William Mehlman

“Zionism has lost its magic dimension over the souls of Jews. There is a danger that the pure Zionist pathos and the pure Zionist enthusiasm will evaporate. It is the demand of the hour that we proclaim that the aim of Zionism is, in fact, the solution of the Jewish problem…”

When Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Zionism’s towering intellect, penned those words in 1931, the essence of Zionism, the fierce divide between its Socialist and bourgeois proponents notwithstanding, could still be captured in the popular Hebrew slogan livnot u’lehibanot, -- to build the Land of Israel and to resurrect one’s spiritual attachment to the Land. Could either Jabotinsky or even his bitterest foes on the Left have imagined that Zionism was so elastic it could be redefined 75 years later as “disengagement” from the Land and the delegitimization of its most dedicated pioneers?

In his 1896 landmark work The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founding father, argued that if the Israel-to-come was to serve as no more than a historical necessity for a beleaguered people, its mission would go down as incomplete. He didn’t confine his concept of Zionism to the mere “ingathering of exiles“ and certainly not to a political end in itself. Secular, assimilated, as far removed from Jewish practice as one could get, he yet viewed his imagined Jewish State as the physical embodiment of a process of spiritual redemption. Zionism, if it were to leave a lasting mark on the destiny of the Jewish people, would have to become the conduit for the achievement of Jewish “spiritual and moral wholeness.”

Herzl’s goal remains a dream. Israel has never been more spiritually and morally fractured. The venom directed against the religious Zionist and settler population by Israel’s ruling establishment and its media handmaidens is little short of breathtaking. Those who have clung most steadfastly to the banner of livnot u’lehibanot have been cast as “hooligans,” “extremists,” “criminals,” infernal impediments to the holy grail of “peace” with Israel’s sworn terminators -- even as Hamas, unconditionally rejecting any acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, is anointed leader of the Palestinian Authority; even as IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz confesses himself at a loss for an adequate response to the metamorphosis of abandoned Gaza – 60 minutes from Tel Aviv -- into the largest terrorist base in the Arab world.

Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the Left and its supporters, even as they cheered the destruction of Gush Katif, never really believed in the efficacy of Ariel Sharon’s “unilateral disengagement” peace strategy. On the contrary, as one observer pointed out, “they were willing to embrace its certain failure because their hatred of the settlers and the pro-active Zionism they symbolize more than compensated for any lack of confidence in the integrity of the protagonist of ‘disengagement.’ What counted most for them was Sharon’s reconfiguration of Israel’s political map, his conversion to their post-Zionist ideology and his success in injecting it into the aorta of Israeli public discourse.” What other than the profoundest contempt for Herzlian Zionism could have justified this manic jubilation at the further erosion of Israel’s borders and defensive perimeter at precisely the moment, as Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick recently noted, “when its neighbors are in unprecedented flux and not one of their societies is prepared to accept Israel’s right to survive within any borders?”

How did it all go wrong – this betrayal of Zionism’s basic tenets, this massive inversion of livnot u’lehibanot? Daniel Doron, an astute observer of the Israeli economic scene, points to “economic exhaustion on top of exhaustion caused by the prolonged struggle to survive” as primarily responsible for the undermining of Israel’s Zionist ethos. “Most Israelis,” he avers,” can barely keep from drowning on an average salary of $1,200 a month,” what with prices as high as in America. Unrelenting economic pressure plus incessant danger equals too much. It is at the core of what he describes as Israel’s “yearning for a ‘quick fix,’ the messianism of ‘Peace Now’ and ‘unilateral disengagement.’” For Doron, it is because of this exhaustion that the Israeli public allowed the Left to get away with "transforming the terrorist chieftain and mega-thief Arafat into a statesman, even a peace partner.”

While economic difficulties superimposed on terrorism have surely been contributing factors to Israel’s spiritual malaise, they do not fully explain the national lowering of the Zionist flag. Even with 25 percent of its citizenry allegedly below the poverty line, Israel has faced far worse economic trials without throwing in the towel.

Where disease is concerned, there are no “contributing factors” without a root cause. Any diagnosis of that cause must inevitably collide head-on with Israel’s retreat from Herzl’s conception of Zionism as the medium, the mechanism – not the end product – for the achievement of the “spiritual and moral wholeness” of the Jewish people.

Looking at the malaise from a different standpoint is Rabbi Berel Wein. From its very outset, Wein avers, “the Zionist movement has been devoutly secular, disdainful and hostile to traditional Jewish beliefs, values and practices.” Unadjusted over the ensuing 110 years, that syndrome has evolved into the costliest zero-sum game in Israel’s 57-year history. How at this late stage, after all the damage that has been done, after decades of portraying the panoply of Jewish religious values, laws and morality as objects of ridicule, inimical to a land of “high-tech,” discos and dance parties, how is one now to convince Israelis that the Arab-Israel conflict is “at its core a religious dispute,” one in which a de-spiritualized, de-Judaized Zionism is at a perilous disadvantage? The Arabs simply refuse to adopt the Israeli left's secular path. They won’t play ball. They regard a Jewish State in “Dar el Salaam" i.e., wherever Islam has planted its foot, as a mote in Allah’s eye. Its removal, no matter how constricted its boundaries, is a Koranic categorical imperative.

To address Hamas, as Israel has done, as a purely terrorist entity is to completely miss the point, Wein asserts. “Hamas is also an Islamic religious organization…Osama bin Laden is a Muslim religious leader.” What resources can a spiritually depleted Zionism rally at this late date in response to that Islamic religious challenge?

Ironically, the most effective Biblical-based defense of Judaism’s God-given right to the Land of Israel emanates today not from Israel, not from Jews, but from the substantial majority of America’s 70 million Bible-oriented Christians -- the Christian Zionists, as they proudly identify themselves. Only those unfamiliar with the intense love and familial attachment that brings tens of thousands of them to Israel’s shores each year would be surprised by the fact that up near the top of the list of major concerns enumerated by the U.S. Christian Coalition in the millions of voter guides it is distributing for the 2006 Congressional elections is Israel, its security and its spiritual and territorial integrity.

While nobody is compelled to sign off on the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s dictum that “to stand against Israel is to stand against God,” the denigration by so-called liberals of Israel’s most devoted, most influential support group surpasses all reasonable understanding. If Christian Zionist allegiance to Israel is too “complicated,” too “problematic” for the tastes of a liberal American constituency more concerned with “women’s reproductive rights” than a nuclear-armed Iran’s existential threat to Israel, then Christian Zionists can proudly plead guilty. Their belief in God’s promise of the Land of Israel as an eternal legacy to Abraham and his descendants is indeed a problem and a complication for those – Jews and Christians – prepared to turn their backs to that legacy at the first flashing signal of the post-Zionist zeitgeist.

The Jewish liberal demonization of the Bible-oriented Christian community, including its large Christian Zionist component, for allegedly trying to “Christianize” America parallels the demonization of 250,000 overwhelmingly Bible-oriented residents of Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the 10,000 former residents of Gaza for their efforts to reinfuse Zionism with the spiritual content that informed and motivated its resurrection after a 2,000-year sleep.

“I believe in the integrity of the world, in the power of a just cause,” Jabotinsky wrote in 1932. “I believe that the great questions are decided by the power of moral pressure and that the Jewish people is a tremendous power of moral pressure…”

In its post-election efforts to form a new government, it will be for Israel to determine whether it still has a Zionist future. In the months ahead, the West, confronted by the growing shadow of a nuclear-armed Iran, will have to decide whether Judeo-Christian civilization east of the Mediterranean still has a future. It should be an interesting time.

William Mehlman is the chairman of AFSI in Israel