Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
Head of Hezbollah Executive Council, Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, pointed out that the Palestinian resistance has managed to settle the military confrontation with the Israeli occupation army, adding that what the Zionist enemy can still do is killing civilians and destroying buildings.
“The Israeli enemy is repeating the same follies it committed during 2006 war .”
During Hezbollah ceremony held in Dahyeh’s Haret Hreik in support of Gaza against the Israeli aggression, Sayyed Safieddine stressed that the Israeli enemy is obliged to acknowledge the new repercussions of the formula imposed by the Palestinian resistance missiles, or that it will pay a heavy price.
Sayyed Safieddine indicated that defending Palestine protects the entire Umma, adding that this battle has extinguished the flame of sedition in the Umma.
In this context, Sayyed Safieddine highlighted of the former military commander of Hezbollah, the martyr Hajj Imad Mughniyeh, and the former commander of IRGC’s Quds Force, the martyr General Qassem Suleimani, in building up the rocketry power of the Palestinian resistance.
Sayyed Safieddine noted that Hezbollah has remarkably augmented it military capabilities since 2006 war, adding that the Resistance Party is now looking for the Day on which it joins the Palestinian Resistance fight against Israeli enemy on all the fronts.
During the ceremony, the Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Ziyad Nakhala, stressed that Palestinian resistance will continue fighting the Zionist enemy till gaining the victory.
For his part, Osama Hamdan, the commander of Hamas movement in Lebanon, stressed that the Israeli aggression unified the Palestinians, adding that the Palestinian resistance is establishing new formulas in the confrontation with the Zionist enemy.
On reading the enduring horrific daily news coming out of Palestine/Israel relating to the ongoing Jewish-state Nakba, I invariably feel a strong desire to discuss what is often the elephant in the room. It’s an issue constantly on the minds of Israelis and Palestinians alike, while at the same time being difficult to discuss frankly and directly in polite society.
The issue is Jewish supremacy as it manifests itself in the Zionist settler-colonial state of Israel and beyond. (See my blog post, What is Jewish supremacy and how is it different from White supremacy?). I say “beyond”, because there is a strong existing connection to Israel by ‘ordinary’ Jews outside of Israel/Palestine, whose Jewish communities, in Europe and America, feed Israel. Even at a mature age they go there, either to visit or to stay (which is a support and confirmation for the state), but more often to serve in the military which is the most militant of brainwashing in Jewish supremacy.
Most activists skirt the issue of Jewish supremacy and some deny it outright in a way they would not dream of doing with White supremacy. The only safe place to discuss the issue of Jewish supremacy, it sometimes appears, is within the confines of Mondoweiss.
But even there, we are more likely to read forceful critiques debunking the Zionist idea of a ‘Jewish nation’ as sold to the world by the world Zionist movement. A necessary exercise. Nevertheless, I often wonder, what about the concomitant fact of the religious Jewish character of the state as expressed in its Basic Law? What about the self-professed Jewish identity of millions of Jews, in Israel and outside Israel — not to mention Palestinian perceptions of them — as Jews first, and Zionist second?
It therefore seems at times that, in order to liberate Palestine from the Zionist settler-colonial regime, Palestinians must first undertake the impossible task of convincing the world that those who espouse the Zionist settler-colonial regime are less Jewish than Zionist, which of course strips them of their self-identified Jewish identity and is unacceptable to them.
More and more Jews worldwide today are saying “not in our name”, in reference to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. However, they too, don’t have the power to rename Israeli Jews as something else. This brings to mind Israel’s chief rabbi’s statement that “some Jews are more Jewish than others.”
When we talk about Israel, we can discuss apartheid, demographics, settler-colonialism, but we are often silenced when the issue is Jewish supremacy and the Jewish nature of the state — issues that are central to Israeli society as well as to the current and future dynamics of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
If the goal of all the analysis about Israel is to find realistic solutions for an impossible status quo, we ought not to dismiss this very real and troubling issue. It doesn’t make sense to do so.
In a 2015 article published online and titled ‘Palestine‒Israel: Decolonization Now, Peace Later’, Alaa Tartir (researcher at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and a policy advisor at Al-Shabaka) lists a number of basic but fundamental obstacles to any future lasting peace in Israel/Palestine. Among them is the following characterization of Israeli society:
Another dominant observation that I noticed in my small, random and unrepresentative sample is the sense of superiority [among Israeli Jews]. liberal, leftist, fundamentalists, secular, religious and progressive voices, from different generations living in different cities, shared the feature of superiority, which is problematic at the very personal and human level, before it extends to politics. Statements like ‘we are God’s chosen nation’, ‘we don’t care about international law’, ‘we help those poor Palestinians to end the occupation’, ‘we offer Palestinians jobs and they work for us’, ‘Gaza is irrelevant’, ‘I have Palestinian friends but would never trust them’ characterized the discussions. Therefore, unless ‘ordinary’ Israelis perceive themselves as ordinary people and not superior to other nations it is impossible to imagine how a one-state or two-state solution could work.
Tartir goes on to say,
Just as the Palestinian people and leadership need to engage in a serious process of reforming their strategies, so do the Israelis. The Israelis need to reconcile internally a number of issues mainly related to the apartheid structures, Jewish supremacy, the Jewish nature of the state, the demographic phobia and the return of the Palestinian refugees from exile.
When we are forced to ignore the perceptions of Israelis and their set of values and beliefs (which are the root manifestation of the Zionist Jewish state in Palestine), when we are unable to confront them candidly, we Palestinians will never be able to achieve justice and equality.
Lena, a former Israeli, writes:
Many Jews, even if not overtly Zionist, share this basic belief that in order to prevent another extermination, they must become DOMINANT and exercise superiority, because “this is how the world works, either you dominate or be exterminated”. Although nobody ever has persecuted or offended these young Jews, they share the view of Goyim as a bunch of people who inherently want to erase Jews from this planet. I honestly do not know how to combat a basic belief that the world is based on domination, that whoever does not dominate will be subjugated or killed, that Jews must forever fight against an inherent existential threat, therefore not letting them dominate is the same as wanting them all dead.
Lena describes the mindset of any group of people who have been conditioned to see the world through us vs. them.
“Confronting the occupier, colonizer or oppressor is the main lesson from the history of liberation movements across the world,” writes Tartir. We must confront Israelis on the issue of Jewish supremacy, as on all others.
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In this interview with Swiss thinker Piero San Giorgio I delve into the present global cultural, political and spiritual crisis identifying the centrality of Jewish identitarian philosophy at the heart of current events. Together we elaborate on the significant influence of Jewish thought on whatever is left out of both ‘Left’ and ‘Right.’ Those who are interested in my thought and the few who are still disturbed by my ideas will enjoy this extended discussion as we simplified some of the most problematic contemporary topics to do with controlled opposition, identitarianism, the collapse of the Left and its surrender to biological determinism, the centrality of Zionism and more.
The 1927 cinematic epicMetropolis is often described as a ‘German expressionist’ (anti realist) and a ‘science-fiction’ film. Today, as we watch the evaporation of the Covid19 phantasmal saga of viral apocalypse, we will examine whether Metropolis’ plot was truly anti-realist.
Watching the film almost a century after its creation brings up some existential and perplexing thoughts. Is not Metropolis the most timely expression of our current fatigue with corporate culture, our dismay with ‘science’ and ‘technology,’ and our fatigue of our deeply rotten and uniquely ungifted political class? I suggest that back in 1927, the creators of Metropolis understood the current dystopia and its ontological roots better than some of our most venerated contemporary ‘intellectuals.’ Accordingly, I believe that rather than as ‘science fiction,’ ‘an astute prophetic message’ is the best description of this ambitious moment in German cinema.
The film was directed by Fritz Lang and written by his wife,Thea von Harbou, in collaboration with Lang. It is important to note that Lang escaped from Germany in 1933. Lang, it seems, didn’t approve of the Nazi regime: his wife, however, stayed behind. After the war, Thea von Harbou was imprisoned for collaboration with the Nazis. I don’t intend to examine whether Von Harbou was a ‘Nazi’ or not, but I will support the argument that Metropolis was probably the definitive and most prophetic ‘Nationalist Socialist’ (as opposed to National Socialist) masterpiece.
Metropolis was created in Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. It is set in a futuristic metropolitan ultra capitalist dystopia that isn’t so removed from the reality of some of our present day Western metropolises. It tells the story of Freder, the son of the oligarch city master (Joh Fredersen), and Maria, an inspirational working class, Christian and saintly character. Together Freder and Maria defeat social injustice and the class divide by means of Herd-Unity. For this unity to occur, a mediator has to come forward to transform the history of social conflicts into a harmonious future. We are exposed to two and a half hours of horror, oppression, slavery, capitalist malevolence and class divide that resolves in the end into reconciliation of an Hegelian ‘end of history’ nature. The cinematic epic exhausts itself when the workers’ leader and Joh Fredersen are shaking hands and accepting their mutual fate and co-dependence. “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart,” is the inter title of the scene, emphasising the ideological and metaphysical motto of the film.
Post WWI Germany was evidently in need of a unifying character who could resolve the class struggle and bond the workers and the capitalists into an integrated organismus sharing an harmonious, unified reality. It would be naïve not to believe that Hitler and his National Socialist party were driven by such a vision. And they weren’t alone. Roosevelt might have been committed to a similar search for such a bond, as was Henry Ford as well as many others.
The film was made in 1925-6 and saw the screen in 1927, during a significant period in terms of German politics and intellectual evolution. In 1927 Martin Heidegger published his monumental Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). Heidegger posited that the history of Western Philosophy is a tale of the forgetting of Being. Heidegger, more than any other philosopher before him, identified the growing detachment that has become intrinsic to modern existence and post enlightenment human landscape.
Another text that was published at that time in Germany that had a far more immediate influence than Heideggers’ philosophical musings was Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925). Though the text is largely described as an ‘anti-Semitic diatribe,’ Mein Kampf wasn’t really a book ‘about Jews,’ though Jews were mentioned occasionally in the text. It was the means by which Hitler, at the time, a veteran corporal and a prisoner, outlined his political ideology and future plan for Germany under his leadership. In that regard, it is interesting to read George Orwell’s 1940 review of the book. Orwell, a voice from the Left, despised Hitler. His review provides an astute critique, yet, he tried to understand the success of Nazism in the light of the total failure of the German working class movement. Not once does Orwell mention Jews or anti-Semitism. In this regard, it is interesting to read George Steiner’s view of Mein Kampf as one of “half a dozen books” published between 1918-27 that resulted from the crisis in German society and culture following its humiliating defeat in WWI. In the introduction to his book about Martin Heidegger, Steiner correctly locates the work of Mein Kampf within the context of its contemporaries such as Ernst Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia (1918), Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918), Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption (1921), Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans (1922), and, of course, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) mentioned above.
While at the time some film critics saw Metropolis as a ‘banal’ communist statement, it was actually an invaluable Nationalist Socialist cinematic revelation as it was critical of both capitalism and communism. By so doing, it expressed the true political spirit and the wishes of many Germans at the time. Like Heidegger and many other German intellectuals who were critical of the enlightenment, the meaning of modern technology and the crude exploitive instrumentalisation of science, Metropolis identified the growing detachment from the Christian and Athenian Western ethos. In a way, the film forecast the nuclear bomb, offered a phantasy of a manmade viral apocalypse, it depicted the reality of concentration camps and even predicted robots dictating the ‘party line’ long before Mark Zuckerberg was born.
Twenty years before Orwell created Emmanuel Goldstein and many decades before George Soros reduced the so-called ‘Left’ into his controlled opposition toy, Lang, together with von Harbou realised that in the eyes of Capitalists and Oligarchs, the fantasy of a ‘proletarian revolution’ is a useful political tool. There is no better means towards total hegemony and oppression than the disasters the masses bring on themselves willingly and even enthusiastically.
While this is obviously the most cynical interpretation of democracy and the prospect of a revolution, it is hard not to admit that this sardonic reading is the reality in which we live.
In 2020 it isn’t Trump or the Tory government that oppresses the masses. It isn’t the White House that deletes Youtube videos of doctors and renowned scientists and it isn’t the British police that close the social media accounts of truth seekers. Instead, it is the private technology companies that dictate a tyranny of correctness in the name of so-called ‘community standards.’
And they are not alone. Corbyn was initially seen by some, including myself, as a refreshing development in British politics. However, it took just a few weeks before many of us were devastated to realize that the British Labour Party under his leadership had quickly morphed into one of the most oppressive authoritarian political bodies around.
In Metropolis Lang ridicules the idea of ‘the revolution.’ He points at the banality and the hopelessness of the masses. In the film, the workers follow Maria’s humane Christian message, waiting for a mediating savior that would redeem the entire class, but when Maria returns in the shape of a robot and delivers the complete opposite message, literally calling for war, the masses follow her and rise up against the machine in what seems to be a suicidal act.
In this, Metropolis managed to capture the menace attached to the Left’s empty and impulsive rhetoric as well as the sinister wickedness inherent in capitalism and its insane abuse of the weak.
The Nationalist Socialism that evolved in the early 1900s promoted social equality however, it flatly rejected the idea of world revolution and cosmopolitanism. In his book, Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg produces an interesting account of the evolution of European Fascist thinking. Italian Fascism, in Goldberg’s eyes, advocated equality of the Italian people. Not such an outrageous concept in itself. German National Socialism could be defined, according to Goldberg, as Socialism of German Speaking people. Again, maybe not the ideal Marxist vision of the world, but not necessarily a racist concept as many people of different origins and ethnicities may speak German. Hitlerism, however, pushed for Socialism of one race. This was an extremely problematic concept as it discriminated against peoples based on the accident of birth.
It is common to look at the distinction between Marxism (or the Left) and Nationalist Socialism from the perspective of their attitudes toward cosmopolitanism versus equality or justice within a given geographical or national context. However, my study of Jewish Identity politics and Zionism has led me to a deeper understanding of the crucial distinction between Marxism and Nationalist Socialism.
In his spectacular book, The Founding Myths of Israel, the Jewish history scholar Zeev Sterhell, reveals that the ideology of Nationalist Socialism, deeply suffocated with blood and soil (Blut und Boden) was also at the core of the early Zionist revolution well before Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and certainly before Fritz Lang and his wife were looking for a mediator to bond the ‘head’ and the ‘hands.’
Sternhell notes that the early Zionist movement saw it as a necessity to bond the ‘workers’ and the ‘owners’ into a unified revolutionary force; the nation or the folk. “Nationalist socialism,” Sternhell writes, “taught that all kinds of workers represented national interests; they were the heart of the nation, and their welfare was also the welfare of the nation. Thus, workers standing beside the production line and the owners of the industrial enterprise were equally ‘producers.’”
“Similarly,” Sternhell continues, “nationalist socialism distinguished between the positive’ bourgeois, the producer, and the ‘parasitic’ bourgeois, between ‘productive’ capital and ‘parasitic’ capital, between capital that creates employment and adds to the economic strength of society and speculative capital, capital that enriches only its owners without producing collective wealth.”
The early Zionist project was very successful in recruiting Jewish wealth and the productive bourgeois into the emerging Jewish nationalist project. Zionism, in its early form, thought of the nation as a cultural, historical, and biological unit, or, figuratively, an extended family. Sternhell points out that in Zionism’s early days the individual was regarded as an organic part of the whole, and the whole took precedence over the individual. “To ensure the future of the nation and to protect it against the forces threatening to undermine it, it was necessary to manifest its inner unity and to mobilize all classes against the two great dangers with which the nation is faced in the modern world: liberalism and Marxism in its various forms.”
In a lucid manner Sternhell relates that Zionism in its early form rejected the spirit of enlightenment – the European bourgeoisie philosophy. “In place of bourgeois individualism, nationalist socialism presented the alternative of team spirit and the spirit of comradeship: instead of the artificiality and the degeneracy of the large city, it promoted the naturalness and simplicity of the village. It encouraged a love of one’s native land and its scenery. All these were also the basic values of the labor movement. Socialist Zionism, however, went further than any other national movement when it rejected the life of the Jews in exile. No one attacked Eastern European Jewry more vehemently than the young men from the Polish shtetl who settled in Palestine, and no one depicted traditional Jewish society in darker hues than the pioneers of the first immigration waves.”
In his reading of the early Zionist movement Sternhell comes to the realisation that the Jewish nationalist movement was Nationalist Socialist to its core. Under this concept, Zion, or more accurately, historic Palestine, the so-called ‘promised land’ was the ‘heart’ that unified the revolutionary Jewish ‘minds’ and ‘hands.’
Two years after Metropolis, Germany faced a horrendous financial crisis that eventually led to the rise of Nazism. It was the disbelief in the Socialist offering and the reality of hard, merciless capitalism that made Germans believe that Hitler was the Heart, the man who brings herd unity and emancipates the Germans from the sons of the enlightenment namely, ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Marxism.’ Hitler lasted in power for about 12 years. His nationalist devotion was complete, his socialism was pretty selective. His reign of power ended in total global havoc. Zionist nationalist socialism, prevailed for eight decades. It started in the late 19th century and came to an end in 1977 with the electoral defeat of the Israeli Labour Party. The party that dominated the Zionist revolution for most of a century literally vanished last month but it achieved a lot before that happened. It won wars while displaying spectacular Blitzkrieg victories e.g.1967, it founded a Jews- only State as it vowed to do, it ethnically cleansed Palestine of its indigenous people, it enacted the most problematic racist, expansionist and nationalist philosophies and tactics and it easily got away with it.
There is a lesson to learn from Metropolis and also from Labour Zionism: if global capitalism is a total disaster then maybe Herd Unity is the way forward; a repeated search for a human bond that transcends race, gender, class, left, right or any other divisive ideology. The push for equality and compassion is precious and the search for that heart that unites us all into one man is a humane endeavour. Labour Zionism eventually crashed because it wasn’t genuine, it pretended to be humane and universal but was tribal and racist to the bone. Labour Zionism vanished because it was a crude Identitarian precept. It was self-centred, it imploded into its own contradictions. It wasn’t ‘patriotism’ that dismantled Labour Zionism, it was the fact that Zionist patriotism was celebrated at someone else’s expense. This is precisely the danger in ethnic nationalism. I want to believe that this type of manifestation of crude chauvinism can be avoided. To be in the world is to live amongst others, to be and let be.
For the heart to bond the ‘heads’ and the ‘minds’ a universal ethos is needed: a humble acceptance of the human condition is crucial. Maybe this very realisation explains the centrality of Christian symbolism and the church throughout the entire Metropolis movie.
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In the last few days Zionist and Israeli advocacy groups were desperate to cancel the gathering of many local peace enthusiasts, intellectuals and religious leaders. Every Hasbara trick was put into play: Social media abuse, intimidating phone calls, smears and lies. But none of it worked. The pro- Israeli bigoted efforts backfired – – interest in the conference grew immediately, the local community stood for Palestine, peace, harmony and free speech!
Roderick Heather MBE, Chairman of Hoole Community Centre was subjected to vitriolic abuse. I learned yesterday that Mr Heather decided to attend the conference meetings and to judge for himself whether it was a ‘hateful’ gathering. Apparently he was impressed and announced to the group at the end of the first day that they will always be welcome at the Hoole Centre. Here is the message Mr Heather sent to North West Friends of Israel, the advocacy pressure group that led the campaign.
One may wonder why Zionist operators are so desperate to cancel Palestinian meetings and are so fearful of my work in particular. As things stand, the law seems to be on their side. With the IHRA definition of antisemitsm and current legislation designed to supress all criticism, the Zionist advocacy groups could theoretically seek to punish everyone who even comes close to any disputes of the operation of their community or their beloved state. You would expect Zionists to ignore Palestinian gatherings. If those gatherings were indeed ‘hateful’ they could have locked many of us up behind bars a long time ago. Clearly, the friends of Israel know that the reality is different. Palestine solidarity is a peaceseeking mission. Despite my huge body of work, I have never been accused of making a single hate statement. Needless to mention, I do not need to mention that I have never been charged or even questioned by a any legal authority anywhere in the world about anything I have said or written. The same applies to Stephen Sizer. The Zionist Lobby groups accuse Palestinian solidarity gatherings of being ‘hateful’ while knowing that this type of behaviour is something that Palestinian activism is free of.
Here are final words from Chester Interfaith Palestine Conference:
Chester Palestine Conference November 2nd 2019
The Chester Palestine Conference was even more successful on its second day. We actually ran out of chairs!
The theme for the day was “Grassroots for Palestine: making local links”.
The day started with a brief interfaith service.
Burnley Women’s Peace Group shared the experience of their Jerusalem Peace Pilgrimage this year. The images of Palestinian suffering were very moving. They are a Jewish, Christian and Muslim interfaith group.
A Jewish Roma activist addressed the similarities between the Roma and Palestinian experience.
Andrew Herbert from Chester’s Methodist Church spoke of his Palestinian house rebuilding experience with the Amos Trust.
Gilad Atzmon the international jazz artist and author of best-selling books on Jewish identity politics flew in from Greece to give a wide-reaching presentation entitled “Zionism from Herzl to Bibi”.
Atzmon was born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, and conscripted into the Israeli regime army where he had a life-changing experience when he was shocked by the barbaric conditions imposed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinians during the Israeli invasion into Lebanon in 1982.
In his intellectual, philosophical and polemical style he engaged us to think deeply about the causes of the worsening trauma of the Palestinian people.
Damien Short’s presentation on the Genocide of the Palestinians was unable to be shown due to technical problems. We will endeavour to distribute it to the conference attendees. Damien is a Reader in Human Rights at the University of London. His book “Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide”, which includes a chapter on Genocide and Palestine, is highly recommended.
The Israeli artist Zohar’s exhibition of Palestinian paintings is on show at Chester University Kingsway Arts Campus, Kingsway, Chester CH2 2LB for the month of November.
These accomplished and thought-provoking pictures are “witnessing the chaos and brutality inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population by an ever more confident and belligerent military power.”
(For insurance and practical reasons we were unable to show these at the conference).
We look forward to the 3rd Annual Chester Palestine Conference in 2020 !
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
One of Israel’s founding myths was that it would provide a homeland to a “people without a home.” Before and especially after World War II, Zionists claimed that the countries in which Jews lived and were citizens were not a homeland. Jews, like others, the argument went, were entitled to a homeland populated by Jews. Even at its peak, this argument never convinced a majority of Jews to move to Israel, although especially after 1967, many supported Israel from afar. It seems that some Israelis are also not convinced that they need to live in their ‘homeland.’
A PhD thesis by Omri Shafer Raviv, reported on recently by 972, documents the ‘professors committee’ formed by the Israeli government in 1967 in response to Israel’s sovereignty over the ousted Palestinians in conquered territories. The committee explored how to limit resistance from and encourage the out migration of Palestinians. The professors were surprised by their findings that the Palestinians, the indigenous people of the land, did not want to leave even if promised a better life in, for instance, Kuwait. The professors, who were among the first generation of Jews to live in their newly declared ‘homeland,’ seemed not to understand what it meant to be tied to a homeland. How else could they have failed to predict that what Palestinians wanted most was to return to their homes, their land, their villages? Over fifty years on, and despite the horrendous living conditions many of them suffer, the Palestinians refuse to disappear.
Emigration has been a continuing issue in Israel, and one that undermines the notion of Israel as a homeland. Initially scorned by Israelis, outward migration was dismissed, as by former Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, as “a fallout of cowards.” But, from its inception, some immigrants chose to leave Israel, in 1942 of the 4,000 Jews who settled in mandatory Palestine, 450 left. And even in the 1950s, when Israel had one of its greatest increases in population from immigration, outward migration was recognized as a problem. In 1953 the governor of the central bank of Israel, David Horowitz, argued that economic conditions would have to improve for the trend [of emigration] to change, implicitly recognizing that the pull of the homeland was weaker than the prospect of economic success. The discussion of emigration was and is perhaps a sign of Zionist insecurity. If Israel is truly the Jewish homeland, why do so many Jews and Israelis fail to see it that way? The Jerusalem Post notes a more practical concern, “Israelis are acutely aware that the future of Israel as both a Jewish and democratic country depends on maintaining a solid Jewish majority.”
How significant is the issue of outward migration? Despite a plethora of articles (see for ex.) trumpeting a decline in emigration, the number of Israelis who leave exceeds new immigration. The statistics are opaque, Israel doesn’t record or perhaps doesn’t know the intent of those leaving. Recent analysis suggests that Israeli immigration to the UK surpassed British immigration to Israel by a ratio of three to two. Israel’s US Embassy estimates that between 750,000 and one million Israelis live in the United States.
But what is more important is that almost 40% of young Israelis have expressed an interest in moving their lives elsewhere. They live in a Jewish homeland, and yet they want to wander.
The primary reason young Israelis give for leaving is their inability to earn a decent living. Some cite Israel’s cronyism and shady business deals, they either can’t or don’t choose to participate in a job market that is ‘fixed.’ One can hope that these young ex Israelis, having seen the corrosive effects of tribal rule, will be less inclined to treat the rules of their adopted countries with contempt.
One mother whose sons emigrated opined that it is the ‘finest’ who are leaving. “They are good, high-quality people who can contribute….who are leaving… They stand out abroad. They are considered smart and successful compared to the Canadians.” (Apparently supremacism is present in Israel.) Available statistics support her claim that more educated Israelis leave in greater numbers and this may be because they are the most able to find good jobs elsewhere. In 2017, 5.8% of Israelis with undergraduate degrees had been living abroad for at least three consecutive years. For Israelis with PhDs, it was 11%, a loss of one in nine PhDs. See for more details on the disproportionate Israeli brain drain phenomenon.
To counteract this trend, in 2011 Israel launched “The Israel Brain Gain Program” to help overseas Israelis find jobs at home. Apparently the targeted Israelis were not amenable to returning to their ‘homeland’ and the program was abandoned as a failure.
Does the lack of a Jewish identity cause young Israelis to make decisions based on economics? Tomer Treves writes that people are leaving “because of what became of the Zionist idea. The moment the tie with Israel is weakened, the point of remaining is measured by the quality of life, and Israel is not in a good place from that point of view…” Treves posits that the most important factor in loyalty to Israel is “where on our scale of identity we place Jewish identity. [When the] decision to live in Israel is no longer based on values,” by which he means ‘identifying as Jewish’ “economic parameters enter the equation.” But this argument assumes that loyalty to Israel and a Jewish identity are the same. Those who leave are not renouncing their identity as Jewish, instead they are rejecting the notion that to be Jewish means living in Israel.
Do these recently departed Israelis retain their ties to Israel? There was an interesting attempt to answer this question by the right wing organization, American Israel Council. AIC sent a questionnaire to Israeli immigrants in the United States that asked who they would support in the event of an Israeli/American rift, whether American Jews (even if they disagreed with Israel’s policies) had an obligation to defend Israel publicly and the extent to which they believed American Jews influenced America’s policies.
Haaretz noted that “two sensitive and potentially explosive” issues have “plagued” American Jews and their relationship to Israel. “The first relates to claims of dual allegiance” to both Israel and the United States; the other “concerns the pro-Israel, American Jewish lobby.” The now widely utilized IHRA definition of anti Semitism provides that accusations of dual loyalty are anti Semitic. Yet a pro Zionist body asked about these issues in a manner designed to elicit responses showing loyalty to Israel. Perhaps insecurity about the extent to which present day emigrants support Israel was the impetus for the AIC survey.
Israeli Professor Tamar Hermann worries that the children of Israeli emigrants will not be Israeli, instead they “become Americans, Canadians or Europeans… Israeliness is generally not sustained in the second generation.” It is not only ‘Israeliness’ that is not sustained in the second generation. This is a hallmark of immigration in general, and in Israel itself. See, for ex. Is there something about Israel that makes it troublesome that the children of those who leave will likely identify with their new land?
Initially, Israel as a homeland was an attractive concept for Jews who felt victimized by widespread anti Semitism. Now it seems that emigrating Israelis are following in the steps of their ancestors, and not the mythical ones to whom God supposedly gave title to land. In the past, and despite the efforts of some to assimilate that were ultimately unsuccessful, the Jews maintained tribal rather than national ties. Young Israelis who move in search of better opportunities may have similarly limited loyalty to their ‘homeland’ and are simply behaving as wanderers.
Introduction by GA: The DC Jewish Dyke march has been immersed in controversy, its organisers banned marchers from carrying rainbow Star of David flags. In the following interview Jill Raney a “mildly radical Southern queer Jewish feminist” interviews IfNotNow DC, a community partner of DC Dyke March. I have provided commentary for the interview, deconstructing and exposing the duplicitous nature of the Jewish anti Zionist argument. This interview is a crucial window into the Jewish Identitarian discourse and it provides proof, yet again, that not every Jew is an Einstein and as the documentation of the march reveals, not every Jewish woman is Gal Gadot.
Jewish dykes are welcome at DC Dyke March! Nationalist symbols are not.
GA: The question is whether Goyim are also welcome at this Purim celebration.
Q: Why does it sometimes seem as though liberation for Jews and liberation for Palestinians are at odds with each other?
GA: The obvious answer is that the two calls have nothing in common. Jews are liberated and Palestinians are oppressed by the Jewish state. ‘Jews’ and Palestinians have little or nothing in common politically.
A: Because white supremacy wants to divide us! Antisemitism structurally makes intersectional organizing more difficult by making Jews feel afraid of non-Jews. Zionism and the State of Israel are important to some Jews, but the particular way that the State of Israel was founded caused catastrophic harm to Palestinians. Antisemitism and white supremacy have pitted Jews and Palestinians against each other, and we say enough!
GA: Did “antisemitism and white supremacy” pit Jews and Palestinians against each other?NO! It is the Jewish State that commits crimes against the Palestinians in the name of the Jewish people and with the almost universal support of world Jewry and its institutions. It is blatantly duplicitous to blame ‘White’ goyim for Israel’s crimes, although the accusation is symptomatic of the Jewish Left call.
Q: What is antisemitism?
A: “Originating in European Christianity, antisemitism is the form of ideological oppression that targets Jews. In Europe and the United States it has functioned to protect the prevailing economic system and the almost exclusively Christian ruling class by diverting blame for hardship onto Jews.”
GA: When you refer to the ‘Christian Ruling class’ who do you have in mind? Are you thinking of Goldman Sachs, or perhaps you mean George Soros or the Kushner Family, or might you mean Haim Saban, a major funder of the Democratic Party or perhaps you are thinking of Sheldon Adelson who takes care of both Bibi and Trump’s campaigns? Who, I wonder do the IfNotNow’s Dykes intend to fool by this deception?
Q: What is Anti-Zionism?
A: “‘Anti-Zionism’ is a loose term referring to criticism of the current policies of the Israeli state, and/or moral, ethical, or religious criticism of the idea of a Jewish nation-state. There has been debate, criticism and opposition to Zionism within Jewish thought for as long as it has existed…
GA: This is revealing. In the good old days, anti Zionism was understood to be opposition to the ‘right’ of the Jewish State to form a Jewish homeland at the expense of others. But as a result of the domination by Jewish groups of the anti Zionist discourse anti Zionism has been diminished into just “criticism of the current policies of the Israeli state.” Here, we are treated to an exposition of the controlled opposition apparatus.
There are also many non-Jewish anti-Zionists whose perspectives may be informed by moral criticism of the policies of the Israeli government, problems with the impact of Zionist thinking in Israel on non-Jewish residents, and/or a criticism of ethno-nationalism more broadly.”
Q: What is the difference between antisemitism and Anti-Zionism?
A: Antisemitism is hatred of Jews for being Jews, also known as bigotry.
Anti-Zionism is criticism of the actions and policies of the State of Israel and/or criticism of the idea of a Jewish nation-state.
GA: Once again, under her definition, Anti Zionism is not the rejection of the Zionist agenda i.e., the erection of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It is merely criticism of Israel’s policies.
Q: What is IfNotNow’s position on Zionism?
A: A principle of our movement is: “We focus on what unites rather than what divides us…We do not take a unified stance on BDS, Zionism or the question of statehood. We work together to end American Jewish support for the occupation.”
GA: IfNotNow could not be clearer, it is not even anti Zionist. It only opposes the occupation. In other words, it supports the existence of the Jewish State, and criticises only some of it policies.
Zionism in practice causes many harms, but Zionism as a conceptual movement for Jewish liberation, and Israel as a place where Jewish people live and visit, are dear to many Jews. Most mainstream Jewish institutions assume all Jews must be Zionist and even hide from young Jews the reality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, so many Jewish dykes are unfamiliar with the harms Zionism has caused to Palestinians. We can take seriously the harms Zionism causes to Palestinians and to some Jews, and also welcome Jewish dykes who hold a variety of perspectives on Israel and Zionism.
GA: This is consistent with the Likud Party’s philosophy. Making plain that IfNotNow is a left field Jewish Hasbara project. We do not need Jewish “progressives” to advise us that “Zionism as a conceptual movement for Jewish liberation, and Israel as a place where Jewish people live and visit, are dear to many Jews.” This is what the ADL are there for .
Q: I want to show that I’m a proud Jewish dyke! Are there things I should think about?
A: Jewish dykes deserve to be proud of their Jewishness at DC Dyke March. Certain symbols of Jewishness have been co-opted by the pinkwashing movement, an effort to conceal Israel’s harms against Palestinians. Palestinian dykes deserve to be proud of their Palestinian-ness at DC Dyke March too, and we believe that Jewish and Palestinian dykes can celebrate shared liberation at DC Dyke March. Is it frustrating that Jews are uniquely expected to consider another marginalized group’s needs before showing our own pride? Absolutely! It is very frustrating that Israel violates Palestinians’ human rights in the name of Jews around the world.
GA: Just out of interest, is the notion of ‘Dyke’ a form of sexually orientated stance on human rights or is it a well informed position on global politics? Would the DC Jewish Dyke organisers who are defined sexually (as queers) and racially (as Jews) welcome Aryan Dykes to their kosher protest? If not, why not?
Q: What happened at Chicago Dyke March in 2017 and why were people upset about it?
A: A few Jewish dykes who were associated with A Wider Bridge, an Israel lobbying organization that engages in pinkwashing, brought a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the middle of it, which looks a lot like an Israeli flag, a Zionist symbol. These dykes purposefully disrupted the march and harassed attendees during the rally. Organizers of the march, including other Jewish dykes, asked them to stop their disruptive, harassing behavior and to put the flag away. They told press that they felt as though they could not be openly Jewish at Chicago Dyke March. This caused many Jewish dykes who heard about the event to worry that they would be unwelcome or asked to hide their Jewishness in dyke spaces. The dykes associated with A Wider Bridge took advantage of common public misunderstanding of the difference between being proudly Jewish, and carrying a flag that represented Zionism. This can be confusing because the Jewish star has been co-opted by Zionism and the State of Israel.
GA: What entitles these Jewish Dykes to decide for other Jewish (Zionist) Lesbians how to identify and what symbols represent them? Their statements here provide a window into the tyrannical and vile nature of the Jewish Identitarian discourse.
Q: What is pinkwashing?
A: Pinkwashing is the practice of a country or corporation presenting itself as queer-friendly and progressive in order to downplay their negative behavior. The State of Israel practices pinkwashing by promoting itself as a safe haven for queer and trans people. This distracts attention from Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights, erases queer and trans Palestinians and some queer and trans Jews who don’t have a safe haven in Israel, and promotes the Islamophobic and anti-Arab racist narrative that Palestinian queers must be saved from Arab and Muslim society.
GA: Is this true? Do we really turn a blind eye to Israel’s criminality simply because it pretends to be gay friendly? Do we fail to see that Israel locks Palestinians in open air prisons because Israel pretends to be LGBTQ paradise? Sorry to deliver the news. The Anti Israeli Pinkwash campaign is a classic controlled opposition apparatus. It is there to rehabilitate the moral validity of the Jewish Identitarian Left and it does so at the expense of the Palestinians. It diverts the struggle from the essential Palestinian cause of the right of return to irrelevant Jew-related issues to do with queer politics.
Q: Why is IfNotNow cosponsoring DC Dyke March?
A: One of IfNotNow’s principles as a movement is “We show up for others.We stand with other movements, such as those working for racial, economic, and gender justice. We are building a world in which American Jews use our unique position to fight for the liberation of all people.” We are also here to show up for ourselves: there are a lot of Jewish dykes who are members of IfNotNow DC, and our work for queer and trans liberation and for Jewish liberation are deeply connected.
GA: Since when do people who care for ‘all people’ dictate to others how they may or may not identify and what symbols to avoid? IfNotNow ought to be honest and admit that they really care for the Jews who think as they do. We are dealing here with an Orwellian synagogue.
Q: Can we talk more about the rainbow flag with the Star of David in the middle? What’s wrong with bringing that flag to DC Dyke March, and what are my other options?
A: The flag that caused so much consternation back in 2017 was a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the middle that used the same proportions and line art as the Star of David in the middle of the Israeli flag. It was very specifically an Israeli flag and a rainbow flag merged together, a specifically Zionist symbol, not a neutral symbol of Jewish pride. DC Dyke March is a liberatory space for all dykes, and that includes liberation from violence, from cops, from militarism, and from nationalism. “We are asking people to not bring nationalist symbols because violent nationalism does not fit with our vision of queer liberation,” says a recent piece from DC Dyke March organizers.
So DC Dyke March welcomes Jewish dykes and does not welcome nationalist symbols. What symbols of Jewish dyke pride are available to us? Paint a rainbow Star of David on your face! Scrawl the words YIDDISHKEIT DYKES across a rainbow flag, or a lesbian pride flag, a bi pride flag, an ace pride flag, a trans pride flag!
Or if Yiddishkeit isn’t your thing, take your pride flag of choice and put a big menorah on it, or a Hamsa or a chai or a pomegranate, or a cool dinosaur wearing Star of David sunglasses and eating a bagel!
Wear a yarmulke, your rainbow tallis, maybe booty shorts that say Jewish Dyke across the ass! There are so many options! Go wild! See you there!
GA: The Jewish Dykes certainly provide a list of kosher symbols. I could add a few: what about putting matzo ballsin your bikini? Or gefilte fish in the bra? Maybe noodles dripping from armpits? I better stop now before I get too exited.
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