I readily agree that the difference is the fact that the majority of the population of Israel is Jews - indeed, that’s my point.
I am merely refuting the odd notion, raised by some, that the difference is that Israel is a very young nation when all of its neighbours are of the same vintage.
Another important point is that a sizable percentage of the population of Israel -the Shephardic Jews (or more technically Mizrahim) - are of middle eastern origin (roughly half the Israeli Jewish population are of Mizrai origin). These people were expelled from ME countries, so oddly enough the descendents of a population of minority middle easterners oppressed and expelled by ME nations are held to be symbols of European imperialism and colonialism …
No substantial Jewish population in the region? If by “the region” you mean the ME, you are quite incorrect. Half of Israel’s population is descended from ME Jews who have always lived there, under Turkish rule.
Their situation changed drastically with the introduction of a host of new state-lets carved out of Turkish imperium. Under the Turks, Jews were a minority population, but then so were various form of Arab, Marionites in Lebanon, Druze, etc.
The other minorities got countries - Egypt for Egyptians, Jordan for Jordanian Arabs, Lebanon famously split between Christian and Muslim minorities, etc.
However, what now occured is that former minority populations became majority, or strived for that status: see for example Lebanon, which has througout its history see-sawed between Christian and Muslim populations; or Iraq, with its resentful Kurds seeking an independent Kurdistan. The reason: minorities formerly granted some sort of protection or status by their Turkish overlords were now more exposed to the fury of their neighbours (the disintegration of Turkish imperium was marked by a rise in Turkish ethno-nationalism as Turks begain to participate in this process, rather than seeing themselves as a ruling caste over the ME as a whole - see for example the slaughter or Armenians).
In this ferment, it is no surprise and no anomaly that while Turks sought a Turkey and Kurds sought a Kurdistan, that Jews sought a Jew-istan. In fact, Zionism is nothing more nor less than a parallel with the rise of ethno-nationalism in the ME generally.
The only anomaly is the triggering participation of European Jews in the process, the fact that unlike most of these other ethno-nations Israel did not become an autocrasy, and of course the continuing insistance that somehow Jewish ethno-nationalism is totally different from any other sort of ME ethno-nationalism.
I do not believe your analysis is historically accurate.
Just off the top:
Demographics: you say “Part of what makes Israel unique is that a people were transplanted there”. This is wrong in two respects.
a. As has already been pointed out, the Europrean Jews were not “transplanted”. They immigrated.
b. You are of course ignoring that half of Israel’s population which has always been in the ME.
You state that I am “simply incorrect about geopolitical relevance” - presumably, in yor opinion Israel is more geopolitically important than Egypt (which controls the Suez Canal) and Saudi Arabia (which controls a substantial part of the world’s oil supply). I state that such a statement requires some sort of evidence. Indeed, I’d go further and state it is a quite extraordinary claim.
Your thesis appears to be the circular one that Israel is more important because lots of people think it is. I would suggest that if Saudi Arabia started to monkey with the oil supply, that order or priorities changes fast (see - 1970s). Further, the reason people think it is important has everything to do with the fact it is inhabited by Jews.
You assert that Jordan is an example of a “drawing new formal borders while leaving the traditional demographics and power structures”. Yet this is not so. The expulsion of the Palestinians after “Black September” puts paid to the notion that the population of Jordan is immutable, and the “traditional power structure” of the Hashimite monarchy of Jordan is no older than the country - indeed, this ancient “tradition” was created by (of all people) Winston Churchill at a tea-party in 1918: Abdullah I of Jordan - Wikipedia
I do not understand how the importation of a “traditional” protector of Mecca (which you may recall is in Saudi Arabia, not Jordan) as a monarch by Winston Churchill is a great example of “… leaving the traditional … power structures”. Let alone the installation of a Saudi Arabian dignitary to rule a country he never even lived in before being somehow “…just fundamentally different from the creation of Israel in the broad view”.
So in conclusion, I simply fundamentally disagree with this:
You have not explained why the “transplantation” of a bunch of ME Jews to Israel from (say) Syria is so drastically different than the “transplantation” of a Hashimite dignitary from Saudi Arabia to ruler of Jordan - though the latter is your chosen example of “…leaving the traditional demographics and power structures”.
To my mind the difference is the obvious one: few people here in the West care or notice the differences bewteen different Arabs, Marionites, Druze, Kurds, Persians, Sunnis, Sh’ites, etc. etc. - even though the various ethno-nationalist and religious conflicts among these cause just as much trouble as the Arab-Israeli one (indeed, I suspect more people have been killed in the Iran-Iraq war than in all Arab-Israeli wars combined). That Israel is composed of Jews - with all of the convoluted history that implies - is the difference, and the explaination for all the attention.
Malthus, that’s a lot of content to discuss and rebut on a nice December day. So let’s try to keep in mind the context of the larger point being made here.
I’m simply arguing that people ask questions about the legitimacy of Israel for reasons other than anti-semitism. In the popular consciousness of the West, Israel was a state created by the Zionists and Europe in a controversial location in order to give the Jewish diaspora a state of their own. Perhaps that narrative is fundamentally incorrect, or even itself the product of anti-semitism, but it is nevertheless the popular narrative and the source of questions over Israel’s legitimacy. Questions stemming from this narrative are not the result of the questioners anti-semitism. If that narrative is incorrect, as you argue, then the useful and intelligent response is to educate people, not berate them false allegations of bigotry.
I won’t spend time correcting and discussing interpretations of my word choice in “substantial,” “the region,” “transplantation,” and “power structures,” if it’s OK by you. I think that stuff is pretty tangential anyway. So I’ll just make three more points:
Egyptian existed as a nationality, in the area of Egypt, long before the rise of formal Egyptian nationalism in 1919. Right? These places were part of the Ottoman empire, but they had all the trappings of ethnic nation-states. The whole point of Israel and the Zionist movement generally is that the Jews had no such nationality and claim to land. They lived largely as a diaspora. The point is that there are some relevant differences both from other nation-states and from other ME nation-states–the wave of immigration to populate the state, the displacement of other people, the dispute over control of holy sites, European involvement in the creation of the state, etc., etc.
First, it isn’t circular to assert that if lots of people think something is important it becomes important. It is, in fact, one mechanism by which something becomes important (see, e.g., religion). But in any case, I think we’re talking past each other here because I’m quite sure you don’t actually dispute my point. Israel has been at the center of conflict in one of the most important regions of the world for 50 years. And the conflict centers on Israel’s boundaries and legitimacy. That’s not Israel’s fault, and it is largely because of anti-semitism. But, this fact gives Israel a prominence which leads people to ask questions about it and not, say, East Timor or Egypt.
You don’t see the difference between millions of people moving to occupy a new home and installing one man as a ruler over a people who largely already occupied that land?
I’m not berating you - I’m arguing history with you. Please stop me if you preceive any “berating”, as such is not my intention.
My point is that the narrative is wrong, and the “wrong” things about the narrative are wrong because of the pre-existing narratives concerning Jews. Pointing this out is simply a factual analysis of a historical problem, not an accusation.
The answer here is complex. Some areas did indeed exist as seperate entities for greater or lesser extents of time - the relationship of Egypt to the Ottomans was always fraught, as Egypt was originally the centre of a quite different power - the Mamluks - and later, during the 19th century, an independent Emirate.
But none of these areas had “…all the trappings of ethnic nation-states”. The reason is that the notion of an “ethnic nation-state” is a modern, European import. The Mamluks were a good example of how unlike a “nation state” Egypt was, prior to the era of European intervention - the Mamluks were a ruling class or caste of slave-soldiers, ethnically from central asia (thus having nothing whatever in common, ethnically, with the average Egyptian).
This lack of ethno-nationalism persisted after Napoleon. The man named “the founder of modern Egypt” - Muhammad Ali - was a European (an Albanian, born in what is now Macedonia to be exact): Muhammad Ali of Egypt - Wikipedia
Nationalism in Egypt became prominent in the 1880s and dominant as you say in the 1910s (at, coincidentally or not, exactly the same time as Zionism).
So, given this history, why exactly is it that an Albanian born in Macedonia can be the “father of modern Egypt”, but a Jew born in Poland (David ben Gurion) cannot legitimately be the “father of modern Israel”?
Note that European involvement was central in both cases, in both cases the “father of the country” was born European, both involved displacements of people (the murder of an entire upper class in the case of Egypt - the infamous “Massacre of the Citadel”), the parallel discovery of ethno-nationalism. The only major difference is that, in the case of Israel, there was considerably greater European immigration.
That’s no different from my thesis.
Immigration and population movements happen all the time. I’m mentioning that such a ruler transplantation is hardly an example of a “traditional power structure”. To my mind, “traditional” means something other than ‘what we invented yesterday over tea’.
You weren’t berating me. I didn’t raise the questions. I was defending those who did against allegations of anti-semitism. If you and others are no longer making such allegations, then we’re in accord.
You’ll have to explain the relevance of the question to my point. I am not arguing that David ben Gurion cannot legitimately be the father of modern Israel. Indeed, I’m not arguing about the legitimacy of Israel at all. I’m merely explaining and defending the motivations of those who inquire about Israeli legitimacy
Exactly.
My sentence would be better read as “leaving the [long-standing] demographics and [existing] power structures.” I apologize for the ambiguity of the construction “adjective noun and noun.”
I do think that the “unique” narrative assigned to Israel and the consequent unique “is Israel legitimate?” question is, ultimately, a product of anti-semitism. The person parroting that unique narritive may not themselves be an anti-semite, of course - just as someone raising the tired question of whether Blacks are genetically less intelligent than Whites may well not be a racist; they are both of them perfectly legitimate questions to ask - which, unfortunately, take a great deal of historical (or genetic/anthopological) explaination to answer.
When the question is posed as it was in the OP - which, basically, amounts (my paraphrase) to ‘I know nothing of the history, but my read of the narrative is …’, the argument can go one of two ways: a long and detailed historical exposition of the history of ME nationalism (as I have attempted to provide), or it could degenerate into the usual bashing match. The former sometimes seems a hopeless task, and the latter always is.
My point is that those arguing that Israel is “unique” are simply historically misinformed. They have seized on a narrative which is not based on the history of the region - the notion that Israel alone is a European imposition on a region that is otherwise composed of “natural” and “organic” ethnic nation-states which have existed in the region since time immemorial, when as a matter of historical fact, all of the countries in the region share a similar history - of European intervention, growing ethno-nationalism, population transfers and dispossessions, ethnic conflict, etc.
While there is nothing wrong with raising the question, again, the (false) narrative is a product of a pre-existing false narrative concerning Jews.
But the simple fact is there is no stripe of Arab that doesn’t hate the Jews. The British knew, or found out very quickly an Israeli state within the territory of their Mandate was going to be big problem. That’s why it didn’t happen until WWII when the world was in shock and the Jews in Palestine forced their hand through acts of violence now commonly known as terrorism.
It seems to me there could have been a better geographic choice for the Diaspora to end up.
Problem was, Europe hated Jews even worse - that’s why many were fleeing Europe.
Other suggestions included Alaska (there was a recent fiction set there) and Uganda.
The only alternative actually enacted was in the Soviet Union. Stalin created a “Jewish homeland” in Siberia, but for some strange reason Jews did not seem very eager to move there.
That’s funny in a sick way about Siberia. I know Michael Chabon placed them in Alaska in a recent novel. Sub Saharan Africa would have been the best bet. Everybody there would have benefited from that. I think they might have been a great stabilizing influence in an area of chronic instability.
Actually, I do not think they do, particularly. There are certainly some nasty references to Jews in the Koran, but (together with Christians) they were not subject to extraordinary presecution in the Muslim world - prior to the rise of ethno-nationalism. They were regarded as “people of the book”, not to be persecuted - so long as they accepted their place.
But in Muslim lore, Jews have always been a minority existing on Muslim sufference - since the time of Mohammed.
Why did/do Europeans hate them? There are myriad reasons, but I think the main one is that the Jews held themselves aloof and separate…and it’s always easier to target separate and outside groups.
There were of course lots of other factors, including the fact that the Jews in the ME supported the allies during WWI and the Turks (and many of the Arab ethnic groups) supported the other side. Also, eventually the Jews got tired of being kicked around and fought back…and this further inflamed the situation in a similar way to the attack and counter attacks in Ireland during the Troubles.
All the African countries at that time were still European colonies. They could have done it had they been willing to give up the gravy which clearly they were not. As for the indigenous population, it would have been better for them than to be subjects of HRM.
If the Arabs did not have a particular and strong hate of the Jews we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
I honestly do not think that Arabs did have a “particular and strong hate of the Jews” prior to Zionism/Israel. The hatred is a more modern creation, an outgrowth of ethno-nationalism and rivalry.
The difficulty may be that, wherever you plant a new ethnic nation, those who are neighbours and rivals are very likely to resent it - in particular if the new nation does markedly better.
They were opposed to Zionism/Israel from the very beginning. I expect they were not much of an issue while a minority but there was no desire for a Jewish state or to be living under Jewish rule.
My point wasn’t merely that Israel was a very young nation, but that the newcomers settled there and took over very recently. I wasn’t contrasting Israel with, say, Jordan but with, for instance, Australia.
The closest examples I could think of would be for instance ethnic Chinese installed in Tibet (which is definitely a contentious issue) or colonists in French Algeria (most certainly contentious too).
Huh? How so? People have hinted at anti-Semitism in this thread, but it’s my turn to smell something a little stinky about Africans, here.
And what make you think that Africans would have welcomed the Jewish diaspora? Outsiders have been frequently targeted during periods of unrest in African nations, for instance Lebanese people who at some point were present in significant numbers as shop owners and traders in West-Africa. What make you think it would have been any different with a bunch of Jews?
And it would have been seen as a continuation of colonialism, even more so than in the middle east, since there was zero local Jewish population to begin with in sub-Saharan Africa (*)
(*) Nitpickers are welcome to point out at some Jewish population living somewhere in Black Africa. Mentioning Ethiopian Jews, being too easy, doesn’t count.
