On Zionism – Pfeffer in Haaretz:

‘But since it’s really too easy to make fun of the organizers and participants puffed-up self-importance and total detachment from the real Israel, let’s ask a more difficult question. What was so special about Theodor Herzl’s original Zionist Congress back in 1897?’

(…)

‘But what made the “first” Congress in Basel were Herzl’s incredible PR abilities. He had no real movement to speak of, no pioneers or soldiers of his own on the ground. He had no guarantee that the Turkish Sultan or the Kaiser or the leaders of France, Britain and the United States would receive him. He had precious little realistic understanding of the Arabs (or of many of the Jews for that matter).
But in his journalism, his books, his speeches and his activism, Herzl conjured out of nothing a grand vision of a modern Jewish nation-state in the ancient land of the Jews. A vision that was so compelling, so rich in promise, so right, that it continued to motivate Jews long after Herzl died to fulfill it.
Fifty-one years after the Basel Congress, Israel became a reality. Herzl’s Zionist dream had been fulfilled. No one has been able to work out ever since what Zionism means after that, or if it even still exists in the real world outside congresses and conferences.’

(…)

‘That congress back in 1897 was dealing with the very real challenges facing Jews in Europe. The pogroms, the discrimination, the lack of any security. A sovereign Jewish state was just one of the solutions for the Jewish predicament, and at the time one of the most outlandish ones. But Zionism won. That state came into being. A state which now faces massive challenges, not to its existence but to its character, to what kind of Jewish and democratic state it is becoming.
But none of the panels this week dealt with those real challenges. How could they? They were too busy "impacting," "innovating" and "implementing."’

Read the article here.

I happen to agree. Israel exists, has become a regional superpower with nuclear weapons and is less fragile than Israelis would like us to believe. The fragility is probably more internal, but one could argue that the divisions in the US make that country fragile as well.

Herzl proves that ideas, even seemingly naive ideas, can become extremely powerful, especially when history is offering its helping hand.

Herzl dreamt of an Austria south of Beirut. It turned out differently. The vision that becomes reality always turns out differently.