Nationalism figures prominently in Berlin's writings. Since at least the 19th century, intellectuals have eagerly predicted a withering of nationalist sentiment, an ideal that remains strong on the European left. Berlin, however, felt that to ignore the apparent inevitability of nationalism (even if we might wish it otherwise) is itself a sort of utopian delusion. The human desire for a sense of home and fraternity, he believed, is an enduring and not altogether negative feature of political life. Nationalism is "a basic human need," he argued, that can, in certain circumstances, represent "the straightening of bent backs." And Jewish backs, perhaps more than any other, were in need of straightening.
But Berlin's Zionism was a modest Zionism. He did not regard his deep-felt solidarity with his own Jewish people as superior or different from similar bonds that united other nations. Membership in one community, he insisted, does not preclude "holding a large area of ideals in common with everyone else." Berlin did not limit himself to dual loyalties; he had a multitude of them. Furthermore, he didn't look upon Israel as a metaphysical project, a light unto the nations. Israel is a country, not a cause, he believed. And his observations of the Jewish state were not always charitable. "The trouble about the Israelis is not only their partly unconscious conviction born of experience that virtue always loses and only toughness pays, but a great provincialism and blindness to outside opinion," he remarked to Felix Frankfurter in 1951. And though Berlin despaired about the quality of Israeli leadership - he privately described David Ben-Gurion as an efficient demagogue - he did not confuse the individual failings of politicians with a failure of Zionism, a frequently elided distinction in our time.
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9:02 PM
Moderate Islamist here
