It wasn't an appeal for people to pay. If you paywall periodically, you get about 5% of the audience on paid, and it's not really worth it to invest much effort in going above that. It was an appeal to bring articles to the attention of big-name accounts because a single share means hundreds of new subscribers, which in due course means a dozen or so will pay. You can share my refreshing takes too.
In a similarly boring manner, one of the best cases for Zionism's success is that Israel's child mortality rate in the 60s was about 3% whereas even in relatively wealthy Morocco is was about 20% and Yemen was about 35%.
Now that's definitely confounded by the fact that child mortality in Israel was definitely higher among poor immigrants, and in Yemen maybe was lower among Jews, but whichever way you slice it the expulsion of Arab Jewry probably saved hundreds of thousands of children from early death.
But the same argument could be made today for western countries to take in tens of millions immigrants from basket case countries with similarly high child mortality rates. But regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, that would be politically unfeasible.
So I guess the real success of Zionism is that it managed to integrate a large number of poor and uneducated immigrants without jeopardising the stability of the country as a whole.
I don't think anyone would deny that getting out of Yemen was a massive step up (and also, by the way, benefitted Israeli culture), but Morocco is much more complicated, and it has been such a disaster for Judaism.
The Soviet patronage would be here but the degree of absolute lunacy was achieved only due to the Cold War dynamics and the Soviets just shoveling stuff into Syria (have you ever asked yourself what $ value Soviet weapons were relative to the Syrian GDP and with what amount of debt to the Soviets/Russians Syria ended). They didn't trust Palestinians and PLO that much because Arafat was mean to Assad.
There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another. All roads seem to lead that way eventually, as Turkey proves.
In the absence of Zionism, some of those countries would have been crappy and dangerous places for Jews to live specifically and some would have just been roughly equally crappy and dangerous for all the people living there.
Israel provided a refuge for those people where the government didn't want to shoot you for your opinions and (eventually) where they got to enjoy some Western style prosperity.
"There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another."
This is also a really good argument against Zionism!
Minus Zionism the Jews in Iran would certainly be *much* better off, and, as a rule, obviously, those in western countries do better than those in Israel.
Of course, that has to be balanced against the consideration that, without Zionism, some number would be stuck in Iran in difficult circumstances.
While this is neither a constructive, nor well-thought-through, nor even really legible response, I'll respond as if it was.
The history of Jews in Iran is quite distinct from that of the Ottoman/Arab world. Most obviously, the conversion of Iran to Shi'ism by the insane tyrant Ismail I entailed massive persecution of religious minorities. The most persecuted were Sunnis, but everyone got their share. By the 19th century, persecution of Sunnis was largely over because there weren't many left, and it shifted to a large extent to Jews. The reason for this is that Iran was heavily influenced by Russia which (a) intervened to stop persecution of Christians and (b) promoted persecution of Jews as a superior alternative.
However, the Pahlavi regime tolerated Jews as part of a programme of inclusive secular nationalism, and Jews did very well (except for the immediate aftermath of 1948). This offers a plausible model of what Arab nationalism might have been like in the absence of the conflict with Zionism. After the revolution, the Shiite revolutionary regime has generally tried to avoid the really bad aspects of Safavid Shi'ism (partly because they are somewhat cucked by western ideas). As a rule, they deal somewhat OK with religious minorities. Jews have fared worst, and this is very clearly a result of Zionism. In the absence of Zionism, Iran's foreign policy, and thus many other aspects, would necessarily have been quite different, so it might be a less messed up country generally.
So, compared to Jews in Arab countries, the negative effect of Zionism on Persian Jews has been less, whereas the benefit of offering refuge following events that are (mostly but not wholly)* orthogonal to Zionism has been greater.
*Zionism made the Iranian revolution perhaps 10% more likely, but it probably would have happened anyway.
They would be, and it's obvious that they would be. And the fact that you are Iranian and imbibed folk history doesn't make you better placed to make informed judgments, it makes you worse placed.
I dunno. While we're considering all these hypotheticals, it's conceivable that the British *not* drafting the White Paper would have turned Israel into a legitimate refugium for Jews fleeing from mid-century Germany, and potentially have averted the Holocaust. Even if Zionism wasn't primarily motivated by the fear of that particular pogrom (or even pogroms in general), that oughta factor in.
I also wonder if you're over-applying historical determinism to the cultural tendencies of the middle east and not enough to the cultural tendencies of 19th-century jewish populations, which weren't determined by the roll of some dice. (There's also a part of me that's rather tickled by the notion of muslim jihadists beating themselves impotently against an obviously stronger power and I'm not sure that's a net negative in the grand scheme of things.)
On that note- how would you see Hezbollah destroying the IDF, exactly? I could see them (plus Iran) inflicting non-trivial civilian casualties if they launched every rocket at their disposal at once, but the entire country folding as a consequence? I doubt it.
This is something I want to explore. How much sense does it make to explore some counter-factuals and not others. I think, roughly speaking, the more intelligent you are, the more meaningfully you can be said to have free will, but it's certainly complicated.
This is the correct take. The real tragedy of the modern Middle East is that the British didn't respond to the Arab revolt with a giant fuck you and triple down on support for Zionism.
The Holocaust AND the Nakba might have been averted.
What would motivated the British to do that? I don't know, being based in the eyes of people on the internet decades later?
Churchill might have done it if he was in office.
I didn't say it was realistic, but maybe if the Zionists weren't so hung up on having a state versus just a homeland, it would have happened.
Like if the Brits and Zionists had cut a deal saying they were going back to what the original text of the Balfour declaration kind of implied, that Eretz Yisrael was going to be some kind of Jewish version of Australia that was loyal to Britain and British interests, it might have worked.
Considering the USSR’s initial pro-Zionist stance, its support for the UN Partition Plan, and its early recognition of Israel, why do you treat the Soviet role in Israel’s creation as secondary? What historical or political reasons account for this?
Also, imagine if Israel had chosen Soviet protection instead of American support. I think much of the Arab nationalism that developed after the 1950s might have shifted toward a more convenient form of socialism, and Stalin’s dream of extending Soviet influence over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire might have come true.
I guess my overarching problem with this argument is that it's the kind of thing a battered spouse says to justify why they stayed with their abuser. "He didn't want to hurt me, but I made him, because I burned dinner. If only I hadn't burned dinner we'd be in a happy marriage."
I'm not criticizing the argument on moral grounds, mind you, but on the grounds that it's probably a poor way to predict counterfactuals.
If the Jews didn't embrace nationalism, would they be tolerated for their rootless cosmopolitanism or perhaps their commitment to international solidarity? No, that was a reason for persecution too. What if the Jews embraced local nationalist movements, would they be embraced by their gentile compatriots? No, generally, not, if Europe is any guide. Well, OK, that's Europe - maybe in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab nationalism and culture is more tolerant of minority communities? No, not really. Any Arab state with a decent sized minority devolved into sectarian civil wars or ethnic cleansing. Ah but what if the Jews were a rich and educated minority, then they could have influenced the - I'm gonna stop you right there.
I mean look, who can say, counterfactuals are counterfactual but if you believe Zionism was an accurate prescription for the threat that Jews faced in Europe (and I understand you do not) then I don't see what special situation would lead you to believe that the situation for the Jews in the MENA would have been better. Jews before Hitler generally thought Europe (at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it) was a much better place for Jews than MENA, which is why no Jews (except Zionists) moved from Europe to MENA and why Moroccans and North Africans were desperately trying to get French citizenship or to get to the Americas. Now it turns out that Europe was actually a much worse place for unforeseeable reasons but that doesn't mean MENA was actually less precarious than contemporary Jews understood.
"(at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it)"
Around 3/4 of European Jewry were subjects of the Tsar, and this is what Zionism really was: a solution to the problems of a population who had seen a sustained 100-year decline in their living standards, social status and legal protection. People don't understand this because they start by learning about the Dreyfus Affair, but the fact is that Herzlean Zionism was a brief, failed attempt to launch a hostile takeover of the Zionist movement, and that the only surviving Herzleans came to be called Territorialists. The fact is that Zionists simply did not predict anything like the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe and did not plan for it in any way. The limmud zechus, of course, is that no-one else did either (except Territorialists).
Now, as to the rest. Dispense with counter-factuals, what did Zionism cause?
- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
This is a complete catastrophe by any standards whatsoever, and I think it's legitimately retarded to think anything close to this would have happened in the absence of Zionism.
I think it's a much closer question whether Jews in Czarist Russia and Poland were worse off than the average MENA Jews than you do (you'd have to drill down to specific times and places), and I also don't think that Herzlian Zionism was an attempt to take over the Zionist movement. (It's not what Russian Zionists thought they were doing even if Chovevei Zion was operating before.) I continue not to get your love for the Territorialists.
>- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
What is the basis for your belief that Morocco was some paradise for Jews or that Jews were a privileged minority? Yes there was an upper strata of wealthy Jewish families some of whom perhaps enjoyed periodic influence with the royals when they weren't being forced to convert but for the vast majority of Moroccan Jews who lived in slums or the rural Atlas mountains...why is Afula so bad?
>- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
But what other minority was present in every such state? MENA is writ large full of sectarian grievances. Islamists vs. nationalists, Shia vs. Sunni, Muslims/Christians, Alawites/everyone else, etc. etc. It's a region of haters! Jews are just the odd man out everywhere. You say it's unprecedented for every main political binary in an area to hate the Jews but is it? What was Europe, where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this? Once the Arabs got their hands on industrial means of killing how long before the periodic massacres started doing some real damage?
>- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
Yeah, because the Middle East sucks and Jews had means of getting out unavailable to Jihad Q. Public. Even without Zionism, North African Jews wanted to go to France. And France is no great shakes either. As transoceanic transportation became safer and cheaper people who could left crappy countries to go to less crappy countries. I don't think it's such a tragedy that Moroccan Jews stopped living as a precarious minority in a Casablanca slum or a cave in the Atlas mountains to go live in an apartment complex in Afula.
I don't think you are understanding what I am saying at all. Zionism was a movement *by* Jews in the Russian empire *for* Jews in the Russian empire, and their concerns were those of Jews in the Russian empire. They thought a lot about why a Jew whose grandparents were tax farmers was now scrabbling away in a shitty factory for pennies. They thought a lot about how they really hated their Rosh Yeshiva and would show him who's boss. What they didn't think about, basically, is anyone else at all. They didn't think about Central European Jewry, except to schnorr from them. They didn't think about MENA Jewry at all. The idea that their project might have implications for a Jew in Tunisia was totally beyond their wavelength. Hell, it wasn't really until the 1930s that they put any effort into thinking even about Palestinian Arabs.
After WW2, really shameless revisionist history reimagined Zionism as a gigantic rescue movement from imminent catastrophes with Herzl as the central figure. But the fact is that the Herzleans were marginalised and borderline expelled from the Zionist movement after about 7 years of Herzl failing in all his plans, which they never supported anyway. As an objective matter of fact, the name we use for Herzleans after that is 'Territorialist'. This has nothing to do with whether I like them or not. You can't think at all about the history of Zionism at all without clearing this apologetic clutter from your understanding. And the proof is the literally insane view that Zionism saved MENA Jewry from an imminent catastrophe when *obviously* it caused a catastrophe.
"where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this"
You're a smart guy and shouldn't say Jewish day school nonsense like this.
Arab nationalism is gay, and the fact that the arabs in the Levant are still into it shows the low level IQ which would eventually have led to other problems. Arabs, can’t live with them….
All third world nationalism ended up pro-Soviet, poor, and dysfunctional, so I see no reason to imagine Arab Nationalism (where human capital is even worse than Latin America and comparable to parts of Africa) would have been any different.
I think Arab World human capital has some range, from Lebanon/Syria to Yemen/ Gulf States. Lot of genetic diversity is contained under the term "Arab". Without oil in the Arabian peninsula, Gulf states would've remained at the level of some African countries.
It's incidental but I don't know how much luck was behind 1967. Before the war UK and US intelligence agencies were confident Israel would win in less than a week if they started the war and in less than two weeks if someone else started it.
Yes, the expected outcome was an Israeli victory against Egypt. But if Israel had been as unlucky as it was lucky, it could have been very bad. Perhaps a 15% chance of catastrophe.
1. First of all, this is a great inspiring blog that suffers from not really being part of what's going on on Twitter - because that's where much of "the conversation" seems to be. I happened to read one or two of your posts a year ago or so, but also - for some reason - thought this was a discontinued project.
2. As to the "Zionism - was it worth it" question: The old hasbara trope of a strong Israel being the major bulwark against antisemitism in the Diaspora is - like *moderate* versions of most hasbara basic principles - correct. We can discuss the causal chain here (pressure valve, lobbying power, intl. prestige, US support etc.) but I find it much more convincing than the opposite claim of a *strong* Israel causing antisemitism in the Diaspora. The October 7 War has indeed emboldened antisemitism, but to a good part this was because Bibi's aimless self-defeating rampage has made Israel much weaker. Relatedly, a very good case can be made for Israel, certainly after 1967 but in my view even before, preventing assimilation (in the sense of de-identification, not necessarily intermarriage, but likely also intermarriage) in the Diaspora.
3. This is more of a general note and not a critique of any of your theses here in particular, but what basically all discussions about immigration to Israel seem to miss is the basic distinction between two types of migrants: those for whom (pre-state) Israel was a preferred destination and those for whom it was a second choice. Most Mizrahi immigrants are in the second category (we have the *relatively* comparable control group of Algerian Jews who could leave for France and overwhelmingly did so), even if somewhat less so than post-1989 (!) Russians. This distinction matters enormously for Israeli political sociology today. Basically all "statist" demographics in Israeli society (on the right or left) are marked by an over-representation of immigrants-by-choice while non-statist or even anti-statist forces are usually demographically dominated by immigrants-by-necessity.
2a) I think all things being equal, a strong Israel is good for the diaspora, but the main thing is how Israel behaves and presents itself to the world.
2b) I basically agree, but i think the demographic vitality of diaspora orthodoxy changes the equation. I need to make a post about this.
3) If by "statist" you mean "in favour of using general taxation to hand out gibs" i think it's the opposite.
2a) Sure. I just think this is a correct argument in defense of Zionism.
2b) I should have said "Non-Haredi" Judaism. Stringent, self-seclusive forms of Orthodoxy can culturally thrive without Israel (as long as not actively persecuted by antisemites).
My point is that for most of history, the Jewish people had a big numbers problem, but now we don't. What we have is a brain drain and dysgenic fertility problem. We need some kind of anti-kiruv system to get rid of dummies and stop them becoming Breslev and having 10 feral children. Israel also intensifies this problem in the diaspora by associating Jewish identity with low IQ Nationalism and shit music.
Yeah, I sort of get your vibe here. But I think it’s more wrong than right. Ultra-nationalism has indeed become dominant in communal Jewish life in the Diaspora. Which is a disaster. I agree with this. But is this an import from Israel? Rather the opposite: zealots are moving to Israel or the settlements from the Diaspora, not vice versa (excluding aliyah returners who often also undergo considerable de-radicalization). Also, by every possible metric, the Israeli communicative lifeworld / interaction order is way more liberal & humanist than the communal Jewish one in the Diaspora today (not in the 1990s but today), simply because the more than 50% of Israeli Jews who would vote for the Anti-Netanyahu camp now aren’t leaving, meanwhile Reform/Conservative Judaism are on life support in terms of engagement. Saying Israel is the more left-wing form of Jewish life is quite counter-intuitive at first, but it’s one of the things that one can’t unsee after really thinking about it.
"Perhaps the biggest redpill about Zionism is that what happened was quite far towards the better end of possible outcomes."
well no, only if you take as an axiom British mismanagement of the mandate. instead of punting they could've taken responsibility and done an early partition into a smaller zone of free jewish settlement and a larger zone where locals would have authority over migration (NOT to be equated with an eventual partition into states, but a way of setting where the baseline is). not a magic formula for peace but I think this would've been politically navigable with respect to both sides through various levers. the actual best case outcome would've been a small 80% ashkenazi state existing in close alliance with its palestinian neighbor, which possesses its own jewish minority and is one of the best arab countries.
and clearly you aren't conspiracy-brained enough about the Liberty. johnson and the CIA were in on it and america would've taken the Suez Canal if the false flag had gone off instead of being derailed by random NSA personnel who built a radio. or the american side were just repaying israel for helping them take out Kennedy a few years prior.
These unique, unsentimental offend-everyone curmudgeon takes on Substack are a welcome and refreshing contribution to this general subject matter.
It’s too bad your appeals to get more paid subscribers on chat are only seen by paid subscribers.
It wasn't an appeal for people to pay. If you paywall periodically, you get about 5% of the audience on paid, and it's not really worth it to invest much effort in going above that. It was an appeal to bring articles to the attention of big-name accounts because a single share means hundreds of new subscribers, which in due course means a dozen or so will pay. You can share my refreshing takes too.
In a similarly boring manner, one of the best cases for Zionism's success is that Israel's child mortality rate in the 60s was about 3% whereas even in relatively wealthy Morocco is was about 20% and Yemen was about 35%.
Now that's definitely confounded by the fact that child mortality in Israel was definitely higher among poor immigrants, and in Yemen maybe was lower among Jews, but whichever way you slice it the expulsion of Arab Jewry probably saved hundreds of thousands of children from early death.
But the same argument could be made today for western countries to take in tens of millions immigrants from basket case countries with similarly high child mortality rates. But regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, that would be politically unfeasible.
So I guess the real success of Zionism is that it managed to integrate a large number of poor and uneducated immigrants without jeopardising the stability of the country as a whole.
I don't think anyone would deny that getting out of Yemen was a massive step up (and also, by the way, benefitted Israeli culture), but Morocco is much more complicated, and it has been such a disaster for Judaism.
Perhaps if the Jews stayed behind they accelerate the build out of medical infrastructure and save more Moroccan and Yemeni lives
The Soviet patronage would be here but the degree of absolute lunacy was achieved only due to the Cold War dynamics and the Soviets just shoveling stuff into Syria (have you ever asked yourself what $ value Soviet weapons were relative to the Syrian GDP and with what amount of debt to the Soviets/Russians Syria ended). They didn't trust Palestinians and PLO that much because Arafat was mean to Assad.
There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another. All roads seem to lead that way eventually, as Turkey proves.
In the absence of Zionism, some of those countries would have been crappy and dangerous places for Jews to live specifically and some would have just been roughly equally crappy and dangerous for all the people living there.
Israel provided a refuge for those people where the government didn't want to shoot you for your opinions and (eventually) where they got to enjoy some Western style prosperity.
I think that’s clearly a good thing.
"There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another."
This is also a really good argument against Zionism!
Are the Jews who stayed in Iran better off than those who left and went to Los Angeles or Holon?
Minus Zionism the Jews in Iran would certainly be *much* better off, and, as a rule, obviously, those in western countries do better than those in Israel.
Of course, that has to be balanced against the consideration that, without Zionism, some number would be stuck in Iran in difficult circumstances.
While this is neither a constructive, nor well-thought-through, nor even really legible response, I'll respond as if it was.
The history of Jews in Iran is quite distinct from that of the Ottoman/Arab world. Most obviously, the conversion of Iran to Shi'ism by the insane tyrant Ismail I entailed massive persecution of religious minorities. The most persecuted were Sunnis, but everyone got their share. By the 19th century, persecution of Sunnis was largely over because there weren't many left, and it shifted to a large extent to Jews. The reason for this is that Iran was heavily influenced by Russia which (a) intervened to stop persecution of Christians and (b) promoted persecution of Jews as a superior alternative.
However, the Pahlavi regime tolerated Jews as part of a programme of inclusive secular nationalism, and Jews did very well (except for the immediate aftermath of 1948). This offers a plausible model of what Arab nationalism might have been like in the absence of the conflict with Zionism. After the revolution, the Shiite revolutionary regime has generally tried to avoid the really bad aspects of Safavid Shi'ism (partly because they are somewhat cucked by western ideas). As a rule, they deal somewhat OK with religious minorities. Jews have fared worst, and this is very clearly a result of Zionism. In the absence of Zionism, Iran's foreign policy, and thus many other aspects, would necessarily have been quite different, so it might be a less messed up country generally.
So, compared to Jews in Arab countries, the negative effect of Zionism on Persian Jews has been less, whereas the benefit of offering refuge following events that are (mostly but not wholly)* orthogonal to Zionism has been greater.
*Zionism made the Iranian revolution perhaps 10% more likely, but it probably would have happened anyway.
They would be, and it's obvious that they would be. And the fact that you are Iranian and imbibed folk history doesn't make you better placed to make informed judgments, it makes you worse placed.
The point is that whilst Holon requires Zionism, LA does not.
Why do they stay? They can leave. People vote with their feet.
"Mentally ill French pederast", you are being excessively generic here, frankly
Its very nice they all decided to sign a letter with their names thus penning them forever as marked by their disconnexion to reality
I dunno. While we're considering all these hypotheticals, it's conceivable that the British *not* drafting the White Paper would have turned Israel into a legitimate refugium for Jews fleeing from mid-century Germany, and potentially have averted the Holocaust. Even if Zionism wasn't primarily motivated by the fear of that particular pogrom (or even pogroms in general), that oughta factor in.
I also wonder if you're over-applying historical determinism to the cultural tendencies of the middle east and not enough to the cultural tendencies of 19th-century jewish populations, which weren't determined by the roll of some dice. (There's also a part of me that's rather tickled by the notion of muslim jihadists beating themselves impotently against an obviously stronger power and I'm not sure that's a net negative in the grand scheme of things.)
On that note- how would you see Hezbollah destroying the IDF, exactly? I could see them (plus Iran) inflicting non-trivial civilian casualties if they launched every rocket at their disposal at once, but the entire country folding as a consequence? I doubt it.
This is something I want to explore. How much sense does it make to explore some counter-factuals and not others. I think, roughly speaking, the more intelligent you are, the more meaningfully you can be said to have free will, but it's certainly complicated.
A lot of people have speculated on what would have happened if Hizballah had attacked on October 7th. It certainly would have been very bad. https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/middleeastnews/841140/israels-military-chief-says-hezbollah-could-have-reached-haifa-on-octo/en
This is the correct take. The real tragedy of the modern Middle East is that the British didn't respond to the Arab revolt with a giant fuck you and triple down on support for Zionism.
The Holocaust AND the Nakba might have been averted.
But what would have been their motivation?
What would motivated the British to do that? I don't know, being based in the eyes of people on the internet decades later?
Churchill might have done it if he was in office.
I didn't say it was realistic, but maybe if the Zionists weren't so hung up on having a state versus just a homeland, it would have happened.
Like if the Brits and Zionists had cut a deal saying they were going back to what the original text of the Balfour declaration kind of implied, that Eretz Yisrael was going to be some kind of Jewish version of Australia that was loyal to Britain and British interests, it might have worked.
I had a different idea which is they never did the Balfour Declaration at all, but rather just lowkey opened up the place to Jewish immigration.
Oh so do Zionism but in secret? See you support actual literal Zionist conspiracies!
Maybe this is the compromise statement we can both get behind.
https://nonzionism.com/p/the-march-of-return-and-the-al-aqsa/comment/149770558?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2ivicc
Considering the USSR’s initial pro-Zionist stance, its support for the UN Partition Plan, and its early recognition of Israel, why do you treat the Soviet role in Israel’s creation as secondary? What historical or political reasons account for this?
Also, imagine if Israel had chosen Soviet protection instead of American support. I think much of the Arab nationalism that developed after the 1950s might have shifted toward a more convenient form of socialism, and Stalin’s dream of extending Soviet influence over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire might have come true.
So...yes and no...
I guess my overarching problem with this argument is that it's the kind of thing a battered spouse says to justify why they stayed with their abuser. "He didn't want to hurt me, but I made him, because I burned dinner. If only I hadn't burned dinner we'd be in a happy marriage."
I'm not criticizing the argument on moral grounds, mind you, but on the grounds that it's probably a poor way to predict counterfactuals.
If the Jews didn't embrace nationalism, would they be tolerated for their rootless cosmopolitanism or perhaps their commitment to international solidarity? No, that was a reason for persecution too. What if the Jews embraced local nationalist movements, would they be embraced by their gentile compatriots? No, generally, not, if Europe is any guide. Well, OK, that's Europe - maybe in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab nationalism and culture is more tolerant of minority communities? No, not really. Any Arab state with a decent sized minority devolved into sectarian civil wars or ethnic cleansing. Ah but what if the Jews were a rich and educated minority, then they could have influenced the - I'm gonna stop you right there.
I mean look, who can say, counterfactuals are counterfactual but if you believe Zionism was an accurate prescription for the threat that Jews faced in Europe (and I understand you do not) then I don't see what special situation would lead you to believe that the situation for the Jews in the MENA would have been better. Jews before Hitler generally thought Europe (at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it) was a much better place for Jews than MENA, which is why no Jews (except Zionists) moved from Europe to MENA and why Moroccans and North Africans were desperately trying to get French citizenship or to get to the Americas. Now it turns out that Europe was actually a much worse place for unforeseeable reasons but that doesn't mean MENA was actually less precarious than contemporary Jews understood.
"(at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it)"
Around 3/4 of European Jewry were subjects of the Tsar, and this is what Zionism really was: a solution to the problems of a population who had seen a sustained 100-year decline in their living standards, social status and legal protection. People don't understand this because they start by learning about the Dreyfus Affair, but the fact is that Herzlean Zionism was a brief, failed attempt to launch a hostile takeover of the Zionist movement, and that the only surviving Herzleans came to be called Territorialists. The fact is that Zionists simply did not predict anything like the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe and did not plan for it in any way. The limmud zechus, of course, is that no-one else did either (except Territorialists).
Now, as to the rest. Dispense with counter-factuals, what did Zionism cause?
- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
This is a complete catastrophe by any standards whatsoever, and I think it's legitimately retarded to think anything close to this would have happened in the absence of Zionism.
I think it's a much closer question whether Jews in Czarist Russia and Poland were worse off than the average MENA Jews than you do (you'd have to drill down to specific times and places), and I also don't think that Herzlian Zionism was an attempt to take over the Zionist movement. (It's not what Russian Zionists thought they were doing even if Chovevei Zion was operating before.) I continue not to get your love for the Territorialists.
>- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
What is the basis for your belief that Morocco was some paradise for Jews or that Jews were a privileged minority? Yes there was an upper strata of wealthy Jewish families some of whom perhaps enjoyed periodic influence with the royals when they weren't being forced to convert but for the vast majority of Moroccan Jews who lived in slums or the rural Atlas mountains...why is Afula so bad?
>- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
But what other minority was present in every such state? MENA is writ large full of sectarian grievances. Islamists vs. nationalists, Shia vs. Sunni, Muslims/Christians, Alawites/everyone else, etc. etc. It's a region of haters! Jews are just the odd man out everywhere. You say it's unprecedented for every main political binary in an area to hate the Jews but is it? What was Europe, where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this? Once the Arabs got their hands on industrial means of killing how long before the periodic massacres started doing some real damage?
>- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
Yeah, because the Middle East sucks and Jews had means of getting out unavailable to Jihad Q. Public. Even without Zionism, North African Jews wanted to go to France. And France is no great shakes either. As transoceanic transportation became safer and cheaper people who could left crappy countries to go to less crappy countries. I don't think it's such a tragedy that Moroccan Jews stopped living as a precarious minority in a Casablanca slum or a cave in the Atlas mountains to go live in an apartment complex in Afula.
I don't think you are understanding what I am saying at all. Zionism was a movement *by* Jews in the Russian empire *for* Jews in the Russian empire, and their concerns were those of Jews in the Russian empire. They thought a lot about why a Jew whose grandparents were tax farmers was now scrabbling away in a shitty factory for pennies. They thought a lot about how they really hated their Rosh Yeshiva and would show him who's boss. What they didn't think about, basically, is anyone else at all. They didn't think about Central European Jewry, except to schnorr from them. They didn't think about MENA Jewry at all. The idea that their project might have implications for a Jew in Tunisia was totally beyond their wavelength. Hell, it wasn't really until the 1930s that they put any effort into thinking even about Palestinian Arabs.
After WW2, really shameless revisionist history reimagined Zionism as a gigantic rescue movement from imminent catastrophes with Herzl as the central figure. But the fact is that the Herzleans were marginalised and borderline expelled from the Zionist movement after about 7 years of Herzl failing in all his plans, which they never supported anyway. As an objective matter of fact, the name we use for Herzleans after that is 'Territorialist'. This has nothing to do with whether I like them or not. You can't think at all about the history of Zionism at all without clearing this apologetic clutter from your understanding. And the proof is the literally insane view that Zionism saved MENA Jewry from an imminent catastrophe when *obviously* it caused a catastrophe.
"where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this"
You're a smart guy and shouldn't say Jewish day school nonsense like this.
Arab nationalism is gay, and the fact that the arabs in the Levant are still into it shows the low level IQ which would eventually have led to other problems. Arabs, can’t live with them….
All third world nationalism ended up pro-Soviet, poor, and dysfunctional, so I see no reason to imagine Arab Nationalism (where human capital is even worse than Latin America and comparable to parts of Africa) would have been any different.
I think Arab World human capital has some range, from Lebanon/Syria to Yemen/ Gulf States. Lot of genetic diversity is contained under the term "Arab". Without oil in the Arabian peninsula, Gulf states would've remained at the level of some African countries.
" speaking their ancestral tongue, and are free, self-governing people living lives of dignity in Afula."
That, sir, was a low blow.
A funny one, but a low one.
It's incidental but I don't know how much luck was behind 1967. Before the war UK and US intelligence agencies were confident Israel would win in less than a week if they started the war and in less than two weeks if someone else started it.
Yes, the expected outcome was an Israeli victory against Egypt. But if Israel had been as unlucky as it was lucky, it could have been very bad. Perhaps a 15% chance of catastrophe.
The two arguments against providence seem weak to me.
Three comments:
1. First of all, this is a great inspiring blog that suffers from not really being part of what's going on on Twitter - because that's where much of "the conversation" seems to be. I happened to read one or two of your posts a year ago or so, but also - for some reason - thought this was a discontinued project.
2. As to the "Zionism - was it worth it" question: The old hasbara trope of a strong Israel being the major bulwark against antisemitism in the Diaspora is - like *moderate* versions of most hasbara basic principles - correct. We can discuss the causal chain here (pressure valve, lobbying power, intl. prestige, US support etc.) but I find it much more convincing than the opposite claim of a *strong* Israel causing antisemitism in the Diaspora. The October 7 War has indeed emboldened antisemitism, but to a good part this was because Bibi's aimless self-defeating rampage has made Israel much weaker. Relatedly, a very good case can be made for Israel, certainly after 1967 but in my view even before, preventing assimilation (in the sense of de-identification, not necessarily intermarriage, but likely also intermarriage) in the Diaspora.
3. This is more of a general note and not a critique of any of your theses here in particular, but what basically all discussions about immigration to Israel seem to miss is the basic distinction between two types of migrants: those for whom (pre-state) Israel was a preferred destination and those for whom it was a second choice. Most Mizrahi immigrants are in the second category (we have the *relatively* comparable control group of Algerian Jews who could leave for France and overwhelmingly did so), even if somewhat less so than post-1989 (!) Russians. This distinction matters enormously for Israeli political sociology today. Basically all "statist" demographics in Israeli society (on the right or left) are marked by an over-representation of immigrants-by-choice while non-statist or even anti-statist forces are usually demographically dominated by immigrants-by-necessity.
1) Share it on Twitter!
2a) I think all things being equal, a strong Israel is good for the diaspora, but the main thing is how Israel behaves and presents itself to the world.
2b) I basically agree, but i think the demographic vitality of diaspora orthodoxy changes the equation. I need to make a post about this.
3) If by "statist" you mean "in favour of using general taxation to hand out gibs" i think it's the opposite.
2a) Sure. I just think this is a correct argument in defense of Zionism.
2b) I should have said "Non-Haredi" Judaism. Stringent, self-seclusive forms of Orthodoxy can culturally thrive without Israel (as long as not actively persecuted by antisemites).
My point is that for most of history, the Jewish people had a big numbers problem, but now we don't. What we have is a brain drain and dysgenic fertility problem. We need some kind of anti-kiruv system to get rid of dummies and stop them becoming Breslev and having 10 feral children. Israel also intensifies this problem in the diaspora by associating Jewish identity with low IQ Nationalism and shit music.
Yeah, I sort of get your vibe here. But I think it’s more wrong than right. Ultra-nationalism has indeed become dominant in communal Jewish life in the Diaspora. Which is a disaster. I agree with this. But is this an import from Israel? Rather the opposite: zealots are moving to Israel or the settlements from the Diaspora, not vice versa (excluding aliyah returners who often also undergo considerable de-radicalization). Also, by every possible metric, the Israeli communicative lifeworld / interaction order is way more liberal & humanist than the communal Jewish one in the Diaspora today (not in the 1990s but today), simply because the more than 50% of Israeli Jews who would vote for the Anti-Netanyahu camp now aren’t leaving, meanwhile Reform/Conservative Judaism are on life support in terms of engagement. Saying Israel is the more left-wing form of Jewish life is quite counter-intuitive at first, but it’s one of the things that one can’t unsee after really thinking about it.
"Perhaps the biggest redpill about Zionism is that what happened was quite far towards the better end of possible outcomes."
well no, only if you take as an axiom British mismanagement of the mandate. instead of punting they could've taken responsibility and done an early partition into a smaller zone of free jewish settlement and a larger zone where locals would have authority over migration (NOT to be equated with an eventual partition into states, but a way of setting where the baseline is). not a magic formula for peace but I think this would've been politically navigable with respect to both sides through various levers. the actual best case outcome would've been a small 80% ashkenazi state existing in close alliance with its palestinian neighbor, which possesses its own jewish minority and is one of the best arab countries.
and clearly you aren't conspiracy-brained enough about the Liberty. johnson and the CIA were in on it and america would've taken the Suez Canal if the false flag had gone off instead of being derailed by random NSA personnel who built a radio. or the american side were just repaying israel for helping them take out Kennedy a few years prior.