At a Time of Genocide, Division and Disunity is a Luxury We Cannot Afford
When I ‘came
out’ as an anti-Zionist Jew in 1970 it was a lonely experience. I lived in
Liverpool where my father was a rabbi in a community of about 8,000 people (now less than 2,000).
The only
other Jews I knew were in a socialist group which I joined at the age of 16 (expelled at 19!), the International
Socialists (now the SWP). It was thanks
to them that I read my first anti-Zionist pamphlet, the Class Nature of Israeli
Society, by Moshe Machover, Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr.
This
pamphlet, which first appeared as an article in the New Left Review, helped
me to make sense of my instinctive hostility to Zionism as a Marxist. Zionism I began to see as an
exclusivist ideology and movement whose only concern was the Jews. This was before the oppression and
dispossession of the Palestinians and the Apartheid nature of Israeli society
had become widely known.
At that
time there was no Palestine solidarity movement in Britain and much of the left
had illusions in Israel. Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, two stalwarts of the Labour
left were members of Labour Friends of Israel.
Today everything is different. Jewish anti-Zionists are not rare. Zionism is no longer assumed to be the natural home of Jews. Its alliance today with the far-right – the EDL, Tommy Robinson, Bannon, Orban etc. – is well known, clear and unmistakable but half a century ago things were different.
interview with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer
on Israel’s Channel 2 about why he calls himself a 'white Zionist'
Hasbara,
the Zionist version of propaganda still held sway. The Labour Zionists who had
formed the government of Israel from 1948-77 continuously spoke of peace whilst they waged war. As I wrote in Tribune in July 1984, there was nothing
Likud had done that Labour hadn’t done before it.
It took the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 for the scales to fall from the Left’s eyes. Benn and Heffer resigned from LFI. For much of the left Israel had been an oasis of socialism in the Middle East. Even Hannah Arendt was fooled into believing that the Kibbutzim were ‘perhaps the most promising of all social experiments made in the 20th century.’ [The Jew As Pariah, p. 185.
The
kibbutzim were held to be models of socialism with their collective
organisation and their lack of private property. No one told me that they were
racially exclusive societies that banned Arabs from membership or that they had
been established over the ruins of confiscated Arab villages whose inhabitants
had been expelled. Nor had we been told that they had been established as the
most effective and economical method of colonisation and were stockade and
watchtower settlements.
Israel was
not founded for the benefit of Jews. The West does not support Israel because
it calls itself a ‘Jewish’ state. As James Baldwin noted in 1979:
Whenever
criticism of Israel is made our rulers profess to be concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’. It is the only form of racism they are concerned about. Even Donald Trump, a bigot
and racist for every season, is not only concerned about Jewish students (Zionist
Jewish students naturally) suffering from anti-Semitism on campuses but he has cut federal funding from those universities and colleges which allow
Palestine solidarity protests on campus.
This is at
the same time that he is insisting that diversity and anti-racist programmes be
ended, migrants be deported and that Confederate flags and symbols be preserved.
You would
have to be stupid (unfortunately many people are) not to see how the rich and powerful,
not least racists like Starmer, are using Jewish people and what they
call ‘anti-Semitism’ (i.e. anti-Zionism) as a means to intimidate and
frighten off support for Palestine and opposition to Zionism.
The same is true in this country. The racist Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, has used the pretext of Jewish Sabbath Services to reroute, ban and delay Palestinian marches on the grounds that they might cause offence to Zionist Jews. Jewish residents of Swiss Cottage are the pretext for banning demonstrations against Israel's racist ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli.
British and
Western support for Zionism is not because of their concern for Jews but
because of their own imperial interests. Jews constitute the moral alibi for
imperialism in the Middle East.
It is for
that reason alone that it is incumbent upon Jews who are not Zionists to say in
both words and deed that what Israel does is not in my name.
Jews in
America, for a number of reasons have been in advance of British Jews. From May
1-4 over 2,000 members of Jewish Voice for Peace gathered in Baltimore for a
member’s conference (see Massive JVP member meeting
vows to fight Zionism, fascism, and the weaponization of antisemitism).
In the United
States 40% of young Jews
see Israel as an apartheid state and one suspects that that figure is far higher today in the midst of the current genocide. No one who is progressive and Jewish has
any excuse any longer for neutrality. Non-Zionism is no longer an option. It is fence sitting.
As Martin Luther King said ‘The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.’
Archbishop Desmond
Tutu observed that if
you are neutral at a time of injustice you have chosen the side of the
oppressor.
Today it is
not difficult to be Jewish and anti-Zionist. On April 10, the Zionists’
propaganda organ, the Jewish Chronicle, woke
up to the fact that young Jews were turning against Zionism and carried an article ‘Who are the young Jews turning against
Israel?’ by Jane Prinsley.
Former General
Amiram Levin
Of course Jane, like all the Jewish
Chronicle’s journalists is a Zionist. If she wasn’t she wouldn’t be working for
them. The JC had started to realise that ‘Radical new groups for Jews who do
not support Zionism have formed on campuses up and down the UK’. It went on
to say that
‘radical Jewish student groups have emerged to cater to Jews who do not
support Zionism. From Leeds, Liverpool, Brighton and Birkbeck to Edinburgh,
Warwick, Cardiff, Cambridge and UCL, students have formed Jewish communities,
or kehillot.’
This followed an article by Karen Glaser
who used to be a features writer on the New Statesman where she wrote what I called the most ‘trivial, trite and superficial’ article the
NS has ever run. Its subtitle was ‘How Karen Glaser’s ex-boyfriend had a very
very narrow escape!’ The article was about how Ms Glaser had kicked her Corbyn
supporting, socialist boyfriend out of the nest at 2 am in the morning because
he doubted that Corbyn was quite the anti-Semite that his girlfriend imagined.
So the article ‘I can’t discuss Israel with my anti-Zionist
kids – it’s pointless’ was on a par with Glaser’s normal output.
It described how 11 year old Talia had given her mother back the Star of David
she had been given as a baby and further that she was ‘resigning as a Jew’.
Not only that but Talia had disposed of her mother’s
big Israeli flag! Bright and intelligent child you might think. Clearly someone
to interview. Karen though thought differently:
Zionist parents whose children are scared of being associated with Israel; youngsters who have internalised antisemitism, in particular its political iteration, anti-Zionism. Their parents say these young people openly loathe the Jews’ nation state. And anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem has grown exponentially since the October pogroms.
Karen Glaser is nothing if not stupid. That after
all is why the Jewish Chronicle sought her out. It probably hadn’t occurred to
her that it isn’t internalisation of anti-Semitism but detestation of burning
children alive and bombing hospitals that is making Jewish youngsters puke at
the mere mention of the ‘Jewish’ state. Talia doesn’t sound like someone who is
intimidated.
Naturally I wrote a letter to the JC suggesting that it might have been a
good idea to interview the children concerned and find out their views. And
equally naturally the JC refused to
print it. The last thing the JC wants
to admit is that there may be good reasons why young Jewish kids detest Jewish racial
nationalism.
Shortly after these articles 36 members of the Board of Deputies signed a letter to the Financial Times. It was not an anti-Zionist letter. Far from it. But even hardened Zionists had begun to realise that they were defending the indefensible. A war driven by neo-Nazis in Israel's government.
Equally predictable was the reaction of the genocide
supporting President of the BOD, Phil Rosenberg, and the rest of the Board's Executive. There is no atrocity, no genocide that they cannot support. The presence of open fascists in Israel's government worries them not. They immediately suspended Harriett Goldenberg,
the Vice-Chair of its International Division and opened disciplinary proceedings
against all 36 signatories.
Moshe Yalon –
Ben Gvir & Smotrich are Mein Kamp Reversed
Being good Zionists the last thing they wanted to see is any discussion over the rights and wrongs of the actions of what I have called ‘Hitler’s Bastard Offspring’. The BOD is there to support whatever Israel does, right or wrong. Jewish neo-Nazis like Itamar Ben-Gvir trouble them not. After all even Gvir and Smotrich are Jewish and Zionism is about the unity of the Jewish tribe.
Rosenberg
then issued a disingenuous statement that
proclaimed ‘The Board of Deputies is a democratic organisation’ without mentioning the suspension of one officer and the disciplinary process
(in the form of a complaint) that was taken against the dissenters.
It is clear that the worm is beginning to turn. That all those who have
not become overt fascists and racists, like Rosenberg and his Executive, have
developed qualms about the genocide being conducted against 2 million Palestinians
in the name of a war against Hamas.
It is therefore incumbent upon Jewish anti-Zionists to come together and
form one united organisation like Jewish Voice for Peace in the United
States. At the moment we have a plethora
of organisations. I am in Jewish Network for Palestine,
there is Jewish Voice for Labour,
formed in the Labour Party during the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against Corbyn
and there is the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Organisation
and the newcomer on the block Na'amod, which
contains a few Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. Na'amod is the most moderate
and probably the largest.
There is also the older Jews for Justice for Palestinians
which is a 2 states group that does very little except canvass for signatures
for its founding statement and there is also Independent Jewish Voices
which made a big splash when it was created in 2007 but which is now inactive.
Its website was last updated a year ago and its last meeting was over four
years ago.
By my estimates there are about 2,000 people who are members of the
above organisations. There are undoubted differences between people but there
is no reason why there should be so many organisations.
JfJP and IJV are not membership organisations. Clearly Na'amod, in so
far as it contains some Zionists, will not be able to join a unified anti-Zionist
organisation but there is no reason why the 3 anti-Zionist Jewish organisations
cannot come together into one single anti-Zionist Jewish organisation.
Although JVL has not explicitly declared itself as anti-Zionist, in
practice it is. There will obviously be differences over things like one or two
states though the consensus today is that two states cannot be achieved given
the number of settlers in the West Bank.
However we owe it to the Palestinians who are undergoing such terrible
massacres and pogroms to put aside minor differences in the name of not only
unity but effectiveness. A single united anti-Zionist Jewish group would be a pole of
attraction, in particular to young Jews who do not wish to have to bear the
strain and the stain of being seen to support genocide in the name of Jews.
Most Jews who have grown up with the exploitation by Zionism of the memory of
the holocaust find it strange that the most ardent supporters of Zionism today
are the neo-Nazi and far right in politics.
When Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump and Viktor Orban are on your side,
with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer declaring that he
is a White Zionist, many Jews will decide that they have had enough of Zionism and
its quest for Jewish racial purity. It is the duty of the existing anti-Zionist
groups to facilitate that journey not to erect obstacles to it.
Tony Greenstein
