Rethinking Zionism
coaste...@yahoo.com
Philip Weiss
Author and Journalist, New York Observer and The Nation
Posted January 11, 2009 | 02:33 PM (EST)
Rethinking Zionism
Dana Goldstein, whose thoughtful condemnation of the Gaza slaughter
after years of reserve I welcome, is a little uncomfortable with the
embrace. She points out that I have identified myself as a non- or
anti-Zionist, and says that anti-Zionism is redolent of antisemitism.
She's a post-Zionist, she says. Goldstein's comments deserve a
response, especially at this moment in intellectual life, when so many
people are crowding the doorways of this conversation.
I also used to say post- or non-Zionist to avoid being negative. The
playwright David Zellnik told me that anti-Zionist felt to him like a
denial of Israel's considerable achievements and I respected David's
view. Now I've come to say that I'm an anti-Zionist for several
reasons.
First: My feelings are not neutral about Zionism; I don't like it. As
a Jew, I think about it a lot and there is nothing I can really feel
positive about outside of the Jewish pride and its historical
significance of it and its visionary component. All these elements
have lost their value: Zionism privileges Jews and justifies
oppression, and this appalls me. Saying I'm anti-Zionist is a sincere
expression of my minority-respecting worldview.
Second, Post-Zionist strikes me as an evasion. At this moment, Zionism
reigns in historical Palestine and in American Jewish leadership. To
say you're a post-Zionist is like saying you're a post-Communist
during the Stalin purges. You are tastefully separating yourself from
the world, dainty as an English person drinking tea with their little
finger in the air. Zionism remains a very powerful force in Middle
East affairs and American society. It's not helpful to those who are
trying to understand these matters to evade this fact or suggest that
post-Zionism is actually a real factor in, say, the life of Gaza City.
I urge people to take a stand if they find Zionist beliefs that
privilege 6 million Jews over 5-6 million non-Jews and that have
entailed apartheid on the West Bank and ethnic cleansing a supportable
ideology, especially in the age of our mutt president-to-be.
Third, anti-Zionism is an idealistic Jewish tradition. In fact, it
draws on the same visionary and If-you-dream-it feeling that Zionism
did 100 years ago, before the militants ruined it, and engages the
same young restless sensibilities and liberationist feeling as Zionism
did by imagining Israel as a state of its citizens, not a Jewish
state. We anti-Zionists can say with honor that anti-Zionists like
Rabbi Elmer Berger identified the problems with Zionism 60 years ago,
accurately when he said that Zionism meant contempt for the Arab
population, dependence on a backroom lobby in the United States, and
the introduction of dual loyalty into American Jewish life. All true.
Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and Norman Mailer all opposed
Zionism to one degree or another out of concerns with ethnocentrism--
didn't like its Is-it-good-for-the-Jews backbeat. These problems are
larger today than ever, especially post-Iraq-war and the Iraq war's
idiot stepson, Gaza.
Finally, declaring I'm anti-Zionist is a way of trying to make room in
American life for this view. Right now being critical of Israel means
that you can hurt your business, as a Bay Area professional told the
San Francisco Chronicle. True and disgusting. As Jimi Hendrix said
when he was changing attitudes: I'm going to wave my freak flag high!
As to the antisemitism point, the American Jewish Committee has said
the same thing: anti-Zionism is antisemitism. It thus conflates
Jewishness with Zionism, and this conflation is damaging the Jewish
experience around the world. When Dana says she worries about the
antisemitic suggestion of anti-Zionism, I feel a shadow of
censoriousness. There are things you can and can't say. Well, I am an
empowered Jew who has never experienced functional antisemitism ever
in my life, and my empowerment is also part of this conversation: I
insist on speaking about Jewish cultural/financial power in the U.S.
as a component of my Zionist critique. Do I think that Jews should be
denied power? No! Do I think that there should be quotas on Jewish
inclusion in elite institutions? No! Well: I would like Jewish
participation in mainstream media roundtables on the Middle East held
to 50 percent. That is my quota. These ideas have made some of my
readers uncomfortable. They've made me uncomfortable. I grew up in
fear of lurking antisemitism. But I have decided in my 50s that these
are things I think about all the time as a mature person, however
flawed I am, and I think they're important--so I am going to talk
about them.
And I would add that shutting down debate in the name of
"antisemitism" strikes me as selfish. Our phantom worries about a
second Holocaust take precedence over the real evidence that surrounds
us of man's inhumanity to man, not just man's inhumanity to Jews. And
our phantom worries mean that we cannot address the incredible,
everyday, real suffering of Palestinians that has been perpetrated
politically in large part by empowered American Jews who are all over
the media and political establishment, some of whom limit debate of
the issue by citing a possible infraction of our tremendous freedoms.
Believe me, when our freedoms are encroached upon, I will howl. Today
and tomorrow I howl for the Jewish leadership's actual crushing of the
Palestinian right of self-determination.
Honest truth
their own murders and thieves. Not leave it to Israel to arrest them.
> Rethinking Zionism
--
嚙踝蕭Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man嚙踝蕭s nature, there is
not one as irrational as anti-Semitism. 嚙皺 If the Jews are rich [these
fanatics] are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of
ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to take
advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it
is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells
in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to
his own land, he is prevented from doing so.嚙踝蕭
Lloyd George
coaste...@yahoo.com
> I think the problem is deeper then this, Palestinian's should deal with
> their own murders and thieves. Not leave it to Israel to arrest them.
>
> > Rethinking Zionism
Israeli Jews have spent sixty years doing their best to destroy
Palestinian society, grinding it to dust, limited only by the
political problems that created with the Western world. And you come
up with the bright idea that Israel is free from guilt? You have no
moral sense whatever.
>
> --
> “Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man’s nature, there is
> not one as irrational as anti-Semitism. … If the Jews are rich [these
> fanatics] are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of
> ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to take
> advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it
> is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells
> in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to
> his own land, he is prevented from doing so.”
>
> Lloyd George
Honest truth
Israel has nothing wrong
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/feature/lynch2a.htm
> And you come
> up with the bright idea that Israel is free from guilt?
--
嚙踝蕭Of all the extreme fanaticism which plays havoc in man嚙踝蕭s nature, there is
not one as irrational as anti-Semitism. 嚙皺 If the Jews are rich [these
fanatics] are victims of theft. If they are poor, they are victims of
ridicule. If they take sides in a war, it is because they wish to take
advantage from the spilling of non-Jewish blood. If they espouse peace, it
is because they are scared by their natures or traitors. If the Jew dwells
in a foreign land he is persecuted and expelled. If he wishes to return to
his own land, he is prevented from doing so.嚙踝蕭
Lloyd George