(JNS) In an essay published in Tablet magazine in early July, Jacob Howland was insistent that “Israel epitomizes not only the abundant fruits of Western civilization but also the conditions for their existence: strong borders, national pride and free markets; thick social bonds and vigorous common purpose.”

He identifies those necessary conditions for Western civilization’s existence as being the fundamental political, cultural and economic essentials that would “impede any sort of political or religious globalization, be it of socialism, Islamism or elite technocratic rule.”

Furthermore, to his mind, the anti-Zionism we are witnessing—with a demand to cleanse Jews from their homeland, to be replaced by a Palestine “from the river to the sea” but with the accompanying call to “globalize the intifada—indicates that the protesters are being motivated also by a desire “to eradicate Western civilization.”

A professor of philosophy and dean of intellectual foundations at the University of Austin in Texas who previously lectured at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, Howland is taking the side that the best way for humans not only to realize their potential and merit a safe, secure and a free life for themselves and families, as well as make significantly positive contributions to society and global communities, is to promote nationalism. This is opposed to forms of globalization, which stultify and oppress.

I see a rough reiteration in this approach to portions of the thinking of author Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Russian-born founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, on nationalism, and so will take advantage of Howland’s lead-in. In a 1913 article titled “Race,” Jabotinsky proposed a term of “national psyche” (which his ideological opponents quickly refashioned as a racial outlook, whereas Jabotinsky, the liberal, forced to use the contemporary rhetoric, rejected racism while searching for additional nomenclature).

Incidentally, in an Aug. 4 ruling by Judge Trevor McFadden of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, his words on P. 14 state that “The Star of David … symbolizes the Jewish race.” He included additional terms in that article, such as “national consciousness,” “national essence” and “national affinity,” to highlight the uniqueness of each nation and its soul, noting that he was not fixated on “race.”

For Jabotinsky, “national culture is the sum total of all the habits, institutions and ways of living of the nation.”

Nations, he insisted, are different from one another; each makes a parallel but distinct contribution based on its lived experience.

As he explains: “A thing that one nation borrows from another is not exactly the same one. In each nation, the borrowed thing takes on a different form. For example, the same parliamentary system which has a unique characteristic in England has an entirely different characteristic in Spain or France. This does not mean that the thing is ‘better’ in one nation and ‘worse’ in another, but it is nevertheless different.”

And so, in seeking to justify why certain nations must be based in their home territory, he penned: “Territory, language, religion, common history—all these are not the essence of a nation but its adjectives only. Indeed, these adjectives are of great importance, and their importance is even greater for the stability of national existence. But the essence of a nation—its first and last fortress of uniqueness of its image—is its distinctive physical characteristics, the compound of its racial (sic) recipe.”

In fact, seeking to explain why nations attack nations, Jabotinsky did not point to an unalterable “racial character” as the guilty element but wrote: “When one nation attacks its neighbour to lust and pillage, the origin of this urge is not to be found in its national qualities, but in its economic appetite.” In other words, Jabotinsky, who studied under Socialists in his university days in Rome—attending the lectures of Antonio Labriola, Italy’s first Marxist academician, Benedetto Croce and Enrico Ferri—was not unsympathetic to socialism. His above emphasis on economic motivation as a cause for aggression could be a hesitant non-rejection of a Marxist rationale at work.

His relationship with Marxism is already visible in a 1903 essay he published, writing: “The fact is that the question of nationalities has not yet been worked out scientifically, especially from the point of view of historical materialism. I do not assert, but I will not be surprised if it turns out that from this point of view, without major amendments (elements of which, incidentally, are already in Engels), it cannot be worked out.”

In that article, his clear and unstinting promotion of nationalism vs. forms of what we call globalization nowadays is in this passage: “ … not only does the preservation of national peculiarities seem, from a strictly positive point of view, to be absolutely inevitable: it must also be remembered that it is also highly desirable. … No one has ever seen the ideal in uniformity; on the contrary, both instinctively and consciously, we always prefer every possible variety of varieties, harmoniously but originally living and developing side by side. Man cannot be an exception to this ideal. If national differences did not exist, then in the interests of all mankind, il faudrait les inventer, they would have to be invented, so that the human spirit could manifest itself in every variety of shades … .”

Jabotinsky then presented an example: “Imagine humanity as a huge orchestra, in which each nationality plays, as it were, its own special instrument. Take all the violinists from the orchestra … [while] the number of musicians remains the same and the talents are the same, but one instrument has disappeared, and the orchestra is at a loss. If only we understand progress as a striving for the greatest fullness, complexity and richness of life’s manifestations, and not vice versa—for the greatest poverty and monotony, then we must value the inviolability of national individualities no less than we value the inviolability of an individual human being … .”

The current campaign of suppressing Jewish nationalism, demands to “eliminate Zionism” and the preference even some Jews to incorporate a mishmash of an identity predicated on their interpretation of liberalism and progressivism—realigning traditional Jewish values and practices to align with contemporary politics—is not only a self-destructive lemming-march to the edge of history. It is anti-history.

Jabotinsky was adamant: “The Jews are the most outstanding example of the rule according to which each ‘race’ always wishes to live in the surrounding[s] that it created for itself in accordance with its special psychic ‘means of production’. Our history, more than 3,000 years ago, starts with a search for a country of our own; and today [1903] we are searching again for a country, and again the very same country.”

Zionism is Jewish nationalism, expressing Jewish identity in the fields of culture, religion, politics, literature, law, morals, economics and so much more. It is a positive force for humankind as well. As such, for 3,000 years, we Jews, as Jabotinsky explains, will insist that we return to our national homeland not only for our own reasons, but to be able to contribute to the world so that it, too, will not be submerged into a globalized condition.

And to do so, the Jews must have their own independent national state on a secure and safe portion of their historic homeland.

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