A dilemma: when zionists provide protective presence for Palestinians
JVL Introduction
For more than 25 years Israelis and Internationals have provided what is known as “protective presence” through organisations such as Rabbis for Human Rights, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, Operazione Colomba and many others. As more Jews than ever are opposed to what Israel is doing, there are more programmes specifically for Jews outside Israel to provide this protective presence.
This article looks at the dilemma for Palestinians who do appreciate activists providing this protection and witnessing, but are concerned that many are Zionists, indeed some have even said that they are motivated by their Zionism. They are undoubtedly well meaning, genuinely concerned about what is happening to Palestinians but, like too many others see this as the actions of this government as thought Zionism itself can be considered possible without ethnic cleansing which was written in from the earliest days.
As this writer puts it: “The wish to remain Zionist while simultaneously opposing what’s done in the name of Zionism is an attempt to separate a result from its cause, to preserve the foundational myth while rejecting a reckoning and its political corollary.”
LL
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Fri 23 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
We Palestinians Don't Yet Have the Privilege of Refusing a 'Protective Zionist Presence'
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Hanin is right in everything she says in this article. My only caveat is that most human beings are able to learn and change; and often what prods them to learn and change is their empathy with others.
Some liberal Zionists seeing close-up – perhaps for the first time – what Zionism means in practice will move along the spectrum leading towards the dumping of Zionist beliefs.
An even smaller group will begin to work for the ENDING of Israel’s occupation and its denial of Palestinian self-determination.
We can be reasonably sure this is the line of travel from earlier social history. The Black civil rights movement in America had its White supporters and activists. Patriotic Germans revolted by the Nazis worked with the Allied powers to defeat Hitler’s Germany.
I agree with Linda. One hopes that the liberal Zionists will come to their senses and see that what is happening in the West Bank (& Gaza) is the inevitable outcome of Zionism.
What they are suffering from is cognitive dissonnance, holding two contradictory thoughts in one’s head at the same time.
It also demonstrates why the term Jewish Supremacism when applied outside Israel to all Zionists is not only wrong but a mistake. It adds nothing to our analysis and in fact aids the Zionists in effectively portraying most Jews as devoted Zionist ideologues.
As I recall, in the election for Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani was very happy to cross-endorse Brad Lander, a very left wing campaigning Jewish politician who describes himself as a liberal Zionist. And the votes he clearly got from Lander transfers ensured Mamdani not only won, but did so with an absolute majority. Perhaps he should have stood fast by his expressed anti-Zionism, rejected Lander’s endorsement and refused his own for Lander. The latter would have made no difference at all, but the former might have lost Mamdani and his huge numbers of passionate volunteers the mayoralty, or meant he won on a minority vote, which would have considerably reduced his credibility. Which matters, not so much for Mamdani, but because he so self-evidently inhabits a different political universe from Cuomo and his ilk, and one that is already starting to make a difference to New Yorkers. Or maybe no compromise on Zionism should have been the hill on which he chose to die. . . .
All this is true. But where is the magic that suddenly changes Israel into a democratic state? It doesn’t exist and must be built. To achieve this the broadest group of people opposed to the current Israeli Government needs to be cultivated. Welcome them. What is the alternative?
As Linda indicates, it gives Palestinians an opportunity to engage with the volunteer and educate them. The issue there is that other Palestinians will condemn it as ‘normalisation’. Indeed, the more extreme interpretations and enforcement of anti-normalisation policy has, to my mind, only increased Palestinian suffering and removed opportunities for children, but isolated Jews and Arabs from each other, enabling greater dehumanisation and othering.
I am not at all saying that Palestinians should accept Zionism and colonisation and ethnic cleansing, that would be absurd. And it is a matter for them, not for me.
But by turning away potential and actual allies from within the oppressor community, they weaken the struggle. Look at the whites involved in the ANC political and armed struggle in South Africa. Or the Protestants in the IRA and other Republican groups in Ireland during the troubles.
It is partly about the vision of the future that people hold. If it’s to purge the historic ‘Muslim’ land of Palestine from almost all Jews then , it’s a fight to the death and conversation is superfluous.