It is tempting to celebrate the creation of Israel
as a great triumph, perhaps the greatest in Jewish
history. Indeed, the history of Israel has often
been read as the heroic saga of a people marked
for extinction, who emerged from Nazi death camps
- from Auschwitz, Belzec and Treblinka - to establish
their own state in 1948, a Jewish haven and a
democracy that has prospered even as it has defended
itself valiantly against unceasing Arab threats
and aggression. Without taking away anything from
the sufferings of European Jews, I will insist
that this way of thinking about Israel - apart
from its mythologizing - has merit only as a partisan
narrative. It seeks to insulate Israel against
the charge of a devastating colonization by falsifying
history, by camouflaging the imperialist dynamics
that brought it into existence, and denying the
perilous future with which it now confronts the
Jews, the West and the Islamic world.
When we examine the consequences that have flowed
from the creation of Israel, when we contemplate
the greater horrors that may yet flow from the
logic of Zionism, Israel triumphs appear in a
different light. We are forced to examine these
triumphs with growing dread and incredulity. Israel's
early triumphs, though real from a narrow Zionist
standpoint, have slowly mutated by a fateful process
into ever-widening circles of conflict that now
threaten to escalate into major wars between the
West and Islam. Although this conflict has its
source in colonial ambitions, the dialectics of
this conflict have slowly endowed it with the
force and rhetoric of a civilizational war: and
perhaps worse, a religious war. This is the tragedy
of Israel. It is not a fortuitous tragedy. Driven
by history, chance and cunning, the Zionists wedged
themselves between two historical adversaries,
the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength
of the first against the second, it has produced
the conditions of a conflict that has grown deeper
over time.
Zionist historiography describes the emergence
of Israel as a triumph over Europe's centuries-old
anti-Semitism, in particular over its twentieth-century
manifestation, the demonic, industrial plan of
the Nazis to stamp out the existence of the Jewish
people. But this is a tendentious reading of Zionist
history: it obscures the historic offer Zionism
made to the West - the offer to rid the West of
its Jews, to lead them out of Christendom into
Islamic Palestine. In offering to 'cleanse' the
West of the 'hated Jews,' the Zionists were working
with the anti-Semites, not against them. Theodore
Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, had a clear
understanding of this complementarity between
Zionism and anti-Semitism; and he was convinced
that Zionism would prevail only if anti-Semitic
Europe could be persuaded to work for its success.
It is true that Jews and anti-Semites have been
historical adversaries, that Jews have been the
victims of Europe's religious vendetta since Rome
first embraced Christianity. However, Zionism
would enter into a new relationship with anti-Semitism
that would work to the advantage of Jews. The
insertion of the Zionist idea in the Western discourse
would work a profound change in the relationship
between Western Jews and Gentiles. In order to
succeed, the Zionists would have to create a new
adversary, common to the West and the Jews. In
choosing to locate their colonial-settler state
in Palestine - and not in Uganda or Argentina
- the Zionists had also chosen an adversary that
would deepen their partnership with the West.
The Islamic world was a great deal more likely
to energize the West's imperialist ambitions and
evangelical zeal than Africa or Latin America.
Israel was the product of a partnership that seems
unlikely at first blush, between Western Jews
and the Western world. It is the powerful alchemy
of the Zionist idea that created this partnership.
The Zionist project to create a Jewish state in
Palestine possessed the unique power to convert
two historical antagonists, Jews and Gentiles,
into allies united in a common imperialist enterprise
against the Islamic world. The Zionists harnessed
the negative energies of the Western world - its
imperialism, its anti-Semitism, its Crusading
nostalgia, its anti-Islamic bigotry, and its deep
racism - and focused them on a new imperialist
project, the creation of a Western surrogate state
in the Islamic heartland. To the West's imperialist
ambitions, this new colonial project offered a
variety of strategic advantages. Israel would
be located in the heart of the Islamic world;
it would sit astride the junction of Asia, Africa
and Europe; it would guard Europe's gateway to
the Indian Ocean; and it could monitor developments
in the Persian Gulf with its vast reserves of
oil. For the West as well as Europe's Jews, this
was a creative moment: indeed, it was a historical
opportunity. For European Jews, it was a stroke
of brilliance. Zionism was going to leverage Western
power in their cause. As the Zionist plan would
unfold, inflicting pain on the Islamic world,
evoking Islamic anger against the West and Jews,
the complementarities between the two would deepen.
In time, new complementarities would be discovered
- or created - between the two antagonist strains
of Western history. In the United States, the
Zionist movement would give encouragement to evangelical
Protestants - who looked upon the birth of Israel
as the fulfillment of end-time prophecies - and
convert them into fanatic partisans of Zionism.
In addition, Western civilization, which had hitherto
traced its central ideas and institutions to Rome
and Athens, would be repackaged as a Judeo-Christian
civilization. This reframing not only underscores
the Jewish roots of the Western world, it also
makes a point of emphasizing that Islam is the
outsider, the adversary.
Zionism owes its success solely to this unlikely
partnership. On their own, the Zionists could
not have gone anywhere. They could not have created
Israel by bribing or coercing the Ottomans into
granting them a charter to colonize Palestine.
Despite his offers of loans, investments, technology
and diplomatic expertise, Theodore Herzl was repeatedly
rebuffed by the Ottoman Sultan. It is even less
likely that the Zionists could at any time have
mobilized a Jewish army in Europe to invade and
occupy Palestine, against Ottoman and Arab opposition
to the creation of a Jewish state on Islamic lands.
The Zionist partnership with the West was indispensable
for the creation of a Jewish state. This partnership
was also fateful. It produced a powerful new dialectic,
which has encouraged Israel, both as the political
center of the Jewish Diaspora and the chief outpost
of the West in the heart of the Islamic world,
to become more daring in its designs against the
Islamic world and beyond. In turn, a wounded and
humiliated Islamic world, more resentful and determined
after every defeat, has been driven to embrace
increasingly radical ideas and methods to recover
its dignity and power - and to attain this recovery
on the strength of Islamic ideas. This destabilizing
dialectic has now brought the West itself into
a direct confrontation against the Islamic world.
We are now staring into the precipice. Yet do
we possess the will to pull back from it?
M.
Shahid Alam is professor of economics at a university
in Boston, and author of Challenging the New Orientalism:
Dissenting Essays on America's 'War Against Islam'
(IPI Publications: 2006). He may be reached at
alqalam02760@yahoo.com. © M. Shahid Alam
