[Salon] IN THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY, ZIONISM IS UNRAVELING

IN THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY, ZIONISM IS UNRAVELING

BY

ALLAN C. BROWNFELD

———————————————————————————————————————————-

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 Price, 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.” Shocken 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 trrritories 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-Semitisn 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.