Read Palestine

Our Approach to Zionism

Properties2
tags
aliases

12 min read

Summary

Jewish Voice for Peace’s organizational statement declares that, guided by “a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people”, it unequivocally opposes Zionism because Zionism is counter to those ideals (Our Approach to Zionism, line 153). The Zionism that took hold, the statement argues, is a settler-colonial movement establishing an Apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others; Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design, and Zionism has also harmed Jewish people by building a racist hierarchy with European Jews at the top, erasing integrated Jewish histories in the Arab world and North Africa, and teaching fear and isolation (lines 159-169). Its Frequently Asked Questions define Zionism and its political, religious and cultural strains, define Anti-Zionism and separate it from Antisemitism, explain the two-year internal process behind the clarification — the board drafted and finalized the statement over the summer and fall of 2018 — and detail Zionism’s harms to Jews through shlilat hagalut, discrimination against Mizrahim and against Ethiopian Jews (lines 173-227).

What the file is

  • A Jewish Voice for Peace resource page, “Our Approach to Zionism”, downloaded from https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/zionism/ (access basis: NGO). The original is the HTML page; the text copy supplied with it (about 2,821 words, lines 1-319) is a plain-text rendering of that page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers.
  • The text copy includes the site’s frame around the statement: navigation at lines 1-142 and 229-319, including a restructure notice as captured — JVP Action, its 501c4 organization, is now doing business as JVP, and JVP Lab, its 501c3 organization, continues separately on nonpartisan educational and cultural work (lines 3-5, 311-315). The statement itself runs lines 143-171, followed by Frequently Asked Questions at lines 173-227.
  • Text quality: the statement’s prose is clean and complete in both copies. The text copy displays no publication date; the original HTML’s structured data gives datePublished as 2018-09-21T00:24:42+00:00 and dateModified as 2024-05-14T20:36:45+00:00. Two printings are as printed and are not corrected: “self determination” without a hyphen (line 157) and the ampersand in “questioned & interrogated” (line 167).
  • The statement is unsigned as an organization statement; its epigraph is credited on the page to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (lines 147-151).

Section by section

  • Statement (lines 143-171): the epigraph, “Solidarity is the political version of love.”, credited to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, “Jewish American lesbian feminist, author and activist (1945-2018)” (lines 147-151), and the declaration and argument as in the Summary. Zionism is “a nineteenth-century political ideology that emerged in a moment where Jews were defined as irrevocably outside of a Christian Europe”, and “European antisemitism threatened and ended millions of Jewish lives — in pogroms, in exile, and in the Holocaust” (line 155). Through study, action and relationship with Palestinians, JVP came to see Zionism as “a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe” (line 157). Because Israel’s founding was based on the idea of a “land without people”, “Palestinian existence itself is resistance” (line 163). The alternative: learning from anti-Zionist Jews who came before, choosing solidarity and collective liberation against violent antisemitism fueled by white nationalism in the United States, for “a future where everyone, including Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, can live their lives freely in vibrant, safe, equitable communities, with basic human needs fulfilled” (line 171).
  • FAQ: What is Zionism? Where did it come from? (lines 175-191): Zionism is “a form of Jewish nationalism, and is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of Israel”, beginning in the late 19th century amid the rise of nationalism and violent antisemitism — pogroms in Russia, conspiracy theories like Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and blood libels (line 177). Other Jewish responses were assimilation, emigration (“over 2.5 million” left as refugees), and the Bund, which “rejected the concept of nationalism altogether or turned to revolutionary socialism”; Theodor Herzl and other early Zionist thinkers were “very influenced by European settler colonial thinking, often explicitly making the case that a Jewish state in Palestine would be a European colony similar to the British presence in India” (line 179). The three strains: Political Zionism, founded by Herzl, solving the “Jewish problem” by a “Jewish state” in Palestine established by a community of nations (line 183); religious Zionism, rooted in theological interpretations and not exclusive to Jewish traditions, since some evangelical Christian denominations hold that Jews must “gather” in Israel to facilitate the second coming of Christ (line 185); and Cultural Zionism, attributed to Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg), calling for a spiritual and cultural center in Palestine, not a “Jewish state” in Herzl’s sense (line 187). Regardless of strain, Zionism “has resulted in the establishment of a Jewish nation-state in the land of historic Palestine. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled as part of that process, their homes and property confiscated”, their United Nations-recognized rights to return and compensation long denied by the US and Israel; in 1967 Israel occupied the Occupied Palestinian Territories, “putting millions of people under military rule” (line 189). Further reading named: former JVP Deputy Director Cecilie Surasky’s speech “Settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and Israel” (line 191).
  • FAQ: What is anti-Zionism? (lines 193-203): anti-Zionism as a loose term spanning religious and secular progressives, ultra-Orthodox Jews and anarchist Jews, non-Jewish critics, and many Palestinians, as in the reading notes; “Criticism of Zionism is not to be conflated with antisemitism”, with criticism of states defended under “our basic First Amendment rights” (line 197). Further reading named: former JVP staffer Ben Lorber on Jewish alternatives to Zionism, NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg on conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, and excerpts from “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” by Edward Said (lines 199-203).
  • FAQ: Why and how did we clarify our position on Zionism? (lines 205-215): at its founding JVP abstained from a position on Zionism because it felt it closed off conversation in the Jewish community; Palestinian partners “had long theorized Zionism as the root cause of the Palestinian condition”, members increasingly agreed and saw Zionism as damaging to Jewish identity and spiritual life, and in 2014 clarification became necessary (line 207). A representative committee of staff, members and board designed a curriculum on Zionism over two years; “Over 700 members attended the webinars presenting the curriculum” and chapters discussed it (line 209); conversations followed at the 2017 National Member Meeting, surveys, and constituency-group discussions including Rabbis, artists and students (line 211); feedback came from staff, Palestinian members, activists and thinkers, and Jewish people of color and Sephardi & Mizrahi Jews (line 213); “The board met over the summer and fall of 2018 to draft and finalize this statement” (line 215).
  • FAQ: What do you see as the harms of Zionism against Jewish people? (lines 217-227): Zionism defined Self-determination narrowly, “rejecting the diaspora as inherently toxic and unhealthy for Jews” through shlilat hagalut, “often to the point of using anti-Semitic imagery” — Micah Josef Berdichevsky’s diaspora Jews as “not a nation, not a people and not human.”, Yosef Hayyim Brenner’s as “gypsies, filthy dogs and inhuman”, and AD Gordon’s as “a parasitic people.” (line 219). Zionism “has always hierarchized Jews based on ethnicity and race” and was an Ashkenazi-led movement that termed Jews from the Middle East and North Africa Mizrahim, “the ‘Eastern Ones’” (line 221). In the early 1950s the Israeli government facilitated mass Mizrahi immigration but barred the newcomers from central cities and ownable housing, using police to keep them in transient camps and later development towns in the periphery “as a means to expand the state territory and prevent Palestinian return”; in the 1950s Mizrahi immigrants were subjected to medical experimentation facilitated or performed by the Israeli government, and several thousand babies and toddlers were forcibly taken and given for adoption by Ashkenazi families, “two thirds Yemeni and a third from Tunisian, Moroccan, Libyan, Iraqi and Balkan families” (line 223). From the first waves of immigration in the 1980s, Ethiopian Jews experienced government and public racism, exclusion, discrimination and violence, remaining unrecognized as Jews by the religious establishment; Ethiopian mobilization consolidated since 2015 calls for an end to institutional discrimination, police harassment, arrests without cause, false accusations and denial of due process (line 225). Further reading named: “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims” by Ella Shohat and “They didn’t want Ethiopian Jews in Israel, either” by Efrat Yerday (line 227).

Key passages

  • “We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.” (line 153)
  • “Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe.” (line 157)
  • “Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design.” (line 161)
  • “It teaches us fear, and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.” (line 169)
  • “Criticism of Zionism is not to be conflated with antisemitism.” (line 197)
  • “The board met over the summer and fall of 2018 to draft and finalize this statement.” (line 215)

Evidence the work relies on

  • The statement presents itself as the product of an internal organizational process, not of cited research: a two-year curriculum designed by a representative committee, webinars attended by over 700 members, chapter and constituency-group discussions, a 2017 National Member Meeting conversation, surveys, and feedback from staff, Palestinian members, activists and thinkers, and Jewish people of color and Sephardi & Mizrahi Jews (lines 209-213).
  • Quotations from Micah Josef Berdichevsky, Yosef Hayyim Brenner and AD Gordon on diaspora Jews, as the statement gives them (line 219). No source or date is given for any of the three quotations in the text copy.
  • Figures given without a cited source in the statement: over 2.5 million Jewish refugees who left Europe (line 179); 750,000 Palestinians expelled in 1948 (line 189); over 700 members at the webinars (line 209); several thousand babies and toddlers taken from Mizrahi parents in the 1950s, two thirds Yemeni and a third from Tunisian, Moroccan, Libyan, Iraqi and Balkan families (line 223).
  • Further-reading works named, without dates in the text copy: Cecilie Surasky’s speech on settler colonialism, white supremacy and the U.S.–Israel “special relationship” (line 191); Ben Lorber on Jewish alternatives to Zionism and Michelle Goldberg on conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism (lines 199-201); Edward Said’s “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” (line 203); and Ella Shohat’s “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims” and Efrat Yerday’s “They didn’t want Ethiopian Jews in Israel, either” (line 227).

Analysis

  • The page is an organizational position statement with an explanatory FAQ, written in the first person plural. Its method is declarative: it states JVP’s position, gives a compressed history of Zionism and its strains, and supports the harms-to-Jews claim with named historical episodes — the negation of the diaspora, the Mizrahi immigration and child removals of the 1950s, and Ethiopian Jews’ treatment since the 1980s — while citing no sources in the text for its figures or quotations; its evidence apparatus is a further-reading list.
  • Its distinctive contribution among the wiki’s sources is institutional: a major US Jewish organization records, in its own words, that it moved from founding abstention on Zionism to unequivocal opposition, and documents the deliberative process and dates of that move (lines 207-215).
  • Its account of Zionism’s harms runs in two directions at once — dispossession of Palestinians by design, and a racist hierarchy and a pedagogy of fear imposed on Jews — and it holds both under one vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people (lines 153, 161-169).

Jewish Voice for Peace, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Bund, Ellah Shohat, Edward Said, Nakba

Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Political Zionism, Cultural Zionism, Christian Zionism, Settler Colonialism, Apartheid, Antisemitism, Negation of the Diaspora, Mizrahim, Self-determination

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • The original HTML’s structured data gives datePublished as 2018-09-21, while the statement says the board met “over the summer and fall of 2018 to draft and finalize this statement” (line 215); a September 21 publication date falls at the very start of fall, and the text copy displays no date, so the relation between the metadata date and the finalized statement is not established by the file.
  • No source or date is given in the text copy for the Berdichevsky, Brenner and Gordon quotations (line 219), for the 2.5 million refugee figure (line 179), the 750,000 expelled figure (line 189), or the several-thousand Mizrahi babies and toddlers figure (line 223).
  • The statement spells the author of “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims” as “Ella Shohat” (line 227); the existing page for that scholar is Ellah Shohat, with “Ella Shohat” as an alias from another source.

Coverage

lines 1-319 of 319, read in full

Graph View

Backlinks