This started with
> folks asserting that Israeli nationalism was qualitatively different from
> other kinds of nationalism. My only point is that it's qualitatively the
> same -- and condemnable when it translates into the racism and oppression
> that nationalism often translates into.>
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I've haven't been following this thread since the beginning, so perhaps the
point has already been made, but what makes Israeli nationalism
"qualitatively different", IMO, is that defines itself as the state of "the
Jewish people" rather than of all of the religious groups within its
borders. While it doesn't withhold citizenship from already resident Muslims
and Christians, it does suggest the state does not belong to them in the
same way as it does to its Jewish citizens. In this sense, I see little to
distinguish it from the Islamic Republic of Iran. While it is true that in
the latter case Islamic law is supreme, it should be noted that Israel still
lacks a formal constitution due to the resistance of its orthodox Jewish
community which insists that there can be no higher authority than the Torah
and other religious law. So the parallel, while inexact, is not as
far-fetched as supporters of Israel would maintain. In any event, I know of
no other nation which constitutionally defines itself in terms of the
religious affiliation of its dominant group, and I'd be equally opposed on
the same grounds to others which are so identified.
The Jewish character of the state is of course the basis for it's Law of Return, which gives preference in immigration to those who are Jewish. The definition of a Jew is derived from the Nazi Nuremburg Laws, which is more expansive than Mosaic law. It was originally adopted in order to provide a sanctuary for all Nazi-defined Jews victimized by the Holocaust. However, while that historical moment has long since passed, the legislation remains in place, and has ironically given rise to the anomolous possibility of the state refusing sanctuary to those most deserving of it. Under Israeli law, for example, a Jewish millionaire from Miami wishing to retire to Israel would have been entitled to jump the immigration queue ahead of, say, a Tutsi mother and her children fleeing Rwanda. More concretly, of course, there are millions of Palestinian refugees whose claim is also greater than the disapora Jew in search of "aliyah". It's an immigration policy which is indefensible by people who define themselves as, first and foremost, internationalists.
I have trouble, in general, with the concept of a "Jewish nation". I don't believe that an Ethopian who practices the Jewish religion can possibly be perceived as belonging to the same "nation" as a Scandinavian born of a Jewish mother without draining the concept of nationhood entirely of its meaning - as being largely applicable a group sharing a common language, history, culture, and geographic area. I can accept that there was a Yiddish-speaking nation in Europe which was massacred by the Nazis, and I can even accept that a new Hebrew-speaking nation has arisen over the past century in what was British mandatory Palestine, but the idea of a "Jewish nation" as such seems to me to have mostly been an ideological construct of the early Zionists to justify the settlement of a scattered religious community within a geographic space in the Middle East it deemed, on biblical authority, to belong to it. It is still the ideological basis on which Israel is able to draw on the support of Jews in North America and elsewhere, an identity reinforced by constant reminders that they are vulnerable in the Diaspora to the ever-present danger of a new Holocaust and that the "Jewish state" is their only sanctuary.
If the influential liberal wing of the Jewish community in the US, in particular, were to alter its perceptions of the state and its misplaced allegiance to it in line with the above, it would have a powerful impact on current US/Israeli policy in the region - from our point of view, a very positive one.