Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

THE DISTINCTION 309
of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state, and there's no telling how far this
opposition may develop, or how it may be halted.
The complacent assumption that this growing and strengthening
populace will always accept its exclusion from the political and cultural heart
is a dangerous illusion, similar to the blindness of Israeli society to the colonialist
domination in Gaza and the West Bank before the First Intifada. But whereas
the two Palestinian uprisings that broke out in 1987 and 2000 exposed the
weakness of Israel's control over its apartheid territories, their threat to the
existence of the state is negligible compared with the potential threat posed by
the frustrated Palestinians living within its borders. The catastrophic scenario
of an uprising in the Arab Galilee, followed by iron-fisted repression, may not
be too far-fetched. Such a development could be a turning-point for the existence
of Israel in the Near East.
No Jew who lives today in a liberal Western democracy would tolerate the
discrimination and exclusion experienced by the Palestino-Israelis, who live
in a state that proclaims it is not theirs. But Zionist supporters among the Jews
around the world, like most Israelis, are quite unconcerned, or do not wish to
know, that the "Jewish state," because of its undemocratic laws, could never
have been part of the European Union or one of Americas fifty states. This
flawed reality does not stop them from expressing solidarity with Israel, and
even regarding it as their reserve home. Not that this solidarity impels them
to abandon their national homelands and emigrate to Israel. And why should
they, seeing that they are not subjected to daily discrimination and alienation
of the kind that Palestino-Israelis experience daily in their native country?
In recent years the Jewish state has become less interested in large-scale
immigration. The old nationalist discourse that revolved around the idea of
aliyah has lost much of its appeal. To understand current Zionist politics,
replace the word "aliyah" with "diaspora." Today Israel's strength no longer
depends on demographic increase, but rather on retaining the loyalty of overseas
Jewish organizations and communities. It would be a serious setback for
Israel if all the pro-Zionist lobbies were to immigrate en masse to the Holy
Land. It is much more useful for them to remain close to the centers of power
and communications in the Western world—and indeed they prefer to remain
in the rich, liberal, comfortable "diaspora."
At the end of the twentieth century, the weakening of the nation-state
in the Western world indirectly presented contemporary Zionism with new
advantages. Economic, political and cultural globalization has significantly
eroded classical nationalism, but it has not done away with the basic need for
identity and alternative collective associations. The post-industrial context