Summary
The phase proposed by some Israeli intellectuals after the 1993 Declaration of Principles, distinct from anti-Zionism, which “abandons the conviction that Jews can live meaningful lives only in Israel” — the frame in which Chapter 8 of The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry places Ronit Matalon’s novel and Emanuel Marx’s proposals (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3769-3789).
Details
- Post-Zionism, as distinct from anti-Zionism, tends to avoid pursuing the morally difficult questions about Israel’s formation and Zionism’s historical practices to the limits of political reasoning; its primary advocates have been Ashkenazi professors, journalists and authors, yet it has a certain Levantine element — accepting the past cannot be undone and making the best of the present and future without pressing a fully consistent critique, which would undermine its appeal to Israeli Jews motivated by “normalcy” rather than anguish over the Palestinian Arabs (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3769-3789).
- Its deliberate ambiguity is unsatisfying for a historian and inadequate for many Arabs, especially Palestinians, who will not find sufficient attention to their grievance in it; nonetheless it may prove politically more effective than the absolutist nationalisms it seeks to supplant (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3769-3789).
- “Post-Zionism abandons the conviction that Jews can live meaningful lives only in Israel. It relinquishes the fearful conception that because of the mass murder of European Jewry, Jews require an absolute guarantee of physical security that can be provided only by the armed forces of Israel. It allows Jews to appreciate and participate in other cultures without feeling guilty for betraying their heritage and opens the possibility that Israel can become integrated into the Middle East” (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3769-3789).
- Matalon’s sympathetic portrayal of her family’s contradictory positions suggests this post-Zionist tolerance, and Emanuel Marx’s proposal to renew a Jewish community in Egypt — “We live in a post-Zionist era” — is its closing example (Chapter 8, note 76) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 3769-3789).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Levantinism, Ronit Matalon, Emanuel Marx, Zionism