“The primary political challenge for Europe today is that of moving beyond the nation-state…”

The primary political challenge for Europe today is that of moving beyond the nation-state, that is, the problem of European integration — a problem that is framed as the clash between nationalism and post-nationalism (with progressive or “good” opinion very much on the side of the latter). It comes as no surprise, then, that Israel (and America) are reviled for acting like the nation-states they are. Israel, as the product of 19th-century European nationalism, acts as the ideology of nationalism suggests sovereign states do and should act: It is ready to employ the force of arms to defend the nation’s interest. This behavior is what drives Europeans crazy. It strikes their post-nationalist sensibilities as retrograde and racist. Israel squares off against the Arabs in the same benighted manner as the French used to against the Germans, and so on. Hence, European anti-Semitism — and anti-Americanism as well.

I should add that Zionism, the darling of the left 75 years ago, became successful — created a nation-state — precisely at a time when the nation-state fell out of fashion. It’s one of the great ironies of history.

Jerome A. Chanes, “Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and The Line Between Them”, The Jewish Week (29 April 2016), 23.