CONFRONTING THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN ZIONISM AND
JEWISH MORAL AND ETHICAL VALUES
Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Issues
Fall 2024
Recent events in Gaza and in the West Bank have caused an increasing number of
Jewish Americans to see a dramatic contradiction between the conduct of the
Israeli government and traditional Jewish moral and ethical values. Students of
history note that this contradiction existed from the creation of the state of
Israel in 1948, but that recent developments have made this obvious to an
increasing number of people of all religious backgrounds. Equally clear is the
manner in which many American Jewish organizations and religious bodies have
defended whatever the Israeli government did, whether it was morally right or
wrong.
Israel suffered a grievous terrorist assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Its response has
been massive and is still in process at this writing. More than 40,000
Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip, the local
Health Ministry said on August 15. According to the Health Ministry, the
majority of the dead are women and children. At least 92,401 have also been
injured.
According to the Washington Post (Aug. 16, 2024), “Palestinian journalists, first
responders, international aid workers and war-casualty watchdogs, all say the
official death toll in Gaza is probably an undercount…After months of bombardment
and siege, thousands of bodies are still believed to be buried under the rubble,
according to Gaza’s civil defense force.”
Criticism Within Israel Is Widespread
Israel’s conduct of the war has been sharply criticized within Israel itself.
The newspaper Haaretz (Aug. 15, 2024) published an editorial with the headline,
“Israel’s use of Human Shields on the Battle Field Is a War Crime.” It de-
clared: “The practice that Haaretz exposed of military units forcing civilian
residents of Gaza to serve as human shields—-searching tunnels and buildings
before the forces enter, while wearing army uniforms and sometimes also
protective vests to give them the appearance of IDF soldiers—is a war crime….
Many of the prohibitions specified in the laws of war are the consequence of
atrocities experienced in wars, especially World War 11. The prohibition against
using enemy civilians as human shields is one of them.”
The International Criminal Court is currently considering a request by the
Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, for arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime
Minister and Defense Minister. One of the conditions for the ICC’s jurisdiction
is that the Israeli justice system is unable or unwilling to investigate and
prosecute war criminals.
In August, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem issued a report
entitled “Welcome to Hell,” highlighting a variety of human rights abuses in
Israel. This report was largely ignored by the Israeli media. Torture of Pales-
tinians in Israeli prisons, it found, is widespread. Physicians for Human Rights
Israel (PHRI) in August reported about one Palestinian inmate who died with a
ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by Israeli prison guards.
Another met an excruciating end because a chronic condition went untreated. A
third screamed for help for hours before dying. According to PHRI, at least 13
Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel have died in Israeli jails since Oct. 7.
An unknown number of prisoners on the Gaza Strip have also died.
Serious Abuse Of A Sexual Nature
Inside Sde Teiman, a facility on a military base in the Negev desert that holds
Palestinian detainees captured in Gaza, nine reservists were detained after
“serious abuse” of a sexual nature of a detainee. Newly released detainees say
that torture, sexual abuse and deprivation of food are widespread. A CNN
investigation found that newly re-leased Palestinian detainees describe being
beaten, denied medical care and made to kneel handcuffed and blind-folded for
days.
The Tel Aviv-based Association for Civil Rights In Israel (ACRI) declared that,
“The conditions at Sde Teiman gravely violate both Israeli and international law.
Its continued operation is not just illegal—-it’s a potential war crime.”
When it comes to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied in violation of
international law for more than 50 years, its current government no longer
supports the two-state solution which the U.S., under both Republicans and
Democrats, has advocated. Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the
creation of a Palestinian state and members of his Cabinet call for annexing this
territory and expelling its indigenous Palestinian population.
Largest Seizure Of Land In Three Decades
Recently, Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the West Bank in
over three decades, reported the Associated Press ((July 3, 2024): “Israel’s
aggressive expansion…reflects the settler community’s strong influence in the
government…Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, has turbocharged
the policy of expan-sion…saying he aims to solidify Israel’s hold on the
territory and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.”
Authorities approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square
miles of land) in the Jordan Valley. It was the largest single appropriation
approved since the 1993 Oslo Accords. Settlement monitors said the land grab
connects Israeli settlements along a key corridor bordering Jordan, a move which
undermines the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state.
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called it “a step in the wrong direction,”
adding that “the direction we want to be heading is to find a negotiated two-
state solution. According to the U.N., more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Much of the international community
condemns these settlements as a violation of international law.
Netanyahu More Interested In Political Survival Than Israel’s Future
The former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency, Ami Ayalon, told
Christine Aminpour on CNN (June 24, 2024) that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
“is more interested in his own political survival than in Israel’s future. He
does not want to end the war or the occupation of the West Bank. On this path,
we won’t have democracy and, in the end, we won’t have sovereignty. There needs
to be a day-after plan, which we do not now have.” Ayalon de-clared that,
“Netanyahu’s toxic leadership will lead to the end of Zionism.”
In recent days, settlers have become increasingly violent toward Palestinians.
Nader Weiman, a former Israeli Special Forces soldier, is now director of
Breaking the Silence, an organization of former Israeli Army veterans that
advocates an end to Israel’s occupation. He said settlers have stepped up
attacks on Palestinian communities while the world’s attention was focused on
Gaza. The U.N. Humanitarian Affairs office has recorded more than 650 at-tacks
against Palestinians since Oct. 7. Settlers have killed at least 9 Palestinians
and Israeli security forces have killed more than 400.
Asked why settlers destroyed schools, Weiman responds: “Because you want families
to feel they are not safe here. With no school here, the kids cannot return.
And if you do not have kids, you don’t have life. It’s not just about stealing
livestock; it’s about destroying the sense of being at home.”
Assault On West Bank Has No Reason Or Justification
Writing in Haaretz (Sept. 1, 2024), Gideon Levy notes that, “Over the 11 months
of war, Israel has ripped up the West Bank…The current assault has no reason or
justification. Israel has exploited the war on Gaza to cause turmoil on the West
Bank…The Army, Shin Bet, Border Police …and violent settler militias blend into
each other…There has not been a pogrom in which soldiers weren’t present and did
nothing to stop it…Tens of thousands of acres were expropriated and robbed over
these months. Roadblocks have also returned in full force. You cannot move from
one place to another in the West Bank without encountering them.”
On July 19, the International Court of Justice, the top judicial arm of the U.N.,
said Israel should “bring an end to its illegal occupation of Palestinian
territory, cease new settlements and pay reparations to Palestinians who have
lost land and property.” The Court said Israel is responsible for “systematic
discrimination” against Palestinians based on race or ethnicity “and breached
their right to self-determination. In advance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s
visit to Washington in July, the Knesset passed legislation opposing the
establishment of a Palestinian state.
In an editorial entitled “Israel’s Continued Denial of the Reality of the
Occupation,” Haaretz (July 21, 2024) de-clared: “The opinion by the International
Court of Justice revealed nothing to Israelis that they do not already know. The
opinion shatters the lie that the occupation is only temporary and intended only
for security purposes. This is the lie Israelis told themselves during decades
of occupation while they seized more and more Palestinian land and built
settlements on it. The opinion bursts this bubble of lies and views various acts
of the Israeli government as annexation of the territory…. Israel’s working
assumption that the world will continue to ignore the occupation has been shat-
tered…Israel…may wake up to a reality in which it is boycotted and ostracized
like apartheid-era South Africa.”
“War On The Palestinian People”
On Aug. 28, hundreds of Israeli troops launched raids in several areas of the
West Bank, carrying out mass arrests, and killing at least 10 Palestinians.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas,
described the operation as “a continuation of the comprehensive war on the
Palestinian people, our land and our holy sites.” He called on the U.S. to
intervene. “The world must take immediate and urgent action to curb this
extremist government,” he said.
Few Americans of any religious background understand the harsh bigotry which
motivates leaders of the settler movement. Rabbi Meir Kahane was expelled from
the Knesset for racism and terrorism in an earlier era. He proposed legislation
that was very much like the Nazi Nuremburg Laws, making marriage between Jews and
non-Jews illegal. Now, he is a hero to the settler movement. Beyond Meir
Kahane, heroes of this movement include the former Sephardic chief rabbi of
Israel, Ovadiah Yosef. In a weekly sermon to the nation, he declared that the
“only reason for the existence of non-Jews is to serve Jews.” His funeral in 2013
was considered the largest ever in Israel with crowd estimates reaching 800,000.
He is a hero in Israeli society, with his picture on postage stamps and many
streets carrying his name.
Another rabbi widely admired by the settler movement is Rabbi Kook the Elder, who
said: “The difference be-tween a Jewish soul and the soul of non-Jews—-all of
them in all different levels —-is greater and deeper than the difference between
a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Bigotry In The Settler Movement
Few Jewish Americans are aware of the bigotry which characterizes the Israeli
settler movement and is to be found in much of ancient Jewish literature.
Consider this statement from Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who headed the Chabad
movement: “The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person …We have a
case between totally different species. The body of a Jewish person is of a
totally different quality than the bodies of (members) of all nations of the
world…A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity…The entire creation of a non-Jew
is only for the sake of the Jews.”
Mordechai Nisan, a lecturer at the Hebrew University, wrote in an official
publication of the World Zionist Or-ganization, that a non-Jew permitted to
reside in the land of Israel “must accept paying a tax and suffering the hu-
miliation of servitude…Non-Jews must not be appointed to any office or position
of power over Jews.”
Reform Judaism, at its beginning, abandoned the bigotry to be found in the Talmud
and other Orthodox religious writing. It looked to the God of the Prophets, who
was not a God for Jews alone, but the Lord of all creation. Second Isaiah
proclaims God the God of all people. In chapter 56 of the Book of Isaiah we find
the passage epitomizing universalism: “My house will be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”
One God For All People
The idea of one God for a particular people was not the unique contribution of
the Jews. There had been other peoples who promoted such ideas. Judaism’s
unique contribution was the idea of one God for all peoples, repre-senting a
single standard of morality with one set of moral values applying universally.
This was the revolution in religious thinking the Hebrew Prophets brought about.
The Prophet Amos helped to move Judaism away from being a narrow tribal religion
to that of a universal faith open to all believers. The Prophet Hosea called for
justice tempered with love. In Hosea’s view, God was always ready to pardon his
people as soon as they repented. In his book “Meet The Prophets,” published by
the American Council for Judaism, Rabbi David Goldberg writes, “…the transition
from the clerical to the prophetic—which finally crystallized Judaism into a
religion centered on ethical monotheism.”
As Zionism emerged in the late 19th century, it was rejected by the leading
religious figures of the day. For Reform Jews, Zionism contradicted their belief
in a universal prophetic Judaism. The first Reform prayerbook eliminated all
references to Jews being in exile and to a Messiah who would restore Jews
throughout the world to the historic Land of Israel. The distinguished rabbi and
author Abraham Geiger declared that the essence of Judaism was ethical mon-
otheism. The Jewish people were a religious community destined to carry on a
mission “to serve as a light to the nations, to bear witness to God and His moral
law.” The dispersion of the Jews was not a punishment for their sins, but part
of God’s plan whereby they were to disseminate the universal message of ethical
monotheism.”
Rejecting Nationalism “Of Any Variety”
In November 1885, Reform rabbis meeting in Pittsburgh wrote an eight-point
platform which emphasized that Reform Judaism “rejected nationalism in any
variety.”
In the wake of growing antisemitism in Russia and Eastern European at the end of
the 19th century and the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, many Jews began
to look positively upon the idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine as a
refuge for those being persecuted. Jewish groups in the U.S. that had always
opposed Zionism, slowly began to view it more favorably. They ignored the fact
that Palestine was already populated.
The early Zionists not only turned away from the Jewish religious tradition, but
Jewish moral and ethical values as well. They launched a campaign of terrorism
in Palestine to remove as many of the indigenous population as pos-sible. In
April 1948 the Zionist Irgun and Lehi forces launched an attack on the
Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. Inhabitants of the peaceful village were
lined up against the wall and shot. More than 100 victims, mostly women,
children, and older people, were killed. As the Zionists had planned, news of
the massacre spread rapidly and helped prompt the flight of hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians from their homes. Irgun leader Menachem Begin, a future Israeli
prime minister, issued this message to his troops after the attack: “Accept my
congratulations on this splendid act of conquest…As in Deir Yassin, so
everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God Thou hast chosen us for
conquest.”
The Goal Of Removing Palestine’s Indigenous Population
The Zionists admit that removing the indigenous Palestinian population was their
goal. As early as 1937, Israel’s future prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, told
the Zionist Assembly: “In many parts of the country it will not be possible to
settle without transferring the Arab fellahin (peasants)…With compulsory transfer
we would have a vast area for settlement. I support compulsory transfer.” What
the Zionists committed, declares Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, was “ethnic
cleansing.”
Since Israel’s creation, much of the organized American Jewish community has
transformed itself into a defender of whatever that state pursues. Israeli flags
fly in many synagogues and Israel and “the Jewish people” often appear to be the
object of worship, not God. This becomes a form of idolatry, much like the
Golden Calf in the Bible.
Now, as Israel’s war in Gaza has cost the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians
and as settlers in the West Bank continue their assault upon its Palestinian
residents and the Israeli government rejects the creation of a Palestinian state,
more and more Jewish Americans are expressing dismay with Israel and the American
Jewish institutions which support and defend it.
Jewish Demonstrators Arrested In U.S. Capitol
In July, U.S. Capitol Police arrested Jewish demonstrators protesting U.S.
weapons sales to Israel inside the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building, a
day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Con-gress.
The protest, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, included rabbis, students, and
descendants of Holocaust survivors. The group is “horrified and dismayed “that
elected officials would meet with Netanyahu, said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a group
spokeswoman.
The Washington Post (July 24,2024) reported that, “…hundreds of protestors sang
‘Let Gaza. Live’ and ‘stop genocide’ and sat in a circle around a banner which
read ‘NO ONE IS FREE UNTIL EVERYONE IS FREE.’ They wore red shirts that read
‘JEWS SAY STOP ARMING ISRAEL’ and clapped as they sang ‘Not In Our Name.’ Pro-
testors unfurled banners, including one that said: ‘TIKKUN OLAM=FREE PALESTINE,’
referring to the Hebrew phrase that means to repair the world. Several
protestors wore hand-made prayer shawls…and the words ‘NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE.’”
Rabbi Linda Holtzman, leader of the social Justice community Tikkun Olam Chavurah
in Philadelphia, said there is a “mass murder” happening in Gaza and believes the
path to a cease-fire includes an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Holtzman
said that there needs to be a political decision about the future of Israel and
she hopes to see a future that Palestinians and Israelis can decide together.
Sanctity Of Life At The Heart Of Jewish Tradition
Rabbi Holtzman said that, “It’s incredibly important for me to be here as a rabbi
and as a Jew because at the heart of Jewish tradition is the sanctity of life.
We can’t sit back and watch people being killed and not stand up. That feels, to
me, like a serious anti-Jewish thing to do.”
An American Jewish military intelligence officer has resigned to protest U.S.
support for Israel, saying that what is happening to the Palestinians there
reminds him of the Holocaust. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (June
6, 2024) ”Major Harrison Mann submitted his resignation to the military and to
the Defense Intelligence Agency…He said, ‘As the descendant of European Jews, I
was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the
topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing…My grandfather refused to
ever purchase produce manu-factured in Germany—-where the paramount importance of
‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following or-ders’ were oft repeated,’
Mann wrote in the letter.”
Mann continued, “I am haunted by the knowledge that I failed those principles.
But I also hope that my grand-father would afford me some grace, that he would
still be proud of me for stepping away from this war, however belatedly.” Mann
told the JTA that he was not saying that the war in Gaza was the same as the
Holocaust: “I think there’s no benefit in weighing tragedies against each other,
and it’s not what I’m trying to do. Obviously, the Hol-ocaust was much bigger,
but that doesn’t mean that smaller massacres of innocent people (also) shouldn’t
happen.”
Recalling Jewish Prayer At Buchenwald
Mann also said his thinking was inspired in part by his experience visiting Yad
Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust me-morial, while participating in training for U.S.
intelligence officers. He recalled seeing the photograph of Jewish U.S. soldiers
leading a prayer service for liberated prisoners at Buchenwald. He recalled,
“That was the most proud I ever felt to be in the same Army as these men. It’s
hard not to think back to that when we are seeing —-again—-photos of starved,
emaciated children and burned corpses. I am now contributing to that instead of
being the ones who liberated them.”
Mann’s resignation came thirteen years into his military career, which began
after he graduated from the College of William and Mary. The first Jewish
government staff member to publicly resign was Lilly Greenberg Call, a special
assistant to the chief of staff of the Department of the Interior. She said,
“there are so many others who feel this way.”
Professor Emeritus Yakov Rabkin of the University of Montreal, author of the book
“What Is Modern Israel?” provides this assessment: “The new state of Israel
placed Palestinian Arabs under military rule, which lasted nearly two decades.
Refugees and exiles who tried to return to their homes were killed, expelled, or
arrested…the murderous attack of Oct. 7, 2023 obviously enraged most Israelis.
But instead of taking pause, military and political leaders immediately subjected
Gaza to massive bombardment followed by a ground invasion. This caused a
humanitarian crisis.”
Demonization Of Palestinians Is Common
In Rabkin’s view. “vengeful demonization of the Palestinians has become common.
Even the soft-spoken pres-ident of Israel claimed that there were no ‘innocent
civilians. In Gaza. Meirev Ben-Ari…said in reference to thou-sands of
Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombardment, ‘The children of Gaza have
brought this upon themselves! We are a peace-seeking, a life-loving nation’…Many
Jews…have been trying to come to terms with the contradictions between the
Judaism they profess to adhere to and the Zionist ideology that has taken hold of
them. A new variety of Judaism has taken root in Israel: National Judaism…Among
its most fervent followers one finds the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, who had attempted to find an accommodation with the Palestinians, and
prominent members of today’s Israeli government.”
A letter signed by more than 1200 alumni and current members of the Union for
Reform Judaism addressed to the organization on Dec. 16, 2023, declares, “We
grieve for the 1,200 killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7th attack and the more than
18,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military—-almost half of whom have been
children—-since then. Israel has cut off water, electricity, fuel, and supplies
to Gaza. We are deeply concerned that tax dollars have been so easily provided
to support Israel’s military assault on Gaza, while we struggle for the basic
needs of our communities.”
At the same time, a letter was released from descendants of progressive rabbis
and leaders to express “our horror at the URJ’s failure to call for a cease-fire
in Gaza. We are alarmed that the leadership of our community has not demanded an
end to Israel’s devastating violence against Palestinians in addition to the safe
and immediate return of the hostages…A decades-long campaign to dehumanize
Palestinians has hardened the American Jewish community’s hearts. Atrocities are
being committed in our name. We do not consider the killing of thousands of
innocent civilians to be a justifiable consequence of ensuring our community’s
protection.”
“Uncompromising Zionist Rhetoric”
The letter concludes: “The URJ continues to actively alienate alumni with its
uncompromising Zionist rheto-ric…We will reconsider our and the next generation’s
membership and support of the URJ unless there is a public, dramatic shifting the
way the movement addresses Israel. It is not too late to listen, to open your
heart, and to make your children proud.”
Among the original signatories of this letter are Zippy Janas, a descendant of
Rabbi Julius Rappaport, Chana Powell, daughter of a current URJ rabbi, Talia
Yudkin Toffany, daughter of Rabbi Marjorie Yudkin, Zachariah Sippy, son of Rabbi
David Wirtschaffer and Hafanyah Perluss, daughter of Rabbi Emily Feigenson.
Oren Kroc-Zeldin, whose grandfather Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin headed Los Angeles’
Stephen M. Wise Temple and whose mother Rabbi Leah Kroll was one of the first
women rabbis ordained by the Reform movement, is director of the program of
Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco. He went to
Jewish Day School and on Birthright trips to Israel. Now, he says that, “Jewish
liberation in Israel was predicated on the oppression and ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians.” He said he rejects “a monolithic pro-Israel identity.”
Reform Jews For Justice
An organization called Reform Jews For Justice(https://reformjewsforjustice.com)
has also been established. It declares that, “As Reform Jews we stand together
for Justice, in solidarity with Palestine. We unite in our values to call for a
ceasefire, the release of hostages and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel…We
have come together to call on our movement to engage in Solidarity with
Palestine. We envision a Reform Jewish movement that…rejects a con-flation of
anti-Zionism with antisemitism…The URJ’s leaders have unabashedly demonstrated
shameful tactics of ethno-nationalism and tribal political priorities over simple
ethics and the illegitimate and dangerous conflation of Zionism and Judaism. We
have been alienated from the movement that raised us to ask, ‘If I am only for
myself, what am I?’—-through binary language suggesting that our affiliation is
conditional on Zionism. WE will not stand idly by.”
It has been pointed out by many scholars and others that the Palestinians are, in
fact, the final victims of the Holocaust, in which they played no role. Deena
Dallasheh, a historian of Israel and Palestine who has taught at Columbia
University and N.Y.U. notes that, “The Holocaust was a horrible massacre
committed by Europeans. But I don’t think the Palestinians figure that they will
have to pay for it. Yet the world sees this as an acceptable equation.
Orientalist and colonialist ideology were very much at the heart of thinking,
that while we Europeans and the U.S. were part of this massive human tragedy, we
are going to fix it at the expense of someone else. And the someone else is not
important because they are Arabs. They’re Palestinians and thus constructed as
not important.”
As American Jewish groups which previously opposed Zionism changed their position
in the wake of World War 11, the American Council for Judaism was established in
1942 to maintain the traditional philosophy of a universal Judaism free of
nationalism and politicization. In his keynote address to the June 1942 meeting
of the Council in Atlantic City, Rabbi David Philipson declared that Reform
Judaism and Zionism were incompatible: “Reform Ju-daism is spiritual, Zionism is
political. The outlook of Reform Judaism is the world. The outlook of Zionism
is a corner of Eastern Asia.” The first pledge of major financial backing was
made by Aaron Strauss, a nephew and heir of Levi Strauss of blue jeans fame.
Attending this meeting were six former presidents of the Central Conference of
American Rabbis, the president of Hebrew Union College and a former president of
B’nai B’rith.
Jewish Nationalism Is Secular, Not Religious
Judah Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote a letter
endorsing the Council’s statement of principles saying, “It is true that Jewish
nationalism tends to confuse people not because it is secular and not reli-gious,
but because this nationalism is unhappily chauvinistic and narrow and terroristic
in the best style of Eastern European nationalism.”
On Dec. 4, 1945, hours after the first meeting with Zionist leader Chaim
Weizmann, President Harry S. Truman received Lessing J. Rosenwald, the first
president of the Council, in the Oval Office. He called for the admission of
both Jewish and non-Jewish displaced persons to Palestine, and urged that
Palestine shall not be a Muslim, Christian or Jewish state but a country in which
people of all faiths can play their full part,” and that the U.S. take the lead
in coordinating with the U.N., “ a cooperative policy of many nations in
absorbing Jewish refugees.”
Rosenwald testified before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jan. 10,
1946 and urged that large numbers of Jews be admitted into Palestine on the
condition that “the claim that Jews possess unlimited national rights to the
land, and that the country shall take the form of a racial or theocratic state,
were denounced once and for all.”
“Emphasis On Blood, Race And Descent”
One of the speakers at the Council’s 1945 conference was Hans Kohn, a one-time
German Zionist associated with the University in Exile in New York. He declared,
“The Jewish nationalist philosophy has developed entirely under German influence,
the German romantic nationalism with the emphasis on blood, race and descent as
the most de-termining factor in human life, it’s historicizing attempt to connect
to a legendary past 2,000 or so years ago, its emphasis on folk as a mythical
body, the source of civilization.”
In the face of the 1947 partition of Palestine, the Council wished the new state
well and declared its determination to resist Zionist efforts to dominate Jewish
life in America. Rabbi Elmer Berger, the Council’s executive director, outlined
the challenge presented by Zionist plans to foster an “Israel-centered’ Jewish
life in the U.S. He wrote, “The creation of a sovereign state embodying the
principles of Zionism, far from relieving American Jews of the urgency of making
that choice, makes it more compelling.”
After Israel’s creation, much of the American Jewish community focused its
attention upon Israel. Israeli flags appeared in many synagogues; Jewish day
schools promoted the idea that Israel was the real “homeland” of all Jews.
Israel, rather than the worship of God and the advancement of Jewish moral and
ethical values, seemed to dominate Jewish life. As Israel engaged in repressive
treatment of Palestine’s indigenous population, Jewish institutions rose to its
defense. More recently, with the assault upon civilians in Gaza and the growth
of settlements in the West Bank, defending Israel’s behavior, not advancing the
moral and ethical insights of Judaism, have dominated much of the established
Jewish community. But it has also produced a growing reaction, particularly
among younger people, who see a contradiction between Judaism’s moral worldview
and narrow nationalism of any kind.
The Council Was Prophetic
In his history of the early years of the American Council for Judaism, “Jews
Against Zionism,” Prof. Thomas Kolsky concluded that the Council was prophetic in
its warning about where Zionism would lead: “…many of its predictions about the
establishment of a Jewish state did come true…For example, Israel became highly
dependent on support from American Jews. The creation of the state directly
contributed to undermining Jewish communities in Arab countries and to
precipitating protracted conflict between Israel and the Arabs. Indeed, as the
Council had often warned…Israel did not become a normal state. Nor did it become
a light to the nations…The ominous predictions of the ACJ are still haunting the
Zionists.”
Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University historian, and author of the book “American
Judaism,” says that, “Eve-rything they (the ACJ) prophesied—-dual loyalty,
nationalism being evil—-has come to pass.” In his “On Religion” column in The
New York Times (June 26, 2010), Samuel Freedman noted that, “The arguments that
the Council has levied against Zionism…have shot back into prominence. ..The
rejection of Zionism …goes back to the Torah itself. Until Theodor Herzl created
the modern Zionist movement…the biblical injunction to return to Israel was
widely understood as a theological construct rather than a pragmatic instruction…
The Reform movement maintained that Judaism is a religion, not a nationality.”
Since that was written, and in light of recent Israeli government actions in Gaza
and the West Bank, it seems that Israel, and those in the American Jewish
community who defend whatever policy Israel sees fit to pursue, have turned away
from traditional Jewish moral and ethical values. Beyond this, while Jewish
Americans believe in religious freedom and separation of church and state, Israel
is a theocracy with a state-supported ultra-Orthodox religious es-tablishment.
Non-Orthodox rabbis cannot perform weddings, conduct funerals, or have their
conversions recog-nized.
Zionism Represents A Major Wrong Turn
For those who have never abandoned the vision of a universal faith of moral and
ethical values for men and women of every race and nation, which the Prophets
preached and in which generations of Jews believed, Zionism represents a major
wrong turn. We are now entering a new era in which that wrong turn can be
reversed. The hu-mane Jewish tradition can finally be restored. Those who kept
it alive during the years in which nationalism seemed to replace the unique
Jewish contribution to world civilization, which also influenced the development
of Christianity and Islam, can be viewed as having been indeed prophetic. A new
and more hopeful era lies before us.
*
Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and serves as editor of
ISSUES.
The author of five books, he has served on the staff of the U.S. Senate, House of
Representatives, and the Office of the Vice President.
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