Postmodern Zionism

For years, Tom Segev has been writing a column in a leading Israeli daily titled “Katav sar” which, literally translated, means “foreign correspondent.” But since Segev is not a foreign correspondent in his homeland, it points to an element of detachment if not alienation, as if he were seeing his country from the outside.

Unlike some other critics, he is not predictable. He does not, for instance, believe that Norman Finkelstein or even Hannah Arendt are the highest authorities on the Holocaust. And this unconventional viewpoint has given his columns an interest and freshness that other critics don’t have.

In “Elvis in Jerusalem,” he deals with certain cultural trends in Israel over the last decade, and it appears at a time when these issues are not exactly on the top of our agenda. But the comments of a shrewd observer are still of interest, not only to professionals in the field of cultural studies but to anyone interested in understanding the continuing debates in Israel over its ideological foundations.

Americanization in Israel has expressed itself in a variety of forms: culinary, linguistic, musical and so on. Its impact cannot possibly be overlooked even by a casual visitor, but I do not think it has gone further than what has taken place in other countries. If the term “bye” has entered the Hebrew language, for instance, then “design” and “date” (replacing “rendezvous”) have become German, “high life” and “parking” Russian, the French “ordinateur” fights an uphill struggle against “computer,” and there are a thousand other examples. It is also true that, in some respects, Israeli mass culture has moved beyond being Americanized, going for better or worse its own ways.

One of the byproducts of Americanization, Segev suggests, was the appearance of post-Zionism, a small but articulate political-cultural trend confined almost entirely to the universities. Post-Zionism was, grosso modo, the Israeli equivalent of postmodernism and post-colonial studies. (True, some post-Zionists were not postmodernists, but this hardly affected the general picture.) It challenged the founding myths of Zionism in a variety of fields: history, archeology, sociology, even theology.

Post-Zionist writings scandalized many the traditional Zionists, who thought them sacrilegious. At one stage, Segev relates, the Israeli parliament decided almost unanimously to have a history textbook rewritten; admittedly it had gone a little far in the direction of post-colonialism, featuring a picture of Gamal Abdel Nasser but not of David Ben-Gurion.

I found post-Zionism not particularly revolutionary but a little provincial; it ignored the fact that the origins of all nations are shrouded in mythology, that Israel has no monopoly in this respect. (Even the term “post-Zionism” is not really new, it appears on the first page of my “History of Zionism,” written more than three decades ago, and I was certainly not the first to use it.)

Perhaps the Israeli school system had indoctrinated its children too intensively; they had come to take the Bible as a guide to history which, in the end, provoked a rebellion. Much has undermined the myths: Revisionist archeologists have recently claimed that the children of Israel were not in Egypt in the first place, that the walls of Jericho did not crumble when Joshua sounded his trumpet, and that King David’s kingdom, if it existed, was not a mighty empire but more a modest collection of villages in the Judean hills.

As to the truth in these claims, the debate continues. But whatever the outcome, the political-philosophical consequences are not readily obvious. If the Israelites were not serfs in Egypt and did not cross the Red Sea, they must have lived in Palestine all along, and this does not weaken their claim to have had an ancient link with the country. For those who did not pass through the Israeli school system, the excitement of the post-Zionists about their discoveries, their demystification and deconstruction is not easy to understand. The same is true with regard to their shock and indignation at having discovered that, in contrast to what the early Zionist leaders argued, Palestine was not an empty country waiting for the Jewish people to take possession. Few Zionist leaders did claim this; only the blind could have made such claims. The truth was more prosaic.

In 1897, the year of the first Zionist Congress, the total population of Palestine was about one quarter that of the city of Vienna, in which Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl, lived. In other words, it was not exactly overpopulated. He might perhaps be forgiven for believing that the presence of a few hundred thousand in Palestine should not make it impossible to establish a Jewish state.

Post-Zionism appeared on the Israeli scene after the demise of the old (Marxist) left; there was a vacuum which it tried to fill, but it failed to do so for a variety of reasons. One reason was predominantly linguistic: The language of postmodernism and post-colonialism does not always travel well; translated into another language it became even more obscure and limited its appeal to a few cognoscenti.

It was meant to reach, above all, the “oppressed minorities” such as the “Mizrahim,” Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin which, given their values, mentality and political outlook, was a hopeless enterprise. The last thing they wanted was a demystification of their traditions, and their brotherly love for their Arab neighbors was strictly limited.

Above all, the ideologues failed to understand that their total critique nurtured in the safety and seclusion of American campuses would not travel well to a small country in the Middle East whose very survival was not assured. For these and other reasons, post-Zionism remained a marginal phenomenon, and of late, even the attacks against it have ceased.

These are not, to put it mildly, happy days for the state of Israel. The Israeli electorate in its wisdom has elected a government that has led to the isolation and weakening of the country. This has brought about the polarization of political attitudes; the right has become more extreme and the left more confused. It is not a very pleasant situation, and in many ways, one looks back longingly to the days, not so long ago, when Segev’s book was written and people had the time and the inclination to engage in cultural and ideological battles of the kind he vividly describes.

“Elvis in Jerusalem” is, in many ways, an ideological guidebook to the world of yesterday; perhaps this world will be resurrected one day, but chances at the moment are not too good.

*

From ‘Elvis in Jerusalem’

One day when I was a student at the Hebrew University High School in Jerusalem, our literature teacher stormed into the room, beside himself. The teacher, A.B. Yehoshua, now a leading Israeli novelist, would often share his most deeply felt thoughts with us, and an experience he’d had the previous evening had roiled him badly. While walking down Hakeren Hakayemet Street in the Rehavia neighborhood, not far from the Hebrew Gymnasium, another high school, he had noticed a group of teenagers having a loud discussion under a streetlight. He was elated--he loved impassioned young people. But when he came closer and heard what they were talking about, he was terribly disappointed. They weren’t debating Zionist values. The subject being discussed so fiercely was the cost of a Volkswagen Beetle in Germany.