We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind

[Little Tich]

36. The ‘New York Times’ is dead set on marginalizing Jewish anti-Zionism

Source: Mondoweiss, by Philip Weiss, August 3, 2016

The New York Times is pointedly ignoring an important news story: the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism. A battle is taking place among Jews over the dead end that Jewish nationalism represents, but the paper of record is doing all it can to pretend that battle isn’t happening, or that only lunatics are engaged, and thereby suffocate an explosive discussion.

Two days ago Haaretz ran two stunning op-eds by American Jewish historians Hasia Diner and Marjorie Feld titled, “We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind,” saying that they cannot go comfortably into Jewish spaces that deny the Nakba any more. Diner, a professor at New York University, related a struggle that will resonate in the hearts of many other American Jews:

The Israel that I loved, the one my parents embraced as the closest approximation to Eden on earth, itself had depended well before 1967 upon the expropriation of Arab lands and the expulsion of Arab populations. The Law of Return can no longer look to me as anything other than racism. I abhor violence, bombings, stabbings, or whatever hurtful means oppressed individuals resort to out of anger and frustration. And yet, I am not surprised when they do so, after so many decades of occupation, with no evidence of progress.

I feel a sense of repulsion when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, “We Stand With Israel.” I just do not go and avoid many Jewish settings where I know Israel will loom large as an icon of identity.

Then yesterday Haaretz ran a great piece by Gideon Levy titled, “Stop living in denial, Israel is an evil state,” which cited the detention of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour and the cruel imprisonment/detention of the Palestinian hunger striker Bilal Kayed as examples of “evil.”

Levy quoted Eva Illouz, a Hebrew University professor who has also used the term “evil” for Israeli practices and who described the occupation as “slavery.”

Two days ago, Haaretz ran a piece by Yitchak Laor characterizing Israeli society as fascist: “the volk has come to overshadow all other institutions – democracy, the law, the army. Not to mention Palestinian blood.”

Read more: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/determined-marginalize-zionism/