Islam And The West

Ultra-Orthodox rabbis and their supporters are targeting Arab workers in the Israeli town of Beitar Illit.

According to the ultra-Orthodox,  Arab workers who enter the town are harmful to the daughters of Israel and create serious spiritual problems:

“..a large group of Beit Illit residents has organized with the support of local rabbis in an effort to expel Arab workers from the town. “They are harmful to the daughters of Israel and create serious spiritual problems in the town,” said the residents. …

…There has always been tension between the town’s residents and the Arab workers who enter the town to make a living. According to the two groups, calls to expel the Arab workers have increased in recent weeks. The Arab workers are mainly employed by the transportation company, Illit, which operates lines that take passengers outside the town, and by Rami Levi’s grocery store, Hashikma. The transportation company employees come 120 drivers, and Rami Levi employees about 40 workers.

In order to solve the so-called problem, rabbis in the city agreed during an emergency meeting following conversations with Illit and Hashikma to appoint inspectors to oversee the work done by the Arab workers. Every Arab worker suspected of attempting to harm the residents or the values of the town will be kicked out.” {Source: Ynet News}

Beit Illit lies 10 kilometres south of Jerusalem in the Judean mountains.

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I’ve already alluded to this book twice before on this blog. Those posts can be accessed through:

• Shlomo Sand On Israel And The Myth Of Diaspora
• Audio: Shlomo Sand And The Invention Of The Jewish People

Originally written in Hebrew it now appears that it has been translated into English. For those interested the book even has it’s own website which can be accessed at The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand. The site has more information on the book and details about Professor Sand’s upcoming events and interviews.

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Israeli Exceptionalism

We finish our series of posts looking at  Zionism and nationalism.

{Part one can be accessed at Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [1]

Part two can be accessed at Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [2]}

Israel was the product of a partnership that seems unlikely at first blush, between Western Jews and the Christian West. It is the powerful alchemy of the Zionist idea that produced and sustained this partnership. The Zionist project to create a Jewish state in Palestine possessed the power to convert two historical antagonists, Jews and Gentiles, into allies united in a common imperialist enterprise against the Islamicate. At different times, the Zionists have harnessed all the negative energies of the West – its imperialism, anti-Semitism, Crusading zeal, anti-Islamic bigotry, and racism – and focused them on a new project, the creation of a surrogate Western state in the Islamicate heartland. At the same time, the West could derive considerable satisfaction from the success of the Zionist project. Western societies could take ownership of, and revel in, the triumphs of this colonial state as their own; they could congratulate themselves for helping ‘save’ the Jewish people; they could feel they had made adequate amends for their history of anti-Semitism; they could feel they had finally paid back the Arabs and Turks for their conquests of Christian lands. Israel possessed a marvellous capacity to feed several of the West’s egotistical needs.

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Israeli Exceptionalism

We continue with guest writer M. Shahid Alam of Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts,  who delves into the topic of  Zionism and nationalism.

{Part one can be accessed at  Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [1]}

Part three can be accessed at Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [3]}

Zionism was a grave assault on the history of the global resistance to imperialism that unfolded even as Jewish colons in Palestine laid the foundations of their colonial -settler state. The Zionists sought to abolish the ground realities in the Middle East established by Islam over the previous thirteen hundred years. They sought to overturn the demography of Palestine, to insert a European presence in the heart of the Islamicate world, and to serve as the forward base for Western powers intent on dominating the Middle East. The Zionists could succeed only by combining the forces of the Christian and Jewish West in an assault that would almost certainly be seen as a new, latter-day Crusade to marginalize the Islamicate peoples in the Middle East.

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Guest writer M. Shahid Alam of Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, delves into the topic of  Zionism and nationalism.

{Part one can be accessed at  Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [1]}

Part two can be accessed at Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [2]

Part three can be accessed at Zionism: An “Abnormal” Nationalism [3]}

“The ultimate goal…is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years…The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” —Vladimir Dubnow, 1882

Zionism is best described as an abnormal nationalism. This singular fact has engendered a history of deepening conflicts between Israel— – leading an alliance of Western statesallies – —and the Islamicate more generally.

Jewish ‘nationalism’ was abnormal for two reasons. It was homeless: it did not possess a homeland. The Jews of Europe were not a majority in, or even exercised control over, any territory that could become the basis of a Jewish state. We do not know of another nationalist movement in recent memory that started with such a land deficit – that is, without a homeland.

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