Bearing the Name of Zionism in Vain

1/21/2007

Yossi Beilin, M.K. and Chair of Meretz-Yahad (Published in Hebrew in Maariv)
Translated by Joanne Yaron, Head of Meretz World Union North American-Australia Desk

1/21/07 - Zionism is a point of view based on the precept that the Jewish people are worthy of a country of their own, where Jews are the majority that determines the country’s way of life. Zionism also believes in the necessity of actively working to assure that as many Jews as possible consider this country as their home and immigrate to it in order to secure the continuation of the Jewish people and to be certain that the country will exist for future generations, while guaranteeing full rights for those [inhabitants] who are not Jewish.

Post-Zionism is a point-of-view that describes the Jewish State as a mistake, stating that since there are hardly any distressed Jews now; there is no longer any reason to promote immigration. In my opinion post-Zionism represents adherence to territory only, which threatens the continued existence of a Jewish majority under direct or indirect Israeli rule.  To my way of thinking, by allowing monopoly status to the religious definition of a Jew, post-Zionism excludes many immigrants, [even] those who are under duress, and prevents those who have only a Jewish father, or those who are very closely identified with the Jewish people but are not Jews according to religious law, from being defined as Jews by the state.

It does not surprise me that those who are identified with Zionist institutions are certain that these institutions are Zionism itself and often forget that they are [simply] tools for the fulfillment of [the Zionist] ideology and not the opposite.  [Indeed], several of the Zionist institutions have become obstacles to the fulfillment of Zionism; they were very relevant in their day, but their renewal has been inadequate and today they are relevant only to very few people in Israel and abroad.

The Jewish National Fund [Keren Kayemet Le-Israel] is an example of this. It was a wonderful idea 105 years ago.  It was assigned the task of promoting the purchase of land in the Land of Israel by Jews all over the world, not for themselves, but for the benefit of the Jewish collective, and indeed, in the framework of the “dunam after dunam” program, some 7% of the of land in the country was purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF).  Following the establishment of the State of Israel – the fulfillment of a generations old dream -- the JNF was supposed to transfer all this land to the Government of Israel as a gift from the Jewish people.  Of course, this never happened.  The organization wanted to preserve itself, while the State found it convenient to utilize the clause in the JNF’s charter that not only forbad the sale of land to foreigners, it also forbad leasing of land to non-Jews, and after the War of Independence sold a million dunams of “State land” to the JNF, plus another small stretch of property later on, all of which came under this restrictive clause. 

Today the JNF is involved in construction of reservoirs, forestry, environmental protection activities and earth work contracting.  Neither ownership of land nor the existence of such a [land owning] national monopoly managed by political parties is required for this [type of work].  As long as the JNF does not change, and as long as it continues to prohibit Arabs [from acquiring JNF land], the little that can be done to lessen the damage is to appoint an Arab member to the JNF Board of Directors to assure that its activities will also be carried out in the Arab community, and that the injury to the Arab citizens of Israel with regard to their accessibility to public land will be reduced as much as possible.  In my opinion there is no greater expression of Zionism [than this], and it is a pity that there are those who consider an injury to the Arab minority as the true fulfillment of Zionism.  I recommend that they reread Herzl’s “Alteneuland”.