Anti-Zionism: The Language of the Oppressor
In this week’s parashah a woman must discern how best to move within the patriarchal tribal system in which she has found herself. Our Torah narrative depicts her as smart and courageous, and, finally, victorious as well – and she manages not only to survive but to prevail by her wits, as she has no physical or political strength to wield.
The story of Tamar, who we are told is the ancestor of King David, is not only significant as story of female power wielded adroitly if indirectly; it sheds light on Diaspora Jews as well. It has been observed that Jews in Diaspora are like women: powerless in conventional terms, our ancestors survived by learning, and learning to work around, the language, culture, and power of the dominant society.
Learning the language and expectations of dominant culture can help us stay safe; but at what cost? Those involved in liberation movements – those that are self-aware – struggle not to fall into the same patterns that oppressed them. The wholesale condemnation of white cis men is one such failure; to judge a man by his essential nature and not his acts is to commit the same sin as any white supremacist. To internalize the standards of the oppressor is to continue to be oppressed!
For a Jew, to call oneself an anti-Zionist is similarly to permit the oppressor to define one’s principles and thus one’s identity. Consider the context of the anti-Zionism of the Western left: Jews in Israel are condemned as white European colonialists oppressing the brown Palestinian indigenous population. Such a simplistic picture is not only incorrect, it commits the sins the left decries, by erasing the reality of both ancient Jewish presence in the land and also the fact that most of the world’s Jews are not white, nor, since the Holocaust, European.
So what essentially is Zionism? The term is first used in the late 1800s:
Zionism is a variety of Jewish nationalism. It claims that Jews constitute a nation whose survival, both physical and cultural, requires its return to the Jews’ ancestral home in the Land of Israel. Pre-1948 Zionism was more than a nationalist movement: it was a revolutionary project to remake the Jewish people. Zionism’s origins lay in a confluence of factors: physical persecution of East European Jewry, Jewish assimilation in the West, and a Hebrew cultural revival that rejected or transformed traditional Jewish religiosity.
Zionism is not an idle, armchair philosophy; it grew out of the fact that Jews were being massacred in Eastern Europe, and second class citizens throughout much of the rest of the world – and no one cared. To be a Zionist was to come to the realization that Jews had no future in Europe, and in that way only it is a movement associated with white European Jews. Colonialism is a charge that is rightly laid at the feet of the British and the French – and, just like a woman might do to gain her objective, powerless Jews were attempting to achieve safety while dodging globally powerful political interests.
If you use the term anti-Zionist to describe yourself, is it because you oppose the current government of Israel’s actions? Or because you oppose the idea that Jews have a basic human right to go home – a “right of return” to the ancient home?
These are two very different things. If the former, then you need a different term, or you are letting the antisemitic left define your identity for you – unlike those Arabs and Jews dedicated to co-existence, the two-state solution, and the absolute worth of each human individual. Yes, there is a lot that is wrong with the state of Israel; but that is also true of every state. As a Jew you own the history, culture, land and people of Israel, and the honorable course is to dedicate yourself to making it better – in the same way that as a citizen of your own city you should support and work for righteousness within it.
Or do you call yourself an anti-Zionist because you are trying to signal to your friends on the left that you are not one of “those Jews”? In the end it will not help you; those “friends” on the left will abandon you. The way of condemnation only feeds the hatred in the world. Being anti-anything does not support the stronger way of love which we must learn.
For me and for many progressive Jews who do not live in Israel, our Zionism consists of dedicating ourselves to support of the organizations on the ground in Israel and Palestine that are not antisemitic, nor thoughtless, nor hypocritical. We support organizations like the Palestinian House of Hope Vision School that teach non-violence and offer children positive role models for a good life amidst trauma.
On this Hanukkah when we need more light, not more heat, so badly, consider how well you know what you are saying, and what it means to the community that will always be there for you – unlike the American left. As you light one more candle or oil lamp each night, may the increasing light bring greater illumination, so that we can see what hurts and repair it together.
Shabbat shalom and hag orot sameakh,
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 