THE LEFT-WING MYTH OF ISRAEL'S FOUNDING

There is much confusion about where the line from anti-Zionism crosses into anti-Semitism. There is one group of anti-Zionists that are clearly not anti-Semites. These are those that would do away with the nation state all together - and do not single out the Jewish state as the first one that should go. Thus, in an email, esteemed anti-nationalist Jeff Hauser finds both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism problematic, although he understands the need for a Jewish homeland in light of history of genocide committed against Jews. Putting aside the problematic nature of a post-national Middle East, what troubled me most was his casual aside that he remained "largely unconvinced there was no justifiable reason to place Israel in the Middle East (rather than Germany) in 1948."

Such a statement goes past a healthy skepticism of Zionism into a pattering of the standard left-wing/Arab myth about Israel: that it was "taken" from the Arabs and "given" to European Jews in 1948 by Europeans who felt guilty about the Holocaust. This myth exposes a profound ignorance of the relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel both before and after the establishment of the Zionist movement.

First misconception: There existed no Jewish presence in the land of Israel between the destruction of the Temple and the Zionist movement.
First, the land of Israel remained a major center of Jewish life for centuries after the destruction of the Temple. The failed revolt of 66-73 C.E. did not end the struggle agaisnt Rome. Jews, first in the Diaspora, and then in the land of Israel, staged two more major uprisings in the next seventy years against Roman rule of the Jewish homeland. Even after the second aborted revolt, which lead to the renaming of the land Palestine and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, northern Israel remained the primary center of Jewish thought and religion - responsible for the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud. The only exception to the continous Jewish presence in the land of Israel was the massacre of Jews in the Crusades. During the Middle Ages, Jewish settlement of "Palestine" was sporadic, but periodic. Religious pilgrims resettled in Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias after the Crusaders were driven out; Sephardi Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition created one of the most vibrant religious community of 16th Century Judaism in Safed, in the Gailee. Way before the Zionist movement, religious immigration had made Jews the plurality of Jerusalem's population.

Second misconception: Western Benevolence in 1948 changed everything:
Large-scale secular immigration to Palestine began even before the Zionist movement in the late 19th century. The Jewish community in Palestine constructed all the institutions required for statehood (government, labor union, universities, schools, army) way before 1948. The Arabs in Palestine made no effort to build a similar pre-state apparatus. Had the British not closed off immigration in response to Arab protests in the 1930s, there would have been a Jewish majority in Palestine by 1948. Arab population growth in Palestine during the period was faster than elsewhere in the Arab world, attracting by the Zionist development of the economy. Finally, it is sheer revisionism to insist that Israel's victory in the 1948 war had anything to do with Western intervention.

Third misconception: Israelis are late-coming Europeans
A plurality of Jewish Israelis come from elsewhere in the Middle East, trading in second-class or worse status in North Africa, Iraq, Iran and Turkey to become full citizens of a Jewish state. Finally, considering that Jewish history is replete with migrations and expulsions, is it ever really accurate to say Jews "belong" in any of the states they've emigrated from to Israel? With the exception of the United States (Canada, Australia, etc.) have Jews been equal citizens of any the states in which they've resided?

In short, while Zionist propaganda that Israel was "a land without a people for a people without a land" is patently false, so is the Arab myth that Israel is simply a random colonialist enterprise of European Jews returning to a fabled homeland of 2000 years past, supported by other Europeans who were guilty over the Holocaust. Jews fled from worldwide persecution to the land of Israel because of historical roots, communal ties, and sheer necessity.