Ha'aretz - July 11, 2004
The state and the vision
Even after 100 years, the vision of Theodor (Benjamin Ze'ev) Herzl seems to suit the taste of Israelis better than any political or diplomatic platform written since. Herzl wanted a country that would be like all the other countries, even dreamt of a Switzerland of the Middle East. He admired Europeanism, although he didn't succeed in being assimilated into it far enough to feel at home. He considered the "new Jew" - a modern, liberal, self-confident, secular fighter, free of the burden of his past - to be his heart's desire, and the solution for all the problems of the humiliated nation in the Diaspora.
Like many of the intelligentsia of his time, Herzl was a colonialist at heart, a missionary of European progress, and he thought Jewish settlement in the Middle East, like British settlement in Africa, could only be to the advantage of the natives, advancing them toward enlightenment. Fifty years before the Holocaust, Herzl arrived at the conclusion that only a separate and independent Jewish state could free the world from hatred of the Jews, and free the Jews from unremitting persecution.
Despite his great frustration that the Europeans rejected him and people like him, he admired European education and liberalism, and wanted to emulate them and to adopt them as a model for the future Jewish state. In doing so, Herzl drew criticism from Jews like Ahad Haam - Asher Ginsberg, the leading proponent of "cultural Zionism" - who were displeased by his detachment from Jewish heritage. Herzl's political Zionism succeeded beyond expectations. Even today the idea of an ingathering of the exiles in a modern nation state, a state that in time of need was capable of absorbing another million new immigrants from Russia into a population of five million, seems to have lost none of its attraction.
The desire to establish a "little Europe" in Israel has also remained relevant, perhaps even more so than in the past, with the European Union outlining a more egalitarian and peace-loving way of life. It is true that Herzl didn't draw most of his political inspiration from Jewish heritage. The irrationality and messianism that spread in the new Jewish state would certainly have been alien to him. There is no doubt he, like many members of his generation, did not anticipate a clash between two national movements fighting over the Land of Israel.
His and others' vision of Zion ignored the Palestinians, while the Palestinians in turn ignored the need to compromise to enable peaceful coexistence. On the 100th anniversary of Herzl's death, we should indeed admire him for his vision. But we must also not be afraid to state that 21st century Zionism will not survive if the new interpretation of the "Jewish state" is an apartheid state that rules over the Palestinians against their will. We must remember that the suffering of the Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation is as desperate as was that of the Jews of Europe in the late 19th century, when Herzl sought a solution for their distress.
The future of the Jewish state is linked to the future of the Palestinian nation that lives alongside and within it, and the logical and ethical solution for that cannot be found in a vision, but by bringing about a change in reality.