Zionism is the belief in a divine guarantee that Jews would someday recover their lost homeland. Is the Jewish experience unique in history? It may be, in the sense that Jews have endured the longest recorded period of displacement—nearly two millenia after the exile ordered by Rome in the first century CE. The illustration above is by Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47020511
Historical Background
“History” consists of written records., in some cases backed up by archaeological evidence. The old and New Testaments offer multiple predictions of the return of the Jews to Israel. While other exiled groups returned to their homelands within one generation or less, the state of Israel was created in 1948. In comparison, thousands of French Acadians were expelled from Quebec by the British in 1755, but many began to return after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763. Even the post-Civil War establishment of a Liberian homeland for freed US slaves can’t compare; it was roughly three centuries after the first African slaves landed in colonial America.
With the possible exception of Antarctica, every continent has had inhabitants who were either the original settlers or view themselves as such because no history of earlier residents exists. (Antarctica is excluded only because no one wants to spend a lifetime there. Most researchers just visit during the Antarctic “summer.”) In most parts of the world, given that every tribe or nationality originally hoped to reproduce without constraint, most craved more territory than they initially claimed. Some “original” groups were overwhelmed by invaders who retain the indigenous people as social inferiors or as slaves. If the original folks don’t like this arrangement, they may opt to relocate. In the worst cases, they experience immediate or prolonged extermination.
Other Disenfranchised People
Examples of these unfortunate ethnicities include the Native Americans of the entire Western Hemisphere, the Australian Aborigines, Pacific Islanders, sub-Saharan Africans, and other groups, many whose stories were never recorded. The Sàmi (sometimes improperly called Laplanders) have experienced discrimination and pressure to abandon their cultural identities in favor of the dominant Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns. (I’m particularly interested in the Sàmi for reasons I’ll discuss in a future post).
Meanwhile, Jews have suffered extremely harsh treatment for centuries, mainly at the hands of European “Christians.” As I noted in Parallels, Martin Luther hoped for decades to persuade Jews to adopt Christianity. When he finally met with their leaders and was rebuffed, he wrote a scathing rebuke in 1543 entitled On the Jews and Their Lies. In it, he recommended many of the actions and policies adopted centuries later by the German Nazis.
Modern Guilt
In 1939, 900 Jews seeking to escape growing persecution in Germany and elsewhere in Europe boarded the St. Louis to seek asylum. After being turned away in Cuba, the United States and Canada, the ship returned to Europe, docking in Antwerp, Belgium. Several Western European countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain accepted the immigrants, but Germany invaded many of those countries in the following year. A large number of the refugees died in the Holocaust.
The enormity of the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jewish lives were lost, gave international support to the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland. However, even the backing of Western Europe didn’t change a fundamental problem: the new country was already populated by millions of non-Jews. The European and American backers of Israel were the same states that had either denied a port of entry to Jews in 1939 or, even worse, had cooperated at some level with the “Final Solution.” Support for Israel was a convenient—though hypocritical—effort to counter a sense of guilt.
The Fossil Fuel Factor
Add to all this the worldwide lust for mid eastern oil. Osama bin Ladin declared the following as major reasons for Al-Qaida’s 9/11 attack on the United States: American support for Saudi Arabia in order to destabilize the Arab world; US support of Israel, including Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon; Russia’s persecution of Muslims in Chechnya; India’s oppression of Muslims in Kashmir; and, of course, US defense of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. All of these reasons seem more to the point than G.W. Bush’s post-9/11 simplistic claims that Al-Qaeda “hates our freedom,” with no mention of the non-Muslim world’s interest in foreign oil. With his characteristic tone-deafness to word associations, Bush described his launch of a new Gulf War as a “crusade.”
Today, another truth-challenged world leader has begun the latest series of Gulf conflicts while denying their root cause—our economic dependence on oil, illustrated by price fluctuations in gasoline and diesel products. At the same time, the current US federal administration actively opposes renewable energy, in deference to oil and gas utilities. “Conservatives” continue to dismiss the idea that human activity and fossil fuel dependency are contributing to the rampant wildfires and melting glaciers on several continents.
Please see my article on Pluggable Solar for related information on the artificial limitations we place on wind and solar power. Also, leave a comment below—either positive or negative—on the article you just finished reading.
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