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PORTSIDE CULTURE

CAUSE AT HEART: SOCIALISTS & THE ABOLITION OF ANTISEMITISM  
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Alan Wald
September 1, 2024
Against the Current
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_ In his omnibus review of these five books, reviewer Wald shows how
these authors offer valuable insights into "how and why the abolition
of both antisemitism and Zionism are presently intertwined." _

People pay their respects at a memorial to the victims of a mass
shooting in front of the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation
in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2018, Photo
daveynin from United States, CC BY 2.0

 

“…the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe.”
—Frantz Fanon, _Black Skin, White Masks,_ 1952

WRITTEN IN HONOR OF NOAM CHOMSKY

_Safety Through Solidarity:
A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism_
Shane Burley and Ben Lorber.
Brooklyn: Melville House
ISBN: 9781685890919

_Zionism: An Emotional State_
Derek J. Penslar
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813576091

_The Threshold of Dissent:
A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism_
Marjorie N. Feld
New York: New York University Press
ISBN: 9781479829316

_Tolerance is a Wasteland:
Palestine and the Culture of Denial_
By Saree Makdisi
Oakland, California: California University Press
ISBN: 9780520409699

_Colonizing Palestine:
The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba_
By Areej Sabbagh-Khoury
Stanford: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9781503642041

I. The Latest Form of Jew-Baiting

FOR DECADES, a bogus accusation of antisemitism was tolerated by too
many people as the two-bit rhetorical ruse of pro-Zionists to shield
their nationalist project from scrutiny by Arab and especially
Palestinian anti-colonial challengers in the Middle East.

In the United States, it also served to divert attention from
criticisms of evidence of Israeli state racism, occupation, and
expansionism, critiques articulated by small Marxist groups and found
in books by noteworthy intellectuals such as the Jewish linguist Noam
Chomsky and Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said. The aim was to
manufacture a consensus in intellectual life by marginalizing
opposition.

Over the last decade, this gravely misguided stratagem of
ostracization was reworked to put a new generation of anti-Zionist
political candidates in the crosshairs of more conservative rivals in
elections. With the growing popularity of British Labour Party leader
Jeremy Corbyn, and U.S. congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, it
was a line of attack that grew ever more frequent and more pronounced
in the public sphere.

Then came October 7, 2023 and a metamorphosis that would make Ovid
salivate. This evil genie of slander, long loosed from its bottle, was
instantaneously hijacked by more powerful and reactionary forces and
reshaped for their own needs.

In April 2024, the revamped falsehood hit peak cringe when televised
to millions as the leitmotif of the House of Representatives Hearings
on Antisemitism. There it operated as gonzo demagoguery servicing the
Congressional friends of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy
theory,(1)
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some of whom are also arms-length fellow travelers of Holocaust
deniers Nick Fuentes and Ye (formerly known as Kanye West).

Liberals were intimidated, and the brains of viewers were scorched by
a fiery stream of false and misleading claims. Most gushed from the
mouth of MAGA flamethrower Rep. Elise Stefanik — an internet troll
disguised as a politician.(2)
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In a mind-boggling feat of political alchemy, antisemites became the
ones defining “antisemitism.”

The chief accusation was against young protestors opposed to the
Israeli-U.S. collateral murder in Gaza — students of many
ethnicities but who were disproportionately Jewish and mostly
anti-Zionist.(3)
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These demonstrators were supposedly guilty of Jew-hatred, one of the
most odious forms of racism, according to the vanguard of Right-wing
Republicans.

Such a branding of anti-racist activists as “antisemites” was
mainly achieved through unreliable misconstructions and inflations of
fringe behavior. After each hearing, these ran in the press as an
endless loop of allegations without fact-checked evidence.

The same genre of intellectual and ethical malpractice reverberated
among panicky administrators at colleges and universities and quickly
became routine. Thanks to the browbeating of these mostly cowering
enablers by wealthy corporate types who are donors and regents, the
news is filled with inflated and embellished concerns about “Jewish
safety.”

The reference point for this is mostly to elite campuses such as
Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, where Jews are very
well represented among the faculty, administration, and student
body.(4)
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While few of these alarmist allegations pass the smell test, they are
repetitively used to bureaucratically quash dissent even as fidelity
to “academic freedom” and “free speech” are synchronically
proclaimed with straight faces.(5)
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In part because of the extensive documented history of confronting
antisemitism, Jews have been disproportionately present as activists
and leaders in radical movements.(6)
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The past two decades have witnessed the considerable growth of
organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now that are
pledged to conduct the fight against antisemitism in solidarity with
the campaign for Palestinian rights.

As I write, Jewish students are conspicuous among those who have been
physically assaulted by police on campus, and Jewish faculty are
prominent among those excluded from academic positions–not on
scholarly merit but due to their non-conformist political views.(7)
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And just like that, antisemitism-baiting has become the latest form of
Jew-baiting.

Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now have been prominent in campus
encampments including the nearly month-long one at the University of
Michigan.
II. Social Justice Activism as “Jew-hatred”?

Simultaneously, a Right-wing campaign led by sanctimonious play-actors
and abetted by centrist liberals, some of them Jewish, is manipulating
accusations of alleged Jew-hatred to roll back progressive advances in
education for people of color and women.

George Soros (born György Schwartz), a billionaire Jewish Holocaust
survivor, is a primary target in nothing less than a classic
antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Having given most of his fortune to the Open Society Foundations,
Soros is depicted as a puppet master financing the Gaza ceasefire
demonstrations and promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
activities.(8)
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Other claims of collusion between an academic Left that is
substantially Jewish, and a rise in Jew-hatred, are amply visible in
the media. For example, _New York Times_ columnist Bret Stephens puts
the blame for Jew-hatred on scholarly fields associated with
anti-racism: “the real problem lies with some of the main
convictions and currents of today’s academia: intersectionality,
critical theory, post-colonialism, ethnic studies and other concepts
that may not seem antisemitic on their face but tend to politicize
classrooms and cast Jews as privileged and oppressive.”(9)
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There are even some Jewish publications, such as _Tablet,_ linking
Left-wing social activism as a whole to “the current climate of
antisemitism on college campuses”:

_“Whether wearing a hijab or a Star of David, SJP [Students for
Justice in Palestine] anti-Israel activists are not simply freaks who
demonstrate in favor of Hamas. They are mainstream products of the
monoculture of the academic left. They are similar, indeed identical,
to the social justice, Black Lives Matter, climate, gender,
decolonizing, and woke activists who have been wreaking havoc on the
U.S. and tearing apart our institutions for years.”_(10)
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To future generations, the persecution of those who should be honored,
and the incendiary manipulation of hyperbolic concerns about Jewish
safety on campuses to disempower people of color, will certainly seem
abominable. Yet the alarmingly reactionary implications of the new
normalization of the duplicity around “Jewish safety,” coexisting
with the literal “genocide denial” perpetrated by the same people,
can hardly be overestimated.

This is practically a Defcon 1 moment, as we are on the brink of a
whole new era, possibly a global shift toward chauvinistic
nationalisms, and the coming days are crucial. Authentic antisemitism
from the Right is escalating, even as we mostly read journalistic
analysis of “Left antisemitism” — with anecdotal lunacy
continuously dialed up as click-bait. The Right is exploiting
Israel’s problems and manipulating many Jewish-Americans for its own
reactionary and antisemitic agenda.

Trying to counterpose “Jewish safety” to those working for social
progress around race and gender is a sure way to make Bret Stephens’
fear of Jews being seen as “oppressive and privileged” come true.

Even with the imminence of Right-wing parties coming to power, sham
accusations of Jew-hatred are playing a role in driving a wedge
between Jews and the Left that is all the more disconcerting as they
are spewed out by known antisemites in MAGA and the National Rally
party (formerly the National Front in France, which has fascist
roots).

Meanwhile, much of the U.S. Jewish establishment is in an alliance
with some of these dangerous elements for the aim of policing opinion
(especially of young Jews) in respect to maintaining a false narrative
of Israel’s history and security needs. To be sure, Jews are not to
blame for antisemitism, but individual Jews and organizations can
collaborate with antisemites out of perceived selfish short-term
needs.

This is a maneuver that goes back for decades, as socialist Peter
Seidman noted in a pamphlet on _Socialists and the Fight Against
Anti-Semitism_ published in 1973: “The desire of the Zionist leaders
to win the support of U.S. imperialism for the Jewish state in
Palestine is what caused them to act in ways [in the 1930s] so
detrimental to the real needs and interests of the Jewish
people.”(11)
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Among the most sickening examples today is the embrace of Christian
nationalists who fetishize support for Israel due to their belief in
the country’s key role in “The End Times,” at which Jews must
control Jerusalem and then choose between conversion or death —
which means the annihilation of Judaism.

At the same time, these spiritual heirs of the KKK regard Jewish
people as “the worst of the worst” because of paranoia about
George Soros and their fantasy that Jews are behind the growing threat
of immigrants, gender equality, and people of color.(12)
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Another example of a dangerous alliance with antisemitism is that of
Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister, who backs
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen for president of France.(13)
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Any confusion as to the definition, actual causes, and real targets of
Jew-hatred will hinder the obligatory task of uprooting antisemitism
wherever it appears. Militant socialists understand that the rise of
racism in general — and not the (mostly justified) criticisms of the
Israeli state — is the foremost enemy of Jewish safety.

We must find our own forms of abolishing antisemitism, independent of
groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Taking the lead in
this effort, in our press and in social movement activism, we must
provide conceptual clarity and effective tactics that reach out. Our
object is to convert people who presently have little understanding of
the vile history of Jew-hatred as well as the unconscionable treatment
of Palestinians.

Let’s be clear: Just as the European Right is out to set European
Jews and Muslims against each other, so the U.S. Right is aiming to
use Jews for the same purpose regarding the social movements of people
of color as well as discrediting efforts to halt the genocide in Gaza.
Both this development and actual antisemitism must be contested at
once.

To help untangle the existing confusion, there are five new books, all
far above mid, one of which can help us name and locate antisemitism
as it relates to the present, and the others which provide evidence
for _the necessity of anti-Zionism as part of the same struggle._ That
is to say, in the present context we can most effectively counter
antisemitism in connection with defeating Zionism (along with other
forms of racism and discrimination).

In what follows, I will not provide a soup-to-nuts assessment of each
book; there is considerable overlap among them, and some matters are
expounded where I lack expertise to offer a useful appraisal. Instead,
I will spotlight the components that are most worthwhile in examining
how and why the abolition of both antisemitism and Zionism are
presently intertwined.

The first two volumes, by Jewish authors Shane Burley/Ben Lorber and
Derek Penslar, are of a more general character, providing probing and
insightful surveys of the complicated landscapes of antisemitic and
Zionist ideas and activities. The last three, by Jewish author
Marjorie N. Feld, and Palestinians Saree Makdisi and Areej
Sabbagh-Khoury, are comparatively focused and treated more briefly.

These home in on the historical counter-narrative of admirable U.S.
anti-Zionist thought at which accusations of antisemitism have long
been trained; the Zionist propaganda strategy of “denial by
affirmation” to mask the history of Palestine/Israel so that U.S.
citizens (especially Jews) end up supporting a system in contradiction
to their basic values; and the devastating analysis of the failed
attempt to reconcile socialist ideals with nationalist practice in the
colonization of Palestine.

Together the five volumes provide footholds of information and
argument that help make sense of the true locus of antisemitism and
the deceptive character of Zionism. In that sense they help explain
why socialists follow Frantz Fanon’s warning about the bond of
hatred between the antisemite and the “negrophobe.”

We do not define the enemies of social justice by any ethnicity,
religion, nationality or physical features; only by their opposition
in practice to the quest for a way of life that ensures universal
equal rights, security, freedom of expression, and workers’ control
over production — which we call socialism.

III. Danger on the Right

One never-to-be-forgotten event underscores many critical features of
antisemitism’s most pernicious and present form. On the morning of
Saturday, 27 October 2018, white nationalist Robert Bowers posted an
instructive message on an alt-right social networking service just
before advancing toward Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue: “HIAS
[Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] likes to bring invaders in that kill
our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.
Screw your optics, I’m going in.”(14)
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The bearded, heavy-set, 46-year old white man then fired a Colt AR-15
semi-automatic rifle and three Glock .357 Sig semi-automatic pistols
for twenty minutes, killing eleven and wounding six Jewish worshippers
at the morning Shabbat services.

This atrocity clearly underscores how antisemitism is now back in the
center of U.S. racism. For a while it seemed as if Jew-hatred had been
significantly displaced by Islamophobia, but as Right-wing forces have
strengthened around the world, antisemitism has also revived.

Bowers’ was not merely a personal act born of a Jew-hatred from
“time immemorial.” It was the outcome of a current culture rife
with conspiracy theories, the pillar of antisemitic beliefs and
ideology. Burley and Lorber’s _Safety Through Solidarity,_ the
product of two committed activists and researchers of U.S. fascism and
antisemitism, is more than an unerring guide to this most threatening
aspect.

In 355 pages the authors take hold of the entire subject of
antisemitism and attack it from every side. Theirs is a tome that
includes the history of antisemitism as it progressed from pagan Roman
times to the Christian era to the rise and consolidation of
capitalism. At that point antisemitism, evolving from a religious to a
racial basis, was undoubtedly part of the ideological fabric of
reactionary and oppressive movements in society.

Then the authors pursue its persistence all the way through its uses
in the Red Scare and its continuation in white nationalist movements
and the Christian Right. What comes through above all is that,
although antisemitism has persisted for centuries, its roots are
social and historical.(15)
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This means that, like other forms of modern racism and oppression, it
can be understood, fought, and changed by political action.

That point is critical, because the alternative strategies — such as
relying on powerful protectors or conquering another’s land to build
an imagined fortress of security — have brought us to the present
moment of crisis. Jews who are justifiably worried about persecution
and violence are bitterly divided among themselves in a way that
increases the danger from the Right.

The book is held together through a rather loose narrative arc that
works effectively in providing both finely reported history and
sometimes intimate accounts that tell the personal stories of
individuals (including the authors). Despite the rather agonizing
topics, Burley and Lorber maintain a cool, unruffled analysis,
summarizing their main points in a cogent way for a general audience.

As one might expect of relatively younger militants, Burley and Lorber
propose a frankly “intersectional” methodology to combat
Jew-hatred, inasmuch as it is one kind of oppression interlocked with
others. Thus, the battle to extirpate Islamophobia, anti-Black racism,
antisemitism, and all types of ethnic and gender discrimination must
be addressed as a collective project.

This does not mean that all modes of bigotry are interchangeable. The
authors are explicit that oppressions do not function that way;
compared to African Americans, “at this historic moment, Jews do not
face structural levels of police violence, poverty, and other commonly
understood effects of state-sponsored institutional racism as Jews.”
(45)

Nevertheless, Jews can be subject to hate crimes and personal
prejudice, and the authors embrace the tradition of Jewish Marxists
and socialists committed to the strategy expressed in the title of
their book, “safety through solidarity.”

IV. Quandaries on the Left

Burley and Lorber are far from oblivious to the Left’s own
quandaries. The text cites instances of antisemitism that have
episodically appeared in radical circles: ugly statements by Russian
anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon;
post-World War II purges in the Soviet bloc where “Zionism” was a
stand-in for “Jew;” and the appearance of dubious
“anti-Zionist” figures such as Gilad Atzmon (an Israeli-born
British saxophonist and author who has expressed openly antisemitic
views) and Alison Weir (a U.S. journalist whose antisemitic subtexts
are more veiled), both of whom were repudiated by the Jewish Left.(16)
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The book also enunciates a harsh critique of the manner in which some
on the Left responded to October 7: “On social media and at some
rallies across the country, some activists uncritically celebrated
Hamas’ overall attack as ‘resistance,’ minimizing Israeli
civilian victims into a homogenous category of ‘settlers,’
unworthy of solidarity or support.” (206)

The most disturbing episode, however, may be Lorber’s revelation of
the pain and shame he felt at a radical political meeting where
blatant antisemitic statements were made promoting conspiracy
theories: “They painted a picture of an immensely powerful
multi-tentacled global Zionist adversary, working behind the scenes to
stir up anti-Blackness and global repression.” (179)

Complicating the matter was that the audience, which was universally
opposed to antisemitism, didn’t seem to _recognize_ these remarks
for what they were; Lorber “worried that if he named antisemitism,
he would be accused of defending Israel’s oppression of
Palestinians.” (180)

Of course, the experience he recounts is similar to those of any one
of us who have been in a pro-Israel audience — or even just among
friends and family! — and feared objecting to obviously false claims
about Palestine because that would elicit denunciations of oneself as
an antisemite or self-hating Jew.

Nevertheless, this element of intimidation in Left culture, whether
from ignorance or knee-jerk defensiveness, must surely be eliminated
if we are to have a movement that effectively moves toward the future
we want.

Most antisemitism (as opposed to insensitivity) on the Left is
probably either at the level of the individual or at the margins, but
vile notions about global Jewish conspiracies must still be
politically defeated by socialists. The relationship between the
United States and Israel, for example, is not dictated by the Israel
Lobby (which of course includes the seven-million strong Christians
United for Israel) but is a self-interested collaboration between two
capitalist states.

Naturally the socialist Left cannot follow the Zionists’ script in
defining antisemitism, any more than it can regarding their command to
“condemn Hamas” — when the Israeli state firstly requires
condemnation for its human rights violations of a far greater
magnitude.

Still, we need to figure out our socialist method of rigorously
differentiating between an actual Jew-hating slogan or action (such as
“Hitler was right!” or harassing a person simply because they
appear to be Jewish), and the plethora of ignorant, ultra-Left,
provocative, and even deeply stupid behaviors that have always
appeared in radical movements.(17)
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On the other hand, there is a hurdle for radicals in dealing with
those among us who are not just disagreeing on facts but unable to
perceive the same reality — for example, those who proclaim the need
for “peace” in the Middle East in a manner that implies political
capitulation by the weaker population.

And there’s a “both-sides-ism” approach that doesn’t work in
Palestine when there are vast differences in the situations of
oppressors and the oppressed. Talk of “two states for two peoples”
may sound good in the abstract, but _not_ if one ignores the serious
danger that the Palestinian one will end up a reservation or a prison
camp.

Of course, complicating any discussion of solutions is the widespread
misperception that the religion of Judaism and the nationalist
movement of Zionism are virtually one and the same. This simplified
melding exists even among those who recognize that the majority of
Jews don’t live in Israel and have zero intention of responding to
calls to “return” (known as “making Aliyah”) to what is
depicted as their rightful homeland.

Students beguiled by that conflation are certainly going to feel
discomforted by current protests and will misinterpret militant
slogans and chants as threatening. Although such emotions are part of
the source for overblown claims about “safety,” they should not be
callously dismissed. Shane and Lorber have a chapter on “Generations
of Trauma” that points to the mistake of belittling Jewish
experiences.

Moreover, this false merging of Judaism and Zionism leads to the
canard that transforming the Israeli ethno-state into a modern
democratic one is code for eliminating the Jewish population. It’s
now a standard talking point usually combined with the claim that
Israel is somehow being “demonized” and “singled out” in a
manner tantamount to antisemitism.

Yet socialists aim to be consistent in opposing state forms that are
not to the benefit of the entire population. No doubt the Chinese
regime regards our socialist denunciation of its own colonial-settler
policies against the Uyghurs as similarly “demonizing.” Likewise,
the antisemitic and reactionary leaders of Iran hold that our support
for the domestic movement of young people to overturn the
authoritarian state system of the Iranian theocracy means the
destruction of Iran or its people.

What _does_ singularize the student protests against Israel is that
the United States is financially and militarily backing Israel’s
genocidal actions, while holding it up as a model democracy.

How one should address all this has not yet been effectively resolved,
a requisite for serious political dialogue. Anger and frustration are
understandable, and their expressions will occur. Yet is hardly
helpful to defame ill-informed people by snarling “Zionist” or
“Israeli apologist” as an epithet in situations when a bridge
might be built, so that united mass action around a principled demand
can occur.

Even when confronting self-professed mainstream Zionists, arguing too
aggressively only makes people double down instead of rethinking with
the unfortunate result that bullying, intimidation and shaming spread
quickly within the Left itself to eventually silence _all_
questioning. No one wants to be trapped in a room with a jack hammer.

Guidance in such matters is among those areas where I find some
weaknesses in the Burley/Lorber book. In addition, there can be a
surfeit of platitudes regarding vague political terminology. The
authors are in support of “Progressives,” although it is not clear
what this means in terms of politics (socialists, liberals?).

Also, they call for “justice for Palestine” and “struggling for
a better world” without explaining what that entails, which seems
necessary if one is to convince people that de-Zionizing Israel is in
the interests and security of Jews as well as Palestinians.

Probably there needs to be more discussion about the matter of
Palestinian resistance, because having an armed resistance _is a
right,_ under international law. Then again, without repudiating a
just struggle, it is common sense that all acts of resistance are
neither effective nor ethical. The Palestinian Left is far from
monolithic and there is much to be learned from hearing a variety of
perspectives.

Moreover, the challenges of dealing with nationalism in political
movements can’t be hedged. Nationalist movements of the oppressed
have a very different dynamic from nationalisms of the oppressor, and
socialists support the former even while promoting internationalist
ideology. But history shows retrograde ideas and practices (often
including antisemitism) are frequently present in _all_ forms of
nationalism.

Likewise, the Burley/Lorber volume might have said more about the
expression of grief and horror about the treatment of Israeli
civilians on October 7. Whether or not Hamas turns out to be
responsible for every single atrocity attributed to it (certainly
debatable at this point), such feelings of human compassion need not
take away from the grief and horror felt at the Israeli state mass
murder that ensued.

Nevertheless, the volume is replete with many deeply observed
insights, careful and respectful judgments, measured analysis, and
certainly a passionate critique of fascism and settler colonialism.
The authors are not afraid of expressing uncomfortable truths, and
they know that trying to win a debate by simply shoving one’s
politics down other people’s throats is a prelude to an
authoritarian culture.

V. “Political Emotions” and“Zionism Reconsidered”

Some ways of arguing against Zionism are more effective than others.
Penslar’s _Zionism: An Emotional State_ is an unusual examination
that considers the passions that drive supporters and antagonists,
both of whom fall into diverse groups. The author is an
American-Canadian who is Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at
Harvard University.

Penslar is no Marxist, and has professed a love of the Israeli state,
yet his 2024 appointment to co-chair Harvard’s Presidential Task
Force on Combatting Antisemitism caused an uproar. This was initiated
by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and taken up by troll
Stefanik, who denounced Penslar for “despicable antisemitic
views.” His crime was that he had described the Netanyahu
government’s West Bank policy as “apartheid.”(18)
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What’s appealing about Penslar’s book is his search for less
polemical ways to address Zionism and colonialism; he convincingly
argues that there is no basis for denying that Zionism is colonialism
but also no grounds for seeing it as a pure form. To me, this seems
consistent with the views of Columbia University scholar Rashid
Khalidi, one of the most informed Palestinian critics of Zionism, who
stated in a recent interview with Tariq Ali:

_“Israel is not a typical settler colony, by any means; it’s also
a national project, with a significant Biblical dimension, and a
refuge from persecution. No other settler colony was a refuge from
persecution to such a degree — the Puritans and other religious
dissidents, like the Quakers, who came to North America, certainly
experienced repression, but not on the same scale.”_(19)
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My impression is that Penslar himself does not take a very clear side
on this issue.(20)
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Nevertheless, his analysis should help readers see why Zionism came to
be considered as an invading force in the Middle East. This was the
main cause of anger at the Jewish ethno-state, especially during 1948
and after when violent acts by Israeli Jews toward Palestinians were
whitewashed by systematic coverup and falsifications.

Penslar explains why Zionists, even if secular, are generally marked
by a feeling of intrinsic loyalty to the state of Israel due to a
history of European antisemitism. The upshot is feeling a need to
defend Israel’s virtue, and also that a destruction of the
protecting state will happen unless there is “defensive” action
against all perceived threats.

That is why exposure of atrocities by the Israeli military and
settlers, presently in the form of an open-ended license to kill on an
industrial scale, seems to have negligible impact.

Penslar’s analysis involves the role of emotions in the campaign to
resettle Jews in what is regarded as their Biblical homeland. His
argument is somewhat similar to philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s view
that emotions are a critical form of knowledge and a way of reasoning:
“Emotion is a component of cognition, and there is no contradiction
or even divide between emotions and ideas. Ideas are sustained
interpretations of experience in terms of beliefs and values.” (9)

Thus, the book is a study in political emotion, tracking the evolution
of the emotions (emotional state) Zionism has aroused over time, since
its origins in the late 19th century, and up till recent decades.

Probably the most constructive aspect is his revelation of Zionists’
self-understanding of their project, critical to those of us who wish
to better understand what we are opposing. This is elaborated in
chapters on “Staging Zionism” and “Zionism as Colonialism,”
and developed up to the present in “Zionism to 1948” and
“Zionism Since 1948.”

All this is achieved with nuance, balance and elegance of expression,
not to mention impressive academic rigor. In concise, pithy, and
sensible prose Penslar crafts a cogent and revealing account of how
Zionism and anti-Zionism inflame powerful emotions that are
characteristic in debates about nationalism in the modern world.

A work of strenuous and intelligent exegesis, alert to paradox and the
telling detail, this book will probably not satisfy partisans of any
camp, but it surely expands our knowledge and understanding.

Where Penslar is less substantial is in his treatment of the actual
history of anti-Zionism. Edward Said gets a page or two, but Martin
Buber is never mentioned, Hannah Arendt (author of the prophetic 1945
essay, “Zionism Reconsidered”)(21)
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is cited only twice in passing, and Noam Chomsky only once.

The Soviet Union is discussed a bit, but there is nothing about
various Communist Parties and not a single reference to the Jewish
Leon Trotsky, who made the following memorable prophecy in July 1940:

_“The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of
Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of
the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs
who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has
sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced
its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land.
The future development of military events may well transform Palestine
into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so
clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound
up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.”_(22)
[[link removed]]

Happily, there exists a growing number of new studies showcasing a
history of many valuable critiques of Zionism in the United States,
although not all of these earlier efforts were embedded in the kind of
socialist politics necessary to address the crisis we have inherited.

VI. Return of the Repressed

This record of discord is superbly illuminated by Marjorie N. Feld’s
_The Threshold of Dissent,_ which follows in the wake of the
publication of two other outstanding studies, Geoffrey Levin’s _Our
Palestine Question: Israel and Jewish American Dissent, 1948-1978_
(2023) and Jonathan Graubert’s _Jewish Self-Determination beyond
Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs_ (2023).

Written with dramatic verve and backed up with a plethora of evidence,
Feld, who is Professor of History at Babson College, covers some of
the same ground as Levin and Graubert, but encompasses a much longer
narrative sweep in her book.

Moreover, _The Threshold of Dissent_ has unique value in demonstrating
that the current slurring of anti-Zionism in U.S. culture as
Jew-hatred is part of a long tradition that has now given birth to a
confusion: one that puts Jews in greater danger than ever before even
as it facilitates the U.S. government’s collaboration in a genocide
that is transforming Israel into a pariah state.

Her genealogy begins in the early 20th century and moves to the
present in four long chapters that are sandwiched between an
Introduction and Conclusion followed by a Coda. It is a disturbingly
powerful narrative but filled with close and penetrating observations
that are expressed moderately in tone — even as they are far from
that in content.

Feld’s initial focus is on the early 20th century Reform Movement.
This is followed by the mid-century activism of William Zuckerman
(1885-1961) and his _Jewish Newsletter,_ the 1960s anti-colonialist
and Black Freedom Movement, and the appearance of the now defunct New
Jewish Agenda (a progressive Jewish organization) in the 1980s.

A capsule summary of her story is that anti-Zionism in the United
States emerged from the mainstream, although not always for the same
reasons as those of Marxist-internationalists, but was incrementally
marginalized over the decades. These moments are connected and
contextualized with extensive commentary by a scholar who writes with
historical acuity and human sensitivity.

What may capture special attention of the contemporary reader are the
accounts of individuals and groups that prefigure our own experiences
of the past several years. Long before 1948, many anti-Zionist and
non-Zionist critics saw numerous problems that would vex the Israeli
state and lead to the current calamity and divisions.

Even after the Nazi Holocaust, the American Council for Judaism argued
that the United States and Britain needed to increase immigration of
Jewish refugees and that “Palestine should be ‘neither a Jewish
state nor an Arab state’ because it is a ‘Holy Land, sacred to
Christian, to Jew, and to Moslem alike….it is not and can never
become, a land which any race or religion can justly claim as its very
own.’” (31)

Zuckerman, a journalist with a Leftist past, was particularly
impressive for his understanding that, if fighting racism and fighting
antisemitism in the United States are part of the same struggle, then
the Zionist establishment is full of hypocrisy when it comes to
Palestinians: “How can the American Jewish Congress and other
outspoken Zionist organizations honestly fight segregation in the
South, if opposition to integration of Jews with non-Jews is the basic
principle of Zionism?” (80)

Page after page of Feld’s inspiring book is filled with arguments to
the effect that fighting racism consistently is what will make Jews
safer, not abetting Right-wing resistance, and that embracing Israel
was more about enabling nationalist colonialism than supporting Jews
because ethnic nationalism in power had led to supremacist aggression.

The book also showcases how individuals can politically evolve given
exposure to information, even if not on Marxist principles. This was
the case with journalist I.F. Stone.

Like many with a fellow-traveling Communist background, Stone was a
one-time partisan of the Israeli side in the 1940s, but argued
differently in the _New York Review of Books_ in 1967: “How we
[Jews] act toward the Arabs will determine what kind of people we
become: either oppressors and racists in our turn like those from whom
we have suffered, or a nobler race able to transcend the tribal
xenophobias that afflict mankind.” (107)

The danger of repression is another major theme — especially from
the constant Zionist efforts to marginalize leaders and organizations
professing anti- and non-Zionism in the post-World War II era through
the present.

In 1973, a course at Tufts University by Marty Blatt innocuously
called “Zionism Reconsidered” was invaded by the Jewish Defense
League and denounced in the Boston press as “a grievous affront to
the Jewish community.” (134)

When the Jewish organization Breira (“choice”) was formed in 1973
to express disagreement with Israeli occupation of the West Bank,
“Jewish leaders [led by the ADL] launched campaigns indicating that
Breira members, like the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], were
‘dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state.’” (144)

In part, Feld’s book is the sad story of what happens to communities
that do not permit meaningful dissent, told meticulously with a
clarity of thought and shrewdness of diagnosis.

VII. Resisting Zionism

Feld unmasks the half-hidden history of opposition to Zionism, but
there remains the need for an explanation of why the U.S. public has
been largely unable to recognize the profound contradiction between
what is claimed about Israel and its actual record. How is it possible
that a state that has committed major violations of human rights can
be celebrated as a model of tolerance?

UCLA English and Comparative Literature Professor Makdisi’s
_Tolerance is a Wasteland_ may strike some outside of academia as
exhaustingly relentless and perhaps hyperdense at times, but it is the
work of a witty and allusive maestro at the height of his powers.

Makdisi, a nephew of Edward Said, displays a rare multi-disciplinary
talent that punches a gigantic hole in the very heart of fables about
the reality of the Zionist project. He writes cerebrally, as if each
sentence were a performance, and knows how to craft a lapidary phrase
with an enviable ear for the _mot juste,_ as some of the following
phrasing in quotations will demonstrate.

In four central chapters — Sustainability, Democracy, Diversity,
Tolerance — he braids politics, theory and cultural criticism in a
cooly devasting takedown of how a very specific form of denial is at
work in the operation of the Zionist myth through reframing and
inversion, whereby the virtues of liberalism are ardently embraced to
obscure what would be unacceptable to most people in the United
States.

As the book jacket accurately explains, through the “whitewashing,
greenwashing, and pinkwashing of colonial violence” the Israeli
state partisans offer “curated perceptions that make this massive
project of cognitive dissonance possible.”

One of the most effective gambits in Makdisi’s calm and methodical
response to the battering ram of Israeli state propaganda, is his
insistence that most U.S. Zionist supporters are actually decent and
well-meaning people; they would not support Israel’s state practice
if they could see what it actually is, including the _Nakba_
(“catastrophe”) that began in 1948 but still goes on.

To make Israel appear as if it did _not_ come into existence as a
minority ruling a majority, values are pronounced that occlude what
has and is happening, and the mind-numbing repetition of mantras (such
as “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East”) “helps us
willingly to suspend our disbelief.” (50)

Surely a grotesque example of Zionist hubris was the construction
beginning in 2004 of a Museum of Tolerance to address global
antisemitism – a museum that intruded into a centuries-old Muslim
burial site:

_“Only a profound form of denial could enable the placement of a
monument to Zionism-as-tolerance on an ethnically-cleansed graveyard.
After all, not many people would knowingly endorse the desecration of
a cemetery; but who would not want to support tolerance?”_ (17)

This is a book filled with endless observations about the paradoxes of
Zionist perception: how can it be that Israel serves as a caretaker
for Jews everywhere, but not its own actual citizens? With all its
military might, why does Israel still feel insecure? How can
resistance to ethnic cleansing be regarded as intolerance?

There is an extraordinary discussion of how apartheid operates in the
Israeli state and the land it occupies, as a racism in practice that
avoids overt racist language.

Another feature of Makdisi’s scholarship is that he is the clearest
among all the authors of the books surveyed about the political
direction he favors.

_Tolerance is a Wasteland_ was published before 7 October 2023, which
has obviously reconfigured the current political conjuncture. But at
the time of publication, he was optimistic about the growth of BDS
(the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) that
“emerged from the terrain once dominated by older Palestinian
formations, notably Hamas and Fateh.”

He clearly favors its simple demands of “an end to the military
occupation of Palestinian territory; the elimination of racial
discrimination within Israel; and the right of return of those
Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1948, along
with their descendants.” (144-5)

The BDS movement, although officially “agnostic” as to whether
these objectives can be obtained in one state or two, makes it clear
that the “violent enterprise” of Zionism must be abolished. In
Makdisi’s view this actually makes the case stronger for “the
establishment of a single democratic and secular state encompassing
the territory of historical Palestine, a position that I personally
support.”

Such an approach, he believes, has shifted the “conflict between
Zionism and the Palestinians from a confrontation between an occupying
power and an armed national liberation movement to a confrontation
between a people demanding equality and rights and a state
representing grotesque inequality….” (145)

This movement from an Algerian paradigm (armed resistance to
occupation) to a South African one (one-person-one-vote), he
speculates, may have both greater international appeal and is more
threatening to the ethno-state regime itself.

Such a forthright consideration of alternatives to the Zionist state
are necessary for the development of strategy, tactics, and education
aimed at dismantling colonial privilege, and the transformation of the
region into a society in conformity with 21st century norms of
democratic citizenship.

For those of us educated over the years by Palestinian experts on the
Left like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, the challenge is to
formulate a perspective on the future that allows two nationalities
(Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish), along with others, to live in
harmony and equality. This includes the expression of national rights
that do not take oppressive state forms.

VIII. The Past is Not Past

Further illumination can be achieved by understanding why 1967 isn’t
ground zero for grasping the current crisis, or even 1948. That point
comes through brilliantly in Areej Sabbagh-Khoury’s _Colonizing
Palestine._ To claim that fighting antisemitism and Zionism are linked
struggles, it is critical to explain why the Palestinian past cannot
be left to the past, and the _origins_ of the Israeli state must be
confronted.

Zionist propaganda, now heightened by the events of 7 October, depicts
Palestinians as inherently violent Jew-haters who cannot be dealt with
rationally. More than ever, we must urge that people listen to the
voices of Palestinians in explaining that it is the very ideology of
Zionism, including socialist variants, that is responsible for a
century of intentional dispossession.

The scholarship of Hebrew University Sociologist and Anthropologist
Professor Sabbagh-Khoury, like that of Makdisi, should be at the top
of the list.

Her formidable Introduction (46 pages) and six chapters cover the
origins of the colonization process; the interaction of socialist
kibbutz settlers (Hashomer Hatzair, Young Guard, a labor Zionist
secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913)(23)
[[link removed]]
with Palestinians; and how the settler colonial “memory process”
represented the events leading up to and including the 1948 _Nakba._

What may be a surprise to some readers is that Sabbagh-Khoury’s
research places “the kibbutz movement squarely in the colonizing of
Palestine and shift[s] our understanding of the Zionist movement from
its origins in Europe to its interactions with indigenous
Palestinians.” (45)

It was these Labor Zionists who were originally bi-nationalists, not
the Zionist Right, who “configured the social and political
relations of settler colonization that would set a path dependency
[historically-produced resistance to change] of hierarchization and
violence.” (45)

Although the socialists may have seriously intended to uplift their
Arab brothers and sisters, their practice became collaboration in the
defining features of the Zionist nation-state: replacement,
dispossession and removal, and discrimination.

Here Sabbagh-Khoury makes a crucial point about terminology:
“comparison [with other settler colonial projects] is a vital
element of my analysis, not to argue for absolute equation of Zionism
or the State of Israel with other settler colonial histories, but to
trace patterned ways of doing and thinking and its relation to other
cases termed settler colonial.”

Moreover, she emphasizes that using settler-colonialism as a
“diagnostic analytic category” is aimed at describing encounters
and transformational processes that turned into structures that
favored Zionist settlers and denied indigenous sovereignty: “it does
not refute Jewish religious and historical connections to what they
term Erets Yishra’el.” (10)

This prefigures a moving conclusion addressing the present:
“Palestinians continue to live in their homeland. They are planning
with their (relatively few) anti-colonial Jewish-Israeli comrades a
decolonized sociality, taking inspiration from and further stimulating
global anti-colonial movements for justice.” (272)

This 348-page book is not exactly a beach read, but one finds rare
intelligence and imagination in its conceptualizations as well as
tenacity and resourcefulness in research. In her account of how the
initial Zionist pioneers thought about and interacted with indigenous
Palestinians, she has produced a beguiling and brilliantly unsettling
work that subjects the history of socialist Zionists to searing
scrutiny.

With exquisite craftsmanship and a many-layered style, she has gone
beyond an impressive archive of primary sources to inhale a massive
number of books. This is without doubt a signal intervention that is
an emotionally honest reckoning, impressively learned, and with a
splendidly original analysis.

IX. Zero Tolerance

The myths of the past about the Zionist record must give way to the
realities of the present so that Jew-hatred can be addressed directly.
Both forms of persecution, Zionism and antisemitism, are seen by
socialists as appreciably products of class society, and the
indispensable combat for the abolition of antisemitism cannot mean any
support to the ongoing deprivation and suppression of another people.

The current situation, wherein a claim of “Jewish safety” is
strategized to put a target on Jewish and other Left-wing defenders of
Palestinian rights as the source of Jew-hatred, is worse than merely a
world-class snipe hunt.

As Gilbert Achcar has pointed out, “the accusation of antisemitism
has become a weapon in the hands of neofascism.”(24)
[[link removed]]
In using Jews as a shield to beat back radical movements for change,
the Right aims to blame Jews as the antagonist of social justice. This
opens the door to all sorts of antisemitic prejudices and clichés,
such as the belief that Jews have a unique relationship to power and
are privileged.

We can’t let anyone be fooled. This instrumentalization of “Jewish
safety” is poison to the fight against antisemitism. Socialists must
vigorously contest it, especially among the parts of the Jewish
community that we can reach, and the five books considered in this
essay can be a springboard to the creative thinking still required to
overcome entrenched positions.

As long as we socialists are divided over whether abolishing
antisemitism is a priority, and whether it must be linked to
anti-Zionism, we will not be able to impose a counter-narrative to the
dominant one at this time. Consequently, we must create a political
culture in which we will be able to stand together to make it quite
clear that the social movements are not antisemitic ones, and that
socialists are the frontline allies of all those contesting racial and
other inequalities.

It means zero tolerance for any antisemitic actions threatening the
Jewish community as well any hate-filled actions aimed at our
Palestinian and Muslim communities. It also means fighting for social
and economic justice _side-by-side_ with Palestinians and all menaced
groups, although one cannot be intimidated from proposing more
effective strategies.

Our solidarity is social and built organically from the ground up. It
is solidarity, first of all, _with people, not states,_ and socialist
Jews today should act toward Palestinians like those few but honorable
“righteous among the nations” who assisted victims of the Nazi
extermination. This will be the way in which socialists reintegrate
the fight against antisemitism within the broader battle against
racism.

Notes

* The conspiracy theory in Europe and the United States that liberal
elites (mainly Jews) are trying to replace white people with people of
color who will vote for them and destroy the traditional, nationalist
culture.
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* See:
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* The most useful short introduction to the current situation in
Gaza and the need to end complicity in crimes against humanity is
Gilbert Achcar, _Israel’s War on Gaza_ (London: Resistance Books,
2023).
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* Peter Seidman, _Socialists and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism: An
Answer to the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League_ (New York:
Pathfinder Press, 1973), 31.
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* The latest theoretical work on antisemitism from a Marxist point
of view can be found in the double-volume “Marxism and the Critique
of Antisemitism,” special issue of _Historical Materialism._ The
Introduction is online at:
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* See David Finkel’s informative critique of Atzmon:
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* In regard to developing effective strategies for mass
movement-building in the face of 1960s ultraleftism, two of the most
helpful resources are: Peter Camejo, _How to Make a Revolution Plus
Liberalism, Ultraleftism, or Mass Action_ (Chippendale, Australia:
Resistance Books, 1999 ) and Fred Halstead, _Out Now: A
Participant’s Account of the Movement in the United States Against
the Vietnam War_ (New York: Pathfinder, 2001).
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* See the thoughtful interrogation of Penslar’s approach to
colonialism and Zionism by Joshua Cole:
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* See the excerpt from “Zionism Reconsidered” reprinted in
_Against the Current:_
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* Retired Stanford University History Professor Joel Beinin has
written in a number of places about Hashomir Hatzair; see for example,
““Knowing Your Enemy, Knowing Your Ally: The Arabists of Hashomer
Hatza‘ir (MAPAM),” _Social Text_ no. 28 (July 1991):100-21.
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_Alan Wald, an editor of _Against the Current,_ is a member of the
Academic Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and a founder of
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of
Michigan._

To appear in the September-October 2024 ATC, ATC 233

* Anti-Zionism
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* anti-Semitism
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* israeli-palestinian conflict
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* Solidarity with Palestine
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* Palestinian rights
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*
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