| I've come to realize lately that all the Anti-zionists of this board have conceded defeat as far as arguing the facts go - and now they try to justify their hate for Israel by using Anti-zionist Jewish groups such as Neturei Karta.
Well, lets examine Neturei Karta, shall we?
Jews who criticize or oppose Zionism are usually Orthodox and maintain that Israel can only be regained miraculously. They view the present state as a blasphemous human attempt to usurp G_d's role, and they work to dismantle Israel. However, unlike many gentile anti_Zionists, they firmly believe in the Jewish right to Israel, but only at that future time of redemption. The best_known of the religious anti_Zionists are the Neturei Karta.
Let it be known, Anti-Zionist Jewish groups only hate Israel because of their religious beliefs, they could care less about the Palestinians.
But that doesn't matter to the average Anti-zionist, because the enemy of his enemy, is his friend.
Now, where does Neturei Karta go wrong? Lets find out:
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The anti-Zionist argument is twofold: (1) since our exile from the Land of Israel was a divinely-imposed punishment for our sins, we cannot act on our own initiative to return to the Land; and (2) the Talmud (Ketubot 111a) explicitly prohibits us from taking unilateral action to end the exile and promises a great slaughter of the Jewish people if we disobey (they thus argue that the Holocaust was a judgement by G-d against Zionism).
With regard to (1), it is informative to compare the Roman exile with the Babylonian exile, which was also a punishment for our sins (see, for example, 2 Chronicles 36). That exile was ended not by open miracles, but by the intervention of King Cyrus of Persia (2 Chronicles 36:22-23). Cyrus defeated the Babylonian Empire in war, took over its territory (including Eretz Yisrael), and issued a decree allowing the Jews to return from exile. Obviously it was G-d who delivered Babylon into Cyrus's hands, a point which Cyrus himself made in his decree; but the same could be said regarding World War I, when the British captured what was then Palestine from the Ottoman Empire and subsequently permitted Jewish immigration to the Land. And while it is true that the first exile had a predetermined length (70 years), whereas the second exile did not, this fact is not relevant to the question of whether mortals can play a role in ending the exile.
The second objection is, in my opinion, a more serious one. The Gemara in Ketubot 111a derives, from the triple mention of the verse "I have bound you in oath, O daughters of Jerusalem" in the Song of Solomon, that G-d bound the Jewish people and the nations of the world with three oaths. The first oath is "shelo ya'alu bachoma", that the Jews should not forcibly "break through the wall" and enter Eretz Yisrael. The second is that the Jews should not rebel against the nations. The third is that the nations of the world should not oppress the Jews too much over the course of the exile. According to Rabbi Zeira, there are three additional oaths which relate to the ultimate redemption. The Gemara concludes with the threat that if Israel violates these oaths, their flesh will be made free like wild animals in the field, i.e. G-d would bring upon them great suffering and physical destruction.
The obvious question, of course, is whether Israel broke through the wall and/or rebelled against the nations. If either is the case, then the anti-Zionists are right.
When the Zionist movement began in the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire allowed limited Jewish immigration to Palestine. However, around the turn of the century, the ruling Turks grew hostile toward the Jewish immigrants and the native Jewish population, probably because of Zionist political aspirations. They began attacking Jewish settlements in Palestine, such that there was a condition of pikuach nefesh (danger to life), for which cause the entire Torah may be suspended, except for the prohibition of murder, idolatry, and adultery. (Thus no one condemns the Maccabees for rebelling against Greek rule just prior to the first Chanukah, and G-d even confirmed the Maccabees' piety by performing miracles.) The Jews thus sided with the British when World War I broke out, and Britain captured Palestine.
Upon capturing Palestine, the British sought to reward the Jews for their help during the war. They were also motivated by a strong sense of Christian duty to help G-d's people end their long and bitter exile. On 2 November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour issued the now-famous Balfour Declaration, which said, "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use our best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." Later, in 1922, the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate, legally authorizing Jewish settlement of Palestine. In short, the Zionist immigrants did not "break through the wall"; indeed, to the extent that Britain complied with the Mandate, there was no wall to break through. Even the illegal immigration which followed Neville Chamberlain's 1939 White Paper, which severely curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine, can be justified on the grounds of pikuach nefesh, because the Holocaust was just getting under way.
The real nuts and bolts, however, was U.N. Resolution 181, passed in 1947, which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Since Britain had ceded its authority in Palestine to the U.N. earlier in the year, the U.N. had the unquestionable right to partition the territory. Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948, was thus not an act of rebellion against the nations, since the declaration was made with the consent of the nations governing Eretz Yisrael.
The anti-Zionists have a somewhat stronger argument regarding the land Israel captured in the 1948 and 1967 wars. A case could be made that Israel was using force to reoccupy the Land, which is precisely what is forbidden in Ketubot 111a. But that is not what happened. Israel was in fact using force to repulse armed attacks against the nascent Jewish state (which, as noted above, had every right to exist in the land it then had). The Israeli counterattacks were for the sake of driving out the Arab armies, not for the sake of settling the land. And even if Ketubot 111a were applicable, it would have been suspended on the grounds of pikuach nefesh. After the wars, Israel's control of the captured territory was a fait accompli, so there was no reason that the Jews should be prohibited from settling it.
As for the Holocaust, it is noteworthy that the Nazis never reached the shores of Palestine. Each and every Jew who immigrated to Palestine was spared the death camps, whereas those who stayed behind - whether by choice or because of the 1939 White Paper - were forced to endure unspeakable horrors, with six million of them dying. If the Holocaust was a divine judgement against anyone, it clearly was not the Zionists. (I don't think it was a judgement at all. For more on this subject, read my article on why bad things happen to good people.)
Interestingly, Ketubot 111a actually necessitates the restoration of the Jewish state before the Messianic era. The Messiah, as the reader may know, will fight the wars of G-d against the wicked of the earth (see, for instance, Isaiah 11:4). But as the Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson said often during his lifetime, the Messiah won't know he's the Messiah until Elijah the prophet returns and identifies him as such. In other words, as far as the Messiah knows at the time, he will be rallying the Jewish people in a fight against the nations for control of Eretz Yisrael prior to the Messianic age. He cannot do this for the sake of ending the exile, because that would violate Ketubot 111a. But the only other possible reason to undertake such a war is if there is already a Jewish presence in the Land which is being attacked by the nations.
Indeed, Zechariah 14:1-3 reads, "Behold, the day of the L-rd cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the L-rd go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle." So the nations of the world will attack Jerusalem, the situation will appear hopeless, and then the Messiah will come. This prophecy could not have been fulfilled before 1967.
There is also the question of why G-d would perform miracles on behalf of blasphemers. At the start of the 1948 war, Israel had no heavy weapons, few light weapons, no Navy, and an Air Force consisting of crop-dusters and single-engine Piper Cubs from which soldiers would throw bombs by hand. (Some months into the war, the Israelis were able to obtain a few military-class aircraft left over from World War II, but by then the war was well under way.) The only thing they had that could stop a tank was a Molotov cocktail thrown with pinpoint accuracy, so as to get inside the tank at precisely the right spot. Armed in this fashion, they faced the combined regular militaries of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, plus a Saudi unit fighting under the Iraqi flag and the local Palestinian Arab paramilitaries. Egypt and Jordan in particular inherited top-of-the-line weapons from the departing British. The population difference was 40 million to 670,000 in favor of the Arabs. Nearly all the commentators were predicting a quick Arab victory, and the Arab nations themselves used this as a basis for inducing their people to flee to safety, lest they be swept up in the slaughter of the Jews. The anti-Zionists were surely shouting from the housetops about the dire prophecies against those who would violate Ketubot 111a. Despite the vast odds, however, the Israelis pulled off the biggest upset since Chanukah, with many instances of small Israeli units storming heavily-fortified Arab positions, only to find that the Arabs had fled in haste, leaving behind huge amounts of weaponry and supplies, as if something supernatural had scared the living daylights out of them. Good things often befall bad people (and vice versa), but never in miraculous fashion.
The anti-Zionists often point out that the early Zionist leaders were all secular, whereas the Orthodox Jewish leadership opposed the movement. Since I don't know much about the people themselves, I will happily take the anti-Zionists at their word; they're probably right anyway, or at least pretty close. There is no doubt in my mind, for instance, that Theodor Herzl knew little or nothing of Ketubot 111a or pikuach nefesh. But we don't reject an idea just because it comes from an unsavory source. The anti-Zionists will readily grant that the Jehovah's Witnesses are right about the oneness of G-d, despite their many errors on other doctrinal issues. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so it is perfectly conceivable that the Zionist leaders, despite their secular lifestyle, were nonetheless right about Zionism.
The website http://www.jewsnotzionists.org makes the claim that Adolf Hitler offered to take monetary ransom for the lives of Jews living under his rule, provided that they not immigrate to Palestine, and that the Zionist leadership cruelly rejected the offer, choosing instead to sacrifice their people's blood on the altar of Zionism. This is the only place I have ever read such a claim, but let's take it at face value. Does anyone really believe that Hitler would have kept his word? He was a manic-depressive who consulted astrologers regarding his war tactics and who killed subordinates who questioned his judgement. The kind of person who would kill six million Jews and five million others, just out of pure hate, will have no qualms about lying to further his goals. That ransom money would have gone toward Hitler's war effort, with the result that many more Jews would have been killed.
The claim is also made that the Zionists fomented anti-Semitism in Arab countries, even to the point of bombing a synagogue in Iraq and blaming it on the Iraqis, to induce the local Jews to emigrate to Israel. Since these countries are not paragons of due process of law, we will never know if the Jews who were convicted were actually guilty. But even if they were, that is a black mark against the people themselves, not their ideology.
As I said before, I will not condemn Jewish anti-Zionists for their beliefs. The issues involved are complex, and we humans are prone to error. But error it is, and hundreds of thousands of Jews are needlessly remaining in exile because of it, subject to the whims of whatever anti-Semites live among them and both physically and psychologically powerless to defend themselves against it. Ketubot 111a backs up its prohibitions with the threat of a mass slaughter of the Jewish people if they disobey, yet the act which allegedly violated the prohibitions - Israel's declaration of independence - was followed not by disaster (which seemed certain at the time), but by miraculous deliverance. The redemption is not complete, nor will it be until the Messiah comes; but there is no question that G-d has performed a great kindness to the Jewish people. |
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I would prefer Naturei Karta if i were Jewish...