ECAJ Research Officer, Julie Nathan, has written an insight­ful piece about the strong con­nec­tion between Judaism and Zionism. It has been published by ABC Religion and Ethics, and is repro­duced below. It was ori­gin­ally published on the Times of Israel as “Zionism explained to a Muslim friend”.

Can There Be Judaism Without Zionism?

Julie Nathan
ABC Religion and Ethics
1 Aug 2017
A Muslim friend recently asked, “How can we discuss Zionism away from Judaism?” I offered to meet with her and explain it. As the offer has not thus far been taken up, my response to the question has now been put into writing.
There is a great deal of innocent mis­un­der­stand­ing about what Judaism and Zionism are, and the con­nec­tion between them. There is also much delib­er­ate obfus­ca­tion and mis­rep­res­ent­a­tion in the service of a range of political agendas.
The standard mantra of anti-Israel activists is that Judaism and Zionism are entirely separate from one another. This is a con­veni­ent, but entirely false and arti­fi­cial, rhet­or­ic­al device for over­com­ing the wide­spread per­cep­tion that many anti-Zionists are anti­semites in disguise.
By attempt­ing to separate Zionism from Judaism, anti-Zionists try to delude others (if not them­selves) into thinking that one can plausibly claim not to hate the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, but “only” to hate the only Jewish-majority State in the world.
To under­stand Judaism and Zionism, the terms need to be explained.
National and Faith Community
Zionism is the national self-determ­in­a­tion movement of the Jewish people with the aim of re-estab­lish­ing a state in the Jewish national homeland, known by Jews as Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel). It is not pre­dic­ated on any par­tic­u­lar set of borders or on the dis­place­ment of non-Jewish com­munit­ies.
With the Jewish state re-estab­lished in 1948, Zionism supports the con­tinu­ing existence of the State of Israel. The word “Zion” – from Mount Zion in the heart of Jerusalem – derives from the Hebrew Bible and is a symbolic reference to Jerusalem as a whole, the capital of previous Jewish states in the land.
Although Zionism is seen as a modern idea, it is actually ancient; the modern Zionist movement is simply the modern practical mani­fest­a­tion of the Jewish people’s millennia-old organised political presence in the land.
Judaism is most often defined or under­stood simply as the religion of the Jewish people. However, Judaism is much more than a religion. It is a civil­isa­tion that encom­passes the full spectrum of the life of the Jewish people, its identity as a nation and a people, its legal system, religion, culture, customs, language, lit­er­at­ure, history, values, ideals and vision for a future of justice and peace for the whole of humanity.
This dual identity as both a national and faith community can be traced to the very begin­nings of the Jewish people. In the Bible, the Jews are con­sist­ently referred to as a nation (goy) and as a people (‘am). The con­tem­por­ary mind, which draws sharp dis­tinc­tions between religion, culture and nation­al­ity, can find it difficult to grasp the nature of Jewish identity. Yet for most of human history, these facets of human self-defin­i­tion were under­stood as being blended into an integ­rated whole. It is only in the last 300 years or so, and only in Western thinking, that they have become con­cep­tu­ally com­part­ment­al­ised.
Most Jewish people continue to see them­selves as a part of both a national and a faith community, as they always have. (The Sikhs, for example, are also defined in this way.) Jews who are atheists but identify as Jews cul­tur­ally are con­sidered, by them­selves and by most in the Jewish community, to be Jewish even though they do not adhere to any religious beliefs or practices.
Part of the modern Western under­stand­ing of Jews as only a religious community and not also a national community ori­gin­ates with the declar­a­tion by Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre to the National Assembly in France in 1789 in the debate on whether Jews should be given civil rights in France after the French revolu­tion, when he stated, “To the Jews as indi­vidu­als, all rights. To the Jews as a nation, no rights.”
And so began the non-Jewish idea of Jews as only a religious community. Con­tem­por­ary anti-Zionists utilise this idea to deny that the Jews are also a nation. With the kind of ignorance and arrogance that typifies many kinds of racism, they are effect­ively claiming to have a better under­stand­ing of what it means to be Jewish than the Jewish people them­selves. This is a trans­par­ent attempt by one group of people to define another so as to suit their own interests and con­veni­ence, and it should be condemned.
The arti­fi­cial attempt to narrow what it means to be Jewish and to confine it exclus­ively to the sphere of religion is part of the polemical arsenal deployed by opponents of Israel’s very existence as the State of the Jewish people. It is used to try to justify their dis­crim­in­at­ory – and therefore racist – denial of the right of the Jewish people to national self-determ­in­a­tion.
Deep and Continual Con­nec­tion to Land
Jews are indi­gen­ous to the land of Israel. The Hebrew language, laws, tra­di­tions, culture and mores of the Jewish people are Middle Eastern, not European. Israel is where Jewish tra­di­tions ori­gin­ated and developed. Jews have con­tinu­ously inhabited the land of Israel for more than 3,500 years – espe­cially in the four cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. The only part of the world where Jews have had a State is in the land of Israel. Despite the majority of Jews living outside their land for nearly 2000 years, often in neigh­bour­ing lands, the Jewish people never gave up the hope and dream of returning home, and many did indeed return over the millennia.
Extraneous to the Bible, there is an abundance of documents and other archae­olo­gic­al artefacts evid­en­cing that a distinct people and polity called “Israel” lived in the Holy Land as far back as the dawn of the Iron Age, more than 3,200 years ago. In contrast, there is a complete absence of Arabic writing or inscrip­tions to be found anywhere in the Holy Land dating before the Muslim conquests of the seventh century CE, and an absence of any reference to Palestine as a descriptor for a people before the late nine­teenth century.
The Arab invasion and occu­pa­tion of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the seventh century did not negate the con­nec­tion of the indi­gen­ous peoples of MENA – namely, the Amazighen (Berbers), Assyrians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Kurds, Yazidis and others – to their ancestral lands. It is akin to the European invasion and occu­pa­tion of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, which did not negate the indi­gen­ous con­nec­tion to their lands.
The deep and con­tinu­ing con­nec­tion of Jews to the Land of Israel is seen in both national and religious aspects. In Jewish religious and cultural tradition, in the Biblical and rabbinic texts, the Land of Israel is paramount to the Jewish people. Even though many Jewish laws are incumbent upon Jews where ever they live – for example, observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, per­form­ing cir­cum­cision – some laws can only be observed in the Land of Israel, such as shmita (leaving the land fallow every seventh year).
In addition, all the holy sites of the Jewish people – like Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and elsewhere – are in the Land of Israel. Wherever Jews live, Jews face Jerusalem to pray. Wherever Jews live, they pray for rain in Israel during the rainy season. Wherever Jews live, they purchase and eat the agri­cul­tur­al produce of Israel, like the seven species (two grains and five fruits) native to Israel, during festivals. One song sums up this deep and intense con­nec­tion: “Next Year in Jerusalem” which is sung at every festival of Pesach (Passover) express­ing the desire that one day, diaspora Jews will return home.
Jewish Life under Muslim Rule
As Jews are both a nation and a religious community, with con­tinu­ous hab­it­a­tion of their national homeland, who even in exile main­tained a deep spiritual con­nec­tion to the land, it was only natural that Zionism, the Jewish national self-determ­in­a­tion movement, would develop con­tem­por­an­eously with the nation­al­isms of other peoples.
The question then arose: How would this self-determ­in­a­tion be mani­fes­ted? Would the Jews continue to live in their homeland under Islamic/Arab rule as they did under the Ottomans? Or as an autonom­ous entity within a larger state? Or would the Jews seek sovereign statehood? Freedom, dignity and the lessons of history ensured that the Jews would settle for nothing less than the latter option. It was and remains a matter of honour, self-respect and justice.
Given the dis­crim­in­a­tion against, and per­se­cu­tion of, Jews over the 1,400 year history of Islam, it is not sur­pris­ing that Jews were averse to con­tinu­ing to live under Muslim rule. Under Islam, Jews (and Chris­ti­ans) were never treated as the equals of Muslims. Although Jews in Muslim lands generally fared better than Jews in Europe, they nev­er­the­less fre­quently suffered forced con­ver­sions, removal of children (even into the twentieth century), and periodic massacres.
There were indeed periods of relative tolerance towards Jews, and sometimes an easing of restrict­ive and dis­crim­in­at­ory laws, but these periods were inter­mit­tent and could not be relied on to last for very long. There could be no authentic Jewish self-determ­in­a­tion under Muslim rule. Several examples suffice to show this.
The holiest site in Judaism is the Temple Mount; on it, Muslims built the Dome of the Rock, and to this day, Jews are forbidden to pray there. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestini­an Authority president – who is widely con­sidered a “moderate” – declared in September 2015 in reference to Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, that Jews “have no right to defile them with their filthy feet.”
The second holiest site in Judaism is the Cave of Machpela in Hebron, where most of the Jewish people’s pat­ri­archs and mat­ri­archs are buried. On the site of the Cave, King Herod of Judea con­struc­ted a monu­ment­al building. From the begin­nings of the Mamluk empire in the thir­teenth century and onwards, Islamic rulers pro­hib­ited Jews from entering the building. In addition, under Islamic rule, Jews were permitted only as far as the seventh step outside the building. This pro­hib­i­tion lasted for nearly 700 years, until 1967, when Israel gained control of Hebron, tore down the humi­li­at­ing steps, and allowed Jews to enter and pray at their second holiest site.
For many centuries, the Jewish community was subjected to threats and extortion by Muslims. If the Jews did not pay an annual amount of “pro­tec­tion” money for the Tomb of Rachel, near Bethlehem, Muslim leaders threatened to destroy the Jewish site. Even today, another Jewish site, the Tomb of Joseph, near Nablus, is subjected to regular arson attacks by local Muslims.
It is only with the re-estab­lish­ment of a sovereign Jewish State that Jews in the land are once again able to determine their col­lect­ive future, to live freely as Jews in their own national home, under their own gov­ern­ment, to speak the mother tongue of Hebrew as the ver­nacu­lar, to use the ancient Jewish calendar as an offi­cially recog­nised calendar, to celebrate Jewish national and religious festivals as official holidays, and, above all, to defend them­selves against physical attack.
Only through self-determ­in­a­tion, have Jews been free of the oppres­sion, humi­li­ation and per­se­cu­tion they were subjected to in the Christian and Muslim worlds over the centuries.
Judaism without Zionism?
Zionism is at its core about Jewish national self-determ­in­a­tion in the Jewish historic homeland. Zionism itself cannot be discussed as something that is separate from and different to Judaism, the civil­isa­tion of the Jewish people. Zionism is an intrinsic component of Judaism.
Criticism of the policies, rhetoric and actions of the Israeli gov­ern­ment, or of any gov­ern­ment, is part and parcel of the right of free speech, as is the right to respond to those cri­ti­cisms. However, those who criticise Israel incess­antly and dis­pro­por­tion­ally – often with exag­ger­a­tions and dis­tor­tions of facts – open them­selves to the legit­im­ate criticism that they are biased and pre­ju­diced.
Those who go further and seek to oblit­er­ate Israel and Zionism, one way or another, open them­selves to the addi­tion­al charge that they have descended into racism by seeking to deny the Jewish people a right that they would never dare to deny to another people – the right to determine their col­lect­ive future as a national community in their own homeland.
Text from ABC Religion and Ethics.