Defending the declaration

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood…

"The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”

Extracts from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, read out by David Ben Gurion, almost exactly 63 years ago, as the storm clouds of war gathered.  The following day the Arab world would unite in an attempt to strangle the Jewish State at birth.  Israel won that war, and several since, but today, though the physical threats to its security remain, there is also another war to be fought; it is for the defense of the dreams of Israel’s founding fathers.

Zionism, religion and the modern State of Israel

BACK IN the UK I was a Zionist.  I supported the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their historic homeland.  Now I’m an Israeli, it seems I can’t define myself that way anymore without being thought of as either hopelessly anachronistic, or avowedly right-wing.

Sections of the Israeli right have made Zionism synonymous with support for the settlement movement, while sections of the left have acquiesced in this fiction by abdicating ownership of the term.  (It is worth noting that Zionism was originally a progressive liberation movement with its roots in enlightened 19^th century liberalism; closer in spirit to those supporting an end to the occupation of the Palestinians than to the West Bank settlers.  Even the father of what became the Israeli right, Vladimir Jabotinsky, was an avowed liberal who insisted on democratic rights for all the citizens of the putative Jewish state and who spoke resolutely against expelling Arabs from their homes).