whether the world is Jewish homeland enough. “There is no diaspora; Jewish expression is alive and well both inside and outside Israel.” (p. 48)

While I feel it probable that the world according to Zionism Unsettled results from zealousness for the cause

of the oppressed and losing control of the subject matter, the responsible thing remains to question the published page. Zionism has many problems in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. These problems are political, existential, humanitarian, and yes, even religious. But to conflate the problems with the movements in the ways that Zionism Unsettled does feels ideologically violent and irresponsible to me. In the world according to Zionism Unsettled, it seems I can be a Zionist or a humanitarian, but not both. It is as if Zionism Unsettled is looking for Zionist demons, and trades a Jewish problem for a Zionist one.