[Peace-discuss] Another Jew talks about Zionism

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

I have a sort of fundamental – if not naïve – question on reading things
like this.  Given the definition of "anti-Semitism,” why isn’t being
anti-Palestinian being  "anti-Semitism” since Palestinians are Semites?
Thus, the aggression being carried out against them by Israel is as much
"anti-Semitism” as being anti-Zionistic; or is it just a case of feuding
among Semites?  To change the wording and phraseology from “anti-Zionist” to
“post-Zionist” is just another word game used to  make one’s position sound
nice and high fluting and less offensive; it reminds me of the use of “post
Modern” in the art world.  Wouldn’t “post Modern” be “futuristic” and as
such non-existent?  “Post Zionist” would assume that Zionism no longer
exists and that everyone has gone beyond it; but everyone knows that is not
the case.  It still is alive and well, living around the world and being
pursued by many in an effort to not only establish and maintain the Jewish
homeland but expand its territory and control.

 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Morton K.
Brussel
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 10:11 AM
To: peace-discuss Discuss
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Another Jew talks about Zionism

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-weiss/rethinking-zionism_b_156955.html

 

Dana
<http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_n
ame=draft_draft_draftthe_idea_of_i>  Goldstein, whose thoughtful
condemnation of the Gaza slaughter after years of reserve I welcome, is a
little uncomfortable with the embrace.
<http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_n
ame=postzionism#112060> 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  <http://www.davidzellnik.com/> 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
<http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/sf-chron-says-breakup-of-jewi
sh-monolith-on-gaza-will-give-obama-room-to-move.html> 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.

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