Allied to the struggle to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people are other issues ─ struggles by a brave and intrepid segment of the Jewish community to prevent emasculation of Reform Judaism and its humanistic content, to deter a remnant of orthodox Judaism from reducing Judaism to the reading of ancient scriptures, and to reverse having Jews connected and solidified by a tribal concept, where Israel is the commanding epicenter of a chauvinistic tribe. Ethical Judaism, which shaped Western Jews, has lessened, and the Judaism that rabbinical Jews brought to fruition in Mesopotamia and guided world Jewry is subdued to a disreputable Zionism that shapes the minds and daily life of all Jews. Jerusalem serves as the headquarters for the World Zionist Organization, from where directives to obedient Jews around the world radiate. Worldwide Jewry is at odds with one another, and cannot escape the charge of committing genocide of the Palestinian people. It was not supposed to be that way.
The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism. Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,
We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
Zionism slowly impressed itself on the Jewish community and, together with the 1913 founding of the Anti-Defamation league, covertly carried a message that Jews would always suffer from “anti-Semitism,” and a Jewish state was the only solution to the “problem.” Immigrant restrictions in the United States, which affected Eastern Europeans and included Jews from that region, and persecutions in Nazi Germany intensified the rhetoric and gained converts to Zionism. Rabbi Andrue Kahn, Executive Director of the American Council for Judaism, argues that “the alignment of Reform Judaism with Zionism represents not an organic development but an authoritarian imposition. It is a ‘slow-moving coup,’ executed over decades by an outnumbered minority against the authentic universalist tradition of the movement’s founders.”
Nor was ancient Israel an established home of the ancient Jews.
Freed from a pastoral life, dry conditions, and restricted economies in the Levant, new communities of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and worldly, appeared in the Fertile Crescent after the third century B.C., and survived there until the establishment of Israel. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers housed the great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, and best expressed the legacy and heritage of modern Judaism. In How Education Shaped Jewish History, by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that “Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800-1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe.”
Ancient Israel was home to ancient Jews. The area that is now Israel was not the ancient home of modern Jews. When an ethnicity speaks of an ancient home, it speaks, such as from the voices of Native Americans, of caring for the land and hunting grounds, for attachment to a soil that nourished the people, and with intimate knowledge of ancestors. It may look back at a recognized civilization that gave the world new advances in technology, culture, warfare, administration, or other disciplines, and left identifiable physical traces that excite mankind. Modern Jews have no attachment to a soil, no memories of an advanced civilization, no honest attraction to an ancient land, and do not have intimate knowledge of ancestors. The Zionists had no original investment in the area, no physical attachment to the area, and no care for its surroundings. The Palestinians had 100 percent “skin in the game;” they cherished every olive tree their ancestors planted centuries ago, every orange tree that gave aroma to their surroundings, and all the ground eggplant for the baba ganoush they nourished.
The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the European Jews were Ashkenazi; the Ethiopian Jews were Beta Israel; and the Yemenite Jews were from the Arabian Peninsula. The Zionists replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of each unique ethnicity with uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jew. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt accompanied the creation of the new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out a major portion of Jewish history, determined what is Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before integrating into the Israel community.
The newly established Israeli Jew duplicates the Spartan militant, nationalist, and racist citizen, and is satisfied by the propositions of being “God’s chosen people” and “returning to an ancient homeland.” Tied together by biblical scriptures, three prominent doctrines shape the minds of the faithful — a World War II holocaust, which did not affect the non-Ashkenazim Jews, the largest sub-group in Israel, and which is daily drilled into the Jewish conscience, as if it lurks closely and is ready to revive at an opportune moment; a non-existent anti-Semitism, where attacks on Jews, provoked by identification of Jews with Israel’s genocidal policies, are conflated to willful attacks on innocent Jews, who are not made innocent by Israel declaring it is the home of all Jewish people; and a sense of victimization, where Jews are promoted as the most wandering sufferers in mankind’s history, although Jews have often been the wealthiest, healthiest, and best educated in the surroundings in which they lived. Untold in the tales of victim hood is that multitudes of other victimized societies have been annihilated and, in death, have been unable to tell their stories of prejudice and repression. Paranoia and fear are installed in Israeli minds, and this allows them to be directed into vicious aggression and repression, which is disguised as defenses against helpless and manufactured enemies. Portrayed as the only safe place for Jews to live, Jews have had magnitudes more deaths inflicted upon them since the inauguration of their safe haven, Israel , than in entire 19th century Europe.
Zionist irredentism concerned itself with the folk; it did not express concern for the land. Keeping biblical names as a subterfuge, Israel turned the contemporary land into an extension of northern Europe. In “beloved” Judah, and Samaria, imported pine trees dot the landscape, olive groves with centuries old revered trees have been torched, dormitory towns replace the green and ancient hilltops, and super highways pave over the quaint roads. Jewish National Fund’s newly planted forests hide dynamited picturesque villages. Jerusalem, with its train, mall, contrived City of David, cable car, and falsified tourist attractions has become a theme park.
Jews are no longer categorized by religious observance — Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Ultra-orthodox, Reconstruction, Humanist, Secular — but by attachment to Israel. The categories have been reduced to three:
(1) Israel above all, the center of Jewish life, represented by World Zionism and coordinated by AIPAC and dozens of worldwide Jewish organizations;
(2) Israel as a significant aspect of Jewish life, represented by J Street and other organizations, who strive to “secure the State of Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people;” and
(3) Israel as an entity, separate from Jewish life, represented by American Council for Judaism, Jewish Voice for Peace, and several other organizations.
Israel above all
The best words to describe Israel’s most rabid followers, those who devote money, time and energy promoting the cause of Israel, are genocidal denier, terrorist, and traitor to the lands in which they live and to all humanity. In the United States, AIPAC leads a pro-Israel chorus that carries the tune of Israeli government orchestrations. DAWN has described the mechanism by which AIPAC radiates its Israel serving message to all of the American society.
Not shown are the plethora of U.S. organizations, too numerous to mention, large and small, tens, if not hundreds, that promote Israel and defend it against its enemies.
Example of the incomprehensible disregard for an organization’s home in the United States, and perverted loyalty to the genocidal nation of Israel. From Detroit Free Press, “Feds accuse private Michigan Jewish Institute college of grant fraud,” David Jesse, March 23, 2016.
A private Jewish Michigan college committed fraud over the past decade, leading to millions of federal dollars being sent to the West Bloomfield school to pay for the education of students who weren’t enrolled there, according to the federal Department of Education. In a 17-page letter to the Michigan Jewish Institute, the department outlines more than 2,000 cases where Pell Grant funds were sent to the school to pay for students who were in Israel studying and never took one class at MJI.
Here is how Israel loyalists deceitfully plant a permanent memory of Oct 7 on the U.S. psyche. No get together to remember Americans killed by Israeli and a get together for foreigners held hostage in a foreign war.
NEW YORK — Several hundred Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered at Central Park on Sunday morning to dedicate a bench to the Israeli hostages taken captive by Gaza terrorists, in an emotional last event for a community that came together each week for the captives for more than two years.
“We always said we wanted one last time to gather, one last time when they’re all back, and now it’s finally here, so we wanted to mark this event together,” said Dana Cwaigrach, the New York director for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum US.
Americans, growing up in a nation in which they are the wealthiest, well educated, healthy, and have all rights and privileges, demonstrate loyalty to a foreign and genocidal nation, and wave a sign that says, “WE HAVE NO OTHER LAND.” No attachmentt to the land that nurtured them and on which they are now standing. This is the pro-Israeli mind.
Supporters of Israel gather on the National Mall in Washington for the ‘March for Israel’ last November. Photograph: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Appearing on discussion group Quora, Israel’s supporters display a grotesque ignorance and insulting depravity that shocks the senses.
Do not forget that they’ve [ED: Palestinians] been trying to complete the work of Nazis, and boost about it till today (also were lead by a Nazi and were joined by multiple Nazi “refugees”).
Not one Arab would have lost their home or been refugees if they didn’t try to invade attack and exterminate the Jews who lived in that land that the Jews bought and paid for, and cultivated, and created a thriving economy which was the basis of a democratic state.
Deir Yasim is Arab propaganda. Its story is not true, but used by the Arabs to attack the Jews in Israel.
The Palestinians (then called “Arabs”) could have had a state. They chose not to. It’s not the Jews’ fault that they chose not to. Neither is it the Jews’ fault that the Arabs tried to kill all the Jews.
While Ben Gurion was begging the Arabs to stay and help build a democracy the Arabs were lead by the Grand Mufti, former SS recruiter. The secretary general of the Arab league called for “war of annihilation” and 6 Arab armies promised ethnic cleansing and drowning of every Jew from the “river to the sea.”
Israelis paid for any property they did live in….Almost all the arab countries murdered and hounded jews from their homes for decades, and stole all the goods and properties jews were forced to abandon.
Israel as a significant aspect of Jewish life
J Street and the New Jewish Narrative, accompanied by several other progressive Jewish organizations, serve as antagonists to the Israel expansionist agenda. Framed as liberal organizations allied with the Democratic Party, they advocate for “a sovereign Palestine alongside a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel,” and “focus on mobilizing the progressive American Jewish community around peace, social justice, and a two-state solution.” Good words and good intentions with unanswered questions — after 75 years, what have they accomplished; why have they not halted the trend that now makes their endeavors impossible; and what, in detail, do they propose that will invigorate their stalled plans?
I have always been suspicious of Americans for Peace Now (AFP), which merged with the left-of-center advocacy group Ameinu to create the New Jewish Narrative. In attending their inaugural 1981 meeting, I had the impression they were formed to sidetrack American Jews who were critical of Israel’s oppressive and expansionist policies; give them a place to complain, argue, and debate, without giving them support or an avenue to bring their beliefs to fruition. The 44 years of AFP existence substantiate the suspicion; in the direction of the policies they proposed, they never moved the needle by a fraction of a degree.
The same suspicion envelops J Street, a confusing Zionist organization that lobbies for an antiquated two-state solution, opposes Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), argued against recognizing Palestine as an independent state at the United Nations, and recently, in August 2025, had its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, state, “Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide. I have, however, been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”
J Street came alive in 2007 to become the political salvation for liberal Zionists and serve as a progressive PAC that counters reactionary AIPAC. J street is the street that does not appear on Washington DC maps, where H street is followed by I street and I street is followed by K street. It is the new street that fills the void in Jewish political life. It may be new, but it has not replaced the old. It is still not on the map. No successful efforts that slowed steamrolling AIPAC until the last two years occurred, and it is uncertain if JStreet played a role in AIPAC’s fall from grace, and the American public’s disillusion with Israel. Indications are these are due to the workings of campus groups and other organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). JStreet only, and belatedly, joined the established trend of a mass of American Jewry in the negative attitude toward Tel Aviv.
Israel as an entity, separate to Jewish life
This is represented by organizations that want modern Judaism, with its progressive and humanist values, to survive. They view Zionism and Israel as harmful to Jewish life, and have been the leaders in enabling Americans to understand the disastrous effect the Israel Lobby and U.S. support for an oppressive, apartheid, and genocidal nation has had on the U.S. public. Unlike the Zionist groups, they shape by veracity, reality, and social awareness, and move by objectivity and not emotional instability. They are human beings in a collective of humanity, then Americans by nature and development, and Jews by circumstances and choice.
The leading organizations in this effort have been
- Jewish Voice for Peace, which slowly matured from a small group opposed to Israel’s repressive and apartheid tactics, successfully promoted the BDS movement, and ripened into a national and confrontational movement that has sparked huge demonstrations and changed voting habits.
- IfNotNow intensively organizes communities to solicit congress to end U.S. financial and military support for Israeli. Founded in 2014, it has grown into a million dollar organization that claims tens of thousands of members and supporters.
- Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) , after its 1993 campus origins, founded its first chapter at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. Since then, it has grown to about 200 chapters across the country. The leading organization in a myriad of campus campaigns and demonstrations, SJP members have suffered severe attacks initiated by pro-Israel groups, including arrests and suspensions.
- International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) “is an international network of Jews who are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human survival and emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part.”
- American Council for Judaism was founded in 1942 “to uphold Reform Judaism as a tradition dedicated to universal ethics and justice at a time when many Jewish institutions began centering Jewish nationalism through Zionism.” The Council supports justice for Palestinians but does not play an activist role in condemning Israel’s apartheid and genocidal practices.
Conclusion
The struggle for Palestinian survival and ethical Judaism existence have common constituents and common determinants. Both depend upon defeat of political Zionism and the country that lives by Zionist ideology. Those who struggle for Palestinian survival and ethical Judaism existence follow the ethical principles voiced by biblical prophets and defy those who accept Zionist practices that contradict the beliefs that guided Judaism.
Amos, who insisted that social justice lies at the heart of Judaism. “Let justice roll on like an ever flowing river and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Micah, who said, “What is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”
Isaiah, who said, “This is the fast I desire: To unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin.”
Zechariah, who said, “Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
Jeremiah, who said, “Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.”
From Psalm 23 A psalm of David.
Its compassion renews my soul’s life.
Its call for righteousness encircles me and guides me on pathways of justice to what ought to be.
For the sake of Transformation,
You spread before me a table in front of my enemy – those I’m bound up with – so we can break bread together.
You anoint my head with oil, comforting me.
My cup overflows.