Jews Against the Occupation
Is it Anti-Semitic to be Anti-Zionist?
Zionism: A Dead-End in the Fight against Anti-Semitism
By Hadas Thier
I’m really glad this panel is happening and want to thank Palestine Activists Forum of New York for putting it on, because I think it’s critical for us to confront the question of whether its anti-Semitic to oppose the state of Israel. The urgency is immense today as Israel locks down almost a million Palestinians under constant curfew and cuts off the major centers affecting over 2 million people.
And for those of us who are active in the pro-Palestine movement, the onslaught of attacks claiming that we’re all anti-Semites has reached a fever pitch.
From Ariel Sharon, who accused anyone who demanded an investigation of Israel’s war crimes in Jenin of committing anti-Semitic "blood libel," all the way to liberal newspapers like the Voice which ran an article by Alissa Solomon that accused pro-Palestine activists as “tipping towards hate.”
All these accusations attempt to cover the real story of Israel’s continued aggression and occupation; they deflect criticism from Israel’s actions by attacking the critics.
In reality these attacks on our movement are based on lies and slander. Solomon claims San Francisco State University pro-Palestinian activists physically threatened pro-Israel activists at a rally in May while chanting "Hitler did not finish the job." But what she wrote as fact was actually the assertion of one of the pro-Israeli protesters. She left out that those claims were refuted by the General Union of Palestinian Students, who put out a statement saying, "We stand firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of racism." Video footage further supports the Union of Palestinian Students, showing racist slurs being hurled against Palestinian protesters.
We need to be clear that this is no time to be defensive about standing up against Israel’s crimes. As Alexander Cockburn put it in the Nation, "[T]he left really has nothing to apologize for, but those who accuse it of anti-Semitism certainly do. They’re apologists for policies put into practice by racists, ethnic cleansers, and, in Sharon’s case, an unquestioned war criminal who should be in the dock for his conduct."
Anti-Semitism does exist. It exists in the Arab world, just as it does elsewhere in the world, including among racists who support Israel because they hate Arabs even more than Jews. But there’s no necessary correlation between opposing the racism, occupation and repression of Israel and anti-Semitism. And there’s absolutely no contradiction at all between opposing anti-Semitism and opposing the political project of Zionism—that is, the construction and defense of a Jewish state on stolen land in Palestine.
Israel’s supporters claim that Israel and Judaism are one in the same, and insist that all Jews’ interests are wound up in Israel’s fate. They claim that no one who isn’t Jewish or Israeli could understand the fear they live in. Besides the absurdity of that claim, which leaves out the far greater fear of Palestinians living in the occupied territories under full-scale military attack, I do want to say as a Jew, as someone who was born in Israel and has family living today in Jerusalem: It’s up Jews and non-Jews alike to stand up to Israel’s crimes. Israel has never had anything to do with fighting anti-Semitism. Today Israel is the least safe place for Jews.
Two of my sister’s friends had just missed the bus which exploded last week and were on the bus right behind it. Of course, I’m afraid for my family. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the responsibility for the deaths of Israeli civilians lies squarely in the hands of Ariel Sharon and the racist occupation that is the state of Israel.
In fact, Zionism has always relied on manipulating fears of Jews to create a moral right for its aims. It angers me to no end that my grandparents—holocaust survivors from Romania—their fear, their losses, pain and suffering –have been manipulated toward the creation of Israel.
So I just want to take a step back and go through what Zionism is, why it never challenged anti-Semitism, and in fact collaborated with it.
Zionism developed in response to anti-Semitism at the end of the 19th century. Anti-Semitism at that time was rife throughout Europe and Russia where pogroms –riots against Jews were encouraged by the Tsarist government.
The basic starting point of Zionism was that anti-Semitism could never be defeated and that Jews could never live safely with non-Jews.
Theodre Herzl (the “father” of Zionism) soon after witnessing the “Dryfus Affair”—the trial of a Jewish military officer who was framed as a spy, wrote of how this experience shaped his views on anti-Semitism in his diary: “I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to combat anti-Semitism.”
And Zionists had no qualms in collaborating with the worst anti-Semites. Herzl himself negotiated for increased Jewish emigration to Palestine with the Russian Tsar's Interior Minister who was the architect of one of the worst pogroms in history.
Worst of all, though Israel today claims to hold the mantle of Jews who died in the Holocaust, the leaders of the Zionist movement relied on and cynically used the Holocaust in order to gain support for creating their state.
Support for a state of Israel had actually been very low among European Jews. Even by the late 20’s there were as many Jews leaving Palestine as were entering it. In fact many Jews were involved in socialist organizations that united Jews and non-Jews in fighting anti-Semitism, not pardoning it as Herzel suggested. So it wasn’t until the rise of fascism in Europe and the Holocaust specifically that Zionism got a large hearing among Jews.
And Ben Gurion (who became Israel’s first prime minister) argued that saving lives from Hitler was a threat to Zionism, unless it could be assured that those saved would be brought to Israel. In one sickening explanation he says:
“If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children of Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them to Israel, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the people of Israel”
He wasn’t just pontificating here; the Zionist movement did face those types of options and continually opted for the latter.
The most important thing is that these weren’t individual aberrations. The Zionist solution to anti-Semitism was not to fight anti-Semitism. Rather, the Zionists looked to create a mirror image of the same society which had persecuted Jews. Only they sought to create a state in which the Jews were the majority persecuting the Palestinian population, which was made a minority through expulsion and what Israeli politicians refer to as “transfer”—a sterile word for –ethnic cleansing.
Israel has relied on the backing of the US, the major imperialist power, and as I said before has never had any qualms about dealing with anti-Semitic governments. The U.S. is no exception. George Bush doesn’t care about Jews, and neither did administrations before him. At the same time that the US supported the creation of the state of Israel, they turned away from US shores Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Holocaust, forcing them into the hands of Hitler’s gas chambers in Europe.
US support for Israel is not out of concern for anti-Semitism, but nor is it based on a powerful Jewish lobby. While there are wealthy Jews that contribute to campaigns, not all of them are Zionists; And they are rather insignificant in comparison to the people who actually control the Government and our foreign policy—-multi-national corporations. Oil in particular is the driving force behind political considerations in the Middle East.
The Middle East is home to two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves. Oil is the most important commodity under capitalism. Big business and their states will do anything to control its flow and profits. In order to remain the #1 super-power, it is critical for the US to maintain a stable foot hold in Middle East.
At first, when the US emerged as a super power after WWII, this was done by maintaining ties to several Arab regimes, as well as to Israel. But as growing movements of Arab nationalists overthrew pro-Western regimes and severely jeopardized others, the US began to think more favorably about the idea of maintaining a “special relationship” with Israel.
Israel and the US built a mutually beneficial relationship in which the U.S. would supply Israel with billions of dollars, the most advanced military weaponry, and loans that Israel didn’t necessarily have to pay back. In exchange, Israel would act as the U.S. watchdog in the Middle East. A role that Israel had been vying for from its inception:
As the mainstream Israeli paper (Ha’Aretz) put it in 1953:
“The West is none too happy about its relations with states in the Middle East. The feudal regimes there have to make such concessions to the nationalist movements...that they become more and more reluctant to supply Britain and the United States with their natural resources and military bases...Therefore, strengthening Israel helps the Western powers maintain equilibrium and stability in the Middle East. Israel is to become the watchdog. There is no fear that Israel will undertake any aggressive policy towards the Arab states when this would explicitly contradict the wishes of the U.S. and Britain. But if for any reason the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighboring states whose discourtesy to the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible.”
The US is the country that arms and funds the continued racist occupation of Palestinian land. Our role here as activists is critical in ending US aid to Israel, building divestment campaigns like the ones that Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups are involved in, and growing the movement in teach-ins and on the street that takes on Israel’s crimes.
We have no reason to be defensive about anti-Semitism. We are in the right. And in fact an ever-wider layer of people have become horrified and politicized by the current occupation.
Still, many people feel like there isn’t a solution--that there’s too much hate. I would argue that there is a just solution. But it can’t include a racist, colonial power in the Middle East, with expansionist aims that are based on ethnic cleansing (such as Israel is.) The only just solution is: one secular state of Palestine, that includes all
the territory before it was seized in 1948, with a right of return for all Palestinian refugees.
Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together in Palestine peacefully before the Zionist project began to settle and uproot Palestinians. The conflict is not religious, it’s political. Through a united fight on the part of Arab workers throughout the region combined with our solidarity here from within the belly of the beast, another world is possible.