The Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has ventured into a territory– Judeophobia– that is nowadays mostly occupied by ardent Zionists intent on proving that Jew hatred is eternal and that the state of Israel is the only place where the Jews can feel safe. In today’s Europe, argues Sand, Judeophobia has been largely replaced by Islamophobia, while erstwhile Antisemites have become admirers of Israel, particularly of its way of “dealing with the Muslims”.

The opposition to a “pro-Israel” position is not a “pro-Palestine” position, but rather a decolonial justice position. This is the position that not only captures the reality of conditions in Palestine/Israel but also seeks to transform them into something new and something just.  

Maurice Samuel’s 1924 tract, “You Gentiles,” is cherished by antisemites and Zionists alike because it says that a Jew can never mix successfully in a non-Jewish world because the Jew’s concerns are more serious, and the gentile’s more playful, so the Jew will always be “a source of unhappiness to himself and to those around him.” Samuel’s book insists on the impossibility of Jews and non-Jews living in stability and respect, and thus, the necessity of Jews living in their own land.

Zionism has not yet murdered Judaism but it has undermined its moral and historical integrity. Just as Israel must de-Zionize in order to finally find its place in the Middle East, so, too, must Jews abroad de-Zionize in order to reclaim their own traditions, experiences and communal validity.

The myth of victim in danger of extinction by Palestinians, has colored the thinking of many older generations Jews who maintain an allegiance to Zionism, Lillian Rosengarten writes. To look at Zionism with open eyes, one observes a form of virulent Nationalism perpetrated on Palestinians who represent for Zionists an inferior race, unwanted and demonized in the dream of a Jewish State for
Jews only.

Israeli leftist David Grossman laments that Israel is not “home” for Jews. “It was meant to be the place in which you felt secure, in which your standing and your relations with your neighbors was never in doubt, in which there was no disagreement with anyone about whose home it was. It’s painful for me that still, after almost 73 years of sovereignty, and of war, we still haven’t arrived at a place in which we feel that real sense of comfort, that real sense of serenity and ease you’re meant to feel at home.”

To anyone who says the situation in Palestine is complex just tell them to spend an afternoon in Hebron.

Jews are in danger. From what, is the question. Are we as a people (if we exist as a people) a Light unto the Nations, or is our narrative a self-intoxication that every ethnic group indulges in? Abba Solomon asks of Jewish identity in the aftermath of the latest Gaza slaughter.

An outpouring of support in India for Israel’s war on “terrorists” can be explained by: India’s rightward drift under Modi, underpinned by hatred for Muslims, and a sense of identity between Zionism and Hindutva, the political philosophy of the ruling party in India. The close ties are also strategic, relating to India’s tensions with Muslim-majority Pakistan.

As Israeli Jews we call upon the international community to intervene immediately in order to stop Israel’s current aggressions, to adopt the demands of the Palestinian BDS movement; to work towards the actualization of the Palestinian Right of Return and to bring about historic justice; to reach a just and democratic solution for all, based on the decolonization of the region and found a state of all its citizens.