by Alyssa Goldstein on May 5, 2012
A few days ago, liberal Zionist poster-child Peter Beinart came to Bard to give a talk. I haven’t read Beinart’s book, though I do follow his website Open Zion. I’ll be straight-up about the fact that I’m not a fan of liberal Zionism, and I didn’t expect to agree with just about anything Beinart said. However, given his recent popularity, I guess I did expect something a little more. . . impressive. He spoke for only half an hour, with only a slightly longer time at the end for questions. Nevertheless, for someone who spoke underwhelmingly for a short time, he did manage to leave me boiling with anger. I suppose that’s a sort of accomplishment.
Beinart started rolling out the gold right from the start, saying that diaspora Jews would find it difficult to maintain their Jewish identity without Israel’s revival of Hebrew as a living language. Not only did I fail to see the connection, but this also seemed rather insulting to diaspora Jewish identity in the past and present, as if Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish and every other Jewish language never counted. [click to continue…]
by Alyssa Goldstein on March 18, 2012
Gilad Atzmon
A few days ago, the U.S. Palestinian Community network published a letter signed by a number of prominent Palestinian authors, intellectuals and activists (including Ali Abunimah, Nadia Hijab, and Omar Barghouti) calling for the disavowal of Gilad Atzmon for his anti-semitism. The letter states that
Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness.” He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.
. . . We reaffirm that there is no room…for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.
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by Lawrence Bush on February 13, 2012
Theodor Herzl’s argument for political Zionism, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), subtitled “Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question,” was published in German on this date in 1896. (To read the whole text in English, click here.) The pamphlet was an immediate sensation. Although Herzl emphasized political outreach to European leaders and financiers and rulers of the Ottoman Empire, Der Judenstaat served to mobilize the proto-Zionist groups such as Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) that had already launched small movements of emigration to Palestine. This energizing of the grassroots led to the first Zionist congress in Basle, Switzerland in August, 1897, which Herzl led and helped to finance. He would spend most of his time in the years remaining before his death in 1904 (age 44) trying to convince European and Turkish political leaders of the righteousness and utility of the Zionist cause, and he would remain open to Argentina and Uganda as alternatives to Palestine. Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state included a seven-hour working day and a modern, technologically sophisticated, social democratic economic system.
“The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.” —Herzl, The Jewish State
by Lawrence Bush on January 28, 2012
On the very first day I came to the Jewish Currents office as the newly hired assistant editor in 1978, the veteran editor Morris U. Schappes handed me a pamphlet reprint of Louis Harap’s 1975 series, The Zionist Movement Revisited [PDF]. Jewish Currents magazine, Schappes explained, was not Zionist because it did not view Israel as the Jewish homeland, nor did it consider Jews living in other lands to be in a state of “exile” or living in a “diaspora.” The magazine had been shaped ideologically, he continued, by a pre-state, Marxist view of Zionism as a “bourgeois nationalism” that ignored issues of class and depended upon European imperialism for its success. Nevertheless, Jewish Currents had always supported Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, viewed the country as a kind of global affirmative action for Jews after the devastations of the Holocaust, and was happy, he said, to express pride in Israel’s achievements. In short, JC was “non-Zionist, pro-Israel.” [click to continue…]
A few days ago, liberal Zionist poster-child Peter Beinart came to Bard to give a talk. I haven’t read Beinart’s book, though I do follow his website Open Zion. I’ll be straight-up about the fact that I’m not a fan of liberal Zionism, and I didn’t expect to agree with just about anything Beinart said. However, given his recent popularity, I guess I did expect something a little more. . . impressive. He spoke for only half an hour, with only a slightly longer time at the end for questions. Nevertheless, for someone who spoke underwhelmingly for a short time, he did manage to leave me boiling with anger. I suppose that’s a sort of accomplishment.
