Zionist Historians and Zionist History

The phenomenon of the "New Historians" has pretty much played itself out (for Israel's first decade, that is, they're just getting started on the next). Everything that could have been said has been said, and it is unlikely that either side will be swayed one way or the other at this point. However, even if the arguments have been done to death, the question of how to rewrite Israel's history, especially for the high school cirriculum, in such a way that it incorporates new revelations on the one hand, and maitains a pro-Zionist (or at least not anti-Zionist) outlook on the other, is a challenge that requires immediate attention. We are, first and foremost, a people rooted in history and common identity. If we can not answer the mal'izim in a way that will convince the uninitiated that Zionism and Israel is just, even if it does make bad mistakes, then the whole structure is in danger of collapse.

Consider, for instance, a scathing critique of Efraim Herzog's book, recently republished, on the Arab-Israel wars in Ha'Aretz (where else?) by a left-wing Zionist historian, Professor Yehiam Weitz. Weitz decries the outdated nature of the text and its ignorance of recent research that shows Israel in a somewhat more negative light (whether the research is ipso facto correct just because of its recentness is another matter...). Indeed, the recent attempts to come out with albums and books simplisticly reaffirming old values seem to yours truly to be an act of desperation to stem an ever-flowing tide towards anti-Zionism as well as a radical critique of everything we hold dear.

Nevertheless, Weitz's complaint can serve no purpose if it is not matched by an equally determined effort on the part of those historians and scholars not bitten by the anti-everything bug to produce a history that is capable of swallowing the grains of truth in anti-Zionist claims and putting them in context, and spitting out the rest. To do nothing but complain about those who make a genuine, if insufficient effort to reaffirm our core values is to prefer cursing the darkness to lighting a candle. It will achieve nothing.

To write a "new Zionist" history that deals with the good and the bad is by no means impossible. Prof. Yoav Gelber and Prof. Joseph Heller, to name just two scholars, have both come out with studies on controversial topics that deal with, and dispose of, revisionist claims. This effort must now increase tenfold - the "critical scholars" have a lead in terms of the sheer amount of revisionist and critical works published under various auspices. Time is of the essence.