George Orwell on Zionism

I recently stumbled into a thicket of confusion surrounding the term ‘nationalism’ while reading an essay on that subject by George Orwell. He stretches the definition to encompass, not just what we usually think of as an attachment to a particular nation, but any all-consuming ideology which pits itself against other groups commanding loyalty. With broad brush strokes he paints Communism, ‘political’ Catholicism, Zionism and antisemitism as examples of forms of nationalism.

In short, he sees nationalism as something power-driven, aggressive, expansionistic and in essence ‘bad’, and he distinguishes it from patriotism, which he defines as devotion to a particular place and way of life “which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people”.

Naturally, I looked closely at his justification for including Zionism in his list of nationalisms. He states that Zionism has the usual characteristics of a nationalist movement, but that “the American variant of it seems to be more violent and malignant than the British” and he adds that “it flourishes almost exclusively among the Jews themselves”.

Writing about this in May 1945, he notes that “in England….the intelligentsia are mostly pro-Jew on the Palestine issue but they do not feel strongly about it. All English people of goodwill are also pro-Jew in the sense of disapproving of Nazi persecution. But any actual nationalistic loyalty, or belief in the innate superiority of Jews, is hardly to be found among Gentiles”.

I felt a pang of disappointment when reading Orwell’s shallow condemnation of Zionism. It seemed to me that he had failed to appreciate the fact that Zionism had its origins as a striving for political emancipation, which surely, he of all people, should have understood.

He ignores the fact that the primary motivation of the Zionists was to establish a national homeland as a refuge where the Jewish people might live in peace, and that there was no aggressive mission on its agenda. And he only refers mildly to the British attitude towards Nazi persecution of the Jews in terms of ‘disapproval’, implying that the problem was essentially a Jewish one and that there could be no reason other than pity for taking the side of the Jews.

Orwell’s view seems to be that Jewish nationalism, like all other nationalisms, must be bad. There appears to be no room in his book for nuance, so he does not recognise Zionist Socialism, for instance, which was the prevailing brand of Zionism during the period of which he is writing and which inspired both American and British Jews. He sees Zionism as a homogeneous entity and therefore as deserving of opprobrium as any other forms of nationalism.

Today, of course, a rift has opened up in the ranks of Zionism. I have no doubt that the brand of Right-Wing Zionism which now prevails in Israel would have incurred Orwell’s vitriolic condemnation but I wonder whether he would have still insisted on blanket condemnation of the Zionist movement or been more lenient in his judgment, given Israel’s struggle to defend itself from Islamism, which he would have had to label as yet another form of nationalism but which had not yet, at the time, materialised on his radar.

It must also be said, in mitigation, that Orwell’s writings contain many strongly worded condemnations of antisemitism. However, like so many other critics of the Left who stoutly maintain that they are not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist, he would probably have continued to underestimate the vital link between Judaism and Israel.