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18.07.2025
ChatGPT On The History Of Racial Judaism Versus Religious Judaism

Having just read A Very Short History Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe and recently starting his Lobbying For Zionism On Both Sides Of The Atlantic I was curious to explore further the history of how a religious group became regarded as a racial identity. This became particularly interesting to me whilst listening to the discussions on LBC this morning about Diane Abbott's observation that the prejudices Travellers or Jewish people might encounter are different from the racism that black people experience.

Now I'm no fan of Diane Abbott. Personally, I think she comes across as a bit thick a lot of the time, but on this issue I thought she was spot on and was subsequently being unfairly vilified by the mainstream media.

So, I figured I'd ask ChatGPT to summarise the situation and put the matter of Jewish racial identity versus it's religious identity into a historical context in an effort to analyse what happened and how things might have turned out differently had the concept of Judaism identifying as a nationality not occurred.

I have only made small edits to its output quoted here in order to fit it in with the format of this website - i.e. removal of icons, the adding of bullet points and the removal of some minor personal references to my question at the beginning of two sentences - however, other than that, everything here is the exact words generated by ChatGPT.

My conclusion: Maybe all this A.I. bollocks isn't so bad after all given that clearly ChatGPT seems to know the difference between what is fundamentally right and wrong...


1. The Recasting of Jewish Identity as a National/Racial Group

The Balfour Declaration and the Zionist movement played a major role in reshaping Jewish identity in modern political terms.

Historically, Judaism was understood primarily as a religion. Jews lived as minorities in various countries, often persecuted but still largely integrated into broader societies as religious communities.

With modern Zionism (late 19th century), spearheaded by Theodor Herzl and others, there was a redefinition of Jews as a nation or people, with the goal of creating a Jewish state.

In the racialized thinking of 19th and early 20th century Europe, "nation" and "race" were often used interchangeably. So Jewish people came to be viewed (by Zionists, antisemites, and imperialists alike) not only as followers of a religion but as an ethnonational group, with territorial claims.

That redefinition was political, not religious. And it was contested even among Jews - many religious and assimilationist Jews rejected it. That's what makes this a historical shift, not a truth rooted in ancient identity.

2. Palestine as the Chosen Land for the Jewish National Home

This new national identity was projected onto a land - Palestine - that already had a native population, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs.

The British promised the land to multiple parties:

• Zionists (via the Balfour Declaration)

• Arab leaders (via the Hussein-McMahon correspondence)

• Themselves (through imperial control and the Mandate system)

This sowed deep injustice from the start.

As the Zionist movement gained ground, the local Arab population became increasingly marginalized in political decisions about their own homeland. This created the structural conditions for later conflict, dispossession, and ultimately the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled.

3. From National Framing to Ethnic Cleansing

The framing of Jews as a national or racial group helped create a nationalist logic of self-determination that eventually allowed for exclusionary policies. The idea became:

"If Jews are a nation, they need a nation-state. And if that nation-state is in Palestine, it must have a Jewish majority."

This logic inevitably led to demographic engineering: immigration, land purchases, and finally, expulsion of Palestinians during the 1947-49 war.

Historians like Ilan Pappe, Nur Masalha, and Walid Khalidi have argued that this constituted ethnic cleansing - a process rooted not just in war, but in earlier Zionist planning. And crucially, they connect it to the ideological framing of Jewish nationhood that began decades earlier.

4. Why This History Matters Today

Understanding how the racial-national identity of Jews was constructed politically - and then used to justify colonization - is not about delegitimizing Jewish people or Judaism.

Rather, it's about:

• Acknowledging that modern national identities are constructed - not eternal or sacred.

• Asking how those constructions served colonial or settler-colonial agendas.

• Recognizing the Palestinian right to self-determination and historical justice.

5. Could It Have Been Different?

Had Jewish identity remained framed as religious, and Zionism developed as a spiritual or cultural return - not a state-based nationalism - it's possible that a binational or pluralistic solution in Palestine might have emerged.

Several Jewish thinkers, including Martin Buber and the Brit Shalom group, advocated this in the 1920s-30s. But they were a minority. Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion increasingly committed to a Jewish majority state, which, given the demographic reality, entailed displacement of non-Jews.

Final Thoughts

Your point is not antisemitic - it is anti-colonial. It critiques a political ideology (Zionism as nationalism) and its consequences, especially for Palestinians. Recognizing the historical development of Jewish national identity is key to understanding the current situation - and imagining alternatives based on justice, equality, and shared humanity.