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BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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In
recent days charges of”antisemitism” have been used to limit funds to
Harvard University, to deport foreign students at American
universities, and to silence criticism of Israel in a variety of ways.
In
recent years, there has been an effort to redefine “antisemitism” to
include not only bigotry toward Jews and Judaism, but also criticism of
Israel and Zionism. In May 2022, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared that,”Anti-Zionism is
antisemitism.” He stated that groups calling for equal rights for
Palestinians in Israel are “extremists” and equated liberal critics of
Israel with white supremacists.
Some
Israelis admit that the equating of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a
tactic to silence criticism of Israel. Shulamit Aloni, former Minister
of Education, and winner of the Israel Prize, describes how this works:
“It’s a trick. We always use it . When from Europe, somebody
criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When in the United
States, people are critical of Israel, then they are antisemites.”
Until
recently, many now forget, Zionism has been a minority view among
Jews. Most Jews believe that their Jewish identity rests on their
religious faith, not on any “national” identification. Jews in the
United States and other countries do not view themselves as living in
“exile,” as Zionist philosophy holds. In 1841, in the dedication of
America’s first Reform synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi
Gustav Poznanski told the congregation, “This country is our Palestine,
this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”
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 Jews being in exile and to a Messiah who
would miraculously restore Jews throughout the world to the historic
land of Israel and who would rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. The
prayerbook eliminated all prayers for a return to Zion.”
The
distinguished Rabbi Abraham Geiger said that the essence of Judaism
was ethical monotheism. The Jewish people were a religious community
destined to carry on the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,”
to bear witness to God and His moral law. The dispersion was not a
punishment for sins but part of God’s plan whereby they were to
disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism.
Many
Orthodox Jews agreed with this assessment of Zionism. In 1929, Rabbi
Aaron Samuel Tamarat wrote that the very notion of a sovereign Jewish
state as a spiritual center was “a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate
‘purpose.” He noted that, “Judaism at root is not some religious
concentration which may be localized or situated in a single territory.
Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality’ in the sense of modern nationalism,
fit to be woven into the three-foldedness of ‘homeland, army and heroic
songs.’ No, Judaism is Torah, ethics and exaltation of spirit. If
Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be reduced to the confines of any
particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘Its measure is
greater than the earth.’”
One
of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel, who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said,
“Judaism is not a religion of space and does not worship the soil. So,
too, the State of Israel is not the climax of Jewish history, but a test
of the integrity of the Jewish people and the competence of Israel.”
In
1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an audience of Zionist
activists against the temptation to create a state imbued with “a
narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already
had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.”
Another
prominent German Jew, the philosopher Martin Buber, spoke out in 1942
against the “aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of
international maneuvers.” From Jerusalem, in the midst of the
hostilities that broke out after Israel unilaterally declared
independence in May 1948, Buber cried with despair, “This sort of
Zionism blasphemes the name of Zion; it is nothing More than one of the
crude forms of nationalism.”
There
are more and more Jewish voices expressing views that the ADL and the
Israeli government categorize as “antisemitic.” An organization called
Reform Jews for Justice”:issued a statement declaring, “We stand
together for justice in solidarity with Palestine. We call…for an end
to U.S. military aid to Israel…we envision a Reform Jewish movement
that…rejects a conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.” Groups
such as Jewish Voice for Peace have frequently been called “antisemitic”
by those who wish to silence them.
The
history of Israel is far more complicated than many Americans realize.
Salim Tamari,a sociologist at Birzeit University in the West Bank,
points out that, “Sending the Jewish refugees to Palestine was a
byproduct of European guilt , but a hypocritical kind of guilt because
they did not want to bear the social and economic cost of absorbing the
refugees themselves. The vast majority of Jewish refugees who came were
not Zionists. They did not have a choice of where to go.”
Free
speech, sadly, is under attack in our country—-on many fronts. When it
comes to the Middle East, an important way to bolster free speech is to
make clear that the idea that defending Palestinian rights and
criticizing Israeli policy is not “antisemitic” and that making such a
charge is simply an effort to end free speech on this subject.