Many people I know would argue that the justificaton for Zionism is the continued existence of anti-semitism, that Zionism should not be viewed as an affirmative nationalism like other 19th Century varieties, but a "negative" nationalism whose claims are supported by the unique nature of anti-semitism as a universal phenomenon in capitalist societies in moments of crisis.
Moishe Postone's National Socialism and Anti-Semitism is a key text for this school of thought, as well as some obscure passages in Marx's Critique of Political Economy concerning interest-bearing capital and its tendency to be a "target for superficial criticism."
The argumentation concludes that the conditions that make Zionism necessary will be abolished when Capital and State are abolished as social categories. The concomitant to this argumentation is that any point of view that holds Zionism to be particularly odious or dubious when compared with other nationalisms is anti-semitic.
I suppose the argumentation is somewhat esoteric, but I think claims of Palestinian "nationhood" are arguably just as dubious. And besides, I think Leftists and other progressive-minded peoples should avoid naturalistic arguments for any sort of nationalism. That sort of "Blut und Boden" argumentation is best left to Neo-Nazis.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >Israeli nationalism as
> >completely different from other kinds of
> nationalism. In a sense, all
> >nationalism is a form of racism, but then that
> should be the issue, not
> >Israel specifically.
>
> I agree that nationalism should be an issue, but
> Zionism is different
> from other kinds of nationalism in that the claims
> of membership in
> the nation are different from most. How is it that
> someone born in
> Brooklyn can claim a piece of subsidized land in
> Israel based merely
> on being Jewish? There are claims of common ancestry
> but they go back
> so far as to be practically phantasmic. No one spoke
> modern Hebrew
> until about 50 years ago, so the claim of language
> is out. There's a
> claim of common culture, but what does that mean?
> Latkes? Freud?
> Seinfeld? There's religion, but Zionists have
> historically been
> mostly secular, and the religious are a minority in
> Israel. And how
> many other nationalisms have centered their claims
> on religion? I
> wouldn't say it's completely different - there are
> some
> commonalities, and Zionism sprung up at the same
> time as a lot of
> romantic, mostly reactionary, nationalisms in 19th
> century Europe -
> but it is a pretty odd duck.
>
> Doug
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