Jewish opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is not new
JVL Introduction
In this piece, Kenan Malik outlines some key points from a US book “Our Palestine Question” which shows that there has always been opposition within the US Jewish community about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Of course the same is true in the UK and many other countries because there is no homogenous Jewish view on this – or any other – issue. Of course these differences of opinion have been particularly telling in those weeks and months from October 7th . He is worried by the calling out of Jews critical of Israel as not really Jewish, something thrown at many JVL members. As Malik says: “For many Jews, the existential threat posed by Hamas gives Israel the right to take any measures necessary to eliminate the organisation. For others, whatever the horrors of the Hamas attack, the destruction of Gaza, the deaths of more than 25,000 people and the displacement of almost the entire population is unconscionable and cuts against the grain of Jewish ethical traditions”
LL
This article was originally published by The Observer on Sun 11 Feb 2024. Read the original here.
Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history
The story of Jewish suffering means there is a moral necessity to fight oppression everywhere
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#ZionismIsNotJudaism.
The insistence of Zionists of dragging ALL Jews into the cesspit of Zionism & its Supremacist agenda of genocide of Palestinians is an insult to the MILLIONS of Jews who suffered REAL antisemitism through History & places Jews in danger as there will always be those who believe Israel & do blame all Jews for Israel’s crimes against Humanity.
I find the quote below from Malik’s piece problematic.
“the murderous Hamas attack on 7 October and to Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza.”
“Gay, as Harvard president, gave a calamitous performance in December at a congressional committee on antisemitism.”
So, history begins on 07 October and the use of loaded adjectives, ‘murderous’, ‘calamitous’, and the failure to call out the ongoing genocide, makes me question his objectivity .
What a clear summing up of the issues.
No it certainly isn’t new. A novel was written called
“Khirbet Khizeh”
S. Yizhar (author),
originally published in 1949 and written in Hebrew –
most recent translation to English in 2008:
N. R. M. De Lange (translator), Yaacob Dweck (translator).
(My version was published in 2014).
The novel is based on the authors experience as a soldier in the war
and concerns the clearance of a fictional village towards the end of
the 1948 war or nakba. It was reviewed in the Guardian in 2011:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/12/rereading-jacqueline-rose-khirbet-khizeh
I’m inclined to agree with Ranil (comment above) regarding the gratuitous use of the term ‘murderous’ in Malik’s interesting Observer review. If the Hamas raid was murderous, then much more so has been Israel’s response. Better omit the loaded term altogether.