The Jewish community must open its eyes to the grotesque armored thing that is modern Israel, and denounce its actions if only in order to save ourselves.
— Read on mondoweiss.net/2024/04/weekly-briefing-at-passover-the-jewish-community-must-break-up-over-genocide/

Weekly Briefing: At Passover, the Jewish community must break up over genocide

The Jewish community must open its eyes to the grotesque armored thing that is modern Israel, and denounce its actions if only in order to save ourselves.

It’s a beautiful day in my town and I am going to go out for a walk with full awareness of my blessings. I don’t live in Gaza where the innocent are murdered day in and day out with U.S. weaponry and Joe Biden’s imprimatur (and that of many running dogs such as Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks on PBS News Hour). I don’t live in Israel, where I would have been indoctrinated in a supremacist ideology from a young age, and made to hate and fear Palestinians and to cheer genocide— and where I would have struggled to ever understand myself as a Jew. No, I live in the most privileged country in the world where there are wonderful freedoms for someone of my class.

Tomorrow is Passover so this is a message to my Jewish community. We must break up over Zionism. We must break up over genocide. Too many innocent people (on all sides) have died for this false and bigoted ideology to go on.  

The good news is that some in the Jewish community are at last awaking from sleep over this. We will see more and more allies come forward in the Peter Beinart tradition—Jews who once drank the Koolaid – Beinart used to do events for AIPAC, and supported the Iraq war for Marty Peretz — and who have walked a path of independence. 

Many of those Jews will come to have solidarity with the victims and the martyrs and the persecuted: the indigenous Palestinian population, driven from their homes to make way for the alleged liberation of the Jewish people.

“In my view, the Zionist narrative, even in its more liberal forms, cultivates an exclusivity and proprietary ethos that too easily slides into ethnonational chauvinism,” Shaul Magid of Indiana University writes in his new book. “

A simple, truer message to Jews was never spoken– by a former liberal Zionist. I urge my community to open its eyes to the grotesque armored thing that is modern Israel, and denounce its actions if only in order to save ourselves. (Because as the great rabbi said, If you are not for yourself who will be.) And yes it’s true: Palestinians who denounce Israel are pleasing their grandparents and parents; and we are not; but as Scott Roth used to say, that is the lamest fucking excuse for a thoughtful person in America.

Yesterday many progressives voted against more bombs for Israel (among others Bowman, Balint, Bush, Carson, Frost, Jayapal, Khanna, Summer Lee, McGovern, Omar, Pingree, Pocan and Pressley); and in a notable break Jamie Raskin voted against. So let us celebrate the memory of his son Tommy a great Jewish idealist and anti-Zionist who left us three years ago.

Zionism is today a danger to Jews. It is destroying free speech in our country (in the name of the Jews). It is destabilizing the Middle East (in the name of the Jews). Israel is wantonly attacking a foreign consulate in a neighboring country (in the name of the Jews). And so this Jewish identity, promulgated by Zionists, will only hurt Jews.

In the Forward last week, Jodi Rudoren, who has carried the water for Israel for years, wrote that Israel must stop killing Palestinians for the sake of “world Jewry.” And in a further heresy, she said, “antisemitism… is not an explanation for everything.”

She means that people are protesting Israel’s actions, not Jews. I believe she sees what I see, People will turn on our community for its blind support for genocide. Because what keeps Israel going in its violations of international law? The blind backing of the Israel lobby, the organized American Jewish community, never called out by the media for such, but everyone knows. As Obama said in 2015, there is only one country against the Iran deal; and today there is one country that wants the genocide to continue (and compels progressive politicians in the U.S. to violate their creed to ship more weapons).

There is another Jewish story. The brave Jewish students who are demonstrating at Columbia. The IfNotNow protesters at Biden rallies. The Jewish presence in the broad antiwar movement in the United States. They are moved by human rights and opposing the endless slaughter of children and women. They are “not hate-filled and bigoted… fringes,” as David Brooks, a longtime Zionist said of the protests on the PBS News Hour.

The Jewish protesters are today the leaders of our religious community. They are bringing an uncomfortable truth to a huddled, fearful, self-involved congregation. They are the heroes of Jewish history. They will save the world, and maybe too the lost Jewish tabernacle in the deserts of militarism.  

Happy holidays, 

Phil Weiss

h/t Allan Brownfeld, Mitchell Plitnick, and Alan Wagman for their great writings this week.