Palestine was not empty. The Jewish people are not a nation with a homeland in the Middle East. Palestine was not ‘redeemed’, it was colonized. Its people did not flee, they were ethnically cleansed. Jews are not all Zionists. These are some of the myths that scholar Ilan Pappe exposes in his new book.
On the 75th anniversary of the American Council for Judaism, Allan C. Brownfeld writes about how the group has challenged the Zionist philosophy which holds that Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews. He explains how the group advanced the philosophy of Judaism as a religion of universal values, not a nationality, and has maintained that Americans of Jewish faith are American by nationality and Jews by religion — just as other Americans are Protestants, Catholics or Muslims.
Donald Trump is giving ISIS a recruiting tool by nominating an extremist supporter of settlers as ambassador to Israel in David Friedman. Hatred of the U.S. will increase if the Arab world comes to believe that the U.S. is abandoning the Palestinians.
In the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris, which included an assault on a kosher grocery store, Israeli leaders have called on Jews to leave France because Israel is their true home. This, of course, is what Zionism believes, that Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews. But, it is an ideological construct which has no relationship to reality. Israel should be content to be the “homeland” of its own citizens, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, and Diaspora Jews should stay in their countries and help build them.