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American Jews Have Long Questioned Zionism
In the name of Jewish and global sustainability and safety, American Jews must end their long standing, unquestioned allegiance to Zionism and Israel.
Sep 23, 2024
As historians and as anti-Zionist Jews active in our communities, we know that unqualified support for Israel has been widespread among American Jews, built on the idea that only Israel could prevent another Holocaust and keep Jews safe. But crucially, there has never been a complete pro-Zionist “consensus.”
What we understand is that there has always been a small, vocal, articulate American Jewish minority—many with direct ties to the devastation of the Holocaust—who fundamentally questioned the role of Zionism and Israel in American Jewish life and asserted that Zionism and democratic ideals are incompatible. Our own lives and research agendas illuminate that for over a century, since the beginning of the modern Zionist movement with Theodor Herzl in 1897, some American Jews have drawn attention to the brutality and racism inherent in the modern Zionist project.
Marty’s mother Molly and her mother Clara fled the Nazis from Heidelberg, Germany, in 1938 and 1940, respectively. The Nazis murdered many in their family. In 1934, the Blue Card was established in Germany to assist Jews fleeing the growing persecution and subsequently re-established in 1939 in the United States to provide direct financial assistance to needy Holocaust survivors. Over a span of nine decades, Marty’s grandmother and mother and Marty, three generations, made a donation every single year to the charitable organization. And now Marty has concluded, painfully, that he can no longer contribute. The Blue Card Passover appeal highlighted the need to “combat the rising tide of antisemitism.” In an August 9 email, the organization noted that many Holocaust survivors are “…triggered by anti-Israel street protests that remind them of Nazi rallies…” The Blue Card has not uttered a single word of condemnation against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. There are several Holocaust survivors who have forcefully condemned the Israeli onslaught. In a message to the Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl, which she has not responded to, Marty wrote: “With my family background, I am appalled by what Israel is doing to the Palestinians….As an American Jew, I condemn the brutal violence of Israel and say – Not in my name.”
How can we move forward out of the current nightmare? We call upon every American Jew to reject the genocidal policies of Israel.
As analyzed in Marjorie’s book, Threshold of Dissent, American Jewish critics of Zionism have long observed that Israel does not ensure Jewish safety. Yiddish and English-language journalist William Zukerman, based in New York City, wrote in his Jewish Newsletter in the 1950s that Israel and Zionism contributed to hostility toward Jews around the world. Together with Israeli diplomats, Jewish leaders forced him out of journalist jobs and removed his communal funding. He incurred the wrath of many American Jews for pointing out their hypocrisy, for example, in this comment in 1959: “How can the American Jewish Congress and other outspoken Zionist organizations honestly fight segregation in the South if opposition to integration of Jews with non-Jews is the basic principle of Zionism?”
Also, Marjorie relates in her book that in 1973, Marty taught a course in Tufts University’s Experimental College titled “Zionism Reconsidered,” which cast a critical eye on Israel’s history, teaching students about the Nakba (the forced dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians at Israel’s founding) and about U.S. support for Israel’s brutalities. The Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the mainstream Jewish community each attacked him and the course. The JDL called the course “an anti-Jewish outrage” and distributed a flyer that declared: “Not since Germany in the days of Hitler has any university dared to offer a course presenting a one-sided view of any national movement.” Not to be outdone, Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council labeled Blatt’s course “an insult to the Jewish community” that was part of an “anti-Israel propaganda effort.”
Since the early 20th century, and especially since the strong Cold War alliance between Israel and the U.S. dating back to the 1960s, in the name of Jewish safety, American Jewish communal leaders have marginalized American Jewish critics of Israel. These leaders categorize them as “self-hating Jews” or antisemites. Though their lives were profoundly upended by the virulent communal response, many, including Zukerman and Marty, remained steadfast in their commitment to providing more and diverse American Jewish opinions about Israel and Zionism.
The horrific brutality of the present Israeli genocidal onslaught is instead rooted in the Zionist project itself which focuses on dispossession and hence is characterized by oppression of the indigenous non-Jews, i.e., the Palestinians. Uncovering the history of dissenting American Jews may help a community that has terribly lost its way. American Jews need to open up to honest conversations about Israel’s brutal past and American Jewish communal complicity in that past.
Many of the thousands of student protesters in the encampments were Jewish, acting as part of this long tradition of dissent. Drawing from an old playbook, communal leaders charged them with antisemitism and self-hatred. However, this remains a big lie used to attack and defame and smear. These student activists reject, as we do, the false equation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
How can we move forward out of the current nightmare? We call upon every American Jew to reject the genocidal policies of Israel. We stand with Jewish organizations including If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace who declare: “NOT IN OUR NAME.” We call for an immediate cease fire; exchange of all hostages, including Palestinian prisoners; cessation of arms supplies by the U.S. to Israel; substantial negotiations for a lasting peace with justice for Israelis and Palestinians. Some sort of confederal state will be required as Israel has effectively crushed the possibility of a two-state solution.
In the name of Jewish and global sustainability and safety, American Jews must end their long standing, unquestioned allegiance to Zionism and Israel. By embracing an understanding of the voices of American Jewish dissent, past and present, perhaps American Jews can play a constructive role moving forward to end the genocide carried out today in our names in Gaza and the West Bank.Keep ReadingShow Less
'Deeply Disturbing' NYU Policy Change Equates Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," one coalition said, promising "new and more creative forms of resistance."
Aug 26, 2024
After cracking down on anti-genocide campus protests this spring, New York University is under fire this week for its new policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism as Israel continues its U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Anti-Defamation League—which has also been criticized for conflating the two—defines Zionism as "the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel."
NYU's Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students (NDAH), updated last week, states in part that "using code words, like 'Zionist,' does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists."
"For example," the document details, "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a 'no Zionist' litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., 'Zionists control the media'), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate."
The policy—seen as a potential model for other universities, as the next academic year begins—was blasted by critics of the Israeli slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians, which is being investigated as genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the U.S. campus administrations that have invited violent law enforcement oppression of anti-war protests.
NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) said Sunday that it was "alarmed" by the guidance, which "sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people. Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group's understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections."
The "deeply disturbing" development "will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination," the group continued. "This weaponization of the Title VI apparatus openly threatens the university's commitments to academic freedom and to nondiscrimination, and we insist that the administration reconsider these changes for the good of the university community."
The policy change "represents an intensification of NYU's yearlong effort to censor criticism and criminalize protest of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza," NYU FSJP added, noting that "equating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism has been roundly critiqued by scholars of antisemitism, by Israeli human rights groups, and by our own group."
In a joint Instagram post, NYU FSJP, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and PYM New York City declared that "NYU ADMINS CHOOSE GENOCIDE."
"Under the guise of 'campus safety' and 'community values,' they informed the student body that speech against Zionism may be deemed antisemitic and a violation of civil rights law," the groups said. "This conflationary logic is not simply an effort to chill pro-Palestine speech on campus, not merely revanchist pushback for the spate of encampments and other actions that NYU students organized last spring, but a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range."
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," they added. "Every attempt to silence, to punish, to quell, will be met with new and more creative forms of resistance. The students have chosen to stand with Palestine and against the racist, colonial, and expansionist ideology of Zionism. Together we will struggle alongside them, until liberation."
Several organizations are planning a National March on New York City for Gaza, scheduled for noon on Labor Day, September 2.
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Jewish Americans to Lead Shabbat Protests Against US Complicity in Gaza
The protests will condemn "the hypocrisy of American politicians cracking down on 'unlawful' behavior at home while repeatedly voting to send Israel more bombs to kill Palestinians in Gaza."
May 03, 2024
Jewish organizers announced plans to hold bicoastal "solidarity Shabbat" protests Friday evening to demand a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the violent repression of campus anti-war protests across the country.
The Jewish-led organization IfNotNow announced plans to hold the protests in Los Angeles and New York, with "hundreds of American Jews" gathering "together with a multi-faith coalition to take a moral stand against U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza."
The Shabbat actions come more than two weeks into a wave of mass protests that have spread on college campuses nationwide, with students setting up encampments and occupying school buildings to demand that universities divest from companies that work with the Israeli government, such as tech firms and weapons manufacturers.
IfNotNow directed participants to wear white and not bring signs to the events, where demonstrators will "uplift the demands of the students of NYC and around the world: Divestment now. Palestinian freedom now. Power to the Students. Eyes on Gaza."
More than 300 protesters were arrested last week at a Passover Seder rally that had been organized by Jewish advocates near Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) home in Brooklyn.
Arrests of protesters on college campuses in the last two weeks have surpassed 2,100, with more than 200 detained both at the University of California, Los Angeles and at Columbia University—both of which have celebrated their histories of student activism in the civil rights era and during the U.S. war in Vietnam.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden denounced the protests, saying "dissent must never lead to disorder."
IfNotNow called on political leaders to condemn "Israel's war crimes in Gaza, not student protesters taking action for peace."
"The media and politicians would rather scrutinize college campuses than confront the human misery and destruction happening in our name in Gaza which is, of course, the source of these protests," said the group.
"The Shabbat protests will serve to condemn state violence aimed at peaceful student protesters, as well as the hypocrisy of American politicians cracking down on 'unlawful' behavior at home while repeatedly voting to send Israel more bombs to kill Palestinians in Gaza," added IfNotNow.
On April 24, a week into the campus protests, Biden signed a foreign aid bill that included $17 billion in additional funding for the Israel Defense Forces.
At campus protests, some Jewish organizers have held other Shabbat services.
Protesters at New York University were planning a Shabbat dinner for Friday evening in solidarity with Gaza, and last week, students at the University of Pennsylvania took part in a Shabbat service.
"We pray together, we protest together, and we will get free together," said Jewish Voice for Peace Philadelphia.
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