As historians and as anti-Zionist Jews active in our communities, we know that unqualified support for Israel has been widespread among American Jews, built on the idea that only Israel could prevent another Holocaust and keep Jews safe. But crucially, there has never been a complete pro-Zionist “consensus.”
What we understand is that there has always been a small, vocal, articulate American Jewish minority—many with direct ties to the devastation of the Holocaust—who fundamentally questioned the role of Zionism and Israel in American Jewish life and asserted that Zionism and democratic ideals are incompatible. Our own lives and research agendas illuminate that for over a century, since the beginning of the modern Zionist movement with Theodor Herzl in 1897, some American Jews have drawn attention to the brutality and racism inherent in the modern Zionist project.
Marty’s mother Molly and her mother Clara fled the Nazis from Heidelberg, Germany, in 1938 and 1940, respectively. The Nazis murdered many in their family. In 1934, the Blue Card was established in Germany to assist Jews fleeing the growing persecution and subsequently re-established in 1939 in the United States to provide direct financial assistance to needy Holocaust survivors. Over a span of nine decades, Marty’s grandmother and mother and Marty, three generations, made a donation every single year to the charitable organization. And now Marty has concluded, painfully, that he can no longer contribute. The Blue Card Passover appeal highlighted the need to “combat the rising tide of antisemitism.” In an August 9 email, the organization noted that many Holocaust survivors are “…triggered by anti-Israel street protests that remind them of Nazi rallies…” The Blue Card has not uttered a single word of condemnation against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. There are several Holocaust survivors who have forcefully condemned the Israeli onslaught. In a message to the Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl, which she has not responded to, Marty wrote: “With my family background, I am appalled by what Israel is doing to the Palestinians….As an American Jew, I condemn the brutal violence of Israel and say – Not in my name.”
As analyzed in Marjorie’s book, Threshold of Dissent, American Jewish critics of Zionism have long observed that Israel does not ensure Jewish safety. Yiddish and English-language journalist William Zukerman, based in New York City, wrote in his Jewish Newsletter in the 1950s that Israel and Zionism contributed to hostility toward Jews around the world. Together with Israeli diplomats, Jewish leaders forced him out of journalist jobs and removed his communal funding. He incurred the wrath of many American Jews for pointing out their hypocrisy, for example, in this comment in 1959: “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?”
Also, Marjorie relates in her book that in 1973, Marty taught a course in Tufts University’s Experimental College titled “Zionism Reconsidered,” which cast a critical eye on Israel’s history, teaching students about the Nakba (the forced dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians at Israel’s founding) and about U.S. support for Israel’s brutalities. The Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the mainstream Jewish community each attacked him and the course. The JDL called the course “an anti-Jewish outrage” and distributed a flyer that declared: “Not since Germany in the days of Hitler has any university dared to offer a course presenting a one-sided view of any national movement.” Not to be outdone, Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council labeled Blatt’s course “an insult to the Jewish community” that was part of an “anti-Israel propaganda effort.”
Since the early 20th century, and especially since the strong Cold War alliance between Israel and the U.S. dating back to the 1960s, in the name of Jewish safety, American Jewish communal leaders have marginalized American Jewish critics of Israel. These leaders categorize them as “self-hating Jews” or antisemites. Though their lives were profoundly upended by the virulent communal response, many, including Zukerman and Marty, remained steadfast in their commitment to providing more and diverse American Jewish opinions about Israel and Zionism.
The horrific brutality of the present Israeli genocidal onslaught is instead rooted in the Zionist project itself which focuses on dispossession and hence is characterized by oppression of the indigenous non-Jews, i.e., the Palestinians. Uncovering the history of dissenting American Jews may help a community that has terribly lost its way. American Jews need to open up to honest conversations about Israel’s brutal past and American Jewish communal complicity in that past.
Many of the thousands of student protesters in the encampments were Jewish, acting as part of this long tradition of dissent. Drawing from an old playbook, communal leaders charged them with antisemitism and self-hatred. However, this remains a big lie used to attack and defame and smear. These student activists reject, as we do, the false equation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
How can we move forward out of the current nightmare? We call upon every American Jew to reject the genocidal policies of Israel. We stand with Jewish organizations including If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace who declare: “NOT IN OUR NAME.” We call for an immediate cease fire; exchange of all hostages, including Palestinian prisoners; cessation of arms supplies by the U.S. to Israel; substantial negotiations for a lasting peace with justice for Israelis and Palestinians. Some sort of confederal state will be required as Israel has effectively crushed the possibility of a two-state solution.
In the name of Jewish and global sustainability and safety, American Jews must end their long standing, unquestioned allegiance to Zionism and Israel. By embracing an understanding of the voices of American Jewish dissent, past and present, perhaps American Jews can play a constructive role moving forward to end the genocide carried out today in our names in Gaza and the West Bank.
Marty Blatt, emeritus professor of public history at Northeastern University, has recently published Violence and Public Memory (Routledge, 2023). He was the recipient of the Robert Kelley Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History for outstanding achievement in public history.
Marjorie N. Feld is professor of history at Babson College in Massachusetts, where she teaches social history courses on gender, labor, and food justice and sustainability. The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Israel is her third book.
