In today’s final chapter of Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism fortnight, I interview Daniel Clarke-Serret from Guerre and Shalom (do subscribe) about his exclusive polemic for Moral Clarity.
I do not distance myself from the term 'Zionist,' but prefer 'post-Zionist' when asked about my connection to Israel, which is great indeed. My daughter was born there on kibbutz. My post-WWII baby refugee brother lived there from the 1973 war on and died there an Arabic-speaking forever-peacenik a few years ago. Nieces and cousins and friends. Tons of deep connections. Foe me, Zionism was/is a philosophy of Jewish national liberation through the recreation of an ancient nation in the collapsed Ottoman Empire and once much larger Palestine Province that, until 1925, included current day Jordan. The 1917 Balfour Declaration aimed at providing a small refuge nation for pogrom-plagued Jews in a significantly larger territory than Palestine would be after 1925. Few anti-Israel protesters know anything about the facts of Palestine from 136 CE (when Judea was so named by Roman conquerors) to today. Zionism, Anti-Zionism. These both refer to an IDEA for a Jewish national state. That idea was paid for in much blood and useless pain for both Jews and Arabs of the territory. Pan-Arabism, another IDEA, put an end to T.E. Lawrence of Arabia's proposal that Arab nationalists make common cause with Jewish nationalists and that European Jews were NOT like the European colonizers, but a whole other history legitimating their connection to the Mideast region. The Arab League obviously rejected Lawrence's counsel though they regarded him to be "as great as Hitler." Israel is no longer just an idea or philosophy. IT IS A FACT ON THE GROUND!! This Jew hating movement is not just anti-an idea. It is anti-a whole country. I can understand Mamdani's critique of any nation that has a religious core, but where is his condemnation of the DOZENS of Muslim nations with much stricter religious exclusions than Israel has ever had? Arabs sit on the highest courts and run departments in universities and other prestigious Israeli institutions. Show us one Muslim-centered nation that permits any minority such status and religious freedom? The current Jew hatred is aimed at anti-Israelism. I now avoid historically limited and contextualized terms like 'antisemitism' and 'anti-Zionism.' Antisemitism is one of the major forms of Jew hatred that aligns with modern ethno-nationalist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Anti-Zionism, again, is a stance against the very idea of a Jewish nation to be reborn in a territory long occupied by great empires and never forgotten. I know that many of the pro-Hamas crowds ARE indeed opposed to this Zionist IDEA, and that's their right of thought and speech. We just need to be clear that when their anti-Zionism fuses with their anti-Israelism, then the rhetoric moves beyond mere speech to incitement of violence against Israel, an established nation (which Arab Palestine could have been since 1948, but the Arab League all said NO and invaded the new Israel instead, causing the war that caused the refugees and then refused to take in their very similar 'brothers and sisters.'), and any Jews worldwide with any connection to that fact-on-the-ground Israel, regardless of the nature of that connection, either adoring or critical.
So...instead of the new
antisemitism = anti-Zionism, I use: the new Jew hatred = anti-Israelism - a call to destroy AT LEAST half the Jews in the world.
It's been a pleasure to collaborate!
The pleasure has been mine.
I do not distance myself from the term 'Zionist,' but prefer 'post-Zionist' when asked about my connection to Israel, which is great indeed. My daughter was born there on kibbutz. My post-WWII baby refugee brother lived there from the 1973 war on and died there an Arabic-speaking forever-peacenik a few years ago. Nieces and cousins and friends. Tons of deep connections. Foe me, Zionism was/is a philosophy of Jewish national liberation through the recreation of an ancient nation in the collapsed Ottoman Empire and once much larger Palestine Province that, until 1925, included current day Jordan. The 1917 Balfour Declaration aimed at providing a small refuge nation for pogrom-plagued Jews in a significantly larger territory than Palestine would be after 1925. Few anti-Israel protesters know anything about the facts of Palestine from 136 CE (when Judea was so named by Roman conquerors) to today. Zionism, Anti-Zionism. These both refer to an IDEA for a Jewish national state. That idea was paid for in much blood and useless pain for both Jews and Arabs of the territory. Pan-Arabism, another IDEA, put an end to T.E. Lawrence of Arabia's proposal that Arab nationalists make common cause with Jewish nationalists and that European Jews were NOT like the European colonizers, but a whole other history legitimating their connection to the Mideast region. The Arab League obviously rejected Lawrence's counsel though they regarded him to be "as great as Hitler." Israel is no longer just an idea or philosophy. IT IS A FACT ON THE GROUND!! This Jew hating movement is not just anti-an idea. It is anti-a whole country. I can understand Mamdani's critique of any nation that has a religious core, but where is his condemnation of the DOZENS of Muslim nations with much stricter religious exclusions than Israel has ever had? Arabs sit on the highest courts and run departments in universities and other prestigious Israeli institutions. Show us one Muslim-centered nation that permits any minority such status and religious freedom? The current Jew hatred is aimed at anti-Israelism. I now avoid historically limited and contextualized terms like 'antisemitism' and 'anti-Zionism.' Antisemitism is one of the major forms of Jew hatred that aligns with modern ethno-nationalist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Anti-Zionism, again, is a stance against the very idea of a Jewish nation to be reborn in a territory long occupied by great empires and never forgotten. I know that many of the pro-Hamas crowds ARE indeed opposed to this Zionist IDEA, and that's their right of thought and speech. We just need to be clear that when their anti-Zionism fuses with their anti-Israelism, then the rhetoric moves beyond mere speech to incitement of violence against Israel, an established nation (which Arab Palestine could have been since 1948, but the Arab League all said NO and invaded the new Israel instead, causing the war that caused the refugees and then refused to take in their very similar 'brothers and sisters.'), and any Jews worldwide with any connection to that fact-on-the-ground Israel, regardless of the nature of that connection, either adoring or critical.
So...instead of the new
antisemitism = anti-Zionism, I use: the new Jew hatred = anti-Israelism - a call to destroy AT LEAST half the Jews in the world.
shalom / salaam