Emigrants' patriotism

The Russian pride in empire comes down to this: “we” have beaten the crap out of “them”. This, of course, is the chief reason for Putin’s popularity in Russia: under his rule Russia is kicking again, in this case Chechnia. Never mind that the war isn’t quite a success; the main thing is – Russians are kicking butt again and this makes Russians feel good.

Russian emigrants to Israel import this attitude and adapt it to the local circumstances. They trade “Russia” for “Israel” and “Chechnia” for “Palestinians” and are Israel’s hardest of the hard lines.

(The other hardest hard line are the settlers, who are religious freaks and think God commands them to displace Palestinians; yet their hard line, as odious as it is, may seem somehow positive by comparison with the Russian Jews’: they at least stand for something. By comparison, Russian Israelis’ hard line appears largely negative: the point is not to build anything in place of Palestinian land; the point is just to kick A).

It is a curious thing, by the way – don’t you think? – how a fierce Russian nationalist becomes a fierce Israeli nationalist. Seen from outside, such an exchange may seem to be an act of treason – the new Israeli nationalist abandons his Russian nationalism, he abandons his Mother Russia. One would expect that such an act – and abandonment of one’s national identity – might lead to some kind of reflection on the illusory and arbitrary nature of all nationality. But not so. In fact, most commonly, the immigrant becomes an even fiercer nationalist of his new nation; as if in expiation for the act of treason he feels he has committed, he determines to be even more blindly loyal to his new state. He determines that he will never betray again.

This last is not a Russian problem, but a universal one. My parents – neither Russians nor Jews – are first generation Americans, and noisily, emphatically, tiresomely “patriotic”.