meemsaf

In service of defending the idea that Jewish Israelis are a liberated indigenous population, versus the obvious fact that we are a settler-colonial society formed largely by immigration, some Zionists go so far as to deny that European Jews were ever “native to Europe”.

To be honest, this genuinely breaks my heart: two thousand years of Jewish history in Europe, the deep roots of Jewish communities across the continent, their many contributions to European society — all discarded in service of a nationalist movement not even two centuries old. Adding insult to injury, of course, “Jews are not native to Europe” was literally a justification used for anti-Jewish violence for generations.

This is not to say that Indigeneity is specifically the right category to be applying here. Nor on the other hand to deny that European Jews had an unbroken spiritual connection to the “Holy Land” and many considered it their lost homeland, in some sense at least.

But historically, European Jews simply did not start emigrating to Palestine because it was their ancestral home. There was a strong religious connection for many, certainly, but it’s ahistorical to frame that as the reason for emigration, and utterly detached from how they saw it. They escaped a continent which insisted, again, that they did not truly belong to it, although their family history here went dozens of generations back — longer than many Christian European communities.

Upon arriving in Palestine, many were shocked at how alien the Levant was to their European upbringing. European Jews spoke European Jewish languages, practiced specifically European versions of Jewish life (or Jewish version of European life), and were an integral part of Europe before the Germans and their collaborators radically ripped most of us out of Europe’s living flesh.

Jews co-created Europe, for better and for worse, and denying our history here in favor of a narrative that casts Israel as the only right place for us is not the brilliant strategy against antisemitism that you might think it is.

I do think however that the question of historical “peoplehood” of the Jewish diaspora — in Europe and beyond — is genuinely complex, more than either the Zionist mythology of eternal nationhood nor its categorical denial by some anti-Zionists allow.

Jewish communities in the diaspora maintained transnational connections for millennia, centered on religious learning. Jewish scripture contains ancient notions of peoplehood which were readily reinterpreted by modern nationalists.

All modern nationalisms are in one way or another an ideological construction based on some material facts but driven by the political interests of those with enough power to forge different communities into a “nation”. Zionism is in some ways unusual, but still fits this pattern.

Indeed, one of the dynamics leading to the emergence of Zionism, was the very tension between the transnational nature of Jewish community/identity/relations and the emerging European world order based on nation-states with clear borders, a shared language, and common religion. Zionism reacted to this tension by seeking to forge the many different Jewish communities into a modern nation-state which would conform to the dominant European pattern.

Unlike other nationalist movements, it first needed to attain a shared territory, as well as a shared language. But similar to other nationalist movements, it was not starting from scratch. To deny any transnational community of Jewish communities does not only undermine Zionist mythology, it also mystifies the reality of Jewish diaspora life.

The truth is not, like secular liberal republicans envisioned, that Jewish Europeans were merely European individuals of Jewish faith, nor, like antisemitic and Zionist nationalists asserted, that Jewish Europeans belonged to a separate nation altogether. In fact, rather, European Jews were both deeply rooted in societies across the continent, and part of a transnational culture based on a common religion and (partly mythological) history.

I see no need to cede either element to the nationalist world-view.

I think this tension is important to acknowledge because it is part of the deep reason “the Jewish question” has troubled European and White colonial nationalism since the late 18th century; part of why antisemitism continues to be integral to White Nationalism etc.

And like I have emphasized above, recognizing this history continues to be a vital antidote to nationalist mythologies, whether antisemitic or Zionistic. Both still downplay Jewish belonging and contribution to European society; these we must still reaffirm and defend.