The enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people, who infest social media, have developed a new meme. What’s needed, they assert, is “Judaism without Zionism”.
This is the next step up from their mantra that “anti-Zionism isn’t the same as antisemitism”. Both statements are designed to deny that hating Israel means they hate Jews — perish the thought!
Some of their best friends are Jews, they maintain; it’s the Jewish state whose existence, alone of all the states in the world, that they oppose. Which apparently is absolutely fine.
This formula of “Judaism without Zionism” is the strategy of Jew-baiters. The “good” Jews, with whom they surround themselves as human shields against the charge of antisemitism, are those who hate Israel. The “bad” Jews are those who love it.
“Judaism without Zionism” is thus a weapon to divide diaspora Jews from each other and further hurt Israel by weakening the support it enjoys from Jews around the world.
Tragically, a small but noisy minority of anti-Zionist Jews have also adopted this stratagem. Whether those making this statement are Jews or non-Jews, it demonstrates their ignorance of both Zionism and Judaism.
Their attempt to separate them falls at the first hurdle because Zionism is an essential part of Judaism. Zionism is simply the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.
Those who think that Zionism started with Theodore Herzl in the 19th century are wrong. It took time for Herzl, a secular Jew, to tap into the Jews’ unique relationship with the land of Israel.
This relationship isn’t so strong just because ancient Israel was the Jews’ national homeland centuries before the Romans, Christians, Arabs and Muslims colonised it.
Jews are the only people in the world who have retained an unbroken connection to their homeland since antiquity. After they were driven into exile, there were always Jewish communities there. In the mid-19th century, Jews formed the majority in Jerusalem.
More to the point, Judaism is the inseparable fusion of the people, the religion and the land. The religion of Judaism comprises the principles that Jews laid out as a matter of faith to be practised in the land of Israel. Which is why Jewish liturgy is studded with the longing to return to Zion.
That doesn’t mean that you need to be religiously observant or live in Israel to be a Jew. But it does mean that separating Zionism from Judaism is to remove the soul of the Jewish people.
That’s why anti-Zionism is most definitely anti-Judaism. So why do some Jews promote it?
One reason is that they think their anti-Zionism will buy their acceptance by the dominant anti-Israel cultural elites. Or they may be ideologues who have convinced themselves that universalist principles inimical to Judaism are actually Jewish principles.
Or they may have bought heavily into the wall-to-wall lies about Israel and therefore loathe what they think Israel represents and what it’s doing to the Palestinian Arabs. Whatever. They’re very wrong-headed and very harmful.
So how should Israel’s defenders react?
First, reclaim the language. Zionism has become a dirty word. So Jews should declare on every possible occasion that they’re proud Zionists – and that Zionism is the ultimate decolonisation movement.
Second, educate young Jews better. Too often, even those educated in Jewish schools know precious little about the history of the Jews in the land of Israel.
They may be taught to a high level about the minutiae of Jewish religious texts and practices. But many are taught next to nothing about Jewish history in the land; nothing about their own heroic ancestry in those Jews of antiquity who fought and defeated enemies who wanted to wipe them out, just like today; nothing about Britain’s betrayal of the Mandate, which launched the century-old war of extermination against the Jewish homeland.
And they need to be taught pride in the State of Israel as the ultimate moral project — which means teaching them the truths necessary to counter the lies.
Third, the community should call out anti-Zionist Jews for the noxious fringe artists that they are. Community leaders should be pointing out publicly the malicious falsehoods they peddle about Israel, which makes them not just anti-Zionism but anti-Judaism. Rabbis and lay leaders should be saying: not in our name.
And this needs to be done in public, to give the community strength to resist the lies themselves — and to stop the gaslighting of Jewish defenders of Israel by anti-Zionist Jews making the disgusting claim that calling out antisemitism creates antisemitism.
Diaspora Jews are very reluctant to put their heads above the parapet like this. They stress the need to avoid disunity. They’re worried that identifying as Zionists, and thus as a Jewish nation, will fuel accusations of dual loyalty. But those accusations are flying now anyway.
Disunity is indeed bad; but self-destructive behaviour is worse. The results of the risk-averse strategy practised for so long by diaspora Jews are now all around us. Time to wake up.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE
This formula of “Judaism without Zionism” is the strategy of Jew-baiters. The “good” Jews, with whom they surround themselves as human shields against the charge of antisemitism, are those who hate Israel. The “bad” Jews are those who love it.
“Judaism without Zionism” is thus a weapon to divide diaspora Jews from each other and further hurt Israel by weakening the support it enjoys from Jews around the world.
Tragically, a small but noisy minority of anti-Zionist Jews have also adopted this stratagem. Whether those making this statement are Jews or non-Jews, it demonstrates their ignorance of both Zionism and Judaism.
Their attempt to separate them falls at the first hurdle because Zionism is an essential part of Judaism. Zionism is simply the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.
Those who think that Zionism started with Theodore Herzl in the 19th century are wrong. It took time for Herzl, a secular Jew, to tap into the Jews’ unique relationship with the land of Israel.
This relationship isn’t so strong just because ancient Israel was the Jews’ national homeland centuries before the Romans, Christians, Arabs and Muslims colonised it.
Jews are the only people in the world who have retained an unbroken connection to their homeland since antiquity. After they were driven into exile, there were always Jewish communities there. In the mid-19th century, Jews formed the majority in Jerusalem.
More to the point, Judaism is the inseparable fusion of the people, the religion and the land. The religion of Judaism comprises the principles that Jews laid out as a matter of faith to be practised in the land of Israel. Which is why Jewish liturgy is studded with the longing to return to Zion.
That doesn’t mean that you need to be religiously observant or live in Israel to be a Jew. But it does mean that separating Zionism from Judaism is to remove the soul of the Jewish people.
That’s why anti-Zionism is most definitely anti-Judaism. So why do some Jews promote it?
One reason is that they think their anti-Zionism will buy their acceptance by the dominant anti-Israel cultural elites. Or they may be ideologues who have convinced themselves that universalist principles inimical to Judaism are actually Jewish principles.
Or they may have bought heavily into the wall-to-wall lies about Israel and therefore loathe what they think Israel represents and what it’s doing to the Palestinian Arabs. Whatever. They’re very wrong-headed and very harmful.
So how should Israel’s defenders react?
First, reclaim the language. Zionism has become a dirty word. So Jews should declare on every possible occasion that they’re proud Zionists – and that Zionism is the ultimate decolonisation movement.
Second, educate young Jews better. Too often, even those educated in Jewish schools know precious little about the history of the Jews in the land of Israel.
They may be taught to a high level about the minutiae of Jewish religious texts and practices. But many are taught next to nothing about Jewish history in the land; nothing about their own heroic ancestry in those Jews of antiquity who fought and defeated enemies who wanted to wipe them out, just like today; nothing about Britain’s betrayal of the Mandate, which launched the century-old war of extermination against the Jewish homeland.
And they need to be taught pride in the State of Israel as the ultimate moral project — which means teaching them the truths necessary to counter the lies.
Third, the community should call out anti-Zionist Jews for the noxious fringe artists that they are. Community leaders should be pointing out publicly the malicious falsehoods they peddle about Israel, which makes them not just anti-Zionism but anti-Judaism. Rabbis and lay leaders should be saying: not in our name.
And this needs to be done in public, to give the community strength to resist the lies themselves — and to stop the gaslighting of Jewish defenders of Israel by anti-Zionist Jews making the disgusting claim that calling out antisemitism creates antisemitism.
Diaspora Jews are very reluctant to put their heads above the parapet like this. They stress the need to avoid disunity. They’re worried that identifying as Zionists, and thus as a Jewish nation, will fuel accusations of dual loyalty. But those accusations are flying now anyway.
Disunity is indeed bad; but self-destructive behaviour is worse. The results of the risk-averse strategy practised for so long by diaspora Jews are now all around us. Time to wake up.
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her work on her website HERE
12 comments:
Good for you Melanie Phillips! Good for you Israel? Good for you Jews worldwide.
Down with Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and anti-semites everywhere
Melanie Phillips is asking us to accept the demand that the borders of the State of Israel should encompass all lands occupied by imperial Israel and Judea over 3 millennia ago. That really is drawing a long bow. Imagine other countries that have been around for comparable periods making such demands. Goodness knows where the land claims of places like Egypt and Italy (Rome) would end.
Personally I am no anti-semite and I recognise the right of the State of Israel to exist, but my starting point for territorial jurisdiction is 1948CE, not 1000BCE.
Yeah - I get it. But look at the size of the country Barend. Look at the desert land all round - at the way the Israelis are using it to the best. Look at the state of the planet! Go Melanie! Go Israel!
Anon 1048, I don't accept your rationalisation any more than I would accept an Italian telling me the region was more stable in the days of the Roman Empire so they should send their army in and take it over again.
-and i don't quarrel with your strict adherence to history and logic, but if you insist on clinging to the view that that's the way the world works...........?
As a first principle, what is wrong with being anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism or even anti-Jewish? What is there is justification in being some, or all, of these things? Why should Jews feel the get to enforce people's opinions about them, and to "correct" the presupposed fault in any deviation from their expectations?
Melanie and her coethnics just seem to take it as a given that if you are less than reverential to the Jewish people, their religion or their ethnostate project, you are disqualified from all consideration. Well, they are arrogant to suppose this.
Anon 1147, the "way the world works" has changed considerably over the centuries and continues to do so. By the 17thC it had dawned on many that relations between sovereign nations ought to be governed by legalistic rules; the Treaty of Westphalia 1648 is generally regarded as the first truly international law treaty. International law has advanced in fits and starts since then with some notable hiccoughs (two World Wars, for instance........) and the continuing tendency of the big and powerful (US, China.......) to treat it with disdain. But "the way the world works" is, I maintain, moving in the direction of a rules-based international order.
Such a global order makes no exceptions. There are rules about what constitutes a legitimate claim to territory and what does not. An imperial entity of 3 millennia past occupying certain lands does not make a case in international law for a country established in 1948 to now claim all those lands.
Dont see any acknowledgement in this comments debate of the 6 days war and/or the Yom Kippur war which Israel won leaving them in control of expanded territory. In history, territory won by conquest seems to become 'owned' by the victor.
Just read Melanie again - then again? Did she say that I.C Clairly? Suggest you read again too.
As for Barend - sure that the world is moving in the direction of international rules-based order ( with a few 'notable hiccoughs - oops - nothing really serious!) Um - keep hoping for the wise and good to implement the rbo -
Putin, Xi, Starmer, that chap with the nuclear installation North of Korea, - you name them. As for me I'm pretty happy that the Ayatollah has hived off , and the world may even see Persians again. happy New Year.
Ellen, international law/RBO is appealed to by countries that want to be seen to occupy the moral high ground - Obama did so quite often. It is important to realise that when a country signs up to a treaty, it does not have to take all Articles on board - it may "enter reservations" to some Articles and will accordingly not be bound by them. A country can also offer its own interpretation of a particular article - a "declaration" which it will adhere to; the Russians are rather good at that. I can hear you scoffing but the good news from my point of view at least is that international law, lame as it often is, is very real and does affect the behaviour of most nation-states (the Chinese being an exception). It will hopefully be "onwards and upwards" from here on in.
Robert Arthur, your comment as deleted above was obviously intended for the article on tattoos so I moved it to there.
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