On Zionism and Anti-Zionism
JVL Introduction
Jewish Currents magazine in the US produces a series of biweekly podcasts under the rubric of “On the Nose”.
They are from half-an-hour to an hour long and range over a whole variety of issues, approached in an open-ended discursive fashion encouraging listeners to think for themselves. Truly educational. You will find a listing here.
The one whose transcript is reproduced below is on the fraught topic of Zionism and anti-Zionism.
Everyone, no matter how well-informed on the topic, will emerge from listening to or reading the discussion in reflective mode, thinking afresh about a burning issue of our time.
RK
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents, On the Nose pdocast on Thu 16 May 2024. Read the original here.
On Zionism and Anti-Zionism
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What I find troubling about some of this is the idea that it seems to go without question that there is no problem with saying ‘Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people’. Would there be a similar ready acceptance of the statement ‘England is the nation state of the English people’?
VERY interesting discussion touching on so many issues I have seen arising recently — I’ll share it widely.
Regarding Les’ comment above,that has always been my problem with the Jerusalem Declaration, although of course it is far preferable to the deplorable IHRA.
To Les May’s point: English people are English whether or not they live in England, because England is their country of origin and where they grew up as citizens and received their primary education; that is true of the French, the Germans, etc. This applies to Israel too: Israelis are people who were raised in Israel; it is where they grew up as citizens regardless of where they now live. But here’s the rub: just as there are non-Jewish Israelis, there are a whole mass of non-Israeli Jews. That’s what the Zionists seem unable to get their heads around. Whether or not Jews ought to give their loyalty to Israel is surely a question of whether or not Jews perceive themselves as being more Israeli than they are citizens of the countries of their birth. Too many Jews choose to refuse Israel’s standing invitation to take up Israeli citizenship for Israel ever to be regarded with any accuracy as the ‘nation state of the Jewish people’. It’s the nation state of the Jews who live there, just as it is – or ought to be – for the non-Jews who live there too.; but for no-one else.