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by Edward C. Corrigan |
|
Mr. Corrigan has a law degree from the
University of Windsor and a Master's in political science from the
University of Western Ontario. He advises the reader: "This article
is not intended to be a comprehensive study of Jewish criticism of
Zionism but only an introductory survey. The author owes a debt to
many people in the Jewish community for assistance and would like to
thank David Finkel and especially Harriet Karchmer for her help with
the material on Orthodox Jews. The writer, of course, bears all
responsibility for the material and any errors or omissions."
The Palestinian uprising or intifada and the
Israeli campaign to suppress it have caused considerable anguish for
many Jews around the world. A large number of Jews have even begun
to reassess their support for Israel and critically analyze the
ideology of Zionism which legitimates the Jewish state. One example
of this phenomenon is a statement that appeared in The
Nation on February 3, 1988. It was endorsed by 18 prominent
American Jews.
The advertisement called upon American Jews to
"dissociate from Israel." It expressed the concern that "the close
identification in the public mind between Israel and Jews -- an
equation vigorously fostered by both the Zionist movement and the
American Jewish lobby, which has come under its control -- threatens
to stigmatize Jews everywhere." The ad called for a two-state
solution and for negotiations with the Palestine Liberation
Organization.1
The statement also discussed past
discrimination against the Jews and the horrors of the Nazi
Holocaust adding:
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How tragic that in our own time
the very state established by Jews in the aftermath of this evil has
become a place where racialism, religious discrimination, militarism
and injustice prevail; and that Israel itself has become a pariah
state within the world community. Events taking place today are all
too reminiscent of the pogroms from which our own forefathers fled
two and three generations ago -- but this time those in authority
are Jews and the victims are Moslems and Christian Palestinians.
|
|
Those endorsing The Nation
statement included Professor Yigal Arens, the son of Moshe
Arens; Mark Bruzonsky, former Washington Associate, World Jewish
Congress, who now serves as chairperson for the organization;
Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor MIT; Rabbi Susan
Einbinder, Colgate University; Jane Hunter, publisher of Israeli
Foreign Affairs; Jeremy Levin, former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief
and former hostage in Lebanon; Professor Don Peretz, Department of
Political Science, SUNY; and Henry Schwarzschild, of the American
Civil Liberties Union. The subsequent organization they formed, the
Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME), has, in the short time
that it has existed, attracted well over a thousand signatures
endorsing their statement. These include academics at 125 U.S.
universities.2
JCOME has challenged pro-Israeli
American Jewish leaders to conduct a joint poll to see what American
Jews really think about Israel and the Palestinians. To back up
their challenge JCOME cited evidence which suggests that there is a
divergence of opinion between American Jews and the pronouncements
of their "official" leadership. As one example of a difference in
opinion JCOME pointed to a poll which showed that 29 percent of
American Jews favor negotiations with the PLO.3 However,
while this new organization is important, Jewish criticism of
Israel's policies and Zionism is not new. They both have deep roots
within the Jewish community.
It is clear that the ideology of
Zionism has had a profound impact on Jews. Today most Western Jews
support its objective of establishing and securing a Jewish state in
the territory formerly known as Palestine, even though the majority
do not follow its precepts and immigrate to Israel. Historically
Zionism was the subject of intense debate. Zionism has always meant
different things to different people. It could be interpreted in a
religious, political, national or racial light depending upon the
circumstances. For some, Zionism was a solution for the age-old
problem of anti-Semitism, while for others merely an excuse for
getting rid of the Jews. As Hannah Arendt explained, "The Zionist
Organization had developed a genius for not answering, or answering
ambiguously, all questions of political consequence. Everyone was
free to interpret Zionism as he pleased . . . ."4
Zionist leaders have put off indefinitely the attempt to
resolve the resulting conflicts and even contradictions generated by
different interpretations of Zionism. This explains why the "Jewish
state" has no constitution and why many fundamental questions about
the nature of Israel remain undefined. The avoidance of a battle
over conflicting definitions of what is a Jewish state is one of the
reasons why Israel has a vested interest in maintaining the state of
war in the Middle East. This interest has been openly acknowledged
by a former president of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum
Goldmann:
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On the day when peace comes, the
leftist movement will undoubtedly be very strong in Israel, and it
will be anti-Orthodox. A great cultural battle will then break out
which, like Ben Gurion, I want to avoid at this moment: as long as
war prevails, that kind of internal struggle would be terribly
dangerous. But after the hostilities the first thing to do will be
to separate religion and state. Today we confine ourselves to
telling the leftists: "Don't make a fuss on this question, you will
be obstructing our defence policy, which requires national unity" --
and the leftists, being good patriots, give way. But after the peace
they will resume the debate.5 |
|
Prior to World War II the majority of Jews
were non-Zionist, and a large number were openly hostile to Zionism.
As Nahum Goldmann wrote, "When Zionism first appeared on the world
scene most Jews opposed it and scoffed at it. Herzl was only
supported by a small minority."6 It was not until the
full horror of the Holocaust was realized that the great bulk of the
Jewish community came to support Zionism.
Jewish history is
rich in its diversity of ideas and ethical dissent. Many of the
Hebrew prophets were "solitary voices" who criticized their people
for betraying the great principles of their faith. The prophet Amos,
for example, advanced a new interpretation of the "Chosen People"
thesis. He wrote: "From all the families of the earth I have chosen
you alone; for that very reason I will punish you for all your
iniquities." Amos' concept of "chosen" did "not imply the assurance
of victory or prosperity" but rather that of "the burden of more
severe punishment for 'normal'
unrighteousness."7
Amos was even more
revolutionary in reinterpreting the meaning of the "Promised Land."
To quote Hans Kohn:
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Through his mouth the Lord
proclaimed that the children of Israel were unto Him no better than
the children of the Ethiopians. True, God had brought up Israel out
of the land of Egypt; but equally He brought the Philistines (then
Israel's hereditary enemies) from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir,
guiding each one into its land.8 |
|
In Amos' view all peoples were entitled to
the land they occupied in a spirit of equality and sharing. No one
people had special God-given rights.
One of the most critical
moments in ancient Jewish history was when Jochanan ben Zakkai, the
leading representative of Judaism in his day and the disciple of
Hillel, "abandoned the cause of the Jewish state." At the time, the
city of Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans and heroically defended
by the zealots. Zakkai escaped from the city by a ruse, and with the
agreement of the Roman commander, established a Jewish academy at
Jabne. Judaism survived while the Jewish state was
destroyed.9
In the more recent period, Ahad Ha-am
(Hebrew for "One of the People" and the pen name for Asher
Ginzberg), one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of this century, was
also highly critical of Zionism.10 He drew attention to
the fundamental and neglected ethical dilemma of Zionism, namely the
presence of the Arabs. In his 1891 report, The Truth from
Palestine, he pointed out that "there was little untilled soil
in Palestine, except for stony hills and sand dunes." Ahad Ha-am
also warned the Jewish settlers against arousing the wrath of the
large native Arab population:
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Yet what do our brethren do in
Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of
the diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom,
and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism.
They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of
their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these
deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous
inclination.11 |
|
Ahad Ha-am wrote this statement when
Zionist settlers formed only a tiny portion of the population of
Palestine. He also gave the following warning: "We think. . . that
the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not
understand what is happening around. This is, however, a great
error."12
Ahad Ha-am worked tirelessly for an
intellectual and spiritual revival of the Jewish people. His belief
in Zion was of a spiritual and prophetic nature. In 1913 he attacked
the Zionist labor movement's racial boycott of Arab
labor:
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Apart from the political danger,
I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable
of behaving in such a way to men of another people; and unwittingly
the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our
relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve "at the end of
time" power in Eretz Israel? If this be the "Messiah," I do
not wish to see his coming.13 |
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Israel Zangwill, one of Herzl's earliest
and strongest supporters, eventually turned against the idea of
establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. Ironically it was Zangwill
who coined the phrase "a land without a people for a people without
a land." It was this phrase that became the potent rallying call for
Zionist settlement in Palestine.14
It was not
until 1904 that Zangwill realized that there was a fundamental
problem with the Zionist program. In a speech given in New York in
that year he explained:
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There is. . . a difficulty from
which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes
to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The
pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated
as the United States, having 52 souls to every square mile, and not
25 percent of them Jews; so we must be prepared either to drive out
by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to
grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly
Mohammedan.. . . This is an infinitely graver difficulty than the
stock anti-Zionist taunt that nobody would go to Palestine if we got
it. . . .15 |
|
Zangwill and many other leading Zionists
split from the movement in 1905 when the Zionist Organization turned
down the British offer to settle Jews in Uganda. Incidently, this
proposal was supported by Herzl. The dissidents set up the Jewish
Territorial Organization to pursue alternative settlement proposals.
Zangwill was elected leader of the new body. The organization was,
however, dissolved in 1925.16
Sir Edwin Montagu,
the only Jewish member of Lloyd George's cabinet when Great Britain
first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, was also adamantly
opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour
Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-Semitic.
Montagu based his argument on the fact that both Zionism and
anti-Semitism were based on the premise that Jews and non-Jews could
not co-exist. He was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine
the security of Jews in other countries.17 Montagu's
opposition to Zionism was supported by the leading representative
bodies of Anglo-Jewry, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish
Association, and in particular, by Claude Montefibre, David
Alexander and Lucien Wolf.18
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
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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 |
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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:
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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:
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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:
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. . . 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:
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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
|
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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:
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. . . 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.
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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
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.., sexual 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
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.
|
1 "Time to Dissociate from
Israel," The Nation, February 13, 1988, p. 19. 2 See
"Jewish Committee on the Middle East," The Washington Report on
the Middle East, November, 1988, p. 19; The Progressive,
February 1989, p. 2; and The Nation, January 29, 1990, p.
119. For more information on JCOME see Mark Bruzonsky, "American
Jews and the Intifada," Middle East International, July 8,
1988, pp. 18-19. JCOME's address is P.O. Box 18367, Washington, D.C.
20036, telephone (202) 362-5266. 3 "A Challenge to American
Jewish Spokesmen," The Nation, May 21, 1988, p. 732. 4
Hannah Arendt, "Zionism Reconsidered," The Menorah Journal,
Autumn 1945, reprinted in Michael Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered:
The Rejection of Jewish Normalcy (London: The Macmillan Company,
1970), p. 217. 5 Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox,
translated by Steven Cox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978),
pp. 71-72. 6 Ibid., p. 77. 7 Cited in Hans Kohn, "Zion and the
Jewish National Idea," The Menorah Journal, Autumn-Winter
1958, p. 19. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 32. 11 Ahad
Ha-am, The Truth from Palestine (1891), quoted in ibid., p.
33. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 34. 14 Israel Zangwill, "The
Return to Palestine," New Liberal Review, 11 December 1901,
p. 627, cited in David Gilmour, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the
Palestinians (London: Sphere Books, 1982), p. 44. 15 Israel
Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem (London: William Heinemann,
1920), p. 88 quoted in Hani A. Faris, "Israel Zangwill's Challenge
to Zionism," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1975, p.
85. 16 Aryeh Rubinstein (ed.), The Return to Zion
(Jerusalem: Keter Books, 1974), p. 63. 17 See "Memorandum of
Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British)
Government: Submitted to the British Cabinet August 1917,"
reproduced in From Haven to Conquest, Walid Khalidi ed.
(Beirut: The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971), pp.
143-151. 18 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), p. 400; See also Chaim
Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1949), p. 163. For an example of Wolf s views see "The Zionist
Peril," Jewish Quarterly Review, October 1904, pp.
1-25. 19 Akiva Orr, The unJewish State (London: Ithaca
Press, 1983), p. i. 20 Marion Woolfson writes "the Zionists whose
claim to the land of Palestine was based on a Divine promise, made
some four thousand years ago, were self-proclaimed agnostics."
Prophets in Babylon (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 12;
See also Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews
(New York: Times Books, 1983); and Dan E. Serge, A Crisis in
Identity: Israel and Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1980), p. 3; and Orr, p. 9. 21 "[T]o be a people like all other
peoples," Hannah Arendt, "Zionism Reconsidered," The Menorah
Journal Autumn 1945, reprinted in Selzer, p. 230. See also Orr,
p. 6. 22 Emile Marmorstein, Heaven at Bay: The Jewish
Kulturkampf in the Holy Land (London: Oxford University Press,
1969), pp. 79-80. See also Laqueur, p. 407. 23 Laqueur, p.
410. 24 Marmorstein, pp. 79-80. 25 I. Kolatt,
"Anti-Zionism," Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel, Raphael
Patai, ed. (New York: Herzl Press, 1971), p. 48. 26 Ibid. 27
"Statement by the Lubbavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem be Schneersohn,
on Zionism (1903)," Selzer, pp. 11-18. 28 "Statement by the Holy
Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes, on Zionism (1901)," Selzer, pp.
19-22. 29 Rubinstein, p. 60. For more information on Rabbi Wise
see Israel Knox, Rabbi in America: The Story of Isaac M. Wise
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1957). 30 For a collection
of the sayings of leading rabbis against Zionism see M. Black (ed.),
Doten sifte yeshenim (3 vols., New York: 1959), cited in
Laqueur, p. 407. 31 Laqueur, pp. 407 and 409. 32 Selzer, pp.
xxi and 251. For an example of Nathan Birnbaum's views see "In
Bondage to Our Fellow Jews," in Selzer, pp. 1-9. 33 Laqueur, p.
410. 34 See for example Emile Marmorstein, "Religious Opposition
to Nationalism," International Affairs (London), July 1953,
pp. 348-359; also Namal L. Zucker, "Secularization Conflicts in
Israel," Religion and Modernization, Donald E. Smith ed. (New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 67-94; Timothy
Phelps, "Religious struggle tears Israel," Toronto Star,
August 10, 1986, p. B3; Patrick Martin, "Split in Israeli society
underlined by rise of religious parties," Globe and Mail,
November 5, 1988, p. A5. 35 See Avishai Margali, "Israel: The
Rise of the Ultra-Orthodox," The New York Review of Books,
November 9, 1989, pp. 38-44. 36 Ibid. 37 Charles Glass, "Jews
Against Zionism: Israeli Jewish Anti-Zionism," Journal of
Palestine Studies, Autumn 1975/ Winter 1976, p. 58. 38
"Jewish Mass Protests Against Zionism," The New York Times,
June 15, 1981. The address of this organization is American Neturei
Karta, Friends of Jerusalem, Rabbi E. Schwartz, P.O. Box 1030, New
York, NY 10009. For a more recent example of a Neturei Karta's ad,
see "One State of Palestine," The New York Times, May 10,
1989, p. A30. 39 See Moshe Schonfeld, Genocide in the Holy
Land (Brooklyn, New York: Bnei Yeshivos, 1980). 40 Rabbi
Moshe Lieb-Hirsch, Yediot Aharonot, February 21, 1975, p. 8
(English translation: Israleft Biweekly News Service, No. 57,
March 1, 1975, p. 11) cited in Glass, p. 58. For more
information on the Neturei Karta see Yerachmiel Domb (ed.), The
Transformation: The Case of the Neturei Karta, 2nd Edition (NY:
Hachomo, 1989). To order, write to P.O. Box 190-231, Brooklyn, NY
11219-0004. 41 "Satu-Mare," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol.
14, p. 909; see also David Birkan, "Diary. . . of a People,"
Canadian Jewish News, August 14, 1986. For more information
on the Satmar see Solomon Poll, The Hasidic Community of
Williamsburg (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) and Israel Rubin,
Satmar: An Island in the City (Chicago: Quadrangle Books,
1972). 42 Statement of the Central Rabbinical Congress of the
United States and Canada, January 11, 1986 (85 Division Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York 11211, tel. (212) 384-6765). Reproduced in The
Jewish Guardian, vol. 2, no. 10, Winter 1986, 5746, pp. 4-5.
The Guardian's address is Box 2143, Brooklyn, New York
11202. 43 Rubinstein, p. 60. 44 Knox, p. 114, quoted in Alan
R. Taylor, The Zionist Mind (Beirut: Institute for Palestine
Studies, I974), p. 72. 45 Rubenstein, p. 61. 46 Evan Wilson,
Decision on Palestine (Stanford, California: Hoover
Institution Press, 1979), p. 27. Wilson served on the Palestine desk
of the State Department during most of this period. See also Moshe
Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time (Beirut:
Institute of Palestine Studies, 1969), pp. 325-361. According to
Rabbi Elmer Berger, Adolph Ochs, the previous publisher of The
New York Times, was anti-Zionist all of his life and the paper's
"editorial position in those days was rather consistently
anti-Zionist." However, Berger indicated that at the time the
Council was formed Sulzberger was anti-Zionist but did not publicly
affiliate himself with the organization. Elmer Berger, Memoirs of
an Anti-Zionist Jew (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies,
1978), pp. 13-14. For more information on the Council see Thomas A.
Kolsky, Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism,
1942 -- 1948 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
l990). 47 Moshe Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism
(Detroit: Association of American Arab University Graduates,
1976), p. 29. 48 Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time,
pp. 364-368. 49 Ibid., pp. 362-364. 50 Alfred M. Lilienthal,
The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace? (New Brunswick,
New Jersey: North American, 1982), p. 872. 51 For more
information contact American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism, 347
Fifth Avenue, Suite 900, New York, NY, USA 10016. Tel. (212)
213-9125. 52 See Reuben Slonim, To Kill A Rabbi (Toronto:
ECW Press, l987). 53 Reuben Slonim, Grand to be an Orphan
(Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1983), p. 175. 54
Lilienthal, pp. 768-769. 55 "Jewish Anti-Zionist Petition
Presented to President Wilson in 1919," American Jewish
Alternatives to Zionism Report No. 52, p. 138. The text of the
statement is reproduced here at pp. 135-139. 56 Wilson, p.
72. 57 Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 263. For a discussion of what
Alfred Lilienthal calls the "kidnapping" of Albert Einstein by the
Zionists, see Lilienthal, pp. 340-343. 58 William Zukerman, "The
Menace of Jewish Fascism," The Nation, April 25, 1934,
reprinted in Zionism, the Dream and the Reality: A Jewish
Critique, Gary V. Smith ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974),
pp. 91-96. 59 Michael Selzer, The Aryanization of the Jewish
State (New York: Black Star Books, 1967). 60 David
Ben-Gurion, "Jabotinsky in the Footsteps of Hitler," cited in Noam
Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? (New York: Vintage Books,
1974), p. 89. 61 Rosie DiManno, "Israeli policies like Nazi
persecution Arens' brother says," Toronto Star, September l9,
1983 (published only in the Metro edition). See also John Motavalli,
"The Arens brothers, agreeing to disagree," The Middle East,
March 1983, pp. 19-20. 62 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
(New York: The Viking Press, 1964), pp. 7-8. For an example of
her views see, "The Jewish State: Fifty Years After -- Where Have
Herzl's Politics Led?" Commentary, May 1946, reproduced in
Smith, Zionism: The Dream and the Reality, pp. 67-80. 63
Morris B. Cohen, "Zionism: Tribalism or Liberalism?" in Selzer,
Zionism Reconsidered, p. 67. 64 For a hostile appraisal of
Rosenzweig see "Franz Rosenzweig as a Critic of Zionism,"
Conservative Judaism, Fall 1967, cited in Zionism
Reconsidered, Selzer ed., p. xx. 65 Kohn, p. 45. 66
Jewish Newsletter (New York), May 19, 1959, cited in
Woolfson, p. 13. 67 Bruno Kreisky interview, Ma'ariv,
January 20, 1974, quoted in Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection
II, p. 434. 68 Yishayahu Ben-Porat, "Interview with Bruno
Kreisky," Yediot Aharonot, May 24, 1985, reproduced in
Jerusalem, January 1986, p. 36. 69 All three of these
individuals get "special" mention in Amy Kaufman Goott and Steven J.
Rosen (eds.), The Campaign to Discredit Israel (Washington:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, 1983), listed
respectively on pp. 118-119, 100-101 and 102. The only other
American Jewish critic of Zionism who merited a special heading was
Edmund Hanauer, the founder of Search for Justice and Equality in
Palestine, P.O. Box 3452, Framingham, MA 0l701. The late Haviv
Schieber's Holy Land State Committee also gets special mention under
the organization category, pp. 68-69. 70 See for example,
"Minority Report," The Nation, August 7-14, 1989, p. 159.
Here he discusses Yitzhak Shamir's past dealings with the Nazis and
the LEHI (Stern Gang) proposed alliance with the Nazis. For
discussion of Hitchens' recent discovery that his mother was Jewish
see his article, "On Not Knowing the Half of It, My Jewish Self:
Homage to Telegraphist Jacobs," Grand Street, Summer 1988,
pp. 121-136. 71 One of the producers of "Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of
a Palestinian Family" distributed by Icarus Films, 200 Park Avenue,
New York (tel: [212] 674-3375). For a discussion of the making of
the film and the attempts to get it shown in the United States see
Joan Mandel, "Making A Documentary in Palestine and Taking It Home,"
Red Bass, No. 12 (1987), pp. 36-39. 72 Co-author with
Steve Goldfield, "South Africa: The Israeli Connection,"
American-Arab Affairs, Fall 1986, pp. 106-129. Both Obenzinger
and Goldfield are editors of Palestine Focus, P.O. Box 27462,
San Francisco, CA 94127, tel. (415) 861-1552. 73 "Soviet
anti-Zionist Jews reject Western claims," London Free Press
(Canada), May 17, 1984, C8. For an example of their views see
Zionism: Instrument of Imperialist Reaction (Moscow: Novosti
Press Agency Publishing House, 1970). 74 See Andrew Rosenthal,
"Soviet Anti-Zionist Agency May Go," The New York Times,
December 8, 1987, p. A16; and Wolf Blitzer, "Soviet anti-Zionist
panel will be disbanded by year's end," Jerusalem Post
International Edition, November 26, 1988, p. 5. Their address:
Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee, 119270, Moscow, Frunzenskaya, Quay 46
(telephone, 245-6106). It is still headed by Dragunski. 75 Leon
Trotsky, On the Jewish Question (New York: Pathfinder Press,
1970), pp. 28, 18 and 12. 76 Laqueur, p. 253 and p. 435. 77
See Ephraim Sevela, Farewell Israel (South Bend, Indiana:
Gateway Editions, 1977). 78 "The Bund," Encyclopaedia
Judaica, Vol. IV, p. 1502. 79 "South African rebel outrages
Israelis," Toronto Star, March 8, 1985, p. A9. 80 Mark A.
Bruzonsky, "Israel is too much like South Africa," Chicago
Sun-Times, September 11, 1985, p. 36. 81 Michah L. Sifry,
"Israel and South Africa," The Nation, February 13, 1988, p.
194. 82 Uri Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed
Press, 1987). 83 Yosef Becher, "Neturei Karta: the anti-Zionist
Jews," Middle East International, February 7, 1986. Rabbi
Becher is a leading spokesman for the Neturei Karta in the United
States. 84 "Memorandum of the Neturei Karta to the Secretary
General of the United Nations on the Question of Jerusalem, July 18,
1949," reproduced in The Guardian, April 1974 Nisson 5734,
pp. 12-13. Also found in International Affairs (London), July
1952, pp. 358-359. 85 See Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings
of Judah L. Magnes, Arthur A. Goren ed., (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982). 86 Glass, p. 78. 87 Judah Magnes and
Martin Buber, "Testimony Before the Anglo-American Inquiry
Commission," in Arab-Jewish Unity (Westport, CT: Hyperion
Press, 1976), p. 12. 88 Taylor, p. 107. 89 Glass, p. 78. 90
Kohn, p. 42. 91 Jewish Newsletter, 9 February 1959, cited
in Gilmour, p. 74. 92 Glass, pp. 63-64. 93 Ibid., pp. 61-75.
For a survey of criticism of Zionism from an Israeli Socialist
perspective see Arie Bober ed., The Other Israel: The Radical
Case Against Zionism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972). 94
Glass, p. 57. 95 Ibid., p. 72. Also see Noam Chomsky, Peace in
the Middle East?, p. 174. 96 Glass, pp. 69-71. See also
Kokhavi Shemesh, "Thy Destroyers and Ravagers out of Ye will
Come," Matzpen, January 1973, reprinted in Uri Davis and
Norton Mezvinsky (eds.), Documents from Israel 1967-1973
(London: Ithaca Press, 1975), pp. 123-126. 97 Glass, p. 71. 98
"Vanunu jailed 18 years for treason," The Globe and Mail,
March 28, 1988, p. A11. For a discussion of Vanunu by a Canadian
anti-Zionist Jew see Mordecai Briemberg, "Prisoner of conscience,"
The Globe and Mail, September 30, 1988, p. A7. 99 For
example see Peter Pry, Israel's Nuclear Arsenal (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1985). 100 Israel Shahak, "The Racist Nature of
Zionism and the Zionistic State of Israel," The Link, Winter
1975-1976, p. 10. For an example of the work of the Israeli League
for Human and Civil Rights see Report on the Violation of Human
Rights in the Territories during the Uprising, 1988 (Tel Aviv:
The Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, 1988). 101 Glass,
p. 77. 102 "Professor Leibowitz Called for Counter Terror: 'Had I
been Younger I Would Have Done It My Self,'" Yediot Aharonot,
February 13, 1983, cited in Uri Davis, "Israel's Zionist Society:
Consequences for Internal Opposition and the Necessity for External
Intervention," Judaism or Zionism (London: Zed Books, 1986),
p. 200. See also Joe Franklin, "Interview with Yeshayahu
Leibowitz," American-Arab Affairs, Fall 1988, pp.
75-77. 103 Glass, p. 69. 104 'The Case of Giora Neumann,"
Davar, July 12, 1972, as reported in Journal of Palestine
Studies, Autumn 1972, pp. 148-149. 105 Gideon Spiro, "The
Israeli soldiers who say 'There is a limit,'" Middle East
International, 9 September 1988, pp. 18-19. Yesh Gvul's address
is P.O. Box 6953, Jerusalem, 91068, Israel. 106 Ibid., p.
18. 107 Ibid., p. 19. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., p. 20. 110
Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon,
translated by Miguel Acoca (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p.
165. 111 Jacobo Timerman, "The Dialectics of Hypocrisies," El
Pais (Spain), March 19, 1988, p. 9. Translation. 112 For a
more extensive discussion of this question, see Michael Jansen,
Dissonance in Zion (London: Zed Books, 1987). 113
Politika, #20, quoted by Yosef Algazi in "Forward: The 21st
Year of the Occupation, the Sixth Month of the Uprising," Report
on the Violations of Human Rights in the Territories during the
Uprising, 1988, p. 5. 114 "We Will Not Be Gagged," News
from Within (published by the Alternative Information Center,
P.O.B. 165, West Jerusalem, Israel), February 24, 1987, pp. 1-2 and
9; and Gad Lior and Yitzhak Rabiheh, "Israeli 'Democracy' in
Practice," Yediot Aharonot, February 17, 1987, translated and
reprinted in above, pp. 2-4. 115 Ibid., p. 9. 116 Bardugo,
"Speak No Evil," Kol Ha'ir, February 20, 1987, translated in
Ibid., p. 8. 117 See Michal Warschawsky, "The Border, The Law and
Peace," News from Within, November 29, 1989, reprinted in
Against the Current, March/April 1990, pp. 12-13. 118 Lili
Galili, "Hadas Lahav: The Shin Bet tried to make me 'crazy,'"
Haaretz, May 26, 1988, translated and additional material
provided by The Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Chicago, 220
S. State Street, #1308, 1 Quincy Court, Chicago, Illinois, 60604.
Tel. (312)987-1830. 119 Ibid. 120 Ronald Storrs,
Orientations (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1945), p. 340
cited in Henry Cattan, The Palestine Question (New York:
Croom Helm, 1988), p. 34. 121 Brendan Weston, "An Interview with
Ilan Ha-levi: Both Jew and PLO Member," The Arab World
Review, April 1988, p. 16. For an example of his work see Ilan
Halevi, A History of the Jews: Ancient and Modern, translated
by A. M. Berrett (London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books,
1987). 122 Press release: Tevet 20, 5748, January 10, 1988, from
Seven-man Neturei Karta Supreme Council. See also Ed Krales,
"Orthodox Jews Oppose Israel," Palestine Focus, July-August,
1987, p. 8. 123 Ibid. 124 The leader of the Lebanese Jewish
community is reported to have said: "The Lebanese Jews are grateful
to Mr. Arafat. We have no need of any outside protection because no
one has touched a hair on our heads. We reject Israeli reports that
the community is in any danger. We want no outside protectors,
Israeli or otherwise. We simply plan to go on living as we always
have, as Lebanese." Quoted in Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection
II, p. 782. Also see Paul Martin, "Palestinians send food to
Jews besieged in Beirut synagogue," The Times (London),
November 4, 1975, p. A5. See also "PLO guarded our embassy U.S.
admits," Toronto Star, May 16, 1985, p. A12. 125 "Beirut's
Only Synagogue Is Casualty of the Israelis," The New York
Times, August 12, 1982, p. A17. 126 "Nine Jews said to be
among massacre victims," The Jerusalem Post, September 30,
1982. 127 Ron Jourad, "Bitter conflict on West Bank cuts through
family ties," The Globe and Mail, November 22, 1988, p.
A9. 128 Israleft Biweekly News Service, November 20, 1972,
p. 7, cited in Glass, p. 65. 129 For an example of his work see
Naim Giladi, "The Iraqi Jews and Their Coming to Israel," The
Black Panther, September 11, 1972, reprinted in Documents
from Israel 1967-1973, Davis and Mezvinsky eds., pp.
126-133. 130 Feuerlicht, pp. 230-232. 131 Woolfson, pp.
15-17. 132 "Petition for Palestinian Rights -- Against the
Israeli Law of Return -- for the Palestinian Right to Return,"
Jerusalem, May 1988, pp. 31-33. Their address c/o Bradford
Resource Centre, 31 Manor Row, Bradford, UK BDI 4PS. 133 Ancil
Kashetsky, "Jews for a Just Peace urges Israeli withdrawal," The
Canadian Jewish News, April 28, 1988, p. 34. Jews for a Just
Peace's address is P.O. Box 647 Station P, Toronto, Canada, M5S
2Y4. 134 "Appeal by Jews for Peace between Israeli and
Palestinian States," Le Monde, December 10, 1988. Reproduced
in Jerusalem, December 1988, pp. 15-16. Their address is B.
Liberman, Grapp B.P. 15507-75326 Paris, France Cedex 07. 135
Christopher Walker, "Jewish philosopher masterminded plan," The
Times (London), November 15, 1988, p. 7. See also Jerome Segal,
Creating the Palestinian State (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books,
1989). 136 For an example of his work see Eric Rouleau (with Abu
Iyad), My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian
Struggle, translated by Linda Butler Koseoglu (New York: Times
Books, 1981). 137 I.F. Stone, "For a new approach to the
Israeli-Arab Conflict," The New York Review of Books, August
3, 1967, reprinted in Smith, p. 210. |
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