The Land Of Purple

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?

As we’ve seen, since the beginnings of Judaism, devotion to “Beth Israel” was devotion to a PEOPLE.  After all, the time-honored locution, “Ahavat Israel” does not convey love for a PLACE; it is an expression of love for one’s fellow Jews.  And when observers recite the “Sh’ma Yisra-El” prayer, they are not beseeching a tract of land; they are addressing world Jewry: “Hear, Israel!”

So what of contemporary terminology? There now exists the neologism “Israelis”–referring to a NATIONALITY (in the modern sense), which is predicated on a newfangled obsession with a specific territory. It pretends to be a reification of “Israelites”; but is little other than a bit of propagandistic nomenclature–coined, as it was, by Judeo-supremacists so as to comport with their geo-political ideology.

Today, we hear tropes about the “founding of Israel”, referring to the activities of 1947-48 vis a vis a new nation-State in Palestine. However, if we were to be true to history, the “founding of Israel” (qua group of people) only means the monumental struggle of Jacob with the angel, per the Torah. As THAT is the circumstance under which the moniker, “Yisra-El” was established. When it comes to a Judaic legacy, the fabled (united) kingdom of Israel is the only salient touchstone; yet that regime only endured during the reigns of David and Solomon. None of this is to be conflated with the establishment of a modern nation-State called “Israel”, which was a product of geo-political exigencies in the years following the Second World War.

Until the modern Zionist movement, what any given Jewish community considered its “moledet” (homeland) was rarely a tract of land in the Levant. In any case, the notion of equating “volkheit” with “heimat” is a fundamental category error. The Revisionist Zionist use of the term, “moledet” is roughly equivalent to the Germanic “ur-heimat” [true ethnic home]. (The Norse term “heimat-land” is another analogue.) This rubric has been used by tribes since time immemorial to lay (exclusive) claim to a tract of land–typically along ETHNIC lines. We should be reminded that ethno-centrism coupled with hyper-nationalism is the basis for fascism. Indeed, it is the quintessential form of tribal chauvinism. (I explore this odious notion of “homeland” in a forthcoming essay.)

And so it went that “Israel” qua people was rendered “Israel” qua place. An ethnonym was re-purposed as a demonym; then put in the service of an agenda: “lebensraum” in Palestine. This has entailed an etymological recursivity that has become the source of further confusion: “Israeli” is a person from the modern nation-State of “Israel”, which is now a sovereign LAND which based its name on the term for a PEOPLE…who were also known as “Israelites” in Classical Antiquity. Gadzooks!

The more liberal takes on what “Israel” ultimately means are worth considering. It is a state of mind–as might be said of Judaism itself. It can be thought of as an IDEAL. After all, the term literally means “struggle with god”. In any case, the god of Israel was a god of a PEOPLE, not of a PLACE. A land FOR Israel (that is: the place where Zionists settle) could, in theory, be anywhere–even, as Michael Chabon imagined, in Alaska (as in his novel, “Yiddish Policeman’s Union”). After the Second World War, Zionists were even considering East Africa (on a tract of land where Uganda meets Kenya). (!)

In the loftier sense, “Israel” is an ideal to which we may all aspire. For we are ALL, as fellow humans, looking for a “promised land”. {14} Put another way: It is a principle on which people might take a stand, not a specific ground on which one might literally stand. This conception is not far-fetched. Using “Israel” symbolically goes back to the Hebrew Bible–as when we read that the “chariots of Israel” were coming from heaven in Second Kings 2:12. The vision of a promising future is also represented by “Land of Yehud[ah]”. We find such an idiom in the opening line of Isaiah 26–which refers to a longed-for FUTURE. (The implication THERE is that the Promised Land would ALWAYS be known by that appellation.)

In any case, the land-in-question was BEQUEATHED TO “Israel”; it was not ITSELF “Israel”. Of course, that is only true insofar as one believes Judaic folklore. Obviously, not everyone is obliged to honor one community’s myths. Hence, so far as geo-politics is concerned, the point should be moot. For some people at one point in time, Canaan was the land “promised”…at least, insofar as it held promise for a better life. Even if we are to assume that to be true, it should have no bearing on what makes sense for any given people in the 21st century.

Bottom line: The “Promised Land” was not so much a place (qua tract of land) that was promised–bequeathed from on high to a group of trustees–as it was a place (qua panacea) that HELD PROMISE, wherever that might be.  It was in this sense that Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that he had “seen the promised land”.  In this more profound sense, the “promised land” did not correspond to the (dispersed) Jewish people’s various homeland(s).  And it obviously did not refer to any particular place.  It was a dream to be fulfilled, not a territory to be seized.

Until it came to be a label for a theocratic ethno-State, “Israel” referred to a special group of people; not to a piece of real estate in the Levant.  It didn’t even need to mean JEWISH people; it could mean any group that ascribed its destiny to divine Providence.  The idiom persisted into the modern era.  Herman Melville once averred that “We Americans [are] the Israel of our time.”  He meant this figuratively, of course.  (Alas, not everyone recognizes an idiom as idiomatic.)

Considering all of this, it is plain to see that the world’s Jewish people have no more a right to the Land of Purple than anyone else–be it Samaritans, Assyrians, Armenians, Arabs, or any of the other ethnicities that have a long history in the Levant.

For religious Jews, referring to the territory-in-question as “Palestine” is problematic, as it carries negative stigmas. Their aversion to “Palestine” stems from the moniker’s association with an Empire that oppressed their forebears: the Romans. To add insult to injury, the Roman “Palaestina[e]” was derived from the purported nemesis of the Canaanite Hebrews, the Philistines. Meanwhile, “Canaan” is posited as the name of the son of Noah’s vilified son, Hamm. Due to this stigmatization, neither moniker is palatable to those who’s worldview is grounded in Biblical tales. Names, it turns out, are often addled with semiotic baggage.

But BOTH of those negative stigmas are based on farce; and so evaporate once ACTUAL history is acknowledged. Today, the Palestinians are a people (specifically: Levantine Arabs), not a sovereign nation. This does not make them inferior; it makes them disenfranchised.

And so it has come to pass that Revisionist Zionists would much rather use the moniker “Israel” (the name of their forebears) as the name for a coveted tract of land; thereby rendering this loaded term the name of a religiously-mandated ethno-State. This is to REJECT the term’s original meaning; engaging in a semantic distortion that is the height of mendacity.

According to a more astute heuristic, those in the Judeo-Christian tradition work toward a metaphorical “kingdom of god”. In this sense, “Israel” is more an ideal to be realized than a regime to be installed. This no more requires ethno-centric hyper-nationalism than being Jewish requires proving oneself to be from the seed of Jacob.

The fact remains that the Jewish people of the world, like any other people, simply want to live in a place–wherever it might be–where they can be safe (and feel at home). Reasonable denizens of Beth Israel want this not because they are Jewish, but because they are HUMAN.

Here’s the catch: In the post-War era, this condition has been met in many places; hence the perceived need for it to happen in a particular place (the Land of Purple) no longer holds credence. {27} Moreover, the suggestion that having a home requires depriving others of having a home is downright venal.

In sum: The notion that THE ONLY people who have a right to ANY tract of land are [insert ethnicity here] is so risible as to make one cringe. One may as well hold that the Normans are indigenous to Sussex; and therefore have legitimate claim to all of Wessex and Mercia. Referring to Canaan as the “Land of Israel” is like referring to England as “Land of the Normans”. Doing EITHER betrays an egregious ignorance of demographics and of history.

One might say that Canaan is inherently Hebrew in the same way that Britannia is inherently Saxon; or that the Americas are inherently European. That is: Not at all. As an apt point of comparison: The Kurdish people–originally a Median offshoot–have more claim to Kurdistan than Jewish people do to Canaan. {28}

The “shema” [daily prayer] states that as long as Israel is faithful to god, they will remain in his good graces.  For this to attain, it doesn’t matter whether they are located in Jerusalem or in Omaha, Nebraska.

Alas. For Revisionist Zionists, “Israel” has become a rallying cry for racial purity, and a Judaic version of “lebensraum”…based entirely on (utterly spurious) Judaic dogmas. This leads to calls for a theocratic ethno-State situated on what is purported to be a divinely-ordained tract of land. In this thinking, the Hebrew Bible is seen as a celestial title deed; and the Abrahamic deity is treated as a real-estate agent. {29}

It is demeaning to the world’s Jewish people to suggest that integral to being Jewish is believing such balderdash. Most Jews are level-headed, morally-upright people; and it is calumny to suppose that to be Jewish-ness is to endorse Judeo-fascism. All decent people can agree: being fully human is ultimately all that matters. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it. That goes for Land of Purple as much as anywhere else.