I used to be a pretty adamant Zionist. And my reasoning was clear, but troubling (and troubled). I knew of course that the re-conquest of Judea was in essence criminal.
That you cannot just walk back into a land where “you” had veritable history — that is, those who joined Judaism during the Diaspora; those who became “the Jewish people” by assimilation into it, and “identified” as Jews — and simply take it over.
But then really — why not?
All the elaborate, strained rhetoric to assemble a justification amounted to little more than excuses for a blatant and obvious land-grab. Nothing could justify it except carrying it off successfully.
But why bother with justifications?
And there is the bottom-line truth : power made a move. And strategic genius won the day. It seemed to me that I need not create false attempts to justify the unjustifiable. And with that stance — cynical or realist? — I felt that I was describing the world — the world as it is. And likely as it will remain.
Israel Am Chai as the mantra goes— it is a mantra: an acknowledgement of intention, self-affirming power, and a will that operates not just for a day but for millennia.
Rome destroyed Carthage and composted the remains. Who weeps today for Carthage? Oh look! All those pretty flowers!
Life needs nutriments.
The actual issue, then, is understood to be how to get along knowing that this is actually how things work in the world.
It’s really quite odd: it became a righteous mode to hate South African apartheid and to see the creators of that nation as vile oppressors. And to hold on to that arrangement required
violence. Then, righteous and “moral” sentiments (I assume genuine) got hold of people, and even got hold of progressive South Africans, and they “abolished Apartheid”. The world celebrated. And in short order (if my sources are right) the state is tending toward ruin.
This will sound really horrid but … the chimps took over the Zoo. Everyone
sees this but no one will
actually see it.
Ownership turned against itself. It hated itself. It couldn’t bear the moral pressure set against holding to strict power principles. More or less of the same sort that Israel is dealing with.
In fact, I don’t know how to solve the Power Principle Dynamic.