Prior to WWII, there was a controversy between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews about whether the best option for Jewish survival lay in the Diaspora or the creation of a Jewish state. One would think that the experience of European Jewry would have settled that question for once and for all, but apparently it did not.
In today’s atmosphere of resurgent antisemitism, and particularly that expression of it which I’ve called extreme anti-Zionism, we have a new phenomenon, that of Jews who are not simply philosophically opposed to the Jewish state but who are doing their best to destroy it. Ami Isseroff has written,
In large part, the Arab Palestinian anti-Israel movement is led not by Palestinian Arabs or anti-Semites, but by Jews. Halper, Beinin, Rose, Pappe, Chomsky. Finkelstein and Klug, rather than Alloush, Abunimah, Fayyad Husseini, Qaukji and abu Youssef, are the intellectual mainstays of the movement to wipe out the Jewish state. Their English is much better, and they can cast their ideas in slogans acceptable to western culture. “Secular Democratic State” sounds so much better than “Drive the Jews into the Sea” to a good progressive, doesn’t it? It is hard to label them as “anti-Semites.” It is hard to discredit their lies. — Isseroff, “The future of Jewish anti-Zionism – a Zionist analysis” (entire article recommended).
Isseroff argues that the ‘future’ in question is not a good one. Like the Jewish Bolsheviks who were ultimately murdered by Stalin, if the Arab program succeeds, it won’t go well for those like Tali Fahima and Jeff Halper unless they leave secular democratic Palestine with alacrity (it won’t go well for the Jews of the Diaspora either, but that’s another story).
It may be too late to help some of the Jews that Isseroff mentions, but the most important message, the one which needs to be transmitted to the ‘progressive’ community — many of whose members are Jews — is this one:
The anti-Zionist movement at its most ‘moderate’ is not about self-determination for Palestinian Arabs, it’s about denying self-determination to Jews. And for the less moderate factions like Hamas, it’s about genocide.
Jews that lend themselves to this project are not only deluded, but they are suicidal.
Technorati Tags: anti-Zionism, Zionists, Zionism, Israel
Halper, Beinin, Rose, Pappe, Chomsky. Finkelstein and Klug, – plus Aharon Shabtai, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and many many more.
One of the special characteristics of the Jewish people though in this case a negative one- its characteristic self- criticism means that it has produced more traitors than perhaps any other people.