Advocating one person/one vote for Israel is antisemitic — ‘Forward’ editor

Last month, the editor of the Forward offered a frank rationale for Zionism, stating that it is opposed to “one person/one vote” in the American tradition. In fact, those who advocate for equal rights for all of Israel’s subjects, no matter their ethnicity, are espousing antisemitism because they oppose Jewish “identity,” which is now rooted in Zionism.

Jodi Rudoren offered her analysis on WNYC radio on December 21 when host Brian Lehrer asked her about the support in the U.S. for one state between the river and the sea that is not a Jewish state.

Rudoren said that might work in the U.S. but not in Israel.   

“The one state solution is Palestine, as you said, it’s not a Jewish state. I certainly understand why some Palestinians find that to be a fulfillment of their national aspirations to have a state that would be majority Palestinian and I also understand ideologically people [on the left] who are very focused on civil rights and human rights and who oppose an ethnocracy and just think one person/one vote is the way to go. But it’s not Israel, it’s not a Jewish and democratic state, it’s a state much more like our own, right? Where different people will have their own ethnicities and backgrounds, but where there will be a melting pot and an elected democracy, etcetera, and that’s not what Israel was founded to be in 1948. It was founded to be a Jewish and democratic state.”

Rudoren acknowledged that young leftists with no memory of the Holocaust question whether Israel “has any right to exist.” But that doesn’t make it OK to support an end to the Jewish state.

“I’m not a person who believes that all anti-Zionism is antisemitism by any means,” Rudoren continued. “But I think that Deborah Lipstadt [Biden’s antisemitism czar] and others have made a smart point… about the difference between being anti-Zionist in 1947 when there’s a debate over whether there should be a Jewish state and being one now 75 years in, calling for the elimination of the Jewish state… It’s a different thing, and it’s not always clear that the campus activists who are calling for that really understand what that feels like for the Israeli Jews and for Jews worldwide who see it as part of their identity that there is a Jewish homeland.”

So: To be Jewish today means to be Zionist, and those who advocate for a non-religious state in Israel, a state of its citizens, are therefore antisemitic. They’re scaring Jews.

Rudoren is a smart and capable journalist, so I’m grateful for her comments here. They make it clear how inconsistent Zionism is with any modern conception of society. Including the society Rudoren has prospered in.

Lehrer is a liberal leader in New York media. He surely should have challenged Rudoren’s claims, that militant nationalism is now part of Jewish identity, that Israel can be “Jewish and democratic” and deny people the right to vote. He should have pointed out what numerous human rights groups say, Israel is an apartheid state. But of course, he didn’t.

(I have never understood why liberal American Jews advocate for a state that destroys principles they cherish here.)

Rudoren made other interesting observations.  

Israeli Jews are incapable of thinking clearly about Hamas, she said, based on a recent reporting trip to the country. While American Jews wonder how the devastation wrought on Gaza can lead to a peaceful future and the “two-state solution,” Israeli Jews don’t. 90 percent of Israeli Jews support the war and the idea of eliminating Hamas.

“When you interview Israelis…. and say, You can’t really eradicate an ideology, and this devastating war could build up a new generation of Hamasniks. They’re just not ready to go there. [A friend in Rabbis for Human Rights said] ‘I’m ashamed to say, my heart has shrunk.’ They just don’t have room in their pain and anguish and mourning and fear of what this all portends for their security to think clearly about what is happening in Gaza.”

Rudoren said that just as October 7 was an intelligence failure for Israel, it was that for American Jewry who did not comprehend the growing generational divide over Israel, including young Jews so fed up with the occupation that they had decided “the Zionist project is untenable.” She said, “I don’t think we had any idea how big powerful or frankly antisemitic some of that movement had become.” The “size and virulence of the activism.. definitely did surprise me.” (We’ve been trying to tell her for years.)

There is now a “moral panic,” Rudoren said. Opposition to Israel “has most of the Jewish world properly freaking out.… People are just terrified at the idea that college campuses seem to have become an increasingly hostile and potentially unsafe place for Jews.”

Lehrer pointed out that the Forward had published a piece on the situation by Berkeley sociologist Jerome Karabel, saying that Israel’s decision to wage brutal war and maintain the occupation is the true existential threat to its future, because it is alienating the world and the U.S., too, and destroying the possibility of a peaceful resolution with Palestinians.

Rudoren hastened to add that the piece is not anti-Zionist and that “we publish things in support of the war effort.”

Karabel’s piece is important because it shows that some establishment Jews in the U.S. are not just reflexively standing by Israel, but offering a non-apartheid framework.  

An even better piece appeared in the Harvard Crimson that many are sharing: Bernie Steinberg, former head of the Harvard Hillel, called on Jews to stop saying that anti-Zionists are antisemitic.  

Let me speak plainly: It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands.

The activists who employ this language, and the politics of liberation, are sincere people; their cause is a legitimate and important movement dissenting against the brutal treatment of Palestinians that has been ongoing for 75 years. One can disagree with any part of what these activists say, but they must be allowed to speak safely and afforded the respect their morally serious position deserves. I have learned much by listening and carefully considering the positions of these activists.