Questioning Zionism

This is the first of four posts that will examine aspects of Jacqueline Rose’s “The Question of Zion”. This first will cover the preface. The subsequent three posts will discuss each of the three chapters: Zionism as Messianism (Vision); Zionism as Psychoanalysis (Critique); Zionism as Politics (Violence). (All page references are to the 2005 hard cover edition).

Israel is innocent of the violence with which it is beset. There is nothing in the actions of the state, the history of the country or of Zionism, that can explain it. (p xi)

This is regarded as the dominant view or vision constituting Israel’s understanding of its relations with the rest of its neighbours and indeed with the world. It is a vision intimately woven into the official Zionist narrative, a narrative that Jacqueline Rose critically examines in her book, The Question of Zion (2005). Rose, while believing that, “Zionism emerged out of the legitimate desire of a persecuted people for a homeland,” nonetheless raises what I take to be the central question of the book - a question that is also a problem waiting for a solution:

What is it about the coming into being of this nation, and the movement out of which it was born, that allowed it - and still allows it - to shed the burdens of its own history, and so flagrantly to blind itself? (p. xii)

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