Retro Anti-Zionism

In Israel's Identity Crisis, one Yonatan Touval, writes that

Regrettably, the Obama administration has bought into Netanyahu’s idea [that is, of pressing the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state”]...Israelis may well be the first to demur at such a definition of their state, or at least to be confused by it...in much of the world “Jewish” today remains a fuzzy term whose precise meaning depends on context. “Jewish” can stand for a religious attribute, an ethical or spiritual one. It can mean an ethnic group or cultural tradition. For some Jews, especially in pre-emancipation Europe, Jewishness was felt to be a destiny. In certain milieus in the U.S. today, “Jewish” primarily defines a genre of humor.

As he admits, though

This failure to forge a coherently national definition of the term “Jewish” dates back to the inception of the Zionist movement...

So much of what is spoken about, and written about and even done today reminds me of the arguments that occured over a century ago and during the 1930s regarding intra-Jewish fights over Zionism.  Tony Judt, Peter Beinart and even J Street are all repeats.

The disputes and arguments and battles were lost then but these "intellectuals" never give up.  They keep fighting again and again, generation after generation.  But they will not admit that the historical record proves them wrong.

They continue to subvert the genuine Jewish nationalist expression and to denigrate the true needs of Israel, especially vis-a-vis the Arab enemy.  Review the chronicles of Herzl, the happenings during the Mandate period and in-between and you'll see the prequels to today's leftist, progressive, humanist rage against Israel and Zionism and the Jewish establishment.  From Lord Montague who fought the Balfour Declaration; from Brit Shalom, Peace Now's precursor; from the American Council for Judaism; and on to the Bund.

And so Touval is granted NYTimes space to regurgitate and ask questions answered long ago like

...What makes Israel “Jewish”? Is sovereignty over biblical lands essential to Israel’s Jewish self-identity (as the settler movement argues)? Is Israel the state of the Jews living in Israel or also of those living elsewhere in the world? (Netanyahu concluded his speech to Congress by stating “I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.”) Does Israel’s “Jewishness” preclude it from being the state of all its citizens, even the non-Jewish ones?

And in a clever move, shifts the blame on to Israel for the problems created by Islamic religious fanaticism and Muslim totalitarianism and an unwillingness to recognize any Jewish national expression anywhere:

Rather than asking the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, therefore, Israel has its own job cut out for itself. And while it is tempting to pass on the burden to others, it remains Israel’s duty — first and foremost to itself — to discover what it means when it says it is Jewish, and to make sure that such a definition be accepted, and recognized, by its own citizens.

And last but not least, a bit of reserch revelaed that Yonatan Touval

is "a foreign policy analyst based in Tel Aviv" but in Haaretz he describes himself as "a foreign policy analyst with several Israeli NGOs dedicated to advancing final-status agreements between Israel and its neighbors."  In Hebrew, he is a "senior advisor to the Geneva Initiative".

Intellectual or very involved and intetested participant?

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