The radical Jewish tradition—the alternative to Zionism
JVL Introduction
In a speech to Gaza solidarity encampments at various Australian universities. Janey Stone elaborates on the alternatives to Zionism in the radical Jewish tradition.
She covers much ground: how antisemitism has been redefined as criticism of Israel in Germany and elsewhere which weakens the fight against real antisemitism and allows Israel carte blanche.
Stone argues there have been three ways historically of responding to antisemitism: to withdraw – into ghettoes, customs, religion; to become a perpetrator oneself; and to fight back against both oppression and exploitation.
Zionism, she believes, has combined elements of the first and the second responses. But pre-WW2 there was another response, of fighting back against all forms of racism, oppression and exploitation, including Bundism and revolutionary Marxism.
This history matters: “the battle for memory is also a battle for the present.”
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Stone is co-author of “The Radical Jewish Tradition: Revolutionaries, resistance fighters and firebrands” which we will be reviewing here soon.
RK
This article was originally published by Red Flag on Wed 22 May 2024. Read the original here.
The radical Jewish tradition—the alternative to Zionism
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I realise that this is a very rapid summary but a key moment in the history of antisemitism is the Dreyfus case. France was split between on the one hand those who thought that this Jewish officer was not only a traitor but was a traitor because he was a Jew, and on the other, those who thought there was a miscarriage of justice, or a state conspiracy and that Dreyfus was being persecuted because he was a Jew. The working class movement was split on the matter and it’s useful to follow how the socialist leader Jean Jaurès changed his views on the matter. To start off with, he made comments that indicated that he thought that Dreyfus had avoided execution on account of being Jewish and that anyway, the case had nothing to do with the working class movement because Dreyfus was middle class. It was Jaurès’s relationship with Emile Zola that resulted in Jaurès moving towards what we would now call a human rights outlook or even the beginnings of anti-racism. Even so, the level of antisemitism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France is quite shocking to read. One example: candidates for parliament could stand on a platform that was explicitly ‘antisemitic’, newspapers could declare that they were ‘antisemitic’. Public figures could openly call for Emile Zola (who was not Jewish but deemed to be a lover of Jews) to be lynched. One interesting side-show to this is how and why the impressionist painters split over the matter. Some were pro-Dreyfus, some were anti (and anti for antisemitic reasons).
Helpful article. However, given the history set out here I can never understand why progressives still accept the use of the term ‘antisemitism’? Most other oppressed groups are content to use ‘racism’.