IN THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY, ZIONISM IS
UNRAVELING
Allan C. Brownfeld
Issues
Winter 2022
Widespread attention is being focused on the decline of Zionism within the
American Jewish community. An article in The New York Times Magazine (Nov. 7,
2021) by Marc Tracy, appropriately entitled, “Inside The Unraveling of American
Zionism,” has stimulated much discussion. This came shortly after the Israeli
human rights organization B’Tselem used the term “apartheid” to characterize
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, as did Human Rights Watch.
Increasingly, the term “apartheid” is being used to identify Israeli policy. The
death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African advocate of non-violence and
racial justice, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, focused attention upon his
characterization of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In a speech in Boston on
April 28, 2002, he declared: “In our struggle against apartheid, the great
supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of
the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting oppression and evil. I have
continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust center in
South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.”
What Tutu found “not so understandable, not justified” was what Israel “did to
another people to justify its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my
visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black
people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at
checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young police officers
prevented us from moving about…I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what
were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis….My heart aches. I say why are
our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their
humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions,
in their own history, so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and
noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the
downtrodden?”
Many Israelis Agree With Archbishop Tutu
In recent days, many prominent Israelis agree with Archbishop Tutu’s assessment.
In December, Amos Schocken, publisher of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, declared
that, “The product of Zionism, the state of Israel, is not a Jewish and
democratic state, but instead has become an apartheid state, plain and simple.”
Schocken is the third generation of his family to run Haaretz. A decade ago, he
argued that Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem, should be changed because its
lyrics are only about Jewish aspirations: “How can an Arab citizen identify with
such an anthem? Hasn’t the time come to recognize that the establishment of
Israel is not just the story of the Jewish people, of Zionism, of the heroism of
the Israel Defense Forces and of bereavement? That it is also the story of the
reflection of Zionism and the heroism of the IDF soldiers in the lives of the
Arabs: the Nakba—-the Palestinian ‘catastrophe,’ as the Arabs call the events of
1948—-the loss, the families that were split up, the disruption of lives, the
property that was taken away, the life under military government and other
elements of the history shared by Jews and Arabs, which are presented on
Independence Day, and now only on that day, in an entirely one-sided way.”
The fact that so many Jewish Americans are turning against Zionism and are
increasingly disillusioned with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, has produced
a backlash among those who defend Israel’s behavior, whatever it may be. Consider
Rabbi Wendi Geffen of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois. After
Israel’s assault on Gaza, she gave a sermon about what she called “the new anti-
Semitism” in which she declared that, “Anti-Zionist Jews are Jews in name only,”
who must be kept “out of the Jewish tent.” (Mondoweiss, Nov. 26, 2021)
Rabbi Geffen told her congregation: “There are boundaries to that tent. And those
begin when a person engages in words or action that seeks to destroy Israel or
the Jewish people,or enables or condones violence in support of extremist
ideology. There is no place for any of that in the big tent.”
Jews Who Oppose Zionism Are “Dangerous”
In Rabbi Geffen’s view, “The vast majority” of Jews support Israel and Jews who
oppose Zionism and say that Zionism and progressive values are a contradiction
“are more dangerous” to the Jewish people than the right-wing anti-Semites who
attack synagogues. Mondoweiss noted that, “The rabbi had nothing to say about a
matter that has caused great disaffection among Jews: the lopsided conflict that
ended a week earlier in which Israeli missiles leveled office buildings and
killed 256 people in blockaded Gaza, while Palestinian militants killed 13 in
Israel…That onslaught helped fuel a survey …showing that 38% of young Jews
believe that Israel practices apartheid and 20% say Israel has no right to exist
as a Jewish state. Those are Geffen’s ‘Jews in name only.'"
Rabbi Geffen opened her sermon by quoting Israeli political leader Natan
Scharansky saying that while classic anti-Semitism targeted Jewish people or the
Jewish religion, the “new anti-Semitism” is aimed at the Jewish state and this
hatred “is advanced in the name of values most of us would consider
unimpeachable, such as human rights.”
In May, 2021, a letter was signed by 93 rabbinical students during the Israeli
onslaught on Gaza which declared that Israel maintains “apartheid” in the
occupied territories and called on American Jews who have taken on structural
racism in the United States to oppose “racist violence in Israel.” This produced
an extreme response from many in the Jewish establishment. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York and previously executive director of the
Association of Reform Zionists in America, wrote an article in The Times of
Israel (Dec. 2, 2021) with the headline, “For the love of Israel, we need to say
the Reform movement is Zionist.”
What Does Reform Movement Believe?
He wrote: “How could future Jewish leaders write an open letter in the middle of
a war, missiles raining down over people, without mentioning Hamas. We have a
communal responsibility to clarify what it is that the Reform movement believes.
What are our values and principles…For the record, the Reform movement is a
Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement…are Zionist and committed
ideologically and theologically to Israel. We are theologically committed to the
centrality of the Jewish people and the Jewish state…What higher responsibility
does a Jewish leader have than to love and protect fellow Jews…Some American
Jews…provide Jewish cover to forces that seek not coexistence with Israel, but
Israel’s destruction.”
Rabbi Hirsch seems to have embraced a form of idolatry, making the state of
Israel and the Jewish people “central” to Judaism, rather than God and the Jewish
moral and ethical tradition. This, of course, is nothing new. Long ago, Harvard
Professor Ruth Wisse, a militant Zionist, declared, “I would sooner pray among
Jews who did not love God than I would among Jews who did not love Israel.”
Rabbi Hirsch ignores, as well, the fact that Reform Judaism opposed Zionism until
the advent of European anti-Semitism in the 20th century, which led to the
Holocaust.
For Reform Jews, the idea of Zionism contradicted almost completely their belief
in a universal prophetic Judaism. The first Reform prayerbook eliminated all
references to a return to Zion. In 1897, the Central Conference of American
Rabbis adopted a resolution which declared that, “Zion was a precious possession
of the past…but it is not our hope of the future. America is our Zion.” The 19th
century Reform leader Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise criticized the idea of Jewish
nationalism and ethno-centric religion in these terms: “The false Messiahs who
appeared from time to time among the dispersed and suffering remnants of Judah,
had no religious purpose in view; all of them were political demagogues or
patriotic fantasists with as much religion as was deemed requisite to agitate the
Jewish mind and to win the goodwill of the masses and its leaders for the
proposed political end, which was the restoration of Jewish nationality and the
conquest of Palestine. All of them failed miserably and left behind them plenty
of misery…and yet with that warning of history before them, the party of men
called Zionists and the admirers of Dr. Herzl… propose to do the same thing over
in our days.”
Young People Returning To Reform’s Prophetic Tradition
What is agitating Rabbi Hirsch and others is that young Jewish Americans, as the
letter from the rabbinical students indicates, are returning to Reform Judaism’s
prophetic tradition.
Using the term “anti-Semitism” to characterize criticism of Israel is a tactic
long used by Israeli advocates to silence criticism. Discussing this phenomenon,
Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, notes that, “The problem is
that their definition of anti-Semitism rests on a distinction between criticism
of Israel, which they consider legitimate, and opposition to the country’s
existence as a Jewish state, which they deem bigoted. But the validity of that
distinction rests on what Jewish statehood actually means for the Palestinians
under Israeli control—-the very subject that its highest-profile defenders evade.
It’s a sleight of hand. The trick is to enforce a set of boundaries around
criticism of Israel without investigating whether those boundaries bear any
relationship to reality on the ground.”
In her 2019 book, “Anti-Semitism: Here and Now,”. Deborah Lipstadt, who President
Biden has nominated to be his special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism,
insists that, “We must carefully differentiate between campaigns that disagree
with Israeli policy and those that essentially call for the elimination of the
Jewish state. There is a vast difference between being opposed to the policies of
the Israeli government and being an anti-Semite.”
Government Policies Discriminate Against Palestinians
The question, Peter Beinart believes, is more complicated. Writing in Jewish
Currents (Dec. 20, 2021) he provides this assessment: “…what if the policies with
which you disagree—-because they discriminate against Palestinians—-are inherent
in Israel being a Jewish state? As Human Rights Watch details in its April
report, the Israel Land Administration (ILA) oversees 93% of the land inside
Israel. Almost half of ILA’s seats go to representatives of the Jewish National
Fund (JNF) which has described its mandate this way: ‘The loyalty of JNF is given
to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated.’ As a result, the
body that controls almost all of the land inside pre-1967 Israel allocates and
develops it almost exclusively for the benefit of Jews, not Palestinians. As
B’Tselem notes in its January report, ‘Palestinian local councils and communities
now have access to less than 3% of the country’s total area,’ even though
Palestinians make up more than 20% of Israel’s citizens.”
In Beinart’s view, “Reality on the ground doesn’t respect Lipstadt’s distinction…
In 2018 when three Palestinian members of the Knesset proposed making Israel ‘a
state for all its citizens’—-without a favoritism based on ethnicity, religion,
or race—-the Knesset speaker ruled that the legislation could not even be debated
because ‘it denies the existence of the state as the state of the Jewish people.’
By Lipstadt’s standards those three Palestinian Knesset members crossed the line
into anti-Semitism by proposing that Israel become a country based on non-
discrimination and equality under the law. That’s absurd, but its absurdity only
becomes clear if you look at how Jewish statehood actually functions for
Palestinians which is what Lipstadt and her allies rarely do.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), it is “offensive” to accuse Israel
of practicing apartheid. The reason, according to the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt,
is that, “Deriding Israel as an apartheid state is not a just critique but part
of a broader effort to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.” Deborah
Lipstadt used the same logic against the BDS movement. She said: “If you look at
the founding documents of the BDS movement, you see an effort to destroy the
state of Israel. That I find anti-Semitic.”
Calling Critics Of Israel “Anti-Semitic”
Jewish critics of Israel who use the term “apartheid” to characterize its
treatment of Palestinians are growing in number and calling them “anti-Semitic”
only seems to be increasing their voices. Consider Ronnie Kasrils, a leading
South African Jewish anti-apartheid activist who served as a Minister in Nelson
Mandela’s government. He wrote an article in The Guardian (April 3, 2019) with
the headline, “I fought South African apartheid, I see the same brutal policies
in Israel.” He noted that, “Israel’s repression of Palestinian citizens, African
refugees and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza has become more
brutal over time. Ethnic cleansing, land seizure, home demolitions, military
occupation” remind Kasrils of the years of apartheid in South Africa.
He declares that, “I’m also deeply disturbed that critics of Israel’s brutal
policies are frequently threatened with repression of their freedom of speech, a
reality I’ve now experienced at first hand, last week, a public meeting in Vienna
where I was scheduled to speak in support of Palestinian freedom, as part of the
global Israel Apartheid Week, was canceled by the museum hosting the event, under
pressure from Vienna’s City Council, which opposes the international BDS movement
from Israel.”
Kasrils recalls that, “South Africa’s apartheid government banned me for life
from attending meetings. Nothing I said could be published because I stood up
against apartheid. How disgraceful that despite the lessons of our struggle
against racism, such intolerance continues to this day, stifling free speech on
Palestine. During the South Africa struggle, we were accused of following a
Communist agenda, but smears didn’t deflect us. Today, Israel’s propaganda
follows a similar route, repeated by its supporters—-conflating opposition to
Israel with anti-Semitism. This must be resisted… A growing number of Jews
worldwide are taking positions opposing Israel’s policies..”
Dershowitz Calls Tutu “Anti-Semitic”
The more extreme Israel’s actions, the more virulent and irrational the charges
of “anti-Semitism” on the part of Israel’s defenders has become. Consider Alan
Dershowitz, a long time defender of Israel’s right-wing, now embroiled in the
Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking affair. Dershowitz was Epstein’s attorney and is
currently being charged with rape by Virginia Giuffre. Still, after the death of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he found time to launch a bitter attack. He posted a
statement on Dec. 30, 2021 with the headline, “A long history of anti-Jewish
bigotry.” He wrote: “Tutu has a long history of ugly hatred toward the Jewish
people, the Jewish religion, and the Jewish state. He not only believes in anti-
Semitism, he actively promoted and legitimated Jew-hatred among his many
followers and admirers around the world.” Dershowitz’s examples of alleged “anti-
Semitism” on Tutu’s part include nothing more than quotes from him such as,
“Zionism has very many parallels with racism.” There is no evidence that
Dershowitz’s assault on Tutu met any resistance on the part of Israel’s
defenders.
Even British actress Emma Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the
Harry Potter films, came under bitter attack from prominent Israeli officials.
What did she do to provoke this attack? She posted an image on Instagram showing
a picture of a protest in behalf of Palestinian rights with a banner “Solidarity
is a verb” written across it. It was accompanied with a quote about the meaning
of solidarity from the feminist scholar. Sara Ahmed. The Israeli response was
almost immediate and the charge against Watson was the familiar one of “anti-
Semitism.” Danny Danon, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations,
shared Watson’s post on Twitter and said, “10 points from Gryffinder for being an
anti-Semite.” Israel’s current ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, was also
critical. “Fiction may work in Harry Potter, but it does not work in reality,” he
wrote. “If it did, the magic used in the wizarding world could eliminate the
evils of Hamas…and the PA (Palestinian Authority)…I would be in favor of that.”
These comments were met with a backlash, including from Leah Greenberg, co-
executive director of the Indivisible Project, a nonprofit founded in 2016. She
said that the attacks upon Emma Watson were “A perfect demonstration of the
utterly cynical and bad faith weaponization of anti-Semitism to shut down basic
expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.” A Conservative member of
the British Parliament, Sayeeda Warsi, called Danon’s comments “appalling” and
noted that, “These constant attempts to stifle any and all support for
Palestinians must be called out.”
Emma Watson, U.N. Goodwill Ambassador
Watson, 31, is an outspoken feminist who has used her platform to support a
number of high-profile causes, earning her a spot-on Time Magazine’s list of the
most influential people in the world. In 2014 she was appointed a U.N. Women’s
goodwill ambassador and delivered an address at U.N. headquarters to launch
HeForShe, a campaign that urges men to advocate for women’s equality. She was
also appointed to an advisory board for women’s rights in 2019. Watson’s post
about Palestinian rights has been viewed by more than a million people and has
received more than 100,000 comments. Miriam Margolyse, a Jewish actor who
appeared in the Harry Potter movies, declared that, “The Israeli treatment of
Palestinians is disgraceful. Anti-Semitism is not at issue. What matters is
opposing cruelty, speaking for compassion. Criticizing Israel is not in itself
anti-Semitism. Conflating the two is a form of disguised censorship.”
In January 2022, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the famed Nazi hunter who
died in 2005, and defines itself as “a Jewish global human rights organization
researching the Holocaust and hate in a historic contemporary context,”
proclaimed its “Global Anti-Semitic Top Ten List.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
Jan. 11, 2022). After listing Iran and Hamas, third on the list was BBC, which
has been criticized for a disputed report on a London anti-Semitic incident.
Number five on the list was Jewish Voice for Peace, the Jewish group which
opposes Zionism. Number 7 is the entire country of Germany, which the Wiesenthal
Center claims, “has failed to curb anti-Semitic attacks.”
The entry on Germany singled out Michael Blume, a commissioner against anti-
Semitism in the state of Baden-Wurttemburg for allegedly “liking” a post that the
Wiesenthal Center found objectionable. Blume did not recall ever having done so
and expressed his complete support for Zionism and Israel. Catherine von
Schnorbein, the European Union’s coordinator for fighting anti-Semitism said that
including Blume on the list “discredits the invaluable legacy of Simon
Wiesenthal.” She said that the Wiesenthal Center was guilty of “harming the fight
against anti-Semitism with this list.” The Jewish community of Baden-Wurttemburg
supported Blume and condemned the Wiesenthal list.
Are Jewish Critics of Israel “Anti-Semites?”
The idea that criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “anti-Semitic”
would have to include increasing numbers of American Jews as well as an
increasing number of Israelis. Former Israeli Attorney General Michael Benyair
recently declared, “Calling it apartheid in the West Bank only is a mistake. The
apartheid regime is in all areas controlled by Israel, between the Sea and the
Jordan River. The distinction between democratic Israel and the West Bank it
controls is wrong…The solution to this is one of two things: granting equal
rights to the disenfranchised in the entire controlled area and the loss of the
Jewish majority, or ending the control of the disenfranchisers…and granting self-
determination to each community in its own territory. The passage of years does
not help to resolve the dilemma, but to exacerbate it.”
More and more prominent Jewish Americans are speaking out. In a statement for
Jewish Voice for Peace (Dec. 24, 2021), Wallace Shawn, actor, playwright and
essayist, whose father, William Shawn, was longtime editor of The New Yorker,
declared: “Jews have suffered so much over the centuries and have felt the
cruelty of which humans are capable. Although I’ve had good luck so far in my own
life, I feel that what has happened to my relatives and ancestors has affected me
and given me an opportunity, as a person with Jewish heritage, to be a few
minutes quicker than others to identify with those who are persecuted and
oppressed. Conversely, I am particularly horrified ——and Yes, I take it
personally—-when Jews draw the wrong lesson from the history of Jewish suffering,
and instead of feeling, ‘We understand what it is to be hunted down and
tormented, and so we need to stand up for those who are hunted down and
tormented,’ they concluded instead, ‘We know what can happen to Jews, so in
fighting on behalf of Jews, no tactics should be considered impermissible or
immoral.’”
Shawn laments that he when he pays his taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, “…
the state of Israel gets to buy weapons that are used to subjugate, terrorize and
kill Palestinians. I’m involved in this struggle, and I’m involved on the wrong
side….At this particular moment, the Palestinian people need our support more
than ever before, because it seems that an increasing number of Jews in Israel
have made the choice, impossible as this may seem, to simply accept the hideous
status quo as a normal condition that may never change.”
Israel Does Not Share American Jewish Values
What is becoming clear to increasing numbers of Jewish Americans is that Israel
does not share their values. This is true on many levels. American Jews believe
in religious freedom and separation of church and state. Israel, quite to the
contrary, is a theocracy with state appointed and paid chief rabbis who control
Jewish religious practices from an ultra-Orthodox perspective. There is no
religious freedom for Reform Jews. Reform rabbis cannot preside over weddings or
funerals and their conversions are not recognized. Indeed, there is less freedom
for non-Orthodox Jews——the overwhelming majority in the U.S.—-in Israel than
anyplace in the Western world. Israel has no civil marriage. If a Jewish Israeli
wishes to marry a Christian or Muslim, he or she must leave the country to do so.
Large numbers of Jewish Israelis, particularly among immigrants from Russia, are
not considered “Jewish” by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate because they may not have
a Jewish mother. They are forbidden by law to marry in Israel.
Israeli law bears no relationship to laws regulating marriage in Western
democracies. When Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, each religious
community was overseen by its own authorities. And so it is today, Muslims in
Israel wed under Muslim authority; Christians under Christian authority; Druze
under Druze authority. Jewish marriages fall under the authority of the ultra-
orthodox rabbinate, an official part of the Israeli government. There are no
sanctioned intermarriages and there are no civil marriages. Same sex marriages
are against the law.
In recent days, Christianity in Israel has come under increasing attack by far-
right ultra-Orthodox groups. Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theopholis
III, in an article published in the British newspaper Orthodox Times (Jan. 8,
2020) wrote: “Our churches are threatened by Israeli radical fringe groups. At
the hands of these Zionist extremists, the Christian community in Jerusalem is
suffering greatly. Our brothers and sisters are the victims of hate crimes.” He
charged that a rising number of assaults against Christians and church buildings
are an attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem’s Old City, home
to Christians, Jews and Muslims, and their holy sites.
Christians Under Attack In Israel
On December 13, 2021, a statement was issued by 13 Christian leaders and Heads of
Churches in Jerusalem which expressed their “grave concern” that the Israeli
government’s commitment to provide a safe home for Christians in the Holy Land
“is betrayed by the failure of local politicians, officials and law enforcement
agencies to curb the activities of the radical groups who regularly intimidate
local Christians, assault priests and clergy and desecrate holy sites and church
properties.”
The population of Christians has steadily declined over the years. In 1922,
Christians made up about 10 per cent of the population of the Holy Land. By 2019,
that had declined to about 2 per cent. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the principal leader of the Church of England, and Hosam Naoum, the
Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, report that, “Someone lit a fire in the Church
of all Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus prayed the
night before he was crucified.”
Archbishop Naoum warned that radical Zionist groups are using systematic attacks
to drive the Christian community out of the country: “Throughout the Holy Land,
Christians have become the target of frequent , and sustained attacks by fringe
radical groups since 2012. There have been countless incidents of physical and
verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, attacks on Christian churches,
with holy sites regularly vandalized and desecrated and ongoing intimidation of
local Christians who simply seek to worship freely and go about their daily
lives. Local officials…are not curbing the activities of radical groups.”
Non-Jews Are Second-Class Citizens
Beyond this, American Jews believe in equal rights for all, regardless of race,
religion or ethnicity. In Israel, those who are not considered Jewish by law are
second class citizens. Those who live in the occupied territories have almost no
legal rights at all. As the illegal occupation grows, the indigenous Palestinian
population is subject to violence and dispossession. The Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (Dec. 15, 2021) published a report with the headline, “Violent attacks by
settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank up nearly 50% from last year.”
According to the JTA, “Violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank are
nothing new. But the phenomenon has reached alarming new levels of frequency this
year. Violent attacks perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians on the West
Bank exceeded last year’s attacks by nearly 50%, according to a report by the
Times of Israel. In 2021, there have been 397 attacks so far, compared to 272 in
2020…based on data from the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security.”
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the violence was particularly evident
during the annual Fall olive harvest, often a time of violent attacks on
Palestinians, who spend their days harvesting from trees located outside their
villages, which are often close to Jewish settlements. Dozens of videos of
violent attacks and photos of bloodied farmers and shepherds and the Israeli
activists who sometimes accompany them have been shared with social media.
B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, reports that settler farms have
taken over nearly 7,000 acres in the last five years.
Settlers Attack Palestinians
B’Tselem issued a report in December highlighting the attacks originating from
settler farms and reported that settler ranchers are actively assaulting
Palestinians whose land they have stolen. Palestinian journalist Basil al-Adraa
writes: “They organize very big attacks on us, especially on Saturdays and on the
Jewish holidays. They use these holidays to collect dozens of settlers. They come
armed with slingshots, sticks and hammers.”
According to B’Tselem, “Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has
misappropriated more than 2 million Dunhams of land there for its purposes,
including building and expanding settlements and paving roads for settlers
(only). Some areas have officially been taken over by the state, others through
daily acts of settler violence. These two seemingly unrelated tracks are both
forms of state violence: the Israeli…regime and its representatives actively aid
and abet the settlers’ violence as part of a strategy to foment the takeover of
Palestinian land. The state fully supports and assists these acts of violence and
its agents sometimes participate in them directly. As such, settler violence is a
form of government policy.”
In a single year, 2021, Israel has leveled a Bedouin village 14 times. According
to Middle East Monitor (Dec. 21, 2021), “Israeli authorities yesterday demolished
the homes of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Al-Araqeeb in the southern Negev
region for the 196th time since the year 2000. The demolition of the tents
sheltering Al-Araqeeb’s residents during the winter storm came less than a month
after the village was last levelled on 24 November. This is the 14th time that
the Israeli authorities have demolished the tents …since the start of the year.
The village was first levelled in July 2010 and every time the residents rebuild
their tents and small homes…The village is one of 51 ‘unrecognized’ Arab villages
in the area and is constantly targeted for demolition ahead of plans to Judaize
the Negev by building homes for new Jewish communities.”
Bulldozers Demolish Everything
Israeli bulldozers, it is reported, “…which Bedouins are charged for, demolish
everything, from the trees to the water tanks, but Bedouin residents have tried
to rebuild every time. Bedouin in the Negev must abide by the same laws as Jewish
Israelis. They pay taxes but do not enjoy the same rights and services as Jews in
Israel and the state has repeatedly refused to connect the towns to the national
grid, water supplies and other amenities.”
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has become so extreme that even members of the
Israeli government have spoken out in recent days. Yair Golan, a former deputy
military chief now serving as deputy economy minister, said that Jewish settlers
residing in an illegal outpost in the northern West Bank were “subhuman.” A
member of the liberal Meretz party, Golan declared that, “People who settle in an
area that was legally evacuated, nobody should be there. When I was commander of
the Judea and Samaria division, I didn’t let anyone return to settle there.” He
was referring to the outpost of Homesh, which was evacuated in 2005, then was
partially resettled and in December 2021 became a flashpoint for violence.
Golan declared that, “These people who come to settle there, riot in the adjacent
Palestinian village of Borja, smash gravestones, they are carrying out a pogrom.
We, the Jewish people, who suffered pogroms throughout history, are now carrying
out pogroms on others. These aren’t people. They are subhuman, despicable people.
They should not get any support and they should be removed by force from there.”
(The Times of Israel, (Jan. 6, 2022)
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called Golan’s statement, “Shocking…
bordering on blood libel.” Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the
settlers: “The settlers are pioneering Zionists who settle the land of our
ancestors. After this shameful statement, taken directly from Nazi terminology
against the Jewish people, Bennett must fire Yair Golan today.”
“This Is Not Our Judaism”
Golan doubled down. He declared, “In my remarks, I referred to the destroyers of
(Muslim) graves, attackers of innocents, destroyers of property. How should one
treat such people? How should one call such people? It is time to tell the truth.
This is not our Judaism.” A former deputy chief of staff of the IDF, Golan, in a
2016 speech for Holocaust Remembrance Day, said he discerned “processes” in
Israel reminiscent of those that preceded the Holocaust in Europe.
Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians goes back to the very beginning of the
state. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (Dec. 9, 2021) published an article with the
headline “Classified Documents Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ‘48—and what
Israeli officials Knew.” It reported that, in the village of Al-Dawayima, troops
of the 8th Brigade massacred about 100 people, although the number of Palestinian
victims later grew to 120. One of the soldiers who witnessed the event testified
before a government committee in November 1948: ‘There was no battle and no
resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children.
The children were killed by smashing their skulls with sticks. There wasn’t a
house without people killed in it.”
The Haaretz report of nearly 5,000 words is filled with stories of Palestinian
elders who were lined up against various walls and massacred. Haaretz reported in
2013 on how Israel’s founding father and first Prime Minister had fabricated
history to protect Israel’s image. Document #GL-18/17028, which was found in the
Israeli military archive, demonstrated how the story of Palestinians who “fled,
supposedly at the behest of Arab governments, was invented by the Israelis
themselves.” As the latest revelations in Haaretz show, Palestinians who remained
due to their disability, age or illness were massacred “in the most horrific way
imaginable.” other massacres reported by Haaretz included those at Reineh, Meron
and Al-Bur.
Moral Foundations Are Undermined
Haim Moshe Shapira, the Minister of Immigration and Health, was quoted as saying,
during a meeting of the government committee, that, “In my opinion, all our moral
foundations have been undermined and we need to look for ways to curb these
instincts.”
David Ben-Gurion advocated for "compulsory transfer” of Palestinians. In 1937, he
established a Committee for Population Transfer within the Jewish Agency.
“Transfer,” of course, is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, and was carried out
at a mass level in 1948 and again in 1967. One of its perpetrators, Joseph Weitz,
director of the Jewish National Fund’s Land Settlement Department, wrote, “It
must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples…The only
solution is a Land of Israel without Arabs…There is no way but to transfer the
Arabs from here…”
Israeli historian Tom Segev notes that, “Disappearing the Arabs lay at
the heart of the Zionist dream and was also a necessary condition of its
realization…With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability
of forced transfer—-or its morality.”
Violating Traditional Jewish Values
Throughout the world, more and more Jewish voices are being heard in criticism of
the manner in which Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is violating traditional
Jewish values. A French Jewish Journalist, a former committed Zionist who lived
and studied in Israel, has written a much-discussed book entitled “The State of
Israel Vs. The Jews.” Sylvan Cypel, once a senior editor at Le Monde, is the son
of a Ukrainian-born father who fled to France in 1938 before the Nazis wiped out
his entire family. He later led the French Labor Zionist movement. Cypel grew up
in that movement. He went to Israel after high school and was drafted and served
as an IDF paratrooper. He returned to France a committed Zionist.
Later, he returned to Israel to attend university in 1969. He found that his
fellow students spoke about Palestinians “exactly the same way” French settlers
talked about Algerian Arabs before Algeria’s war of independence. He was
increasingly alienated from the ethno-nationalist sentiments which surrounded
him. He recalls that, “As I became an increasingly active anti-Zionist, my life
in Israel got harder. My wife and I were ostracized because of our beliefs.” He
writes that, “the yawning gap between the promise and the reality of Zionism”
drove him away from Israel. He saw it was becoming a society no idealist could
bear, “a racist, bullying little superpower.”
What he discovered was “total contempt for international law, the belief that
might makes right…and a colonial mentality of domination…making war crimes
committed against civilian populations part of Israel’s official strategy.” He
laments Israel’s “congenital nativism” and “its ability to deny basic rights to
an entire people, without seeming to suffer any political consequences.”
Abandoning A Genuinely Jewish Worldview
Beyond this, he saw a state which proclaimed itself “Jewish” abandoning “a
worldview that characterized Judaism in the modern era, one primarily rooted in a
progressive conception of humanity and society, with only a small, determined
minority fighting it all.” He emphasizes the factors which make Israel’s
occupation particularly oppressive: the forcible expulsions of Palestinians from
their lands, the occupation which followed and the policy of making Palestinian
lives unbearable, “making them feel sick of life, in hopes they will eventually
leave.” He noted that, “Palestinians are shot dead every week by soldiers, who
are never prosecuted, even when there is no dispute about the facts.”
Israel, Cypel argues, has gone from denying its expulsion of Palestine’s
indigenous Arab population, because of an understanding that such a policy
violated Jewish moral and ethical values, to a growing acceptance of it as
desirable and legitimate. He states that, “To Jews any ideology that prizes the
preeminence of blood should bring back terrible memories.” And the idea of
annexing Palestinian territory enjoys growing popular support. A 2019 poll found
that 72% of Israeli Jews favor annexation, in whole or in part. Cypel writes
that, “There is a widespread inability to see Palestinians and black Africans as
human beings…Israel sets the Jews accompanying its destiny on the path to
abandoning that which made Judaism’s culture and glory in the modern age: the
multifaceted engagement in progress and a rejection of racism in all its forms.”
Israel Is “Bad For The Jews”
Israel, Cypel concludes, “is bad for the Jews, a belligerently intolerant, faith-
driven ethno-state at odds with the pluralistic democracies it originally sought
to join.
As Zionism unravels in the American Jewish community—-and in Jewish communities
around the world——-the idea that AIPAC and other establishment organizations
speak for large numbers of Jewish Americans becomes increasingly difficult to
promote. The older moral and ethical Jewish tradition is reasserting itself.
Calling it “anti-Semitic” shows us how much Zionism has distorted the very nature
of Jewish Identity.
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