The Balfour Declaration's forgotten clause, 101 years on: a thread on Israel, Zionism and the diaspora, after Pittsburgh >>
When discussing the Balfour Declaration, we usually remember the promise not to harm "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". This limited pledge reduced Arabs to "non-Jews", promised no political and national rights, and was not kept.
But we almost always forget the other condition: that the establishment of a Jewish national home should not harm "the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country". We forget this clause because after 1945 Zionism became a Jewish consensus.
So the idea that Zionism put at risk the rights of Jews outside Palestine appears a theoretical concern of 1917 which did not materialise. This shows how problematic it is to read Zionism not in historical context. Because the concern was very real indeed.
And as Dmitry Shumsky brilliantly showed, Zionist leadership in the interwar period was painfully aware that Zionist actions in Palestine could put at risk Jews in Poland, and it was a concern that informed their calculations and political horizons. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030023…
The linkage between Jewish rights in Poland and Arab rights in Palestine was a real one. It stopped being an issue after the Jews of Poland were murdered. But we forget about this: we anachronistically imagine 1930s Zionism as a triumphant movement with a Jewish consensus behind
By the time Israel was established, the Jews of Europe were mostly murdered, and those who survived in Western Europe were not negatively impacted as some originally feared. There was no serious attempt to push them to migrate to Israel.
But Jews in the Arab world were impacted. They lost their political rights, and found their position increasingly impossible. The combination of Arab persecution with Israeli actions that put these communities at risk (Lavon affair) left them with little choice but to leave.
When it came to the Western diaspora, Israel has become an article of faith. There were sometimes disagreement and tensions between Israel and some parts of Jewish communities, there were political, moral, philosophical, and religious differences.
But there was no serious suggestion that Israel put these communities at risk. At least on the face of it, there was no need to "choose" between supporting Israel and supporting the interests of your community. They seemed complementary or unrelated: not contradictory.
It is now, 101 years after Balfour, that we seemed to be arriving at the point where there is again a parting of ways, and when the political project of Israel seems potentially at odds with the core interests of Jewish communities, especially in the US.
Israel has allied itself in recent years with the wave of populist illiberalism, and proto-fascism that is taking over the globe. With Israel's hand warmly extended to Duterte, Modi, MBS, Orban, Trump and Bolsonaro, Israel is firmly in the camp of the global hard right.
But this is more than just about "realist" foreign policy of crude interests. This is about the outcome of the evolving nature of Israeli constitution. Under Netanyahu, the occupation has become a permanent feature. The West Bank is all but annexed.
Israel is now a democracy for its 6.6m Jewish citizens, with 1.7m Palestinians with second-rate citizenship, 2.8m militarily-ruled West Bank Palestinians with no citizenship, and 1.7m Gazans under indirect control. This is a permanent state of affairs.
After the Nation State Law it is no longer a matter for debate. It is a matter of basic law (constitutional law). Israel sees itself an ethno-state, for and by its Jewish citizens. It promises no equality to its Arab subjects and it is committed to colonisation of their lands.
The issue, for many diaspora Jews, is not only that Israel fails to live up to their idealised understanding of Zionism. It is rather that Israel allies with political forces that they see not only as abhorrent but as dangerous to their own future.
And furthermore, Israel is championing a model of an ethno-state which hard-right movements in other parts of the world find appealing. It is a model in which the status of minorities (including Jews) is under threat.
These tensions have been brewing for a while, but became painfully visible after the Pittsburg massacre. Jewish condemnations of Trump's climate of hate triggered rebuke from Israeli officials, asking US Jews, in effect, to put the interests of Israel first.
It seems that the political projects of the world's two largest Jewish congregations - Israel and the US - are now at odds. Strong voices in the US arguing that Israel is undermining US Jews by supporting Trump and accepting his politics of white nationalism.
I think these contradictions (between political visions, but also notions of Jewishness), are structural, and beyond this or that individual (Netanyahu or Trump). While clearly many try to paper over the cracks, this appears to me increasingly impossible.
