Nation-building predicament

EUGENE KAELLIS

Among Jews, when an historical approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is expounded, the process may begin with the Exodus story and go on to the destruction of the third Temple by Titus (70 CE), after which, it is usually alleged, the Diaspora began. But, as Salo Baron has pointed out, Jews were living in significant numbers along the western Mediterranean during much earlier times. Indeed, it is estimated that at the time of the first Roman-Jewish war (66-73 CE), 20 percent of the population of the city of Rome consisted of Jews.

A few years ago, I heard a noted biblical scholar lecture on the Middle East. He seemed determined to view the current episode as part of a history harkening back to Abraham, and reminded the audience that Muslims have their own version of the story of Hagar and Sarah, and of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. In the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount, there is a stone on which the near-sacrifice of Ishmael (not Isaac) is said to have occurred.

What the distinguished Bible scholar and professor had to say was not at all helpful. The Arab-Israeli conflict has already been terribly over-theologized. To continue with that process would only make it more malignant than it already is. When people invoke God, there is no telling what they will do.

To put things in context, Israel is far from being the only country with nation-building problems. Great Britain was built on the military defeats of the Welsh, Scots and Irish. Even with the relative peace in Ulster, the reverberations of those defeats still redound in growing Welsh and Scottish cultural and political autonomy. America had to fight its bloodiest war ever to maintain its union. A united Germany, i.e., as the Second Reich, was proclaimed along with an in-your-face ceremony in the Versailles Palace Hall of Mirrors after Prussia had defeated France (from which two major provinces were subsequently seized and annexed) and before which, Prussia had defeated and seized territory from Denmark and Austria as part of Bismarck's plan for the new Reich. The unification of Italy was also achieved largely by using force or threats of force against the Austrians and the Pope, busy protecting his own estates. Today, India still holds largely Muslim Kashmir, in violation of a United Nations' resolution, China is practising colonization by re-populating the restive areas of Tibet and Sinkiang with Han (the racial-ethnic majority in China). The Russians still hold Chechnya and, that chronic cockpit of contending nationalism, the Balkans, has finally settled down after all sorts of ongoing genocidal violence. And, oh yes, some Basques are still struggling against Spain. Arctic sovereignty is going to be a hot-button item in the next decade. And, with the growing Hispanic population in the United States, Mexican irredentism may be in the offing.

The West is willing to overlook nation-state problems of Africa, many of which grew out of the slicing up of the continent at the 1884 Berlin Conference, leaving boundaries dictated only by imperialist rivalries, boundaries that, unfortunately, became borders in the post-colonial era. The West can put up with chronic African instability because basically it is getting what it wants: ores, oil, diamonds and gold, in many cases cheaper than if it had to deal with viable states instead of entities that periodically engage in efforts to "adjust" arbitrary national boundaries imposed on Africa by its former colonizers.

A fundamental question is: Why nations? Among Marxist and para-Marxist historians, the process of nation-building is essentially the bourgeoisie creating a national market. But that process leaves out many nations formed before the advent of capitalism. There seems to be a growing trend among contemporary historians to take a different, less theory-based view. According to Simon Schama, for example, history has largely been subjected to prejudicial ex post facto analysis, in which the supposition is: If it happened, then it was inevitable, which sounds more than a bit like Marxist determinist political-economy. In his view, there are many decisive, unplanned and irrational factors that, through vagaries, dominate history.

In considering the establishment of the state of Israel, it could be useful to place its development in a broader context of nation-building rather than continuing to invoke a mythic scenario. The trouble Israel faces is based evidently on the claims of the Palestinians. Their claim cannot begin to approximate in justification that of many indigenous peoples, in Asia, Australia, Africa and the New World, who were defeated, displaced, killed, enslaved, their territories expropriated by European expansionism. The problem is, by "quirks" of history, with which every Jew is familiar, the Jews arrived quite late on the nation-building scene when others had already taken what they wanted and could manage. Israel faces a "liberationist nationalist" post-colonial world consciousness and is therefore being subjected to censure by the use of criteria simply not applied to those countries building nation-states or acquiring colonies in the past. In those times, it was quite enough to get on a horse, use firearms and the Bible to legitimate any claim or conquest.

The dynamics of nation-building have long been a favorite topic of historians. Many believe that the era of the nation-state, in which a certain more or less defined territory is occupied by a more or less homogenous and identifiable people, was a "natural," even inevitable, outgrowth in historical and economic development. More likely, there are no inevitabilities in history and nation-building is sometimes the consequence of apparently capricious events, much influenced by the labile consciousness of people involved in them.

People like to hold on to myth. Often, they even fashion their lives around it. Nations owe their very existence to it. Many people consequently resist the insertion of what they believe is a cynical note of realpolitik in circumstance. But over time, realpolitik, over time, trumps all other considerations.

Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic living in New Westminster.

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