In response to this post about the toxic behaviour of zionists, commenter "zoombats" mentioned an article in The Guardian by Kenan Malik about how Jewish people who criticize Israel for abusing the Palestinians, or for being non-zionists (which is to say they espouse a universal humanitarianism and believe that states based on exclusionary grounds -- religious, ethnic, linguistic, whatever --- are illegitimate) are "Un-Jews" or "self-hating/antisemitic Jews."
I suppose it's an interesting question whether non-zionist Jews felt that zionists were "Un-Jews" if they thought that zionism was antithetical to Judaism. Personally I doubt it. non-zionist Jews probably just thought/think that their zionist brethren are wrong.
It starts off with the mid-20th Century case of Jewish activist-journalist for the Jewish Chronicle, William Zuckerman:
Zuckerman might have been embraced by the Jewish establishment as a model public figure but for one problem. He was critical of the policies of the newly created Jewish state, especially towards Palestinian refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom had fled or been driven out and were now barred from returning. “The land now called Israel,” Zuckerman wrote, “belongs to the Arab refugees no less than to any Israeli.”
Zuckerman’s advocacy for Palestinian refugees alarmed Israeli diplomats who successfully organised a behind-the-scenes campaign to prevent his work from being published in the Jewish press. “To have induced the Jewish Chronicle to dispense with the services of Mr Zuckerman is to have performed a real mitzvah,” rejoiced one official.
The story of Zuckerman and his erasure is one of many told by Geoffrey Levin in his new book Our Palestine Question, on the forgotten history of Jewish dissent in America in the decades following the founding of Israel. It is one of several accounts that will be published this year exploring the history of American Jewish opposition to Zionism and support for the Palestinian cause.
Anyway, it's a good article. I do have an issue with the way some of the issues are framed though. For instance the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023 and Israel's response:
These studies provide an essential backstory to one of the keenest debates today within Jewish communities: how to respond to the murderous Hamas attack on 7 October and to Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza.
Perhaps things had to be described in the traditional hypocritical way in order for Malik to be permitted to get such a radical article (for our propaganda system) pusblished in the first place. Or, perhaps, Malik has internalized the slanted persepctive of mainstream culture. For my part, I must always insist that Hamas's attack be identified for what it was: An attempt to take Israeli hostages to exchange for Palestinian hostages kidnapped by the apartheid Israeli state's military and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that many of the Israelis killed on October 7th were slaughtered by the IDF. These facts are not in dispute and the paint a much different picture of the Hamas attack. Also, note the double-standard of describing the Hamas attack as "murderous" but Israel's genocidal assault as merely being "subsequent" to the "murderous" action of Hamas.
[ Before I forget, here is an EXCELLENT essay about Hamas from Robert M. Schaible at CommonDreams about Hamas and its history with Israel. ]
Immediately after mentioning the "murderous" Hamas attack and Israel's "subsequent" assault on Gaza we get the following:
For many Jews, the existential threat posed by Hamas gives Israel the right to take any measures necessary to eliminate the organisation.
Excuse me; but just how does an "existential threat" justify killing 10,000 children? Let's break that ridiculous, disgusting, insane, evil premise down for a bit. First of all, if you read that CommonDreams article linked to above you will see that Hamas does NOT pose an existential threat to Israel. Also, even if you FALSELY attribute all the Israeli deaths on October 7th, 2023 to Hamas (which would be WRONG because many of those Israelis were slaughtered by the IDF) Hamas would still not pose an existential threat to Israel. And, finally, even if Hamas posed an existential threat to Israel, how does indiscriminately slaughtering innocent Palestinian men, women and children help Israel to defeat Hamas?
Framing the genocide of Palestinians as a "war" against Hamas obscures the obvious reality that Israel is DELIBERATELY slaughtering Palestinian civilians simply because they are Palestinian. Even framing things as if Hamas is using "human shields" and the IDF is wantonly demonstrating a criminal indifference for Palestinian lives by indiscriminately bombing to get at Hamas is inaccurate, because Israel consciously wants to obliterate ALL Palestinians, Hamas or not, because Israel is a murderously racist apartheid state run by religious degenerates.
Which is why Jewish people who reject zionism believe the following:
For others, whatever the horrors of the Hamas attack, the destruction of Gaza, the deaths of more than 25,000 people and the displacement of almost the entire population is unconscionable and cuts against the grain of Jewish ethical traditions.
In other words, these non-zionist Jews believe that humanity is humanity, human rights are human rights, oppression is oppression, wrong is wrong, no matter the religious-cultural makeup of those doing the killing and those doing the dying.
So, on the one side we have racist monsters and on the other side we have decent people. The decent people insist that 2+2=4 and the racist monsters believe something else that is stupid and insane.
This cleavage has led to fractious debates over what it is to be Jewish and the meaning of antisemitism.
So my problem with this is that it is at all framed as some sort of genuine debate. This error starts with mischaracterizing Hamas and the Palestinians as some inscrutable threat, some irrational "other" that defies rational analysis. From this distortion, some self-interested parties can pretend that there is a legitimate debate over how to deal with it. Should we gleefully bomb them to fragments or not? And, is disagreeing with killing them all, or (even worse) criticizing killing them all "antisemitic"?
Still and all, it is an important essay. It goes on to talk about the [manufactured] crisis of campus antisemitism in the USA, the censorship of Jewish critics of Israel in Germany, and other issues, and it is pretty clear that Malik sympathizes with those humanitarian Jewish critics and disagrees with tarring them with the broad brush of antisemitism.
It's just that I think it's been too long that we have treated what is, in essence, a garbage perspective of being deserving of respectful debate. There are so many idiotic belief systems that pollute our world that we continue to have to endure and it would be better if they were treated with the absolute contempt they deserve.
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