Homeland

If you are Irish or of Irish descent, you can celebrate your Irish culture and heritage anywhere in the world. You can make occasional trips to the 'old country' and enjoy yourself even if your Irish ancestors had to leave Ireland over a century ago or starve. If you live in Ireland, you can make a yearly shopping trip, as many Irish so do, from Dublin to New York and Boston. If you are American-Irish, you can celebrate St. Patrick's Day along with the millions who are not Irish and parade in the streets, wear green, drink Guinness and gorge on corned beef (or boiled bacon) and cabbage. If you are Irish you have a culture and a homeland: Ireland. Doesn't matter if you are Catholic or Protestant; you have a homeland. If you are of Irish descent you are welcome just about everywhere.

If you are Italian or or Italian descent, you can celebrate your traditional Italian heritage all over the world. Consume Italian food at a local restaurant. Have a parade on Columbus Day. Visit Italy and search for your relatives. You have a homeland also: Italy. Never mind that your ancestors may have fled Italy over a century ago, or that Italy was on the wrong side of the war in WWII. If you are of Italian descent you are welcome just about everywhere and everybody celebrates with you.

Almost every nationality and culture can tell this same story. Despite hardships, despite discrimination, even despite national laws to keep you in your place, you can celebrate your culture, honor your past, and practice your group traditions. And somewhere on the planet you have a 'homeland'. You might not want to actually live there but it exists. No matter how 'outside' you may sometimes feel, you know emotionally that there is a cultural home somewhere.

Until the mid-twentieth century however, the ideal of cultural identity and celebration was not true for one particular group: Jews. Until 1948, Jews worldwide were a culture without a homeland. A powerless minority, Jews were discriminated against legally in almost every nation on earth for millennia; marginalized, robbed, raped, and murdered - ghettoized in some nations, kicked out of others. Expelled from England in 1290; expelled from Spain in 1492; forced into ghettos in Italy in 1516; taxed excessively, socially restricted; the occasional murder, and barely tolerated in Muslim nations. It made no difference even if Jews tried to fully blend in and integrate into the national culture. German Jews were more German then most Germans in the early 20th century and we all know how that turned out. America was the only tolerant nation although anti-semitism continued to be a strong social force until the later part of the 20th century.

Jews have felt like outsiders in every nation on Earth and no amount of adaptation to the dominate culture made a difference. Even in America, the Jewish joke was to 'always kept a packed bag just in case you needed to flee in a hurry'.

Jews would dream like the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz': 'If we only had a home". This then was the essence of Zionism: Let us have a home so that we are no longer outsiders in an unfriendly world. The dream came true with the creation of the nation-state of Israel. Many people were surprised that it actually happened, including Palestinian Jews. They had not asked for a country, just a homeland, but even that was unacceptable to their fellow Arab Palestinians and neighboring Arab nations. So the nation-state of Israel, a secular nation, emerged out of violence in 1948 and was given little chance of actual success. But it did. American Jews were somewhat ambivalent about Israel at first. Most folks have either forgotten that. It wasn't until 1967 that American Jews gave their full support to Israel. The reason? For some it was pride in defeating Arab nations in the 1967 War against overwhelming odds, but I believe that it was really because it took 20 years for Jews worldwide to realize that they finally had a homeland: a small piece of real estate that they could culturally identify with even if the reality of Israel bore little resemblance to their everyday lives . It is significant that it was after 1967 that Jews worldwide began to immigrate to Israel, not because they had no other place to go, but because they wanted to be there.

Until the late 1960's there were only 3 reasons why Jews immigrated to Israel: One, they were very religious and were tolerated in a secular Israel. Two, they were European DPs, displaced persons with no other place to go, survivors of the holocaust, who were not welcomed back in their home countries. Three, they were among the 700,000 Arab Jews who were kicked out or fled from their homes in Arab states like Morocco, Syria, etc. By the way, I would have more respect for those who champion Palestinian Arabs if the fact of displaced Jews was treated with equal importance as displaced Arabs.

Jews have a sense of homeland in Israel; a cultural home. They may have little desire to actually live there. They may often disagree with the nation's policies. But it is still a place of culturally identification. It has nothing to do with religion. After all, how many Jewish American actually like hummus. Unfortunately, it is not that simple for Jews in the world. Just as Jews were outsiders in every nation they ever lived in, the Jewish 'homeland' of Israel is treated as an outsider in the world of nations.

Jews are still the globe's pariah. Once Jews were only unacceptable in the nation they lived in; perennial outcasts no mater how French, Spanish, Italian, or German they tried to be. Now that Jewish culture has a homeland nothing much has changed. The nation of Israel, the first Jewish homeland in 2000 years, is treated the same as Jews have always been. The nation, the culture, the people, have no right to exist except in servitude. Is there any doubt among those who understand history that if the state of Israel had been not created in the 1940's that Jewish culture would have disappeared? Where would the DPs have gone? What would the status have been of Arab Jews? An historical fact that has perplexed scholars for decades is why was the percentage of American anti-semitism higher after WWII than before it?

Why is it so difficult for the world, particularly the Arab world to allow a small homeland for Jewish culture? Sure, Israelis can be irritating, righteous, and argumentative, but we don't use other culture's stereotypical characteristics as excuses for mass annihilation. When was the last time you heard: Those Irish are all a bunch of drunks, let's drive them into the sea? Bernard Lewis, Middle Eastern scholar, was once asked what he though would satisfy the Islamic world concerning the fate of Israel. His response: other than total annihilation, move to Mars.

(see http://www.aviperry.org/uploads/1/7/2/5/172566/on_the_jewish_question.pdf)

I will soon be visiting Israel for the first time. I have little in common with Israel as a nation. I'm an American from the midwest. I may like my time there or I might not. I am not religious, I do not speak Hebrew, I do not follow dietary law. I am critical of some national policies. But it still feels like I'm going home. And that's the last word on the subject.