The national anthem of Israel – known as the Hatikvah or Hatikva and composed by Naphtali Herz Imber in 1878 in Poland – has been accused of racism in recent years. The accusations centre around the focus on jewishness in the song itself, which effectively pushes the idea that Israel is a state only for jews as well as being a jewish state.
To examine this we need to read the whole text of the Hatikvah verse by verse to understand whether this is or is not the case. (1)
However before we do this it is important to emphasize that contrary to common perception Judaism bases jewishness on ancestry not of religious confession. This is why jews write about ‘Buddhist jews’, ‘jewish atheists’, ‘Jewish Christians’ and so on, which if this was not the case would be anachronistic and nonsensical.
This has been carried over into Zionism, which has viewed jews as an ethnic-cum-racial grouping since its very beginning and indeed in the writings of Moses Hess and Theodor Herzl Zionism stands alone on this very fact.
On the other hand, Judaism lumps all non-jews as being one ‘other’ rather than many individual ‘others’ (i.e. gentiles/goyim), which has also been carried over into Zionism as is evident from reading historic and current Zionist intellectual and popular work.
This necessarily informs us that racism within a Judaic/Zionist intellectual paradigm is more about the strength of the distinction between Israel and non-Israel or jew and goy not about what we tend to think of as classic racism per se. Therefore, if the Hatikvah makes a strong distinction between jew and goy then it would be racist and if does not then it wouldn’t be.
So bearing that in mind let’s examine the text of the Hatikvah verse by verse.
To wit:
‘As long as in the heart, within,
A Jewish soul still yearns,
And onward, towards the ends of the east,
An eye still looks toward Zion;’
Notice here the specific references to a ‘jewish soul’ and that the eye of that ‘jewish soul’ ‘still looks towards Zion’, which explicitly state that Zion – another name for Palestine in Judaism – is coveted by those with ‘jewish souls’. This necessarily suggests that jews want Palestine for themselves and that their right to live in/occupy that land is based on their jewishness and no other rationale.
The Hatikvah continues by saying:
‘Our hope is not yet lost,
The ancient hope,
To return to the land of our fathers,
The city where David encamped.’
Notice once again the explicit ancestral references here in that the ‘jewish soul’s’ hope to ‘return to Zion/the land of our fathers’ is ‘ancient’ and even reference Jerusalem (= ‘the city where David encamped’) as if it were their own by right. Thus we see another reference to the right of ‘jewish souls’ to live in/occupy Palestine is based on their jewishness and no other rationale.
The Hatikvah continues thus:
‘As long as tears from our eyes
Flow like benevolent rain,
And throngs of our countrymen
pay homage at the graves of (our) fathers;’
Here the Hatikvah explicitly endorses jewish ethnic-cum-racial identity by styling ‘jewish souls’ as ‘our countrymen’ and stating that the jews therefore have a right to live in/occupy Palestine, because the ‘graves of [their] fathers’ are there.
This rather misses out the fact that according to the Written Torah itself. The jews more likely came from either Egypt or the Sinai rather than Palestine, but regardless of this. We can see that there is a strong sense in the Hatikvah that jewry is an ethnic-cum-racial entity that has ownership of territory based upon its ancestral residence in them and therefore there is also a certain level of jewish supremacism attached to that sentiment.
The text of the Hatikvah continues by referencing the Temple of Solomon as follows:
‘As long as our precious Wall
Appears before our eyes,
And over the destruction of our Temple
An eye still wells up with tears;’
This is again an ancestral reference to the destruction of the second Temple of Solomon by the Romans – after the jews rose up and started murdering all the local non-jews and any perceived ‘collaborators’ with Roman authority for reasons of religious fanaticism stirring a smouldering hatred for the goyim – which is as I have just pointed out is an implicit equation of anti-gentile sentiment among jews with a ‘longing for a return to Zion’ (i.e. Zionism).
We next read that:
‘As long as the waters of the Jordan
In fullness swell its banks,
And (down) to the Sea of Galilee
With tumultuous noise fall;’
And next that:
‘As long as on the barren highways
The humbled city gates mark,
And among the ruins of Jerusalem
A daughter of Zion still cries;’
This is another reference to jewish ‘ancestral ownership’ of Jerusalem and Palestine in general with references to the sea of Galilee and the river of Jordan, which are the traditional markers of the geographic borders of the land of Zion in Judaism.
We also see an emotional hook introduced at the end of the last verse with a reference to ‘a daughter of Zion crying’ as if waiting for liberation from her oppressors. The oppressors are obviously in this case non-jews since Roman then Byzantine then Muslim leaders have ruled over Jerusalem and the land of Zion from which the jews have been actively expelled and to which they not only desire to return but to rule.
The Hatikvah continues in this emotional vein by sorrowing that:
‘As long as pure tears
Flow from the eye of a daughter of my nation,
And to mourn for Zion at the watch of night
She still rises in the middle of the nights;’
In this verse we can see the emotional blackmail being used by Naphtali Herz Imber in that he sought to reference the evening (i.e. night) prayers of Judaism (= Ma’ariv) as well as the custom of personal night prayers (in the form of reciting the Bedtime Shema aka the Kriat Shema al Hamitah) to remind jews that they are an ethnic-cum-racial group (i.e. ‘a daughter of my nation’ which is then said to be ‘Zion’) who need to return to and wrest control of Jerusalem and the land of Zion from its evil non-jewish rulers.
The reason I use the word ‘evil’ in regards to the non-jewish rulers of Palestine is that the Bedtime Shema is traditionally a prayer meant to guard against evil spirits and demons that were – and are - traditionally believed by jews to haunt the night as well as certain locations like toilets.
Thus when Naphtali Herz Imber references the Bedtime Shema in the context of a return to Zion. It follows that it is actually a reference to non-jews as being like the evil spirts and demons that haunt the night hunting for jews. Like the death squads of the Emperor Hadrian successfully pursued and executed Rabbi Akiva for leading a bloody religious revolt with Simon bar Kokhba that sought to slaughter every non-jew in Palestine and establish a ‘free jewish state’ in that geographic locale.
This reading is confirmed when we read next that:
‘As long as drops of blood in our veins
Flow back and forth,
And upon the graves of our fathers
Dewdrops still fall;’
So what the Hatikvah is really saying is that as long there is one drop of blood in the vein of any jew. Then it is that jew’s mission to reclaim the ‘graves of our fathers’ (i.e., the ‘land of Zion’ = Palestine) from its non-jewish rulers.
The text continues with a further rallying cry for jews to wrest control of Palestine from its non-jewish rulers and inhabitants as follows:
‘As long as the feeling of love of nation
Throbs in the heart of the Jew,
We can still hope even today
That God may still have mercy on us;’
And next that:
‘Hear, O my brothers in the lands of exile,
The voice of one of our visionaries,
(Who declares) That only with the very last Jew —
Only there is the end of our hope!’
In other words, only with the death of the very last jew – defined as an ethnic-cum-racial group hence the use of ‘nation’ by Naphtali Herz Imber - will the ‘land of Zion’ be free from jewish attempts to wrest control of it from its non-jewish rulers and inhabitants.
The parallel to Rabbi Akiva and Simon bar Kokhba’s rebellion that I have drawn is thus extremely apt, because like Naphtali Herz Imber and the Hatikvah itself. They desired to create a ‘free jewish state’ in Palestine – indeed both Rabbi Akiva and Simon bar Kokhba are often styled as ‘freedom fighters’ by both jews and Zionists – and chose to achieve it – as Israel later tried and has continued to try to do – by ethnically cleansing non-jews from it.
The Hatikvah ends with an attempt to hide Naphtali Herz Imber’s meaning by proclaiming:
‘Go, my people, return in peace to your land
The balm in Gilead, your healer in Jerusalem,
Your healer is God, the wisdom of His heart,
Go my people in peace, healing is imminent...’
How can jews ‘return to peace’ to ‘their land’ when there are non-jews in it?
The fact is that Naphtali Herz Imber was aware like any other rational observer that you cannot just move into a country and then take it over without the native inhabitants resisting this, which inevitably results in violence and eventually open civil war. Such is the inevitable result of ethnic cleansing by stealth: systematic violence and mass murder.
Therefore from the foregoing discussion we can see that the Hatikvah – Israel’s national anthem – is openly and extremely racist within the paradigm of Judaism – which even its defenders have been forced to tacitly acknowledge – (2) and implicitly calls for the ethnic cleansing of non-jews from Palestine, while defining jewishness in ethnic-cum-racial not religious terms.
So yes the Hatikvah is racist.
References
(1) For the sake of relative impartiality I have taken the full text (rather than just the first verse) from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatikvah#Official_text
(2) For example: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-hatikva-a-racist-song/