Ben-Gvir agitating for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
In my youth, I was induced, and there was not a countervailing assertion proffered, that Zionism was both a citadel of mind and of landscape, that as a Jew Israel was my true place of sanctuary in a world that might tolerate me on sight one moment and shove me into a deathcamp-bound cattle car next, and this homicidal intent was partly true of Arabs, and the closer the proximity of said Arab — i.e., Palestinians — the greater the degree of homicidal intent.
In the small Appalachian, industrial city of my birth, Birmingham, Alabama, the locals were given to throw pennies against the windows of my step-grandfather’s small, retail men’s clothing store. My father, in turn, was given to gather up the coinage, thank the assembled knuckle-dragging bigots, and use the proceeds to purchase bubble gum and penny candy for my sister and me.
“The Arabs” were viewed, in the most simplistic manner, as distant , exotic, irrational Jew-haters. I was warned at synagogue, Hebrew school, and Jewish summer camp that “the Arabs” were an even more dangerous menace than even classic Jew-haters such as Klansmen and Nazis. If fortress Israel’s vigilance and will were to falter, then Israeli Jews would be “driven into the sea by blood-lusting Arabs,” – a new Holocaust would befall all Jewry.
The wounds of memory worked as a self-resonating circuitry of nebulous angst transformed into self-perpetuating anger. Incessant showers of pennies against store windows. Of course a separation wall is necessary for survival. The boot of an IDF soldier must remain upon every Palestinian neck. “The grass must be mowed” in Gaza; every structure leveled.
When anti-Zionist Jews compare Israelis to Third Reich era Germans, we are dismissed as Kapos — all, as Israeli settlers, with the full complicity of the IDF, perpetrate Kristallnacht on an hourly basis in the West Bank. Yet Zionist Jews insist on remaining in perpetual victimhood. It would seem self-awareness and a sense of proportion are regarded as a path to doom.
This is part and parcel of what we talk about when we talk about Zionism. We are talking about the malignant conflation of all Jewish life with a creed of bigotry, insularity, and belligerence. The Zionist mind is a fortress guarded by malevolent ghosts. We are faced with a nightmare precincts of the mind wherein it is permissible to train dogs to rape prisoners. Shoot children dead. Livestream war crimes.
As an anti-Zionist Jew, I wonder how many people witness such (incessant) actions perpetrated by Israel and conclude there is an inherent rot at the heart of Judaism. Between the pervery machinations of the Upper East Side Epstein class in the blood drenched actions of the Zionist thugacracy, as a Jewish person, I’m tempted to wash my hands of it all thus not to be associated with the above’s blood drenched hands.
Thus we come upon the reason Jews of conscience must, in no uncertain terms, condemn, in the strongest manner possible, the abomination that is the Zionist state. Jewish voices must be the loudest and the most resolute in calling out Israel’s perpetual crimes against humanity, and calling for the dissolution of the Zionist state.
Otherwise, antisemitic voices will continue to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Ironically, by the advocacy of the same conflation, we play right into the hands of anti-Semitic demagogues.
In the US, an ideological sea change has transpired.
Among US Jews, Zionism is falling from favor. Israel has rendered far too many innocent men, women, and children into corpses to claim endless victimhood. Instead of supporting corrupted-by-Zionism Jewish organizations, money should be earmarked for a fund of restitution for the Palestinian people.
Israel’s inherent right to exist?
The world, at some point, will ask, and of Jews in particular, as was the case with Third Reich era Germans, where did you stand and what actions did you take during the dismal and deranged years of the Zionist reign of terror?
The trajectory of history exposes the fact that South African Apartheid and the US slave-holding Confederacy/Jim Crow Law-ruled US South did not have “the right to exist.”
The people of the world, to greater and greater degrees, have apprehended the following: Israel is a nation established in ethnic cleansing with the agenda of the creation of an ethno-supremacist state. The Zionist state, since its inception, has perpetuated continual crimes against humanity, from wars waged for territorial expansion (i.e., the Greater Israel project); the presence of torture prisons; and a compulsion for genocidal rampages.
Moreover, there is nary a hint of evidence that Israel intends to amend its odious ways. Thus, the Zionist state reveals its lack of legitimacy to exist. The only people who appear to be in denial of the reality are insular Israelis and aging Zionist dead-enders.
Storylines, although based on misapprehensions, remain potent.
We humans move through our days and are able to sleep through the night due to a (dismal and deranged) comedy of misapprehensions.
As a mundane example, my dog’s loyalty stems from her misapprehension that I am an alpha wolf. It is my blessing, insofar as our companionship goes and her adherence to my commands, that she couldn’t be more wrong. Withal, a propitious misapprehension working in my favor.
Hence, Trump’s hold over (steadily sinking numbers of) MAGA true believers who buy into his “I-am-a-billionaire therefore I’m an Alpha male” grift and Israeli propagandists hold over the minds of fear-based, authoritarian personality types.
Accordingly, Trump will declare he will win bigly in his war with Iran and Israel will proceed onward with its crimes against humanity as, all the while, claiming perpetual victimhood.
Yet the reality is: Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war has elevated Iran into a position of global power broker and has ended US military and monetary imperium in West Asia.
Trump, lacking the ability to experience a sense of humility thus admit error, will be unable to abide the humiliation of defeat and will double down on his doomed gambit, and Israel will, in the myopic manner of death cults, careen onward with murder-suicidal intent.
Tragedy is the means the wider world exacts change, both personal and systemic, upon the radically obtuse. There is, as the poet apprehends, a terrible beauty to it all.
There is truth in ashes. Thus the world will witness, and will regard the event as a beautiful thing, when Trump’s and Israel’s hubris-borne self-immolation comes to pass.
“Your posts and essays on Israel spread antisemitism.”
Nonsense. People who resonate with my writing regarding Israel are enraged by Israel’s perpetual crimes against humanity.
Next and often arrives variations of this strawman rampage in uppercase:
KAPO!!! BY INSULTING ISRAEL YOU ARE A TRAITOR TO YOUR TRIBE!!!. ISRAEL IS THE PROMISED LAND FOR G-D’S CHOSEN PEOPLE!!!!!!!
Question then: Why did G-d retrofit the DNA of the Jews of the Torah within the people known as Palestinians?
Bronze/Iron Age mythos notwithstanding:
It comes down to this: Zionism is a (Eurocentric, colonialist ) political philosophy while Judaism is a religion, with diverse cultural flowerings. Zionist dead-enders conflation of the genocidally prone, ethno-nationalist state of Israel with all Jewish people is, in fact, anti-Semitic in nature. Please. Stop it. Perhaps, after we settler-colonialist Jews make proper amends and restitution, we can live together with our Palestinian cousins, as one people, in a democratic Palestine.
Those Israelis too rancid with hatred-borne-of-bigotry will be welcome to find their way to the exits. Do not let the progressive door of history hit you in your tokhes (תּחת) as you go.
What does this Jew talk about when he talks about Zionism? I speak in regret and lament. I speak in favor of evincing remorse and proffering reparations. I speak in behalf of the reclamation of the Jewish soul.