Today the idea of a hopeful, humane Zionism is obsolete. For more than 100 years Jews wrestled with Zionism’s darkness. Daphna Levit profiles those thinkers, who range from enshrined heavyweights like Buber, Albert Einstein, and Hannah Arendt, through more specialized contemporary scholars, journalists, activists, and lawyers. All of them once believed in a hopeful Zionism; all resisted its darkness; not all of them went all the way to renounce it completely.
Bari Weiss’s exit from The New York Times is good news for Palestinian news and opinion. Weiss has made a career as a Zionist warrior, often smearing anti-Zionists in ways that she is quick to call McCarthyism when others employ the same methods.
Jews who criticize Israel are increasingly being excommunicated from the Jewish community. Barry Trachtenberg reflects on this marginalization, and what legacies anti-Zionist Jews can draw upon.
Lately we’ve seen several institutional efforts to show that American Jews are all for Israel, except the lunatics. That’s because the appearance of wall-to-wall US Jewish support is a necessity for Israel lobby groups in convincing politicians to back Israel unconditionally. IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace are a threat to the Stalinist consensus.
Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward is attacking our website on twitter, implying we’re anti-Semitic. But Batya once asked Phil Weiss to write for the Forward. He revisits the meeting she sought with him in 2017.