Abstract
Like all political movements, Zionism not only perpetuates its myth but also uses basic myths to justify its goals and to legitimise its action. This chapter, written with an explicit purpose to justify the creation of the Zionist State and to confer legitimacy upon it, is a case in point. Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller uses the myth of the land of Israel to equate obligations to Zionism with Judaism. His presentation gives the impression that Zionism is the natural outcome of the whole of Jewish history and that it is also the intrinsic core of Judaism to which all Jews owe their allegiance. The author views the doctrine of the Land from two perspectives — mythic and legal — and employs preconceived ideas without discussing all their implications. The so-called ‘legal perspective’ is nothing but Zionist sophistry.
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Notes and References
Joseph Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 119–51.
I. F. Stone, ‘For a New Approach to the Israeli-Arab Conflict’, in New York Review of Books, 3 August 1967; reprinted in Gary Smith (ed.), Zionism: The Dream and the Reality, A Jewish Critique (New York, 1974) p. 199.
W. Polk, D. Stamler, and E. Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957) p. 148. The Dreyfus affair created a political crisis for the French Third Republic between 1894 and 1906, about the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish and was convicted of treason for selling military secrets to the Germans.
Hannah Arendt, ‘The Jewish State: Fifty Years After — Where Have Herzl’s Politics Led?’, in Smith (ed.), Zionism, pp. 72–3.
Gary Smith, ‘Introductory Note’, in Smith (ed.), Zionism, p. 17.
Smith (ed.), Zionism, p. 14. Herzl’s program was entirely secular, see also Blau, Modern varieties, p. 141.
Blau, Modern Varieties, pp. 38–9.
See the prophetic book Isaiah in the Bible; Encyclopaedia Britannica, IX, p. 908.
Polk et al., Backdrop to Tragedy, p. 147.
Polk et al., pp. 160–70; Ronald Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c. 1983 (London, 1983); and its review in New York Review of Books, 15 March 1984.
Stone, ‘For a New Approach’, pp. 210–11.
Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs, M. Perl (trans.), (1st American edition New York: Pantheon, 1968), especially ch. 9.
See also Les Temps Modernes special issue on Le conflit israélo-arabe (Paris, 1967).
Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs, p. 219.
Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs, pp. 13–14; Polk et al., Backdrop to Tragedy, pp. 150–4.
Stone, ‘For a New Approach’, pp. 208, 210–11.
John Kimball, The Arabs 1983 (Washington, 1983) p. 32.
Kimball, The Arabs, p. 32.
Smith (ed.), Zionism, p. 17.
Stone, ‘For a New Approach’, p. 209.
Smith (ed.), Zionism, p. 15; Moshe Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time (New York: Exposition Press, 1965) pp. 325–61, 542–54.
Noam Chomsky, United States, Israel and Palestine: A Fateful Triangle (New York, 1983);
Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood (New York, 1974); Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (London, 1983; this sets the stage for a better understanding of the direction of Israeli politics).
Arie Bober (ed.), The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism (New York, 1972);
Uri Davis and N. Mezvinsky, Documents from Israel, 1967–1973 (London, 1973);
Uri Davis, A. Mack and N. Yuval-Davis, Israel and the Palestinians (London, 1975);
Felicia Langer, With My Own Eyes (London, 1975);
Roberta Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics (New York, 1983; this is a biting corrective to the various forms of Israeli and Zionist brainwashing and confronts the Jews with painful truths).
See also Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York, 1979, by a Palestinian Arab); Arabs Under Israeli Occupation, series published by Institute for Palestine Studies;
see also news reports by M. Kubic in Newsweek, 13, 20, 27 February, 1984.
N. Goldmann, ‘Where is Israel Going?’, in New York Review of Books, 1 October 1982.
See also Bernard Avishai, ‘Can Begin Be Stopped?’ in New York Review of Books, 2 June 1983;
Meron Benvenisti, ‘The Turning Point in Israel’, New York Review of Books, 13 October 1983.
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© 1989 The Claremont Graduate School
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Poonawala, I.K. (1989). A Muslim Response to Chaim Seidler-Feller: The Land of Israel: Sanctified Matter or Mystic Space. In: Hick, J., Meltzer, E.S. (eds) Three Faiths — One God. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09434-9_17
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