tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post2631967681771928810..comments2024-03-18T22:21:33.261-07:00Comments on The Debate Link: Teaching IsraelDavid Schraubhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-11851088435286512872010-05-22T06:45:34.204-07:002010-05-22T06:45:34.204-07:00Teaching Zionism as a liberation movement might ev...Teaching Zionism as a liberation movement might even be good history, placing it in line with other liberation movements.<br /><br />I am, however, rather doubtful that such is really a left wing approach to Israel's history. Historian Bat Ye'or, who is definitely not on the left - although she has been inaccurately painted as being on the very, very far right, a label -, long ago advanced a liberation movement theory about Israeli history. To her, Israel's history has quite a bit in common with the Greek liberation movement, with European diaspora Greeks instigating a movement within the Ottoman Empire to create a "Greece" where it resides today and return "Greeks" (i.e. Christians from what is now Greece but also from those scattered from across the Ottoman Empire) into Greece to, for the first time, create a country called Greece. In the case of Israel, European Jews, in addition to liberating themselves, awakened Jews throughout, once again, the former Ottoman Empire including in Israel and created a country called "Israel."<br /><br />This view, while it may be a loosely interesting historical analogy, was severely criticized for not being politically advisable. The Greek liberation movement displaced and killed substantially more people than the Jewish liberation movement. Hence, the view was that to associate the Jewish liberation movement with other such movements (and nearly all liberation movements displace large numbers of people) would focus more attention on those displaced in the Jewish liberation movement. Of course, one substantial difference between the Jewish and Greek liberation movements is that the Greek movement overtly aimed to displace all Muslims living in Greece - such being central to the movement - while that was not the political agenda of Zionism, although clearly quite a number of people were displaced.<br /><br />My gut reaction is that, for the far left, Israel is irredeemable. The country has become too important to them for any rational argument to succeed. Maybe the next generation of kids can be helped.N. Friedmannoreply@blogger.com