By Alex Rutherford
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has provoked a sharp turn to antizionist ideas amongst Jewish people, who have played a prominent role alongside Palestinians in the global solidarity movement.
While there has been a long tradition of Jewish opposition to the formation and maintenance of a Jewish state on the land of historic Palestine (particularly in the socialist and communist left), this is now becoming a mass phenomenon.
For many years, the idea that the Jewish communities outside Israel were united in their support for Israel has been a common trope. However, as the portrayal of Israel as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ becomes increasingly untenable thanks to the atrocities live-streamed in real time on social media, opposition is mounting.
Driven by the disgust of young Jewish workers against the horrors being committed by Israel, thousands have joined the ‘Jewish bloc’ in the Palestine solidarity movement, which in Britain has become a staple feature of the weekly demonstrations against the genocide. Led by organisations including Naa’mod and Jewish Voice, these have taken their place in the front ranks of the movement, providing a counterweight to the myth that all Jews are Zionists, and the slander that antizionism is antisemitic.
This is mirrored by a growth of antizionist sentiment in the US (Jewish Voice for Peace), Germany (Jüdische Stimme), and even Israel itself. Many of these organisations are united around the International Jewish Antizionist Network. These organisations have the potential to provide a counterweight to pro-Zionist propagandists for Israel like the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is allowed to present itself as representing the opinions of the whole Jewish community.
Antizionism is not antisemitism
All this poses a real threat to the Israeli state and its imperialist backers, who marshal ‘official’ Jewish opinion in support of their financial and political backing for Israel. The increasing visibility of an antizionist Jewish movement undermines the attempt to paint the Palestinian solidarity movement as terrorist sympathisers and ‘Jew-haters’. These are fundamental ideological props for Israel, allowing Western governments to outsource the ideological justification for their imperialist pro-Zionism to ‘official’ Jewish public opinon.
It is therefore vital that Jewish antizionists continue organising to expose this propaganda and demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. This will be a difficult campaign, as it means fighting not only the legal repression of the imperialist states, but the ideological and moral pressure applied by Zionist propaganda within Jewish communities.
These barriers can be partly overcome by deepening and extending the solidarity between antizionist Jewish organisations and activists throughout the world, sharing their methods and experience and uniting in common action. The international labour movement also has an important role to play, supporting the movement in their trade unions and political organisations, and providing a platform to dissenting and critical Jewish voices.
They can play a vital role not only in exposing the bogus antisemitism accusations aimed at the Gaza movement but in overcoming its divisions, both on a national and international level. Our governments, backing Israel’s crimes, fear this embryonic unity, as was shown last April when Berlin police broke up the Palestine Conference, arresting and deporting Palestinian, Jewish, German and international activists.
