The purpose of Zionism was simple: The desire of Jews “to be a free people in our land.” The words are right there in the anthem.
Judged by that goal, any reasonable person would conclude that Zionism has utterly failed. Today Jews feel less secure than ever in Israel, and they are fighting yet another in an endless series of wars, to try and gain the sense of security they have never had.
Today’s war is an “existential” war — the commentators on i24 say — and yet it is against the non-Jewish people among whom the Zionists live. And it is also vast and open-ended, threatening peace across the Middle East and even the world. Because Israel’s war with Iran is also “existential.” And the war against the boycott campaign is “existential.”
The Israelis are widely hated for their actions. “The world sees Israelis as monsters” — even a liberal American-Israeli Jew declares to Americans for Peace Now.
The reasons for that hatred are obvious. Zionists have denied the people who lived on the land when they arrived any rights, and they have never stopped resisting (as others surely would — including with terrorism against civilians.) Israel’s response is mass slaughter. The global community is justly angered and sickened by the endless reports on Al Jazeera of Palestinian children being operated on without anesthesia. Even PBS can’t ignore the reality.
The political lesson of October 7 is also obvious: Israel and its lapdog, the U.S., sought to extend the policy of bypassing Palestine and bribing Arab monarchies to overlook apartheid and normalize relations with Israel — and they got what some have called the worst war of Israel’s existence. The political lesson is: you can never take Palestinian serfdom for granted, even if you are a nuclear power and economic powerhouse with a European standard of living.
Today, the failure of Israel’s latest existential war is clear in reports from Israeli media: the goal was to get rid of Hamas, but oh, by the way, it is impossible to get rid of Hamas, and in the meantime, the hostages are dying anyway. And if the hostages are sacrificed to get rid of Hamas, “Israeli society will not be able to live with itself.”
Israel has had Zero Vision on this war from the first day. “The war that began as perhaps the most justified war in the history of the State of Israel continues without clear political goals,” a J Street official writes.
So, Israel is simply killing civilians and destroying cities. It has not even killed Hamas’s senior leaders (the New York Times buries this news), despite the bombing of an area the size of Philadelphia that makes Ukraine look like a walk in the park.
As readers here know, I care deeply about Jews, about American Jewish culture and its contribution to civilization. Jews are my ethnic community, for whom I have love and pride; and it is obvious today to any reasonable observer that Zionism is pure tragedy for Jewish people. The belief that you can set up a state for your own religion on lands where others live using overwhelming force is a murderous and racist delusion.
And yet Jewish life is wed to this delusion.
American Jews are overwhelmingly for this war that is so pointless and hateful, having killed 25,000 people, the great majority of them women and children.
Why are they wed to it? Because we grew up being told, Israel is the great project of the Jewish people in the 20th century. Because we were told, we had an essential role to play in that project, to support Israel politically and diplomatically in the bosom of the superpower.
American Jews and Jewish organizations played that role to the hilt. Since 1973, if not longer, they have acted with tremendous cohesion — right up to today, to the destruction of Palestinian hospitals and all the maimed Palestinian children being operated on without anesthesia in the eyes of the world. Just so Joe Biden sends more bombs.
American Jews have enabled war crimes because we are not on the front lines, so we are in no position to judge the Jews whose children are in uniform. And more importantly, because of a sense of minority corporate cohesion — we must stick together in the face of a hostile world — which became our ethos during the persecutions in Europe, and especially after the Holocaust. If we don’t look out for Jews, no one else will.
So today, the most privileged, highly-educated ethnic group in America is wed to a brutal failed project of religious nationalism out of a sense of ethnocentrism. And it must endlessly defend bombings that leave Palestinian children operated on without anesthesia. (Liberal Zionists included).
The Israel lobby had one guiding precept. There must never be any daylight between the Israeli government and the American government. The lobby won the day. Today, even liberal Zionist groups like J Street and New Israel Fund have signed off on the ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the order that the only way for a tiny minority of the U.S. population to exercise influence is to create common cause with other Jewish groups, including the rightwing frankly-racist Zionists.
There are just a few brave dissenters in the Jewish community: the courageous ceasefire groups IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace. Everyone else is on board with mass slaughter out of blind ethnocentrism. (Wait, stop the presses — J Street just called for a ceasefire after 25,000 deaths).
This is a great tragedy. For Palestinians, of course. For the world and for Jews, too. Israeli society is today in a desperate and dangerous place because it painted itself into a racist supremacist corner, destroying repeated offers of partition, with American Jews preventing any criticism of its actions.
There have been warnings for years. American interest types warned us about the dangers of the Israel lobby to U.S. foreign policy independence. Palestinian solidarity groups repeatedly called for South Africa-style nonviolent boycott and divestment to end the Israeli occupation and stop the ethnic cleansing.
Both forces have been dismissed as antisemitic for standing up for democracy and human rights. J Street even called the noble BDS movement antisemitic.
As I often reflected at the fascistic Qalandiya checkpoint — there is a special place in hell for those who come here and witness apartheid, then go home and deny it.
The risks the Israel lobby has taken with others’ lives represent a historic moral collapse. Now, we must all pray for a miracle.
Powerful and honest piece PW. American and Israeli Jews as well as many others have been complicit in the oppression, theft of land, homes, killing of Palestinians by directly supporting the growth of the apartheid nation of Israel. Direct donations, moral support or silence. Some believing they would be betraying their tribe, some believing Jews more than deserved a big break from the historical suffering of their people. All ignoring the facts on the ground in Palestine a hundred years ago. A huge population of Palestinians pushed to the ground, run over by Irgun, Haganah, the Jewish Agency, Run out of their villages with the threat of death, homes villages, olive trees, lives destroyed by the force of bold and cruel Zionist forces taking over. Hey European’s had done it in North America etc why not here I am sure Zionist thought. Conquering forces had done it in other parts of the world. Why not here.
Yes, many have warned that their would be days, years of reckoning for these decades of injustice taking place in the historic land of Arabs, Jews and Christians. The volcano exploded with the heinous attack on Oct 7. Decades of anger percolating due to the oppression, theft of land, killing, humiliation, imprisonment etc of Palestinians. The escalation of extreme tribal violence of Israel right now in the Gaza has clearly become hell on earth for the Palestinian people. People like Blinken throw out bullshit statements like “when I see the Palestinian children suffering I see my children” clearly complete horse shit coming out of Blinken’s mouth. If the Palestinian children etc being slaughtered daily by Israel were his children or Biden’s we all know they would be doing everything in their power to stop the genocide taking place. Watching those children’s faces on the streets of Gaza the looks of terror, pain, sadness, horror calls out to all of humanity. Yes, the ICJ just put out their list of demands to Israel to be more careful about who they are killing and how many. Demanding Israel allow humanitarian aid through. We all know how Israel has ignored international treaties, conventions, un resolutions etc etc. We know the last time Israel paid any attention to the UN was when the UN created Israel. The killing will go on and on. In the meantime we are all let with wtf do we do? We march, we protest, we lobby our Reps to cut aid etc. Still the bloody killing fields of Gaza expand..
I have seen the awareness of friends grow. One Jewish friend a dear lady friend who is my age (7) who used to go apoplectic when I would bring this issue up with her over last 25 years is now marching in the streets with Students for Justice in Palestine. An evolution, not that she would ever acknowledge she would go stark raving blind when it came to this issue over decades. Another Jewish friend whose parents were Holocaust survivors who could NEVER talk about this issue honestly is now posting accurate reports. Eyes opening.
Phil and others, this is written by a dear friend in Boulder. Her parents are Holocaust survivors. So moving. I bet if you contacted her she would really like to have this up at Mondoweiss.
https://julietwittman.substack.com/p/for-murder-though-it-hath-no-tongue
” Indiscriminate bombing of Gaza that destroys homes and kills thousands of civilians. The forced displacement of most of the population. The withholding of food, water, medications, and power, so that starvation is setting in, and the danger of epidemic illness increases as people drink contaminated water. Hospitals destroyed and health workers helpless to provide care as incubators intended to save vulnerable babies lose power and the babies die, the sick and wounded die in corridors, children’s limbs must be amputated without the use of anesthetic and there is also no analgesic for laboring women requiring a cesarian section. Gaza’s single cancer hospital for children is gone too. Families search desperately through rubble to find their dead and wounded. An ancient and powerful culture is vaporized as Gaza’s main public library lies in ruins and mosques are razed or irrecoverably damaged, along with a revered and ancient Christian church. Universities are rubble. So are schools run by UNRWA, an agency of the United Nations that has long offered education for Gazan children, and now attempts to shelter a population every member of which is aware they may die at any moment. UNRWA is the successor to UNRAA, another United Nations organization formed in 1945 and that my father joined immediately after World War II to bring aid to displaced and starving Europeans. In Gaza, over a hundred UNRWA staffers have been killed.”
Zionism is what it was from the start, herrenvolk. It was possible not to see it before. Now it’s not possible.
Garrison Keillor said something about Americans who believe things they know are not true. That includes American Jews.
Juliet’s latest about missing Medhi Hasan on MSNBC. Juliet and I both watched MSNBC regularly and would check in with one another about what they were missing and what they had covered. Medhi, Velshi, Ayman and sometimes Joy Reid would give the I/P issue the attention deserved. Medhi, Juliett and I always agreed was the best.
Her latest piece up over at Substack. I think would be appropriate here at Mondoweiss
https://julietwittman.substack.com/p/dont-know-what-to-watch-on-sunday
” The Mehdi Hasan Show is gone and MSNBC–which I once watched regularly–is feeling to me like a giant waste land. The show was cancelled a while back but Hasan still appeared and we heard then that he would be an occasional host or guest expert. Then at the end of his last show on January 7th he told us he was cutting his ties to the channel altogether.”
How many deaths constitute a ‘genocide’??? Deaths are deaths, no matter what it is called.