I’m excited by the publication of Sylvain Cypel’s book “The State of Israel Vs. the Jews” (Other Press) because it bluntly states a heresy: Israel is endangering American Jews. By insisting on “blindfold”-ed western Jewish support for an “ethnonationalist” segregationist state that borrows the worst of white supremacist ideas, Israel is destroying Jewish traditions and putting American Jews at risk, Cypel says.
Not to mention Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian past, present and future (the part of the story Cypel tends to gloss).
“I am exhausted by Israel,” Cypel says. Israel has become a “terrible burden” dragging Jews into an “ethnocentric past.”
That’s why we’re co-sponsoring a talk between Cypel and Robert Herbst next Tuesday at noon. ICAHD — the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions — is another cosponsor. A civil rights lawyer, Herbst is co-chair of the board of ICAHD-USA and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Here’s the link to register for the Zoom.
Cypel urges western Jews to wake up to the “thug nation.”
“Will diaspora Jews gradually emancipate themselves from a thug nation that claims that it alone can speak in the name of Judaism?”
Cypel is hopeful about the growth of anti-Zionism.
More and more American Jews are awakening to the idea that [Israel’s] political rightward drift is a calamity, and that the consequences for them could be disastrous. And that explains the anger of those among them who turn their back on Israel.”
Obviously these are parochial concerns, but I regard them as larger social questions because people are tribal, because Zionism is a Jewish ideology, and the Israel lobby is such a powerful force in U.S. foreign policy making, and in the U.S. discourse too. Just google Cypel’s book, and you will see that for all the power of its ideas it is getting very little attention in the American press. The New York Review of Books has published a great essay about the book by David Shulman focused on Cypel’s own transformation from Zionist to anti-Zionist, a road that many Jews are now walking. And no surprise, the Washington Post has slammed the book as “a one-sided condemnation of Israel’s ‘contempt for international law.'” While we have run laudatory reviews by Robert Herbst and Joshua Gold…
But where are NPR and the New York Times for such an important event? Cypel is of the elite; he worked for many years for Le Monde.
Herbst is sure to ask Cypel about his own journey out of the Zionist fold, and his use of withering epithets in the book: Israel is a “belligerent, intolerant faith-driven ethno state,” Israel “seeks salvation in the application of force and if that doesn’t do the job, it applies more force,” Israel is a “racist, bullying little superpower.” (I like these phrases because I think they meet the highest standard for speech, accuracy).
Cypel is sure to ask Herbst about the lawsuit he filed last month on behalf of Jesse Sander, the teacher who was fired by Westchester Reform Temple in 2021 for her anti-Zionist post.
The call will go 90 minutes so there will be lots of time for listeners to ask Cypel questions. I am sure that one theme will be the reflexive effort by Israel lobbyists to defend Israel by hurling the antisemitism charge at critics, and the ways that this strategy actually fosters antisemitism. The newest definition of antisemitism (IHRA) equates “intolerable racism to a criticism, however radical, of Israel and its policy,” and thereby equates “all Jews to the latter’s misdeeds,” a French human rights leader tells Cypel.
Cypel says that this identification is a dangerous one: Israelis are “trying to drag the world’s Jewish communities on to the path of radical Islamophobia while promoting the fraudulent use of the accusation of anti-Semitism and the assimilation of anti-Zionism as the embodiment of modern anti-Semitism.” They are turning these communities into “weapons to defend the worse policies.”
The historian Daniel Boyarin is quoted saying that if Christianity died for many Christians at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor, “my Judaism may be dying at Nablus, Dheisheh, Betein [Beit El] or El Kahlil.”
While the sociologist Eva Illouz says what I believe, that Israel is going to lose the battle among American Jews over anti-Zionism. “For Jews the choice now is between clinging to an ethno-tribalism that rejects modern Judaism’s tradition , or joining a Judaism embodied by a group that is renewing it.”
Years ago, Jewish leaders resolved that “no Jewish culture could develop in the diaspora without a connection with Israel,” Cypel writes. The French writer is now a leader in what my friends in Palestine would call a thawra — or revolution.
Calling Israel a “thug nation” is going to seem way over the top to a lot of people, but after reading Tyler’s “Fortress Israel – The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run The Country – And Why They Can’t Make Peace” I would defend that phrase as accurate. The book shows to what extent the military in Israel is the tail wagging the dog.
For example, Tyler documents how the Begin government drew up very careful and limited plans for the invasion of Lebanon in 1982; as soon as Sharon stepped across the border he began to disregard his orders in favor of bombing the crap out of everything; there were no politicians around to rein in the military. One quote can’t do the book justice but here’s one from page 483 that captures the essence:
“We are becoming more aggressive,” lamented Uri Saguy, the retired major general who had commanded the Golani Brigade and had served as Rabin’s dirnector for military intelligence…”we are only relying upon our military capability….but we cannot solve the Palestinian issue by using only our military force. It’s not enough.”
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Fascistic Zionism & its racist spawn Israel are doomed! It’s only a matter of time. https://tothepointanalyses.com/author/firstname-lastname/
By Professor Lawrence Davidson
EXCERPTS:
“Ahad Ha-am (the pen name of the famous Jewish moralist Asher Ginzberg) noted as early as 1891 that Zionist settlers in Palestine have “an inclination to despotism.” They treat the Arabs with hostility & cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, & even boast of these deeds.” He warned that such behavior stemmed from the political orientation of the Zionist movement which could only end up ‘morally corrupting’ the Jewish people.
“As the issuance of the Balfour Declaration drew nearer, other Jews voiced their worries. In the United States, a letter representative of the Jewish opposition to Zionism was sent by Henry Moskowitz to the New York Times on 10 June, 1917. Moskowitz was a Jewish activist & cofounder of the NAACP. He wrote the following: ‘What are the serious moral dangers in this nationalistic point of view from the standpoint of the Jewish soul? First, it is apt to breed racial egotism.’
“In a 1945 essay, Hannah Arendt, one of the most insightful Jewish political philosophers of the 20th century, described the Zionist movement as a ‘German-inspired nationalism’ (thus my use of ‘über alles’ above). That is, as an ideology that holds ‘the nation to be an eternal organic body, the product of inevitable natural growth of inherent qualities; & it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities.’
“In 1948, Arendt and 27 other prominent Jews living in the United States—including Albert Einstein—wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning the growth of rightwing political influences in the newly founded Israeli state. Citing the appearance of the ‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat Haherut) led by Menachem Begin, they warned that it was a ‘political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, & social appeal to the Nazi & Fascist parties.’ Begin would go on to become one of Israel’s prime ministers. The contemporary Israeli party Likud is a successor of the ‘Freedom Party.’ (cont’d)
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“Albert Einstein was a person of moral sensitivity. He turned down an offer to become Israel’s president & distanced himself from Zionism & the Israeli state. Zionist treatment of the Arabs had alienated him. In 1938, he observed, ‘I would much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain–especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our ranks.’
“In August 2002, as a consequence of aggressive Israeli behavior in the occupied West Bank, England’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, warned that Zionist state policies, as they manifest themselves in the colonization process & the associated persecution of the Palestinians, are perverting ‘the deepest ideals’ of Judaism.
“The U.S. media, still bound by the mythology of Israel as a democratic, modern, secular state that shares America’s pioneering tradition, have traditionally ignored or downplayed critics of Zionism. This leaves most in the West ignorant of Israel’s actual policies & practices.
“Today, Judaism is on the cusp of ethical collapse due to the purposeful transformation of the religion into an arm of Zionist-Israeli state ideology.”
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Some old nobody is “exhausted”, falas6een has been liberated!