I spotted an advertisement for an IfNotNow Los Angeles “Sukkot Mobilization & Mass Interfaith Rally” scheduled to take place on Oct. 9. Among the themes were Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, and famine conditions inflicted on Palestinians with “hundreds dying by starvation and thousands more on the brink of death.”
The ad invokes “Jewish tradition” to protest all this and invokes the mantra, “As Jews … we all must choose to act right now … to speak out—no to starvation, no to invasion.”
As the event is scheduled for the festival of Sukkot, they will “gather for a mass Jewish-led interfaith rally” and “celebrate the abundance of the agricultural year.”
Hamas is not mentioned. Not the shelling of Israel, not their holding hostages, not their shelling of humanitarian-aid distribution centers or their killing of Gazans who seek peace and coexistence with Israel. Jews being killed, injured, attacked and assaulted around the world—from Los Angeles to New York, from Toronto to Melbourne, from Paris to Berlin and in Manchester—in the name of pro-Palestine positions and sympathy with Hamas was all omitted.
Jews forgetting Jews.
The anti-Israel journalist Peter Beinart recently interviewed Hannah Einbinder, she of the Emmy Awards “Free Palestine” shoutout.
On Yom Kippur, near the Brooklyn Bridge, Rabbis4CeaseFire (Rodfei Shalom) conducted a blocking of the highway. This included many participants (rabbis all?) donning keffiyehs. They also mimicked the prostration act done during the fast day’s traditional Mussaf service, included to remind ourselves of the Temple worship procedure—a Temple, though, that they reject.
New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Socialist Democrat running for New York City mayor, was New York Rep. Jerry Nadler’s and City Comptroller Brad Lander’s guest (Mamdani wore a kippah) at the anti-Zionist hub of Congregation Kolot Chayeinu. British Prime Minister Keith Starmer and his Jewish wife, Victoria, following the Manchester terror attack on Yom Kippur, visited the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood, North London, later that day.
Still in the United Kingdom, as Yom Kippur began, members of the anti-Zionist Na’amod group gathered outside the Labour Party Conference to sound the shofar for the delegates inside to accept the motion that Israel is committing genocide and to promote an arms embargo of Israel.
Jews are tokenizing Jewish customs, and non-Jews are taking advantage of the opportunity these Jews have awarded them. For example, an extended ramification is the poll conducted by and published in The Washington Post on Oct. 4, headlined: “Many American Jews sharply critical of Israel on Gaza” and sub-headlined “Most Jews say Israel is committing war crimes.” I am no expert on polls, but as there were 815 respondents, I would suggest the poll’s representativeness of a true cross-section of American Jews is fairly weak.
One person quoted in the story, Max Parke, 38, a software engineer in Brooklyn, N.Y., said that“the fastest way to improve conditions in Gaza is for the U.S. to restrict aid to Israel or impose conditions on it.” He then added that “Jewish principles would say we need to respect everyone’s humanity. In Israel, that is not the case; it privileges Jewishness in countless policies, without following actual Jewish principles.”
In the first case, it would seem more logical that Hamas releasing the remaining 48 hostages would be the fastest solution. As for his second point, the Jewish state “privileges Jewishness” in the sense that while every citizen has all civil and political rights assured, the state is a Jewish state. Its ethos and cultural character are Jewish. It preserves Jewishness.
Parke’s thinking may appeal to the younger progressive, less-than-traditional Jewish generation, but is it fair that they present themselves as reflecting Jewish culture, history, religion and experiences? By the way, a Max Parke living in Brooklyn and listing his position as a software engineer has a Facebook account, but I found no Jewish content, which leads me to wonder how the respondents were selected.
These Jews for Palestine have little regard for Israel or its people. Their Judaism appears mostly external in that they display Jewish customs and religious objects more at rallies and political protests than among themselves. They exploit these symbols so they can portray themselves in a moral tone wrapped in quaint spirituality. The hostages, if they appear on the agenda at all, are incidental. Hamas, Gaza and Palestine are uppermost of their campaign.
Moreover, rejecting Zionism is most un-Jewish, with no authentic basis in Jewish thought, history and practice.
Michael Doran (for the record, not Jewish), writing at the Free Press website, notes the “casting Israelis as ‘white colonizers’ and Palestinians as ‘oppressed peoples’ ” as a tactic of the progressives whereby “Zionism becomes … a uniquely nefarious form of settler colonialism” which then “shades into rank antisemitism.” Jewish anti-Zionists know this well yet still proceed with their sit-ins, sit-downs, marches and other activities that provide a so-called Jewish cover to the above.
For all intents and purposes, these Jews employ their Judaism as running interference for the most vicious enemy of the Jews: the Arabs-cum-“Palestinians,” whose goal is the elimination of the Jewish state and the killing of as many Jews as possible in the process.
Their approach stems not from analysing Jewish sources, although they purport to do so, but from their secular political beliefs that stretch across an expanse from liberalism to progressivism to globalism. We have witnessed anti-Zionism in the Jewish Enlightenment era, in early Reform Judaism thinking and Socialist Bundist ideologies.
Jewish anti-Zionists are not bringing Judaism’s principles or practices, nor any Jewish principles to their politics and political theatrical performances. Rather, they dress up their radical ideologies in a Jewish disguise for show. They are being antithetical to genuine Jewish ideals.
In more than one sense, they parade a form of cultural appropriation in reverse by adopting elements of their minority culture in a way that is disrespectful, exploitative or without proper understanding. I would even reinterpret a term from psychology studies and suggest their anti-Zionism is a form of “extraversion,” orienting themselves toward the outer world of people and things with a “hey, look at me” tack.
Unfortunately, they misrepresent Judaism, its values and traditions while endangering Judaism as a religion, nationality and culture, and, in the end, Jews as humans. They can wrap themselves up in prayer shawls and fake perform rituals, but that’s not truly being Jewish.
