This has been a year of pogroms in Palestine, capped by a horrifying incident last week in the occupied West Bank in which Israeli soldiers chased a 7-year-old Palestinian boy out of his house into the streets. Rayan Suleiman was so terrified that he had a heart attack and died. Can you even imagine?
The monstrousness of this murder should have elicited outrage from leading U.S. Jewish institutions in these, the days of awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. No. Liberal Zionists wrung their hands over the murder, while the only appropriate response came from the heretics, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which retweeted Rashida Tlaib’s angry statement.
Don’t look away. $3.8 billion+ of our money is funding this. Enough. It must stop.
That of course is the wisest response to pogroms: Cut off the funding.
Yom Kippur begins tonight and I reflect that the most prominent moral voice in the extended American Jewish community is today Rashida Tlaib. Young Jews turn to her to measure their own responses to events in Palestine. Older Jews too.
We look to her. She inspires us.
We must thank her for her leadership. At a time when virtually every establishment Jewish organization has abandoned any pretense to universal moral values, Tlaib has led the way.
That leadership includes her comment of a couple of weeks ago that you cannot call yourself a progressive and support the apartheid government of Israel. This was a simple and clear statement, and a true one. Countless human rights organizations have now concluded that Israel’s official discrimination/domination of Palestinians constitutes apartheid.
Tlaib knew that she would elicit an onslaught of attacks from the Israel lobby, and the official Jewish community, yet she went ahead. The onslaught has been overwhelming. The ADL said that she was antisemitic. Many Democratic congresspeople have slammed her, including supposed solons like Jerry Nadler. J Street joined in the pile-on, saying that of course you can be a progressive and be a Zionist.
They are wrong. In this day and age, you cannot be both a progressive and a Zionist. We have too much information about what maintaining a “Jewish and democratic state” entails– in a word, brutal inequality. Israel didn’t have to work out this way; I have enough sympathy for religious/nationalist movements to understand why good people would have chosen Zionism in an earlier age. But Israel has worked out this way, and we know too much to look the other way, as Rashida said. Zionism means pogroms against a captive Palestinian population that does not accept the terms of its subjugation. Zionism means “Judaizing” more land. Zionism means killing a 7-year-old boy in the streets by scaring him to death.
The clearest sign of Rashida Tlaib’s importance is that she is terrifying the establishment. They all know she has taken up this role in the leadership of young American Jews. This is why Ted Deutch started his new job at the American Jewish Committee this week by attacking Tlaib. This is why Deutch auditioned for that job a year ago by smearing Tlaib as an antisemite on the floor of the House because she had “besmirched” our ally. (Tlaib had quoted apartheid reports from Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem.)
She must be stopped. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a tool of the Israel lobby, said it best last month: he likes to work behind the scenes against the Squad (meaning Tlaib most prominently) so as not to give them oxygen from the millions of people including young Jews who are inspired by her.
One of the things I’m most concerned about is there are millions of people on twitter including some young people, including some young Jews, who follow some of my far left colleagues.
They have traction inside the Democratic Party. Back in February, Gottheimer lamented that criticism of Israel is a “growing cancer” on the Democratic Party; and it is now hard to get some congresspeople from signing letters for Israel because they lay low, lest “they just get the snot beat out of them” — on social media.
Gottheimer made clear the stakes in his comments last month. If Israel becomes a partisan issue, then we will have Congress on one side and a president on the other, and that’s a “disaster.”
That is the role of the center-left Israel lobby, to keep Democrats on board. If the definition of Zionist in Israel is, you support the killings of Palestinians in the occupied territories to stop terrorism– well if you are an American Zionist, you support the continued flow of billions to Israel because we American Jews are not in a position to criticize Jews on the front line, and to keep the money flowing we must keep the issue bipartisan.
J Street, the liberal Zionist lobby, is on board. That is why it crushed a student leader who came out for BDS earlier this year. It cannot tolerate dissent on the critical questions, Is Israel an apartheid state, and what should we do about it if it is?
The answers to those questions are obvious now. They have been obvious to the discerning for nearly 20 years but now they are obvious to anyone. It is apartheid and the only humane response is boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The failure of the American Jewish community to grapple honestly with these questions is a devastating chapter in Jewish history. There are many generational reasons for that failure. The shadow of the Holocaust, the history of antisemitism in America, the commandment that arose in the 70s of supporting Israel no matter what it does because over there Jewish children are at risk. None of these is a good excuse. They are rationalizations for Jewish supremacy.
Young Jews know that they must take on Zionism inside their community. And they have a moral hero in Rashida Tlaib.
Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is senior editor of Mondoweiss.net and founded the site in 2005-06.
Back to Katie Halper – the fired journalist who defended Rashida Tlaib. Here’s her monologue that was censored:
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/29/hill-tv-israel-apartheid-rashida-tlaib-censorship/
“Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been condemned by some over comments she made about Israel…I’m not a Jewish colleague of Tlaib, but I am a Jew and I am outraged. Not by Tlaib, but by the attacks on Tlaib. Rashida Tlaib is saying that Israel is an apartheid state and that people who claim to have progressive values cannot support an apartheid state. No matter how loose a definition of progressive we use, it certainly excludes supporting a racist apartheid system….But apartheid doesn’t just apply to South Africa. In 1973, the U.N. defined “the crime of apartheid” as including “similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in Southern Africa,” as well as any “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” In 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defined apartheid as “inhumane acts of a character” that are “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” “
Hill then goes on to enumerate just exactly what these ‘inhumane acts of character’ are. Also, here’s Hill explaining her comments:
“This is What Got Katie Halper Censored & Canceled By The Hill: Israel Is An Apartheid State”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3xLOxx1ggQ
“They are wrong. In this day and age, you cannot be both a progressive and a Zionist.”
Luv ya, Phil, but I have to correct you here. It was/is NEVER progressive to support privileging one people over all others in the governing of a nation – ANY nation!
Incredible article by the author. One can ask the same question for Muslim Americans: Can they not be true Muslims and loyal US citizens and still criticize so called Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Iran, for their countless human rights abuses? this is an article that should be read by all Americans of conscience. No wonder that that the NY Times will never print such an OP Ed piece: it has the chutzpah to criticize the Israel lobby and US Politicians that want to coddle and feed various regimes in today’s world, while it also forces one’s introspection as a human being. Thank you, Mr. Weiss. This is why I support your organization.
Amazing. Claiming Tlaib as a moral voice is like claiming Putin or Stalin are moral voices of their generation. Tlaib has replaced the word Jew with the word Zionist. Tlaib has successfully taken over the progressive movements using classic anti semitic narratives. Mr. Weiss is at best, a convenient idiot or at worst, a culprit in promoting Tlaib as a moral authority. Zionism is a Jewish liberation movement that succeeded in returning oppressed people to their ancestral homeland. Tlaib has borrowed heavily from classic soviet and communist propaganda and misinformation to attack, discredit and demonize Israel and the ancient Jewish connection to the land of Israel. Tlaib view of the world has little to do with justice or freedom. It is a 21st version of soviet propaganda that uses social media and skillfully manipulates facts and history using Zionism as the great evil to take over the progressive movement. Using Jews as a convenient target to further political objectives is not new, what’s new here is the extent that some Jewish “progressives” are willing to join the efforts, history and facts be dammed. Claiming that someone is progressive doesn’t excuse bigotry and lies.
One last point… during the Yom Kippur religious services Israel, Zion and Jerusalem are all mentioned numerous times. The relevance of Israel and the yearning of the Jewish people to return to Zion Is prominent throughout the Yom Kippur service. If you are indeed, a Jew who cares about Yom Kippur I would assume you know that. Mr. Weiss I wish you an easy fast and may you be inscribed in the book of life. May your own Yom Kippur prayers to return to Zion be answered too.