The Fall of Zionism

Zionism, as a political and ideological movement, has become inseparable from Judaism in the minds of many. In mainstream Canadian media and popular debate, being Jewish and being Zionist have become confounded, as all Jews are portrayed as ardent supporters of the Israeli state and believers in Zionism.  The confusion is perhaps understandable in light of the positions taken by the best-funded Canadian Jewish organizations. Claiming to represent all Jews, organizations such as the Canadian Jewish Congress, Canada-Israel Committee, B’nai Brith, and the student networks they fund, spend a great deal of time promoting the notion that questioning Israeli government policy is anti-Semitic. 

Of course, this is not the case. Many Jews, like their non-Jewish counterparts, have publicly spoken out against the criminal acts committed by Israel. Prominent Jews like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Amira Hass and David Noble are considered leading voices in the anti-occupation movement. And beyond such public faces, even more Jews work as Palestinian human rights activists in solidarity networks and other organizations taking action in support of the Palestinian cause. Digging deeper, there may even be a ‘silent majority’ of Jews who simply believe that Israel should be held to the standards of international law to which other countries are held, and, that it is acceptable to criticize the actions of the Israeli government, just like it is fine to criticize the actions of any other state, without being labeled an anti-Semite. So, if the aforementioned observations are generally correct, why is it that the mainstream Jewish organizations in Canada are all so pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, and believe themselves to be licensed to portray questioning Israel as an act of anti-Semitism?

This is a complex question that we can begin answering by looking at the history of Zionism and this movement’s role in the internal politics of Jewish communities. For the purposes of this analysis, I will concentrate on the Ashkenazi (European) Jews, and not the Sephardic (Middle Eastern) Jews, since it was in Europe that modern Zionism began, and in Europe that Zionism took over as the dominant political movement within the Jewish community. This was not always the case. Prior to World War II, Zionism as a social movement and ideology was only followed by a minority of Jews. Indeed, this is still the case if you consider that despite Zionism’s call for all Jews to move to Israel, the majority of Jews today remain in the Diaspora. 

To give a brief history, before the Second World War, the dominant political movement within European Jewish communities was the Bund movement. The Bundists adhered to a doctrine called do’ikayt, Yiddish for ‘hereness’. What the Bundists meant by hereness is that Jews should be actively engaged where they live, and so the Bund parties took on issues like labour rights and social justice. Moreover, this conviction that Jews should be active where they find themselves - and the corollary that they should not migrate to some new homeland - meant that the Bundists were also ardently anti-Zionist. Indeed, the Bund’s opposition to Zionism was an essential part of the movement, based on a fundamental disagreement with modern Zionism about the future of the Jewish people. The Bund parties even opposed elements of the Zionist movement, such as the resurrection of Hebrew (a language that was then considered dead outside of prayer books), and opted for the increased use of Yiddish, the traditional language of European Jewry. The Zionists, meanwhile, only had limited support amongst Jews prior to WWII, despite their significant growth in popularity since the modern movement’s founding in the late 19th century.  Conversely, support for the Bund party was actually growing as Europe became more dangerous for Jewish communities. This was evident from the 1936 Warsaw Jewish community elections, in which the Bund won a large majority of the votes.
 
World War II changed these dynamics. During the Nazi Holocaust, community leadership was the first target of the Germans. The Bund made up the leadership and the prominent Bundists were for the most part wiped out (it didn’t help that they were also considered affiliated with the communists). As a result, this left a vacuum in the Jewish community, which was soon filled by Zionists after the Second World War. The Zionists partly filled the void by winning over a traumatized people, who now believed that Jewish nationalism was the key to survival.  But, critically, the Zionists took control of the displaced persons camps in Europe and then used underhanded techniques - such as the blocking of Holocaust survivors’ immigration to anywhere but Palestine, drafting survivors into the Israeli Defence forces through a mandatory process, and using violence against holocaust survivors who did not want to migrate from the camps and join the Israeli Forces - to gain “human material” to back their political ambitions.  With the Zionists’ competition from mainstream anti-Zionist groups in the heart of Jewish life in Europe eliminated, Zionism spread. In Canada, like in Europe, for instance, Zionism was more of a marginal movement than the socialist Jewish organizations in the interwar period. It was not until after the Jewish socialist movements in Europe were replaced with their Zionist counterparts following WWII that Canadian Zionism began to grow. (This was also aided by Canada’s racist refusal to allow the migration of Jews, which left ‘Canadian Bundists’ unable to help their brethren overseas by bringing them to Canada and absorbing them in the community.)

Once at the helm, the Zionists solidified their position and ensured they would control mainstream Jewish discourse. In Canada, Zionists went on to run the majority of Jewish education programs, Jewish camps, and Jewish youth groups. Perhaps more importantly, Zionists also began their ongoing control of Holocaust education, where they distort Jewish collective memory and play on Jewish fear to portray Zionism as the only acceptable collective response to the Holocaust.  Through the above approaches, mainstream organized Jewry has presented a united front in the defense of Israel that is funded by the pro-Israel lobby to both drive foreign policy on Israel, and serve as a smoke screen for other reasons why Canada supports Israel so blindly. 

In the United States, where the Israel lobby is a great deal larger than its Canadian counterpart, some serious questions about the pro-Israel lobbies’ role in driving overall Middle East policy are now being asked by mainstream commentators and analysts. For instance, recent studies by former president Jimmy Carter and Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have harshly criticized the lobbies. In response, the lobbies have aggressively sought to use their money and influence to defame detractors.  In their hysteria, pro-Israel groups have even been interfering in University Tenure proceedings (as in the case of the former DePaul professor, Norman Finkelstein), and blocked world figures who are critical of Israel from speaking at universities (as in the recent cancellation of Desmond Tutu’s speaking invitation at St. Thomas University.)

Many serious analysts, however, find it hard to believe that the Israel Lobby is completely responsible for Canadian and especially American foreign policy towards Israel. The oil industry, the military-industrial complex, the fundamentalist Christian lobby, and many policy planners who agree with Israeli actions without external coercion, also play a role in forming foreign policy.

What is potentially dangerous, however, is that given its dirty tactics and extreme views, the Israel lobby will likely be used as a scapegoat should war break out with Iran or nuclear weapons be launched in the Middle East. With the lobby promoting the illusion of all-out support from the Jewish population for Israel, this possibility is worrisome for those truly concerned about anti-Semitism.

In Canada, non-Zionist Jews and those who simply don’t blindly agree with Israeli policies often feel isolated, especially if they are connected to the Jewish community. For those who do speak out, they are often labeled as self-hating Jews, and told vile things like: “You represent the kind of Jews that that Hitler should have gotten.” This isolation is a key tactic in attempts to subvert a Jewish counter position to that offered by the lobbies. Jewish activists are now starting to realize the need to reclaim their Jewishness and stand together as Jews opposed to Zionism and critical of the Israeli state. In Canada, groups such as Not In Our Name, Jews Against the Occupation and Neturei Karta (an orthodox group long opposed to Zionism), now have a national reach, and are made up of Jews committed to standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In doing so, these groups are also committed to taking on and reforming the mainstream Jewish community, partly reconnecting with Judaism’s non-Zionist past, and partly paving a new road towards a contemporary identity based on the values that they hope will form Canadian Judaism’s future.

A long road with many battles lies ahead, but as a Canadian Jew writing this article, I am certain that the fight is worth it.  The Israeli state has justified many horrific crimes by claiming to act in the name of the Jewish people. Taking a stand as Jews is essential to removing the veil the terrorists responsible for Israel’s actions hide behind. Standing with the oppressed - namely, the Palestinians - should of course be reason enough, but in taking on Zionism, non-Zionist Jews are also fighting anti-Semitism and opposing destructive nationalist elements within the Jewish community.

The number of non-Zionist Jews keeps growing. Part of the reason for this certainly has to do with the obviousness of the unjust treatment of the Palestinian people. A close identification with Israel is something that is forced upon Jews from a very early age, but the independent minded - that is, those who need to look deeper into the claims they are presented with before accepting them as fact - will no doubt quickly uncover the more obvious “truth” of the other side - namely, that Israel, the occupying force, is primarily responsible for the depraved situation in Palestine. Of course Jews, like most others in our society, are schooled to be “disciplined minds”, making independent thinkers few and far between. Nonetheless, even the propaganda employed to indoctrinate mainstream Jews instills several core values, which cannot be overcome easily. For example, mainstream Holocaust education, as much as it is used to serve the interests of Israel advocacy, cannot be prevented from creating empathy with the oppressed Palestinians. Indeed, this is perhaps why Israel apologists work so hard to confuse the power relationship in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
 

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