As Jews, we’ll never address racism while clinging to Zionism
JVL Introduction
Jewish communal bodies have rushed to express outrage at the murder of George Floyd, demonstrate their solidarity with black Americans and show their commitment to tackling racism more widely.
And rightly so.
But their words turn to ashes for Robert Cohen, when these same spokespeople are unable to condemn the same “vile racism” when it leads to the murder of 32-year-old autistic Palestinian, Eyad al-Halaq, just another incident in the deathly racial profiling by Israeli security.
And their concerns about the unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank are less because of its manifest injustice to the Palestinians, but because it might threaten Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” character.
“Until we drop Zionism as the lens through which we see the world, and our place within it, we will not understand why our project of national liberation has been, and remains, a racist endeavour for another people.”
This article was originally published by Micah's Paradigm Shift on Sat 6 Jun 2020. Read the original here.
As Jews, we’ll never address racism while clinging to Zionism
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Excellent article and so important.
Jewish communities, like those for the rest of society, will have their blatant racists (around 25%) who will care little about the discrimination and abuse inflicted daily on Palestinians.
Some, who are not racist, may turn a blind eye because they see such racism as a price worth paying to protect Israel.
Others, like you Robert, will condemn such violations of human rights outright.
But it seems difficult to have a reasoned debate between these groups.
The liberal Zionists – of whom there are several in my own family – are the worst in my view. What do they think the present reality of Israel is? Do they really think that a ‘negotiated two state solution’ would leave an Israel that is an acceptable democracy? They refer to a ‘Jewish democracy’ – if that’s not an oxymoron, I don’t know what is.
At least with people such as Geoffrey Alderman we know where we are – as he tweeted the other day:
“Sadly, the signatories fail to see [or perhaps are incapable of seeing] the proposed annexation in its historical context – the righting of a wrong. There already is a 2-state solution: Israel & Jordan. They want a 3-state solution!”
excellent article by Robert Cohen. In Brighton PSC is putting together an open letter to the Council leader, Labour and the Green Party leader, after they sent a message of solidarity to Black Lives Matter describing themselves as anti-imperialists. The same people passed the IHRA 18 months ago. The IHRA is nothing if not an integral part of the imperialist narrative demonising anyone who is pro-Palestinian as antisemitic.
Is there any difference between ‘caring little’ and ‘turning a blind eye’? The Yom haYerushalayim marchers (including Ephraim Mirvis in, I believe, 2015) with their loud cries of Mavet La’aravim [“death to the Arabs”] surely do care a lot about the discrimination and abuse visited daily on Palestinians; they care because they are discriminators and abusers. They constitute a fourth bloc who drag the rest along behind the systematic murderers who form Israeli governments (and, currently, the American). And along follow the so-called JLM, old uncle Keir Starmer and almost all the LP bureaucracy and PLP. Notably John Spellar dismisses the eminently balanced article ‘the killing of Jeremy Corbyn’ as ‘moon howling’. Were it not for their slavish devotion to the so-called special relationship, one would regard their credulity in the myth of Labour’s serious antisemitism as stark staring mad (or as cynical realpolitik) – indeed ‘moon howling’. These are the people who judge us to be antisemitic racists.
Excellent exposure of the hypocrisy of the BOD and the Chief Rabbi Mirvis in proclaiming their abhorrence of racism while denying what is going on in Israel with its brutal occupation and the murderous actions of the IDF, ‘the most moral army in the world’. Similarly with the eminent figures who signed the anti-annexation letter to the Israeli Ambassador, who couched their supposed concern with mealy-mouthed support for Israel’s ‘democracy’, while again denouncing the ‘far left’ who have always stood up for human rights wherever is is breached.
Many statements in this article would contradict the examples in the IHRA definition of antisemitism pertaining to Israel but which have proved glaringly true. That political Zionism in practice is a racist and apartheid endeavour, and that the constant refuting of international law and UN Resolutions, and particularly Israel’s National State Law and the illegal annexations and occupation makes its legitimacy being questioned. No wonder many anti-Zionist Jews in the Labour Party are being subject to suspensions and expulsions, as a threat to the exposure of Israel’s true nature as projected by the most right wing government in its history.
Thank you Robert Cohen and JVL. At a public meeting in South Wales in February 2018 addressed by a JVL speaker under the title “Supporting Palestinian Rights is not Anti-Semitism” a question from the audience “Does Labour have a problem with Anti-Semitism?” produced such a busy discussion that I had no opportunity to put a question forming in my mind: “Does Judaism have a problem with Zionism?”
Robert Cohen, the author of the essay above, describes himself as “the wrong kind of Jew” – using the words that Chaim Weizmann, then a leading figure in the nascent little-known Zionist movement and subsequently the first president of Israel, gave in response to Arthur Balfour when the two first met in early 1906. Avi Shlaim, (in the Guardian, June 2009) reports the conversation like this:-
“Are there many Jews who think like you?” wondered Balfour.
“I believe I speak the minds of millions of Jews,” replied Weizmann.
“It is curious,” Balfour remarked, “the Jews I meet are quite different.”
“Mr Balfour,” said Weizmann, “you meet the wrong kind of Jews.”
(End of quote)
Hajo Meyer opens his 2007 book “The End of Judaism An Ethical Tradition Betrayed” with a quotation from Rabbi Hillel (1st century B.C.) “That which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole of the Torah.”
It was the difficulty I had in reconciling the actions, attitudes and behaviours of the Zionist movement’s adherents over the preceding century with the ethical tradition quoted by Hajo Meyer that prompted the formation of my unasked question of two years ago.
Thus I am now grateful to Robert Cohen, supposedly “the wrong kind of Jew”, for answering my question so unequivocally: “As Jews, we’ll never address racism while clinging to Zionism.”
We could do with an alliance across the Abrahamic faiths united against ALL racism and for peace and new economic order against neoliberalism.
Typically honest and principled material from Robert, calmy argued and cogently expressed. Hope the hyenas don’t get after him.