60 ntt; viKsnoN ok i' ai.kntivk noted, this unanimity cxceeds even the Zionism o f most Israelis.1 O n the other hand, it would be totally unjust to neglect the power o f Zionism as an idea for Jews, or to minimize the complex internal debutes characterizing Zionism , its true meaning, its messianic destiny, etc. Even to speak ahout this subject, much less than attempting to "d efin e" Zionism , is for an A rab quite a difficult matter, but it must honestly be looked at. Let me use myself as an example. Most o f my education, and certainly all o f my basic intellectual formation, are Western; in what 1 have read, in what I write about, even in what 1 do politically, I am profoundly influenced by main­ stream Western altitudes toward the history o f the Jews, anti-Semitism, the destruction o f European Jewry. Unlike most other A rab intellectuals, the majority o f whom ohviouslv have not had my kind o f background, I have been directly exposed to those aspects o f Jewish history and cxpcrience that have mattered singularly for Jews and for Western non-Jews reading and thinking about Jewish history. I know as welt as any educated Western non-Jew can know, what anti-Semitism has meant for the Jews, especially in this century. Consequent­ ly I can understand the intertwined terror and the exultation out o f which Zionism has been nourished, and I think I can at least grasp the meaning o f Israel for Jews, and even for the enlightened Western liberal. And yet, bccause I am an A rab Palestinian. I can also see and feel other things— and it is these things that complicate matters considerably, that cause me also to focus on Zionism ’s other aspects. The result is, I think, worth describing, not because what I think is so crucial, but bccause it is useful to see the same phenomenon in two com plementary ways, not normally associated with each other. One can begin with a literary example: G eorge Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda (1876). The unusual thing about the book is that its main subject is Zionism , although the novel’s principal themes are recognizable to anyone who has read Eliot's earlier fiction. Seen in the context o f Eliot's general interest in idealism and spiritual yearning. Zionism for her was one in a series o f worldly projects for the nineteenth-century