Cloudy with a Chance of Missiles

John Kerry, who literally lives in cloud cuckoo land, has urged a "reality check" from Israelis and Palestinians.  This come from the person who has been obsessed with the only sliver of land in the Middle East that is not currently on fire as the rest of the region burns.  I am sure he does not even realize that now, like every time there has been a so-called "peace process," we will have to deal with the fallout and frustration of failed expectations.

Personally, I am really looking forward to the day when John Kerry is just a historical footnote.

L'Affaire Yaalon

Recently, the Israeli Defense Minister got himself into hot water for saying what everyone else has been thinking.  Referring to the Crimean crisis, he stated that:

“If you sit and wait at home, the terrorism will come again. Even if you hunker down, it will come. This is a war of civilizations. If your image is feebleness, it doesn’t pay in the world. Nobody will replace the United States as global policeman. I hope the United States comes to its senses. If it doesn’t, it will challenge the world order, and the United States is the one that will suffer.”

This made the State Department go ballistic, caused Kerry to call Bibi, and apparently involved a request from the American side that Yaalon resign from his post!

My thoughts on this whole affair include:

• Instead of trying to turn Israel into your whipping boy, maybe the "cronies" at the State Department should address the points that Yaalon raised. It seems to me that they are trying to kill the messenger precisely because his points were so close to home. 
• Israel is a democracy where free speech is protected. The US also used to value freedom of expression, but clearly those days are gone.
• Yaalon was freely elected by the voting public and is a war hero who is eminently suited to this position. Why would the US think that they could dictate who is in the Israeli cabinet? Can you imagine any country making such demands?
• Since the NSA is reading this, I expect that I am now on some Orwellian watch list.
• Actually one of the things that I love the most about Israel is that being "dugri" (i.e. direct/blunt) and free-wheeling, heated debates, are a valued form of discourse. It is so refreshing to be in a place where political correctness has not yet infiltrated people’s vocabulary and minds to the point that they can't produce a sentence without qualifying it ten times. I honestly can't tell you how much I missed this all the years that I was living in the US! 

Lastly, I find this whole affair slightly odd when you consider how much harm this administration has done to US-Israel relations. Let’s take a moment to recap some highlights:

The administration began its first term pledging the need to put some "daylight" in the relations between Israel and the US. (This is apparently the politically correct way of saying “Distance yourself while kissing up to the Arab States").

Though this administration has repeatedly said to Israelis that "among friends there are bound to be disagreements," it is clear that this is meant to only work one way.

This administration has, on more than one occasion deliberately ambushed Netanyahu on core issues surrounding the peace process - both in the press and at press conferences.

Perhaps most egregious of all, Obama had the temerity to compare Palestinians to African Americans in the antebellum South and the Secretary of State who recently said that Israel's core, simple demand, that it be recognized as the state of the Jewish people was not particularly important.

So these are the people who want an apology because Yaalon said what everyone around the world is thinking? I think it is long past due for the Obama administration to offer an apology to Israel.

Instead, as Shakespeare famously said in Hamlet, they "doth protest too much, methinks.”

Crimea is Bigger than Israel

The BBC is reporting that while in the US, Ukrainian PM Yatsenyuk stated that:

"A country which willingly gave up its nuclear arsenal... and received guarantees from the world's leading countries, finds itself unprotected, one-on-one with a country which is armed to its teeth. If you do not uphold these guarantees… then explain how you will convince Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear status."

I think that it is a good question and certainly something that Israelis are watching carefully.  The Obama administration has removed sanctions from Iran while asking Israel to trust the US amid promises that it will all work out in the end.  At the same time the administration is admonishing Israel not to take any action to ensure our security because the US has our back.

With the Palestinians, Israelis are being asked to return to the ceasefire lines (not borders) of 1967 in which the country will be less than 10 miles wide at its narrowest point.  The US is offering security "guarantees" to entice Israel to commit national suicide by giving up the Jordan Valley.  Based on the Budapest Memorandum and guarantees that were given to the Ukraine in 1994, we will be closely watching how the US and EU react following the upcoming referendum this Sunday in the Crimea.

Even with all of the captured territories, Israel is still smaller than Crimea.  Maybe, instead of pressuring Israel and making 10 trips to Jerusalem in the past year, Kerry should have spent some time in Kiev and Moscow?

Self Inficted Catastrophe

Prof Ephraim Karsh's definitive and eye-opening article on the Palestinian refugee issue is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the events of 1948. Based solely on documents from that era, many of which have only recently been made available to historians, Karsh shows, what reputable historians have been saying all along - that the Palestinian refugee problem is one that was caused primarily by the venal Palestinian leadership and self-interested Arab parties.


To read the article in HTML.
To read it as a PDF.
To read the fully annotated version.

Which ever way, definitely read it!

Canary in the Coal Mine

Israel has often been called the canary in the coal mine - what happens in Israel tends to repeat itself elsewhere, usually sooner rather than later. Ironically, this is no where more true than in the Muslim world. The terrorism that was first tested out on Israeli children is now de rigeur in Baghdad. Suicide bombings - which were unheard of twenty years ago, are now common from Mauritania to Pakistan. The fighting skills that Hamas perfected against Israel was used to throw their brothers off of rooftops and to undemocratically maintain power in Gaza.

Moreover, while countless articles have been written about how the conflict has been bad for Israel, it seems to me the Arabs have fared much worse. Israel remains a vibrant democracy with an enviable economy and a strong legal system. Palestinian society is in shambles. When they remember the Nakba, they do not have to hearken back 60 years, but rather can just look around them. Sure, they blame Israel, but it is they - and not Israel - that has to endure daily suffering at the hands of their own brothers.

The Palestinians - who were once led by the secular PLO and famously included many Christians, has now been replaced by Hamas - which is rapidly weeding out Fatah along with the minuscule Christian community in Gaza. While Israel is roundly attacked for "human rights abuses" Hamas in Gaza has perfected its societal oppression and waiting for the chance to spread it to the West Bank and all of Israel. If it works in Israel, you can be sure this will impact Jordan Egypt and Lebanon.

Though I am opposed to the way Kossovars declared independence, I commend them for instinctively realizing this. Michael Totten, who usually reports from Lebanon is presently doing a series on the Balkans. Recently (April 30), he wrote:

Kosovo is the world’s newest country, and its unilateral declaration of independence is more controversial than the existence of Israel. It should be only slightly surprising, then, that many Kosovars, though most are Muslims, identify to an large extent with the Israelis. “Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land,” a prominent Kosovar recent told journalist Stephen Schwartz. “Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”

So, while columnists the world over are busy eulogizing Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding, they may want to consider also asking about the odds of the Palestinians surviving as one people for another 60 years. Or will the fault lines of Fatah and Hamas, Christian and Muslim, Secular and Religious, and Refugee and those living in the territories, West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Arab and non-citizen Arabs prove too much? The same could be said for most of the repressive Middle East states, where tribe, religion, ethnicity and politics are all regularly suppressed by the totalitarian regimes that rule the region.

Sure, Israel has its societal divides as well, but they are out in the open and are regularly discussed. As New York Times columnist Freedman noted in his book The World is Flat, the difference between India and Pakistan is that in India, when a poor boy looks up the hill and sees a mansion, he says "One day I will grow up and be that man." When a Pakistani boy looks up, he says, "One day I am going to kill that man." The only discussions that occur at present in Palestinian society and Muslim society as a whole, occur at the end of a rifle.

I doubt I will be around in 60 years and don't really know if Israel will be around in 60 years, but am pretty sure that Muslim dictators and the Palestinians should be the most worried right about now.

Manchurian or Mensch?

Paul Krugman and Roger Cohen fight it out over Obama on the pages of the New York Times.

In an article titled "Hate Springs Eternal", Krugman accuses the Obama camp of verging on a cult of personality and implies in the process that there is no substance there. Even worse, he compares Obama to President Bush, which in Obamaland (read the article) is probably the worst epithet that he could come up with short of comparing him to Mississippi's civil rights era Governor Wallace:

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

Cohen, in his article, "No Manchurian Candidate" demonstrates once again that he is not only living in la-la-land, but that he can not help but be patronizing.

I believe Barack Obama is a strong but not uncritical supporter of Israel. That is what the Middle East needs from an American leader: the balance implicit in a two-state solution.

He implies that Israel does not know what's in its own interests and needs armchair intellectuals like Cohen or foreign policy (idealists? novices?) such as Barak Obama to sort it out and put it on the right path. Aside from the fact that this stinks of Marxist notions of "false consciousness" that permeate the "progressive" mindset, Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that if a peace partner emerges it can and will make difficult and painful concessions for the sake of peace. In both the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties Israel gave up hard-won territories for the sake of peace - even though it was clear from the start that it would be a cold peace.

What exactly did the Egyptians give up? Their claim to Gaza? Well they are most welcome to it. Israel withdrew over two years ago and Hamas seems interested in such an arrangement. For some reason the Egyptians have not been so keen.

Cohen is not only implying, but also saying that if only Israel were pressured a bit more by the United States to soften its stance and sign a peace with the Palestinians (at all costs) that the conflict could be brought to closure. This is not only naive, it is discriminatory because it holds Israel to a different standard than it holds its neghbor, and it is patently wrong because it is based on the false premise that Israel, by virtue of its unnatural existence, lacks legitimacy and is the root cause of the conflict. Otherwise, why should Israel be the one forced into making concessions? Worse than patronizing, Cohen's article is offensive.

If this is Obama's position and these are the people supporting him, then you can be certain that if he is elected President, there will be rejoicing in the Arab street the likes of which we have not seen since 9/11. Who knows, perhaps someone will even have the perspicacity to put up a sign that says, "Mission Accomplished"?

The Problematics of Anthropology

Here is another egregious example of how Anthropology is used to change the discourse on the Middle East and to undermine Israel's legitimacy that I received by e-mail.

"Esmail Nashif of Birzeit University is organizing a session on Palestine and anthropology at the international Union for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 16th world congress, which will take place in Kunming, China. He welcomes paper proposals.

"Palestine: An anthropologically imagined site". The aim of the panel is to discuss the anthropological practices that focus on Palestine. By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site. While engaging critically with the
current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion
will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research
on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

Allow me to translate:

"By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that
dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site."

This is a sophisticated way of saying, "How do Anthropologists get around the fact that Palestine does not exist as a political entity?" He could have asked, "How do anthropologists study the Palestinian people?" but that would not accomplish the political goals of his proposed session. This is clear from the sentence that directly follows:

"While engaging critically with the current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

The "current problematics" is basically a euphemism for "The existence of the State of Israel" and the "colonial condition" does not refer to the Ottoman or British periods, but rather to the present-day "neocolonialism".

This is confusing to me because my 2007 Textbook for Intro to Anthropology Window on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Anthropology (2nd ed.) clearly defines "colonialism" as, "the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power." (p. 405) Since every State dominates its territory politically, economically and culturally the keyword in this definition is clearly "foreign".

By implying that Israel is a colonialist state, the session organizer is ipso facto arguing that the Jewish people are foreigners and hence no different than the British or Ottomans who preceded them. Unfortunately, this historical fiction is becoming a more and more common view - spread by precisely such people as Nashif and Abu El-Haj in their supposedly "neutral" and "academic" guises.

Since the conference is being held in China, the IUAES should consider doing a similar or joint session on Tibet. I think that such a forum would be a good place to discuss the "problematics" surrounding the desire and efforts of the Tibetan diaspora to "colonize" Tibet.

An Update to "What I Did Last Summer"

(Continued from the Previous Post)

The Sudanese Refugees

The police did indeed start rounding up Sudanese refugees and sending them to a refugee camp that was built on the grounds of Ketziot prison. The government's rationale was that this would allow them to provide services for the refugees without the need to incarcerate them. So, instead of taking the opportunity to get some good press out of a bad situation, the decision-makers chose to do the worst thing possible – take a group of refugees and put them in a tented refugee camp in the parking lot of a prison that is located in the heart of the Negev desert.

Luckily, the refugees who were camped out in the Wohl Garden were whisked away by the university students and volunteers before the police could round them up. All of them were taken to private homes and many were then provided with apartments or taken to Kibbutzes that are now hosting them. I am still in touch with one of them and they seem to be making a go of it for now.

These folks are actually the lucky ones, since the Israeli and Egyptian governments have joined hands to prevent any more Sudanese from crossing the border. Israel, as the official government spokesman is not interested in being the, “dumping ground for Africa’s problems” and Egypt is afraid people might ask why the Sudanese are so desperate to forego “Egyptian hospitality” that they prefer to sit in a prison parking lot in an enemy state. To illustrate the seriousness of this agreement, the Egyptians have taken to firing at any refugee who will try to leave Egypt. So far they have killed several refugees including a mother who was trying to free her young daughter who got stuck in barbed wire.

Sadly, the Olmert government announced that it would send most of the refugees back to Egypt and immediately turn back those caught at the border. Unconscionably, they are even trying to whip up the “terrorist” fear factor by saying that the refugees may include members of Al Qaeda who are infiltrating the country or, even more conspiratorially, that Arab governments are paying for their passage so that they overwhelm the country with Muslim immigrants. Frankly, both contentions are so ridiculous and separated from the reality on the ground that they hardly merit a retort. Children are clearly not Al Qaeda members and Arab countries who think that sending Christians (half of the refugees are from Southern Sudan) will get a really poor return on such an investment. To read about this disgrace: Click here.

Musings

In general, I found it therapeutic to be in Israel. Following the news about Israel from over here is often unnerving precisely because there are very few good things to report and very few ways to get actively involved. Also, being there one finds a certain degree of normalcy that is quite reassuring. No matter how bad the situation is, people still get up in the morning and go to work or school, spend time with their kids and have fun with their friends. Actually, most of the country is free of the day to day strife that makes the headlines and most people are not living "the conflict" every moment of their day.

On the other hand, it became sadly clear that there is an ever growing disconnect between the public and the elected authorities that is even deeper and more pervasive than what Prime Minister Olmert’s 5% approval rating suggests. In fact, there is a widespread and profound “crisis of confidence” surrounding the governmental institutions and the nation’s foundational mythos.

First of all, the President was forced to resign while I was there because he was found to be a serial sexual molester who terrorized the women on his staff. Though he never admitted to doing the things he was accused of, he left his office as part of a deal where he would not be prosecuted for his actions. This infuriated the Israeli public to the point where over 100,000 came out to protest the decision. That this did not prompt any introspection on the part of the politicians is clearly indicative of a larger trend. They felt that they could ignore those 100,000 people in the same way that they ignored the 100,000 people who came out to protest the (mis)handling of last year’s Lebanon War.

This has become part of a sadly familiar pattern that goes something like this: incompetent, corrupt and self-absorbed (take your pick) government officials make short-sighted, self-serving and disastrous decisions that cause many other people to get hurt (or die). When confronted by the public’s anger and indignation, said officials hunker down, deny responsibility, blame their political opponents for opportunism and pretend like their actions were above reproach. Not only does no one resign in disgrace, no one resigns anymore. And if, for some strange reason they do, then it is because they are using it as their “get out of jail for free” card.

Even more disturbing is the general breakdown in social solidarity (bordering on anomie) stemming from the sense that everyone is out for themselves and all alone. Contrast this with the idealism and socialism of the founding fathers and you get a clearer picture of how unsettling this shift is to most Israelis. Olmert’s volte face regarding the kidnapped soldiers and the government’s abandonment and inability to defend the residents of the city of Sderot from Palestinian rocket attacks are often cited by the man on the street as symptomatic of this mindset.

Netanyahu’s dismantling of the last vestiges of socialism and embrace of neo-liberal economic policies has also eliminated the last vestiges of what was once quite a large social safety net. That this appears to have revitalized the Israeli economy is no consolation to the thousands of homeless and 1.5 million Israelis who are currently living below the poverty line. That 19 families presently control one third of the economy and that only five of those families control 61% of the country’s wealth underlies the growing social inequalities while adding insult to injury.

Nonetheless, I would be lying if I did not say how wonderful it was to be in Israel after such a long hiatus. Jerusalem was overflowing with tourists from all over the world and has a much more cosmopolitan flavor than it once had. Today you can sample food at world-class restaurants and enjoy a rocking nightlife that even rivals Tel Aviv’s. Moreover the numerous divisions between Jews, while still there for everyone to see, no longer revolve around questions of ethnicity (e.g. Ashkenazim vs. Sephardim). At least on this point Israel can pride itself that the grand “social experiment”, which involved bringing Jews from all over the world to live together to forge a modern nation-state in their ancestral home, has been a success. Now, if only this cynical administration would get out of the way.

After Thought

On my first morning in Jerusalem, I made a beeline for the Wailing Wall to deposit some notes into the cracks of this ancient and imposing wall. Since it was a Thursday morning, the expanse was filled with families celebrating Bar Mitzvah’s. There were secular Ashkenazim and Haredim in black clothes as well as Yemenite Jews banging on drums and Sephardim with their beautiful silver-gilded “standing” Torahs. Just as I was starting to take in the raucous scene, a large group of Russian–speaking Bukharan Jews in Kaftans and large colorfully embroidered yarmulkes announced their arrival with ululations and the blowing of long “dung chen” style trumpets.

The tears welled up in my eyes as I observed this spectacle of Jewish continuity. After all, if a people who had endured 80 years of Communist repression had withstood and outlasted their oppressors, then I felt there is still hope that 80 years from now there will be Jews practicing our traditions in our land.

Biladi, Biladi!

Clearly the exodus of reporters following Alan Johnston's kidnapping in Gaza has benefitted those who prefer to sow mischief away from the limelight. Here is an article from Haaretz that demonstrates that if it is not being reported for all intents and purposes it is not happening. In general, the fact that the media does not feel it necessary to relate this story conveys the casual racism that I have referred to previously - that Palestinians (or people of color) killing Palestinians is no more interesting than "dog bites man".

What is even more disturbing however, is that for some reason not even the human rights organizations seem particularly bothered by it. Could this be because it is bad for business?

Reporting this widely makes the Palestinians look violent and this means that they lose the mantle of victimhood and the cherished position of underdog. What bleeding heart will shell out money for a group that they see as aggressors?

Besides, shining a light on the tribal warfare that is going on at present risks being banned from the area. Since organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNRWA are already heavily invested and plan campaigns around the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, this is a non-starter. It effectively becomes an internal matter.

Of course, if one were to borrow the relativist logic that is so often yet selectively used by the Left, then one might ask what difference it makes if a Palestinian child is killed by a bullet fired from an M-16 or one fired from an Ak-47? Apparently it matters to some.

Here are some examples:

Several weeks now the Gaza Strip has been burning. This is not a matter of fighting between Hamas and Fatah activists or actions by the Israel Defense Forces, but battles between armed groups that for the most part are identified with large clans. Nearly every day for the past two weeks ,men, women and children have been killed in Gaza. Every day civilians are being wounded by deliberate or stray gunfire, the result of the unrestrained use of weapons. The number of armed men in the Gaza Strip, according to various estimates, is greater than 100,000. These men belong to security mechanisms, political organizations and above all to clans, and are trying to ensure the economic interests of their kinfolk. There is a tremendous amount of weaponry in the inhabitants' homes, the entire purpose of which is a potential quarrel with a neighbor, an acquaintance or a driver on the road.

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes.

But the world is ignoring this. The media in Israel and the West, which reported on every person killed or wounded in the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas or because of "the Israeli occupation," are not taking any interest in Gaza. Even before the release of the Winograd report, the television news broadcasts and the major newspapers focused on trivial matters and chose not to deal with the danger to the lives of every Palestinian living in Gaza.

(For those who are unfamiliar with Haaretz or think that this is just self-serving Israeli propoganda, I would point out that this is the most left-wing of the mainstream Israeli newspapers and has a long track record of favorable reporting of the Palestinian cause.)

The Basis for Hope

In his most recent dispatch, "A Country Called Hope", Daniel Gordis reflects on Last Summer's war with Hizballah, the sense in Israel that the country is rudderless at present while another war is brewing for the not too distant future. Gordis correctly recognizes the malaise as greater than a simple reaction to Israel's poor performance in the war or the loss of faith in the country's leaders and public institutions. I think he is correct in saying that the root of this unease stems from a loss of faith in Zionism - the country's stated raison d'etre. As he notes:

I was speaking with an Israeli Army general the other day and our conversation turned to the recent government scandals.

“How do you explain this country?” the general asked me. “In any normal country, people would be in the streets, burning tires, protesting by the thousands. But here, nothing happens. People are going on as if there’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Maybe, I said, but I look at it differently. Burning tires would suggest that a change in the government would be enough. But that would be delusional. The reason Israelis aren’t protesting, I think, is that they understand this problem is much deeper than the government or the corruption. It’s Zionism. No one frames it that way, but that’s the real issue. One hundred and ten years after the First Zionist Congress, people are beginning to wonder if Zionism hasn’t begun to fail.

As he rightly points out, this is not meant to imply that Israel as a State has been a failure. If anything, the State has prospered and has proven itself viable in more ways than one. To take only the Israeli economy as an example, Israel's GDP is greater than that of it's neighbors combined and the standard of living that it's citizens enjoy is unmatched by its neighbors. In fact, the economic opportunities are such that over 100,000 Palestinians have made their way into Israel since 1994 either through marriage or illegal immigration (If you don't believe me, check it out). Rather:

But Israel is not doing for the Jews what the original Zionists had hoped for. And that’s what accounts for the national funk.

A century ago, the early Zionist ideologues promised that if a Jewish state were created, there would finally be one place on earth where Jews would be safe. It might not be big, it might not be beautiful, but it would be safe. In Israel, it was said, Jews would be able to defend themselves. In Israel, it was said, they would be spared the capriciousness of the world.

While I do not disagree with Gordis that this was the goal of early Zionists and of Herzl in particular, I think it is long past due for Israelis and Jews to question the assumptions under which these hopes were formulated. Zionism developed as a political philosophy in Europe during the rise of the European nation states and is a product of that historical cauldron. The majority of Europe's Jews were living in close proximity with neighbors who strived for their own imagined states. In Europe of the 1880s there was no Poland or Hungary, no Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania nor Serbia, Slovakia or many other of the nations we presently take for granted.

To be fair, the modern world has not been terribly kind to tribal peoples - whether Gypsies in Europe or Native Americans in the New World. The Jewish people have long seen themselves as a "Tribe" and combined with a sense of chosenness, there is perhaps nothing that has infuriated our detractors more than this fact. The creation of a modern nation-state, was supposed to resolve this "problem" by leading the Jews into modernity and acceptance. Once the Jews had their own country, the Jews living in the diaspora would finally have a country of their own that would be responsible for them. Zionist Jews believed that if they could get the world community to agree to let the Jews have a state of their own, the Jews could finally be masters of their own fate and become "normal" in the eyes of their neighbors. As Herzl stated, "The resolution of the Jewish difficulty is the recognition of Jews as a people and the finding by them of a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of the world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate". Zionism was conceived as the antidote to European Anti-Semitism.

With the birth of the State of Israel, Jews did finally have a say in the making of laws and governance that affected them and others. Yet the notion that this would spare the Jews from, "the capriciousness of the world" was unrealistic and I suspect that stems from a millenial mindset that confused the beginning with the end. I am not suggesting, as some have, that Zionism was a messianic movement - rather that the founding of the State of Israel following the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel's unexpected military victory in the '48 War after 2000 years of exile and oppresion seemed so unexpected and unreal - that the Jewish people can be excused for confusing this with the "birth pangs" of the Messianic age.

Actually, I think that the early Zionists knew that to truly be a master of your own destiny, you had to be able to grapple with capriciousness. Unfortunately, they failed to pass this knowledge onto their children. Instead they sold them false hopes of an imagined time when there would be no more need to struggle and suffer or of a time in the future when the Jewish "problem" would be resolved. It is hardly a wonder that so many Israelis have sought out normalcy elsewhere - moving to the United States, Australia and Europe when the capriciousness proved to be too much for them.

Unfortunately, the "capriciousness of the world" does not spare anyone and normalcy has always been an ephemera. The root of the problem actually lies in an approach that treats the Jewish people as a "problem" that needs to be resolved. The founding of the State of Israel should not be in order to solve some "problem", but rather because of Jewish self-determination and a historic right to a homeland - to their own homeland. If you make the raison d'etre of the Jewish state contingent on the resolution of a problem, then you get what we have today - either despair that the problem has not been "solved" or emigration to countries where Anti-Semitism is not tolerated and Jewish safety is no longer seen as a problem.

At a time when the State of Israel has been singled out among the nations and publicly villified to the point that the right of the State to exist is constantly being called into question, it is time that we reject the Zionist approach that seeks to solve the "Jewish Question". We should stop worrying about what our patrons might think and we should definitely not expect guarantees, approval or legitimacy from the international community. As long as we think of this as a "problem", we delude ourselves into thinking that if only we did this differently or conceded that point we would finally have the "solution". Let us publicly reject an approach that makes Jews a problem that needs to be "solved" and instead demand what are our natural rights as human beings.

To insist on Jewish rights implies that we are clear-headed and have the knowledge and conviction to demand sovereignty in our historic homeland with neither guilt nor hand-wringing. This is precisely what most of the world's nation states have done and no one questions their right to exist. Our enemies do not doubt that they have rights and are willing to unapologetically fight for these rights. It is time we abandoned the naive dreams of a bygone era, truly accept that we also have inherent rights while demonstrating our willingness to vigorously claim those rights. Frankly, this is the only basis for hope.