JEWISH CHALLENGEES TO ZIONISM

NOVANEWS

“Jewish challenges to Zionism on the rise in the US”

I looked for an aphoristic or stunning, incisive sentence to quote from the accompanying Electronic Intifada article, “Jewish challenges to Zionism on the rise in the US,” but ended up quoting four full paragraphs almost at random. Read the whole piece.
As Ella Shohat among others  has made clear, Zionism has stolen our identities. Gabriel Ash comments that one must take positive steps to remedy the situation when your identity is stolen. My feeling is that we should push things a touch further, and steal our identities back from Zionism. But when Zionism has relentlessly and so utterly stolen them, this reclamation process is not only cultural in the sense of highlighting or recovering “lost” Mizrahi or Eastern European identities.
 It is also political. While there is Zionism, anti-Zionism will be a politic, as they write, but a politic is part of an identity. Zionism stipulated that without Israel, Jews could not be free from anti-Semitism. Not quite. Amidst understandably rising anti-Semitic sentiment in parts of the world that for centuries were uncontaminated by the vicious plague of European anti-Semitism, we know, we see, that Zionism was wrong. While there is Zionism, Jews can not be free.

Overcoming Zionist ideas and practice is crucial, first and foremost, because of the impact of its institutionalized racism and colonialism on the people of Palestine and the broader region. This impact manifests in the demand for political, legal and economic power for Jews and European people and cultures over indigenous people and cultures.
This racism is also the cause of the extensive displacement and alienation of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of African and Asian descent) from their diverse histories, languages, traditions and cultures and in the marginalization and economic exploitation of its Mizrahi population and migrant workers within Israeli society.
Zionism is also anti-Semitic in its rejection of Jewish cultures and histories — including both Jews who are “other” than European and the European Jewish “victim” which it attempted to distance itself from in the creation of the “new Jew.” While rejecting the feminized Jewish victims of Christian Europe, it then uses their memory to justify and perpetuate European racism and colonialism and a militarized Jewish state. Likewise, Zionism promotes Islamophobia in Palestine, the broader region, the US and around the world. And the resentment and anger toward Jews living in Israel and elsewhere, aroused by Israeli violence and military domination, is used to justify further Zionist violence.
Zionism perpetuates Jewish exceptionalism and tells a version of Jewish history that is disconnected from the history and experiences of other people. By exceptionalizing the Nazi genocide, Jews are set apart from the victims and survivors of that and other genocides instead of being united with them. As such, Zionism implicates us in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasement of our own heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with our fellow human beings.
Jews have an independent case against Zionism, and we are also part of a solidarity movement. When Jews aren’t clear — either about their own confrontation of Zionism, or about the precedence of the demands of the Palestinian grassroots struggle — Jewish participation threatens to muddle rather than clarify and strengthen the Palestine solidarity movement. We must be cautious to not presume that our commitment and investment in overcoming Zionism suggest “equality” in the struggle; overstepping our actual role in the movement undermines Palestinian leadership in their own struggle, thus reinforcing the centralization of Jewish voices that Zionism promotes and racism suggests.
Likewise, equating the need for Palestinian liberation and safety with safety of most Jews in contemporary Western countries is inaccurate.

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