The following is a response to the profile of Sivan Fridman that we posted yesterday. We will be posting interviews all week with Jewish Israelis discussing their connection to the idea of Zionism in the hope of sparking a conversation over the what Zionism means today.
I have to admit that I was agitated after reading Mya Guarnieri’s profile of Zionist Sivan Fridman. I understand that what remains of the left in Israel desperately needs our support. And I believe that people like Ms. Fridman may comprise the new anti-Zionist left in Israel in the future. But I can’t help but recoil when I read about the ‘Zionist’ experience and ‘what it means to me as a Jew.’ To be fair to Ms. Fridman, I will never have to make the difficult decisions that she will. I will never have to forcefully disavow the lies of my forefathers, their supremacist ideology, and their legacy of ethnic cleansing and racial purity. I do not know whether I would have the courage to do so; I am grateful for having been born on the right side of history.
That said Ms. Fridman and people like her must start asking the pertinent questions, not about identity, but about morality. Is it right that my state exists solely because of ethnic cleansing? Is it right for me to continue live in a state where non-Jews are 3/5ths a person? Does the Holocaust excuse the ‘abandonment’ of my avocados? And what happened to those ‘abandoned’ people and what is my state doing to them today? What behavior am I willing to engage in to preserve my racial supremacy in my state?
These are the questions of Zionism. Far from defining Zionism ‘from a personal place’, please, back into the definition. The Zionist state murders and dispossesses for the preservation of racial purity – in pursuit of Jewish dominance in Palestine. What does Zionism mean? How is any reasonably good person not an anti-Zionist?
I hope Ms. Fridman and others will forgive my tone here. Again, I don’t underestimate the magnitude of the personal struggle that lies ahead of you. But I am impatient to have you join our struggle for equal rights in Palestine/Israel.
Ahmed Moor is a 25-year-old Palestinian-American from the Rafah refugee camp. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Beirut.
Okay, “Thanks Ahmed”! is apparently too short for the commenting system, and I got a “try again” I say, don’t press your luck, succinctness like that you won’t get from me everyday.
Anyway, “Thanks, Ahmed!”
I’m with you, Mooser, and Aref.
You are right MRW, and I will try to be more succinct.
Thanks Ahmad. You are absolutely correct. Those are the questions that need to be asked.
Ahmad nails the problem.
On moral grounds Zionism that is simultaneously Jewish haven AND democracy at approximately 67 borders is the optimal outcome.
Anti-Zionism meaning forced assimilation into a distinctly foreign culture is more suppressive than accepting moderate Zionism.
Unless you believe that forced assimilation is progressive.
“Forced assimilation?” Fuck, Witty, most of the people of Israel right now — and the vast majority of the Jews — are from outside Israel. And would you like to talk to a Sephardic or Middle Eastern Jew about “forced assimilation” in Ashkenazi dominated Israel? Better still, how about the Ethiopian Jews who had to be “converted” before the state would consider them Jewish at all.
If Zionism is about being a Jewish have, a democracy and existing within the 67 borders, then it has failed on every single account.
Witty is so right! How can American (and many other Jews, all over the world), live like this, in this completely forced, un-Jewish manner! Think about the horror of it! Jews, living as free men, citizens of their countries, who may practice their religion (or not) as they see fit. Disgusting! Everybody knows Jews should live in ghettoes, ruled by obscurantist Rabbis, superstition, and under the rubric of elite Jews who mediate between them and the Gentile community! Any other way of life for a Jew is anti-Semitism!
But gee, Witty, it occurs to me, why haven’t the Jews in America done the logical thing, bought some land, and established their own communities?
And Gee Witty, please tell us, what is the normative “Jewish” way to live?
“forced assimilation”
Pure senility. He should be banned for that reason alone.
So Witty, would you call the story of the Jews in America one of “forced assimilation”?
The Mizrahi, most of whom were brought to Israel on false promises were forced to assimilate into a european culture which had yiddish as it’s original language. Far from being kicked out, as false legends have it, the vast majority of newcomers were urged, cajoled, and conned into leaving a comfortable enough existence to become more dhimmis in Israel than they ever were in their countries of origin (read Sara Roy if you don’t beleive me; many others too). Not only that, but the practiced a rather different religion from the east european jews (who now, we understand, could have been mostly descendants of khazaris, explaining much). To call both of them “judaism” is a complete stretch, the artificial commonality accomplished largely through brain washing.
The entire sad affaire of turning the mizrahi into demographic fodder for the european founders is now replayed with the ethiopians. A country founded on profounddly and decidedly non=progresssive forced dislocation practices, while professing allegiance to the highest ideals, cannot but be doomed to being unmasked, in the end, for what it really is. An theocratic ethnocracy with a thin venner of ‘democracy”, now peeling off and fading, leaving the ugly core of parochialism exposed for all to see.
If the Zionists didn’t want to be forcibly assimilated into the Mideast, they should have remained home.
Since when is a bi-national state ‘forced-assimilation’?
In the US’ 200 odd year history, when have Jews ever been forced to assimilate?
I agree with Ahmed Moor. An interpretation of Zionism is like an interpretation of Nazism. The intentions may be noble but to the victim, the associations are too deep and damaging for your noble intentions to overcome the horror of their memories.
I appreciate your very thoughtful response to Sivan’s profile. You balance your own perspective, which I completely agree with, with a sensitive understanding of Sivan’s personal history and the difficulties she would face in renouncing a world view in which she has been immersed since childhood. You ask, “How is any reasonably good person not an anti-Zionist?” I completely sympathize with the question, but my answer is that Sivan is just one of many reasonably good people who are Zionists. I know many others, people who have a strong sense of fairness and decency but a moral blind spot when it comes to Israel. It has taken me many years to find my own voice and deconstruct the Zionist ideology which was spoon-fed to me. When I was Sivan’s age, around the time you were born, my thinking was not as advanced as hers. I wouldn’t say I was a Zionist then, but I certainly was not an anti-Zionist.
Look at other examples. Whites who were raised in South Africa blithely accepted their undeserved and monstrously unfair privilege in overwhelming numbers. How many deeply religious people, whether they be Orthodox Jews, devout Muslims, or Amish, abandon their upbringing? This appears to be universal human nature; most people develop life-long beliefs based on what they learn in childhood. If you want to achieve anything, you have to reach people like Sivan, decent thoughtful people who still identify as Zionists. You express concern about your “tone,” but I think your tone was perfect (as was Shmuel’s response to Sivan yesterday). You have every right to be impatient and uncompromising in your demand for equal rights, but your criticism of Sivan unmistakably signaled that you would welcome her and others like her to join your struggle, and do not condemn her forever. Anyone offended by your tone is probably not reachable anyway. Congratulations on a wonderful essay.
Great reply, David Samel, and I couldn’t put it better.
“To be fair to Ms. Fridman, I will never have to make the difficult decisions that she will. I will never have to forcefully disavow the lies of my forefathers, their supremacist ideology, and their legacy of ethnic cleansing and racial purity. ”
You find this to be respectful tone?
How respectfully can you address your own dispossession and ethnic cleansing? He shows more empathy for the legacy of Zionist apartheid than most Israelis show for holocaust survivors.
I think it is likely difficult to get free of one’s ideology, Lebanese, Israeli, neo-American, Palestinian.
I’m not sure where you find a democratic mass movement coming out of that sentiment. I can see where a solidarity movement might appeal to some, but I don’t see it possible as a mass movement without some fascist component.
The democratic choices are fully democratic single-state, fully accepting minorities, most likely incorporating western legal system regarding property rights and governance.
Or a fully democratic partitioned state in which minorities in Israel and in Palestine have full and equal civil, legal and governance rights.
I suggest that the partitioned state is the only democratic state possible now. The animosities are too imprinted, and nearly inevitably result in suppression of the 48+% minority whomever that is.
Better that minorities have legal and civil rights in fully democratic reformed Israel and Palestine, than that 49% have contested suppressed either/or rights in a single-state.
You choose from the options available and possible to construct. Anything else is fantasy, and ends up also suppressive.
So Witty? How come Jews have the right to spontaneously declare sovereignty and no one else does? Now that all that ethnic cleansing has made Palestinians a minority in Israel, don’t they have the same right to turn around and do exactly to Zionist Jews what Zionist Jews did to their people in 1948?
Or do you believe that being Jewish somehow merits someone greater rights to that sort of thing? That, you know, some ‘chosen’ people are “more democratic” than others?
It’s more respectful then your constant racism against Arab Muslims, such that any sort of political movement they produce is automatically condemned by you as violence and terrorism.
I only name violence and terrorism as violence and terrorism.
Throwing rocks for example is violence. Blowing up school buses is terrorism. Shelling civilian towns is terrorism.
Argument in parliament is not. Political campaigns based on persuasion are not. Publishing material urging self-help and self-determination are not.
Moral courage sufficient to accept the other is not violence and terrorism.
Oh, but bulldozing a house isn’t violence? Dropping a bomb isn’t violence? Dragging someone off to be tortured in a prison under “administrative detention” isn’t violence?
Zionism, isn’t violence?
You accused me innaccurately of considering “any” Palestinian dissent as violent.
Thats not truth. I describe violence as violence. There is a difference between non-violent civil disobedience and rock-throwing for example.
One demonstrates the profound courage of willingness to bear suffering for good.
And when have you bothered to make a distinction between a rowdy, desperate Palestinian who throws a rock and a calm, desperate Palestinian who holds a sign and shouts? Hell, you don’t even make a distinction between legitimate military targets and civilians in Gaza.
And like it was eloquently said on a much earlier topic:
If you need the other side to produce a Gandhi, you are on the wrong side.
Or an accurate summary?
“Accuracy” is such a vague term, Witty. What does it really mean? I think you’re taking it out of context. ;)
I recall beginning to be awakened to what is meant by nonviolent resistance, even in the face of violence, when I read an interview of Lech Walesa in a New Yorker magazine article. Walesa said “I would rather be the victim than the victimizer.”
“I am grateful for having been born on the right side of history” — the side of the victim, not the victimizer.
Israel has clung to its dramatis persona as victim for all its life, even as, for most of its life, it has victimized Palestinians.
Please excuse the botched tags. Only the first line should be in blockquote.
I had similar thoughts to Ahmed about the Sivan Fridman article, but I was a bit kinder to her. To make the journey she has already, in a state like Israel, is something to be applauded.
If I was in the same situation, I don’t think I’d be able to go any further – How many people would stand up and say that the state they call home, shouldn’t have ever existed? It’s alright for some Americans to say that their nation was built on genocide, seeing as they know there’s no chance of the US being dismantled. How many of us would publicly call for the dismantling of our own country? I doubt very many
Danaa’s comment is perfect; when it’s all said and done, the second most numerous of victims of Zionism will be Jews.
Ahmed Moor- I understand your reference of three-fifths of a person, but if you had stated instead that nonJewish Israelis are not treated equally before the law, you would have been clearer and more accurate.
So how many fifths of a person are non-Jewish Israelis regarded as, functionally? Two? Four? Three point one seven?
LOL
Well said (whoever said it). All the focus on looking for a non-violent leader on the Palestinian side is a distraction and ignores the truth of Barghouti and the Bil’in demonstrations among many other examples, as has been pointed out here before.
Even going back to Gandhi (and MLK and Mandela) is it true to credit their non-violent position with the success of their movements? Mandela peacefully submitted to imprisonment decades before De Klerk ended apartheid; In the U.S., was Martin Luther King’s non-violence the sole, or even primary, cause for bringing civil rights to the South?
Non-violence may have been a necessary feature for the legitimacy of these liberation movements in the eyes of the power elite. But we shouldn’t reinforce the notion that a liberation movement earns its credibility by rejecting violence. Liberation movements may, or may not, have the right to meet violence with violence. in fighting the British, both the Zionist movement and the founders of the U.S. embraced violent resistance.
Why should the Palestinians be held to a higher standard?