[wvns] Equality, Not Zionism, Will Save Israel

Equality, Not Zionism, Will Save Israel
By Anthony Loewenstein
http://tonykaron.com/2007/06/11/loewenstein-equality-not-zionism-will-save-israel/

As an Australian anti-Zionist Jew writing about Israel/Palestine, the
rules of the game are made clear to me on an almost daily basis. All
Jews must support the "Jewish State," no matter what. Any action
carried out by the state is defensible, justified and moral. Any
public criticism of Israel will be assumed to be anti-Semitic; if
Israel is to be criticized at all, it should only be in hushed tones
and in private. Dare to challenge these rules, and you can expect to
be bombarded with hate-mail, death-threats and public abuse,
invariably from fellow Jews.

The email I received this week from "Steve" in Australia is typical:

You are one of the largest distorters of facts about the Arab -
Israeli conflict. The only larger liars about this sensitive issue are
the terrorist organisations, Palestinian Authority, Iranian Government
and some Arab media.

By portraying Israel in such a negative light, which is completely
unwarranted, you cause people to be anti-Israel, which more often that
not spills over into anti-Semitism. The attacks on Jewish buildings,
graves and people would occur less often if the ignorant pricks such
as yourself did not write all the shit that you do.

Sometimes I wonder whether you have a learning disability, because you
are completely ignorant of the facts. Go talk to the traumatized
residents of Sderot, with Qassam rockets falling around them all the
time. Go talk to all the Israelis who have lost relatives and friends.
Go to Beit Halochem in Israel and talk to the people who have been
disabled, often permanently, because of the gutless actions of
Palestinian terrorists.

You disgust me, Antony. Stop betraying your own people and do some
proper research instead of spreading propaganda.

Sincerely,
Steve

It's hard to respond seriously to such incoherent screeds, but I
recognize where they come from.

As a Jew growing up in Melbourne, Australia, it was simply expected
that I would show solidarity with Israel in good times and bad. I
didn't know any better in my early years and it wasn't until my teens
that a sense of inner conflict developed. Why were most Jews able to
defend the firing of Israeli rockets into Palestinian refugee camps?
How did some Jews not think twice when they heard of systematic abuse
by IDF soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza? By time I turned 20, I was
no longer the same kind of Jew. I wasn't able to properly articulate
my feelings, perhaps, but I now know that too many Jews used the same
excuse that Germans articulated after the Second World War; pleading
ignorance or condoning brutal violence against the "other."

In Australia, the Jewish community is primarily parochial, strongly
Zionist and highly insecure. They love Israel, but fear it's only one
step away from annihilation. They detest Palestinians who dare to
articulate their own narrative. And they offer platitudes towards a
two-state solution and rights for all, but in fact never speak out
against the ever-expanding occupation that has negated any prospect
for realizing such a solution. Indeed, such positions are the default
position of most Diaspora Jewish communities, and those among them who
dare to dissent are greeted with ridicule or hysterical howls of
treachery. My parents have paid a social price for the fact that I
have publicly expressed my views, which they share. They found
themselves shunned by old friends, for whom those views were so
despicable that those who declined to condemn them had to be
excommunicated.

Years ago, the constant abuse I received perplexed and upset me. When
it was directed at my partner at the time, who was also Jewish, I knew
a line had been crossed, but was unsure how to respond, if at all. The
hysteria I had generated told me I was having an effect – rather than
seriously debating the issues I was raising, my Jewish critics seemed
capable of little more than demagoguery and name-calling. Their rage
seemed fueled by the fact of my Jewishness; in their worldview, the
criticisms I was making were solely the prerogative of Arabs,
anti-Semites, terrorists.

The release of my book in 2006, My Israel Question, and its subsequent
best-selling status in Australia - it was released in the US this past
April – caused even greater vitriol (from, among others, Australia's
only Jewish Federal MP. I had dared to suggest that robust debate on
Israel/Palestine was being stifled by an aggressive Zionist lobby. I
argued that an alternative Jewish identity was essential for Israel if
it was to survive in the next 50 years.

This meant separating Zionism from Judaism, and recognizing that being
a Jew didn't mean automatic identification with every Israeli action.
This Jewish identity had to not be solely defined through what was
"good for the Jews", but on the universal principles of justice as
espoused by the Jewish prophets, i.e. by creating a state that treats
all citizens as equal. No religiously based state - Muslim, Christian
or Jewish - is able to achieve this, and Israel is no exception.
Instead, many Jews continue to identify with Israel despite its
flagrant violations international norms, denying those or blaming them
on the victims. Just last week, on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day
War, The Australian Jewish News editorialized that the "continued
occupation is mainly the result of Arab intransigence ." Clearly the
occupied are to be blamed for building new settlements, restricting
their own freedom of movement and imprisoning their own children.

Whatever noble thoughts may have been in the minds of some of its
founders, Zionism in the real has always been a racist enterprise,
precisely because the majority of people living on the land on which
it envisaged building a Jewish state were not Jewish, and their very
existence in that space was deemed a "problem." From its outset, it
has been obsessed with attaining and maintaining a "Jewish majority"
in that territory, which necessarily required discrimination — and
worse — against the Arab population of Palestine. Today, still, when
the world has come to recognize the politics of ethnic exclusion as a
dangerous anachronism, Israel continues to treat its Arab citizens and
the non-citizens who live under its occupation not as fellow human
beings who should enjoy the same rights as any other, but as a
"demographic time bomb."

As leading British historian Tony Judt wrote in 2003, "Israel itself
is a multicultural society in all but name; yet it remains distinctive
among democratic states in its resort to ethnoreligious criteria with
which to denominate and rank its citizens. It is an oddity among
modern nations not—as its more paranoid supporters assert—because it
is a Jewish state and no one wants the Jews to have a state; but
because it is a Jewish state in which one community—Jews —is set above
others, in an age when that sort of state has no place."

The obsession with maintaining a Jewish majority in a land that always
housed a substantial Arab population was always going to require
serious military might and super-power support. How should we explain
to Palestinians that they can't return to the lands of their
ancestors, but I, as an Australian Jew, can arrive in Israel and
automatically gain citizenship?

I couldn't be proud of a nation that beat, starved, killed, tortured,
raped and destroyed another people. But I do remain proud of my Jewish
heritage, although curious as to its most-recently deformed evolution.
For articulating a Judaism that strives for equality, one is mocked.
When writing about Israel's apartheid in the occupied territories, one
is met with denial. When seeing disastrous U.S foreign policy in the
Middle East and Israel's unyielding love affair with it, one can't
help but note that the Jewish state's future is seriously in jeopardy
until radical changes are made. The Australian Jewish establishment
wanted to hear none of this, of course, preferring to talk of Jewish
solidarity and Israeli strength in the face of Arab "terror". I was,
in the words of the Australian Jewish News, capable of little more
than "Israel bashing."

I fear that most Jews are unprepared to take the necessary decisions
to guarantee Israel's future. And it appears many Israelis are equally
unwilling to understand the cost of their continued intransigence.
Israel doesn't need to commit political suicide, merely, like
apartheid South Africa before it, re-define who is an Israeli.
The Israeli peace movement is too divided and weak to achieve these
changes alone - during last year's Lebanon war, Peace Now actually
supported the mission. Justice-minded Jews around the world must
continually explain why they are in fact the best friends Israel will
ever have. Tough love is needed.

The solution to the conflict requires debate and the path to achieving
it will be tortuous, but it must be framed by principles of democratic
equality. While I once believed a two-state solution was the correct
outcome, I have come to believe that in fact a unitary democratic
state for Jews and Arabs may yet be the only way to resolve the
conflict on the basis of equal rights. In many ways, there is already
a single state of Jews and Arabs in the territory between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean, but most of the Arabs live under
occupation and Israeli laws in which they have no say because they are
denied the democratic rights of citizenship – an apartheid state by
definition.

There is clearly an urgency about Israel ending its occupation regime
over the West Bank and Gaza. The rest is open to debate and
negotiation, and past discussions have shown that compromise is
possible between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side on issues
such as Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinian refugees.

Jews around the world have begun debating these issues outside of
narrow terms demanded by the Zionist establishment, which is
struggling to contain the fires. The recent launch of the UK-based
Independent Jewish Voices — I soon co-founded Independent Australian
Jewish Voices is a signal that a growing number of Jews is no longer
willing to accept the Zionist establishment's limits on debate over
Israel. Many of the adherents of these groups love Israel and believe
that the state's own policies are leading to its destruction. I've
lost count with the number of Jews who've told me about Jewish family
members or friends who have slammed them for daring to criticize
Israeli policies in public and private. Furthermore, literally
hundreds of non-Jews have written to me and expressed exasperation
that they feel uneasy discussing Israel because they fear being
accused of anti-Semitism.

Public debate on Israel/Palestine in the West invariably revolves
around "what is good for the Jews?" The tradition of Judaism has
always been about campaigning for justice, not just for our own. What
has happened to this humanity? The rights of Palestinians are
secondary, if they're considered at all. It's far easier to blame
Hamas or Mahmoud Abbas or the French or the EU. The fact that the
international community is deliberately trying to unseat the
democratically elected government of Hamas is justified as a pragmatic
reality. Political Islam is a growing force around the world and the
Western elite is singularly unprepared for its arrival. During a
recent visit to Egpyt, I was struck by the number of Western-oriented
intellectuals, bloggers and journalists who simply couldn't understand
why Washington and London refused to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood,
the undeniably popular opposition party despite its ban by the Egytian
authoritarian regime. They saw it as evidence that the West isn't
really interested in democracy in the Arab world, merely seeking
subservience. Likewise in Iran, where I am currently, the Western view
of a fundamentalist people led by a Jew-hating leader is utterly
removed from reality. As a human being first, and Jew second, I
believe that a more open-minded Judaism is essential if Israel is to
successfully move past its current militaristic malaise.

The personal price many of us pay for critically analyzing the Middle
East is balanced by the encouraging messages received from university
students, high-school children and average citizens who are either
curious about the conflict, or studying my book. As is so often the
case, the general public is far savvier than the ruling elite give
them credit for.

I write as I do because I believe it to be the truth, not because of
the associated controversy or fame. As an atheist Jew, I struggle with
my identity only so far as I wonder how my religion has been hijacked
by a militaristic and exclusionary ideology.

Israelis are not Nazis, [although the philosophy of Zionism is the
motherr of Nazi philosophy and the two are very ideologically similar,
so what does it mean that Israelis are not Nazis? The only difference
is that they come from a different European ethnic group -WVNS] but I
wonder, as Harvard academic Sara Roy, herself a child of Holocaust
survivors, put it , how have children of the Holocaust ended up as
brutal occupiers and oppressors? And why do so few Jews speak out
against it?

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