One of the greatest ironies of Jewish history is that the secular Zionism of the nineteenth century was formulated precisely for the purpose of offering an alternative to the assimilationism and Jewish "self-hatred" of the Diaspora. Zionism arose as a response to both assimilationism and anti-Semitism. Who then could have dreamed that the fulfillment and realization of Zionism would be accompanied by the emergence of the most malignant manifestations of Israeli self-hatred and Jewish anti-Semitism, in the state of Israel and the land of Zion?



The very same Zionism that was designed to offer an alternative to Jewish assimilationism saw in fact the emergence of a uniquely bizarre movement of assimilationism right inside the Jewish state itself, in the form of "Post-Jewish Israelism" and "Post-Zionist" Jewish anti-Semitism.



Until very recently in Jewish history, it was widely presumed that secular Zionism and the establishment of Israel had achieved an irreversible victory over the movements of Jewish assimilationism and self-hatred, at least among Jews living inside the Jewish state, but also to a large extent among Diaspora Jews, as well. Secular Zionism represented a blending of modernity with Jewishness that involved neither the assimilationism of the radical anti-Orthodox "reformers" among Jews in the Diaspora, nor traditional Orthodox rejectionism of modernity. It had achieved this via the engineering of "Israeliness", which was a new phase of identity for Jews who lived inside their own Jewish state. "Israeliness" was ever-so-modern, with high-tech industries cropping up everywhere like mushrooms, with European standards of living and lifestyles, with prestigious universities and scientific institutions, not to mention a military of legendary prowess. And all this was taking place inside a state whose raison d'etre was its Jewishness, its serving as a national home for Jews.



Certainly, Israeliness had its problems, not least of which was a dubious, if not outright hostile, attitude towards Jewish tradition. Israel's intellectual, journalistic, academic and artistic elites long displayed a deep animosity towards matters of religion and towards religious people, an antipathy shared by parts of the broader secularist population. This hostility was fanned in part by resentment at the powers of the politicized religious establishment. Anti-Orthodox bigotry has long been the primary form of bigotry in the country. It escalated after the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin by a religious law student, and it found perhaps its greatest expression in the surprising electoral achievements of the Shinui Party, reconstituted as an anti-Orthodox party under the leadership of Joseph "Tommy" Lapid.



Beyond knee-jerk hostility to Jewish religion and tradition, "Israeliness" also had other dubious roots. There was always a strong "Canaanite" trend present in Israeli society, especially among its intellectual elite, which insisted that Israelis represented a new "post-Jewish" nationality; and so, were essentially an altogether non-Jewish ethnic group. (The "Canaanites" were a movement of Israelis in the 1950s and thereafter who attempted to detach Israeliness from Jewishness and create a new "non-denominational" Hebrew-speaking "nationality" of "Israelis", one that could encompass the Arabs, as well.) As such, these new "Canaanized Israelis" believed they had little in common with Diaspora Jews and even less with Diaspora history. Many a "Canaanized" Israeli Jew insisted that he had far more in common with the Druse and Bedouins of the country than he did with any Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Another of the many forms of backlash against Diaspora Jewishness was a ferocious hostility to Yiddish.



In the first decades of its existence, the celebration of "Israeliness" in Israel took many forms, including those that downplayed the role of Jewishness in the state. The Israeli school curriculum at secular schools, where the majority of Israeli children attend, was largely stripped of Jewish content. Jewish history in the typical Israel school ended at Masada or with Bar-Kochba and then mysteriously rematerialized at the first Zionist Congress in Basel. Jewish religion, other than the Bible, was eliminated almost altogether from the curriculum, except in the religious schools. The result is that today, many an Israeli teenager cannot complete the sentence that begins with the words "Shma Yisrael", and few can correctly explain what the Amidah is.



The celebration of Israeliness was also widely believed to offer the ultimate path towards resolution of Arab-Jewish differences. After all, there was no reason why Arabs could not follow the example of the more "Canaanite" Jews and embrace with enthusiasm the new "Israeliness", an "Israeliness" that would transcend religion and pre-Israeli ethnicity or denomination.



National challenges and deluded "Canaanitism" aside, until recently, few would have questioned the basic conclusion that secular Zionism was an unqualified Jewish national success. The leadership in the state of Israel may have been filled with certain self-delusions, but ordinary Israelis were not assimilating into any alien gentile ethnicity or nationality, as were so many Diaspora Jews. Israelis would always remain Jews, even if only deluded Jews, knowing little about Judaism. Hebrew was their everyday language of communications. Jewish holidays were the bank holidays. Jewish symbols were the symbols of state. Moreover, the secular Zionist merging of Judaism with modernity appeared to be stable for the very long run. It was not threatened by modernity even in its most extreme forms.



The axioms concerning the ability of secular Zionism to overcome the traditional threats to Jews of anti-Semitism, assimilationism and self-hatred came crashing back down to earth in the 1990s. There emerged inside Israel a movement of mass Jewish anti-Semitism, which effectively exerted its hegemony first over the radical Left and the chattering classes of Israeli academia and journalism, and ultimately over the entire country, in the form of the Leftist Ascendancy. Under this Leftist Ascendancy, the Left has continued to exercise control over much of national policymaking, even when it is in opposition; indeed, even when coalitions headed by the Likud have held power.



The rapid growth of Jewish anti-Semitism inside Israel during the "Oslo era" raises serious questions about just how successful secular Zionism really was. The Oslo era was accompanied by a massive assault on Israel's pride and confidence by its own leaders. Israeli intellectuals lectured the country about its original sinfulness. Israeli campuses were flooded with "New Historians" and "Post-Zionists", pseudo-academics rewriting history texts and school curriculum to promote the Arab "narrative" and the Arab version of history, the moral equivalents of Holocaust Deniers in other countries.



Israeli politicians in the 1990s leapt forward, ready to strip the country of all of its Jewish national emblems, from the star on the flag to the words of the national anthem. And after 1,300 years of discrimination against Jews by Arabs, Israeli politicians were implementing "reverse discrimination" programs, under which Arabs received preferences and Jews suffered quotas. One after the other, Israeli politicians during the early and mid-1990s mouthed the post-modernist gibberish of the anti-Israel choruses from overseas, about how Israelis needed to stop ruling over another "people", had to learn to understand the "other", had to commemorate the "tragedies" the Jews had imposed upon the innocent Arabs and so make restitution. If no Palestinian people had ever existed in history, Israeli politicians were determined to invent one - for peace.



World anti-Semitism exploded as a direct consequence of Israel's own politicians granting lip service and credibility to the anti-Jewish canards that had always been the propaganda underpinnings for hatred of Israel, including Israeli official acquiescence in accepting the rhetoric of the anti-Semites. Here were Israeli leaders agreeing that Israel was indeed a colonial "conqueror" and "outsider", an "oppressor" of Palestinians and the cause of Palestinian "suffering". Here were Israel's own leaders confirming that Palestinian barbarism and atrocities were ultimately the fault of Israeli "occupation" and Jewish insensitivity.



While Jewish assimilationism in the Diaspora has often been termed "self-hatred", the expression is misleading. Diaspora assimilationists are generally people who are simply indifferent to their Jewishness and want nothing to do with Judaism. They generally do not actively wish Jews harm (although there are some exceptions). Going further back in history, Jewish assimilationists were in general simply socially-mobile people, willing to jettison their Jewishness in exchange for opening career doors and access to positions of status closed to Jews. By and large, these were not people who hated other Jews, although of course there were always some exceptions among these, as well.



The Oslo era in Israel however saw the emergence, perhaps for the first time in history, of virulent and literal anti-Jewish bigotry among the intellectual, media and political Jewish elites of Israel. Israeli universities became petri dishes for Jewish anti-Zionists and anti-Semites, "Post-Jewish" leftist extremists openly collaborating with the enemies of their own country in time of war, people openly advocating the elimination of their own country and its merger into some sort of Palestinian state. Israeli campuses became, in large part, the occupied territories of the Leftist Ascendancy. There are today Israeli professors and lecturers who openly serve as Court Jews for the worst anti-Semites on the planet, including Islamist fundamentalists, neo-Nazis and Holocaust Deniers. Israeli leftist faculty members tour the world, denouncing Israel before audiences of anti-Semites as a Nazi, fascist, terrorist, criminal, apartheid country, engaged in systematic human rights atrocities.



[Part 1 of 3]