Lower-Case zionism
Robert J. Lewis introduces the novel (at least for me) idea of lower-case, or generic zionism: Reduced to what is universal in its objectives, zionism is the appeal of a people (identified by either race, religion, ethnicity, language or combination thereof) for a special territorial dispensation necessitated by imminent threat. It asserts that without recourse to sovereignty, the threatened group risks obliteration through either annihilation or assimilation or combination thereof. Throughout history, there have been many peoples and cultures that have disappeared from the face of the earth because they were not able to negotiate for themselves that special territorial dispensation upon which self-preservation is predicated. Thus, we speak of zionism as a threatened people’s unalienable right – in practice rarely secured -- to selfhood. Since no nation or identity is exempt from the vagaries of history, we are all implicated in the zionist prerogative in that we all recognize the leg