America’s election reveals the immorality of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Just like America is a work in progress, so is Israel.
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This is a guest essay written by Ariel Beery, a strategist dedicated to building a better future for Israel, the Jewish People, and humanity.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Among the millions who will vote in the American presidential elections this November 5, 2024, are a few thousand Jewish citizens of the United States who have proudly and openly taken an anti-Zionist position on the front pages of the news sites of record. In doing so, these American Jews will be taking responsibility for the government of the people, by the people, and ideally for the people that will be elected while simultaneously rejecting the right of millions of Jews to do the same in Israel. Which is why now is an opportune moment to reflect on the morality of the anti-Zionist dual commitment: for American democracy, and against Jewish self-determination.
At its root, the Jewish anti-Zionist position is simple: the Jews are an ethnic or religious group, they would claim, while States should be multi-cultural political entities equally representing all of their citizens. Some anti-Zionists go farther, taking a Diasporist approach: not only should a state not reflect the distinct culture of an ethnic group, but the Jews in particular are better off when we live dispersed among the nations. Concentrating all the Jews in a State, they argue, especially a State in conflict with a Palestinian national movement, undermines the accumulated experience of generations of exile where Jews learned to empathize with the weak and powerless. By acquiring power, they argue, Jews are alienated from the political ethic that developed within the Jewish tradition that inspired devotion to social justice.
Both of these positions, when taken without context, might be argued to be moral. There is a case to be made for why States should not favor a particular culture over another even if – in reality – few if any States are not ethnically imprinted. One can imagine a moral world in which solidarity is extended to all humans without regards to culture or belief, keeping the mechanisms of the State technocratically neutral as a platform for voluntary affinity communities (which, one would assume, would have the right to self-determination even if they are Jewish).
There is also a case to be made for the Jews to celebrate our Diasporic status. Our founding narrative includes a blessing to Abraham promising that his heirs will be scattered in order to bless the nations. Despite the perennial effort to wipe us out, Jews have in large part survived tragedy after tragedy because we were distributed. By spreading out, a Diasporist such as Shaul Magid might claim, Jews can fulfill our roles as lights among the nations. By insisting on the Jewishness of Israel, they claim, we dim our light through the friction of the ideal and the real.
Yet participating in the American elections casts these positions in a different light. Anti-Zionist Jews, it turns out, are willing to take responsibility for determining the government of the United States and all it entails: the continued occupation of native lands, the isolation of 15 million indigenous on reservations, the continued force projection and military interventions, the ongoing extraction of fossil fuels and the transformation of those heaps of carbon into greenhouse gasses that threaten humanity’s very future.
Moreover, I haven’t seen a single party platform calling for the extension of the vote to the tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants and noncitizens living in the US who are currently barred from political participation. They may argue that their political participation is intended to ameliorate these realities, yet by their very participation in a system that perpetuates disenfranchisement they legitimate the continued existence of America and all it entails.
This is not to say that America is immoral or to question its right to exist. The opposite. It is to recognize that America, founded upon a clear ethnic and religious foundation imprinted on its present culture, holidays, and institutional structures, is doing the best it can to create the ideal conditions for life as determined by its citizens. It is to recognize that liberal democracies have not been, ever, founded on a blank slate and are not, ever, truly reflective of all of the residents within a particular geographic boundary. They are works in progress, aspiring to a better tomorrow as defined by the values shared by the citizens who bring them into being.
To actively participate in the American election and in doing so legitimate the existence of the United States while calling for the dissolution of Israel is not only hypocritical, it is immoral because it distinguishes between what is permitted to some and not permitted to others. It necessarily determines that Jews do not deserve that which is assumed by Americans. It privileges the existence of certain States over others, despite the complexities inherent in the birth of all Nations, and relegates the Jews to second-class status by definition. At the pleasure of the States who allow us to settle there. The perennial minority, free to critique so long as we stay in the favor of the powers that be.
It is immoral to participate in the democratic process in America while delegitimizing the democratic process in Israel. Just as it is immoral to deny from the Jews the rights afforded to Greeks, the English, or the 97 other countries with an ethnic identity and an official state religion.
It is immoral to call for the Jews to give up their only chance at majority status simply because. It is immoral to deny from Jews the opportunity to wrestle with the same complexity faced by all other nations who seek to define their destiny by realizing their particular values in the complex world in which we live. Don’t want that responsibility as a Jew? No worries – stay in America. There’s enough to fix there as it is.
As Mordechai Kaplan, of blessed memory, wrote in 1951, “Without the opportunity of demonstrating what Judaism that has a free field for itself can do to further social and spiritual progress, the Jewish people is like a musical genius who lacks an instrument on which to play.” We have seen what Americans have been able to accomplish, with all of their blemishes: progression towards a more advanced world freer from poverty and hunger, with greater freedoms for all. Israel is still at the beginning of her journey. The only moral position on Zionism and the Jewish desire for self-determination is to support the continued development of the Jewish State even as it grapples with its shortcomings and expands the freedoms available to all of the peoples who call this land their home.
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Excellent post. Sharing. I’m not Jewish but I am a committed supporter of Israel. I just don’t get Jews who oppose Israel. Do they think that will make people like them?
I imagine that Jewish anti-Zionists run the gamut from impractical Jewish academics to bigoted antisemites who happen to have a Jewish ancestor. There are seven million Jews in Israel and no other country is going to take them all in. That was conclusively proven in the 1930’s. There is no Arab society that is tolerant of minority populations. It’s pretty clear what would happen to Israeli Jews in an Arab country, given that 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands, in most cases down to the last Jew. Academics who blather on about “diasporaism” are detached from reality. The others are left-wing bigots who use their Jewish ancestry to give cover to antisemites.