Things Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists Need to Do better

The Israeli invasion of Gaza has brought a dramatic increase in the expression of “Non-Zionist/Anti-Zionist” viewpoints.

There is a validity in a lot of what “Non-Zionist/Anti-Zionist” people say about the Israel-Palestine issue(s), but people expressing these views need to make some significant changes in what they say and how they say it, and need to make some significant changes in what they argue for.

BTW, I’ve also written a critique of the other side in this discussion:

Things Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists Need to Do better | by Ken Burch | May, 2024 | Medium

(The point of writing these pieces is that, like it or not, BOTH points of view on this issue are going to have to work together to create something that nobody will be completely happy with, but both can live with for the long term. Thus, for both, the very ideas of “victory” or “defeat” need to be abandoned).

To set up the points I’m going to make here, I need to clarify some terms:

“Non-Zionism/Anti-Zionism” are a set of positions regarding the Zionist project- the creation and perpetuation of what is now the State of Israel, or at least the State of Israel as it has developed in practice.

These terms that can have a variety of meanings. At their most extreme- and the vast majority of Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists don’t actually take THIS position- Non-Zionism/Anti-Zionism can mean calling for the expulsion of the entire Jewish population of not only the Occupied West Bank- which is an area, most non-reactionary people agree where all the settlements Israel set up should be removed, since those settlements were created solely to inflame tensions between Israeli Jews and Palestinians by claiming land for the SAKE of claiming land- but all of what made up the 1948–1967 area of the State of Israel.

This position is not tenable. Contrary to what most people in the West assume, most Israelis are not purely Askenazim- that is, of Central European/Eastern European/Russian origin, related to the Jewish culture best known in North America(the US and Canada). Most Israelis are actually a mixture of Sephardic(From the Iberian Peninsula, through Italy, extending Greece) or Mizrahim(Jewish people from countries in what are now considered the Arab or Muslim world(s)- people who could mostly be described as “Arab Jews”.

The Mizrahim, in particular, hadn’t been Zionist to start with- they essentially became Zionists-by-default as a result of the various pressures, many of which are still in dispute between Israelis and the countries around Israel- that led to the Mizrahim feeling they had no choice but to leave their home countries and emigrate to Israel. Unlike, say, the Askenazim of Europe and North America, the Mizrahim don’t, at this point, have the option of returning to their countries of origin. It’s questionable at best whether the Sephardim can return to places like Italy, which currently has a right-wing extremist, xenophobic, quasi-fascist government.

A more moderate position- the position, I believe, most Non-Zionist/Anti-Zionists actually take- is support for the creation of a single, democratic, secular state in which Jews and Palestinians would live as equals.

This is an achievable objective, but it isn’t instantly achievable.

To get to the point, where it would be achievable there would need to be an intermediate period where there was a permanent cessation of violence on BOTH sides.

There would also need to be a major economic reconstruction project takes place in the West Bank and Gaza, and where ordinary Palestinians would receive financial compensation, acknowledgement of the wrongs done to them, and apologies and admissions that the wrongs done should not have been done.

There would also need to be a shared anti-poverty program- coupled with a commitment to non-austerity economics- to undo the years of economic hardship caused, in both national communities- far more among Palestinians than Israelis, but existing in both- by the fixation with claiming or retaking land.

At the same time, a major program of education in Palestinian areas would have to take place that acknowledged and apologized for not clearly and absolutely making a distinction, at ALL times, between Zionism and Judaism, between opposition to Israel and hatred of Jews.(non-Zionists/anti-Zionists in Europe, the UK and North America are better at making this distinction).

And there would have to be a joint educational program in both national communities in which each acknowledges that the other has deep roots in the soil and both have the right to be in these lands on a shared basis, without anybody being forced to live under the domination of the other.

Single-state non-Zionism, therefore, is a great distance away.

Another possibility is a Belgian-style federation- an overall single state, with a shared, elected legislative body, yet with both national communities being able to elect a legislature/parliament of their own. This model would be the easiest to implement on a short-term basis, would protect the national “sense of self” of both communities, would accommodate shared infrastructure issues, could most easily in the short term protect the religious freedoms and the right of the secular to be secular that would be in question under the single state model, and could be a bridge to a long-term single state future, since it would help create the culture of trust between both communities that would be needed to make any single-state model workable.

The most moderate form of Non-Zionism/Anti-Zionism is, in many ways, simply a more progressive interpretation of the “two state” model- it calls for preserving Israel(at least in the pre-1967 lands, the only areas that legitimate can be called Israeli territory), with a viable, prosperous Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as the capital(yet with people of all faiths allowed to share East Jerusalem as a living space).

Beyond that, “hasbara”, the Israeli propaganda network, has now painted essentially any dissent from anything the Israeli government and the IDF do to Palestinians in Gaza OR the West Bank as Non-Zionism/Anti-Zionism- after a brief period in the 1990s, when the supposedly “dovish” Israeli governments- government which, for all their supposed dovishness, NEVER stopped expanding the illegal West Bank settlements, never abandoned the official policy of inflicting physical beatings on Palestinians, never accepted that peace required the acceptance of a Palestinian state and the permanent absence of Israeli troops from that state- admitted that disagreeing with their inflexible hardline “security” policies is not the same thing as expressing hatred of Jews.

Since 2002, ALL Israeli governments have reverted to the childish position of equating any disagreement with its brutal collective oppression of Palestinians to putting the very survival of Israel as a country into question, and reverted as well to reducing their whole position on the conflict to endless bombing, shooting, beating, arresting, torturing and relentlessly immiserating ALL Palestinians, while simultaneously screaming “admit you’re wrong! admit it’s all YOUR fault! admit you just hate Jews! admit you’re not a real people! And after admitting all this, just move to Jordan or Egypt or Syria and never come back!”.

There are many things those who range from “non-Zionist” to “anti-Zionist” could do to win over more of the world, but they need to make some major changes.

1. DENOUNCE WHAT HAMAS DID ON OCTOBER 7TH, and call for Hamas to release the hostages. This does NOT mean endorsing what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza- Netanyahu, who spent years “bolstering” Hamas” solely to weaken Fatah and prevent a two-state peace, has never cared about the lives of the hostages and, even though he was warned that Hamas was planning something, did not order the Nova Festival cancelled or evacuate all kibbutzes and towns on the Israel/Gaza border when his generals told him an attack was likely. He doesn’t care that carrying on his war has likely caused the deaths of numerous hostages, and he’s made it clear that he doesn’t care the brutal attack he wants to launch on Rafah gets the rest of the hostages killed. The hostages themselves were and are secular progressives, overwhelmingly anti-Netanyahu- if Netanyahu could get away with executing Israeli Jews, he would execute the people who were taken hostage that day- and he may be expressing this by putting their lives in further danger. All this war is to Netanyahu is a means of staying in power and preventing the creation of any Palestinian state at any time, ever.
2. MAKE IT CLEAR YOU DON’T SUPPORT HAMAS. most Palestine activists don’t and never did, but it needs to be an absolute that nobody does. Hamas is NOT a liberation movement- it is simply a different religious nationalist movement and nothing it seeks is liberation. Also, as mentioned above, Netanyahu spent years funneling money to Hamas, and that, in itself discredits it.
3. PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN FIGHTING GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM, as well as all other forms of hatred. One of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of Israeli hardliners is the fact that Europe, the UK and North America DID spend centuries treating Jews horrifically and, even after 1945, have never really addressed this- in many respects, the decision of the governments in these areas to “support Israel” was an attempt to, in pre-Reformation Christian parlance, buy an indulgence- that is, to avoid actually acknowledging their crimes and changing their societies so those crimes will not recur, they helped create the untenable situation in Israel/Palestine. If the Palestine solidarity movement can be a force for dealing with this form of hatred in the larger world, it can disrupt the hardline Zionist “everybody hates Jews/everybody wants Jews dead” narrative, by working to create a world in which the imperative to give unquestioning support of Israel no longer exists. And addressing this issue head-on is also crucial, obviously, to increasing Jewish support- support that has grown dramatically in the last few months- for alternatives to “actually existing Zionism”- as well as being a crucial show of respect to those valiant Jewish activists who have turned up to show solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians.
4. THROW ANY “BAD ACTORS” OUT OF PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MARCHES/PROTESTS IMMEDIATELY. This should have happened from the start and it didn’t. The movement has become far better at this as the months have gone, but greater vigilance is always needed.

(note: This essay will be edited in response to reader feedback)