The Iran crisis and the crisis of Jewish identity

The attack on Iran is Israel’s war. It is damaging to any conception of American interest. It hurts the U.S. economically, hurts U.S. alliances, and trashes the U.S. image —  burying any claim that we care about the rule of law and human rights. And it is likely to hurt American families in ways that we can only guess.

As both Tucker Carlson and Tim Kaine say, this is Israel’s war. But now it is America’s war as well. And why? Because Israel and its American friends pushed U.S. foreign policy yet again. Trump was “effectively snookered by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Mouin Rabbani writes. While the Forward asks, “Did Netanyahu coerce Trump into attacking Iran?”

This is hardly the first time. Israel and the lobby helped to push the Iraq war, spreading propaganda about weapons of mass destruction, as Netanyahu testified to Congress that regime change would transform the Middle East. They moved our foreign policy on the occupation of Palestine for decades, denying that Israel was committing violations of the Geneva Convention that nullified the world’s commitment to two states. And of course, they moved foreign policy on the Gaza genocide, causing Joe Biden’s administration to whitewash a holocaust that was occurring before our eyes, to the point of rebellion in the Democratic Party. Then this weekend, Trump broke his own vow of non-interventionism to help Israel.

The ideas I stated above used to be marginalized. The only positive outcome of the unlawful aggression that is causing immeasurable suffering in the Middle East is the effect on the U.S. discourse. Israel is today hated inside the Democratic Party, for ample reasons. Zohran Mamdani is rising in the New York City mayoral race, in part because progressives are rewarding his refusal to truckle to Israel. New York Magazine’s unprecedented cover story calling out the Democratic Party’s complicity in the destruction of humanitarian law (written by Suzy Hansen) is further proof.

It’s plain as day that the Iran crisis was brought to us by Israel and its supporters. Barack Obama warned us about this ten years ago when he pushed the Iran deal through Congress. “When the Israeli government is opposed to something, people in the United States take notice,” he said, but if he heeded Israel, it would be “an abrogation of my constitutional duty.” Three years after that, Trump abrogated his duty, destroying the Iran deal at the behest of his largest donor, Sheldon Adelson, who had called on the U.S. to nuke Iran. Yesterday on CBS, yet another Israeli talking head said that Trump now has an opportunity to reshape the Middle East and give it stability. The same fool is holding an “emergency briefing” with the lobby group Democratic Majority for Israel today.  

These war crimes have an ideological basis. They stem from Israel’s self-definition as “the Jewish state” and its inability to provide any justice to Palestinians. However idealistic its roots were in Europe, Zionism is today an ideology of fervent Jewish supremacy and Palestinian persecution. Zionism has two political tools: reliance on a superpower, and brutal violence. Right-wingers have repeatedly resorted to assassination to resolve differences — in Iran, yes, but also inside Israel/Palestine. When leaders called for a liberal response to Palestinians, they were cut down, from de Haan to Arlosoroff to Bernadotte to Rabin.

So long as Israel treats Palestinians as lesser human beings, it will always be raging against resistance and non-recognition.

Awareness of Zionism has grown by leaps and bounds among progressives in the last two years (defying Norman Finkelstein’s joke that Zionism might as well be a shampoo brand, for all Americans knew). Zionism is now a dirty word on the left, as it should be, and liberal Zionism is exposed more and more as a fig leaf for aggression. J Street cannot come out and condemn the recent attacks as illegal because it is engaged in apologetics for its Israeli friends. IfNotNow, a non-Zionist organization, can.

This is a vulnerable time for American Jews, as Zohran Mamdani says. Overwhelmingly, our community is identified with a brutal aggressor. Zionist identity politics are the work of generations of Jewish leaders building an alliance between Jews here and in Israel. Myself, I have always opposed the conflation of Judaism and Zionism, and I cared more about actual American bombs falling on civilians than Jewish fears, yet I must also acknowledge the real bases for Jewish anxiety, in light of the violent attacks on Jews in Colorado and D.C. 

This shows the urgent task before American Jews. We are called on to dissociate from a rogue state given to genocide and apartheid, and other violations of human rights. We are called on to renounce Zionism as a failed and hateful ideology: 130 years ago, it arose with a promise of achieving Jewish safety through colonization, but it has failed to deliver again and again, in the process bringing endless unrest across the Middle East (just as the State Department warned Truman before he recognized the state of Israel).

We are called on to renounce bigotry and embrace equality. We are called on to join anti-Zionist groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, and to endorse the nonviolent BDS program that backs Palestinian rights, as in generations past we supported boycotts in the Jim Crow South and apartheid South Africa.

I single out Jews because I’m Jewish, and the Jewish community was my first home. I single out Jews because we have a greater influence over the politics of the Middle East than other American communities. And it is clear that the Jewish discourse needs a revolution — and so does the American discourse.