Topics Justice

Question I am an American who has embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment, specifically the inherent value, perspective, and rights all humans on this planet. How do we reconcile these values with contemporary ideologies, specifically Zionism, that posits a racially, religiously unique group with "overriding" rights?

Accepted:
October 16, 2008

Comments

I am not sure you are right on Zionism, although of course there are many Zionisms, as with all such national ideologies. Most Zionists, it seems to me, argue that the Jews constitute a nation and like any other nation, the British, the French, the Germans etc. they are entitled to a homeland. And it ought to be in Palestine, although a hundred years ago or so many Zionists were prepared to accept somewhere else! The idea that Jews seek status as "a racially, religiously unique group with 'overriding' rights" owes more to antisemitic stereotypes than to the reality of most forms of Zionism, although it is certainly true that there are some extreme views in Zionism as elsewhere.

It's no doubt true that Zionism as such doesn't necessarily insist that Jews are "unique" and so deserve "overriding rights". That said, there's a case to be made that "national ideologies" are intrinsically racist, on the ground that the very notion of a "nation" that is being deployed here is intrinsically racist. It is certainly true, for example, that there are people who regard the French as constituting a "nation" that deserves its own homeland, but most of those people would generally be regarded as extremists, and the same goes for British and German nationalists. If so, then nationalism is fundamentally inconsistent with the Enlightenment values the questioner mentions.

Whether any of what I've just said is true, however, is hotly debated. In particular, the question to what extent "shared community values" might inform the basic structure of a political system has been much discussed over the last few decades. As good a place to start as any is Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice.