Zionism — White Christian Nationalism’s kissing cousin — has been the* problem in Palestine for 82 years, and it is increasingly difficult or career-ending to say this out loud in public. Nowadays anyone — Jews included — who criticizes Zionism is accused of antisemitism. This is patently absurd, especially since anti-Zionism has a long history within Judaism itself. The* American Council for Judaism is a group of anti-Zionists within Reform Judaism who have been extremely vocal for 82 years that Zionism is not Judaism, and for Judaism to make a central place for Zionism in American Jewish life is a terrible mistake. For more on the history of Jews opposing Zionism, see my November 2023 piece. The following post is reproduced with the kind permission of the author, Allan C. Brownfeld. You can subscribe to the ACJNA’s newsletter here.

For More and More Jewish Americans, Zionism Looks Like a Dangerous Wrong Turn

Allan C. Brownfeld — Issues Spring – Summer 2024

In recent months increasing attention has been focused upon developments in the Middle East. The October 7 terrorist assault on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s response, which has already cost the lives of more than 34,000* Palestinians, including thousands of women and children, has focused attention upon the way in which Zionism has come to dominate American Jewish life.

More and more Jewish Americans are coming to the conclusion that Zionism was a dangerous wrong turn for American Judaism, as the American Council for Judaism has argued from the beginning. In the Council’s view, Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a nationality. American Jews are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim. Zionism, on the other hand, argues that, somehow, Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews, and Jews living elsewhere are in “exile.” Zionism has come to dominate American Jewish life, with Israeli flags on synagogue pulpits and Jewish schools promoting the idea that emigration to Israel is the highest ideal for Jewish young people.

Much of American Judaism seems to place the state of Israel in the position of a virtual object of worship, a form of pagan idolatry much like the worship of the golden calf in the Bible. This is not Judaism, which is a religion of universal values dedicated to the long Jewish moral and ethical tradition which declares that men and women of every racial and ethnic background are created in the image of God.

Jewish Americans Are Not In “Exile”

Jewish Americans are not, as Zionism proclaims, in “exile,” but are very much at home, and always have been. In 1841, in the dedication of America’s first Reform synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski told the congregation, “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our temple.”

Zionism, many forget, was a minority view in Jewish life until the rise of Nazism in Europe. Even then, many Jewish voices warned against substituting nationalism for the humane and universal Jewish prophetic tradition. In 1938, alluding to Nazism, Albert Einstein warned an audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state imbued with “a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.”

The prominent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber spoke out in 1942 against “the aim of the minority to ‘conquer’ territory by means of international maneuvers.” From Jerusalem, where he was teaching at the Hebrew University, Buber, speaking at the time hostilities broke out after Israel unilaterally declared independence in May 1948, cried with despair, “This sort of ‘Zionism’ blasphemes the name of Zion; it is nothing more than one of the crude forms of nationalism.”

A Rupture in American Jewish Life

In an article titled “The Great Rupture in American Jewish Life” (New York Times, March 22, 2024), Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish Currents, notes that, “For the last decade or so, an ideological tremor has been unsettling American Jewish life. Since Oct. 7, it has become an earthquake. It concerns the relationship between liberalism and Zionism, two creeds that for more than half a century have defined American Jewish identity. In the years to come, American Jews will face growing pressure to choose between them.”

Beinart points out that, “The American Jews who are making a different choice — jettisoning Zionism because they can’t reconcile it with the liberal principle of equality under the law…their numbers are larger than many recognize, especially among millennials and Generation Z…The emerging rupture between American liberalism and American Zionism constitutes the greatest transformation in American Jewish life for decades to come.”

American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon—a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.” In the years to come, Peter Beinart believes, “For an American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, these anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient. There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future in which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the basis of legal equality rather than Jewish supremacy…For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on contradictions. Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now, here and there are converging. In the years to come we will have to choose.”

No Liberal Rights for Palestinians

Many are in the process of choosing now. Noah Feldman, the Harvard Law School professor and First Amendment scholar, and author of the book “To Be a Jew Today,” declares: “Today, many progressive American Jews find it difficult to see Israel as a genuine liberal democracy, mostly because some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli authority with no realistic prospect of liberal rights.” Shaul Magid, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, says, “In my view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism.” Oren Kroc-Zeldin, director of Jewish Studies at the University of San Francisco, says that “Jewish liberation in Israel was predicated on the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” He says he rejects “a monolithic Pro-Israel identity.”

Within Reform Judaism, there have been calls for a move away from Zionism. A letter signed by more than 1200 alumni and current members of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) addressed to the organization on Dec. 16,2023 declares, “We grieve for the 1,200 killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7th attack and the more than 18,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military—almost half of whom have been children —since then. Israel has cut off water, electricity, fuel and supplies to Gaza. We are deeply concerned that tax dollars have been so easily provided to support Israel’s military assault on Gaza, while we struggle for the basic needs of our communities.”

The letter declares that “The URJ teaches practicing Pikuach Nefeshz, ‘saving a life,’ and Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world.’ An immediate cease-fire is in line with these Jewish values.”

“Atrocities committed In Our Name“

At the same time, a letter was released from descendants of progressive rabbis and leaders to express “our horror at URJ’s failure to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. We are alarmed that the leadership of our community has not demanded an end to Israel’s devastating violence against Palestinians in addition to the safe and immediate return of the hostages…A decades-long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians has hardened the American Jewish community’s hearts. Atrocities are being committed in our name. We do not consider the killing of thousands of innocent civilians to be a justifiable consequence of ensuring our community’s protection.”

The letter concludes: “The URJ continues to actively alienate alumni with its uncompromising Zionist rhetoric…We will reconsider our and the next generation’s membership and support for the URJ unless there is a public and dramatic shift in the way the movement addresses Israel.”

Among the original signers of the letter are Zippy Janas, a descendant of Rabbi Julius Rappaport, Chana Powell, daughter of current URJ rabbi Talia Yudkin Toffany, and Zachariah Sippy, son of Rabbi David Wirtschaffer.

Reform Jews for Justice

At the same time, an organization called Reform Jews for Justice has been established (https://reformjewsforjustice.com). It declares that “As Reform Jews we stand together for Justice in solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. …We have come together to call on our movement to engage in Solidarity with Palestine. We envision a Reform Jewish movement that…rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism…The URJ leaders have unabashedly demonstrated shameful tactics of ethno-nationalism and tribal political priorities over simple ethics and the illegitimate and dangerous conflation of Zionism and Judaism. We have been alienated from the movement that raised us to ask, ‘If I am only for myself, what am I?’—through binary language suggesting that our affiliation is conditional on Zionism. We will not stand by.”

In recent years, there has been a growing effort to redefine “antisemitism” to include not simply bigotry toward Jews and Judaism, but also criticism of Israel and Zionism. In May 2022, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) declared that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Ignoring the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, he has been strenuously promoting this false and ahistoric notion ever since. Some Israelis admit that falsely equating anti- Zionism with antisemitism is a tactic to silence criticism of Israel. Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli Minister of Education, and winner of the Israel Prize, described how this works: “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are antisemitic.”

The tactic of equating criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism has come under widespread criticism. Writing in Slate (April 29, 2024), Emily Tamkin headlined her article, “The ADL has abandoned some of the people it exists to protect: For those with the wrong opinions, the group is now a threat to Jewish Safety.”

Muddying The Waters About Antisemitism

Tamkin writes: “Over the past six months, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the ADL, has stressed repeatedly that he is concerned about rising antisemitism. Unfortunately, he has also made clear that he cares about antisemitism only as he defines it and as it affects people who agree with him on the definition…The ADL… is insisting on conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and it has made its conflation central to the ADL’s work. This has not only muddied the waters of its own antisemitism research, it has also undermined the safety, security, and pluralism of American Jews.”

One example is the fact that ADL evidently mapped protests for a cease-fire led by the Jewish groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow as “antisemitic incidents” on its calculation of how much antisemitism has risen. This makes it more difficult to assess the year-over-year change in antisemitic incidents. Tamkin notes that, “Of course, an increase will seem more dramatic if you are now counting incidents, you weren’t before—but it also arguably undermines the rest of the ADL’s reporting of antisemitism.”

When it comes to Jonathan Greenblatt, a story in Jewish Currents from 2021 revealed that former ADL employees felt that Greenblatt was choosing defense of Israel over protecting civil liberties, one of the group’s- stated missions. In March 2023, Jewish Currents published a report on internal dissent at ADL over Greenblatt publishing a report comparing pro-Palestinian groups to the extreme right. Greenblatt has compared pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University to the explicitly neo-Nazi march in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He likened the group Jewish Voice for Peace to the terrorist group Hezbollah and called it an “on campus proxy for Iran.”

Younger Jews Disconnected from Israel

In Emily Tamkin’s view, “I wonder how likening a Jewish student group to a terrorist organization helps stop the defamation of the Jewish people, or scores justice and fair treatment to all…Younger American Jews are increasingly critical of and feel disconnected from Israel. The Pew 2020 study on American Jews found 51% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 were not emotionally connected at all to Israel…Young American Jews were “less likely to view antisemitism as ‘a very serious problem.’…Greenblatt is failing to stand up for the rights of all American Jews. He is using his position to make clear that some Jews are more worthy of protection and political representation than others. He’ll have powerful allies, including non-Jews who have made common cause with open antisemites.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely described student protestors on behalf of Palestinian rights as “antisemitic mobs” and likened the demonstrations to “what happened in German universities in the 1930s.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (IND-VT), who is Jewish and lost members of his family in the Holocaust, pushed back against Netanyahu’s characterization of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. He declared to Netanyahu: “It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless—almost half the population.”

Sanders continued: “Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable things to many millions of people. But please do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the illegal and immoral policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in Israeli courts.”

Protesting Against Slaughter Is Not Antisemitism

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and now professor of public philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, writing in The Guardian (April 3, 2024) makes the point that, “Protesting against this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus —taking a stand against a perceived wrong, thereby provoking discussion and debate.”

In the view of Robert Reich, who is Jewish, “Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked—stirred, unsettled, goaded—even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks…The Israel-Hamas war is horrifying. The atrocities committed by both sides illustrate the capacities of human beings for inhumanity, show the vile consequences of hate. Or it presents an opportunity for students to re- examine their preconceptions and learn from one another…Peaceful demonstrations should be encouraged, not shut down…To tar all offensive speech ‘hate speech’ and ban it removes a central pillar of education…”

Jewish critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are receiving increasing attention. The Forward (May 6, 2024) carried a feature article with the headline, “This 100-year-old Jewish activist is speaking up again—this time about Gaza.” It reports that, “Jules Rabin stood at the busiest intersection of Montpelier, Vermont in early April with snow still on the sidewalks, protesting the war in Gaza. Accompanied by about 75 friends and family members —holding a sign that asked, ‘How could the Nazi genocide of Jews 1933-45 be followed by the Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?’ He was celebrating his 100th birthday.”

“A Piecemeal Holocaust”

Jules Rabin, a World War 11 veteran, graduate of Harvard, former Goddard College professor and a pioneer in Vermont’s bread-making renaissance who, with his wife, ran a bakery for more than 40 years, appeared on a podcast on the nonprofit Vermont Digger. He referred to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza as a “piecemeal Holocaust.” He told podcast host David Goodman that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza “resembles what the Germans did to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and everywhere else in Europe.” In Rabin’s view, the Jewish claim for restitution after World War 11 should have resulted in the Germans awarding Prussia or Bavaria to the Jewish people. Concerning the latest news from Gaza and the West Bank, Rabin says, “One can’t look the other way when something dreadful is going on.”

In May, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would enshrine a contentious definition of antisemitism into U.S. law. The Antisemitic Awareness Act (AAA) passed the House by a wide margin. It mandates government civil rights offices to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This definition has drawn widespread criticism because most of its examples of antisemitism involve criticism of the state of Israel, such as calling it a “racist endeavor.”

If this bill is passed by the Senate, which will consider it at a later date, it would mean that this definition would apply when officials adjudicate Title V1 complaints alleging campus antisemitism. Opponents say it chills legitimate criticism of Israel. The bill passed by a vote of 320-91. Opponents of the IHRA definition include Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the House’s longest serving Jewish member. He declared that “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title V1’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (May 2, 2024) reported that, “Americans for Peace Now, a dovish pro-Israel group worried that the bill, should it become law, would be used as ‘a cudgel against the millions of Americans, including many Jewish Americans, who object to the Netanyahu government’s decisions and actions.”

Jewish Critics of AAA Legislation

Even some members of the Jewish establishment are critical of the AAA legislation. Alan Solow, who serves on the board of the Nexus leadership Project and is a former Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote this in The Forward (May 3, 2024): “Distinctions…are vital for developing strategies to fight this prejudice. If those with whom we disagree about Israel—sometimes vehemently—are labeled antisemitic without regard to nuance or context —they will not join us in coalition against anti- Jewish bigotry…A viable strategy against this scourge…must recognize this….It cannot ignore…the diversity that exists in this country, a diversity reflected in an intense debate about Israel within the Jewish community, on college campuses as beyond…If the Senate passes the AAA, it will alienate our political allies, including stalwart supporters of Jewish causes and Israel, and narrow the coalition we need to confront the spread of antisemitism.”

An editorial, “Not in Our Name” appeared in the Jewish journal Tablet (May 3,2024). It declared, “There is no exception for hate speech in the Constitution —it is not, according to the Constitution of the United States of America, illegal to say that the State of Israel ‘has no right to exist’…No governmental authority has the standing to penalize you for (making such a statement) …That includes Congress. The fact that a word or idea is annoying or upsetting to you —or us! —does not make it illegal.”

Tablet declares that “This includes the phrase ‘From the River to the sea,’ which the House of Representatives voted to condemn last month. This is wrong. No citizen of America, Jewish or not, should support the condemnation of speech by those whose conditional authority is entrusted to them by the people. You are American citizens. However noxious your beliefs, as long as they stay beliefs, they should be done the business of government.”

Danger Of “Weaponizing Antisemitism”

The staff attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Chris Godshall-Bennett, who is Jewish, provided this assessment: “In weaponizing antisemitism by equating it with criticism of Israel, this bill evades the fundamental principles of free expression and academic freedom. As a Jewish person, who stands hand-in-hand with my Palestinian brothers and sisters, and who works daily against anti-Arab hate, I found this weaponization of my identity particularly disgusting. Criticism of Zionism and of the Israeli government is not antisemitism and conflating this only serves to provide cover for Israel’s ongoing human rights abuses in violation of international law…”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly condemned the House of Representatives for passing this legislation (H.R. 6090) which, it declared, threatens to censor political speech critical of Israel on college campuses under the guise of addressing antisemitism. Christopher Zanders, director of ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Policy Division declared that “The House’s approval of this misguided and harmful bill is a direct attack on the First Amendment. Addressing rising antisemitism is critically important, but criticizing America’s free speech rights is not the way to solve the problem. This bill would throw the full weight of the federal government behind an effort to stifle criticism of Israel and risks politicizing the enforcement of federal civil rights statutes precisely when their robust protections are most needed. The Senate must block this bill that undermines the First Amendment protections before it is too late.”

As a recent ACLU letter to Congress made clear, a federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities, and the Antisemitism Awareness Act is not needed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. Additionally, as the Supreme Court ruled more than fifty years ago in the landmark decision of Healy v. James, “This Court leaves no room for the view that, because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large. Quite to the contrary, the vigilant protection of Constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of America’s schools.”

“Netanyahu Making Israel Radioactive”

Many of Israel’s longtime supporters are expressing dismay over recent events. In a column, “Netanyahu is making Israel Radioactive” (New York Times, March 12, 2024), columnist Thomas Friedman writes: “Israel today is in grave danger, with enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world. But it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive…”.

Friedman argues that “I fear it is about to get worse…No fair-minded person could deny Israel the right of self-defense after the Hamas attack…But no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign…that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza…and not conclude that something has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children, and the survivors many orphans… This is a stain on the Jewish state…Netanyahu has sent the IDF into Gaza without a coherent plan for governing it after any Hamas dismantling or cease-fire…Israel has a prime minister who apparently would rather see Gaza devolve into Somalia, ruled by warlords…than partner with the Palestinian Authority or any legitimate broad-based non-Hamas Palestinian governing body because his far-right Cabinet allies also dream of Israel controlling all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including Gaza, and will oust him from power if he does.”

In an important and much discussed article entitled “We Need an Exodus from Zionism” (The Guardian April 24, 2024), Naomi Klein, a Guardian columnist and director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, writes: “I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the Mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. It is about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.”

Worshipping A False Idol

In Klein’s view, “Too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again… Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it onto a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate. It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of Justice and emancipation from slavery —the story of Passover itself—and turned them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, road maps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

The whole concept of a “promised land” has, Klein declares, become “a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land — a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe —-and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnic state… Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba…Zionism has brought us to our current moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said it clearly: it has always been leading here….It is a false idol that has led far too many of our people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet…We seek to elevate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid.”

More and more One-time advocates of Zionism have moved away from this position. One of these is Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic Culture Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. In his book, “The No-State Solution, A Jewish Manifesto” (Yale University Press), he writes, “I was a Zionist in my youth. In those years, I thought of myself as a left-wing Zionist. I was very active in Habonim (a Socialist Zionist youth movement). I think I ultimately caught the leftism and socialism more than the Zionism. And when it became clear to me that I had to make a choice, I finally realized I had to let the Zionism go. That choice came when Yitzhak Rabin stated that the Israeli Army should break the legs of Palestinian kids who threw stones at soldiers. I asked at that time, what is this cruel idea of breaking the arms and legs of little boys? And somebody explained to me that this was necessary in order to maintain the state. I said, if that’s necessary…then the state is clearly a wrong thing…I remember the first time I wanted to say I was an anti-Zionist…. I couldn’t say the words. That’s how hard it was for me.”

For Dr. Boyarin, “…the dilemma is how to maintain a truly, vital, authentic, rich, lively and compelling Jewish cultural life without falling into the kinds of nationalism and ethnocentrism that we find all over the world today.”

Zionism Was a Minority View

Zionism, many now forget, has, before the Holocaust, always been a minority view among Jews. It seems likely that it is on its way to becoming a minority view once again. Only during the period of the Holocaust, when Jews were endangered by Nazism, did the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine gain support. The fact that Palestine was already fully populated was largely ignored. Deena Dallasheh, a historian of Palestine and Israel who has taught at Columbia University and Rice University, told the New York Times ((Feb. 4, 2024) that, “The Holocaust was a horrible massacre committed by Europeans. But I don’t think the Palestinians figure that they will have to pay for it. Yet the world sees this as an acceptable equation. Orientalist and colonial ideology were very much at the heart of thinking, that while we Europeans and the U.S. were part of this massive human tragedy, we are going to fix it at the expense of someone else. And the someone else is not important because they are Arabs. They’re Palestinians and thus constructed as not important.”

Most Jews historically believed that their Jewish identity rests on their religious faith, not any national identification. Jews in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Italy and other countries never viewed themselves living in “exile,” as Zionist philosophy holds. Instead, they believe that their religion and nationality are separate and distinct. The God they believe in is a universal God, not tied to a particular geographic site in the Middle East.

An early leader of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Abraham Geiger, pointed out in the 19th century that the underlying essence of Judaism was ethical monotheism. The Jewish people were a religious community destined to carry on the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,” to bear witness to God and His moral law. The dispersion of the Jews was not a punishment for their sins, but part of God’s plan whereby they were to disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism.

Not A Nation but A Religious Community

In 1885, Reform rabbis meeting in Pittsburgh adopted a platform which declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.” In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state and declaring that, “America is our Zion.” In 1904, The American Israelite declared, “There is not one solitary native Jewish-American who is an advocate of Zionism.”

To the question of whether Jews constitute “a people,” Yeshayahua Leibowitz, the Orthodox Jewish thinker and long-time Hebrew University professor, provides this assessment: “The historical Jewish people was defined neither as a race , nor a people of this country or that, nor as a people which speaks the same language, but as the people of Torah Judaism and its commandments…The words spoken by Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882-942) more than a thousand years ago: ‘Our nation exists only within the Torah’ have not only a normative but also an empirical meaning. They testified to a historical reality whose power could be felt up until the 19th century. It was then that the fracture which has not ceased to widen with time, first occurred: the fissure between Jewishness and Judaism.”

An early leader of the American Council for Judaism, Rabbi Irving Reichart of San Francisco, made his first significant declaration of opposition to Zionism in a January 1936 sermon: “If my reading of Jewish history is correct, Israel took upon itself the yoke of the law not in Palestine, but in the wilderness at Mt. Sinai and by far the greater part of its deathless and distinguished contribution to world culture was produced not in Palestine but in Babylon and the lands of the Dispersion. Jewish states may rise and fall, as they have risen and fallen in the past, but the people of Israel will continue to minister at the altar of the Most High God in all the lands in which they dwell…There is too dangerous a parallel between the insistence of some Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood, and similar pronouncements by Fascist leaders in Europe.”

Zionism: A Dangerous Wrong Turn

In America at the present time, Zionism looks to more and more Jewish Americans like a dangerous wrong turn. Those who resisted Zionism from the beginning appear to have been prophetic in their warnings and misgivings. Let us hope that prophetic, universal Judaism will be restored.

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Anyone who opposes Israel’s genocidal wars is smeared as a Hamas sympathizer. I got my first taste of this myself in 2009 when I visited then-Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s office in Washington, DC to lobby against US support for Israel’s “Cast Lead” operation, which was a smaller version of today’s genocidal war on Gaza. I was asked, and I quote, “What, do you support Hamas?”

I concluded at the time that the Senator, who had just replaced Joe Biden as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, was an evil bastard incapable of understanding that opposing war crimes and disproportionate force was not at all the same as supporting terror — which by the way he seemed to define extremely narrowly since Israel wasn’t included.

When Kerry eventually became Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, the evil bastard hypothesis was confirmed, though I then understood that Kerry’s understanding of terrorism would never include his own government’s drones, assassinations, black sites, black ops, wars of choice, regime change, or support for proxy regimes that also used terror and repression. Kerry, like most American politicians, is a disappointing creature of empire not unlike his many simulacra at the DNC convention this week.

With thanks to Mehdi Hasan, who was hounded from MSNBC for his outspoken views on Palestine, here’s a list of a few others who have gotten the same treatment. It turns out you don’t have to argue for human rights or against genocide to get on this not-at-all exclusive list; you simply have to have a momentary lapse of conscience or exhibit involuntary shock at how depraved imperialism and capitalism are.

Amnesty International, AOC, Bella Hadid, Ben & Jerry’s, Bernie Sanders, Billy Eilish, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Church, Children in Gaza, Chuck Schumer, College students, Cori Bush, Elizabeth Warren, EU Foreign Affairs chief, Gary Lineker, Harvard, Hostages’ families, Human Rights Watch, Ice-skating young people, IfNotNow, Jake Tapper, Jewish professors, Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP), Joe Biden, John Cusack, John Oliver, Jonathan Glazer, José Andrés, Kamala Harris, Keir Starmer, Kenneth Roth, Mayor of London, Ms. Rachel, Norman Finkelstein, Oxford University Press, Pramila Jayapal, South Africa, Spain, State Department, Susan Sarandon, United Nations, UN humanitarian chief, UNRWA, UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, World Health Organization, and Zara Larsson.

The October 7th attack on Israel may have been Israel’s 9/11 but it was also a defining moment in American politics. As Israel unleashed its genocidal response, which has now destroyed almost all of Gaza, left 2.3 million homeless and snuffed out at least 40,000 lives, Americans had a choice to make. Instead of locating their moral center and preventing a barbarous human rights abuse, America sided with an ongoing, historical injustice and — as usual — against the rule of law.

But the culture of impunity that shields Israel is the same that shields our own politicians from accountability and justifies almost every injustice in this country. Our culture of impunity exists because we have always worshipped at the altar of raw power instead of true democracy.

The particular intensity of the cruelty and the barbarity of hounding 2.3 million people from one place to another, then bombing them, using crude AI models to target 100 civilians for every suspected Hamas commander, and the use of massive American munitions — all made a lie of Israel’s claims of “surgical” strikes against terrorists.

Israel’s genocidal violence, accompanied by numerous Israeli public and political expressions of genocidal intent, finally got to some Americans. Many for the first time — including a large proportion of young American Jews — began to examine the sickness and inconsistency of our foreign policy and to connect these with the sickness of our domestic institutions that rhyme so well with it.

The disproportionate Israeli Blitzkrieg on Gaza was a waterboarder’s bucket of ice-water to the face that reminded us of empire’s cruelty — not just Israel’s but our own. A handful of “terrorists” had managed to kill and kidnap hundreds of Israelis — and that led to Israel’s slaughter of dozens or possibly hundreds more of their own citizens, as the Israeli media itself has reported. The documented number of Palestinian dead is now over 40,000 as I write this, but the British medical journal Lancet estimates the number could be as high as 186,000 — 8% of the entire Gaza population.

For decades Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and pogroms against Palestinians have proceeded with the collusion of settlers, politicians, the Israeli public, the Israeli military, and the US foreign policy establishment. The barbarity of Israel’s war on Gaza is nothing new.

With revelations that prisoners of war and even civilians face summary execution (which also occurred during the 1948 Nakba) as well as torture, murder and rape in detention, Israel’s claims ring hollow that it has the “most moral army in the world.” Thousands of social media posts by IDF soldiers have documented Israel’s many war crimes, from looting to heinous crimes against humanity. I sincerely hope these are being collected as evidence in a future war crimes trial.

We are told that Israel “has a right to defend itself” and that any response to “terrorism” is justified. But what of the terror of 1948 that created Israel? And if we are discussing terrorism we should not forget that no one does terrorism as well as a state with an air force, nuclear weapons, and unlimited munitions from a friendly imperialist benefactor. If Hamas is a terrorist organization after killing 1,000 people and destroying a few kibbutzim and military posts, then what is a nation that slaughtered forty times that number, terrorized and destroyed an entire enclave?

There’s no other word for it. Israel is a terrorist state.

After international institutions like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice condemned Israel’s war crimes, and the ICJ ruled that charges of genocide leveled by South Africa at Israel were credible, the United States and its Western imperial partners showed their contempt for the so-called “rules-based order” — the thin veneer of “civilization” they hide behind when not providing arms and diplomatic for friendly repressive regimes. It is nauseating to see a Biden, a Macron, or a von der Leyen supporting Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the Philippines as if they did not deserve the status of international pariahs. It turns out that the “rules-based order” involves absolutely no respect for international law but simply follows the law of the jungle.

Joining Republicans in mocking the rule of law as something only for suckers, rubes and peons, Democrats screamed a loud Fuck You! to international conventions on cluster munitions and domestic laws, including the Leahy Law and the Magnitsky Act, which forbid military aid to human rights abusers. Democrats, who frequently accede to demands to dismantle or defund social programs, went on a veritable bomb-buying spree, shelling out billions for [internationally prohibited] cluster munitions for Ukraine, jets and munitions for Taiwan, and 2000-pound neighborhood-leveling bombs with which Israel has inflicted so much carnage and damage to civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

Both American political parties went on to reject the ICJ’s determination of genocide by Israel, defund the United Nations refugee program, reiterate their objections to the International Criminal Court’s mandate to indict war criminals, and to promise that, if Netanyahu and Gallant were ever indicted, the U.S. would continue to thumb its nose at international law.

For Democrats, there ought to be no whining about the lawless Supreme Court and its disregard for our domestic “rule based order.” In that institution, operating with complete impunity, habitual corruption among Justices goes unpunished — not including the Court’s own unaccountable departures from established jurisprudence and legal precedence. How can Democrats object to any of this while thumbing their nose at the ICJ?

Democrats who object to the MAGA president’s attempts to overturn inconvenient election results should not announce plans to impose unelected puppet regimes on post-war Gaza or Venezuela. Democrats who bristle at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and land theft are curiously mute on Israel’s identical crimes. The same Democrats who call for Russia’s complete withdrawal from the Donbass should not speak of a “Two State Solution” that fails at a minimum to require a complete withdrawal from the West Bank by settlers coddled by Israel and the US and funded by American Zionist institutions.

The American lame-duck president, a self-described Christian “Zionist” who cannot enunciate his own foreign policy to the American public and instead leaves that to his military-security establishment, has given Israel everything it wants, which includes the deployment of U.S. naval fleets as well as beefed-up military bases in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. There is no question that — regardless of the nature of Israel’s belligerency — the U.S. will never hesitate to put American troops in harm’s way to defend the Zionist state.

The Israeli Prime Minister, all but indicted in both Jerusalem and at the Hague, was invited to address Congress by leaders of both political parties and he used that opportunity to gaslight Congress and the American public, insulting both the American people and the institutions of the host nation that underwrites his genocidal war.

Americans listen to our elected officials using words like “ironclad,” “unbreakable,” and “no daylight” to describe the US-Israeli relationship. We hear again and again that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that its military is the most moral, its enemies nothing but virulent jihadist antisemites bent on its total destruction. Like the fabled “beheaded babies,” such talking points begin life in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, bounce about among an armada of Israel lobbyists and Zionist organizations who serve only Israel, and end up glued to the lips of American politicians. Billions in junkets and PAC money ensure American politicians’ subservience to a foreign state.

Despite the relentless propaganda thrown at us by Israeli and domestic propagandists, Americans can see with their own eyes the carnage that Israel is inflicting with our complicity. The cognitive dissonance between the propaganda and what we see and read with our own eyes is so great that some weak minds simply deny the reality. Israeli propagandists do their part by conjuring up “crisis actors,” a term they pilfered from their MAGA bedfellows to discredit what is seen and real as “just an act.” If not slammed as “fake news” then accurate descriptions of Zionism’s dark reality are termed “antisemitic.” The White House, the State Department, and the national security establishment invariably follow Israel’s lead, disputing Palestinian casualty figures, denying documented atrocities, sanitizing Israel’s crimes, recycling Israeli Foreign Ministry talking points.

Despite all this, Americans have begun to tally the costs of our reflexive, uncritical support for a murderous rogue state. American taxpayers — denied national healthcare like Israel or even Mexico — nevertheless have to foot the bill for 15% of Israel’s military budget, more if you factor in the many buy-at-cost military programs, or the numerous joint technology, security, and energy ventures.

Uncritical American support for Israel’s murderous regime also threatens our own democracy. Israel’s defenders have thrown tens of millions of dollars at the Democratic primaries and recently unseated the second of two members of Congress they had targeted for opposing genocide.

Thousands of people have lost their jobs in purges of critics of Israel. Laws in 36 states — New Hampshire just joined them — create a legal definition of “antisemitism” that has nothing to do with “the baseless hatred of Jews” (the traditional definition) and everything to do with punishing any or all criticism of Israel. American universities, once safe places for debate and critical studies, are now in ideological lockdown, experiencing a new form of McCarthyism — as Zionist attack groups working with MAGA Republicans take down their real targets: DEI programs and the faculty members who challenge settler colonialism — including Israel’s.

The near-assassination of Donald Trump brought forth a torrent of repudiations of political violence — of the “this is not who we are” sort of argument. But this is exactly who we are.

Less than a week before a white supremacist managed to clip Donald Trump’s ear, North Carolina governor and Christian nationalist Mark Robinson told a church assembly that secular America were all Nazis and that “some folks need killing… it’s a matter of necessity.” Church pastor Cameron McGill agreed with Robinson, who suggested that the “guys in green” or the “boys in blue” were up to the job.

Not surprisingly, Americans were quick to applaud Israel’s targeted assassination of Ismael Haniya. Besides the hundreds if not thousands of our own political assassinations carried out by American presidents (remember Obama’s “Terror” Tuesday?), many more have been carried out by agents of foreign governments in our employ — just as Israel paid off two disaffected Iranian IGRC agents to plant a bomb in Haniya’s residence. The Guantanamo detention center remains open; the US tortured prisoners to death there and at Abu Ghraib and at other “black sites” — all artificially and yet unimaginably outside the reach of the Constitution. And all this occurred despite numerous U.S. laws and directives prohibiting assassination. In America the rule of law means nothing.

But Governor Robinson was simply speaking of reality when he suggested having the police carry out assassinations. This is exactly what they do in thousands of documented cases each year. We already give the police — who act like and are often armed precisely like military occupation forces in non-white and working-class neighborhoods — carte blanche to kill people. In practice “qualified” immunity amounts to complete blanket immunity, as Justice Sotomayor observed.

Likewise, the American judicial system — which convicts 95% of those it processes by inflating charges in order to coerce plea deals — carries out assassinations every time it applies the death penalty. Even knowing that we are murdering a not insignificant number of demonstrably innocent people, those who had an inadequate defense, or those who lack the mental capacity to understand their crime, makes no difference to the terror state. We go so far as to use untested drugs and mystery cocktails to stop a human heart, keeping their provenance secret, preventing the public and the press from observing or documenting these gruesome rituals — which now include the reintroduction of the firing squad and the gas chamber.

Rounding out the injustice and impunity at work in both our foreign policy and domestic government is the Presidency. The rogue Supreme Court recently ruled that whatever the President does — whether a blatant crime for personal benefit or an official act of state — is protected. The President is a goddamned emperor.

It is not the anarchists or the communists that scare me. It’s the fascist thugs and the neoliberal machinators making up the law as they go along. In this climate of official corruption, hypocrisy, lawlessness, and impunity, how is the average citizen supposed to respect the rule of law — when virtually every branch of government revels in its unchecked corruption?

If the nation’s moneyed and “connected” murderers, bribe-takers, scofflaws, insurrectionists, and war criminals can get away with anything — then open the doors to all the prisons and let them all out.

No one’s a more murderous criminal than the politician who signs a bomb bound for Gaza or the one who votes for it.

As the Democratic National Convention convenes in Chicago, a handful of “Uncommitted” delegates hopes to influence the party to stop funding genocide. With all respect to the moral certainty of this tiny group, they are tilting at windmills and have already been told to shut the hell up. The party’s 2024 platform planks on Israel remain unchanged from 2020. More importantly, Kamala Harris’s choice of Middle East advisor offers the greatest clue about her policies; the advisor may talk a good game, but in the end he joins all his predecessors as little more than a creature of empire and occupation.

Harris’s advisor, Philip H. Gordon, previously served under Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton and is a member of the National Security Council and the Council for Foreign Relations. Although tapped as Harris’s Middle East advisor, Gordon’s expertise is mainly on Europe and Eurasia. He has been around a while and published articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, the Atlantic, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, and others.

Compared to much of the American foreign policy establishment, Gordon at first glance appears to be a moderate. He has argued, for example, against US involvement in regime change schemes, for the preservation of the US-Iran nuclear deal, and has questioned the usefulness of crippling sanctions on nations the US opposes. Gordon’s less belligerent tone immediately placed him in the GOP’s crosshairs. MAGA whackadoodle Elise Stafanik actually accused Gordon of being in bed with Iranian foreign agents.

Because Israel is constantly pushing the US toward outright war on Iran, Iran-watchers have naturally been curious about Gordon’s background. Last week the Iranian expat website Iran International produced an interesting and extraordinarily detailed roundup of Gordon’s career and connections (for example — who knew? — Gordon and Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken used to play on the same indoor soccer team at the Washington DC Edlavitch Jewish Community Center). Similarly, Jewish Insider also ran a profile of Gordon, as did Politico and The Nation.

Bottom line: Gordon is simply Pepsi to someone else’s Coke or Dr. Pepper. In terms of foreign policy there is little to suggest that a Harris presidency will look any different from any that have preceded it. Gordon was a booster of NATO’s disastrous involvement in the US war in Afghanistan. And given that both Gordon and Harris support continued US support for the war in Ukraine and continued US support for arming Israel, defense contractors have nothing to worry about under a Harris presidency.

Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship

For readers of this substack, Gordon’s monograph Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship, written together with Robert D. Blackwill, the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, may provide the best idea of his orientation toward Israel and Palestine. Gordon and Blackwill argue that the US and Israel ought to exhibit as little divergence (“daylight”) in policy as possible, particularly where Iran is concerned. In the preface written by CFR President Richard N. Haass:

“Here they note the widening gap between many in Israel and the United States over the desirability and feasibility of pursuing a two-state solution to this long-standing conflict. They then go on to suggest a more conditional American approach that would tie elements of U.S. policy to a range of Israeli actions on the ground, including settlement policy and what Israel is prepared to do to improve the daily lives of Palestinians and prospects for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.”

Gordon and Blackwell acknowledge the dirty little secret of Israel’s reliance on the United States:

“Israel prides itself on being able to “defend itself by itself,” but the reality is that it continues to rely heavily on the United States for both military and diplomatic support. The United States has provided Israel some $100 billion in defense assistance since the 1979 Camp David peace treaty and regularly expends an enormous amount of political capital at the United Nations and in a wide range of other international organizations to shield Israel from criticism or sanction. Israel can choose to shrug off concerns about growing differences with Washington if it wants, but a decline in support from the United States would only embolden Israel’s enemies and imperil its legitimacy and security.”

but also Israel’s strategic importance to the United States:

“Despite the arguments of some of Israel’s critics, the United States profits substantially from the relationship as well. Israel is the United States’ closest strategic partner in the world’s most unstable region and shares valuable intelligence with Washington on terrorism, nonproliferation, and regional politics. The United States also derives important military benefits from the partnership, in areas such as military technology, intelligence, joint training and exercises, and cybersecurity. And, despite its relatively small population, Israel is the largest regional investor in the United States, the third largest destination for U.S. exports in the Middle East, an important research and development partner for the U.S. high-tech sector, and a source of innovative ideas on confronting twenty-first-century challenges such as renewable energy and water and food security.”

The thesis of their monograph is that certain tweaks need to be made to the US-Israel relationship:

“The future of the U.S.-Israel relationship is at risk. The two countries continue to share many interests and deep cultural bonds, but the relationship is threatened by diverging strategic perspectives on a region undergoing fundamental change and by long-term demographic, political, and social trends that are undermining the pillars on which the relationship once stood. No one is well served by pretending that these risks do not exist. For strategic, historical, and moral reasons, both governments should do all they can to reframe and revive the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership. The upcoming transition to a new U.S. administration provides an opportunity to put recent disagreements aside and to show the political will needed to reverse the negative policy trends described. This report offers several realistic and necessary steps the leaders on both sides should take as they contemplate their stewardship of this important relationship in the years to come. Although some of these steps would entail painful compromise and political risk, those leaders should understand that preserving this special relationship is worth the effort.”

These tweaks included:

• Seek to reframe the relationship at a summit in early 2017 at Camp David focused on developing a new strategic vision for a changing Middle East, committing the United States to remain engaged in the region, seriously addressing the Palestinian problem, and institutionalizing an intensive bilateral strategic dialogue.
• Enhance Israel’s sense of security and confidence in the United States by committing to expanded missile defense, anti-tunnel, and cybersecurity cooperation under the terms of the September 2016 longterm defense assistance Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
• Move beyond the debate about the merits of the Iran nuclear agreement and work together to implement and rigorously enforce it, with a commitment to imposing penalties on Iran for noncompliance and a joint plan for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons after the deal’s main restrictions expire.
• Develop detailed common understandings about how to more effectively contain Iranian hegemonic regional designs and take action designed to do so.
• Agree on a set of specific, meaningful measures that Israel will take unilaterally to improve Palestinian daily life and preserve prospects for a two-state solution, linking continued U.S. willingness to refrain from or oppose international action on Israeli settlements or the peace process to Israel’s implementation of such positive, concrete steps.
• Expand economic cooperation focused on bilateral trade, investment, energy, innovation, and Israel’s integration into the region.

Unfortunately, the monograph’s proposals were simply so much boilerplate. US “engagement” in the region from administrations Gordon served in had already consisted of destabilizing Iraq, Syria, and Libya, undermining the Arab Spring, and arming Saudi Arabia to the hilt. Naturally, all joint security initiatives with Israel were pursued. Ignoring Gordon’s tepid suggestions, the Biden Administration made no effort to re-establish the Iran nuclear agreement and dismissed Gordon’s concerns about increasing sanctions. “Meaningful measures” to improve Palestinian life were never implemented by either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Israel’s “integration into the region” was pursued by both Trump and Biden under the rubric of the Abraham Accords. And now the United States has doubled-down on the complete destruction of Gaza and its people.

There has been virtually no difference between Democratic and Republican policies vis-a-vis Israel or Palestine. Democrats who imagine a Harris administration will abandon a road long traveled are simply deluding themselves.

Further reading

Anderson, Lisa. “Book Review – Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East.” Foreign Affairs, 5 Feb. 2021, www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2020-12-08/losing-long-game-false-promise-regime-change-middle-east.

Deutch, Gabby. “The Obama Mideast Expert Guiding VP Harris on Foreign Policy.” Jewish Insider, 22 Dec. 2023, jewishinsider.com/2023/12/phil-gordon-national-security-advisor-to-the-vp-kamala-harris/.

Gordon, Phil. “Harris’ Support for Israel ‘Ironclad’ after Attack on Golan Heights.” Reuters, 28 July 2024, www.reuters.com/world/harris-support-israel-ironclad-after-attack-golan-heights-2024-07-28/.

Gordon, Philip H. “As Israel’s Greatest Defender and Closest Friend, We Owe It to You to Ask Fundamental Questions.” Times of Israel, 9 July 2014, www.timesofisrael.com/as-israels-greatest-defender-and-closest-friend-we-owe-it-to-you-to-ask-fundamental-questions/.

Gordon, Philip H. “Back up NATO’s Afghanistan Force.” The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/opinion/back-up-natos-afghanistan-force.html.

Gordon, Philip H. “Philip Gordon and Ray Takeyh on Iran.” Council on Foreign Relations, 10 Jan. 2018, www.cfr.org/podcasts/philip-gordon-and-ray-takeyh-iran.

Gordon, Philip H., and Robert D. Blackwill. “Repairing the US-Israel Relationship.” Council for Foreign Relations, 1 Nov. 2016, cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2016/11/CSR76_BlackwillGordon_Israel.pdf.

Gordon, Philip H., and Robert D. Blackwill. “Repairing the US-Israel Relationship.” Council on Foreign Relations, 1 Nov. 2016, www.cfr.org/report/repairing-us-israel-relationship.

Gordon, Philip, and Ariane Tabatabai. “The Choice That’s Coming: An Iran with the Bomb, or Bombing Iran.” The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/opinion/irans-crisis-nuclear-expansion.html.

Gordon, Philip. “Opinion: Israel’s Arabian Fantasy.” Washington Post, 27 June 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/06/27/israels-arabian-fantasy/.

Harris, Kamala. “Readout of National Security Advisor to the Vice President Phil Gordon’s Trip to Israel and the West Bank.” American Presidency Project, 26 June 2024, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/readout-national-security-advisor-the-vice-president-phil-gordons-trip-israel-and-the-west.

Israel National News, Editors. “VP Harris’ Security Advisor: ‘Some in Israel Reject a Ceasefire Deal, We Simply Disagree.'” Israel National News, 25 June 2024, www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392050.