The fight over Rep. Ilhan Omar exposed deep divisions in the Democratic caucus
In a society in which nobody is afraid to complain about and denounce white nationalism how is it out of bounds for people to denounce Zionism, commitment to Israel as an expressly Jewish state?
Ethnic, "blood and soil" nationalism is the belief that some or all ethnic groups (aka nations or nationalities)
are entitled to live in sovereign and independent states inhabited and ruled chiefly if not exclusively by their own members.
Zionism, commitment to Israel as a Jewish homeland, a Jewish state, is exactly that kind of nationalism.
White nationalism in the United States is a broader form of ethnic nationalism that partly reflects the success of the melting pot, but also reflects the continuing influence of racism, in making all our tribes of whites see themselves as one tribe, the white tribe.
Such nationalism does not entail or require any degree of belief in the biologically intrinsic and inherited superiority or inferiority of any ethnic group or race; nor does it exclude such belief.
Nor does it entail or require political domination of any nation over any other nation; nor does it exclude such domination.
European nationalism in most of the 19th Century favored and partly drove the revolt against the
ancien regime and the rise of representative government.
But at every point in the 20th Century it drove the rise of such horrific phenomena as fascism and nazism, the most devastating wars in European history, ethnic cleansing, and mass genocides.
As a result, ethnonationalism especially, though also increasingly any form of nationalism, is now often looked upon as an absurd and dangerous political commitment capable of causing the most extravagant harm and no good.
So how is it out of bounds to denounce Jews and Christians who are Zionists?
Support for the existence and defense of Israel as
a Jewish state is being made mandatory and criticism of it is being smeared as anti-Semitism.
You are not allowed to reject the right to exist of Israel
as an expressly Jewish state without being denounced and perhaps punished as an anti-Semite.
And that is altogether deplorable, however true it is that almost all Muslim hostility to Israel is clearly and viciously anti-Semitic and does not seek to make Israel over into a non-ethnic and secular state in which Jews and Muslims live together in bonds of citizenship and equality but to utterly destroy Israel.
As for me, I support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
When two or more ethnic groups living in the same state cannot get along peacefully with each other partition may be the best solution, allowing each to live in a state of its own.
For that matter, partition may be the only way to safety even when the warring groups are one by blood, language, and culture in general but differ in religion, as Serbs differ from Croats.
And since we already know that things would go very badly, indeed, in Israel, if it were not on the whole an overwhelmingly Jewish state, we may on that good ground concede its right to be a Jewish state, despite people like Ms. Omar who think otherwise.
To be clear, I oppose denying Ms. Omar any of her committee assignments over this.
No, hers was not some sort of Steve King moment.
