Nationalism must be condemned whether Christian or Jewish 

Zionism is akin to Christian nationalism. A difference in Zionism is that it existed originally as political/religious thought among a diverse population spread across national borders in Europe that identified religiously and culturally as an ethnoreligious group. 

Originally the argument of Jews pursuing a homeland in Palestine was met with skepticism as a political/religious philosophy and existed on the margins. However, the various European pogroms against Jews began to coalesce larger swarths of Jews to strategically reconsider Zionism.

Zionism emerged in the 19th century as an ethnocultural ideology. It sought to establish a national home for the Jewish people that they controlled and therefore were free from the ethnic cleansing that arose periodically in Europe. World War II and the atrocities carried out against Jews and other groups in Europe became a major factor for the intellectual and emotional acceptability of the Zionist framework that would result in the colonization of Palestine. 

As the acceptability of Zionism arose as a solution for Jewish security among larger segments of the Jewish population, its political and religious tenets became more wedded to Judaism. This conflation of Zionism with Judaism has become problematic in terms of having any sober political discussions on the realities and consequences of Israel and the implications of Zionism without being accused of being antisemitic.

Zionism claimed that Palestine is the historical land of the Jews and therefore the Jewish right to the land outweighed anything that was Arab. The concept of “transfer,” or what we today would call “ethnic cleansing,” is inherent to Zionism, believing that the security of Jews had to be based upon their majority, and to lessen any potential of uprisings in response to Jewish occupation. 

The idea of removing non-Jewish populations and affording non-Jews less rights than Jews evidently gained widespread support across an array of Zionist groups. The religious roots of Zionism focused upon the land of Palestine being promised by God to the Jewish people into perpetuity with the conquest and subjugation of non-Jewish people resulting. 

There are biblical narratives that justify the subjugation, conquest and killing of non-Jewish people. The political roots of Zionism are based upon what is presented as practical strategies of protection, security, and historical rights to the land. The religious justifications of Zionism are questionable given that Jews largely have appropriated and identified with the biblical narratives as stories of identity and belonging, just as Black people largely reinterpreted the biblical stories as our own identification with God and divine purpose. 

The political justification of Zionism is flawed in that it affirms the European colonization and conquest of non-white lands, and the subjugation of non-white peoples. Zionism, though ethnic in character, is a nationalistic European expression of the stealing and conquest of the land of others and the extension of white supremacy in form and practice.

I am offering a brief summation of Christian and Jewish nationalism. I am also raising the ideological and political deficiencies of the left where it condemns Christian nationalism but fails in offer the same kinds of condemnation and critique of Jewish nationalism. One has to ask why. 

Each form of religious nationalism is an apostasy to the spiritual and political concepts of Christianity and Judaism. Each nationalism avoids the declarations of justice, right treatment of neighbors, and welcoming the stranger as if it is foreign to the scriptural text. Instead, they turn to scriptures that seem to affirm their narrow and myopic points of view, conquest, and divine justification for subjugation and genocide. 

Each form of nationalism deserves and needs to be condemned. Peace and justice organizations on the left, liberal religious groups, and political secular groups need to apply their criticism of religious and political nationalism across the board and in a principled way. I am offering that all forms of nationalism are inherently evil because they strip non-conforming groups of their dignity, security, and freedom of expression. 

Zionism emerged because of nation-state nationalism, but the irony is that they formed another expression of nationalism to combat nationalism. This simply illustrates how one evil leads to another. 

Christian nationalism has been the backbone of all kinds of evils from enslavement to the Christianization and genocide of indigenous peoples. It must be condemned in all of its forms from the past to the present, and into any future expression. 

Zionism must also be subjected to the same types of criticism and analysis, and if we fail to apply the same standard of criticism across the board in reference to Christianity, Judaism, and even Islam, then we have certainly failed in being any moral voice at all.  

This is a portion of “Zionism and Christian Nationalism Same Corruption in a Different Hue” originally published in the LA Progressive. To read the full piece, visit www.laprogressive.com.