Love Jews, Hate Zionism?

In the last few days America’s governing administration has taken steps to demonstrate just how pro-Jewish it really is. A few days ago the president’s wife attended a tour of Prague’s Jewish quarter and now the President himself will be taking part in a Seder and has wished the Jewish people a happy holiday and heaped praise on the Passover story. This is much like his trip to Israel and the Western Wall in the run up to his election. It’s all part of a loud message saying ‘I’m not anti-Jewish’ in preparation for policies that will no doubt potentially upset America’s Jewish community. And this is reminiscent of what many of Israel’s critics have done, perhaps most overtly seen with the statements of Jewish British M.P Gerald Kaufman, who began his commons speech during which he compared Israel to Nazis by stating his credentials as the descendant of Holocaust victims who was raised an Orthodox Jew. It’s all part of a message that you can be anti-Israel with out being anti-Jewish, Anti-Zionist without being Anti-Semitic and that the Jewish people and the state of Israel are two very separate entities.

But with just over half of the worlds Jewish population being Israeli, Israel being the worlds only Jewish state and the wide support that Israel still has from almost all Jews all over the world, how credible can this claim really be? On the most basic level throughout its short history Israel has acted as a haven for Jews across the world fleeing real danger and seeking refuge. In opposing the existence and security of the Jewish state those doing so are at the very least showing a callous indifference to Jewish wellbeing and survival. Westerners, in whose countries Anti-Semitism is still relatively low assume that the Jews could quite happily live somewhere other than Israel and as a small religious group needn’t have their own country. They still act under the impression that Israel was created purely for Holocaust survivors, a one off event that is long in the past and many argue that Arabs shouldn’t have to pay for something Europeans did. This shows ignorance of the fact that around 50% of Israel’s population are actually descended from the 1.million Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced to flee or were even expelled from their communities during and shortly after WW2 as rioting and violently anti-Jewish feeling spread throughout the Arab world. The other large demographic are Jews from ex-eastern bloc countries. Again most westerners are ignorant to the great hostility they experienced from the Soviet regimes and eastern European culture in general. And of course countless other smaller Jewish groups such as the Ethiopians have also fled for refuge in Israel. If you’re a Jew seeking refuge then Israel is the one place you’re guaranteed an open door and a haven.

The other issue concerns the claim of being able to be anti-Israel/Zionist without being anti-Jewish. Yet Israel and returning to living in its land aren’t modern ultra-nationalist ideas, they are essential parts of the fabric of Judaism. Not only does Jewish scripture overtly command the Jews to live in Israel but Jewish law even allows individuals to divorce their spouse to move to Israel. Furthermore many Jewish observances are only fulfilable from within Israel and just about every Jewish prayer links the Jews to the land and talks of their return; the prayer after eating, the prayer before going to bed, the three prayer services said every day, also at Yom kippur and Passover when Jews famously pledge their desire to next year be in Jerusalem and even at Jewish weddings when the blessing talks of hearing the bride and groom’s laughter over the hills of Judea. The Jewish religion is overtly Zionist and views life outside of Israel as a shameful exile and only allows the fullest Jewish life to be lived from within Israel. Nothing that anyone can say can change the fact that Jewish tradition is based first and foremost around monotheism and the land of Israel. In being anti-Zionist you can’t avoid being anti-Jewish because Judaism is itself intrinsically Zionist.

If you said you liked French people but hated France as a country, or if you acknowledged that Mecca is the holy city of Islam but denied the Muslim right to have control over it people would know that really you had an anti-French or anti-Muslim agenda. Yet somehow it’s alright to hate the Jews as a nation but still not be considered anti-Jewish. Anyone who’s been to Israel or knows even a little about it knows what a strongly Jewish country it is; its people, its culture, its national symbols, its geography, its history and much of its laws are all Jewish.

As the biggest concentration of Jews in the world it is not possible to oppose the state of Israel or to advocate policies that will in reality bring an end to it as a Jewish or viable state without simultaneously advocating an overtly anti-Jewish policy. The new agenda seems to be to try and divorce the two, to demonstrate that they’re not one and the same and therefore save ones name from accusations of anti-Semitism. Perhaps even more sinister than that is an attempt at divide and rule, to get the Jewish communities in the Diaspora away from their loyalty to Israel, to tell them that they’ll be accepted as Jews but not as Zionists and that in supporting Israel they are inviting what amounts to anti-Semitism against themselves. If Jews across the world would stand strong against this argument being made by some non-Jews and a small minority of radically anti-Zionist Jews, then this argument would immediately lose credence. But as long as large sections of the Jewish community allows itself to be wood by the sort of gestures being made by the American president so they add legitimacy to the growing claim that you can respect Jews while simultaneously calling for the destruction of the nation that represents the height of their culture in modern times and the best hope for their survival in the future.