The Israel-Diaspora divide: The abandonment of Zionism
By DAVID TURNERUpdated: MAY 6, 2018 22:45On re-reading Lior's article and minus my reflexive and unwarranted rejoinder, there is much in his article to recommend beyond bias. While I feel my own response is still worthy of reading within the context of The Israel-Diaspora Divide, truly anticipate the fate described, still is there room for debate and discussion: Israel and Diaspora."You are invited to either immigrate to Israel and join us, or continue living your lives in comfort and send us money, lots of money... That’s the deal we offer and it’s a deal they no longer agree to accept." LIOR TAL SADEH in his article, "Israel and Diaspora Jewry: We really need to talk", which offers a dialogue between the deaf and the blind.Thank you for your service, Lior. I appreciate your sacrifice and your opinion. However, some of your remarks display a "naiveté" regarding your previous "homeland" and the understanding of its present (and past) appreciation of both their condition, and the failings of Israel to appreciate its purpose in the cause of Zionism. American Jewish "leaders" only accepted participation in the Zionist cause with the concession that its true meaning NOT apply to the United States, that the purpose of Zionism is to create a homeland and refuge for the “needy” Jews Europe: the United States, they, as their forebears in German insisted, was “exceptional”: In the US there was no danger of persecution, etc. And so, as you rightly point out, the US became philanthropist, but opposed “aliya.”The Shoah, even when not fading into the calendar of events to memorialize, 1. Happened over there, an “Old World” event that surely could not have happened over “here”; 2. The Holocaust was a “unique” event in history (a “mystery” to theologians) and itself a one-off event not likely to recur.Really? lt certainly is consoling, and there are many academics happy to so reassure, that the Holocaust is “exceptional in history” (most begin their “research” the condition of Germany following WWI, for example.With two-thousand years of anti-Jewish persecution, the background for the effort to rid the world of Jews began in the 1920’s?Should not two-millennia of persecution costing at least an equal number of Jews murdered before the start of the Holocaust with the invasion of Poland in 1939; should that true history be disregarded to provide solace for our small survivor community existing today? Does Denial so cloud judgment as to fail to even see a “process” at work here? And what value solace today as this process moves forward? Are we condemned to participate in our role as assigned by our exceptional Diaspora Homelands?Sorry Lior, Zionism was born of the hint of Holocaust in the pogroms of the nineteenth century which followed “Jewish Emancipation” and the popular rejection of equality for Jews across the West, including the United States. Looking around us today, who of the Diaspora would suggest that Jews are secure, safe living “lives of comfort” in our “exceptional” homelands?And what about Israel, how well is Israel serving its Zionist mission as “homeland” and “refuge” to the Jewish People? My fear is that anti-Zionism may already have rooted too deeply in the soil to even appear a welcoming alternative to persecution abroad.