David--
Consider the qualifications checked.
Kevin, Dan--
I'll wade into the discussion a bit, but only a bit. My own opinions fall much closer to Kevin's as a rule, but neither of you seems to be quite on the right track about what Israel is or is not.
Let's start with the idea of the "Jewish State." I the abstract, this can potentially mean several things:
1. A state that is specifically Jewish in religious outlook. (Though I think Kevin overstates the case with his talk of "theocracy," there is an element of truth to that, in that the official rhythms of Iraeli life are, to varying extents, tied to Jewish observances.)
2. A state that looks out for, in the first instance, its Jewish citizenry. (This strikes me as probably the closest to what Israel is. Unlike apartheid South Africa, where black people were always an integral part of the economy, the Zionist project foresaw--and created--a state in which not only the upper and administrative classes were Jewish, but the working class as well, mostly through the dispossession and forced removal of Palestinian Arabs.)
3. A state that represents all the Jewish people in the entire world. (This is, I think, the claim of Zionism, more or less conflated with #2, and falsely assumes a national identity for Jews, on which more anon.)
Now all of this is somewhat fictive. States represent the interests of the dominant class in the first place, ultimately protecting those interests by violence or the possibility of violence. But you catch my drift.
On to my main point, though, which concerns nations--not the same thing as nation-states. The Jews of the world were not, by most definitions, a nation in the early 1900s. Regardless of the continued sacral importance of Hebrew, they lived in widely scattered parts of the world, spoke different languages, had differing customs, differing types of interaction with society at large, etc. An Ashkenazic Jew in Vilna lived a very different life than a Sephardic Jew in Thessaloniki or an Ethiopian Jew or a Yemani Jew.
But since 1949, with successive generations growing up in Israel, speaking Hebrew as their native tongue, etc., I think we can speak of a Hebrew-speaking Israeli nation with a valid claim to the land on which they live--a claim that wasn't valid in the same way for their immigrant ancestors. The Israeli grandson of a Polish immigrant has no particular ties to Poland, any more than I do to Germany--or that immigrant Polish couple did to Palestine.* You push that Israeli out of Israel, and he or she has been dispossessed. Again, this goes for those from Israel, not for Jewish Brooklynites.
BUT... the Palestinians who were pushed off of the land or forced into enclaves have their own, valid, conflicting claim to the same land--and they are the ones whose very presence in their own country is under threat.
(And no, the Arab regimes in the area didn't give a shit about Palestinian self-determination in 1949, either.)
And that's what makes it so damn hard. I suspect that the situation will only improve when things shift for the better in the region as a whole--which won't come from mullahs or kleptocratic U.S. puppets or the remnants of Pan-Arab nationalism. But in the short term, it's a fairly hopeless situation.
Quincy
*Titus's sacking of Jerusalem aside, it seems, from what I've read, that most of ancient Palestine's Jewish population probably stayed put, converted to Christianity and then Islam, and gradually became Palestinians.
[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited July 29, 2006).]
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