At this site, we have long maintained that the anti-Zionist movement inside leftwing Jewish life is burgeoning and will ultimately devour Jewish community organizations, that Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Max Blumenthal’s frank description of Israel as a racist rightwing polity is actually now commonplace in the Jewish grassroots, it just hasn’t broken out because it is contained by such official travesties as Peter Beinart and Alan Dershowitz debating the supposed question, Is Zionism in Crisis? in fancy halls in New York, at a time when any fool can see that Palestinians are living under apartheid. That question is so morally obtuse it is no wonder many Jews have walked away from the official institutions and begun a conversation of their own– This Israel you gave me doesn’t share my values or interests, it recently killed nearly 400 Palestinian children in three weeks with your active support–that will one day swamp the official organizations like a tsunami.
Or as I have written on earlier occasions: Roll over Ben-Gurion and give Jabotinsky the news.
There is good evidence for these claims in a Jewish Chronicle piece on a Jewish Council for Public Affairs survey of rabbis showing “that as many as half of the respondents feel that they are restricted in some ways in speaking about Israel in their congregational and other settings.”
I.e., those rabbis want to raise gentle criticisms of Israel, but they feel they can’t; and Ethan Felson of JCPA says the resulting blight on dialogue is occurring throughout the Jewish community. People can’t have a conversation about Israel because they’re too divided.
In an interview with the Chronicle prior to the program, Felson said Israel has always had something of a polarizing effect on the Jewish world. Now, the problem is becoming acute…
That’s right: the traditional Jewish opposition to Zionism has been revived, and we’re not going away.
[This represents] a polarizing problem in the Jewish community. Like much of the country, when it comes to politics, Jews are increasingly breaking off into camps, talking at one another, instead of with one another and eschewing constructive dialogue.
“There’s also a polarization that is sometimes overwhelming in the Jewish community because these issues feel existential,” he said. “People feel that they have a tremendous stake and a conflict, and sometimes they inappropriately choose to act out the conflict here at home.”
How so?
“We are seeing more resorts to silencing opposing viewpoints,” Felson said. “We find people taking their marbles and walking away from institutions because that institution isn’t aligned with them, so less of a respect for the debate or, in some cases, some of the majoritarian influences in a community.”
This absence of dialogue is a good thing. The problem is too severe and Palestinian human rights too important to seek to ameliorate matters by dialogue. The institutions don’t want to reflect our views, they want to tincture their own support of Israel with a little criticism. They are corrupted; that is the actual crisis of Zionism, what it has done to Jewish life in the Diaspora; the Rx is not dialogue but adversarial debate; and the anti-, non-, post-Zionists must come up with new institutions that will reflect our values.
‘The problem is too severe and Palestinian human rights too important to seek to ameliorate matters by dialogue”
Right……. and there is nothing left to debate.
“Something happens….then you make a choice and take a side”
Graham Green..”The Quiet American”
Phil, thanks for your thoughtful essay, dealing with the conflicts over Israel, conducted within American Jewry, who make up about 2.5% of the US population.
The next series of battles is likely to be conducted within the 96-97% of the US population that is not Jewish. In the past, criticism of Israel drew accusations of anti-Semitism. But recently, Mearsheimer/Walt, and Jimmy Carter wrote critical books, geared to the general public, and they successfully fought off the usual smears from the Israel Lobby. Their books became best sellers.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict will be echoed within non-Jews also, with evangelical Christians (Robertson, Hagee, Falwell) allied with the Israelis, and other Christians supporting the Palestinians.
So when are these heroic, enlightened “anti-Zionist Jews” going to join a movement against Zionism? The Boston organized Jews staged the “Amazing Israel Race”, centered on the statehouse on Beacon Hill. “The Amazing Israel Race is a fun-filled day with YOU racing around Boston with your teammates led by clues and obstacle tasks in search of sites related to Israeli culture and history.”
http://www.jewishboston.com/events/20303-boston-s-amazing-israel-race-2013
Jewish Voice for Peace organized a demo and put out email on non-Jewish lists. “Join us to challenge a local event that celebrates Israel’s settlement industry, erases occupation, and ignores restrictions on Palestinian movement.”
I was pleasantly surprised, and decided, after some thought, to show up and help them out. I brought my non-sectarian banner, “Zionism Threatens Us All”. It got
some comment from the handful of demonstrators when I unfurled it. Then people moved away, and I didn’t realize exactly why. One guy attending the “race” said he opposed what Israel was doing, but insisted that the banner was dangerous. “That’s what they said about the Jews. You really mean Jews.” I tried to tell him that 9/11
happened because of our relationship with Israel but he wasn’t receptive.
Then the JVPers politely informed me that my banner was off-message. I
explained that they had to appeal to the public, that they would always lose an intra-Jewish debate, that this was an urgent issue for all of us. They invited me to stay, but not with the banner visible. Essentially, they chose to endorse the views of the man who had denounced the banner, rather than stand with the 98% of the US who pay the bills and suffer the consequences, not to mention the Palestinians and their regional neighbors. I was happy to leave in a way, had things I wanted to do.
The term “anti-Zionist Jew” is an oxymoron, in any secular sense. Shlomo Sand’s third installment in his trilogy will be “The Invention of the Secular Jew”. In the modern world, people can be Judaic, practice their religion. They can be “Jewish” in a “cultural” sense, whatever that means to the most acculturated and accomplished elements of US society. “Jewish identity” in a political sense, or anything approaching it, is either a) not Jewish, but merely liberal; or b) privilege and discrimination, as the demonstration clearly shows.
the traditional Jewish opposition to Zionism has been revived, and we’re not going away.
Another appropriate opportunity to cite the fascinating 1919 petition to Wilson, printed in the NYTimes, from dozens of prominent Jews opposing Zionism (commenter MRW has repeatedly linked to this).
http://home2.btconnect.com/tipiglen/statement.html
The concerns raised by these Jewish Americans in 1919 were both wise and prescient, though if uttered today, would be condemned today as extremist and antisemitic.
“When’s it gonna be a good time to be me?”