Home-Grown Deligitimators: Jewish Anti-Zionists
Delivered on April 22, 2012, at conference on the security of Israel
Sally F. Zerker
I’m here today to talk about a subject that I wish weren’t true. I wish that the Jewish people were one, that there was a universal consciousness that we have an obligation to each other, to our heritage, to our survival, hence to the state of Israel. But sadly that’s not the case. I’m here to tell you about Jews who are anti-Zionists, some of whom literally despise Israel, and who aren’t quiet about it. They’re objective is to use every means at their disposal to harm Israel. They are undoubtedly important contributors to the current form of war against the Jewish state, an international effort by all sorts of groups to define Israel as a rogue and illegitimate state, which must be abolished. Jewish contributors to this hateful message and goal come from a variety of sources and perspectives, so in the 15 minutes at my disposal I will try to touch on as many aspects of this subject as possible.
First, let’s understand why these anti-Israel Jews obviously feel a need to announce their Jewish connection along with their hate-filled message, and often I find that these same Jews have no other connection to Judaism. Not always, but often. I offer three reasons. One reason they openly associate themselves with their Jewish being/birth is that they think that their message is more persuasive to their audience that as Jews they must have a sensitive outlook on Israel, and so what they have to say has got to be an unbiased opinion. Secondly, if he or she is Jewish, they can’t be accused of being anti-semites, so they argue, because Jews can’t be anti-semites. Alan Hart, for eg., a British journalist, in his book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews , writes. “all of the most perceptive and most devastating Zionist critics were and are Jews.” and these accusations can never be anti-semitic because Jews themselves have voiced it. This absolution of Jews as anti-semites is a cover for theirs and non-Jewish critiques’ false attacks on Israel. Of course, as I will demonstrate later on, Jews can and are anti-semites. Unlike Leon Trotsky who recognized the anti-semitic aspects of harassment of him, who said he can smell anti-semitism, (and which of us can’t?) contemporary Jewish anti-Zionists have lost the sense for it.
A third reason for their self-identification as Jews was offered by an organization called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist network. I’ll get to that reason in a moment. First let me tell you about that that alliance of Jewish anti-Zionists. It is a network that has Jewish affiliates from all over the Western world, (Argentina, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, United States, South Africa, Australia, and United Kingdom). This network of Jews against Israel are in agreement that Israel has no right to exist, should indeed be destroyed, preferably by a widespread, universal attack that leads to its isolation and economic destruction They have an active campaign in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against what they call the Apartheid and colonialist state of Israel. Also the network endorses academic and cultural boycotts. They also demand the right of return of all so-called Palestinian refugees to Israel, which of course is a prescription for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, decidedly in this network’s positive agenda. And stated in one of their publications is their motive for Jewish activism against Israel, and I quote; “these anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organizations put the blame for ‘crimes against humanity’ on Israel …in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel.” What we have here is a familiar defense, historically, where Jews damn other Jews and thereby pose as the “good Jews” for the gentile world. So this motivation applies not only to the signators of the IJAN, but I believe has broad motivation among anti-Israel Jews.
As we can see this network is openly hostile to Israel. But there is another and subtler ploy as practiced by some others like J Street, (New Israel Fund) which calls itself Jewish and pro-Israel. But let’s see what this so-called pro-Israel body has advocated. When Israel launched its defensive war in Gaza after thousands of missiles have been rained on southern Israel from Gaza, J Street called for superpower intervention to restrain the IDF. More recently, all published evidence to the contrary, J Street released a statement on the recent rocket attacks against Israel's southern communities and the IDF response. In this statement, J Street says… "Israel Defense Forces… have killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians." This is an utter lie, one they actually had to back down from because the evidence that these were not civilians but Hamas fighters. Another lie is their claim that the majority of Palestinians recognize that a two-state solution is the only means to achieve true peace and security. No such popular opinion exists among Palestinians. The vast majority simply want nothing less than all of the land between the Jordan and the sea. J Street is perfect tool for Obama, and Obama is a perfect tool for J Street.
There is yet another set of Jewish anti-Zionists who are disturbing to say the least, but by and large are not openly involved in the international war to deligitimate Israel. That is ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists, many of whom live in Israel, but won’t celebrate Yom Ha’atzma’ut, yet are very happy to drain the coffers of the State of Israel and contribute nothing. That’s the biggest concern about these religious orders, and they are more like order than organizations. Naturei Karta is the exception with regard to public condemnation of Israel—early on they allied themselves with the PLO—but there are actually 19 groups listed on the internet as “well-known Jewish orthodox anti-Zionist groups”, and we’ve not had the external impact we find with other Jewish anti-Israel groups and individuals.
Anti-Israel Jewish academics are altogether another matter. They have access to press because they write articles and books, they also have access to young people’s minds. Not only have academics the opportunity to influence students by persuasion, but they also have the power of intimidation, and can and often do make it a matter of scholarly success that the students follow their anti-Israel bias.
This is particularly worrisome coming from the professors in Israeli universities. I know it is surprising that this is a real problem, that there is overt hostility emanating from some Israeli universities, but it is a distressing fact Israeli professors don’t have to identify themselves as Jews to have the advantage of “believability’. After all, they are Israelis. Who would know the situation better than Israeli Professors. Right? Wrong!
Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post writes the following about this element of Israel’s academe; “One of the gravest challenges facing Israel today is the international assault on its legitimacy. Much of the assault is being precipitated—certainly facilitated and exacerbated—by prominent figures within the Israeli academe.” The source of the malaise, as he calls it, is mainly the faculties of social sciences and humanities, including law, although there are six mathematicians and a couple from chemistry and physics in the roster. According to Shlomo Sharan, writing under the auspices of the Ariel Policy for Scholarly Research, of approximately 8000 faculty in all the Israeli universities, about 500 are activists against Zionism and the Israeli state. That is about 6%, but if take the proportion of the concentration of such opinion and activity in the more relevant faculties, the proportion is about 25%. Not all Israeli universities, and hardly any colleges are inundated with these anti-Israel pro-Palestinian professors; included however are Hebrew U., Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion and Haifa universities. Ofira Seliktar has examined and documented the intellectual debt of Israel’s anti-Zionists to a long tradition in the social sciences of neo-Marxist, post modernist “critical” thought. That’s a scholarly way of saying the simple truth, that they are leftists.
And that’s exactly what I want to talk about now. Is there a common factor among all the Jewish anti-Zionists, and here I exclude the ultra-orthodox. These have their own ideology, that Israel is a false state because the moshiach hasn’t yet appeared. But for the others is there a driving principle a common characteristic? There is! Scratch any one of these haters of Israel and underneath you’ll find that they have a leftist origin. We have some Jewish academics here in Canada who write and speak against Israel and support the IAW, and without exception they are committed leftist ideologues. In the United States the same is true.
It’s also true that Jewish leftists and the left generally have a history of bias not only against Israel but against Jews generally. The god of all modern leftist thought, Karl Marx, was a virulent anti-Semite. His hateful diatribe against Jews is found in his essay “On the Jewish Question”. In which her pretty well argues that the trouble with the world is the existence of Jews; Let the world be rid of the Jews and all will be well. How far is that from Mein Kampf? Not far at all.
Early pioneers, many socialist Kibbutz founders, though Zionists, were devoted to Stalin, whose record on anti-semitism is no secret. Some even hung his picture in their kibbutzim dining rooms.
There was one time when the left, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had glowing things to say about Israel. That occurred when Stalin was in favour of the establishment of Israel, believing as he did that those early socialist leanings of the kibbutzim founders would create a vassal state for the Soviet Union in the Middle East. He had reason to hope because as we know, the left in Israel at that time were indeed devoted to Stalin. The revealing work of Amnon Lord (1988) leaves little room for doubt that in pre-State Palestine and in Israel’s early years, the far-left wing of the Zionist movement (Mapam, Hashomer Hatzair) was singularly concentrated on its loyalty to the Soviet Union and to communism, and viewed the Jewish State as a potential tool for the cultivation and spread of communist doctrine. But Israel did not follow the Stalin plan, and so that was the end of pro-Israel sentiment by leftists. As Stalin went so went his followers, and so the left generally reverted to its traditional hostility to Israel and to Judaism.
I have yet to be able to prove that Israeli anti-Zionists, some of whom call themselves post-Zionists, are the descendents of these radically leftist kibbutznicks, (who were actually not even raised by parents but by the ideological grouping family structures that were the nature of child-rearing in those days.) It would be an interesting research project, one that maybe is a good graduate thesis. But I do suspect that from original Mapam and Shomer Hazair kibbutzim is be found a fundamental source to leftist passionate hatred that one finds among Israeli anti-Zionist .But such fanatic loathing is not restricted to Israeli anti-Zionists. Here’s some arguments I find among both types, not in any specific order.
1. Zionist ideology is racist; Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians in 1948 was racist; Israel's laws, especially as reflected in its treatment of the Arab citizens of Israel and its status as an occupier of Palestinian territories, are racist. Hence, this justifies the term "apartheid."
2. Arab aggression is justified . A disturbing example: Amos Oz , a very prominent Israeli author, who though leftist, would never previously demonize Israel abroad in the past. Recently, he visited with Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist condemned for five life sentences for the murder of five Israelis plus other orchestrated attacks on Israeli civilians and who only recently called for a third intifada and global boycott of Israel. Oz morally identified himself with Barghouti, insisting that they both share the same national objectives, and expressed the fervent hope that the ruthless killer would soon be released.
3. It’s Israel’s fault that anti-semitism is on the rise everywhere. Israel is bad for Jews. It’s true that Muslims attack Jews in Europe but they’re only getting back at Jews for Israel. Anti-semitism is Israel’s fault. “Tony Judt”
4 Israel / Nazi analogy is not uncommon. If we want to save this world, if we want to live in a humane planet, we must focus on the gravest enemy of peace, those who are wicked for the sake of evilness: the Israeli State and world Zionism. We all have to de-Zionise ourselves before it is too late. We have to admit that Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi Germany
5. . In the Israeli, they see nothing of the legitimate state-building pioneer, they see only the predatory land-grabber and people-expeller; in the Palestinian, they see nothing of the defeated aggressor, they see only the victim. Indeed, the Palestinians are mostly represented as somewhat spectral vessels of pure suffering. Jews should remain victims, that’s an ok. role for Jews not Arabs.
6. the good news; despite all this, anti-Zionism remains a minority position in the Jewish community., thank God.
The last thing I want to talk about today is this widely-spread use of the term and the idea that those Jews who are against Israel and willing to do it harm are self-hating Jews. I don’t think Noam Chomsky hates himself, nor does Naomi Klein or her husband Avi Lewis who appropriately works for El Jaziera. No they don’t hate themselves at all, because they are convinced that they, as followers of their leftist ideals, have the answer to all human problems. The actual failure of every leftist experiment to date makes no impression on them at all. They believe in themselves, they know what’s best. So they don’t hate themselves.
But they do hate. They hate me, and Fred and Hal and you. They hate us because we are Jews who love the Jewish people and love Israel. They hate us for being Jews throughout out beings. In other words, they are not self-hating Jews , they are Jews who are anti-semites, no different than non-Jewish anti-Semites we unfortunately encounter as the universal illness that doesn’t go away.
Anti-Semites can’t bear that Jews are always “in your face”, always up front, always creating, always writing books, songwriting, inventing science, in fact, changing the world. Anti-Semites can’t abide it. As for Jewish anti-Semites specifically, Israel is always “in your face”, every day on the front pages, leading stories on the news, and it simply won’t lie down and be quiet. Someone I know quite well, a Jew, not an ignorant man, shocked me one day when he angrily spewed out , “I wish there had never been an Israel”. That’s what the Jewish anti-Semites, anti-Zionists want, that Israeli disappear. I thank God that Israel is here, that Israel will not disappear, but instead will go on from strength to strength.
Sally F. Zerker
I’m here today to talk about a subject that I wish weren’t true. I wish that the Jewish people were one, that there was a universal consciousness that we have an obligation to each other, to our heritage, to our survival, hence to the state of Israel. But sadly that’s not the case. I’m here to tell you about Jews who are anti-Zionists, some of whom literally despise Israel, and who aren’t quiet about it. They’re objective is to use every means at their disposal to harm Israel. They are undoubtedly important contributors to the current form of war against the Jewish state, an international effort by all sorts of groups to define Israel as a rogue and illegitimate state, which must be abolished. Jewish contributors to this hateful message and goal come from a variety of sources and perspectives, so in the 15 minutes at my disposal I will try to touch on as many aspects of this subject as possible.
First, let’s understand why these anti-Israel Jews obviously feel a need to announce their Jewish connection along with their hate-filled message, and often I find that these same Jews have no other connection to Judaism. Not always, but often. I offer three reasons. One reason they openly associate themselves with their Jewish being/birth is that they think that their message is more persuasive to their audience that as Jews they must have a sensitive outlook on Israel, and so what they have to say has got to be an unbiased opinion. Secondly, if he or she is Jewish, they can’t be accused of being anti-semites, so they argue, because Jews can’t be anti-semites. Alan Hart, for eg., a British journalist, in his book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews , writes. “all of the most perceptive and most devastating Zionist critics were and are Jews.” and these accusations can never be anti-semitic because Jews themselves have voiced it. This absolution of Jews as anti-semites is a cover for theirs and non-Jewish critiques’ false attacks on Israel. Of course, as I will demonstrate later on, Jews can and are anti-semites. Unlike Leon Trotsky who recognized the anti-semitic aspects of harassment of him, who said he can smell anti-semitism, (and which of us can’t?) contemporary Jewish anti-Zionists have lost the sense for it.
A third reason for their self-identification as Jews was offered by an organization called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist network. I’ll get to that reason in a moment. First let me tell you about that that alliance of Jewish anti-Zionists. It is a network that has Jewish affiliates from all over the Western world, (Argentina, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, United States, South Africa, Australia, and United Kingdom). This network of Jews against Israel are in agreement that Israel has no right to exist, should indeed be destroyed, preferably by a widespread, universal attack that leads to its isolation and economic destruction They have an active campaign in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against what they call the Apartheid and colonialist state of Israel. Also the network endorses academic and cultural boycotts. They also demand the right of return of all so-called Palestinian refugees to Israel, which of course is a prescription for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, decidedly in this network’s positive agenda. And stated in one of their publications is their motive for Jewish activism against Israel, and I quote; “these anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organizations put the blame for ‘crimes against humanity’ on Israel …in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel.” What we have here is a familiar defense, historically, where Jews damn other Jews and thereby pose as the “good Jews” for the gentile world. So this motivation applies not only to the signators of the IJAN, but I believe has broad motivation among anti-Israel Jews.
As we can see this network is openly hostile to Israel. But there is another and subtler ploy as practiced by some others like J Street, (New Israel Fund) which calls itself Jewish and pro-Israel. But let’s see what this so-called pro-Israel body has advocated. When Israel launched its defensive war in Gaza after thousands of missiles have been rained on southern Israel from Gaza, J Street called for superpower intervention to restrain the IDF. More recently, all published evidence to the contrary, J Street released a statement on the recent rocket attacks against Israel's southern communities and the IDF response. In this statement, J Street says… "Israel Defense Forces… have killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians." This is an utter lie, one they actually had to back down from because the evidence that these were not civilians but Hamas fighters. Another lie is their claim that the majority of Palestinians recognize that a two-state solution is the only means to achieve true peace and security. No such popular opinion exists among Palestinians. The vast majority simply want nothing less than all of the land between the Jordan and the sea. J Street is perfect tool for Obama, and Obama is a perfect tool for J Street.
There is yet another set of Jewish anti-Zionists who are disturbing to say the least, but by and large are not openly involved in the international war to deligitimate Israel. That is ultra-orthodox anti-Zionists, many of whom live in Israel, but won’t celebrate Yom Ha’atzma’ut, yet are very happy to drain the coffers of the State of Israel and contribute nothing. That’s the biggest concern about these religious orders, and they are more like order than organizations. Naturei Karta is the exception with regard to public condemnation of Israel—early on they allied themselves with the PLO—but there are actually 19 groups listed on the internet as “well-known Jewish orthodox anti-Zionist groups”, and we’ve not had the external impact we find with other Jewish anti-Israel groups and individuals.
Anti-Israel Jewish academics are altogether another matter. They have access to press because they write articles and books, they also have access to young people’s minds. Not only have academics the opportunity to influence students by persuasion, but they also have the power of intimidation, and can and often do make it a matter of scholarly success that the students follow their anti-Israel bias.
This is particularly worrisome coming from the professors in Israeli universities. I know it is surprising that this is a real problem, that there is overt hostility emanating from some Israeli universities, but it is a distressing fact Israeli professors don’t have to identify themselves as Jews to have the advantage of “believability’. After all, they are Israelis. Who would know the situation better than Israeli Professors. Right? Wrong!
Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post writes the following about this element of Israel’s academe; “One of the gravest challenges facing Israel today is the international assault on its legitimacy. Much of the assault is being precipitated—certainly facilitated and exacerbated—by prominent figures within the Israeli academe.” The source of the malaise, as he calls it, is mainly the faculties of social sciences and humanities, including law, although there are six mathematicians and a couple from chemistry and physics in the roster. According to Shlomo Sharan, writing under the auspices of the Ariel Policy for Scholarly Research, of approximately 8000 faculty in all the Israeli universities, about 500 are activists against Zionism and the Israeli state. That is about 6%, but if take the proportion of the concentration of such opinion and activity in the more relevant faculties, the proportion is about 25%. Not all Israeli universities, and hardly any colleges are inundated with these anti-Israel pro-Palestinian professors; included however are Hebrew U., Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion and Haifa universities. Ofira Seliktar has examined and documented the intellectual debt of Israel’s anti-Zionists to a long tradition in the social sciences of neo-Marxist, post modernist “critical” thought. That’s a scholarly way of saying the simple truth, that they are leftists.
And that’s exactly what I want to talk about now. Is there a common factor among all the Jewish anti-Zionists, and here I exclude the ultra-orthodox. These have their own ideology, that Israel is a false state because the moshiach hasn’t yet appeared. But for the others is there a driving principle a common characteristic? There is! Scratch any one of these haters of Israel and underneath you’ll find that they have a leftist origin. We have some Jewish academics here in Canada who write and speak against Israel and support the IAW, and without exception they are committed leftist ideologues. In the United States the same is true.
It’s also true that Jewish leftists and the left generally have a history of bias not only against Israel but against Jews generally. The god of all modern leftist thought, Karl Marx, was a virulent anti-Semite. His hateful diatribe against Jews is found in his essay “On the Jewish Question”. In which her pretty well argues that the trouble with the world is the existence of Jews; Let the world be rid of the Jews and all will be well. How far is that from Mein Kampf? Not far at all.
Early pioneers, many socialist Kibbutz founders, though Zionists, were devoted to Stalin, whose record on anti-semitism is no secret. Some even hung his picture in their kibbutzim dining rooms.
There was one time when the left, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had glowing things to say about Israel. That occurred when Stalin was in favour of the establishment of Israel, believing as he did that those early socialist leanings of the kibbutzim founders would create a vassal state for the Soviet Union in the Middle East. He had reason to hope because as we know, the left in Israel at that time were indeed devoted to Stalin. The revealing work of Amnon Lord (1988) leaves little room for doubt that in pre-State Palestine and in Israel’s early years, the far-left wing of the Zionist movement (Mapam, Hashomer Hatzair) was singularly concentrated on its loyalty to the Soviet Union and to communism, and viewed the Jewish State as a potential tool for the cultivation and spread of communist doctrine. But Israel did not follow the Stalin plan, and so that was the end of pro-Israel sentiment by leftists. As Stalin went so went his followers, and so the left generally reverted to its traditional hostility to Israel and to Judaism.
I have yet to be able to prove that Israeli anti-Zionists, some of whom call themselves post-Zionists, are the descendents of these radically leftist kibbutznicks, (who were actually not even raised by parents but by the ideological grouping family structures that were the nature of child-rearing in those days.) It would be an interesting research project, one that maybe is a good graduate thesis. But I do suspect that from original Mapam and Shomer Hazair kibbutzim is be found a fundamental source to leftist passionate hatred that one finds among Israeli anti-Zionist .But such fanatic loathing is not restricted to Israeli anti-Zionists. Here’s some arguments I find among both types, not in any specific order.
1. Zionist ideology is racist; Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians in 1948 was racist; Israel's laws, especially as reflected in its treatment of the Arab citizens of Israel and its status as an occupier of Palestinian territories, are racist. Hence, this justifies the term "apartheid."
2. Arab aggression is justified . A disturbing example: Amos Oz , a very prominent Israeli author, who though leftist, would never previously demonize Israel abroad in the past. Recently, he visited with Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist condemned for five life sentences for the murder of five Israelis plus other orchestrated attacks on Israeli civilians and who only recently called for a third intifada and global boycott of Israel. Oz morally identified himself with Barghouti, insisting that they both share the same national objectives, and expressed the fervent hope that the ruthless killer would soon be released.
3. It’s Israel’s fault that anti-semitism is on the rise everywhere. Israel is bad for Jews. It’s true that Muslims attack Jews in Europe but they’re only getting back at Jews for Israel. Anti-semitism is Israel’s fault. “Tony Judt”
4 Israel / Nazi analogy is not uncommon. If we want to save this world, if we want to live in a humane planet, we must focus on the gravest enemy of peace, those who are wicked for the sake of evilness: the Israeli State and world Zionism. We all have to de-Zionise ourselves before it is too late. We have to admit that Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi Germany
5. . In the Israeli, they see nothing of the legitimate state-building pioneer, they see only the predatory land-grabber and people-expeller; in the Palestinian, they see nothing of the defeated aggressor, they see only the victim. Indeed, the Palestinians are mostly represented as somewhat spectral vessels of pure suffering. Jews should remain victims, that’s an ok. role for Jews not Arabs.
6. the good news; despite all this, anti-Zionism remains a minority position in the Jewish community., thank God.
The last thing I want to talk about today is this widely-spread use of the term and the idea that those Jews who are against Israel and willing to do it harm are self-hating Jews. I don’t think Noam Chomsky hates himself, nor does Naomi Klein or her husband Avi Lewis who appropriately works for El Jaziera. No they don’t hate themselves at all, because they are convinced that they, as followers of their leftist ideals, have the answer to all human problems. The actual failure of every leftist experiment to date makes no impression on them at all. They believe in themselves, they know what’s best. So they don’t hate themselves.
But they do hate. They hate me, and Fred and Hal and you. They hate us because we are Jews who love the Jewish people and love Israel. They hate us for being Jews throughout out beings. In other words, they are not self-hating Jews , they are Jews who are anti-semites, no different than non-Jewish anti-Semites we unfortunately encounter as the universal illness that doesn’t go away.
Anti-Semites can’t bear that Jews are always “in your face”, always up front, always creating, always writing books, songwriting, inventing science, in fact, changing the world. Anti-Semites can’t abide it. As for Jewish anti-Semites specifically, Israel is always “in your face”, every day on the front pages, leading stories on the news, and it simply won’t lie down and be quiet. Someone I know quite well, a Jew, not an ignorant man, shocked me one day when he angrily spewed out , “I wish there had never been an Israel”. That’s what the Jewish anti-Semites, anti-Zionists want, that Israeli disappear. I thank God that Israel is here, that Israel will not disappear, but instead will go on from strength to strength.
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