The Lie of a Jewish Nation

'Birthright' founder Michael Steinhardt giving anti-Birthright demonstrators the finger in New York, April 16, 2018. Posted by If Not Now on twitter.

Central to Zionist ideology, the idea of Jewish ‘homelessness’ and the concept of a ‘right of return’ is the myth of a Jewish nation.   Below is an article from Jonathan Offir explaining why this myth is central to Zionist ideology and the Zionist project.

This Zionist idea that Jews do not belong in the lands of their birth is really just a reflection of the anti-Semitic idea that Jews do not belong.  Zionism is not original.  Its most important ideas are borrowed, not from the Bible but from the enemies of the Jews.  Zionism is, above all, not the product of a 2,000 year yearning for a Jewish state, as the Zionists would have you believe but the desire of anti-Semites that Jews pack up and go.  It is because Zionism does not accept that Jews have any right to live anywhere outside Palestine that the fight against anti-Semitism is not a priority for it.  Historically Zionism never fought anti-Semitism because it was deemed 'futile' in the words of Political Zionism's founder, Theodor Herzl.  When individual Zionists have fought fascism or antisemitism they have done so despite not because of their Zionism.  Integral to Zionism  is the idea that anti-Semitism cannot be cured or even fought because it is inherent in the non-Jew, the Gentile.

Jonathan Offir - the author of the article below

When Zionism today purports to oppose anti-Semitism in reality it is redefining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.  Because Zionism calls its opponents, including Jewish opponents, ‘anti-Semitic’ people often forget that Zionism is not only indifferent to anti-Semitism but on occasion positively welcomes it.  

We can see, with the effusive welcome given to Donald Trump and the alt-Right in the USA by not only Netanyahu and the American Zionists but by the whole of the Zionist movement, including the Israeli Labour Party.  We can see this in the friendly relations between the anti-Semitic far-Right governments of Poland and Hungary and Israel.  Even today Zionism and anti-Semitism are like Siamese twins.

Sir Edwin Montagu - was not only the only member of Lloyd George's war cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration but he was also its only Jewish member

The quote from Sir Edwin Montagu below is from a much longer memorandum by him to his colleagues in the Lloyd George War Cabinet in August 1917.  Its title was ‘Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government’ and its opening paragraph stated:

I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty's Government is anti-Semitic in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.

How prescient this was.

When the Zionist Organisation of America held its last Annual Gala Dinner it invited Steve Bannon, formerly Donald Trump's Strategic Advisor and someone who is on record for antisemitic comments [Steve Bannon Didn’t Want Children Going to School With ‘Whiny’ Jews] according to his former wife, but also Sebastian Gorka, a member of a neo-Nazi Hungarian order , Vitezi Rend.

Tony Greenstein

The ‘Jewish nation’ is the central myth of Zionism. It needs to be dismantled

Jonathan Ofir April 18, 2018

Some people are probably wondering how it could be possible, if Israel declared its independence on the even of May 14^th that this year it is celebrating its independence on the eve of the 18^th April. The answer is, that Israel celebrates the event as if it was a Jewish holiday, according to the moon calendar, which most often does not coincide with the Latin, sun-based calendar.

This is only one aspect in how Israel seeks to apply itself as a “Jewish State”. But I am going to speak about an even more essential ideological aspect that sits at the heart of Zionism. It is not the notion of the Jewish state as such, but the notion of the Jewish nation.

Sir Edwin Montagu

First, let’s jump back 100 years and look once again at the words of the British (and notably Jewish) Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, in his critique of His Majesty’s Government’s intentions to endorse a ‘Jewish national home” in Palestine in 1917:

“I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion. It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation: of the same race, perhaps, traced back through the centuries – through centuries of the history of a peculiarly adaptable race”.

But Montagu’s logic did not win the day. Zionism did. And nowadays, many Jews around the world are relating to Israel’s Independence Day as if it was a religious holiday. Last Friday I had a conversation in Copenhagen with a man I hardly knew, we both merely knew we were Jewish:

“Will you be celebrating Yom Haatzmaut [Israeli Independence Day]?”, he asked.

“You betcha I won’t!” I answered.

The man responded with a predictable expression of bewilderment.

“I’d rather be commemorating the Nakba”, I said.

“Nakba? What’s that?” He wondered.

“It’s Arabic for ‘catastrophe'”, I explained, “when the vast majority of Palestinians was expelled”.

“Oh”, he said.

After a short pause, he went:

“But I love holidays like for example Pesach [Passover]”, he said.

“Alright, but that’s a religious holiday. Independence Day is not a religious holiday, unless you consider nationalism to be religious”, I said.

That was that conversation. Yesterday I was invited by another Jew to celebrate Israeli Independence Day – at the Copenhagen synagogue (as the very issue of Independence Day as a Jewish holiday was discussed):

“If you really are in any doubt about it being a Jewish holiday you can go to the Synagogue in Copenhagen tomorrow night as well as most other synagogues where there are special services and there are prayers on Thursday that you only say on Holidays (Hallel) and of course it is a day off and therefore a holiday in the Jewish state”, he wrote.

So you see, this notion of an extra-territorial, Jewish ‘nation’ has been subscribed to by very many Jews around the world – and makes the Israel case a mixture of religion and nationalism – but not nationalism in the sense that we normally attribute to the term.

The Jewish ‘nationalism’, as embodied by the State of Israel, literally means that there are no Israeli nationals, and that there cannot be. It may sound surreal (and should) to those who are not yet familiar with this bizarre concept – but even more bluntly put, Israelis don’t exist in the national sense – only as citizens. “Jewish” is defined as a “nationality” (alongside some 130 other recognized ‘nationalities’), and the purpose of this construct is simple: Since Israel defines itself as The Jewish State, and wishes to cement that concept fully as the Nation State of the Jewish People, the only ones who actually enjoy national rights, as opposed to merely citizenship rights, are the Jews. And yes when I say ‘the Jews’, I’m not accidentally generalizing – this is a generalization that Israel itself makes, an extra-territorial generalization, which entails that any Jew from anywhere can ‘return’, ‘ascend’ and receive automatic citizenship and a subsidy welcome package from the Jewish State. This even includes people who are not Jewish by Israeli orthodox law, merely by third generation paternal affiliation.

These are fantastic terms for Jews all over the world – I mean, why wouldn’t you want such an ‘insurance policy’?

It is this ‘insurance policy’ that makes it possible for Prime Minister Netanyahu to call on Jews to immigrate to Israel in the wake of terror, like he did in the wake of the Paris 2015 attacks:

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home”, he tweeted.

Some Jews were concerned about what such proclamations and ‘insurance policies’ can mean. The Director of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said at the time:

“Israel must cease this Pavlovian reaction every time Jews in Europe are attacked. Every such Israeli campaign severely weakens and damages the Jewish communities that have the right to live securely wherever they are.”

This is essentially the point that the mentioned Edwin Montagu was also making, back in 1917:

“When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants”.

How insightful. Montagu elucidates not only the Judeo-centric concern – but the Palestinian one. And with all the Jewish concerns, it is the Palestinians who have had to pay most dearly for this Jewish ‘insurance policy’. The “Jewish nation” has for them meant dispossession, and it is a continuing matter. Jews around the world insist on their “birthright” to Israel, while those who were actually born there and have ancestry from time immemorial, are dispossessed. And when some Jews protest this, they even get the finger (see above how ‘Birthright’ founder Michael Steinhart reacted to Jewish protesters calling for boycott of the free trip to Israel for young Jews). But giving the finger to Jews is the least of it. That finger has been given to Palestinians all the way through, that’s what it’s all about. The Jewish ‘nation’ idea is about them being dispossessed and stripped of any national affiliation with their homeland, for Jews to ‘return’.

That’s what Israel’s ‘independence’ is about. It means ‘we don’t need Palestinians’. Because we already have a ‘nation’ – the Jewish one.

This is the central myth that needs to be dismantled – that of the ‘Jewish nation’. It is the absolute core of Zionism. Everything that Israel does stems from this notion, of the “Jewish nation”.

For Judaism to actually survive this horror and become a mere religion or societal tradition within modern constructs of ‘nations’, the myth of the ‘Jewish nation’ must be deconstructed. The archaic concept of a religious-conditioned ‘nation’ must give way to the modern, enlightened version, wherein the term basically defines those who happen live in a given territory in a given time, providing them with justice, freedom and equality. Dispossessing the vast majority of those under the pretext that there’s a ‘nation’ waiting to take their place cannot be the solution.