Tuesday 16 August 2016

US Jewish professors abhor visiting Israel

Posted on  |

On August 1, 2016, two female Jewish history professors, Harsia R. Diner (New York University), and Marjorie N. Feld (Babson College) in an opinion post at Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz entitled, We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind, blasted Israel as an evil entity. Both said they abhor to visit Israel, refuses to donate money to it or buy its product after watching what its government and Israeli Jews do to Palestinians.
Both professors who were committed Zionists during youth – find it hard to digest the non-stop growth of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands stolen since June 1967. They’re not anti-Israel as both believe that biblical G-d did promised Holy Land to their Khazarian ancestors.
The socialist Zionism of the Habonim youth movement was central to my early years, providing my base during the 1970s when the Jewish settlement of the Occupied Territories began. I need not belabor the point that from that date on, the Palestinian land that has been expropriated for Jews has grown by leaps and bounds and that the tactics used by the State of Israel to suppress the Palestinians have grown harsher and harsher,” Diner said.
Nor do I need to say that the exponential growth of far right political parties and the increasing Haredization of Israel, makes it a place that I abhor visiting, and to which I will contribute no money, whose products I will not buy, nor will I expend my limited but still to me, meaningful, political clout to support it,” Diner added.
Jewish professor Ari Y. Kelman (Stanford University) has questioned the ‘Jewishness’ of the two women. “There have been anti-Zionists in the Jewish community for a long time,” he said.
On April 29, 2016, Ray Filar, editor Open Democracy published an article, entitled, Why I am anti-Zionist Jew, he wrote:
While in Israel this year I lost count of the number of times I was quizzed as to my religious heritage by random Israelis. The question,“Are you a Jew?” was asked of me more in a month than at any other time in my life. Refusing to answer caused some consternation – and where all interactions are guided by fears of the Palestinian majority, of the loss of “the Jewish democratic state”, I can see why. As a counterpoint I also experimented with purposefully telling Palestinians that I am Jewish, the primary reaction being surprise, then pleasure, and the short response: “welcome”.
In 2012, Dr. Norman Finkelstein claimed that more and more young American Jews are distancing from Israel. Last year in a speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Finkelstein said that Israel could reduce hatred toward Jews by not calling itself the Jewish state.

Calling Israel a Jewish state is like saying United States is a White state.


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

No comments: