The contortions of Liberal Zionism
JVL Introduction
In a blistering post on his blog, Joseph Finlay skewers the contortions of liberal Zionists who want to have their cake and eat it.
He welcomes many in this category, late converts speaking out against the war on Gaza, but he stresses their limitations:
“[S]ome of those coming round, particularly those with large public platforms [Jonathan Freedland, Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg and Daniel Finkelstein are his chosen exemplars], have done so in a way that is so limited, so enclosed by caveats and hasbara talking points that it is unclear how much value their damascene conversion actually has.”
Adept at identifying their particular weaknesses, Finlay draws out two strategies they use “to make a moral critique while at the same time not making one”: to talk in the future conditional about possible terrible consequences for Israel as though the situations the authors describe have not already happened; and to employ “bothsidesism”, balancing criticism of Israel with critiques of Hamas and Egypt, or claiming that while Israel is acting immorally there really are antisemites attacking Jews around the world…
As Finlay makes clear:
“What is needed – and what these writers are desperate to avoid – is a recognition of the clarity of what is happening. Israel, and Israel alone, is doing terrible things in Gaza and all non-violent pressure needs to be brought to force it to stop doing them.”
While Freedland, et al have begun to speak out, “they need to go a lot further if they want to save their future reputations”.
RK
This article was originally published by Toral Albion on Wed 4 Jun 2025. Read the original here.
Liberal Zionist writers need to go further in their critiques if they wish to safeguard their future reputations
Loading article text…
The two-state solution is based on an unquestioned, fundamental premise, that there can only be an abstract “yes” or an abstract “no” to a Palestinian state. However, the crucial question is in fact this: what concrete kind of Palestinian state would there be if it were to come into being?
Over the years, though changing in nuance, Israel’s historical position was never to refute a Palestinian state tout court. Rather, Israel’s objective position has always been to not necessarily want a Palestinian state—but if there were to be one, then it should not be an enemy state hellbent on Israel’s destruction (a doctrine that changed with the October 7 massacre).
Historically, however, the Palestinian leaders’ position (which differs only in the degree of directness with which Israel’s destruction is to be carried out) is at best the following: we don’t necessarily want a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but if there were to be one, then it would have to be an enemy state for Israel, capable of and hellbent on its destruction.
Palestinian leaders and their following have repeatedly responded to Israel’s peace offers with terrorism, because they were denied this condition—the Second Intifada was the answer to the Oslo peace process; October 7 was the answer to Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza. Both times they were confronted with the immediate possibility of realizing their demand for self-determination—the Oslo peace process was supposed to make the Palestinian state a reality, and Gaza was sovereignly ruled by Hamas, so that it was already a state-like entity. The reasoning from the point of view of the Palestinian leadership is the following: “We want our own state (or the demand for it) only as a means to destroy Israel. So we must implicitly reject our own statehood if it requires acceptance of Israel”. And this is precisely what Israel always rejected in turn: it did not want a Palestinian state if it meant its own (Israel’s) destruction. Israel would have only accepted a Palestinian state as a means of preserving its Jewish majority and achieving peace.
This comment reads as a complete inversion of the true history. But we will let our other readers respond.
This is so clear – thank you
In reading about those who seek to criticise Israel for the horrors it is perpetrating so arbitrarily on the Palestinian people while simultaneously seeking to justify them, I recall George Orwell’s words: ‘DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt…it is a vast system of mental cheating.’ This is the kind of mentality that nearly eighty years of hasbara has imposed, and which has made hasbara so destructive of rational thought and reasonable debate.
Cracking article… vital… historical moment in my view. Perhaps additionally we need to think hard about UK subordination long term to whatever it is runs the USA?
Freedland was a leader of the pack in attacking Corbyn and the left with false allegations of antisemitism. Not alone on the Guardian but I will not be buying another one until he is gone. Is Freedland really a “liberal” zionist?
What an excellent, well-argued article!
The comment above about Corbyn is also spot on – his critics have a lot of mea culpas to perform before they can be forgiven.
I agree with Jacob Butler, but it doesn’t matter one jot whether Freedland is a liberal, a conservative, a social democrat. What does matter is that he is a Zionist through and through.
A rather long and detailed response to several establishment-esteemed supposed “knowledgeable commentators” on what, to observers looks quite simply to be state homicide of a comparitively defenseless civil society of Palestinian families because Zionism has always had a mission to ‘cleanse’ the territory of ‘unwanted rabble’. October 7th’s attack and the holding of hostages simply created an opportunity to continue a policy of genocide begun in 1948.
no Freedland and the rest on G I stopped my sub scrip 3 yrs ago . The final straw for me was getting rid of Steve Bell by far the best political Cartoonist ever
Oct 7 certainly gave the ultra-fascist right in the Knesset the excuse and cover “– to rid the land of Palestinians altogether, preferably through induced migration, but also through mass bombing and starvation.” For ‘induced migration’ read: violent, forcible expulsion.
I sought out Rabbi Wittenberg’s 31 July 2024 “Thought for the Day” in which he again failed to ‘speak out’, not even mentioning the 50,000+ Gazans killed and who knows how many maimed, but speaking with confected, honeyed and soothing words which doubtless made him feel good but did no good. And I echo JB’s view of Freedland.
In the posting above, Walter Hundt is talking nonsense. It is wrong at almost every level. It is hasbara, and is barely worth a response on this page.