Old concepts and ideas can undergo a rejuvenation.
A new book, The Hebrew Falcon by Roman Vater, has as its subject Adya Horon, born Adolphe Gourevitch, who became an early admirer of Ze’ev Jabotinsky. It was his seminal thinking which, together with others, gave birth to the Canaanite idea. Horon sought to create a Hebrew nation in the 1940s and 1950s, and later, Uri Avnery and Natan Yellin-Mor sought to create a Semitic expanse to replace an Arab Middle East.
While his idea of a throwback political construct that would replace Zionism ultimately failed, its ramifications on language, literature, culture, and art in Israel were significant.
Canaanism, as Vater presents it, is an anti-Zionist ideology that promoted a national movement of a presumed existence of an indigenous Hebrew non-Jewish nation in the territory of the pre-state Palestine mandate and then the post-state Israel. Zionism was Jewish, and their Canaanism was pre-Judaic Hebrew. As such, Horon’s geopolitical borders extended far beyond “Greater Israel.”
Horon’s homeland was an imagined “Land of Kedem.” This expansive territory led him down a path of interesting and important possibilities of political influence for the entire Middle East region that, only now, are becoming perhaps part of the new Netanyahu vision.
Horon was antagonistically anti-Pan-Arab. His focus was the Sea People, the Phoenicians, and, as such, he identified Lebanese nationalism as a pre-Arab concept. They were seafarers, and so were the ancient Hebrews. His Land of Kedem was the Semitic Levant. This overintellectualization does point to a simple fact: the Arabs are actually a minority in the Middle East and, moreover, they are the actual occupiers and colonialists in the region.
They came out of southern Arabia in the seventh century CE, conquered lands not theirs and replaced local religions and cultures with their own language and faith. They treated Jews, Christians, Copts, Assyrians, and other minorities, and continue to do so, with cruelty and intolerance. Islamic Arabism was imperialistic. It was an instrument of subjugation.
Learning what happened in Syria
ON MARCH 1, learning of the events at the Druze village Jaramana, outside of Damascus, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with Defense Minister Israel Katz, declared, “We will not allow the extremist Islamist regime in Syria to harm the Druze. If the regime harms them, it will face consequences from us.”
Whether or not all the Druze welcome that implicit intention of an Israeli intervention, the subtext is that Israel is reinterpreting the thinking of Horon. The underlying message being transmitted, in the face of the current Middle East reality in Syria as well as Lebanon, echoes the thinking of Horon. In witnessing the persecution and suffering of the Middle East’s Christian communities and maybe even the genocide Arabs are practicing against non-Muslim Sudanese, Israel is willing to posture itself as a defender of minorities suffering from extreme Islamism.
I searched for a list of non-Arab minority socioethnic groups in the Middle East and stopped counting after 25. They include Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis, as well as Assyrians, Arameans, Circassians, Druze, Mandaeans, Maronites, Samaritans, and Yazidis.
Who can forget the events of 2014 and the siege of Mount Sinjar waged by ISIS forces? The Yazidis suffered massacres and enslavement. The community was perceived by ISIS as heretics, and the ISIS extremist ideology insisted on annihilation of those who did not interpret Islam just as it did.
Over 5,000 Yazidis were killed, 7,000 women and children were kidnapped, and many were sold into slavery and suffered abuses. Some 400,000 Yazidis fled to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. Parallel stories exist with many of the other minorities.
Since 1995, the International Christian Concern group has been campaigning against “fundamentalist Islam,” which they see as intolerant toward other faiths. Christians suffer greatly in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. Moreover, there has been a “historic exodus of Christians” from these countries.
The last time Israel sought to exert its diplomatic, economic, and military influence to alter the balance of power between authoritarian Islam was that of Menachem Begin. Begin was motivated, in a fashion, by the example of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s diplomacy maneuverings in the mid-to-late 1930s.
The Zionist movement, of course, had no real sovereign power or any genuine military ability prior to 1948. Facing the growing European antisemitism on the one hand and, on the other, the surrendering of British support for the Mandate to the demands of the Mufti’s terrorist campaign, Jabotinsky devised his “policy of alliances.” He sought support for Jewish immigration outside the Mandate limitations and, as well, clandestine military training and arms for the Jewish youth in the Betar movement and the nascent Irgun. He reached out mainly to countries that were less than friendly to Jews, such as Poland, and managed to meet with Romania’s King Carol II.
A new contemporary policy of alliances could be constructed on a position of Israel’s relative strength as well as its warm diplomatic relations with America. It could be a further development of the Abraham Accords that, in part, would realign Sunni Muslim states against the Iranian Shi’ite regime’s “axis of evil.” The policy could be built from the ground up, reaching out to those who seek equity and freedom in the Middle East, a Middle East liberated from Arab domination.
Israel’s new strategic vision should take the initiative to establish regional Middle East stability while creating a human resources base resting on its non-Islamist minorities. An agenda would encompass economic, health, and security issues, along with democracy. This would also garner support from Christian friends of Israel in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Africa and South America.
It would be an alliance for civilization. An alliance of moral values and freedom. An alliance to assure peace, security, and prosperity, and to defend those principles. Israel, the Jewish state, could lead in the spirit of Isaiah 60:3 – “And by your light, nations shall walk, and kings by the brightness of your rising.”
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.