Yesterday, the New York Times gave a platform to anti-Zionist Israeli professor Omri Boehm to discuss “Liberal Zionism in the Age of Trump.” He didn’t say anything particularly new and regular readers of Mondoweiss are certainly familiar with all his arguments. But the biggest problem is that the Times is continuing to push the idea that people like Boehm and groups like J Street represent Liberal American Jews. They don’t, but with the media inundating us with articles like these, it isn’t hard to see how it might start to sway your average Jew who isn’t particularly observant or up on politics but would normally be supportive of Israel’s existence if not all of its policies.
Boehm ostensibly wrote this article to vent his ire that Israeli leaders haven’t come out against Trump and Steve Bannon. But it is beyond hypocritical for people like this to go crazy when Bibi utters even minor criticisms about Obama’s policies (not even of Obama himself) and then say he MUST speak out against Trump. Israelis didn’t elect Trump, Americans did, so in that sense American Jews have a responsibility that Israelis don’t. In that sense, Jews were very vocal in speaking out against him during the election, with most of the prominent #NeverTrump Conservatives being Jews. Even so, when Trump first announced his plan for a “Muslim-ban,” Netanyahu DID reject it, but I suppose radicals like Boehm would only be satisfied if the President-Elect is completely boycotted by everyone in the same way he wants done to Israel.
Trump’s pick of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist is a big concern since he has openly said that he made Breitbart into the premier “platform for the alt-right.” Personally, I doubt he’s actually alt-White himself. I think it’s much more likely he’s a power-hungry man who saw a group he could easily exploit for his own ends and didn’t care about the consequences for other people, which, to be honest, is probably worse than him being a racist himself. The real question now is will Bannon continue to court the alt-White’s support, or will he abandon them now that he finally has the power he’s sought for years. Only time will tell. But regardless of your views on Trump or Bannon, neither of them were the reasons why this article was written.
Boehm wrote this article in order to try to to convince liberal Zionists that they are hypocrites who should reject Zionism outright. He rejects the right of the Jews to have a state of our own like all other peoples because it is “exclusionary.” But all states are exclusionary in one way or another and there isn’t anything inherently wrong or illiberal about that. Countries have a right to define themselves, decide who can immigrate there and what their laws should be… unless, apparently, the people doing so are Jewish.
His assertion that Zionism is essentially antisemitic, since it sees Jews as a national group in the same way that Nazis saw Jews as a national group, is beyond ridiculous and at odds with Jewish history. We’ve always been a national group… it just happens that after the Emancipation we didn’t highlight it as much because we didn’t want to be considered disloyal to the countries where we lived (not that this was ever enough to convince Jew-haters). In fact, when the Reform movement was founded, one of its main principles was renouncing the national component of Judaism and attempting to turn it into just another religious faith. But they quickly realized this was impossible and have since rejected this anomalous idea.
The only one who is trafficking in traditional antisemitism is Boehm who alleges that if Jews have a state of our own, any of us living outside of it “inhabit a country that is not genuinely [our] own.” Many people today live in different countries than their ancestors did, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of their resident countries or that they are disloyal. If someone were to assert that Mexican-Americans “inhabit a country that is not genuinely their own,” you’d rightly call that person a racist, but since Boehm is saying it about Jews, he is a champion of Liberalism. There are over 35 countries that have similar Laws of Return to Israel (including the Palestinian Authority) and yet the only country that ever gets condemned for this is Israel. Somehow people like this are able to get others to sign up for the Palestinian “Right of Return” which would essentialize the Palestinian diaspora, while simultaneously arguing that when Jews do the exact same thing, they are the absolute manifestation of evil. I’d say they can’t have it both ways, but with the New York Times and other major organizations are still willing to give them a pulpit, apparently they can.
Israel can be and is both a state of the Jews and a state of its citizens (something Palestinians claim they want for themselves as well). Any Jew can make Israel their home, but they don’t have a say in Israeli policy until they actually live there; once they do, they have just as much say as non-Jewish citizens – no more, no less.
I’m shocked that the rabbi who confronted Richard Spencer didn’t have a set answer for the ridiculous comparison that the alt-White makes and which the author essentially agrees with. Spencer and his ilk, in their attempt to rebrand themselves away from the Klan and the Nazis, have taken on new, neutral-sounding names and tried to attach themselves to movements that don’t belong to them in order to gain legitimacy and attention. This idea that they just want a “White Zionism” is disgusting and if the author would actually read anything that Spencer and other neo-Nazi leaders have written, he would know it’s a pure media trick. As we previously discussed, White nationalism is racist not because white people can’t have nations, but because they are in reality white supremacists. White people know their history and where their ancestors came from. That’s why there are Irish-pride parades and organizations for French-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc. But reducing one’s identity to just “white” isn’t an embrace of history but a rejection of it in favor of the least important or consequential aspect of it: skin tone. European nations are not all the same, which is why history is filled with wars between the nations there! They have their own languages, cultures, foods, traditions and that’s just fine. These are things that can be celebrated, even though they are partially exclusionary because they are still ideas that people can take on and accept as their own. Someone can move to a European country, learn the language, marry a local and take on the traditions and it won’t matter what color they are (at least it shouldn’t). The same is true of being Jewish but not true of just being “white.”
Boehm also tries to make it seem as though Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant policies are the same as Israel’s standard immigration ones. Trump called for a blanket ban on all Muslims entering the US and has since moderated this position to something that isn’t entirely clear. Israel, on the other hand, has roughly 100,000 Muslims enter every single day as Palestinian workers, both legal and illegal. There is no ban on people of any religion but Israel – nor any other country – is not under any obligation to simply open its borders to everyone, especially not people who have been raised for generations to hate them and who are actively working for its destruction. Even so, Israel has welcomed in over 300,000 Palestinians since 1948 (mostly through the laws of family reunification) and, in 2013, offered to allow all Palestinians in Syria to move to the West Bank (Abbas said it was better for them to die than to give up their Right of Return!). In just the past few days, Israeli civilians have raised large amounts of money for Syrian refugees and the government is looking into ways to bring in wounded refugees from Aleppo. So it is demonstrably false that Israel’s identity as a Jewish State is an impediment to it living up to the highest of liberal standards and values. On the contrary, it is the Jewish values that gave birth to Zionism that instilled within it such a strong attachment to traditional liberalism.
Boehm falsely describes Zionism as “a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics.” Yet Zionism has brought about the only liberal democracy in a sea of dictatorships, theocracies and police states. Does that mean that Israel is a perfect democracy? Of course not. But for someone to claim they care about liberal values, human rights and progressive ideas, then look at the Middle East and say that Israel is the problem and to actively work against it? I’m not sure hypocrisy is a strong enough term to describe this… I guess I’ll have to settle for traitorous chutzpah.
