Liberal Zionism and I

   An op ed piece by Antony Lerman, “The End of Liberal Zionism,”  in the New York Times of August 24 spoke to me.  I urge you to read it:

            http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/sunday/israels-move-to-the-right-            challenges-diaspora-jews.html?emc=eta1

   Current events in Israel make it tough for Jews who also propose to uphold humanistic values, for want of a better word.  I’ve expressed my views as they pertained to a stage before the current conflict in a post of  May 31 of this year.  But I am perplexed as to what I should now do, if there is anything that I could do in response to current Middle East events.  Let me just use the Lerman piece as an excuse for giving a brief history of my relationship to Israel, starting well before the creation of the Jewish state itself.

   As a kid in Germany (which I left in 1939 at the age of twelve), I belonged to the Habonim and vaguely recall talk about the possibility of a Jewish state, but remember better the Hebrew songs we sang, especially the Hatikvah, the Jewish national anthem avant la lettre—that is, avant l’état.  I became a Zionist, if not a very reflective one.  My next (relevant) recollection, either just before or just after the creation of the state of Israel, is seeing a cover of the New York Times Magazine depicting “soldiers” of the Haganah marching diagonally across the entire page.  I recall being very dubious about the suggestion of Jewish militarism and even thought vaguely about the desirability of a  bi-national state.

   In Jewish fashion (a practice certainly not limited to Jews), I have been writing modest checks annually, ever since I had a predictable income and some of those checks went to the United Jewish Appeal (which supports Israel) and a couple standard Israeli organizations.  I might also add that I much enjoyed two visits to Israel.  During those years of the Mapai there was no conflict for me between Zionism and liberalism.  But this harmony came to an end.

   At Northwestern University, where I was dean of arts and sciences at the time, it ended with a bang.  In 1976, a Northwestern faculty member, Arthur Butz, associate professor of electrical engineering, had published a big book entitled The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jews, making him a member of the species now known as Holocaust deniers.  All hell broke loose in the Chicago area Jewish community when that became known, propelling NU’s president into a defensive crouch. 

   In response, several high profile Philo-Judaic events were scheduled, with Elie Wiesel among the speakers.  I was tapped to introduce Lucy Dawidowicz, author of The War Against the Jews.  Since there had been a lot of pressure to get Northwestern to fire Butz, my tack, appreciated by some, was to contrast the policies of our university that only considered a faculty member’s professional behavior with those of the Germany Butz defended.  It had been established that he kept his political views out of the classroom, where he stuck strictly to his engineering subject.  Hence no procedure would be initiated that would lead to his being fired.

   Northwestern’s penance concluded with the awarding of an honorary degree to Menachim Begin—at a specially created ceremony rather than, as was normal, at an end-of-academic-year graduation.  By then, given the Likud practice of establishing settlements, my liberalism had tested my Zionism severely, so I actually considered staying away from the Beginfest.  I showed up, as did a bunch of vigilant athletic-looking Israeli bodyguards, since I feared that the absence of the Jewish dean would be interpreted in fanciful and undesirable ways.

   Not long afterwards I stopped contributing to the United Jewish Appeal and limited my modest charity to dissenting Israeli organizations and to local Jewish outfits.

   Now we have reached a new low, rightly dubbed the end of liberal Zionism.  I fear that for me at least liberalism is more basic than Zionism.  Yes, nothing excuses or justifies the actions of Hamas.  Still, I cannot help but believe that the Israelis are powerful and astute enough to contain Hamas without large numbers of civilian deaths and the destruction of countless homes that appear to have no military significance.  Netanyahu may be retaining the support of his own citizens, but he is in grave danger of turning a larger world against Israel.  After the demise of liberal Zionism, will Zionism of any kind also come to an end?