Transcript

Arielle Angel: Hello and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, and I’ll be your host for today. Today, we’re going to be talking about an article that we will be publishing in a few days’ time, but if you’re hearing this podcast, it is already published and you can go read it. The article is called “Against Zionist Realism,” and we are talking today with the author of that piece, Jon Danforth-Appell. Jon is a filmmaker, a writer, and an organizer living in Los Angeles. He’s one of the founding members of the Hollywood Labor Project, which is a project of the LADSA chapter, and a former board member of the Silver Lake Independent JCC. And we are also joined by associate editor Mari Cohen. Hi, Mari.

Mari Cohen: Hello. Good to be here.

AA: And hi, Jon.

Jon Danforth-Appell: Hello.

AA: So Zionist realism, as you have defined it, is a take off of Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism, which argues that we can’t really see outside of capitalism and that in order to actually build the future that we want, we have to stop seeing capitalism as naturalized within our system. And you’re taking off of this argument to basically say that the same thing has happened with Zionism and that the Jewish left in particular continues to labor under the auspices of Zionist realism. I’ll just read a little bit from the piece—and from the beginning of the piece in particular—where you’re talking about visible Jewish protests, where Jews are organizing as Jews (talking about protests by JVP, and IfNotNow), and saying, quote, “To double down on an explicit connection between Jewishness and Zionism, even in an attempt to counter Zionism’s appropriation of Judaism, is to reify the misplaced belief that all Jews are complicit in the actions of Israel, simply because they are Jewish. Even as Jewish left movements insist that it is essential to draw a distinction between Judaism and Zionism, in effect, their approach often suggests that Zionism’s power is rooted primarily in Jewish communities rather than in its relationship to the material processes of capital and geopolitics.”

AA: I think a very strong part of your argument is the idea that we’re eschewing our American complicity in this issue, in particular, by reinforcing our Jewish complicity, which is not shared equally among Jewish people. You say, quote, “What ultimately matters is not an abstract notion of Zionism as a totalizing spiritual contaminant upon the Jewish people, but the ways in which American Jews, alongside all other Americans, hold multiple kinds of material relationships to Israel,” and that these protests may, quote, “overemphasize Jewishness as a site of complicity at the expense of other axes of complicity, most importantly one’s position as an American, or more specifically, one’s employment at complicit entities like arms manufacturers or in government offices.”

AA: So I wanted to talk to you about this, and I know Mari did as well. We’ve been engaged in a several-month discussion about this. You brought this article to us quite a while ago now. And as you know, there are a lot of pieces of this that I have questions about and disagree with, in addition to being very compelled by the argument. And I’ll also say that the piece, to its credit, is very aware of the fact that it’s not really a critique of JVP or IfNotNow, which appear in the piece also as successful and self-aware and as much as positive examples as anything else. But I think the piece is really more a reflection on the questions that we’re all facing right now in American Jewish organizing and in Jewish left life as a whole. So first, Jon, I just wanted to kick it to you to see if there’s more you want to say about your argument before we get started, just to lay the groundwork for our readers.

JDA: Yeah, so the first thing I want to offer is just to head off any bad-faith criticism. Saying that we are—and I say we, because it’s all of us—we are laboring under some of the same ideological frameworks of Zionism is not a critique of individuals, saying “this person is actually Zionist,” or “JVP or IfNotNow or whoever are actually liberal Zionists.” It’s instead an attempt to tease out frameworks that are shaping thought rather than the thought itself. So it’s almost not about the content of the thought primarily but about the assumptions and the things that we believe without questioning or challenging that then shape our thought as anti-Zionist activists. I came to this, I think, because of my own involvement in IfNotNow. I was on the strategy team in 2021 for a bit. And I think that my entry into activism was a little different than a lot of other anti-Zionist organizers. I came in through DSA and a much more Marxist and materialist analysis and stuff. And so eventually, I left IfNotNow, and one of the things that I always struggled with was what I would call a battle of hearts and minds versus a materialist understanding of politics. Like, where does power actually lie in the real world? With that understanding, how can we shape our strategy with that goal in mind? So also, having grown up in a pretty ambivalent Zionist household, even though I was in the Reform movement growing up, I’ve always felt a little frustrated, even alienated, by some of the rhetoric and discourse around IfNotNow and JVP, which assumes that the milieu in which Jews exist in the United States is uniformly Zionist and also offers a notion of the Jew wherein the Hasidic rabbi and the Jew of no religion are the same—that they exist in the same milieu, or that they have more in common as Jews than they do not have in common.

AA: Or maybe another way of saying what you’re saying is that the assumption that both of these Jews, while not necessarily being Zionists—of course, Hasidic Jews are anti-Zionist and, as you show in your article, Jews of no religion (as in Jews who do not consider their Jewishness primarily a religious identity) are usually not Zionists. And so, just to say that even those Jews exist in a Zionist context, and this is the source of some of your frustration.

MC: Just a note. I think we should say not all Hasidic Jews are anti-Zionist, but like Satmars.

JDA: I think ultimately what it comes down to is that I think JVP and IfNotNow, have a very good analysis of what is happening in Israel, in terms of the occupation, and apartheid, and even Zionism as a political ideology there. And I think what’s unfortunately lacking is a material understanding of Jews in the United States—Jews in an American context—and then, vis-à-vis, how that relates to Israel.

AA: I mean, do you really think that that’s lacking? I mean, just to say, first of all, I think we should separate JVP, and IfNotNow on a certain level, because I do think that they have different strategies. And like, certainly in 2015 or whatever, IfNotNow’s strategy was about changing hearts and minds and about trying to kind of change the weather system in which a certain kind of politics takes shape. But I actually am not sure that that remains their strategy, and I think that was never really JVP’s strategy. I think both of them have moved towards more materialist aims. Like, they’ve stopped focusing, for the most part, on Jewish targets. In both cases, they’ve taken aim at the American government—kind of like Stop the Blank Check—and this appears in your article as well. And JVP was very involved in Deadly Exchange stuff. Again, this appears in your article. So can we even say at this point that their strategies necessarily do this, as opposed to some other basis within their organizing?

JDA: Yeah. I mean, what it comes back to, for me, is, again, both groups understand their strategy as (and this is direct language) building a mass movement of Jews. Right? And so, that entails a certain amount of, like, radicalization and organizing. Like, convincing Jews as Jews to show up. But the question then becomes: What is the material foundation upon which the Jewish identity rests by which to contest that power? And I haven’t heard that articulated. What makes me think that there might not be one, or that it’s not a particularly useful thing to do, is how much of this action gets oriented in the realm of spectacle; how much of the work involves being what I call visible Jewish public dissent. Like, there is a lot of faith placed in the notion that to contest Israel’s claims, all it takes is other Jews to publicly disagree with them. Which is, again, I would say, something that is part of Zionist realism, because it assumes that Israel’s claims to Jewishness and its claims to antisemitism are good faith. That that’s the actual conversation we’re having, rather than some kind of thing that’s mystifying the actual processes of capital and imperialism.

MC: Yeah, I think that’s helpful. And I think the question of strategy in the realm of spectacle is something that we talk a lot about at Jewish Currents, and there’s opportunity for real, I think, critique and consideration of the way that the movement in general for Palestine has been reliant a lot on spectacle over the past year and a half. And it’s been challenging to find a strategy for more materially targeted actions. And also, obviously, the scale of repression facing the movement, and now the fact that it’s getting even worse, has made it harder to do that. So I think it’s an important conversation, and I think this is really interesting. I think, to back up a question I have, though, in terms of the question of “Is there a material basis for this analysis,” placing Jews in an important position of complicity with respect to Israel and Zionism—I mean, what about all of the money going from Jewish communities into buying Israel bonds? What about all of the money that Jewish federations are raising—millions of dollars since October 7—to go to Israel to support the state, sometimes directly to the IDF?

AA: All the mission trips?

JDA: Yeah, you had that new article today about the uncovered new funders of Canary Mission. And we know the San Francisco Federation, at one point, was supporting Canary Mission and stuff like that.

AA: And the LA Federation.

JDA: Yeah, I mean, it’s undeniable, right? It’s undeniable that these institutions are not just Zionists but part of the most militant and oppressive wings of Zionism. I think (and this is something I bring up in the article) the question then becomes: To what extent are Jews (again, in the abstract) related to these institutions? Like I say in the article, these are undemocratic institutions—we can’t vote for who’s leading them. The people who get appointed to lead them are people who are appointed by the richest donors, and the other elite people that serve on their board. And so then, it becomes like: Well, if I as a Jew can’t impact the LA Federation, to what extent does it represent me, versus to what extent does it represent its own interests?

AA: Right.

JDA: One of the things that I really want to come from this piece is an understanding of class in the Jewish community and how that functions. Because not only do we have proof that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to support Zionism; we have proof that it’s the richest among the Jewish communities who are propping up the Zionist project. And this is a level of wealth that is incomparable to, you know, if middle-class and working-class Jews pooled their money and said they were going to take it out of the Federation, it wouldn’t matter at all. Adelson can prop up like 10 Federations without missing a beat, and so that again calls for a materialist analysis.

AA: Yeah, I mean, I’m in agreement with you, and I think also, our organizing bodies like JVP and IfNotNow are in agreement. They know that these groups are not democratic, and they do not feel represented by them. But there are two ways in which I want to complicate this. One is that Zionism is not just a top-down structure of feeling in the Jewish community; it’s also a bottom-up one. I mean, you have a lot of, for example, new immigrants, like in the Soviet Jewish community, who are not wealthy by any stretch but are very, very Zionist and also very Republican. Like they’re Republican voters. You also have tens of thousands of people joining these grassroots groups like Mothers Against Antisemitism. That may be the limit of their activism, as a Facebook group. But there is energy that is coming from below, citizen activism, that is actually, at this point, I would say, having an impact on deportations. And we also know, just by all accounts of what we know about the polling, that at least I’ve only felt comfortable claiming 30% of the Jewish community that is anti-Zionist or holds views that are consistent with anti-Zionism.

AA: So it’s not like anyone is arguing that we are a silent majority or anything. Certainly, there are these other things that are at play, like class, like religious observance. And the people who would be in power would be Zionists anyway. There’s no way to, as you say, separate what the United States wants of an American Jewish power class. They want a Zionist partner too, because it serves their interests. So I agree with all of this—and we are still the minority. We know that. And there is an enormous machine tying us to this work. I mean, I’m not a big peoplehood person, but do I feel affected by the fact that the narrative wedge is Jews and Jewishness in this campaign of repression? Yes, I do feel affected. And do I feel like I have a particular responsibility as a Jew to say “I’m not for this?” Yes. And so, I see what you’re saying in terms of like, we need to start differentiating, we’re getting stuck. But at the same time, I actually don’t feel like I can just walk away from the project of Not In My Name. Like I don’t know what that would look like, because then nobody’s holding that space. There’s no public expression in that regard of something different. And one other thing that I’ll say is that overall, we don’t have institutions (that are not activist institutions) that can actually hold that space without being in a negating role, and also without being in a role of having much less power. In other words, we haven’t created the dual power situation in order to live in that world. So until we do, we would have to say as Jews, Not In Our Name kind of thing.

MC: Yeah, I think one way that I found compelling to articulate it is, I was at this conference on non-Zionist Jewish traditions at Brown earlier this year. Lots of super interesting discussion. But at one point on a panel, there was some discussion about like ideas about the label non-Zionist versus anti-Zionist, which provoked a lot of conversation. And it’s not exactly actually about this point specifically, but this response ended up being relevant, which is that the Brown philosopher Adi Ophir, one of the conveners of the conference, responded to a provocation about embracing non-Zionism by saying first, you have to counter the existing Zionism; you have to be anti-Zionist first, and then you can be non-Zionist. Like once it’s negated, once you’ve countered the rampant force, then you have more space to carve out a different identity that’s not based on opposition. And I think that that was very compelling to me because it feels like, as Arielle’s saying, in order to carve out a space that’s separate, where you can just be Jewish and not have to have your identity rely on Zionism or anti-Zionism or any of it, in order to combat the realism, we have to first suck out the poison, as it were, or we won’t be able to make that space.

JDA: Yeah, okay. There’s a lot there, and all of it’s super compelling. I think the first thing I want to say is, I think, Arielle, you rightfully pointed to—yes, Soviet Jews, there is a tendency to skew conservative. But what you’re doing there is really successfully identifying how difference works in the Jewish community, which undercuts the notion that there is this comprehensive Jewish body that can act as one. And so, if you read the academic literature on Soviet Jews, there is a profound disconnect between American Jews and Soviet Jews. And so, that then begs the question: What business—not even what business, but how successful is it going to be if I, coming from a reform synagogue, try to talk to and engage those people on the level of Jewishness that they don’t even recognize as similar? Like, that’s not a compelling strategy.

AA: Don’t we have to recognize that actually, one of the main ways that they were assimilated into American Jewishness to the extent that they were is through Zionism? Isn’t that actually the way that most American Jews have found the expression of their Jewishness? I mean, we can’t just ignore that. I mean, that’s why these movements look the way they do. It’s not just because we are imposing a hegemonic narrative; it’s because that hegemonic narrative has been actually quite successful.

MC: And not just American, for what it’s worth. I don’t want to get too far afield, but I think what’s really interesting is that we see these tendencies play out with Jewish communities in other countries.

JDA: Yeah, I mean, if anything, I think we need to historicize more. I think that there’s a profound lack of historicization that happens in our movements because we’re so often trying to counter the contemporary moment that things often can become instrumentalized. Like, you look at the discourse around the Bund; the Bund is being held up as this anti-Zionist example, and they certainly were. But there’s a couple of things to consider. One, that was a contingent position that they didn’t have initially. It only came out in specific instances; and two, that anti-Zionism flowed from an affirmative positive project of their own nationalism. And this brings us back to Zionist realism. I think one of the things that’s difficult for me about this moment is that Jewish history, even in an anti-Zionist context, often gets reduced to Zionism, even in opposition. Like, we’re trying to pull out all of these things from Jewish history to give examples of how we’re anti-Zionist. And that’s true—there are some really incredible useful examples, but at the same time, that isn’t the extent to which they existed, or to reduce them to just being anti-Zionist actually, like I said, instrumentalizes them. And I think there’s some poverty in that. It doesn’t, to your point, offer that alternative vision which would be used to build those alternative institutions.

AA: Yeah. So this is one place where I really agree with you—is on the question of the need to start to build a Judaism beyond Zionism that actually defines itself by what it’s for and not what it’s against. I’m working on a piece right now about this and about institutions. I really, really very much agree. But something that occurred to me last night as I was rereading your piece and preparing for this is the fact that right now, JVP in particular is holding this enormous role because it’s the only institution that Jews on the left have, in some way. And so, we both want it to hold this role as figuring out what Judaism is into the future and holding this strategic political role. And I think, on some level, the work of defining Judaism beyond Zionism is actually not the work of an activist group like JVP. It’s the work of like, new havurot in synagogues, and it’s the work of other kinds of institutions across the board whose primary job is not Israel/Palestine work. And JVP has had to do it all, because it’s like the only show in town, in a certain level.

AA: But actually, if we just take the responsibility of building the next whatever hundred years of Jewish life off of JVP’s plate—not to say they’re not an important player in this but that it’s not their primary job—then the question just becomes: What is their strategy going to be? And I think you make compelling arguments, that if we recognize that actually, our American axis of complicity is maybe just as strong—depending on the person—maybe stronger or at least just as strong as our Jewish axis of complicity (and I do want to still push on that a little bit, but we’ll get there), then the question of their strategy might be: How do they not just incorporate that into their messaging but also, in terms of who they’re actually trying to organize, what their campaigns look like, how they utilize Jewish visibility or not. And I’m just actually not sure that we’re there yet. And I also just, again, think that the other way that JVP ends up having to carry it all is that there aren’t that many general interest places to take action on this issue. Like, if you want to do an arrestable action, like nonviolent direct action, JVP is one of the only groups that do it. So we’re asking them to then account for all the people who want to do this work. Isn’t that some mission drift? I just think we’re asking JVP to do too much, in terms of the places where this work is going to actually happen. It’s not going to happen under the auspices of one activist organization.

JDA: Yes, and I agree 100% with everything you said. I really want more diversity and a multiplicity of approaches. It can’t be all on JVP. And I think that people in JVP would agree with that.

AA: But then, what does it mean for the JVP’s strategy? And I think that that’s—I mean, obviously, just to be clear, none of us are JVP organizers, and so it’s not for us to answer that question. But considering the critique that’s being made, I think we should talk about it a little bit.

JDA: I think there’s an opportunity in leveraging the number of non-Jews that come to these protests, and I don’t feel comfortable in telling them how to navigate that. And I also do understand your point of holding what you’ve called at one point this subjectivity, this Jewish subjectivity, because you’re right—no one else is doing that. And I think there’s actually some critiques I have of the broader left that have intentionally closed off spaces for that subjectivity, and that makes me quite frustrated.

AA: Right. Which is even more to say that we need these spaces to actually hold some of that since Jewish subjectivity is actually like—you talk a lot about materialism, but Jewish subjectivity is the material of this organizing terrain, both on the left and in our Zionist opposition.

MC: Yeah. I think it’s interesting to think about why there’s not a group like JVP that is hosting protests where people can show up and get arrested, and why is there not a mass American anti-war movement? I think obviously, there are a lot of groups that do exist and have worked on this that aren’t JVP, but like, there’s different reasons why none of them are taking that particular role. I mean, I think you have certain organizations that are really aligned around representing the Palestinian perspective, like PYM, Palestinian Youth Movement, that does a good amount of direct action and invites others to it.

AA: Well, and also like, it’s not safe for them to be arrested, so they can’t hold that particular role as firmly as largely white American Jews.

MC: Yeah, and obviously like in New York, you have Within Our Lifetime, but they operate a lot differently than JVP does. Like, JVP is definitely more of like a nonprofit structure that’s a little bit more accessible to people who are first getting involved in activism. And then, I think there’s also just a big situation where a lot of the groups that tend to have the loudest voices in terms of putting together these coalitions, like Answer Coalition or PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), there’s like a real tankie situation going on, in that like this part of the left, specifically like the anti-war internationalist, anti-imperialist left, has like been really subject to takeover by like a certain type of lefty, tankie grifter. And there’s like a lot of breakdowns in the coalition there over those groups, like support for Assad’s war crimes and other things. I’m not sure how much that’s legible to the average protest participant, and I do think a lot of people just show up to these protests anyway, but that is a real thing that has, I think, inhibited the mass nature of the movement. And I’m sure I won’t get in any trouble for saying that. And then obviously, you have groups like US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and they help put on some of these protests, but they’re really more of like a legislative political lobby group as opposed to this kind of mass action group. So there’s all these things going on. And I also think the other reason is that Palestine is a really hard issue for more mainstream progressive groups to organize on because of all the backlash, because of all the repression. And I do think some of that has to do with the role of the Jewish community in contributing to that repression. And so, one might hope that the role of a group like JVP in like, creating space to say, “Jews are part of this protest; this is not an anti-Jewish concern,” would create more room for some of these mass alternatives to develop.

JDA: Yeah, I do think JVP has opened up more space, again, by providing space for people who are non-Jewish to come in. I do think that that’s true. I mean, I think we’ve seen people, in our own lives, who have never protested or been engaged on this issue or even in politics, maybe in general, become engaged. And they’ve often done it through JVP or IfNotNow, and I think that that’s super important and something to, again, take advantage of. Now, I’ll also call myself out and say that I don’t know what that looks like in terms of actual strategy, but I think that the opportunity is there.

AA: Yeah, I mean, I think of the fact that we are in this moment, right, where—as you say in the piece—the American axis of this is so prominent. It’s American weapons, it’s American ICE agents abducting kids, they’re breaking down universities. And yes, there have been grassroots and not grassroots—Democratic donors or whatever, ADL or AIPAC—pressure on these organizations. But it’s very clear that at this point in particular, Trump is pursuing a strategy for his autocratic regime in the United States, and that has very little to do with Jews. And also, by the way, I think it’s worth noting, in any material analysis, that on the Republican side of things, Christian Zionists have more power, and on the Democratic side of things, Jewish Zionists have more power as donors, because Democratic regimes are not as interested in Christian Zionists. That’s just like, not their concern. But that is a particular subset of the Republican Party base.

AA: And so at this point, we really are in a moment where American identity and the need to mobilize as Americans feels very important. And I guess the way that I feel about this is that rather than faulting JVP for having to inhabit this very uncomfortable role of basically saying Not In Our Name in a way that implies, “Well, we are sort of a part of this. I’m also just like, “Well, where are the other American communities?” Like, where are, for example, evangelicals? Like, where is the group of evangelicals that is protesting CUFI, the Christian groups? Like, there’s a lot of complicity in a lot of different areas. I wonder if we could think about JVP as a model for other groups to start organizing within their communities. Actually, maybe against what you’re saying, Jon. Like, it wouldn’t be so bad that JVP was showing up as a Jewish group if there were a bunch of other groups that were taking responsibility for collective complicity. But because the Jewish groups are the only ones taking responsibility for our collective complicity, it ends up reinforcing the idea that this is about Jewishness as opposed to all of these other factors that you’ve mentioned: the military industrial complex and the global machinations of American empire.

MC: I mean, I would push back on that a little bit, in that I think some of that organizing has happened. I mean, none of it is as visible as JVP, although I think that also has to do with JVP as a real magnet for media attention because it’s like, “Oh, shit, Jews going against what everyone else says the Jews are supposed to do.” But I think it’s true that I’ve not seen the massive evangelical anti-Zionist movement protesting CUFI, although you have certain concerned Christian groups, but probably not so many evangelicals that I’ve seen. I think maybe some people are starting to work on it. But I mean, I feel like, at least in the Black community, you’ve got a real split, right? In the Movement for Black Lives platform, you had a real indictment of Israel in 2016, which is obviously very different than how the Congressional Black Caucus operates.

JDA: Yeah, so I believe in Philly, there was an event recently, or one coming up, where I noticed the sponsors were Christian groups specifically created to agitate on Palestine. I will say though, it’s only in the Jewish left that I see the concept of complicity come up. I think probably some evangelical people or groups or whatever have this notion of complicity, but the idea of complicity seems to be the terrain that the Jewish groups have staked out for themselves. And I don’t know what’s going on with these other groups or these other folks, but I think one of the things I want to challenge in general is the utility of complicity as a mobilizing strategy. Because my concern is that it’s a moralism that functions in lieu of an alternative vision or even an articulated politics, and also has the opportunity to induce, like, what Benjamin called a left-wing melancholy—this emphasis on one’s self and one’s own shame versus the outside world, the materiality and the intersecting lines of power of the outside world.

AA: Yeah, but what do you do when those two things actually align very closely? I understand that in your home, there was a lot of ambivalence about Zionism. In my home, there was not. And I did all the things—I went on Birthright. I went on all of these Israel trips. My mom particularly gave money to the Federation. I went to a school and a synagogue that were very engaged in Zionist advocacy. I mean, I understand that we are different in that way, and maybe this kind of Jewish organizing is not satisfying to you, but I think in terms of numbers, when you’re trying to go for numbers, I think a lot of people did have an experience that’s more like mine. And why would you leave that on the table? I mean, that doesn’t seem like a good organizing strategy either. I agree with you that Sherry Brown, who’s an older Jewish organizer, has said that shame is the glue that keeps oppression in place. And I certainly don’t think that we can shame ourselves out of this hole as Jews, and I also don’t think that it’s a good idea to invite other groups to shame us out of it because it’s not going to work. It’s going to keep people where they are. But I feel—and I know that it is true—that considering how much money I have, that’s like tax dollars going to Israeli bombs, that’s dwarfed, in terms of my lifetime, by my participation in Israel advocacy, work, and community, and investment. So for me, my axis of complicity is my Jewishness, materially, on a material basis. And I think a lot of people are in that position.

JDA: Yeah, and I understand that. But one of the things that I think needs to be named is the tension between a collective and individual project. When do you get to be free of that shame? When do you get to be free of that complicity? Like, I went on Birthright, and I experienced moments of really profound shame on that trip. But my politics are not oriented toward my inner life. They’re oriented toward outward collective visions. And my concern is that the emphasis on shame as a starting point doesn’t often get superseded by something else. Sarah Ahmed, who has the book The Cultural Politics of Emotion, has a really interesting response to this kind of thing. And what she offers is the notion of wonder, right? Not in this optimistic, “Wow, isn’t life grand?” But wonder in the sense of a new way of seeing, right? Specifically, the surfaces of things; understanding the world not from the inside out but from the outside in. In a sense, a materialist analysis. And I think that’s often missing for me. I think the technocratic orthodox Marxist, “We just have to follow the plan and then we get socialism,” is dead wrong, and you have to speak to people where they’re at. And that’s why I was in IfNotNow and not JVP, because I truly do believe in IfNotNow’s project of taking people, holding them in moments of distress and change. But where I differ is that I think that that’s a step towards the project; that’s not the full project itself. That moment of transformation is what activates the capacity to act rather than that being the action itself that then leads to change. Because in my mind, that’s like a form of idealism, right? Like, all we have to do is change our inner life and the outside world will change as a result of that. And that’s not how I understand the world.

MC: I think that’s helpful. I think it raises really interesting questions about what it actually looks like to transform Jewish community and the American community writ large, but to transform the community politically, which I think has proven to be very, very difficult. I mean, I think since October 7, we have seen the largest swell of grassroots anti-Zionist Jewish organizing that we’ve ever seen. Clearly, a lot of people getting involved; a lot more people speaking up and identifying themselves in that way. And I think the biggest possibilities for new anti-Zionist Jewish cultural institutions, that work is being done. People are starting to plan those things—way more independent minyanim and synagogues and all of those things who aren’t pro-Israel are going to be available and are starting to be available more and more. So there obviously has been a real shift in certain ways, and on the other hand, there’s been a real retrenchment, right? I mean, actually, what you see across the board since October 7 is am increase in synagogue attendance at these mainstream pro-Israel synagogues and an increase in people wanting to support and donate to Israel.

AA: And an increase in people moving to Israel.

MC: All of those things. And I think I struggle with all of these questions a little bit. I mean, I’ll just explain where I sit in terms of what my day-to-day vantage point is. When I go on speaking engagements and stuff, often about my work, I often get questions about Christian Zionists and what role they’re playing in the political work that I’m tracking. Because a lot of what I cover in terms of American Jewish politics and American pro-Israel politics is like interventions on campuses or in civil society institutions, arts and culture institutions, government, financial institutions—all of these places where basically there is a real campaign to try to suppress criticism of Israel. And I’m often asked, “So what role did the Christian Zionists play in this?” And most of the time, it’s “They weren’t there.” I mean, that’s not always true. Like, if you think about the anti-BDS legislation, obviously they have involvement. Obviously, Jon, in your piece, you write about the influence of evangelicals on Trump’s foreign policy, which can’t be denied. But if we’re talking about like these day-to-day struggle spaces, basically liberal institutions or civil society institutions, Palestine is being taken off the table as something to talk about. The groups in my work that I see doing that are almost never Christian Zionist groups. It’s really these Jewish groups that are coming in. Maybe it’s the local Federation or local synagogue that’s complaining or escalating it to the state legislature. And then, for example, Minnesota, Raz Segal gets hired to be a director of a genocide studies center, and it’s often several Jewish state legislators that are taking a special interest in trying to convince the president to fire him, who’s being lobbied by all these local Jewish donors.

MC: Even where I grew up, Ann Arbor—a very liberal town—I know there’s a lot of Jews there with various different opinions, but the rabbis across denominations and all the Federation officials are signing joint statements to lobby against the ceasefire resolutions at a local level. And so, it’s just tough because I see in those questions that I get that there’s a desire for it to not be like this because it feels really uncomfortable to be like, “These Jewish groups are the problem in this way.” Because it feels a lot better, I think, both in terms of our own personal sense of shame and culpability and also just broader desire to not be implicating a historically oppressed minority group, to say, “The Christian Zionists are responsible for this in the United States.” But I think that so often, that’s not actually what I see when I’m doing my reporting. And so, I think that’s partly why I feel invested in this idea that it’s going to be hard for us to escape that lens. And if it is true that many of these leaders are not necessarily representative of all of the opinions of their populations, which I think is often true, it is true that there are enough people who are invested in them to keep them in power, continue in these institutions, to join them at the school board meeting when they’re complaining—all of that stuff.

JDA: Yeah. I think to bring it back to Zionist realism, I want to get at some of the foundational ideas that are shaping what you just said, one of which is this inherent connection between all Jews everywhere. My mom converted when I was 13. I grew up reform. I’ve had a lot of instances in my life where people were like, “You’re not Jewish,” or “We don’t recognize you as Jewish,” or “Our community is not co-extensive with you or yours.” And so for me, the idea that other Jews are doing something that I disagree with is something that, politically, I have to account for, or that even I can make a difference in. I just don’t see the there there.

AA: But Jon, if these are considered Jewish issues because Jewish people, who are organized—and I mean organized in the broadest sense, in synagogues and in other places that have taken them up as Jewish issues—then there has to be a rival Jewish force that says: If you want to deal with Jewish issues, come talk to us. I mean, just look at the difference between what’s happened in Europe, where there is no visible contestation of, like, “This is what Jewishness means.” In the US, we actually do have a sizable minority that disagrees, and they’ve been very visible. And I mean, until Trump, that has meant that there was some difference in the way that the conversation proceeded here. Like, it’s actually a little bit better here than it is in Europe, where there isn’t enough people on the non-Zionist or anti-Zionist side to contest that narrative. So, any way you slice it, there has to be some contestation. And how that contestation is organized is a good question, whether it’s actually organized around, “We’re just a rival representational body and this is what we say,” or whether it’s Not In Our Name direct action or whatever, is a question. I hear what you’re saying about diversity and also about strategy, and also, the process of organizing is in consolidating groups of people that have enough in common to be able to organize under a similar banner. And so, we can’t leave that on the table.

AA: One other thing that I really want to say is that I’m not comfortable with the separation of the subjective or emotional concerns and material concerns. I think that in our organizing, these are actually the same thing. Like, people’s emotional states are material facts on the ground that affect what our organizing looks like. And so, that’s been something that has been in our conversation. I think we’ve seen it in October 7, not just in Jewish organizing but also in Arab American and Palestinian organizing. In some sense, politically, feelings are facts that we need to maneuver around and organize around, and strategy needs to come from that on some level.

JDA: Yeah. So one of the things that’s not in this piece but is a crucial part of Mark Fisher’s idea of capitalist realism is that it’s not just an ideological process. It’s not just people think, “Oh, capitalism is the only system.” It’s a libidinal process as well, right? It’s deeply interconnected with desire. The famous quote that kicks off the book that’s attributed to Fredric Jameson or Zizek is that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. And libidinally, that’s connected to the massive number of movies we see where there’s a lot of pleasure in watching the world end. It substitutes for the pleasure (or operates in lieu of the pleasure) of watching capitalism end. And to bring it back to what I say in the piece is that libidinal aspect of why people crave Zionism has to and can only be contested by an alternative. To your point: you’re right. Feelings are facts. But ideologically, moralism can’t contest that. If people feel like they’re existentially under threat—which is my understanding of Jews in America and Israelis in Israel, that what often propels the most violent, brutal aspects is like, they’re going to do whatever they want to do. If they feel like they have no other alternative, they’re going to engage in behavior (or at least advocate for behavior) that’s reprehensible. And so, to your point, that’s why having an alternative political vision is so important. It speaks to that desire that Zionism stands in for. And if there’s no alternative to it, there’s really no place to go.

MC: Yeah, I think that that’s a helpful articulation because I feel like my response to this idea that, “I don’t feel like it has to affect me what other Jews do” is certainly at least aspirationally true. I would love to say I’m somebody who casts off shame because shame is not a particularly productive political emotion, but I find it quite difficult, to be honest. But it’s also, like, there’s like a real practical situation where, yes, I don’t have to feel responsible for what the rabbis and Federation officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are doing. In fact, I have been trying since I was probably 17 years old to say, “I don’t feel good about this, I don’t want to be a part of that. I do not think I’m responsible for it.” At the same time, it basically means that if I want to spend the high holidays with my family in Ann Arbor, there’s no synagogue where I could go where I would not feel profoundly morally uncomfortable, to be sitting during a genocide trying to do spiritually important prayers in a place where the people leading it have not made their opposition to that genocide clear, and, in fact, thwarted the opposition to that genocide. And so I don’t go to Ann Arbor anymore. I stay in New York for high holidays. So it is true that there is this more nebulous, shame-inflected dimension of the complicity, but there’s also just the real facts that if you want to show up and be a Jewish person in United States, you’re going to run into all this a lot of the time. And I do think—I mean, I think you’re saying that we do need to offer an alternative, and I think people are working to try to make some of those alternatives possible. But we are really stuck in a situation in which this is everywhere we turn and not so easy to separate ourselves from.

AA: I mean, for the amount of us that there are, there should be more institutions that are holding an alternative. But because of how resource-intensive that is, it hasn’t happened yet. And I think it will happen, and we’re going to see it. But just one more question on this. You say, “The public declaration of the slogan Not In My Name becomes necessary only when we understand Jews as a monolith. By the same logic, every Jew who does not exclaim Not In My Name becomes complicit and must respond publicly as a Jew.” I just want to say, from an organizing perspective: Wouldn’t we want that polarization? Like, wouldn’t we want every single Jew to have to be able to say either I’m for this or against this, and therefore arrange themselves and, to the extent that they participate in Jewishness, to choose a side? Wouldn’t we want that for every American and, therefore, for every Jew?

JDA: Yeah. So on that level, I can understand where you’re coming from. I think the thing that’s frustrating is like, just because Israel calls itself the Jewish state, that doesn’t mean you have to legitimate it, right? That doesn’t mean you have to take it at its word. Not only that, but if you believe that Jewishness is not a national identity—if you believe that it cannot be embodied in the nation-state (which I would think a lot of anti-Zionists believe)—then you are in a sense saying, “Hey, you are a citizen, or a potential citizen, or a proto-citizen of this state. So where do you stand?” And I’m certainly not above asking people to take sides, but I think that it misses the multiplicity and the unstable category of Jewishness to begin with. One of the things we haven’t spoken about and that I think ties back to Zionist realism is that Zionism is incredibly, fundamentally dedicated to normalizing Jewishness, to normalizing the category of Jew, from taking it from this abstraction and materializing it into the Israeli. Like, that’s how it works. And so to me, to take on the face of it the stability of the category of Jew, in an abstract sense, is really problematic and, I think, really against my own understanding of Jewishness as this unstable assemblage that is incredibly contingent.

AA: I agree with that. I think that actually, what we’re really talking about is the different ways in which one can utter Not In My Name. Like you could say Not In My Name because you consider yourself a stable piece of this group—and I think some people probably do say it in that way, with a more solid identification with some kind of peoplehood. And then there’s also a more material way of saying—people are saying that this is being done for Jews, and Not In My Name actually is helping to fracture, in a certain kind of way. And I think we have to recognize, too, that the tagline itself is not that stable. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are part of it. But I totally hear what you’re saying. I mean, it’s very uncomfortable that this is just like the main way of understanding Jews, both on the right and, in some sense, on the left, as part of this complicit collective.

MC: I mean, I guess I just have a question about how to think about this structural element of this. Like, what does it mean to be positionally complicit in something, even if you’re not individually or consciously complicit? For example, obviously, I think many of us might argue that, as a white person, even if you’re rejecting the tenets of white supremacy and trying to do your best to turn away from the terror of whiteness, you’re still, as a white person, placed in a system in which you have access to certain types of privileges.

AA: Right. Like, are we doing, Not All Men during MeToo or whatever right now?

MC: Yeah. I would just think that if you, as a Jewish person in the US right now, have the privilege to move to Israel and get citizenship there and displace Palestinians or whatever, even if you don’t take advantage of it, or if you have access to these things like birthright, or if you are somebody who has an opportunity to go get your representatives to all riled up on your behalf because you claim that you’re unsafe, and there’s this particular type of structural access—even if we don’t claim it, do we need to take responsibility for it?

JDA: Yeah. I find myself wanting to say something incredibly provocative. And so, I’m just going to say it: Your point makes sense, but if you follow it to its logical conclusion, the best way to get rid of that complicity that’s actuated through a potential of power is to stop being Jewish. Like it’s to just say, “I’m no longer a Jew,” or convert to another religion, and so there’s something a little cynical and pessimistic about that, you know?

AA: I think a lot of people are feeling that right now, and I agree with you. It’s not—it sucks. I don’t think it’s the right answer.

MC: And look, I think there are people who have made this argument on the left and the Jewish left that I really strongly disagree with. But, yes, I think you’re right. Like, we do want to destroy whiteness, right? And we want to destroy modern masculinity in a certain way. We want to destroy patriarchy. We don’t want to destroy Jewishness. So I think you’re right that there is a different category there. I still maintain that it’s important to have a Not In My Name Jewish part of that ecosystem because I just do think these interests that claim to speak on behalf of Judaism are going to mobilize, even within social justice contexts or liberal institutions. You get people making decisions that do not have a ton of familiarity with the issues and really don’t want to be called antisemitic, or actually feel very—personally would hate to be actually hurting Jewish people. And so, I think it becomes really important to have a vocal group of Jewish people who are like, “No, we’re doing this as Jews.” I really see those things as complementary.

AA: Well, this has been a really great conversation. Jon, I’m appreciative to you for allowing us to argue with you about your piece, but I’m also very excited for people to read the piece. So thank you for being game for this. And I also just want to say, if you are an organizer on the Jewish left and you have thoughts about this, you can definitely send them to us. You can send your letters to editor@jewishcurrents.org. We will publish them. And also, just to say, I think it’s very clear from your piece and otherwise that we are proud of these organizing groups and the work that they’ve done, and that our organizing sphere would be so much more impoverished without them, and that these questions are coming up precisely because we are in a new moment that we couldn’t have even have imagined maybe even five years ago. And so, I do hope that if you’re listening and you’re a JVP organizer, this doesn’t feel like a critique but a recognition of where all of us are together, and a recognition of the fact that we have to keep interrogating the way that we’re thinking about our situation if we’re going to move forward and win. Thank you. This has been another episode of On the Nose. If you liked it, share it. Subscribe to Jewish Currents, JewishCurrents.org. Hang in there, everyone.