Zionism goes from bad to worse, taking Judaism with it

24th July 2016   Highlights, Home, Israel

By Lawrence Davidson

From bad to worse

Zionism’s range of influence is shrinking. One can see this progression worldwide. At a popular level the Israelis have lost control of the historical storyline of Israel-Palestine. They may teach their own citizens their version of the story, the one wherein the Jews have a divine and/or historical right to all of Palestine’s territory. But beyond their fellow Zionists and the loony Christian right, no one else believes this story.

An existential dilemma

Zionism did not start out advocating slaughter. The original Zionist preference for the disposal of the Palestinians was “transfer” – the removal by force or economic inducement of the Palestinians from conquered Israeli territory into the surrounding Arab lands. This scheme, in its forceful guise, was put into effect during the 1948 and 1967 wars. This certainly cleared out some of the indigenous population, but by no means everyone: there are today some 6 million Palestinians living under Israeli control.

For most of those who have remained, policies of enforced poverty, enforced immobility and daily harassment have made life miserable. It has also encouraged continuous violent resistance among Palestinians and a corresponding growing frustration among Israeli Jews. This frustration soon began to encourage Zionists, both secular and religious, to replace the traditional notion of transfer with newer visions of slaughter.

Unfortunately, Jews in active opposition to Zionism, be they rabbis or laity, while growing in number, are still insufficiently organised to challenge Zionist political influence in official circles. 

The participation of the rabbis, who play the role of “spiritual guides” for millions of Orthodox Jews, in preaching a call to murder creates an existential dilemma for the adherents of the Jewish religion – existential because it speaks to the religion’s evolving nature. In terms of its present adherents, it places them in the same situation experienced by many Catholics and Protestants during the eras of the Crusades and Reformation wars. It was in those eras that official religious institutions and leaders espoused and religiously rationalised wholesale slaughter. Today we have created standards, supported by international law, that render such repulsive behaviour illegal. But the Zionist leadership seems not to care about such standards and laws.

There are certainly those among today’s Jewry who understand the watershed nature of this turn of events. In August 2014 the American rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, called on his fellow Jews to “mourn for the Judaism of love and generosity that is being murdered by Israel and its worshipers around the world, the same kind of idol-worshipers who, pretending to be Jewish [are] actually assimilated into the world of power”. The organisation of Rabbis For Human Rights attempts to ally with Palestinians so as to keep alive the notion that there are still Jewish religious leaders who understand the potentially humane essence of their religion. Organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace give an alternative for Jewish laity who want to work against Zionist policies. In the meantime, increasing numbers of Western Jews have silently broken with Israel and the Zionist movement. They have retreated to a passive apolitical position, rendering Israel no aid. Unfortunately, Jews in active opposition to Zionism, be they rabbis or laity, while growing in number, are still insufficiently organised to challenge Zionist political influence in official circles.

Conclusion

The existential problem that now confronts Judaism is the logical consequence of the World-War-II-era alliance made by the religion’s leadership and the secular ideology of Zionism. There are clear historical reasons why this alliance was made: a millennium of anti-Semitic persecution in the West culminating in the Nazi holocaust; the existence of the national state as the premier model for collective self-protection; the colonial tradition that rationalised European control of non-European lands; and finally an age-old religious devotion to biblical tales of wandering and conquering Israelite tribes.

This offers the context within which the modern Jewish religion got captured by the Zionist movement, but whatever you think of these reasons, none of them, nor all of them together, mitigate the predictable disastrous consequences, laced with racism, chauvinism, intolerance, and violence, that was bound to follow Judaism’s collaboration with Zionism. As Rabbi Lerner says, the end product of all of this sends him into mourning.

In the eyes of increasing numbers, the country of Israel is a pariah state, and the behaviour of its rabbinical officialdom may have already thrown its religious establishment into similar disgrace. Those Jewish organisations that stand against the Israeli debacle are like candles burning in an otherwise political-religious darkness.Their struggle will go on. Indeed, it may never cease until Israel’s racist behaviour ceases. But right now, it has become evident that it is not only the existence of the Palestinians that Zionism threatens. It also has put in danger whatever humane instincts are left within organised Judaism.

http://www.redressonline.com/2016/07/zionism-goes-from-bad-to-worse-taking-judaism-with-it/