Actually they do. Look at the distance that Henry Siegman, born in 1930, has traveled. Today he talks about apartheid and the disappearance of democracy in Israel and has suggested that the world recognize a Palestinian state. the need to impose a And in 1988, during the first intifada– Siegman was head of a Jewish organization and supported Israel’s deportation of a leading figure in nonviolent Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation:
AJCONGRESS SUPPORTS ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO DEPORT AWAD
NEW YORK, June 15 /PRNewswire/ — A statement released today by Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, maintains that Israel was completely within its rights, both under its own laws and international law, to expel Mubarak Awad. While noting that Israel may have committed an error in political judgment by expelling Awad, Siegman said "however one comes down on this question, Israel has done nothing illegal."
In the statement, Siegman expressed regrets that the U.S. administration…
Does Siegman explicitly state that Zionism has caused so much destruction in the holy land, or does he simply disagree with Israel’s conduct because it’s “not good for Israel”?
In other words, is he more concerned with saving Israel from itself or with upholding the universal principles of justice?
Hey, here’s an idea–why don’t you simply Google his writings and find out for yourself, rather than posting knee-jerk insinuations?
Methinks you’re confused.
That’s a very relevant question for both Siegman and others in his camp. We need people to say proudly that they are critical of Israel not for the sake of Israel, but for the sake of the weak who are suffering as a result of it.
@Matt: I think you’re wrong to brusquely berate Avi for posing this question. Whether Siegman has in fact said it this way or that in his past writings is something worth looking at yes, but Avi is responding within the scope of the post and Siegman is not someone who’s known very well. Would you like to tell us where he stands on the subject?
No, I won’t tell you where he stands. You can read what the man has written and divine for yourself. What I will say is that one shouldn’t traffic in “either/or” simplifications that subject an individual’s complex morality to some kind of absurd litmus test–particularly when that individual regularly generates compelling analyses of Israel’s West Bank apartheid system.
It’s not a litmus test.
Besides, do you see me waterboarding Siegman?
We’re having a discussion here, I voiced my curiosity. If it offends your sensibilities, don’t read my posts. Perhaps my cynicism is what truly bothers you. Either way, I will continue to pose such questions, despite your knee-jerk reactions.
For the record, I have been reading Siegman for quite a while now. His articles are always very insightful and contain a wealth of information otherwise not available through other outlets.
I’m always grateful for miracles, no matter how small and no matter how infrequently they occur.
Think of it as the first drop of water melted off of a retreating glacier.
Whether it’s a sincere and radical change of heart, or merely an instrumental, tactical gambit, he’ll no doubt catch holy hell for uttering those words.
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I see Siegman as someone whose major motivation is religious rather than political. His position since about 2000 seems to be that the famous 2-state solution would be right but that Israel does not, never has had or as far as he can see never will have, the slightest intention of agreeing to this. An unstable position but not entirely a dishonourable one – sorry if I sound patronising, you know what I mean. He complains of having lost touch with most of his family – and I take this as very genuine, not theatrical – for his change of views. He does not seem to have taken many people, family or not, with him.
He dwells much on the Dayan formula of ‘living without a solution’.
He got to me especially by the question ‘Is this to be the outcome of Judaism?’ or words to that effect in a London Review of Books article. ‘This’ being the current behaviour of Israel.
I found myself wanting to see Siegman’s question discussed substantially rather than asked rhetorically. It was at that moment that I began to think that the shield that I, like thousands of anti-Zionists, had raised against accusations of anti-Semitism – ‘I have always admired many Jewish people and you, if you accuse me, should remember that there is a long tradition of anti-Zionism within Jewish thought’ – was inadequate. Siegman was opening, perhaps unintentionally, the question of whether there is something in the logic or spirit of Judaism or of authentic Jewish culture that Zionism, even to the great regret of many Jewish people, captures. If there is, then I seem to be opposed to something inherent in Jewish culture and where does that leave me? Am I naked and unshielded before accusations of anti-Semitism? This shouldn’t happen to a liberal-minded British person.
I’ve bored you with this hang-up of mine before – couldn’t resist mentioning it again in the Siegman context. I’ve been making various efforts to patch up my shield with the help of other contributors to Mondo Weiss.
If anyone can advise me on financial contributions to MW from outside the USA I’d be grateful. I don’t seem to able to make paypal work. And I don’t think my credit card’s maxed out.
RE: “…there is a long tradition of anti-Zionism within Jewish thought…” – MHughes976
SEE: War Guilt in the Middle East, By Murray Rothbard — Left and Right, Spring-Autumn 1967 (antiwar.com, 03/03/10)
(EXCERPT) …The chronic Middle East crisis goes back – as do many crises – to World War I. The British, in return for mobilizing the Arab peoples against their oppressors of imperial Turkey, promised the Arabs their independence when the war was over. But, at the same time, the British government, with characteristic double-dealing, was promising Arab Palestine as a “National Home” for organized Zionism. These promises were not on the same moral plane: for in the former case, the Arabs were being promised their own land freed from Turkish domination; and in the latter, world Zionism was being promised a land most emphatically not its own. When World War I was over, the British unhesitatingly chose to keep the wrong promise, the one to world Zionism. Its choice was not difficult; if it had kept its promise to the Arabs, Great Britain would have had to pull gracefully out of the Middle East and turn that land over to its inhabitants; but, to fulfill its promise to Zionism, Britain had to remain as a conquering, imperial power ruling over Arab Palestine. That it chose the imperial course is hardly surprising…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to original.antiwar.com
P.S. “You can donate using the paypal donate button on the site or by sending us a check (write mondoweiss@gmail.com for details).” – MARCH, 2009
Thanks for comment, Dickerson! My country must indeed accept its share of warguilt.
And there may have been a time when Zionism was more of an Anglo-American Christian than a Jewish craze, with support from zealots like Scofield and at the opposite end of the spectrum from those like George Eliot whose Christianity had become so progressive it was scarcely Christianity at all.
The Balfour Declaration made a pretence of even-handedness – I believe that there are documents proving that Balfour was consciously disingenuous at this point. But one can’t ignore the fact that this was because Balfour and his class had been worked upon for years by Zionists like Weizmann with a mixture of religious propaganda and promises of imperial cooperation. It surprises me that Zionism was already so strong amid Jewish people worldwide, but it was.
There was also a deep anti-semitism among the aristocratic classes who hoped that all the Jews in Britain would move to Palestine. “For God’s sake, George, give them their sandbox.”
Mhughes: But one can’t ignore the fact that this was because Balfour and his class had been worked upon for years by Zionists like Weizmann with a mixture of religious propaganda and promises of imperial cooperation. It surprises me that Zionism was already so strong amid Jewish people worldwide, but it was.
Zionism was not “strong amid Jewish people worldwide”. It was actually a very weak movement with very little Jewish support. The most important Jewish currents of the time – assimilation, Reform, Orthodoxy, Neo-Orthodoxy, the socialist Bund, etc. – were all staunchly opposed to Zionism. That’s in Europe/America. In Asia/Africa, it hardly made a dent at all. Weizmann however, was a gifted snake oil salesman, and knew exactly how to manipulate the prejudices of his powerful “marks”, pretending to be something that he was not (“representative of world Jewry”). Tom Segev describes the circumstances and process quite well in One Palestine, Complete.
And this was especially true here in the US at the time. The most powerful and prominent Jews in the country (Judges, industrialists, etc) signed a petition to President Wilson to kill the idea, led by the publisher of the New York Times. You can find it in the NYT archives, March 1919. Not enough coffee in me to remember the exact date.
MHughes: Siegman was opening, perhaps unintentionally, the question of whether there is something in the logic or spirit of Judaism or of authentic Jewish culture that Zionism, even to the great regret of many Jewish people, captures. If there is, then I seem to be opposed to something inherent in Jewish culture and where does that leave me?
Do you ask yourself similar questions about contemporary phenomena associated with other religions/cultures/civilisations? I’m not trying to dismiss the question, just trying to frame it a little better.
Sorry to have been slow replying to this very pertinent question.
I mentioned how Siegman prompted me to ask myself questions I found rather dismal. Another prompt came from Pope Ben reviving the question asked by Emperor Manny about the historical and contemporary value of Islam. I didn’t think that it was wrong to ask that question of other people so long as we also asked it of ourselves – what of British imperialism? Yet another and more recent prompt from Y.Laor on the Myths of Lib Zionism – Jews were a major force in the emergence of European modernity, for which a debt of gratitude is owed. This of course chimes in with admiration for many Jewish individuals, past and present.
Some would say that Zionism is Jewish culture in inauthentic and perverted form. But how much comfort can we draw from that? How much less do I antagonise Paraguayans by saying ‘Paraguayan culture used to be splendid but now look at it!’ rather than by saying ‘Paraguayan culture has always been awful’? Somewhat less, perhaps, but is that enough?
Yes, I concede that I used excessively strong words. I haven’t studied all the machinations leading up to the Declaration but I suppose that Balfour, Milner and Lloyd George must have had an eye on their chances of getting the United States, the one hitherto uncommitted great power, into the war. So don’t you think there was, despite majority dissent, some sort of critical mass behind US Zionism even then? I’d assumed – I know much less about all this than you 2 do – that the other (highly understandable) source of enthusiasm for Zionism was among pogromised Russian Jews.
In Eastern Europe, anti-Zionist Orthodoxy ruled the religious roost, and universalist socialism (with or without Jewish culture) was the preferred route to emancipation of the pogrom-weary and poverty-stricken Jewish masses. In Central and Western Europe, Jewish religion came in two flavours – anti-Zionist Reform/Neolog and anti-Zionist Neo-Orthodoxy. Among Jews with no special attachment to the Jewish religion, baptism and/or assimilation (necessarily anti-Zionist) were all the rage. The Zionist movement did have some followers throughout Europe at that time, but was a marginal ideology (especially in its political form) espoused by a small minority of Jews. MRW probably knows more than I do about the situation in the US.
Lloyd George and Balfour already believed that World Jewry was extremely powerful (especially in the US). All Weizmann had to do was pretend that he represented Jewish power and could guarantee its support for the interests and aspirations of the Empire.
Shmuel, when you say “anti-Zionist Orthodoxy” does this include the Lithuanian followers of the Gaon of Vilna, who moved to Palestine in the early 19th century?
They are anti-Zionist now, with regard to the Israeli state, but it seems odd to call them anti-Zionist then.
Potsherd,
Throughout Jewish history, there have been Jewish individuals and groups (Ashkenazim and Sefaradim/Edot Hamizrah) that have immigrated to Palestine – primarily the “holy cities” of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed – for religious-spiritual reasons. A branch of my family (from Galicia) had a house in Safed that was passed from mother to daughter – allowing the pious women of the family to spend their final years in the Holy land. The house was lost, along with its final occupant, in the earthquake of 1837.
To the extent that there was any theoretical interest in mass immigration (eg. in the writings of Judah Halevi) it was meant to precipitate divine redemption, not as an expression of Jewish “nationalism” (an anachronism in any case, throughout most of Jewish history). Others (eg. Ibn Ezra) were rather ill-disposed to the entire idea, preferring to leave the first move to God.
Some Zionists have tried to “convert” these religious pilgrims and immigrants (particularly the students of the Gaon of Vilna) to Zionism posthumously, thereby affording Zionism earlier, more traditional roots. Nothing could be further from the truth. These Palestinian Jews, often called the “Old Yishuv” opposed and fought Zionist immigration and the Zionist agenda tooth and nail. At the forefront of this battle were the Ashkenazi communities of the “Perushim” – the very communities founded by the students of the Gaon of Vilna in the early 19th century.
Sorry, I meant the above as a reply to Shmuel and MRW on the comparative weakness of Zionism among Jews in the WW1 era.
MHughes976, Shmuel is right.
You might be interested in these:
One long piece, but really great bathroom reading, well worth printing out to read.
“Explaining the Long — and Largely Untold — History of Jewish Opposition to Zionism”
link to acjna.org
Historian Gabriel Kolko, (who reads Hebrew BTW) and
“Israel: Mythologizing a 20th Century Accident”
link to original.antiwar.com