Marwitz, an ultra-conservative general, objected to the liberal reforms proposed at the time. In 1811 he warned that these reforms would turn Prussia into a "Judenstaat," a Jewstate. He did not mean that Jews were about to become a majority in Prussia, God forbid, but that moneylenders and other shady Jewish dealers would corrupt the character of the country and wipe out the good old Prussian virtues.
Herzl himself did not dream of a state that belongs to all the Jews in the world. Quite the contrary -- his vision was that all real Jews would go to the Judenstaat (whether in Argentina or Palestine, he had not yet decided). They -- and only they -- would thenceforth remain "Jews." All the others would become assimilated in their host nations and cease altogether to be Jews.
Far, far indeed from the notion of a "nation-state of the Jewish people" as envisioned by many of today's Zionists, including those millions who do not dream of immigrating to Israel.
WHEN I was a boy, I took part in dozens of demonstrations against the British government of Palestine. In all of them, we chanted in unison "Free immigration! Hebrew State!" I don't remember a single demonstration with the slogan "Jewish State."
That was quite natural. Without anyone decreeing it, we made a clear distinction between us Hebrew-speaking people in Palestine and the Jews in the Diaspora. Some of us turned this into an ideology, but for most people it was just a natural expression of reality: Hebrew agriculture and Jewish tradition, Hebrew underground and Jewish Religion, Hebrew kibbutz and Jewish Shtetl. Hebrew Yishuv (the new community in the country) and Jewish Diaspora. To be called a "Diaspora Jew" was the ultimate insult.
For us this was not anti-Zionist by any means. Quite the contrary: Zionism wanted to create an old-new nation in Eretz Israel (as Palestine is called in Hebrew), and this nation was of course quite distinct from the Jews elsewhere. It was only the Holocaust, with its huge emotional impact, which changed the verbal rules.
So how did the formula "Jewish State" creep in? In 1917, in the middle of World War I, the British government issued the so-called Balfour Declaration, which proclaimed that "His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
Every word was carefully chosen, after months of negotiations with Zionist leaders. One of the main British objects was to win American and Russian Jews for the Allied cause. Revolutionary Russia was about to get out of the war, and the entry of isolationist America was essential.
(By the way, the British rejected the words "the turning of Palestine into a national home for the Jewish people," insisting on "in Palestine" -- thus foreshadowing the partition of the country.)
IN 1947 the UN did decide to partition Palestine between its Arab and Jewish populations. This said nothing about the character of the two future states -- it just used the current definitions of the two warring parties. About 40% of the population in the territory allocated to the "Jewish" state was Arab.
The advocates of the "Jewish state" make much of the sentence in the "Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel" (generally called the "Declaration of Independence") which indeed includes the words "Jewish State." After quoting the UN resolution which called for a Jewish and an Arab state, the declaration continues: "Accordingly we ... on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."
This sentence says nothing at all about the character of the new state, and the context is purely formal.
One of the paragraphs of the declaration (in its original Hebrew version) speaks about the "Hebrew people": "We extend our hands to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the independent Hebrew people in its land." This sentence is blatantly falsified in the official English translation, which changed the last words into "the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land."
As a matter of fact, it would have been quite impossible to reach agreement on any ideological formula, since the declaration was signed by the leaders of all factions, from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox to the Moscow-oriented Communist Party.
ANY TALK about the Jewish State leads inevitably to the question: What are the Jews -- a nation or a religion?
Official Israeli doctrine says that "Jewish" is both a national and a religious definition. The Jewish collective, unlike any other, is both national and religious. With us, nation and religion are one and the same.
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