[Peace-discuss] Re: Another Jew talks about Zionism

[C. G. Estabrook]

I'd say, "Better latke than never!" (and blame it on Wayne's influence), but 
there's no sense in which you've been a pancake on this issue... (or, as we say 
at my house, "Leigh Viva!" [לביבה]...) --CGE

David Green wrote:
> Mort,
> 
> This is an incisive post by Philip Weiss, who spends most of his energy on
> discourse with other Jews in New York. I'm not as interested in this issue as
> I once was, which will come as a relief to most of the people on this list
> who haven't yet pressed the delete key. Zionism was a powerful ideology
> toward establishing a Jewish state, and up to 1967 in attracting Jewish
> immigrants, absorbing Jews from Arab and other non-European countries,
> assigning Arab non-Jewish Israelis to 4th class citizenship at best, and
> maintaining the siege mentality that led to the 1967 war and subsequent
> occupation. Obviously, it still is a powerful motivator among settler
> fanatics, in a religious manifestation that was of course not intended by the
> founders (although territorial expansion was).
> 
> Ideologies outlive their usefulness, and its harder and harder to attribute
> Israel's behavior to Zionist ideology, in my opinion. In fact, I would see
> Zionism per se as having almost nothing to do with Israel as it now exists
> and behaves. The ideology is greatly overshadowed by material realities,
> facts on the ground, power and domination--and, of course, it's choice to be
> an American surrogate. The Jewish state is like any other state at this
> point; the people who run it do so for their own aggrandizement; along with
> that goes racism, militarism, neoliberalism, etc. Zionist ideology is now
> windowdressing, intended more for American Jews than Israeli Jews.
> 
> I understand that those dissenters who seek an alternative need to articulate
> their positions and address the problems of Zionism and a Jewish state,
> especially those who are Jewish, especially in discussions with other Jews.
> Your post is from Philip Weiss, on whose blog I've attempted to participate.
> It's extremely informative and has become quite popular, if one can tell by
> the greatly increasing number of individuals who participate in the comments
> sections. In spite of all the nutcases it attracts, I think it's a positive
> interaction. The blog is also run by a guy named Adam Horowitz, who is more
> to my liking than Weiss, who is much too giddy about Obama, JStreet, etc.;
> and who is also obsessed with the Lobby.
> 
> What's concerns me, however, is that a basic Chomsky/Finkelstein leftist 
> Enlightenment orientation is not often clearly and plainly articulated (in my
> comments, I started referring to myself as a boring whitebread leftist
> socialist). There's too much time wasted on the Lobby, dual loyalty, etc.
> There's obvious and blatant anti-Semitism by some frequent commenters. Add to
> that the anti vs. post Zionist discussion. Having a state based on Jewish
> domination of non-Jews has obviously turned out to be a horrible idea, a
> moral and humanitarian catastrophe. But now we've got 6 million Jews living
> with five million Arabs in Israel and Palestine. Anti or post, Zionism is
> finished. The choice is either continued state-sponsored terrorism and a
> national security state vs. the Enlightenment and human decency.
> 
> If one has to make choices, anti-Zionism implies correctly that it's a racist
> ideology, and disregards the minimal (sadly) influence of bi-national Zionism
> as endorsed by Einstein, Chomsky, etc. Post Zionism asserts the validity of
> the original necessity of a homeland for the Jews, which was a terrible idea
> but now is a fact on the ground that we all have to deal with.
> 
> Just my 2 latkes.
> 
> DG
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> *From:* Morton K. Brussel <mkbrussel at comcast.net> *To:* peace-discuss Discuss
> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> *Cc:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> 
> *Sent:* Monday, January 12, 2009 10:11:00 AM *Subject:* Another Jew talks
> about Zionism
> 
> 
> _http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-weiss/rethinking-zionism_b_156955.html___
> 
> 
> _Dana Goldstein_ 
> <http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name=draft_draft_draftthe_idea_of_i>,
>  whose thoughtful condemnation of the Gaza slaughter after years of reserve I
> welcome, is a little uncomfortable with the embrace. _She points out_ 
> <http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=01&year=2009&base_name=postzionism#112060>
>  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_ <http://www.davidzellnik.com/> 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/_ 
> <http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/sf-chron-says-breakup-of-jewish-monolith-on-gaza-will-give-obama-room-to-move.html>.
>  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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