(Jewish Group) The Loneliness Of The Liberal Zionist

[Behind the Aegis]

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

To be a “liberal Zionist” in the United States is to lead a lonely existence. It often means having few friends, aside from other liberal Zionists. It means you support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland while simultaneously supporting progressive causes in your American homeland. It means wanting to have a place on the left, alongside Black, Latinx, and LGBT activists, because it means you react with horror at the Trump administration’s racist, misogynistic, and homophobic agenda. But it also means a denial of your right to have a place on the left, because the left – including prominent activists like Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Shaun King – consider Zionism to be a white supremacist ideology that has decimated the “native” Palestinian population of the middle east through brutal colonial practices. And it means lowering your head in confusion and shame when the Trump administration offers unquestioned support for Israel while simultaneously enabling – even cultivating – the anti-Semitism of the Alt-Right. It means being homeless in America’s increasingly binary political landscape.

To be a liberal Zionist means having a position on Israel/Palestine, one that is rejected by the anti-Zionist left and the Zionist right. It usually means supporting a two-state solution based on the Oslo Accords, so that Israel can be secure, Jewish, and democratic without having to perpetuate the misery of the stateless Palestinian people. However unlikely this solution may seem at present, liberal Zionists cling to this vision; it is the only way they can intellectually square a commitment to universal human rights and to an ethno-national state. Both the right and the left view this position with contempt, seeing it as implausible, duplicitous, and dangerous. The right insists that a Palestinian state would never allow a Jewish state to exist securely, and even if it would, it is beside the point, because the land belongs to the Jews and the Jews alone. The left, conversely, insists that a Jewish state is by definition repressive because ethno-nationalism is inherently anti-democratic and can never protect the rights of minorities. The right insists that all liberal Zionists are hypocrites because they tolerate and occasionally engage in criticism of Israel’s government and the Occupation. Much like the right, the left insists that liberal Zionism is hypocrisy: their expression of concern for Palestinians is spurious, for if it were genuine, they would not be so hostile to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement which seeks to make Israel into a pariah state in the global community until the Palestinians are liberated.

Liberal Zionists are forced to wage war on two fronts, a reality made apparent yet again last month when Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of T’ruah, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, in which she explains “How to tell when criticism of Israel is actually anti-Semitism.” With delicacy and nuance Jacobs staked her claim as an American progressive and a liberal Zionist, neither exonerating the Jewish state for its continued occupation of Palestinian land, nor endorsing the American left’s “Israel as genocidal empire” narrative. What ensued was sadly predictable: a social media outrage mob and a relentless attack against her emanating from the left and the right. There is neither nuance nor middle ground for the left and the right. Israel/Palestine is a zero-sum game.

But liberal Zionism in America is not merely a political position. It is also an expression of American Jewish identity. Liberal Zionists believe that American Jews, much like other minorities who have suffered oppression throughout history, have the right to celebrate their Jewish pride in public, to be a so-called hyphenated nationality, like African Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans. This is the underlying premise of American multiculturalism as preached (if not always practiced) since the 1960s. And for liberal Zionists, being Jewish includes the right to engage with Israel, the right to express an emotional attachment to Israel, the right to practice and celebrate Israeli culture as Jewish culture. Liberal Zionists demand the right to show pride in Israel in public in America without having to shoulder the burden of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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The left argues that they are not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist, and they also claim to welcome Jews with open arms in the social justice movement if they check their Zionism at the door. My response to them is: why should Jews be denied the right to express pride in their historic homeland and its culture when this demand is not imposed on any other minority? Why should Palestinian Americans enjoy the right to express their solidarity with Palestine in public when the Jews are not permitted? Nobody on the left has raised this question. Nobody on the left targets Chinese Americans for the oppression of Tibetans. Nobody on the left would dare confront a hijab wearing Muslim woman (such as Linda Sarsour) over Islam’s violent misogyny and homophobia as practiced in many (if not most) Middle Eastern and Central Asian states. If the left finds a Star of David “triggering” and demands that such inherently violent political symbols be left at home, then progressive Jews have every right to feel triggered by placards reading “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.” To banish one and not the other is to impose a double standard on American Jewry.

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[Mosby]

1. It's not easy being a liberal zionist

Here and IRW.

[MosheFeingold]

2. Try being a politically liberal Orthodox

I am literally the only Democrat in my shul.