Jewish anti-Zionism

Jewish anti-Zionism is as old as Zionism itself, and enjoyed widespread support in the Jewish community until World War II.^[1] The Jewish community is not a single united group, and responses vary among Jewish groups. One of the principal divisions is that between secular Jews and religious Jews. Reasons for secular opposition to the Zionist movement are very different from those of Haredi Jews. Opposition to a Jewish state has changed over time and has taken on a diverse spectrum of religious, ethical and political positions.

The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed to the present day, including the more recent and disputed relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.^[2] Other views regarding the various forms of anti-Zionism have also been discussed and debated.^[3][4][5]

Before 1948

There is a long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism that has opposed the Zionist project from its origins. The Bundists, the Autonomists, Reform Judaism and the Agude regarded the rationale and territorial ambitions of Zionism as flawed. Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, targeted the Zionist movement and managed to close down their offices and place Zionist literature under a ban. However, Soviet officials themselves often disapproved of their anti-Zionist zeal.^[6][7] Orthodox Judaism, which grounds civic responsibilities and patriotic feelings in religion, was strongly opposed to Zionism because, though the two shared the same values, Zionism espoused nationalism in secular fashion, and used "Zion", "Jerusalem", "Land of Israel", "redemption" and "ingathering of exiles" as literal rather than sacred terms, endeavouring to achieve them in this world.^[8] Some Orthodox Jews also opposed the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, as contradicting divine will.^[9] By contrast, reform Jews rejected Judaism as a national or ethnic identity and renounced any messianic expectations of the advent of a Jewish state.^[10]

Religious

Hope for return to the land of Israel is embodied in the content of the Jewish religion (see Kibbutz Galuyot). Aliyah, the Hebrew word meaning "ascending" or "going up", is the word used to describe religious Jewish return to Israel, and has been used since ancient times. From the Middle Ages and onwards, many famous rabbis and often their followers returned to the land of Israel. These have included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris, Isaac Luria, Yosef Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk among others. For Jews in the Diaspora Eretz Israel was revered in a religious sense. They prayed, and thought of the return, as being fulfilled in a messianic age.^[11] Return remained a recurring theme for generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers, which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", as well as the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).

Following Jewish Enlightenment however, Reform Judaism dropped many traditional beliefs, including aliyah, as incompatible with modern life within the Diaspora. Later, Zionism re-kindled the concept of aliyah in an ideological and political sense, parallel with traditional religious belief; it was used to increase the Jewish population in the Holy Land by immigration. It remains a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. Support for aliyah does not always equal immigration; however, most of the world's Jewish population resides within the Diaspora. Support for the modern Zionist movement is not universal, and, as a result, some religious Jews, as well as some secular Jews, do not support Zionism. Non-Zionist Jews are not necessarily anti-Zionists, although some are. Generally however, Zionism does have the support of the majority of the Jewish religious organizations, with support from segments of the Orthodox movement, and most of the Conservative, and more recently, the Reform movement.^[12][13][14]

Many Hasidic rabbis oppose the creation of a Jewish state. The leader of the Satmar Hasidic group, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's book, VaYoel Moshe, published in 1958, expounds one Orthodox position on Zionism, based on a literal form of midrash (biblical interpretation). Citing to Tractate Kesubos 111a^[15] of the Talmud Teitelbaum states that God and the Jewish people exchanged three oaths at the time of the Jews' exile from ancient Israel, forbidding the Jewish people from massively immigrating to the Land of Israel, and from rebelling against the nations of the world.

Secular

Prior to the Second World War many Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful and unrealistic movement.^[16] Many liberals during the European Enlightenment had argued that Jews should enjoy full equality only because they pledge their singular loyalty to their nation-state and entirely assimilate to the local, national culture; they called for the "regeneration" of the Jewish people in exchange for rights. Those liberal Jews who accepted integration and assimilation principles saw Zionism as a threat to efforts to facilitate Jewish citizenship and equality within the European nation-state context.^[17]

The Jewish Anti-Zionist League, in Egypt, was a Communist-influenced anti-Zionist league in the years 1946–1947. In Israel, there are several Jewish anti-Zionist organisations and politicians; many of these are related to Matzpen.

After World War II and the creation of Israel

Attitudes changed during and following the war. In May 1942, before the full revelation of the Holocaust, the Biltmore Program proclaimed a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy of a "homeland"^[18] with its demand "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth". Opposition to official Zionism's firm, unequivocal stand caused some prominent Zionists to establish their own party, Ichud (Unification), which advocated an Arab – Jewish Federation in Palestine. Opposition to the Biltmore Program also led to the founding of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism.^[18]

The full knowledge of the Holocaust altered the views of many who critiqued Zionism before 1948, including the British journalist Isaac Deutscher, a socialist and lifelong atheist who nevertheless emphasized the importance of his Jewish heritage. Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, arguing for Israel's establishment as a "historic necessity" to provide a refuge for the surviving Jews of Europe.

Religious

Neturei Karta call for dismantling of the state of Israel at AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, May 2005

Most Orthodox religious groups have accepted and actively support the State of Israel, even if they have not adopted the "Zionist" ideology. The World Agudath Israel party (founded in Poland) has, at times, participated in Israeli government coalitions. Most religious Zionists hold pro-Israel views from a right-wing viewpoint. The main exceptions are Hasidic groups such as Satmar Hasidim, which have about 100,000 adherents worldwide and numerous different, smaller Hasidic groups, unified in America in the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada and Israel in the Edah HaChareidis.^[19][20]

According to Jonathan Judaken, 'numerous Jewish traditions have insisted that preservation of what is most precious about Judaism and Jewishness "demands" a principled anti-Zionism or post-Zionism.' This tradition dwindled in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the establishment of Israel but is still alive in religious groups such as Neturei Karta and among many intellectuals of Jewish background in Israel and the diaspora, such as George Steiner, Tony Judt and Baruch Kimmerling.^[21]

Secular

Noam Chomsky has reported a change in the boundaries of what are considered Zionist and anti-Zionist views.^[22] In 1947, in his youth, Chomsky's support for a socialist binational state, in conjunction with his opposition to any semblance of a theocratic system of governance in Israel, was at the time considered well within the mainstream of secular Zionism; by 1987, it lands him solidly in the anti-Zionist camp.^[23]

Alvin H. Rosenfeld in his much discussed essay, Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,^[24] claims that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist".^[25] Rosenfeld's general claims are:

1. "At a time when the de-legitimization and, ultimately, the eradication of Israel is a goal being voiced with mounting fervor by the enemies of the Jewish state, it is more than disheartening to see Jews themselves adding to the vilification. That some do so in the name of Judaism itself makes the nature of their assault all the more grotesque."
2. "Their contributions to what's becoming normative discourse are toxic. They're helping to make [antisemitic] views about the Jewish state respectable – for example, that it's a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."

Some Jewish organizations oppose Zionism as an integral part of their anti-imperialism.^{[26][27][28][29]} Today, some secular Jews, particularly socialists and Marxists, continue to oppose the State of Israel on anti-imperialist and human rights grounds. Many oppose it as a form of nationalism, which they argue to be a product of capitalist societies. One secular anti-Zionist group today is the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, a socialist, anti-war, and anti-imperialist organization that calls for "the dismantling of Israeli apartheid return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine."^[30]

References

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