Things Zionists Need To Do Differently

Last week, I posted this article on some things Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists need to change in the way the do and say things: Things Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists Need to Do better | by Ken Burch | May, 2024 | Medium

Because I believe that the only way to get to something remotely like a sustainable, genuine peace in the Israel/Palestine conflict is to create a compromise that people who support Zionism- and people who don’t can find some way of living wing- something that will not be entirely what either side wants, but will treat people of good will on both sides with respect and help achieve a culture of safety and acceptance for both communities, I now offer a similar set of suggestions aimed at those who identify as Zionists.

The original idea of something like Israel is not inherently invalid- in the late 1940s Christian Europe, Christian Britain, and Christian North America had comprehensively betrayed Jews- there had been 14 milennia of unrelenting hatred, exclusion, restriction, suppression and unceasing refusal to accept the right of Jewish communities in Europe to live in safety, in human equTality and on the same terms as the “Christians” who lived around them. This had just culminated in the unforgiveable, indefensible attempt made by Hitler and his European allies- and in many cases at least tacitly abetted by capitalists in Europe, the UK and North America on “anticommunist” grounds.

And it is understandable that, especially at that time, there were a lot of people who ended up moving to what became Israel because they were stuck, after 1945, in displaced persons camped they had no place else to go- the United State, Canada and Britain- countries who, between them, could have taken in every Jewish refugee- and every other survivor of Hitler’s extermination project- STILL, even after the facts of the Holocaust were known, refused to do so. So many, if not most of the people who were in the camps, the choice was go to Israel or stay in the camps- and yes, there is something deeply creepy in postwar Gentile governments and the US occupation forces in postwar Europe making Jews keep staying in camps of all places…how did they not get how messed-up that made things look.

And, of course, the idea of telling anybody, anywhere, that their country should cease to exist as currently constituted is uncomfortable and disturbing to anyone who has to hear it.

But in the situation that now exists, Israel, and those who wish to see it continue to exist, who feel a a connection to it, who see it, if they don’t live there, as their only guarantee of safety in a world that has often been deeply unsafe- needs to change a lot of what it is doing and how it is expressing itself.

If it wants those who identify as “Non-Zionists/Anti-Zionists” to endorse a 2-state solution, Israel and its supporters need to adopt an entirely new discourse.

1. It’s time to stop calling people “antisemitic” not just for being non-Zionist/anti-Zionist, but in many cases simply for being what I call “Zionist-critical”, that is calling on Israel to switch to humane, decent treatment of ordinary Palestinians, rather than seeing them all as nothing but “the enemy”.
2. It’s time to stop equating all disagreement with what Israel is doing to Palestinians “anti-Zionism”, and implying that the objective of all who make such comments is the destruction of Israel and the extermination of its majority community- essentially nobody anywhere actually wants that.
3. It’s time to stop calling all Palestinians “antisemites” or “Hamas supporters”- most of them never supported Hamas(it only took 44% in that one election in 2008, and most Palestinians and Gazans weren’t even born or at least weren’t old enough to vote when that election was held).
4. It’s time to admit that, while Palestinian and rest-of-the-world antisemitism does exist- though the vast majority of the rest of the world ISN’T antisemitic- and does need to be fought wherever it appears, most of what drives the various forms of Palestinian resistance is not antisemitism, but the relentless brutality inflicted on ordinary Palestinians by the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces(IDF, or as many Palestinians and activists now call it, the “IOF”, for “Israel Occupation Forces”), ranging from the continuing onslaught Netanyahu is inflicting on Gaza- most of whose population are innocent, unarmed civilians- to the continued illegal expansion of the illegal West Bank settlements- all of which seem to be, in the eyes of ordinary Palestinians- that is, the 95% or more of Palestinians who are NOT part of any of the armed factions and therefore are not responsible for anything those armed factions do- to be part of a concerted effort on the part of the Israeli government to drive all Palestinians out of every millimeter of the Israel/Palestine area- an effort sometimes justified by repeating the discredited claims that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian” and “Jordan is Palestine”- in order to annex the entire area to Israel and consequently make any form of Palestinian self-determination impossible.
5. It’s time to admit that- while it is entirely justifiable to be outraged and grief-stricken about the miseries Hamas . on October 7th, to ask the world to condemn those attacks, and to demand the release of the hostages- the conflict didn’t start on October 7th, the vast majority of suffering in the conflict has been experienced by Palestinians- most of whom were or are unarmed civilians- that Palestinians overall have much more to be justifiably angry at the Israeli government about than Israelis have to be angry with Palestinians over, that Israel needs to change at least as much as it wants Palestinians to change.
6. It’s time to admit that the key to ending this conflict lies not in “crushing Hamas”- something which, even if it is possible, cannot end the fighting and will likely if not certainly lead to nothing but the creation of a nastier, more extreme and more unrelenting group to avenge the perceived humiliation of the Palestinian side- but in addressing the actual grievances Palestinians have about the way they’ve been treated under the Occupation. Rather than simply repeating phrases to them that sound like you’re just screaming “Admit the whole thing is your fault! Admit you’re wrong! Admit you just hate Israelis out of bigotry!” — that is, repeating talking points that are pointlessly inflammatory, that are simplistic and wrong, and which have no chance of changing anything at all- try actually listening to them. Try showing actual empathy for them. Try admitting that, even in a two-state model, both communities need to be recognized as having equally deep roots in the soil, that both must have guarantees of safety and security, that both must be treated with dignity and respect.
7. Admit that a lot of what was done in the creation of Israel probably shouldn’t have been done- that the hundreds of Palestinian villages didn’t need to be destroyed, that hundreds of thousands of people didn’t need to be forever forced into exile with their homes confiscated and given to others; that there should never have been sixteen years of Israeli Arab/Palestinian-Israeli martial law within Israel- those Palestinians/Arabs who stayed within Israel were saying, by staying where they were, that they ACCEPTED Israel’s existence, that they had made peace. They should have just been left alone from the start.
8. It’s time to accept that any form of peace MUST include Palestinian self-determination. This means that, if Israel is going to ask Palestinians, their regional supporters, and activists supporting them globally, to accept it on the terms it seeks, it must forever abandon its opposition to Palestinians getting a state- that it is not reasonable, in any sense, to insist that Israel has a “right to exist” but Palestine doesn’t- or to demand that any Palestinian leadership that would engage with Israel agrees to accept the humiliation of being treated as the defeated side- a humiliation that could actually put the lives of that leadership into imminent danger, and make any agreement worthless if that leadership was killed as a result of being seen as “the losers”. It’s time to stop seeing any agreement as simply another brief stopping-point in an unending war.
9. It’s time to admit that it will never be reasonable to make any Palestinian leadership SAY that it recognizes Israel in Netanyahu’s exact, arrogant demeaning words, or to recognize the validity of the Zionist project- because asking that is asking the oppressed, persecuted side in this conflict to formally say that it DESERVED to be oppressed and that everything that’s been done to it is justified. Nobody who’s been treated as Palestinians have been would ever agree to such a demand. Instead, work out ways they can effectively agree to simply recognizing current reality- that Israel is there, that it won’t be going away, that it’s population will not actually leave the area- while offering them, in exchange, acknowledgments of the wrongs done to them, apologies for those wrongs, and proper compensation for the wrongs. Many Palestinians have said that simply having their lived experienced acknowledged and granted validity would do more than anything else to get them to reconcile themselves with Israel-back behind the pre-1967 lines, where it should be- and getting to something like peace with that. The precise words of an agreement don’t matter- getting agreements that effectively commit to what is being sought, without the “say it the WAY I want you to say it!” spoiled-child petulance are what matters.
10. And it’s time to admit that Palestinians, in the prohibitive majority are decent, moral human beings- not monsters, not berserkers, not the successors to the Nazis; that they are just as capable as anybody else of creating, given the chance, a decent society that oppresses no one, that they are NOT pathologically capable of anything above enforced servitude.

The simple truth is this:

Israel is going to go on existing no matter what- the question is, in what form will it exist? Will it exist in anything remotely like peace, or will it continue to exist as a country in which the organizing principle of society is the myth of “existential crisis” and the myth that the country must exist because the majority of the world supposedly want its majority community dead(which is not true- there are a small minority of people globally who do, and all others need to be vigilant against them, as all should be against all forms of hatred)?

Any worthwhile future for Israel must be based on breaking with the “existential crisis” myth, on breaking free from the myth of universal murderous antisemitism, on the myth of inherent Arab/Palestinian irredeemability. But it is those who advocate for preservation of this state who need to do the work of admitting their existing discourse has failed, that they are alienating the world through unrelenting viciousness and unreasonable demands, and by pretending that what the leaders of the state want is the only thing that matters.

Israel is here to stay.

Unless it and those who support it make a dramatic break from their whole current approach, though, it will not be of any real value to those it purports to exist for, and incapable of ever getting to peace with those around it.

Try dialog. Try empathy. Try listening. Try anything but what is currently being done- because what’s being done now, by your side in this discussion, is NOT working.