The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

tus in place of that of protected religious communities. The Zionist challenge
also ran up against emerging Arab nationalism, with its Western
notion of affairs.
From the Jewish-Zionist point of view, the definition of the Jewish collective
identity is contradictory and confusing. The usual definition of nationality
is complex enough: a common language, a common culture,
common ethnic origin, history, territory, and/ or a combination of all or
some of these?
The Jews in the world, it is claimed, do not share a common language,
culture, ethnic or genetic ancestry, have no common territory, and history
and beliefs of Jewish communities vary. The only common element
is religion and religious civilization, either directly (among the orthodox)
or vague and distant, or even rejected (among the secular). With the definition
of the Israeli state as a “Jewish” state, the Israeli state must necessarily
fail to become an entity that safeguards and regulates the
common interest of a pluralistic civil society and the communities in its
boundaries.
This confusion between religious and secular definitions and terminologies
derived partly from the existential conflict with the Arab world, in
which Israel and the Zionist movement were engaged since its inception,
a century ago.
This national-political conflict over land and domination provided the political
leadership the opportunity to translate the political and the military
threat by the Arab world into the terminology of ancient collective fears
of the Jewish communities, experienced in the long history of Jewish
Diaspora. This common fear of the Jewish communities in the diaspora
created and deepened their solidarity with the Jewish collective, the citizens
of Israel. This fear brings with it an entire cultural aspects and environment:
the hatred of the “goyim”, the fear of “pogroms”, Jewish
pride, etc.
Ironically, this culture, exactly what the founding fathers of Zionism wished
to rebel against and reject, is encountering “renaissance” within the inde -
pendent state, equipped with arms and nuclear weapons.
187