The new Israeli government is so radical that even moderate Israelis are saying that Zionism is racism. That’s what scares American Jewish leaders and why they will rely even more on the lie that Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. This must not be allowed to succeed.
2022 was a moment of truth.
The year laid bare the political reality in Palestine from the river to the sea, dispelling any illusions that we may have had about the nature of “the conflict,” as it has been glibly called by the mainstream media. Two such illusions can be discarded immediately — for Palestinians, that the Palestinian Authority’s collaborationism can be maintained indefinitely, and for the Israeli state, that Zionism is anything other than a settler-colonial project that must constantly be at war with the Palestinian people.
The new generation leaders of the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League were both silent today as Netanyahu’s explicitly-racist far-right government was sworn in. The silence is amazing, and reflects the fact that Netanyahu blew off Jewish leaders’ warnings not to lead such a coalition or it would damage relations with the U.S. While the anti-Zionist Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace said that the Jewish “consensus on the ‘democratic’ character of Israel has broken apart.”
Israel’s steady lurch to the right is a predictable outcome for a country founded on Jewish supremacy and discrimination against Palestinians.
This election could also be viewed as the outcome of longstanding antidemocratic forces, an inheritance from fascistic leaders like Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky, rabbis like Meir Kahane, the unwillingness of sequential Israeli governments (left to right) to control a violent and rabid settler movement, and even the consequences of the Zionist movement itself which preached not only Jewish nationalism, but Jewish supremacy.
New Knesset member Zvika Fogel told a British interviewer that “the concept of proportionality must cease to exist” and that he is prepared to make “a thousand Palestinian mothers cry” to prevent the loss of one Israeli. This call to violence is shocking, but it is also the logical result of Zionism.
The masks have fallen. Israel’s new government, supported by far-right parties with outright racist tendencies, represents one step further in the repression between the river and the sea.
Israel’s recent election is a perfect opportunity for Jewish communities to end blind support for Israel and embrace Judaism’s social justice tradition. This begins by working for Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation.
Israel is holding its fifth election in three years and there’s a growing fear among…
Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general who is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, praises onslaught on Gaza that killed 15 children as an “exceptional achievement.” Yadlin was protested at Harvard earlier this year. But he is excited now that PM Yair Lapid has passed the manhood test.