The Growing Trend of Jewish Anti-Zionism

A large group of Jewish activists opposed to the Zionist ideology are challenging Israel’s occupation, racist and colonial policies against Palestinians and calling for the return of Palestinian refugees. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) of organizations and activists in western countries firmly support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as a moral tool in response to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

The State of Israel, the manifestation of Zionism, declares IJAN, is “a colonial project that dishonors the memories of the European Jews who perished in the Genocide in Europe”. Rejecting the Zionist ideology and institutions as “unjust….leading to further entrenchment of an apartheid system and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”, the Network further indicates that such policies are implicating every Jew “in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasement of Jewish heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with fellow human beings”. Along this line, IJAN has been launching campaigns to draw support to its activities, with one targeting and seeking to halt support to the National Jewish Fund, responsible since the early years of the twentieth century for capturing Palestinian lands or seizing their ownership papers.

In June, 2010, IJAN hosted in Detroit, USA, the first anti-Zionist gathering, the ‘Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid’. The gathering was declared a success. IJAN activists also joined campaigns in 2009 and 2010 in the USA, held in support of the BDS movement, led by a Palestinian coalition of civil society organizations. Earlier in February, 2009, IJAN published an appeal by ‘an anti-colonialist Israeli citizen’ calling on UNESCO to ‘revoke Israel’s membership’. In fact, when in February, 2011, the Zionist organizations in America and around the world issued a statement condemning the BDS campaign, IJAN’s thirty four anti-Zionist Jewish individuals and organizations issued a counter statement declaring: (a) The BDS activities “are a moral tool of non-violent, peaceful response to more than sixty years of Israeli colonialism, and, (b) “Rightfully place accountability on Israeli institutions (and their allies and partners) that use business, culture and academic ties to white-wash Israel’s responsibility for continuing crimes against humanity”. These anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organizations put the blame for “crimes against humanity” on Israel and its colonial structure in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel. They have categorically rejected the label of anti-Semitism attached by the Zionists to the BDS campaigns, saying such “campaigns the world over are not rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment against the daily, brutal occupation of Palestine and military threat to the region by the State of Israel.”False claims of anti-Semitism”, according to IJAN, “distort the true nature of the Palestinian struggle and are an affront to, and betrayal of the long history of Jewish survival and resistance to persecution”. Such groups of conscientious Jewish activists are asserting the need “for justice in Palestine which does not include the domination and colonization of the Palestinian people which have made Israel a racist state that is only for the privilege of Jews”. These groups of Jews around the world have always considered themselves as the voice of conscience that should sound the danger bell against persecution based on gender, race, creed, color or ethnicity. When a certain community was being persecuted by a racist/ colonial system, Jews were the first to oppose it fearing they might be the next in line to face such an action. Conscientious Jews take to their hearts the certainty of the law of reciprocity, sent down to Moses and which stood behind the ‘Golden Rule’ that says: “Treat thy neighbor as thyself”. The law of reciprocity is commonly known as “what goes around shall come around”. In the Torah it says: “Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword”. Where the Zionist entity is concerned, it means that who lives by dispossessing others of their lives and lands, shall be dispossessed in the same way. Ending the Israeli apartheid system is the strategy of the BDS campaign backed by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, a strategy that once brought an end to South Africa’s White racist regime.

Indeed, conscientious Jews are opposed to the Zionist ideology being aware of the fact that its basic principle is racist and discriminative and is bound to lead to the utter destruction of the Zionist entity. They are trying to protect Jewish communities from the aftermath of the predicted destruction being anticipated by every Christian fundamentalist in the West, and by Western intelligence agencies. Moreover, the Jewish anti-Zionist activism that renounces injustice, seeks to protect Jewish survival, now threatened by Israel’s racism.

‘The war against terrorism’ is a battle with multiple fronts designed to prevent the use of mass destruction weapons hitting Tel Aviv and major western cities, especially New York City and Washington D.C. Western intelligence agencies usually specify two types of such weapons: (a) an atomic weapon and (b) a conventional bomb with radioactive material. Destruction resulting from the first is inevitable, but the effect of a radioactive bomb will cause a disaster in an area that will be unfit for human life, with the late 20th century explosion of Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine still a live example. This is why the safety and survival of the Palestinian people are linked to Jewish survival, both, according to IJAN, are being threatened by Israel’s racist and colonial Zionism.