At the 2023 Palestine Book Awards ceremony, the winner of the “Counter Current Award” category was the volume “Imagining Palestine,” which concerns itself with a topic referred to as “cultures of exile and national identity.” Oddly enough, it has a very Jewish ring to it.
The book highlights that “all national identities are somewhat fluid, held together by collective beliefs and practices as much as official territory and borders” and that “the articulation and ‘imagination’ of national identity is particularly urgent.” It acknowledges that “the imaginative construction of Palestine is a key element in the Palestinians’ ongoing struggle.” As I asserted in December 2020, “In the artificially conceived world of the imagined ‘Palestine,’ there is an alternative constructed history—the result of an ideological creationism I will term ‘Palestinianism.’”
My thesis is confirmed.
Of course, there is no artificial creationism in Zionism, despite the recent uptick in pro-Diasporic theorizing output by Shlomo Sand, Peter Beinart, Shaul Magid, Daniel Boyarin, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Jessica Dubow and other uncomfortable Jews seeking to justify themselves within a “non-location” and belonging to a “non-nation.” A new initiative is an Anti-Zionist Congress in Austria. Will they adopt the claim that there’s a “right of Palestinian Return, Repatriation and Reparations,” as some claim, which is just a reverse Zionist narrative since very little of anything “Palestine” is original.
Zionism is multi-layered, ancient (no, it did not begin in the 1880s), fully integrated and rooted into Jewish texts, liturgical and secular, as well as sacred and secular observances.
Zionism is the very real national identity expression of the Jewish people. It possesses a very provable past of 3,000 years, including literary sources and archaeological finds, along with an ongoing religious performance and a continual presence in a recognized national homeland with a globally shared language, ritual and customs. Only a genuine political, social and religious movement could have succeeded, as Zionism did, with more than 7 million Jews in Israel and millions of Jewish Zionists abroad. It is not at all inauthentic or artificial.
Nevertheless, Jews today are to be targeted for a form of “Great Erasure” (with tangential acknowledgement to Charles Blow). Jews must be chased from public venues, suspected of participating in or assisting a faked “genocide” and an effort of “mass starvation.” Their synagogues, hospitals and institutions are targeted, their livelihoods damaged, their reputations besmirched. And leading the charge are the Jews of the liberal, humanist camp.
That erasure is not enough, of course. Israel’s existence cannot be acknowledged by them. Responding to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani saying that “Israel has a right to exist,” Within Our Lifetime activist Nerdeen Kiswani tweeted: “What kind of strategy justifies affirming a settler colony in the middle of a live-streamed extermination?” At her rallies, she has Neturei Karta-like Jews (at least they appear to be ultra-Orthodox Jews) lined up in a standby performance.
Something must replace it. For pro-Palestine proponents, Jewish history in the Land of Israel, the continual presence of Jewish in the Land of Israel throughout the centuries, the primacy of Jerusalem Rebuilt and Zion Resettled in Jewish consciousness and what Israel represents the 99% of Jewry supportive of Zionism is not only worthless and “fake” but must be eradicated from the minds of humankind. They are practicing a genocide of thought, a genocide of truth.
In his brilliant takedown of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), journalist Liel Leibovitz suggests that “Palestine … has never been and will never be a real place, let alone one that accommodates real, live Jews. Instead, Palestine … is merely an abstraction.” To reorient that phrasing, Arab Palestine is an abstraction, whereas “Jewish Palestine” was very real. The name was intended to erase Judea as applied by the Roman occupation in the second century C.E.
“Palestine” did exist, but as a Jewish reality. It existed for scholars and historians who wrote about the Roman and Babylonian administration of “Palestine,” a Jewish country. Or of the so-called Palestinian (actually “Jerusalem”) Talmud. In the seventh century C.E., there was a Jewish Palestine. There was a Jewish community in Crusader “Palestine.” In Mamluk “Palestine,” there were Jews, including in Gaza.
Jewish “Palestine” existed for Christian pilgrims from the 16th century and for Protestant Pilgrims in the 19th century. It existed for diplomats, religious leaders and politicians. Their mental geography was clear: Jews and Palestine belonged together, even if they derided Jews and sought to replace the Old Testament theology.
“Palestine” eventually took an actual shape and form, which it never had previously, in 1922 when the League of Nations decided that the territory would be reconstituted as the Jewish national home due to its historic connection to the Jewish people. Arabs were not mentioned in that decision. The land was grasped as Jewish—and not because Arabs were ignored. Their countries were to be everywhere else in the Middle East, except where the Jewish homeland would be.
The territory of what was known as “Palestine” for 1,800 years since the Jews of Judea (a name the Romans used on a victory commemorative coin) lost their political, military and economic independence—their sovereignty—was not an imagined land. It had delineated borders, and Jewish religious law defined practices to treat the land with appropriate sanctity.
All of this is not a fairy tale but very real history. Jews do not imagine the Land of Israel. We know what it is. We know we lived there, and many of us will live there. We know (and many non-Jews know as well) what it looks like, and how its fruits and produce taste. And we reject Islamist replacement efforts.