Bashing nationalism is very desirable in academic circles these days, and bashing Jewish nationalism and the Zionist movement is especially popular.
By MOSHE PHILLIPSA bloodied Israeli flag hangs on the main building at the University of Cape Town on Monday at the start of Israel-Apartheid Week.(photo credit: SAUJS/FACEBOOK)
Jewish academic critics of Israel have come up with a new smear tactic: falsely portraying Jewish nationalism as being intimately tied to the evils of 19th-century “white-settler colonialism.”That was the theme of a May 4 online program called “Baja California Dreaming: How US Settler Colonialism Shapes Jewish Nationalism,” hosted by the University of California at Davis. The featured speaker was Maxwell Greenberg, a doctoral candidate at UCLA, and the “respondent” was Sarah Imhoff, a professor at UC-Davis.Greenberg’s remarks focused on a handful of American Jewish philanthropists in San Francisco who in the 1890s were looking for a way to save Russia’s Jews from the pogroms: the systemic, violent anti-Jewish riots of the time. These US Jews came up with the idea of purchasing some land in the Baja section of Mexico where Russian Jewish refugees could live and work.But the plan never advanced past the point of a few discussions and a pamphlet or two. They didn’t purchase any land and they didn’t bring in any refugees. So why should anybody care about it today? Why did UC-Davis choose to feature the topic in its prestigious “New Directions in Jewish Studies” series, choosing Greenberg’s proposal from among 70 scholarly submissions?Apparently because bashing nationalism is very desirable in academic circles these days, and bashing Jewish nationalism and the Zionist movement is especially popular.Greenberg’s entire thesis is based on playing games with the word “nationalism.” Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, the leader of the San Francisco philanthropic circle that was thinking about Baja, was not a “Jewish nationalist.” He was an ultra-assimilationist, and one of the few Reform rabbis those days who performed intermarriages. He was a vehement opponent of Zionism. There was nothing “nationalistic” about wanting to find a refuge in Mexico for some pogrom victims. But by slapping the “nationalism” label on the Voorsanger group, Greenberg and Imhoff had their target.According to Greenberg, the Baja plan “shows the influence of US settler colonialism on movements for Jewish nationalism.” How so? Well, around the same time as those Russian pogroms, “privileged white settlers” from America were carrying out “land theft, genocide and enslavement” against Mexicans, so that means Voorsanger and his friends must have been preparing to turn those Russian Jewish refugees into “useful white settlers” who would promote the goals of “white American imperialism and colonialism.”IN HIS TALK, Greenberg demonstrated his progressive credentials by tossing around lots of fashionable rhetoric about “the hegemony of the ruling classes,” “capital accumulation,” and “racialized property claims.” But his main accusation, again and again, was that “Jewish nationalism” has long been the evil ally of racism and oppression.Greenberg indulged in quite a bit of guilt-by-association tactics. He pronounced “Jewish nationalism” guilty for being “associated” with “white imperial expansion.” Even though, of course, Rabbi Voorsanger and his colleagues never uprooted, expanded or settled a single refugee.Nonetheless, Greenberg insisted, merely talking about Baja meant they were “deeply entangled with American imperial expansion” and somehow allied with “privileged white settler annexation.”
It wasn’t long before Greenberg’s frequent use of the terms “settlers” and “occupation,” when referring to what he called “Jewish nationalism,” spilled over into openly taking shots at the Zionist movement.He compared the idea of Jews working the land in Mexico to “the Jewish masculinity image that promoted settling Palestine.” He claimed Mexicans would have opposed “turning Baja into a polarizing center of Zionism.”And Greenberg concluded his remarks by declaring that we should study the Baja plan today because “it is a model for studying Jewish nationalism elsewhere, such as Zionism, for showing what this story tells us about Zionism and its political influences, and about how Jewish nation-building in Palestine was not only part of European colonialism but entangled with American imperialism too.”Next it was time for Prof. Imhoff, the “respondent.” As if to drive the home the point that “exposing” the “racist” Baja plan is a way to expose Zionism too, she declared that “this idea of Jews ‘redeeming’ the land in Baja is reminiscent of certain brands of Zionism, that say ‘Oh, people will redeem the land and it will redeem the people.’ I mean, exactly what’s being redeemed here?” She indicated pretty clearly that she views those “certain brands of Zionism” with disdain.Zionism, the liberation movement of the Jewish people, has nothing to do with racism or colonialism. Jewish nationalism has nothing to do with imperialism or white hegemony. Every thinking person should reject the attempts by Greenberg, Imhoff, and like-minded academics to make Jews feel ashamed of Jewish nationalism.Today, Greenberg is just a graduate student. But already he has been featured on the prestigious UC-Davis platform. And he said he has been offered a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. Soon he may have a teaching position, where he can spread his radical views. American Jews should think about what it would be like to have him teaching their college-age children.The writer is national director of Herut North America’s US division. Herut is an international movement for Zionist pride and education. herutna.org
