We zijn eigenlijk aan het afdwalen van de topic maar aangezien we bezig waren over zionisme en diaspora lijkt het me interessant de volgende tekst tevermelden. het gaat over Joden die tegen de bezetting zijn en tegen het zionsme:
RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM
Much of the fiercest opposition to Zionism came from the Jewish religious community which attacked its secular nationalism. Akiva Orr, who characterizes himself as a Jewish refugee from Israel, describes this conflict between religion and secularism as follows:
The State of Israel is a secular state: its law, its legislative assembly (the Knesset), and the majority of its population are non-religious. This is hardly surprising as Israel came into existence due to the efforts of a secular political movement motivated by non-religious nationalism, namely political Zionism. In its early days Zionism came into fierce conflict with religious Jewry. The Zionists rejected religious submissiveness; the religious saw the atheist attempt to create a secular Jewish state as blasphemy.19
A nonreligious Jewish identity is antithetical to a religious definition of Jewishness. This fact presents an irreconcilable contradiction between the religious and secular streams in the Jewish community. Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and many other leading Zionists were non-believers who actively sought to reformulate the basis for Jewish existence on race and territorial nationalism.20 This process would thereby "normalize" the existence of the Jewish people.21 The anti-religious component of political Zionism explains the vehement opposition of most devout Jews when the movement first emerged.
For religious Jews the restoration of Zion could only be brought about by divine intervention; human attempts to reestablish Israel were heretical. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the religious leader of nineteenth century German Orthodox Jews stated that it was a sin to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine.22 Zionists were called by Rabbi Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld of Brisk "ruffians" and "evil men."23 In 1898 Rabbi Sonnenfeld wrote that Zionists have
asserted view that the whole difference and distinction between Israel and The Nations lies in nationalism, blood and race, and that the faith and the religion are superfluous. . . . Dr. Herzl comes not from the Lord, but from the side of pollution.24
Other leading Jewish religious leaders who opposed Zionism included Moritz Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna,25 Dr. Herman Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain,26 the Lubbavitscher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem ben Schneersohn,27 the Holy Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes,28 and Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the leader of the American Reform Movement.29 Many more Jewish religious leaders were opposed to Zionism.30
Religious Jews in Palestine and the Orthodox Jewish organization, Agudas Yisroel, founded in 1912, also opposed the political Zionist colonization program in Palestine. They protested, to the British Mandatory Administration, against the Zionist claim to represent the entire Jewish community.31 Nathan Birnbaum, an early Zionist, who is credited with coining the term Zionist, later broke with the movement and became a devoutly Orthodox anti-Zionist Jew. For a brief time he served as one of Aguda's spokesmen.32
On June 30, 1924, Jakob Israel De Han, a member of Aguda's executive committee, was assassinated in Palestine by underground soldiers of the Haganah. He had "violently denounced Zionism in cables to British newspapers and attacked the Balfour declaration" and British colonial officials who were "pro-Zionist " De Han became a martyr to Jerusalem's anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.33
In time, the Zionists managed to win much of the Orthodox Jewish community to their cause. This was done in part by granting the Orthodox political and economic concessions and by implementing a proportional representation system in central Zionist organizations and in the Israeli Knesset. This type of political mechanism gave the Orthodox Jews an important role in determining the course of Jewish affairs in Zionist institutions.
The various religious parties in Israel today represent Orthodox Jewish opinion that has accommodated itself to the Zionist view. However, the religious orientation of these parties is frequently at odds with the majority secular-national interpretation of "Jewishness" in Israel. This contradiction is the source of much political conflict.34
It can even be said that the Israeli ultra-orthodox religious parties which participate in Israeli politics are still anti-Zionist, despite that involvement. The ultra-Orthodox parties are Shas (the Sephardic religious party), Aguda (the Hasidic) and Degel Hatorah (the Flag of the Torah or the "Lithuanian party"). They are supported by between 250,000 and 300,000 Orthodox Israeli Jews and won 13 Knesset seats in the 1988 election.35
These three religious parties are opposed to the Zionist aim of creating a secular Jewish homeland, and as such are considered by some as anti-Zionist. This view is held despite the fact that they support the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and bargain for financial support from the state. The National Religious party, which won five seats in the 1988 Israeli election, is considered Zionist and over the years has become increasingly nationalistic.36
While much of the Orthodox religious Jewish community was eventually won over to the extent of giving at least nominal support to the state of Israel, significant pockets of resistance remain. The Neturei Karta ("Guardians of the Walls") in their large enclaves in Jerusalem's Mea Sharim Quarter and in Bnai Brak near Tel Aviv, preserve Orthodox Jewry's fierce opposition to Zionism. They refuse to have anything to do with Israeli state authorities.37 The following is an excerpt from a Neturei Karta advertisement that appeared in The New York Times on June 15, 1981:
Besides the millions of Jews who are non-Zionist, there are many hundreds of thousands of Jews who are fervently anti-Zionist. They are opposed to Zionism and the very existence of the Zionist state because Zionism seeks to change the essence of Judaism and substitute chauvinism and militarism and loyalty to the Zionist state for the lofty and unchangeable principles of the Jewish faith. The Jewish nation was not founded by Zionist politicians but the character of Jewish nationhood was determined on Mount Sinai and the Jewish people as well as every individual Jew are bound to fulfill the Mitzvos (commandments) of the oral and written law of the Torah. Jews are certain that the Jewish redemption will come with the coming of the Moshiach. The establishment of the Zionist state before that time is heretic and indeed blasphemous. Our greatest rabbis have taught us that Zionism is one of the worst calamities that has ever befallen the Jewish people.38
The intensity of the ultra-Orthodox's opposition to political Zionism is fierce. Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, for example, argues that Zionism is causing a genocide of the Jewish people by destroying the religious and spiritual basis for Jewish existence.39 Rabbi Moshe Leib-Hirsch summarized the extent of Neturei Karta's opposition to Zionism by stating, "We will not accept a Zionist State even if the Arabs do."40
Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe, until his death in 1979, at the age of 91, was also implacably anti-Zionist and "influenced Orthodox Jewry in the whole of Transylvania." After World War II, and a brief stay in Jerusalem, he emigrated to New York. Many of his followers congregated there and new members joined his flock. Rabbi Teitelbaum opposed Zionism not only on halachic grounds but also because he believed that "Zionism forestalled the Messiah. . . brought the Holocaust and other calamities on the Jewish people." In his view the Jewish state "condemned itself through its own lifestyle and politics." Teitelbaum's 40,000 chassidim are found largely in Williamsburg, New York, and in Jerusalem.41
In January 1986 the non-Zionist Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, representing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, issued a statement attacking Zionism and Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. It included the following:
It is our duty to denounce those who invoke the name of the Almighty in vain. It is our holy obligation and our moral responsibility to call on them: Stop using these falsehoods and heresies to justify yourselves and your misdeeds. The Jewish faith, as transmitted by the Almighty to our forefathers has not and will never countenance the zionist and nationalistic doctrines of the state of Israel. These false doctrines are compounded of atheism and anti-religious zionism, ideologies alien to Judaism. Let them not be misrepresented to the world as Jewish.42
Reform Jews in the United States were also opposed to Zionism. Their Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 stated their opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state very clearly: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine. . . nor the restoration of the laws concerning the Jewish state."43
With the emergence of the Zionist movement their position even hardened. In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) declared:
. . . we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's mission, which from the narrow political and national field has been expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets. . .44
It was not until 1937, and after the rise of Hitler, that the CCAR changed its position on the question of Zionism. This reversal, however, also spawned another anti-Zionist Jewish organization.45
In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other prominent American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with the express intent of combatting Zionism. Included in the Council's leadership were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J. Rosenwald, the former chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who became president of the Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its executive director; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times; and Sidney Wallach of the American Jewish Committee. Membership in the Council grew to over 15,000. Its members were highly articulate and greatly angered the Zionist leadership, who wanted the American Jewish community to present a united front on the Palestine question.46
Even after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947 the American Council for Judaism continued to oppose Zionism vocally. The magazine, Issues, was their principal vehicle of communication.47 Issues was joined in its opposition to Zionism by The Menorah Journal edited by Dr. Henry Hurwitz48 and William Zukerman's Jewish Newsletter.49
After Israel's spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the American Council for Judaism. Alfred Lilienthal suggests that "Zionist infiltration" succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council.50 A separate organization was subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ). The new group, which is based in New York, continues the original anti-Zionist tradition of the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger is currently the president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report.51
One of the most articulate and vocal critics in Canada today of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians is Rabbi Reuben Slonim. He is a spiritual Zionist in the tradition of Ahad Ha-am. His criticisms of Israel's policies eventually led to a break with his congregation in Toronto. However, he does have a small, but devoted, following among the Canadian Jewish community.52 In 1983 he wrote:
Today we Jews are losing [the] humanism and universalism of Judaism, all for the sake of Jewish statehood. We love Israel, and so we should, but we are so blinded by that love that we are willing to pay a prohibitive price for it. We condone acts we would declare unconscionable anywhere else in the world: nuclear weapons are wrong but necessary for Israel; apartheid is wrong, but for the sake of Israel's survival we will tolerate it; human rights are critical, but not for the Palestinians; we have a right to a state but Palestinians do not. Our racism towards Arabs would be regarded as anti-Semitism if others spoke of us in the same light. In all things we need to remember that the Jewish people and the Jewish state are but instruments, not ends in themselves; that what is good for the world is good for the Jews, not what is good for the Jews is good for the world; that the ultimate goal of the Jew, if he be truly Jewish, is to serve humanity.53
NON-RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM
Not only Orthodox and Reform Jews were opposed to Zionism. In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was leaving for the Paris Peace Conference. The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. These included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey; Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H. Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy's Jesse I. Straus; New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco.54 The petition read in part:
. . . we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish.
Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion," it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases.55
Albert Einstein was also anti-Zionist. He made a presentation to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, which was examining the Palestine issue in January 1946 and argued against the creation of a Jewish state. Einstein also later turned down the presidency of the state of Israel.56 In 1950 Einstein published the following statement on the question of Zionism.
I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight without a Jewish state.57
Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and twenty-five other prominent Jews, in a letter to The New York Times (December 4, 1948), condemned Menachem Begin's and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party as "fascist" and espousing "an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority." The same theme is echoed in William Zukerman's 1934 article in The Nation, "The Menace of Jewish Fascism. "58 This is also the premise of Michael Selzer's book, The Aryanization of the Jewish State.59
For most Western Jews and many other people, the connection of Zionism to fascism and racism is odious and inappropriate. However, this theme is a recurrent motif in the debate on Zionism within the Jewish community. Even David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and first prime minister, wrote an article in 1933 entitled, "Jabotinsky in the Footsteps of Hitler."60 Vladimir Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the mentor of Menachem Begin.
Professor Richard Arens, the late brother of Moshe Arens, the Israeli defense minister and leading figure in the Likud party, has also equated Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with the Nazi persecution of the Jews.61 Hannah Arendt, when writing about the trial of Adolph Eichmann, pointed out the irony of attacking the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws of 1935 when certain laws in Israel regarding the personal status of Jews were identical to the infamous Nazi code.62 Morris Raphael Cohen, the distinguished philosopher, went so far as to argue that "Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of anti-Semites, but draw different conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is the Jew that is the pure or superior race."63
Other leading Jewish intellectuals who opposed Zionism include Louis D. Brandeis (see Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism), Martin Buber (coauthor, with J.L. Magnes and E. Simon, of Towards Union in Palestine: Essay on Zionism and Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 1947), Isaac Deutscher ("The Non-Jewish Jew," in The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, 1968), Simon Dubnow (Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, edited by Koppel S. Pinson, 1961), Morris Jastrow (Zionism and the Future of Palestine, the Fallacies and Dangers of Political Zionism, 1919), Emile Marmorstein ("A Bout of Agony," The Guardian, April 1974), Moshe Menuhin (father of Sir Yehudi Menuhin and author of The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time), Claude Montefiore ("Nation or Religious Community?" reprinted in Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered), Jakob I. Petuchowski (Zion Reconsidered, 1966), and Franz Rosenzweig.64 Hans Kohn, who was one of the world's leading authorities on nationalism, posed the following questions on the issue.
Might not perhaps the "abnormal" existence of the Jews represent a higher form of historical development than territorial nationalism? Has not the diaspora been an essential part of Jewish existence? Did it not secure Jewish survival better than the state could do?65
Erich Fromm, the eminent scholar, also was critical of Zionism. He stated that the Arabs in Israel had a much more legitimate claim to citizenship than the Jews. Fromm also wrote:
The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.66
Bruno Kreisky, the former chancellor of Austria, who died in July 1990, was well known for his attempts to bring about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. ln a 1974 interview with an Israeli paper he stated: "There is no Jewish race; there are only Jewish religious groups. Israel was only the ancient, religious fatherland of Jews, but not their true fatherland."67 In another interview, conducted in 1985, Kreisky said, "In the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians I am on the side of the underdog -- the Palestinians."68
Present-day Jewish opponents of Zionism who have published books on the subject include Rabbi Elmer Berger (The Jewish Dilemma, 1945), Noam Chomsky (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, 1983), Marc H. Ellis (Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation: The Uprising and the Future, 1989), Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht (The Fate of the Jews, 1983), Georges Friedmann (The End of the Jewish People, 1967), Maxim Ghilan (How Israel Lost Its Soul, 1974), Alfred M. Lilienthal (What Price Israel? 1953), Norton Mezvinsky (The Character of the State of Israel, 1972), Cheryl Rubenberg (Israel and the American National Interest, 1986), and Michael Selzer (The Wineskin and the Wizard, 1970). Several collections of articles are also useful in understanding the scope of debate within the Jewish community and especially the strength of opposition in Jewish intellectual circles. These collections are Jewish Critics of Zionism by Moshe Menuhin; Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer; and Zionism: The Dream and the Reality -- A Jewish Critique, edited by Gary V. Smith.
Lilienthal's The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace? is one of the classic expositions of the Jewish anti-Zionist position, and as a historical work it is virtually encyclopedic. Lilienthal, who also edited the newsletter Middle East Perspective (1968-1985), Rabbi Elmer Berger and Noam Chomsky have to be considered the three preeminent American Jewish critics of Zionism.69
Many Jews have opposed Zionism because they believe that there is a moral contradiction in trying to create an exclusionist Jewish nation-state out of a universal religious ethic. They have also opposed Zionism because of what it has done to the Palestinians and how they believed this violence would transform Judaism.
A large number of Socialist and Marxist Jewish scholars are also opposed to Zionism. These include Peter Buch, (Zionism and the Arab Revolution, 1967), Steven Goldfield (Garrison State: Israel's Role in U.S. Global Strategy, 1985), Abraham Leon (The Jewish Question, 1973), the famed Orientalist Maxime Rodinson (Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? 1973), Jon Rothschild (editor of Forbidden Agendas: Intolerance and Defiance in the Middle East, 1984; coauthor, with Nathan Weinstock, of The Truth about Israel and Zionism, 1970), and Nathan Weinstock (Zionism: False Messiah, 1979). A rising generation of American leftist Jewish thinkers, including Joel Beinin ("From Land Day to Peace Day.. . and Beyond," in Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation, edited by Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, 1989), Lenni Brenner (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983), David Finkel (editor of the Detroit-based magazine Against the Current, whose "Occupation and Resistance: A Look Inside the Israel-Palestine Crisis," appeared in Changes, July-August, 1982), Norman Finkelstein ("Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial," in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, 1988), Christopher Hitchens (writer of a bimonthly column in The Nation),70 Zachary Lockman ("Original Sin," in Intifada, edited by Lockman and Beinin), Joan Mandel71 and Hilton Obenzinger,72 are also highly critical of Zionism.
There also exists in the Soviet Union an active Jewish anti-Zionist organization. It is headed by General David Dragunski.73 Despite reports to the contrary, this organization is still in existence.74 The West tends to dismiss such bodies, but one should remember that historically there has always been a powerful anti-Zionist Socialist and Communist tradition within the Jewish community.
Many Jewish intellectuals were prominent leaders in the Socialist movement, and in many respects they represent a competing stream of thought in the world Jewish community. Leon Trotsky, for example, attacked Zionism as "reactionary," a "blind alley" and "a bloody trap."75 Rosa Luxemberg also was anti-Zionist and as a result was attacked with the accusation of "self-hatred."76 Ephraim Sevela, a Soviet Jewish emigrant to Israel, has written a book about his disillusionment with Zionism in which he concludes that Israel is not a Jewish homeland.77
The Jewish workers' Bund movement was also anti-Zionist. The Bund was a large and well-organized Jewish socialist, autonomist party that existed in Lithuania, Poland and Russia between 1907-1948. It favored a secular East European Jewish nationalism and rejected a world Jewish national identity.78
Over time Socialist Zionists managed to reduce leftist Jewish opposition to the Zionist program by emphasizing the utopian and socialist aspects of political Zionism. The kibbutz experiment of collective farming and the large role labor played in the early years of the state figured prominently in the campaign to win support from the left for the Jewish state. But with the shift of the political character of Zionism to the right and with Begin's and Shamir's rise to power in Israel, and with the increased repression of the Palestinians, the left has lost much of its enthusiasm for the Zionist experiment.
For many critics of Zionism the parallels between Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and South Africa's handling of its black population are striking. Dennis Goldberg, a white South African and member of the African National Congress, was released from Pretoria prison in 1985 to immigrate to Israel when he agreed to fore-swear violent opposition to apartheid.79 He was also highly critical of Israel's close military and economic ties with the white-supremacist state. Goldberg later emigrated from Israel to Great Britain. Mark A. Bruzonsky80 and Micah L. Sifry81 have made similar comparisons. Israel: An Apartheid State, by expatriate Israeli Uri Davis, also equates Israel with South Africa.82
OPPOSITION IN ISRAEL
It may surprise some, but much of the opposition to Zionism today is centered in Israel. It is there that the realities of Zionism's confrontation with the Palestinians are most painfully apparent. Local Jewish opposition to Zionism also has a long history.
Several important Jewish religious leaders in Palestine were opposed to Zionism and the creation of Israel. Rabbi YosefTzvi Dushinsky, the Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, and Rabbi Zelig Reuven Bengis were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. These two rabbis stated their opposition in a presentation on June 16, 1947, before the U.N. Commission on Palestine when it convened hearings in Jerusalem. They feared that "a Jewish state would be a rallying point for anti-Semitism and thus an actual danger to the Jewish people."83
In July 1949 Rabbi Amram Blau and Rabbi Aaron Katzenellenbogen sent a memorandum to the Secretary General of the United Nations on behalf of the Neturei Karta in Jerusalem. They called for the internationalization of Jerusalem and asked for U.N. passports and protection for their community.84
Judah L. Magnes, who was president of Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the Palestine Mandate, was also opposed to the creation of a Jewish state.85 In 1936, Magnes, together with other leading Jewish Palestinian humanists, including Pinhas Rutenberg and Moshe Smilanski, advocated the creation of a bi-national state. The Zionist establishment rejected this proposal. These prominent Jewish intellectuals then founded the Ihud (Union) group to oppose the partition of Palestine.86
Shortly before the creation of Israel, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, on the behalf of the Ihud Association, made the following statement before the Anglo-American Palestine Commission Inquiry: "We do not favor Palestine as a Jewish country or Palestine as an Arab country, but a bi-national Palestine as the common country of two peoples."87 The Ihud, however, abandoned the idea in 1948 after Magnes' death, and after war had broken out in Palestine.88
Mordechai Avi Shaul was one of these early Jewish humanists who continued to oppose the Jewish state after its creation. In 1935 he helped to establish the League of Civil and Human Rights in Palestine, "whose original purpose was to oppose British oppression of Jews and Arabs under the Mandate." He continued to work for equal rights for Arabs in the Jewish state.89
Reb Binyomin, a prominent writer, strongly criticized actions that occurred during the creation of the Jewish state. In 1953 he wrote:
After the State of Israel was established, I began receiving news about the terrible things perpetrated both during and after the Israeli-Arab war. I did not recognize my own people for the changes which had occurred in their spirit. The acts of brutality were not the worst because those might have been explained somehow. . . Far more terrible was the benevolent attitude towards these acts on the part of public opinion. I had never imagined that such could be the spiritual and moral countenance of Israel. . .90
Another old Jewish settler, Nathan Chofshi, who also witnessed the birth of the Jewish state, did not like what he saw. In 1959, in a reply to a rabbi who "parroted" the official version of the Palestinian exodus from Israel, he bore witness to the campaign to expel the Palestinian population. Chofshi also stated the following:
We came and turned the Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare slander and malign them, to besmirch their name; instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did, and trying to undo some of the evil we committed, we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.91
In 1962 Moshe Machover founded the Israeli Socialist Organization (known as Matzpen after its publication) with other Israeli leftists. He described Zionism as "the equivalent of what in other places is known as white supremacy. Here [in Israel] there are exact parallels in terms of Jewish supremacy."92 Matzpen, however, splintered into several political factions and together with other small left-wing anti-Zionist Israeli groups the divisions greatly diminished the strength of non-Zionist Jewish forces within Israel. All of these "radical" groups came under political attack from state authorities.93
In 1975 Charles Glass estimated that 5-8 percent of Israel's Jewish population fell into the anti-Zionist category. Most of this opposition was of a "leftist" variety. However, Glass also stated that "they represent 50 percent of the only significant debate in the country."94
Ehud Adiv, Dan Vered, Yehezkel Cohen, David Cooper and Rami Livneh are five Jewish Israelis who have been sent to prison for working against the Jewish state. Livneh was sentenced to ten years in prison for meeting with a Fatah member near Nazareth to discuss political issues. His case was adopted by Amnesty International.95
Adiv, Vered, Cohen and Cooper were members of the Revolutionary Communist Alliance-Red Front. They were critical of Matzpen and some of the other leftist anti-Zionist organizations for their lack of a political program. Their belief in activism led them to participate in an underground Palestinian-Israeli organization. This resulted in their being convicted of helping to form an "espionage and sabotage network." The "Red Front Trial" was a shock to Israeli society which was used to the image of its Jewish youth ready to defend The Nation under all circumstances.96 As Charles Glass commented:
While the Red Front probably never presented a security danger to the State of Israel, its psychological threat was enormous. Here were Jews born and raised in Israel, Adiv himself from a kibbutz, working with Arabs for the overthrow of the state! Young Israelis could not help but ask why.97
The 1986 disclosure by the former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, of Israeli's nuclear arsenal can be seen in a similar light. Israeli authorities launched a massive campaign to discredit Vanunu in the eyes of Israel's Jewish population while his trial was conducted in total secrecy. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.98 The stiff penalty given Vanunu for revealing what has been an open secret for years is a harsh reminder that the Jewish state is tightening the noose around internal dissent.99
One of the leading Israeli anti-Zionists today is concentration-camp survivor Israel Shahak, who currently heads the Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights. Shahak takes the view that "the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of the term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin."100 He also indicates:
I would say the only human response to Holocaust is to try not to be like Nazis, in word or in deed. What brought the Holocaust was the racist attitude towards Jews, the division of German society into Jews and non-Jews on grounds of race. This is exactly the same thing that is happening in Israel.101
Many view this type of comparison as inappropriate, but other Israeli Jews have drawn the same parallel. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the renowned scholar of Judaism and philosophy and the editor of several volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, has expressed similar concerns:
The big crisis of the Jewish people is that the overwhelming majority of the Jews genuinely desire to be Jewish -- but they have no content for their Judaism other than a piece of colored rag attached to the end of a pole and a military uniform. The consciousness and the desire to be Jewish did not vanish, rather they are transformed today into a Judeo-Nazi mentality.102
Other leading Israeli critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians include Professor Danny Amit ("There is a basis for an Israeli-Palestinian strategy of joint struggle," MERIP Reports, May 1983), Uri Avnery (Israel without Zionists, 1968), Yoram Binur (My Enemy, My Self, 1989), Uri Davis ("Journey Out of Zionism," in Journal of Palestine Studies, summer 1970), Boaz Evron ("Holocaust: The Uses of Disaster," in Radical America, fall 1983), the late Simha Flapan (The Birth of Israel, 1987), Isaac Hasson ("Can Israel Be a Democratic State?" in The International Humanist, December 1987), Amnon Kapeliouk (Sabra and Shatilla, 1984), Peretz Kidron ("Truth Whereby Nations Live," in Blaming the Victims, edited by Hitchens and Said), Felicia Langer (With My Own Eyes, 1975), the late Livia Rokach (editor of Israel's Sacred Terrorism, 1980), Ur Shlansky ("Eyewitness in Gaza," in Radical America, fall, 1983), Professor Jacob Talmon ("Self-Determination for Palestinian Arabs: An Open Letter," in Jewish Liberation Journal, November-December 1969), Georges Tamarin (The Israeli Dilemma: Essays on a Warfare State, 1973), and Lea Tsemel ("The Political Prisoners," Arab Studies Quarterly, spring/summer 1985). This list is by no means complete.
Many Israelis have also refused to serve in the army on political grounds. These include Marius Shattner, Irith Yacobi and Reuben Lassman.103 In 1973 Giora Neumann was sentenced to eight months imprisonment for refusing military duty. At his trial Neumann said that he had to be loyal to his values, and that the Israeli military had become a "persecuting army" of occupation which "uproots and exiles people."104
Over 2,000 Israeli reserve soldiers signed a petition requesting not to serve in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The opposition to war among Israeli reserve soldiers formalized itself into an organization called Yesh Gvul ("There is a limit").105 Gideon Spiro, one of its founders, wrote:
It was the first time in Israel's history that Israeli reserve soldiers said to the government: We are not going to a war which violates all democratic and humanistic norms; which violates all international charters to which Israel is a signatory, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; which contradicts the essence and spirit of the Israeli Declaration of Independence; and which involves the criminal bombing of civilian populations.106
Yesh Gvul is not a pacifist organization and does not question the need for an army for Israel's defense. However, its members argued that they were not prepared to support a war they viewed as illegal, and they were not prepared to hide behind the defense of "we acted under orders" in an attempt to justify that illegality. One hundred and fifty Israelis were court martialed for refusing to serve in Lebanon.107
Yesh Gvul has also been active in opposing Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Over 600 Israeli reserve soldiers have signed a petition indicating their refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories. At least 37 "refuseniks" have been sent to prison and approximately 100 reservists have been released from service after refusing to help crush Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the territories.108
The board of directors of the state-operated Israeli television network has decided to prohibit reports of Yesh Gvul demonstrations. Israel has only one television network. This decision was seen by many Israelis, including those who were opposed to Yesh Gvul, as an ominous attack on freedom of expression.109
Israel's invasion of Lebanon also prompted Jacobo Timerman, the world-renowned author and human-rights activist, to sharply criticize the actions of Israel. He asked, "Why are the Israelis incapable of recognizing the high degree of criminality in their army's campaign against the Palestinian people?"110 In 1988 Timerman attacked "hypocrisy" in Israel:
Israel's great hypocrisy consists in disguising her policy of occupation with security arguments similar to those utilized by the Argentine generals to justify their bloody dictatorship. The real objective of Israel's policy is to expel all Palestinians and seize their lands. . . . There is a second hypocrisy shocking in its obscenity: the utilization of the Holocaust to justify alleged Israeli fears of a new extermination. It is used as an excuse for the policy of wiping out the Palestinian identity which has been implemented in Israel for the past 20 years, as if an unproven future danger were sufficient reason to commit crimes against a defenseless nation today.111
The 23 years of occupation that has been imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has also left its mark on Israeli society. The occupation has been opposed by many Jews.112 Professor Leibowitz, for example, made the following comment:
It is both understandable and natural that an enslaved people will fight for its freedom against an occupying power with all the means at its disposal, and without regard for their propriety; this phenomenon is recognized to be part and parcel of the wars of liberation of all peoples. We use the term "terrorism" to describe the acts of the Palestinian people, and call their fighters "terrorists." But our rule over a resistant people could not persist were it not for the use of means which are considered to constitute war crimes throughout the world -- and even plain criminal acts. We do not view these acts as terrorism; they are considered to be policy because they are being implemented by a legal government and a state arm. "Aberrant acts" by necessity become the norm because, far from being a side effect of an occupation regime, they are its essence.113
While Palestinians have been long subjected to restrictions, Jews have largely been free from overt state interference, although the Jewish press is censored. However, there are signs that the tactics which are used to control Palestinian opposition are being extended to Jewish dissent.
In February 1987 Michael Warschawsky, an anti-Zionist Israeli and director of the Alternative Information Center was arrested. The Center was closed down and its files seized. The organization provided information on human-rights violations in the Occupied Territories to the media. The Center was a constant irritant to Israeli authorities, who wanted to present a benevolent image of the occupation to the world and "manage" coverage of the suppression of the Palestinian uprising. Several foreign journalists who witnessed the raid claimed that "what's happening here is similar to the police treatment of foreign correspondents in South Africa."114
Warschawsky was charged with security offenses for assisting proscribed "terrorist" organizations. The charges included "rendering typing services to students and women's organizations" which were claimed to be "front organizations for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine." Other offenses included rendering typing facilities for several Palestinian newspapers that are not even banned by the authorities. The Israeli newspaper Hadshot reported that one of the charges leveled against Warschawsky was that he had helped in "preparing and distributing instructional material related to the interrogation method of Shin Bet [Israeli General Security Services], which teaches potential detainees how to behave when they are arrested and thereby harms the activities of the security services. . . ."115
The information was to help Palestinian detainees resist torture techniques practiced by Israeli security services. In the words of one Israeli: "It is clear why Mikado [Warschawsky] was arrested. . . so that the Jews can say: With our hands on our hearts, we didn't know."116
Warschawsky was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment. However, widespread outrage at the harshness of the sentence caused the authorities to reduce it to eight months after an appeal was heard.117
On February 18, 1988, Derech Hanitzotz/Tariq A-Sharara, a joint Hebrew/Arabic newspaper operation, was shut down by Israeli authorities. The paper was left-wing and extremely critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Four editors and the publisher, all Jews and three of them women, were arrested: Yakov Ben Efrat, Roni Ben Efrat, Michal Schwartz, Hadas Lahav and Asaf Adiv. It was the first Hebrew-language newspaper to be closed under the security laws.118
Hadas Ladav was released after 12 days of solitary confinement without charges being brought. She reported that the detainees were subjected to "emotional torture,. . . humiliation and.., coïtusual harassment" from the investigators. Ladav stated after such an ordeal, "one does not leave the same person as one went in."119 There were also reports of more severe types of punishment being inflicted on the remaining prisoners. The dissidents were held without bail and charged with security offenses similar to those leveled at Warschawsky.
The term Palestinian is simply that of a national designation which includes not only Christians and Muslims but also Jews, and other religious and even non-religious groups. The first British governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, reported that virtually all indigenous Palestinian Jews were adamantly opposed to European political Zionism.120 Ilan Halevi, a Jewish Palestinian, is a top-ranking member of the PLO. He is the PLO ambassador to Europe and its representative to the Socialist International.121
It is also interesting to note that the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta religious sect has asked for affiliation with the Palestine National Council. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch has even offered to serve as minister for Jewish Affairs in a Palestinian government-in-exile.122 Rabbi Hirsch argues:
We are as Palestinian as Yasser Arafat. There are Jewish Palestinians, and there are Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians. In regard to issues relating to the Palestinian people, we also have our interests. If a state is established we would like to have our representation in the government.123
Two little-known facts are that the PLO helped protect the Beirut Jewish community (and also the American embassy) during the Lebanese Civil War,124 and it was the Israelis who destroyed their synagogue during the siege of Beirtut.125 Nor has it been widely publicized that nine Palestinian Jews were among the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.126
There are also a small number of Palestinian Jews still living within Palestinian society. Esther Ramahi is one such individual. She prefers to live in the squalor of the Jelazoun refugee camp, a few kilometers from Ramallah, with her Moslem Palestinian family rather than with her Jewish daughter and all the comforts of modern Israel.127
Like the Palestinian Jews, many Arab Jews (also called Oriental and Sephardic) were initially opposed to political Zionism. European secular Zionism was a totally alien ideological concept that was in direct conflict with their Jewish religious and their Arab cultural background. Kohavi Shemesh, a former leader of the Black Panthers, an Israeli anti-Zionist Oriental Jewish organization, has stated that, contrary to popular belief, "There wasn't any large-scale anti-Semitism in the Arab countries."128
The long-simmering Arab-Israeli dispute and Israel's military actions in the name of the "Jewish people" have all but virtually destroyed what was once a thriving Jewish-Arab community. Today, only remnants remain. It was, of course, in Israel's interest to strengthen the Jewish foothold in Palestine by ingathering Jews from the Arab world.
Naim Giladi, an Oriental Jew and one of the founders of the Black Panthers, has been working on the subject of Mossad operations in the Jewish-Arab community to "facilitate" Jewish-Arab immigration to Israel.129 One example of this campaign to "encourage" Zionist immigration were the bombs set off in Baghdad in 1950 to terrorize the Iraqi-Jewish community into fleeing their home of 2,500 years.130 This question is also the subject of Marion Woolfson's Prophets in Babylon where she argues, from an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, that the Jewish Arabs were victims of Zionism.131
RECENT OPPOSITION
One of the more recent manifestations of Jewish anti-Zionism is a public advertisement that contained over 200 names, including that of Harry Cohen, a British member of Parliament. The original ad was published in The Manchester Guardian (October 31, 1987) on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. More names were added to a subsequent version published in the magazine, Jerusalem. The ad stated that "the state of Israel does not represent all Jewish people, neither legally, morally nor in any other way." The statement also charged that "the Zionist structure of the state of Israel is at the heart of the racism and oppression against the Palestinian people, and should be dismantled."132
In other countries Jews are also expressing concern about Israel's policies towards the Palestinians and about the direction that Zionism is heading. In Canada there are several Jewish organizations that are sharply critical of Israel's policies. One of the most active is Jews for a Just Peace. Yossi Schwartz, an Israeli, has served as spokesman for the organization. The group is part of a small but growing number of Canadian Jews who are voicing their opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestintans.
At a rally organized by Jews for a Just Peace, held in April 1988 in front of the Israeli Consulate in Toronto, Schwartz denounced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as a "terrorist," a "fascist" and an enemy not only to the Palestinians, but to the Jewish people too." He said "the real heroes are Jews who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon." "Petition for Palestinian Rights -- Against the Israeli Law of Return -- for the Palestinian Right to Return," Jerusalem, May 1988, pp. 3 1 -- 33. Their address do Bradford Resource Centre, 31 Manor Row, Bradford, UK BDI 4PS. The demonstration drew a crowd of "about 300 people, including Arabs... as well as members of the New Jewish Agenda." The demonstration was reported to have been "orderly."133
In France, 155 Jews have endorsed an advertisement calling for the French government to recognize the new Palestinian state declared at the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers on November 15, 1988. The ad stated: "Now that the right of Israel to exist has been recognized by the Palestine National Council, nothing is against negotiations starting between the representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples." They also declared their support for the "peace forces which are fighting bravely in Israel against those who wish, among other things, to expel the entire Arab population."134
The "father" of the proposal to issue a declaration establishing a Palestinian state is Jerome Segal, an American Jewish peace activist who has long been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.135 At the present time there are also a number of prominent Jewish journalists who are extremely critical of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. These include Gerald Ca-plan of the Toronto Star ("Mindless cheerleaders for Israel?" May 13, 1990), Anthony Lewis of The New York Times ("Israel: It's Time to Speak Out about Injustice," October 22, 1989, one of many examples), Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice ("The Silence of American Jews," June 29, 1982; reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies, summer/fall 1982), and Eric Rouleau of Le Monde.136 However, the diverse nature of Jewish opposition to Zionism, in the West at least, and conflicting approaches to politics makes this opposition relatively incoherent and very difficult to weld into a viable alternative Jewish political force. Zionism clearly dominates the activist and organized elements of the Western Jewish community.
Support for Israel has virtually become a litmus test for loyalty to the Jewish community, and the role of religion has clearly diminished. Anti-Zionist Jews are simply defined outside of the community, and if they become vocal they are attacked as self-hating Jews, and sometimes even as "Kapos" (Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in the concentration camps), for betraying the new belief system.
I. F. Stone, the award-winning American Jewish journalist, who died on June 18, 1989, wrote:
. . . Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist. Jews might fight elsewhere for their very security and existence -- against principles and practices they find themselves defending in Israel.137
At the very least, some of the criticisms that I. F. Stone, Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals and religious leaders have leveled at Zionism and at the creation of a "Jewish state" seem to have been borne out.
There is no monolithic Jewish position on Zionism. Many Jews have opposed Zionism in the past, and many still do today, whether it is from a religious, leftist, liberal or humanist perspective. It would not be inappropriate to say that Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are the ones who are upholding the great Jewish tradition of ethical dissent and moral leadership. It also can be argued that Zionist Jews who place power above morality are, in fact, the historical aberration.
RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM
Much of the fiercest opposition to Zionism came from the Jewish religious community which attacked its secular nationalism. Akiva Orr, who characterizes himself as a Jewish refugee from Israel, describes this conflict between religion and secularism as follows:
The State of Israel is a secular state: its law, its legislative assembly (the Knesset), and the majority of its population are non-religious. This is hardly surprising as Israel came into existence due to the efforts of a secular political movement motivated by non-religious nationalism, namely political Zionism. In its early days Zionism came into fierce conflict with religious Jewry. The Zionists rejected religious submissiveness; the religious saw the atheist attempt to create a secular Jewish state as blasphemy.19
A nonreligious Jewish identity is antithetical to a religious definition of Jewishness. This fact presents an irreconcilable contradiction between the religious and secular streams in the Jewish community. Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and many other leading Zionists were non-believers who actively sought to reformulate the basis for Jewish existence on race and territorial nationalism.20 This process would thereby "normalize" the existence of the Jewish people.21 The anti-religious component of political Zionism explains the vehement opposition of most devout Jews when the movement first emerged.
For religious Jews the restoration of Zion could only be brought about by divine intervention; human attempts to reestablish Israel were heretical. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the religious leader of nineteenth century German Orthodox Jews stated that it was a sin to promote Jewish emigration to Palestine.22 Zionists were called by Rabbi Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld of Brisk "ruffians" and "evil men."23 In 1898 Rabbi Sonnenfeld wrote that Zionists have
asserted view that the whole difference and distinction between Israel and The Nations lies in nationalism, blood and race, and that the faith and the religion are superfluous. . . . Dr. Herzl comes not from the Lord, but from the side of pollution.24
Other leading Jewish religious leaders who opposed Zionism included Moritz Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna,25 Dr. Herman Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain,26 the Lubbavitscher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem ben Schneersohn,27 the Holy Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes,28 and Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the leader of the American Reform Movement.29 Many more Jewish religious leaders were opposed to Zionism.30
Religious Jews in Palestine and the Orthodox Jewish organization, Agudas Yisroel, founded in 1912, also opposed the political Zionist colonization program in Palestine. They protested, to the British Mandatory Administration, against the Zionist claim to represent the entire Jewish community.31 Nathan Birnbaum, an early Zionist, who is credited with coining the term Zionist, later broke with the movement and became a devoutly Orthodox anti-Zionist Jew. For a brief time he served as one of Aguda's spokesmen.32
On June 30, 1924, Jakob Israel De Han, a member of Aguda's executive committee, was assassinated in Palestine by underground soldiers of the Haganah. He had "violently denounced Zionism in cables to British newspapers and attacked the Balfour declaration" and British colonial officials who were "pro-Zionist " De Han became a martyr to Jerusalem's anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.33
In time, the Zionists managed to win much of the Orthodox Jewish community to their cause. This was done in part by granting the Orthodox political and economic concessions and by implementing a proportional representation system in central Zionist organizations and in the Israeli Knesset. This type of political mechanism gave the Orthodox Jews an important role in determining the course of Jewish affairs in Zionist institutions.
The various religious parties in Israel today represent Orthodox Jewish opinion that has accommodated itself to the Zionist view. However, the religious orientation of these parties is frequently at odds with the majority secular-national interpretation of "Jewishness" in Israel. This contradiction is the source of much political conflict.34
It can even be said that the Israeli ultra-orthodox religious parties which participate in Israeli politics are still anti-Zionist, despite that involvement. The ultra-Orthodox parties are Shas (the Sephardic religious party), Aguda (the Hasidic) and Degel Hatorah (the Flag of the Torah or the "Lithuanian party"). They are supported by between 250,000 and 300,000 Orthodox Israeli Jews and won 13 Knesset seats in the 1988 election.35
These three religious parties are opposed to the Zionist aim of creating a secular Jewish homeland, and as such are considered by some as anti-Zionist. This view is held despite the fact that they support the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and bargain for financial support from the state. The National Religious party, which won five seats in the 1988 Israeli election, is considered Zionist and over the years has become increasingly nationalistic.36
While much of the Orthodox religious Jewish community was eventually won over to the extent of giving at least nominal support to the state of Israel, significant pockets of resistance remain. The Neturei Karta ("Guardians of the Walls") in their large enclaves in Jerusalem's Mea Sharim Quarter and in Bnai Brak near Tel Aviv, preserve Orthodox Jewry's fierce opposition to Zionism. They refuse to have anything to do with Israeli state authorities.37 The following is an excerpt from a Neturei Karta advertisement that appeared in The New York Times on June 15, 1981:
Besides the millions of Jews who are non-Zionist, there are many hundreds of thousands of Jews who are fervently anti-Zionist. They are opposed to Zionism and the very existence of the Zionist state because Zionism seeks to change the essence of Judaism and substitute chauvinism and militarism and loyalty to the Zionist state for the lofty and unchangeable principles of the Jewish faith. The Jewish nation was not founded by Zionist politicians but the character of Jewish nationhood was determined on Mount Sinai and the Jewish people as well as every individual Jew are bound to fulfill the Mitzvos (commandments) of the oral and written law of the Torah. Jews are certain that the Jewish redemption will come with the coming of the Moshiach. The establishment of the Zionist state before that time is heretic and indeed blasphemous. Our greatest rabbis have taught us that Zionism is one of the worst calamities that has ever befallen the Jewish people.38
The intensity of the ultra-Orthodox's opposition to political Zionism is fierce. Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, for example, argues that Zionism is causing a genocide of the Jewish people by destroying the religious and spiritual basis for Jewish existence.39 Rabbi Moshe Leib-Hirsch summarized the extent of Neturei Karta's opposition to Zionism by stating, "We will not accept a Zionist State even if the Arabs do."40
Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe, until his death in 1979, at the age of 91, was also implacably anti-Zionist and "influenced Orthodox Jewry in the whole of Transylvania." After World War II, and a brief stay in Jerusalem, he emigrated to New York. Many of his followers congregated there and new members joined his flock. Rabbi Teitelbaum opposed Zionism not only on halachic grounds but also because he believed that "Zionism forestalled the Messiah. . . brought the Holocaust and other calamities on the Jewish people." In his view the Jewish state "condemned itself through its own lifestyle and politics." Teitelbaum's 40,000 chassidim are found largely in Williamsburg, New York, and in Jerusalem.41
In January 1986 the non-Zionist Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, representing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, issued a statement attacking Zionism and Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. It included the following:
It is our duty to denounce those who invoke the name of the Almighty in vain. It is our holy obligation and our moral responsibility to call on them: Stop using these falsehoods and heresies to justify yourselves and your misdeeds. The Jewish faith, as transmitted by the Almighty to our forefathers has not and will never countenance the zionist and nationalistic doctrines of the state of Israel. These false doctrines are compounded of atheism and anti-religious zionism, ideologies alien to Judaism. Let them not be misrepresented to the world as Jewish.42
Reform Jews in the United States were also opposed to Zionism. Their Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 stated their opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state very clearly: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine. . . nor the restoration of the laws concerning the Jewish state."43
With the emergence of the Zionist movement their position even hardened. In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) declared:
. . . we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's mission, which from the narrow political and national field has been expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets. . .44
It was not until 1937, and after the rise of Hitler, that the CCAR changed its position on the question of Zionism. This reversal, however, also spawned another anti-Zionist Jewish organization.45
In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other prominent American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with the express intent of combatting Zionism. Included in the Council's leadership were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J. Rosenwald, the former chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who became president of the Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its executive director; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times; and Sidney Wallach of the American Jewish Committee. Membership in the Council grew to over 15,000. Its members were highly articulate and greatly angered the Zionist leadership, who wanted the American Jewish community to present a united front on the Palestine question.46
Even after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947 the American Council for Judaism continued to oppose Zionism vocally. The magazine, Issues, was their principal vehicle of communication.47 Issues was joined in its opposition to Zionism by The Menorah Journal edited by Dr. Henry Hurwitz48 and William Zukerman's Jewish Newsletter.49
After Israel's spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the American Council for Judaism. Alfred Lilienthal suggests that "Zionist infiltration" succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council.50 A separate organization was subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ). The new group, which is based in New York, continues the original anti-Zionist tradition of the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger is currently the president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report.51
One of the most articulate and vocal critics in Canada today of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians is Rabbi Reuben Slonim. He is a spiritual Zionist in the tradition of Ahad Ha-am. His criticisms of Israel's policies eventually led to a break with his congregation in Toronto. However, he does have a small, but devoted, following among the Canadian Jewish community.52 In 1983 he wrote:
Today we Jews are losing [the] humanism and universalism of Judaism, all for the sake of Jewish statehood. We love Israel, and so we should, but we are so blinded by that love that we are willing to pay a prohibitive price for it. We condone acts we would declare unconscionable anywhere else in the world: nuclear weapons are wrong but necessary for Israel; apartheid is wrong, but for the sake of Israel's survival we will tolerate it; human rights are critical, but not for the Palestinians; we have a right to a state but Palestinians do not. Our racism towards Arabs would be regarded as anti-Semitism if others spoke of us in the same light. In all things we need to remember that the Jewish people and the Jewish state are but instruments, not ends in themselves; that what is good for the world is good for the Jews, not what is good for the Jews is good for the world; that the ultimate goal of the Jew, if he be truly Jewish, is to serve humanity.53
NON-RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM
Not only Orthodox and Reform Jews were opposed to Zionism. In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was leaving for the Paris Peace Conference. The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. These included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey; Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H. Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy's Jesse I. Straus; New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco.54 The petition read in part:
. . . we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish.
Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion," it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases.55
Albert Einstein was also anti-Zionist. He made a presentation to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, which was examining the Palestine issue in January 1946 and argued against the creation of a Jewish state. Einstein also later turned down the presidency of the state of Israel.56 In 1950 Einstein published the following statement on the question of Zionism.
I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight without a Jewish state.57
Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and twenty-five other prominent Jews, in a letter to The New York Times (December 4, 1948), condemned Menachem Begin's and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party as "fascist" and espousing "an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority." The same theme is echoed in William Zukerman's 1934 article in The Nation, "The Menace of Jewish Fascism. "58 This is also the premise of Michael Selzer's book, The Aryanization of the Jewish State.59
For most Western Jews and many other people, the connection of Zionism to fascism and racism is odious and inappropriate. However, this theme is a recurrent motif in the debate on Zionism within the Jewish community. Even David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and first prime minister, wrote an article in 1933 entitled, "Jabotinsky in the Footsteps of Hitler."60 Vladimir Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the mentor of Menachem Begin.
Professor Richard Arens, the late brother of Moshe Arens, the Israeli defense minister and leading figure in the Likud party, has also equated Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with the Nazi persecution of the Jews.61 Hannah Arendt, when writing about the trial of Adolph Eichmann, pointed out the irony of attacking the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws of 1935 when certain laws in Israel regarding the personal status of Jews were identical to the infamous Nazi code.62 Morris Raphael Cohen, the distinguished philosopher, went so far as to argue that "Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of anti-Semites, but draw different conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is the Jew that is the pure or superior race."63
Other leading Jewish intellectuals who opposed Zionism include Louis D. Brandeis (see Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism), Martin Buber (coauthor, with J.L. Magnes and E. Simon, of Towards Union in Palestine: Essay on Zionism and Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 1947), Isaac Deutscher ("The Non-Jewish Jew," in The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, 1968), Simon Dubnow (Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, edited by Koppel S. Pinson, 1961), Morris Jastrow (Zionism and the Future of Palestine, the Fallacies and Dangers of Political Zionism, 1919), Emile Marmorstein ("A Bout of Agony," The Guardian, April 1974), Moshe Menuhin (father of Sir Yehudi Menuhin and author of The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time), Claude Montefiore ("Nation or Religious Community?" reprinted in Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered), Jakob I. Petuchowski (Zion Reconsidered, 1966), and Franz Rosenzweig.64 Hans Kohn, who was one of the world's leading authorities on nationalism, posed the following questions on the issue.
Might not perhaps the "abnormal" existence of the Jews represent a higher form of historical development than territorial nationalism? Has not the diaspora been an essential part of Jewish existence? Did it not secure Jewish survival better than the state could do?65
Erich Fromm, the eminent scholar, also was critical of Zionism. He stated that the Arabs in Israel had a much more legitimate claim to citizenship than the Jews. Fromm also wrote:
The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.66
Bruno Kreisky, the former chancellor of Austria, who died in July 1990, was well known for his attempts to bring about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. ln a 1974 interview with an Israeli paper he stated: "There is no Jewish race; there are only Jewish religious groups. Israel was only the ancient, religious fatherland of Jews, but not their true fatherland."67 In another interview, conducted in 1985, Kreisky said, "In the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians I am on the side of the underdog -- the Palestinians."68
Present-day Jewish opponents of Zionism who have published books on the subject include Rabbi Elmer Berger (The Jewish Dilemma, 1945), Noam Chomsky (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, 1983), Marc H. Ellis (Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation: The Uprising and the Future, 1989), Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht (The Fate of the Jews, 1983), Georges Friedmann (The End of the Jewish People, 1967), Maxim Ghilan (How Israel Lost Its Soul, 1974), Alfred M. Lilienthal (What Price Israel? 1953), Norton Mezvinsky (The Character of the State of Israel, 1972), Cheryl Rubenberg (Israel and the American National Interest, 1986), and Michael Selzer (The Wineskin and the Wizard, 1970). Several collections of articles are also useful in understanding the scope of debate within the Jewish community and especially the strength of opposition in Jewish intellectual circles. These collections are Jewish Critics of Zionism by Moshe Menuhin; Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer; and Zionism: The Dream and the Reality -- A Jewish Critique, edited by Gary V. Smith.
Lilienthal's The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace? is one of the classic expositions of the Jewish anti-Zionist position, and as a historical work it is virtually encyclopedic. Lilienthal, who also edited the newsletter Middle East Perspective (1968-1985), Rabbi Elmer Berger and Noam Chomsky have to be considered the three preeminent American Jewish critics of Zionism.69
Many Jews have opposed Zionism because they believe that there is a moral contradiction in trying to create an exclusionist Jewish nation-state out of a universal religious ethic. They have also opposed Zionism because of what it has done to the Palestinians and how they believed this violence would transform Judaism.
A large number of Socialist and Marxist Jewish scholars are also opposed to Zionism. These include Peter Buch, (Zionism and the Arab Revolution, 1967), Steven Goldfield (Garrison State: Israel's Role in U.S. Global Strategy, 1985), Abraham Leon (The Jewish Question, 1973), the famed Orientalist Maxime Rodinson (Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? 1973), Jon Rothschild (editor of Forbidden Agendas: Intolerance and Defiance in the Middle East, 1984; coauthor, with Nathan Weinstock, of The Truth about Israel and Zionism, 1970), and Nathan Weinstock (Zionism: False Messiah, 1979). A rising generation of American leftist Jewish thinkers, including Joel Beinin ("From Land Day to Peace Day.. . and Beyond," in Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation, edited by Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, 1989), Lenni Brenner (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983), David Finkel (editor of the Detroit-based magazine Against the Current, whose "Occupation and Resistance: A Look Inside the Israel-Palestine Crisis," appeared in Changes, July-August, 1982), Norman Finkelstein ("Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial," in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, 1988), Christopher Hitchens (writer of a bimonthly column in The Nation),70 Zachary Lockman ("Original Sin," in Intifada, edited by Lockman and Beinin), Joan Mandel71 and Hilton Obenzinger,72 are also highly critical of Zionism.
There also exists in the Soviet Union an active Jewish anti-Zionist organization. It is headed by General David Dragunski.73 Despite reports to the contrary, this organization is still in existence.74 The West tends to dismiss such bodies, but one should remember that historically there has always been a powerful anti-Zionist Socialist and Communist tradition within the Jewish community.
Many Jewish intellectuals were prominent leaders in the Socialist movement, and in many respects they represent a competing stream of thought in the world Jewish community. Leon Trotsky, for example, attacked Zionism as "reactionary," a "blind alley" and "a bloody trap."75 Rosa Luxemberg also was anti-Zionist and as a result was attacked with the accusation of "self-hatred."76 Ephraim Sevela, a Soviet Jewish emigrant to Israel, has written a book about his disillusionment with Zionism in which he concludes that Israel is not a Jewish homeland.77
The Jewish workers' Bund movement was also anti-Zionist. The Bund was a large and well-organized Jewish socialist, autonomist party that existed in Lithuania, Poland and Russia between 1907-1948. It favored a secular East European Jewish nationalism and rejected a world Jewish national identity.78
Over time Socialist Zionists managed to reduce leftist Jewish opposition to the Zionist program by emphasizing the utopian and socialist aspects of political Zionism. The kibbutz experiment of collective farming and the large role labor played in the early years of the state figured prominently in the campaign to win support from the left for the Jewish state. But with the shift of the political character of Zionism to the right and with Begin's and Shamir's rise to power in Israel, and with the increased repression of the Palestinians, the left has lost much of its enthusiasm for the Zionist experiment.
For many critics of Zionism the parallels between Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and South Africa's handling of its black population are striking. Dennis Goldberg, a white South African and member of the African National Congress, was released from Pretoria prison in 1985 to immigrate to Israel when he agreed to fore-swear violent opposition to apartheid.79 He was also highly critical of Israel's close military and economic ties with the white-supremacist state. Goldberg later emigrated from Israel to Great Britain. Mark A. Bruzonsky80 and Micah L. Sifry81 have made similar comparisons. Israel: An Apartheid State, by expatriate Israeli Uri Davis, also equates Israel with South Africa.82
OPPOSITION IN ISRAEL
It may surprise some, but much of the opposition to Zionism today is centered in Israel. It is there that the realities of Zionism's confrontation with the Palestinians are most painfully apparent. Local Jewish opposition to Zionism also has a long history.
Several important Jewish religious leaders in Palestine were opposed to Zionism and the creation of Israel. Rabbi YosefTzvi Dushinsky, the Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, and Rabbi Zelig Reuven Bengis were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. These two rabbis stated their opposition in a presentation on June 16, 1947, before the U.N. Commission on Palestine when it convened hearings in Jerusalem. They feared that "a Jewish state would be a rallying point for anti-Semitism and thus an actual danger to the Jewish people."83
In July 1949 Rabbi Amram Blau and Rabbi Aaron Katzenellenbogen sent a memorandum to the Secretary General of the United Nations on behalf of the Neturei Karta in Jerusalem. They called for the internationalization of Jerusalem and asked for U.N. passports and protection for their community.84
Judah L. Magnes, who was president of Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the Palestine Mandate, was also opposed to the creation of a Jewish state.85 In 1936, Magnes, together with other leading Jewish Palestinian humanists, including Pinhas Rutenberg and Moshe Smilanski, advocated the creation of a bi-national state. The Zionist establishment rejected this proposal. These prominent Jewish intellectuals then founded the Ihud (Union) group to oppose the partition of Palestine.86
Shortly before the creation of Israel, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, on the behalf of the Ihud Association, made the following statement before the Anglo-American Palestine Commission Inquiry: "We do not favor Palestine as a Jewish country or Palestine as an Arab country, but a bi-national Palestine as the common country of two peoples."87 The Ihud, however, abandoned the idea in 1948 after Magnes' death, and after war had broken out in Palestine.88
Mordechai Avi Shaul was one of these early Jewish humanists who continued to oppose the Jewish state after its creation. In 1935 he helped to establish the League of Civil and Human Rights in Palestine, "whose original purpose was to oppose British oppression of Jews and Arabs under the Mandate." He continued to work for equal rights for Arabs in the Jewish state.89
Reb Binyomin, a prominent writer, strongly criticized actions that occurred during the creation of the Jewish state. In 1953 he wrote:
After the State of Israel was established, I began receiving news about the terrible things perpetrated both during and after the Israeli-Arab war. I did not recognize my own people for the changes which had occurred in their spirit. The acts of brutality were not the worst because those might have been explained somehow. . . Far more terrible was the benevolent attitude towards these acts on the part of public opinion. I had never imagined that such could be the spiritual and moral countenance of Israel. . .90
Another old Jewish settler, Nathan Chofshi, who also witnessed the birth of the Jewish state, did not like what he saw. In 1959, in a reply to a rabbi who "parroted" the official version of the Palestinian exodus from Israel, he bore witness to the campaign to expel the Palestinian population. Chofshi also stated the following:
We came and turned the Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare slander and malign them, to besmirch their name; instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did, and trying to undo some of the evil we committed, we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.91
In 1962 Moshe Machover founded the Israeli Socialist Organization (known as Matzpen after its publication) with other Israeli leftists. He described Zionism as "the equivalent of what in other places is known as white supremacy. Here [in Israel] there are exact parallels in terms of Jewish supremacy."92 Matzpen, however, splintered into several political factions and together with other small left-wing anti-Zionist Israeli groups the divisions greatly diminished the strength of non-Zionist Jewish forces within Israel. All of these "radical" groups came under political attack from state authorities.93
In 1975 Charles Glass estimated that 5-8 percent of Israel's Jewish population fell into the anti-Zionist category. Most of this opposition was of a "leftist" variety. However, Glass also stated that "they represent 50 percent of the only significant debate in the country."94
Ehud Adiv, Dan Vered, Yehezkel Cohen, David Cooper and Rami Livneh are five Jewish Israelis who have been sent to prison for working against the Jewish state. Livneh was sentenced to ten years in prison for meeting with a Fatah member near Nazareth to discuss political issues. His case was adopted by Amnesty International.95
Adiv, Vered, Cohen and Cooper were members of the Revolutionary Communist Alliance-Red Front. They were critical of Matzpen and some of the other leftist anti-Zionist organizations for their lack of a political program. Their belief in activism led them to participate in an underground Palestinian-Israeli organization. This resulted in their being convicted of helping to form an "espionage and sabotage network." The "Red Front Trial" was a shock to Israeli society which was used to the image of its Jewish youth ready to defend The Nation under all circumstances.96 As Charles Glass commented:
While the Red Front probably never presented a security danger to the State of Israel, its psychological threat was enormous. Here were Jews born and raised in Israel, Adiv himself from a kibbutz, working with Arabs for the overthrow of the state! Young Israelis could not help but ask why.97
The 1986 disclosure by the former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, of Israeli's nuclear arsenal can be seen in a similar light. Israeli authorities launched a massive campaign to discredit Vanunu in the eyes of Israel's Jewish population while his trial was conducted in total secrecy. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.98 The stiff penalty given Vanunu for revealing what has been an open secret for years is a harsh reminder that the Jewish state is tightening the noose around internal dissent.99
One of the leading Israeli anti-Zionists today is concentration-camp survivor Israel Shahak, who currently heads the Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights. Shahak takes the view that "the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of the term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin."100 He also indicates:
I would say the only human response to Holocaust is to try not to be like Nazis, in word or in deed. What brought the Holocaust was the racist attitude towards Jews, the division of German society into Jews and non-Jews on grounds of race. This is exactly the same thing that is happening in Israel.101
Many view this type of comparison as inappropriate, but other Israeli Jews have drawn the same parallel. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the renowned scholar of Judaism and philosophy and the editor of several volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, has expressed similar concerns:
The big crisis of the Jewish people is that the overwhelming majority of the Jews genuinely desire to be Jewish -- but they have no content for their Judaism other than a piece of colored rag attached to the end of a pole and a military uniform. The consciousness and the desire to be Jewish did not vanish, rather they are transformed today into a Judeo-Nazi mentality.102
Other leading Israeli critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians include Professor Danny Amit ("There is a basis for an Israeli-Palestinian strategy of joint struggle," MERIP Reports, May 1983), Uri Avnery (Israel without Zionists, 1968), Yoram Binur (My Enemy, My Self, 1989), Uri Davis ("Journey Out of Zionism," in Journal of Palestine Studies, summer 1970), Boaz Evron ("Holocaust: The Uses of Disaster," in Radical America, fall 1983), the late Simha Flapan (The Birth of Israel, 1987), Isaac Hasson ("Can Israel Be a Democratic State?" in The International Humanist, December 1987), Amnon Kapeliouk (Sabra and Shatilla, 1984), Peretz Kidron ("Truth Whereby Nations Live," in Blaming the Victims, edited by Hitchens and Said), Felicia Langer (With My Own Eyes, 1975), the late Livia Rokach (editor of Israel's Sacred Terrorism, 1980), Ur Shlansky ("Eyewitness in Gaza," in Radical America, fall, 1983), Professor Jacob Talmon ("Self-Determination for Palestinian Arabs: An Open Letter," in Jewish Liberation Journal, November-December 1969), Georges Tamarin (The Israeli Dilemma: Essays on a Warfare State, 1973), and Lea Tsemel ("The Political Prisoners," Arab Studies Quarterly, spring/summer 1985). This list is by no means complete.
Many Israelis have also refused to serve in the army on political grounds. These include Marius Shattner, Irith Yacobi and Reuben Lassman.103 In 1973 Giora Neumann was sentenced to eight months imprisonment for refusing military duty. At his trial Neumann said that he had to be loyal to his values, and that the Israeli military had become a "persecuting army" of occupation which "uproots and exiles people."104
Over 2,000 Israeli reserve soldiers signed a petition requesting not to serve in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The opposition to war among Israeli reserve soldiers formalized itself into an organization called Yesh Gvul ("There is a limit").105 Gideon Spiro, one of its founders, wrote:
It was the first time in Israel's history that Israeli reserve soldiers said to the government: We are not going to a war which violates all democratic and humanistic norms; which violates all international charters to which Israel is a signatory, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; which contradicts the essence and spirit of the Israeli Declaration of Independence; and which involves the criminal bombing of civilian populations.106
Yesh Gvul is not a pacifist organization and does not question the need for an army for Israel's defense. However, its members argued that they were not prepared to support a war they viewed as illegal, and they were not prepared to hide behind the defense of "we acted under orders" in an attempt to justify that illegality. One hundred and fifty Israelis were court martialed for refusing to serve in Lebanon.107
Yesh Gvul has also been active in opposing Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Over 600 Israeli reserve soldiers have signed a petition indicating their refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories. At least 37 "refuseniks" have been sent to prison and approximately 100 reservists have been released from service after refusing to help crush Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the territories.108
The board of directors of the state-operated Israeli television network has decided to prohibit reports of Yesh Gvul demonstrations. Israel has only one television network. This decision was seen by many Israelis, including those who were opposed to Yesh Gvul, as an ominous attack on freedom of expression.109
Israel's invasion of Lebanon also prompted Jacobo Timerman, the world-renowned author and human-rights activist, to sharply criticize the actions of Israel. He asked, "Why are the Israelis incapable of recognizing the high degree of criminality in their army's campaign against the Palestinian people?"110 In 1988 Timerman attacked "hypocrisy" in Israel:
Israel's great hypocrisy consists in disguising her policy of occupation with security arguments similar to those utilized by the Argentine generals to justify their bloody dictatorship. The real objective of Israel's policy is to expel all Palestinians and seize their lands. . . . There is a second hypocrisy shocking in its obscenity: the utilization of the Holocaust to justify alleged Israeli fears of a new extermination. It is used as an excuse for the policy of wiping out the Palestinian identity which has been implemented in Israel for the past 20 years, as if an unproven future danger were sufficient reason to commit crimes against a defenseless nation today.111
The 23 years of occupation that has been imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has also left its mark on Israeli society. The occupation has been opposed by many Jews.112 Professor Leibowitz, for example, made the following comment:
It is both understandable and natural that an enslaved people will fight for its freedom against an occupying power with all the means at its disposal, and without regard for their propriety; this phenomenon is recognized to be part and parcel of the wars of liberation of all peoples. We use the term "terrorism" to describe the acts of the Palestinian people, and call their fighters "terrorists." But our rule over a resistant people could not persist were it not for the use of means which are considered to constitute war crimes throughout the world -- and even plain criminal acts. We do not view these acts as terrorism; they are considered to be policy because they are being implemented by a legal government and a state arm. "Aberrant acts" by necessity become the norm because, far from being a side effect of an occupation regime, they are its essence.113
While Palestinians have been long subjected to restrictions, Jews have largely been free from overt state interference, although the Jewish press is censored. However, there are signs that the tactics which are used to control Palestinian opposition are being extended to Jewish dissent.
In February 1987 Michael Warschawsky, an anti-Zionist Israeli and director of the Alternative Information Center was arrested. The Center was closed down and its files seized. The organization provided information on human-rights violations in the Occupied Territories to the media. The Center was a constant irritant to Israeli authorities, who wanted to present a benevolent image of the occupation to the world and "manage" coverage of the suppression of the Palestinian uprising. Several foreign journalists who witnessed the raid claimed that "what's happening here is similar to the police treatment of foreign correspondents in South Africa."114
Warschawsky was charged with security offenses for assisting proscribed "terrorist" organizations. The charges included "rendering typing services to students and women's organizations" which were claimed to be "front organizations for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine." Other offenses included rendering typing facilities for several Palestinian newspapers that are not even banned by the authorities. The Israeli newspaper Hadshot reported that one of the charges leveled against Warschawsky was that he had helped in "preparing and distributing instructional material related to the interrogation method of Shin Bet [Israeli General Security Services], which teaches potential detainees how to behave when they are arrested and thereby harms the activities of the security services. . . ."115
The information was to help Palestinian detainees resist torture techniques practiced by Israeli security services. In the words of one Israeli: "It is clear why Mikado [Warschawsky] was arrested. . . so that the Jews can say: With our hands on our hearts, we didn't know."116
Warschawsky was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment. However, widespread outrage at the harshness of the sentence caused the authorities to reduce it to eight months after an appeal was heard.117
On February 18, 1988, Derech Hanitzotz/Tariq A-Sharara, a joint Hebrew/Arabic newspaper operation, was shut down by Israeli authorities. The paper was left-wing and extremely critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Four editors and the publisher, all Jews and three of them women, were arrested: Yakov Ben Efrat, Roni Ben Efrat, Michal Schwartz, Hadas Lahav and Asaf Adiv. It was the first Hebrew-language newspaper to be closed under the security laws.118
Hadas Ladav was released after 12 days of solitary confinement without charges being brought. She reported that the detainees were subjected to "emotional torture,. . . humiliation and.., coïtusual harassment" from the investigators. Ladav stated after such an ordeal, "one does not leave the same person as one went in."119 There were also reports of more severe types of punishment being inflicted on the remaining prisoners. The dissidents were held without bail and charged with security offenses similar to those leveled at Warschawsky.
The term Palestinian is simply that of a national designation which includes not only Christians and Muslims but also Jews, and other religious and even non-religious groups. The first British governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, reported that virtually all indigenous Palestinian Jews were adamantly opposed to European political Zionism.120 Ilan Halevi, a Jewish Palestinian, is a top-ranking member of the PLO. He is the PLO ambassador to Europe and its representative to the Socialist International.121
It is also interesting to note that the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta religious sect has asked for affiliation with the Palestine National Council. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch has even offered to serve as minister for Jewish Affairs in a Palestinian government-in-exile.122 Rabbi Hirsch argues:
We are as Palestinian as Yasser Arafat. There are Jewish Palestinians, and there are Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians. In regard to issues relating to the Palestinian people, we also have our interests. If a state is established we would like to have our representation in the government.123
Two little-known facts are that the PLO helped protect the Beirut Jewish community (and also the American embassy) during the Lebanese Civil War,124 and it was the Israelis who destroyed their synagogue during the siege of Beirtut.125 Nor has it been widely publicized that nine Palestinian Jews were among the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.126
There are also a small number of Palestinian Jews still living within Palestinian society. Esther Ramahi is one such individual. She prefers to live in the squalor of the Jelazoun refugee camp, a few kilometers from Ramallah, with her Moslem Palestinian family rather than with her Jewish daughter and all the comforts of modern Israel.127
Like the Palestinian Jews, many Arab Jews (also called Oriental and Sephardic) were initially opposed to political Zionism. European secular Zionism was a totally alien ideological concept that was in direct conflict with their Jewish religious and their Arab cultural background. Kohavi Shemesh, a former leader of the Black Panthers, an Israeli anti-Zionist Oriental Jewish organization, has stated that, contrary to popular belief, "There wasn't any large-scale anti-Semitism in the Arab countries."128
The long-simmering Arab-Israeli dispute and Israel's military actions in the name of the "Jewish people" have all but virtually destroyed what was once a thriving Jewish-Arab community. Today, only remnants remain. It was, of course, in Israel's interest to strengthen the Jewish foothold in Palestine by ingathering Jews from the Arab world.
Naim Giladi, an Oriental Jew and one of the founders of the Black Panthers, has been working on the subject of Mossad operations in the Jewish-Arab community to "facilitate" Jewish-Arab immigration to Israel.129 One example of this campaign to "encourage" Zionist immigration were the bombs set off in Baghdad in 1950 to terrorize the Iraqi-Jewish community into fleeing their home of 2,500 years.130 This question is also the subject of Marion Woolfson's Prophets in Babylon where she argues, from an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, that the Jewish Arabs were victims of Zionism.131
RECENT OPPOSITION
One of the more recent manifestations of Jewish anti-Zionism is a public advertisement that contained over 200 names, including that of Harry Cohen, a British member of Parliament. The original ad was published in The Manchester Guardian (October 31, 1987) on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. More names were added to a subsequent version published in the magazine, Jerusalem. The ad stated that "the state of Israel does not represent all Jewish people, neither legally, morally nor in any other way." The statement also charged that "the Zionist structure of the state of Israel is at the heart of the racism and oppression against the Palestinian people, and should be dismantled."132
In other countries Jews are also expressing concern about Israel's policies towards the Palestinians and about the direction that Zionism is heading. In Canada there are several Jewish organizations that are sharply critical of Israel's policies. One of the most active is Jews for a Just Peace. Yossi Schwartz, an Israeli, has served as spokesman for the organization. The group is part of a small but growing number of Canadian Jews who are voicing their opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestintans.
At a rally organized by Jews for a Just Peace, held in April 1988 in front of the Israeli Consulate in Toronto, Schwartz denounced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as a "terrorist," a "fascist" and an enemy not only to the Palestinians, but to the Jewish people too." He said "the real heroes are Jews who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon." "Petition for Palestinian Rights -- Against the Israeli Law of Return -- for the Palestinian Right to Return," Jerusalem, May 1988, pp. 3 1 -- 33. Their address do Bradford Resource Centre, 31 Manor Row, Bradford, UK BDI 4PS. The demonstration drew a crowd of "about 300 people, including Arabs... as well as members of the New Jewish Agenda." The demonstration was reported to have been "orderly."133
In France, 155 Jews have endorsed an advertisement calling for the French government to recognize the new Palestinian state declared at the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers on November 15, 1988. The ad stated: "Now that the right of Israel to exist has been recognized by the Palestine National Council, nothing is against negotiations starting between the representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples." They also declared their support for the "peace forces which are fighting bravely in Israel against those who wish, among other things, to expel the entire Arab population."134
The "father" of the proposal to issue a declaration establishing a Palestinian state is Jerome Segal, an American Jewish peace activist who has long been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.135 At the present time there are also a number of prominent Jewish journalists who are extremely critical of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. These include Gerald Ca-plan of the Toronto Star ("Mindless cheerleaders for Israel?" May 13, 1990), Anthony Lewis of The New York Times ("Israel: It's Time to Speak Out about Injustice," October 22, 1989, one of many examples), Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice ("The Silence of American Jews," June 29, 1982; reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies, summer/fall 1982), and Eric Rouleau of Le Monde.136 However, the diverse nature of Jewish opposition to Zionism, in the West at least, and conflicting approaches to politics makes this opposition relatively incoherent and very difficult to weld into a viable alternative Jewish political force. Zionism clearly dominates the activist and organized elements of the Western Jewish community.
Support for Israel has virtually become a litmus test for loyalty to the Jewish community, and the role of religion has clearly diminished. Anti-Zionist Jews are simply defined outside of the community, and if they become vocal they are attacked as self-hating Jews, and sometimes even as "Kapos" (Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in the concentration camps), for betraying the new belief system.
I. F. Stone, the award-winning American Jewish journalist, who died on June 18, 1989, wrote:
. . . Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist. Jews might fight elsewhere for their very security and existence -- against principles and practices they find themselves defending in Israel.137
At the very least, some of the criticisms that I. F. Stone, Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals and religious leaders have leveled at Zionism and at the creation of a "Jewish state" seem to have been borne out.
There is no monolithic Jewish position on Zionism. Many Jews have opposed Zionism in the past, and many still do today, whether it is from a religious, leftist, liberal or humanist perspective. It would not be inappropriate to say that Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are the ones who are upholding the great Jewish tradition of ethical dissent and moral leadership. It also can be argued that Zionist Jews who place power above morality are, in fact, the historical aberration.
, tijd om daar eens overheen te stappen en verder te gaan kijken wat men nu allemaal kan doen op het gebied van intergratie ipv alleen terug te kijken !!
Maar voor sommige conflicten liggen historische feiten jammergenoeg nog steeds aan de bron van de hedendaagse geweldplegingen ... 
( 1e regel )
