I am a Jewish opponent of Zionism, the politics behind the Jewish-privileged state of Israel. Zionism is that country’s pretext for the outrages it commits against the Palestinian people, including today’s genocide in Gaza. As a human being and a Jew, I cannot condone Israel’s atrocities.
But I did not always reject Zionism. Raised in a conservative Jewish community in New York, I marched in Israel Independence Day parades commemorating the 1948 establishment of the country, sang nationalist songs at summer camps, and believed fighting anti-Semitism meant having our own state.
I also enjoyed my religion and traditions. I was a regular at the synagogue. I loved chanting Hebrew prayers and playing Yiddish songs on my accordion. I did not question the assumption that my religion and Zionism were inseparable.
But slowly, my observations informed me that politics was not the same as religion and culture. I studied world events and followed my conscience. That’s how I came to renounce Zionism.
As a young supporter of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, I couldn’t accept Israel’s racism against Palestinian Arabs. Nor could I tolerate that Israel supported the criminal U.S. war against Vietnam and collaborated with apartheid South Africa. Later, I learned it also helped arm Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship.
My Zionist beliefs turned into dust under this insufferable avalanche of reality. I decided to boldly challenge what I had been taught growing up.
Willing to risk family consternation, I temporarily left college and moved to West Germany. At Munich’s synagogue, I met young people whose parents remained in Germany, of all places, following the Nazi holocaust. These Jewish victims of fascism chose not to emigrate to Israel. They did not get the message I got that a Jewish state was our only security.
At the university, I met many socialist students. Some were not Jewish, yet they were anti-fascist foes of anti-Semitism. I thought, if people could fight the ultra-right while living outside Israel, then so could I. That made more sense to me than Zionism’s position that Jews needed a forever haven to escape to.
I learned that capitalism’s drive for profit creates scapegoats to distract from its own economic crises. Thus, Jews became targets for persecution. Socialism, however, is about satisfying people’s needs; it has no necessity for victims to blame.
Ultimately, I found myself agreeing with Albert Einstein, who opposed a Jewish state and called for a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all. I would add that it must be part of a world socialist movement, or its virtues will not survive.
