Zionism is Not Evil--Fanatical Zionists are Evil

I often hear people deride Zionism, but I don’t know if they really understand what they are saying.  Here is my understanding and position.  Maybe this will help clarify some discussions.

One can be a Zionist zealot who has no concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people, and who wants every Palestinian cleared out so Israel can run from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan.  Some of these Zionists are religiously motivated—Orthodox Jews who believe the Torah guarantees us this portion of land.  Others are just harsh, calculating pragmatists who won’t feel safe, vindicated, or powerful until Israel has complete control of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, with a clear Jewish majority.

Or one can be a liberal or progressive Zionist who believes in Israel’s right to exist but also believes as strongly in a Palestinian state, with human rights and economic justice for all.

Zionism is a Jewish Nationalist movement started in the late 1800s in Europe and, shortly after the Holocaust, culminated in the birth of Israel in Palestine in 1948.  After thousands of years of suffering severe persecution in Europe—inquisitions, pogroms, restrictive laws, and exiles—the Jewish need for an independent and armed Jewish state became paramount to the survival of this ancient people. Nazi-Germany made this clear and, by murdering approximately six million Jews, nearly succeeded in eliminating the Jewish people and erasing the need for a Jewish state.  

Again, to be a Zionist simply means to believe in the right of Israel—a Jewish state—to exist.  There are fanatical right wing Zionists, like Netanyahu, and there are progressive Zionists like Rabbi Lerner.

Like millions of Americans, I will forever be angry, disgusted and saddened by the means with which my native country was established and expanded. Armed with avarice, brutality, and racism, we simply murdered and displaced countless Native-Americans, shoving their survivors on to reservations (another name for refugee camps) relegating many of their descendants to lives of degradation and poverty, which continues through today’s generations.

Despite this horror story and the benefits I’ve reaped from the establishment of this country, thus my inherited culpability in the terror Native-Americans suffered, I will not denounce the U.S., it’s right to exist, nor our right to be safe.

I deplore our forefathers’ megalomaniacal lust for land, waterways, minerals, and power and their blatant disregard for the lands, lives, and suffering of indigenous people.  The U.S.A. could have been established without a near genocide.

Like wise, I deplore much of the history of modern Israel with regards to how we have treated the indigenous populations of Palestine—killing tens of thousands and displacing over a million Christian and Muslim Palestinians over the past 66 years.  The Palestinian Jews faired better than their centuries-old neighbors, but to this day Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose most recent roots are in Europe) treat Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spanish, North African, or Arab origin) as essentially second-class citizens.

Just like our country could have had humane relations with the Indians, the establishment of a Jewish state in our ancestral homeland could have happened in cooperation with the indigenous people and with humanity and humility:

You may say I’m a dreamer, 

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will live as one—J. Lennon

If you are against Zionism—without qualification—you are in favor of the dismantling of Israel—the Jewish state.

If you are a proponent of progressive Zionism you are, at a minimum, against the Jewish settlement movement/expansion in the West Bank, the killing of Gazan civilians, and the Israeli siege of Gaza.  And you believe in the right of Israel to exist and to exist as a Jewish state.

I’m not going to denounce the Jewish dream; however, I am going to repent for the Palestinian nightmare that my people have largely created.

It’s a paradox—not a contradiction.  We can thrive within paradoxes—contradictions, on the other hand, are murder.

Shabbat shalom and have a relaxing weekend,

Andreas Rubinstein