In 1996, in the midst of reporting on the Israeli elections, I attended a Welcome rally for new immigrants at the National Theater in Jerusalem. The joint was packed. The master of ceremonies asked the various national groups to rise: there was a significant group from Russia, but the vast majority were from elsewhere. There was an Ashkenazi style folk singer—a Theo Bikel clone—who received a respectful hearing. Then a trio came out, two tall redheads, playing tabla and a string instrument and a silver-haired singer. They were from Iran. The redheads laid down a riveting beat and, in an instant, the entire auditorium was up and dancing—Moroccan, Iranian, Yemeni, Russians, Falashas from Ethiopia, a cornucopia of pigments, the sort of crowd you might see in New York or London, but few other places. They were all Jews. They looked at each other with amazement: you’re Jewish, too? It was ecstasy.
I think of that rally often when the left talks about Israel as a European colonial imposition. There is something to that. Karen Attiah lays out the history here: the Zionist project was a European attempt to get rid of its Jewish problem. It was, in that sense—and given the dark humor of my people—a last colonial trick, played on the Jews. But that’s a faulty narrative.
It conflates Israel with European Jewry. Ashkenazi Jews represent only 31% of Israel’s population. The majority of Israeli’s, more than 60%, are Mizrahi—that is, they come from the Middle East. They were kicked out their homes and sent packing by Arabs. The city of Baghdad was about one-third Jewish in 1940; Iraq is 0% Jewish now. Persia had a thriving Jewish community; it produced a rather raucous version of the Talmud in antiquity; the city of Isfahan was named after its Jewish population; there are about 8300 Jews left in Iran now. It is no small irony that having exported its Jews to Israel, Iran now wants to destroy the “Zionist entity.”
Israel is as much a creation of Islamic intolerance as it is of the failed European attempt at genocide. The country is populated by ethnic Arabs who happen to be Jews—just look at them! It is, for many, a return to their ancestral homeland.
This is not to say the Palestinians haven’t been mistreated. I’ve long been in favor of a Palestinian state, with its capital in East Jerusalem. I’m in favor of closing down the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank and land swaps for settlements like Ariel that have been there forever. There isn’t much room involved—an area the size of New Jersey—but it is a moral necessity: Israel exists. It cannot be undone. It was Jewish before it had an Islamic population. But there must be space for its Palestinian residents as well.
Hitler had it wrong: Judaism is a religion, not a race. It is a religion, moreover, that gave civilization a road map—the Ten Commandments. It is a religion that, through history, has demanded the rule of law and justice for the oppressed, which is why the Jew-hatred now flashing through the world is so abhorrent. But it is also why Jewish tradition and practice demands the existence of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world…
As a proud alumnus of The New Yorker, I’m sometimes annoyed by the cloying political correctness of its attempts to address the issue of race. But it remains a great magazine, one of only a few places where you can read stuff as good as this piece about China by Evan Osnos. The great fear of Chinese leadership has been luan—that is, chaos—and it has been a particular burden for the current generation of leaders, many of whom have dreadful memories of their own excesses as student-terrorists during the Great Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. The response of Xi Jinping to the prospect of freedom has been a national campaign against creativity, a totalitarian suppression of what is a vibrant, entrepreneurial culture. Osnos offers a compelling account of the prevailing numbness. If you think America is in trouble, so is China.
I hate spell-check. It messes with my neologistic wordplay. It also inserts apostrophes where there shouldn't be any, as in Israeli's above.
As a Ghanaian-Nigerian Attiah is already biased so what she has to say is generally useless. She also forgot to mention the 1920 Cairo Conference. In addition, she neglects the Jewish perspective on this, which was to find a homeland. I’m frankly sick and tired of hearing this colonialist nonsense. Did you read, also in the Post, about the Philadelphia bakery who makes Jewish and Israeli food who was subjected to a boycott because she made “colonialist” food. Absurd.
On the New Yorker, my mother had a subscription since the 1930s which I took over when she passed away. It’s not nearly the magazine it was. I used to read it cover to cover. Nowadays maybe I look at a third of it. Unfortunately, nothing is what it used to be.