tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36646589.post7490380009422925324..comments2023-10-30T19:03:59.225+01:00Comments on David Seaton's News Links: Thoughts on ZionismDavid Seaton's Newslinkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00269813419598042699noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36646589.post-48734868302873444642011-10-08T19:13:25.208+02:002011-10-08T19:13:25.208+02:00Yes, i too, luv the vignette.Yes, i too, luv the vignette.baileyhttp://www.baileyalexander.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36646589.post-15674478671446331772011-09-29T23:49:59.336+02:002011-09-29T23:49:59.336+02:00Thanks for that vignette... wow.Thanks for that vignette... wow.Jacob Gitteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10559764359800682222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36646589.post-4369843182531930992011-09-29T06:26:33.991+02:002011-09-29T06:26:33.991+02:00I had Zionism well and thoroughly explained to me....I had Zionism well and thoroughly explained to me. My Israeli girlfriend was raised on a Hashomer Hatzair (Young Red Guards) kibbutz, one of the earliest kibbutzim in Galilee. Her parents had made the aliya from Poland in the early 1930s. She had never had money in her hand until, at 18, she did her military service. What I know about Zionism I learned from her.<br /><br />Zionism was really rather beautiful in its origins. Very 19th century romantic: the purification of men and women, an entire people, through work in the soil owned in common, where each contributed according to their ability and each received according to their needs.<br /><br />The idea behind it all was in some ways rather similar to Marx's view of Judaism: that centuries of being forcibly divorced from the land and forbidden to exercise most skilled trades and forced to live a rootless life, surviving by lending money to, or practicing medicine on, Christian rulers, who hated them and persecuted them, had alienated and thoroughly shrunken Jewish people's "species nature" and this could only be healed in a land of their own, working with their hands and eating the fruits of their own labor. The ideal was the "cultured peasant": working in the fields by day, but reading philosophy and science in their ample free time.<br /><br />Nowadays there are immigrants from places like Thailand doing stoop labor in the fields... and Tel-Aviv is a world capital of money laundering... that is how far things have come adrift from the original idea. That today, reactionary, born again Christian, Tea Party types are ardent "Zionists" would have Theodor Hertzl spinning like a top in his grave.David Seaton's Newslinkshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00269813419598042699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36646589.post-5927688118213383452011-09-28T16:31:06.692+02:002011-09-28T16:31:06.692+02:00Great analysis. I recall that Hannah Arendt was al...Great analysis. I recall that Hannah Arendt was alarmed and disappointed by the course that Zionism started to take after WWII, and she was vilified for it.Jacob Gitteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10559764359800682222noreply@blogger.com