(Cross-posted at My Left Wing.)
Recently Markos asked the question:
When I get an email with the word "zionist" on it, how come it's ALWAYS some crazy, anti-semitic conspiracy rant?
Perhaps I can help answer that question.
The liberal-left has a certain number of people who self-identify as "anti-Zionists." These folk oppose the existence of Israel, a place the size of New Jersey, on moral grounds and they have made this opposition to the Jewish state the very heart of their political ideology. They have made the very word "Zionist" into an epithet meaning "right-wing Jewish warmonger." They always wish, needless to say, to make a strict distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. I have pondered what exactly to make of this distinction and whether or not I think the distinction is legitimate. I have concluded that it is not. While it is certainly true that mere criticism of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic, this does not hold true for anti-Zionism and many thoughtful people agree. (See here and here and here and here.)
Anti-Zionism, of course, is a political movement that views Israel as the world’s sole illegitimate country and, among some of this breed, as the source of an international conspiracy for world domination and war. Because Israel is a Jewish state, anti-Zionists castigate it as a racist "entity." This is highly ironic. While Zionism, as a movement, dates to the 1880s, it was the Holocaust that finally decided the question of whether or not there would be a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, the traditional home of the Jewish people. Nazism, of course, considered the Jewish "race" inherently inferior and parasitical by nature. It was for this reason that Hitler sought to eliminate the Jews of Europe.
What anti-Zionism says is that despite this, despite the millions dead, it was a moral abomination for Jewish people to gather in their traditional home for purposes of self-defense, and self-determination. In other words, after one-third of the entire Jewish population was wiped off the planet for reasons of "race," the Jews are racists for organizing in their own defense.
So, I ask you, can that be something other than anti-Semitic?
In response, of course, anti-Zionists will point to the suffering of the Palestinian people as evidence of the evil that Is Zionism. Zionism is imposing "apartheid" on the Palestinian people. Zionism is committing "genocide" in the West Bank. Zionism wants war, war, and more war. Zionism, through AIPAC, has infiltrated, even controls, the US government.
Zionism is evil. Zionism is the enemy.
(We are ruled by ZOG.)
This is the "Zionism" of the anti-Zionists imagination and it makes most Jewish people very nervous. It is the anti-Zionist social construction of Zionism. The anti-Zionists have created an imaginary foe, "Zionism," to which they impart an assortment of malicious, often anti-Semitic, attributes and then spend day after day attacking their creation. The Zionism that the anti-Zionists have created, however, bares virtually no resemblance to the varied beliefs of people who favor the existence of a Jewish state. The Zionism that the anti-Zionists have created is a Hungry Ghost that barely exists beyond the imagination of the anti-Zionists, themselves.
In their feeble historical imaginations there is no recognition of the diversity of Zionism. There is no recognition that the primary movement within Zionism was Labor Zionism, socialist Zionism, the Zionism which promoted the Kibbutzim tradition. There is no recognition of the difference between socialist-utopian Zionist Martin Buber, who called for a single state long before 1948, and the right-wing militarist Haganah leader, Ze've Jabotinsky. There is no distinction ever made between secular Zionism, religious Zionism, cultural Zionism, political Zionism, capitalist Zionism, socialist Zionism, or dope-smoking, tree-hugging, hippie Zionism. Because, the fact is, Zionism from the 1880s through 1948 was, unlike today's ideologically vactant anti-Zionism, a highly diverse and complex movement.
None of this, however, is meant to deny the brutal injustices, past and present, done to the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. Quite the contrary. It is merely to suggest that those injustices, such as Israeli expansion into the West Bank, did not derive so much from Zionism as an ideology, as from wrong-headed political calculations, particularly among conservative Israeli politicians in the Likud party.
Perhaps most disturbing, however, the Zionism of the anti-Zionist imagination often mirrors the familiar tropes of historical anti-Semitism. For example, anti-Zionists are very often quick to suggest that Zionists (or Israel, or sometimes even Jews) "run" the US government, or at least her foreign policy. AIPAC is often viewed by anti-Zionists not merely as a powerful lobby that, along with other powerful lobbies, such as the NRA, has influence in American politics, but as an organization that controls the US government. This represents a very old anti-Semitic theme, one that the Nazis also promoted; that there is an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination.
Anti-Zionists usually claim that they are not anti-Semitic. Writing in the UK Guardian, however, Oxford professor of Jewish Studies, Emanuele Ottolenghi suggests:
If Israel's critics are truly opposed to anti-semitism, they should not repeat traditional anti-semitic themes under the anti-Israel banner. When such themes - the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, linking Jews with money and media, the hooked-nose stingy Jew, the blood libel, disparaging use of Jewish symbols, or traditional Christian anti-Jewish imagery - are used to describe Israel's actions, concern should be voiced. Labour MP Tam Dalyell decried the influence of "a Jewish cabal" on British foreign policy-making; an Italian cartoonist last year depicted the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as an attempt to kill Jesus "again". Is it necessary to evoke the Jewish conspiracy or depict Israelis as Christ-killers to denounce Israeli policies?
Jewish Zionism, furthermore, is essentially defunct. As Carlo Strenger writes in Ha'aretz:
"Zionism" used to denote the Jewish national liberation movement. Now that Israel is approaching its 60th anniversary, the word has no more current use than the term Risorgimento - the 19th century quest for a free and unified Italy. Zionism once expressed the idea that all Jews should live in Israel. This is now as anachronistic as the concept that a good Jew should wear khaki, a pioneer's kova tembel hat and work the land.
As a motivating ideology, outside of a tiny number of highly religious right-wing Zionists, it barely exists. With the birth of Israel in '48, it simply lost it's motivating power for most Jews because the Jewish state was established; the Zionist goal was fulfilled. The policies that Israel has pursued since are not motivated so much by Zionist ideology, but by what Israeli politicians believe to be in the best interest of their country. In this way, Israeli behavior is no different from the behavior of any other country. Israeli political policy is not grounded in some nefarious ideology which seeks to oppress the Palestinian people. Israeli political policy is, like the political policies of every other country, grounded in a tension between liberals, moderates, and conservatives competing within, and responding to, specific, circumstances on the ground. There is no monolithic Zionist ideology that directs the voting or legislation of Israeli politicians. To think otherwise is to pursue the demons of one’s own imagination.
In any case, part of the reason that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism is because it denies the normality of Jewish nationalism in a way that is not done to any other people on the face of the planet. Jewish people, generally, whether the anti-Zionists like it or not, conceive of themselves as "a people" and have done so for five-thousand years. The Jewish state, therefore, is the country of the Jewish people in much the same way that France is the country of French people or Italy is the country of Italians. There is little difference. One might argue, along with Benedict Anderson, that nations are "imagined communities;" that the traditional idea of nationhood, which emphasizes a common people with a common culture, common language, common traditions and religion, does not exist. Fair enough. But if this is the case then it holds true for all nations, not just the Jewish nation.
Writing in Dissent magazine, liberal professor of political science, Mitchell Cohen, draws a striking comparison between the major motifs of nineteenth and twentieth century anti-Semitism and twenty-first century anti-Zionism.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Anti-Semitism:
Insinuations: Jews do not and cannot fit properly into our society. There is something foreign, not to mention sinister about them.
Complaints: They are so particularistic, those Jews, so preoccupied with their "own." Why are they so clannish and anachronistic when we need a world of solidarity and love? Really, they make themselves into a "problem." If the so-called "Jewish problem" is singular in some way, it is their own doing and usually covered up by special pleading.
Remonstrations: Those Jews, they always carp that they are victims. In fact, they have vast power, especially financial power. Their power is everywhere, even if it is not very visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind the scenes. (But look, there are even a few of them, guilty-hearted perhaps, who will admit it all this to you).
Recriminations: Look at their misdeeds, all done while they cry that they are victims. These ranged through the ages from the murder of God to the ritual slaughter of children to selling military secrets to the enemy to war-profiteering, to being capitalists or middlemen or landlords or moneylenders exploiting the poor. And they always, oh-so-cleverly, mislead you.
Twenty-First Century Anti-Zionsim:
Insinuations: The Zionists are alien implants in the Mideast. They can never fit there. Western imperialism created the Zionist state.
Complaints: A Jewish state can never be democratic. Zionism is exclusivist. The very idea of a Jewish state is an anachronism.
Remonstrations: The Zionists carp that they are victims but in reality they have enormous power, especially financial. Their power is everywhere, but they make sure not to let it be too visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind people’s backs, behind the scenes – why, just look at Zionist influence in Washington. Or rather, dominance of Washington. (And look, there are even a few Jews, guilty-hearted perhaps, who admit it).
Recriminations: Zionists are responsible for astonishing, endless dastardly deeds. And they cover them up with deceptions. These range from the imperialist aggression of 1967 to Ehud Barak’s claim that he offered a compromise to Palestinians back in 2000 to the Jenin "massacre" during the second Intifidah.
Given how closely anti-Zionism parallels anti-Semitism, I would like to suggest that if pro-Palestinian advocates wish to be more effective as advocates, they would do well to forgo the anti-Zionist stance. This would mean criticizing Israeli behavior and Israeli policies, via-a-viz the Palestinians, without calling for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. If pro-Palestinian advocates would take this step it would go a long way toward easing the tensions between them and Jewish people, the great majority of whom, for reasons that should be obvious given twentieth century European history, believe in the necessity of a Jewish state.
Western Jews are among the most liberal-minded people on the planet. The Left has always included large numbers of Jews and American Jews at the forefront of every progressive cause in the twentieth century. In the 1930s, Jews helped lead the fight for labor organizing. In the 1950s and 1960s, Jews represented a proud part of the fight for African-American Civil Rights and for an end to the Vietnam War. Jews were present in numbers well beyond their demographic in the Women’s Movement, the GBLT Movement, and every other movement for social justice. However, most liberal Jews find it virtually impossible to join their voices with people who would deny Jewish people, and only Jewish people, the right of self-determination.
If pro-Palestinian advocates truly want justice for the Palestinian people, it would be smart to back off of anti-Zionism. Not only is it futile, because the Knesset is certainly not going to dissolve itself, but because it's causing vitriol and divisiveness on the left among people who might otherwise join their voices in a common cause.
All of us on the left want peace. We all went social and economic justice for the Palestinian people, but insisting upon the end of Jewish self-determination after two-thousand years of diaspora, pogroms, and wholesale slaughter is simply unjust.
The great majority of Jews will never go along... not willingly, at any rate.