Jewish Criticism of Zionism - Not all Jews are rats!

http://www.mepc.org/journal/9012_corrigan.asp

JEWISH CRITICISM OF ZIONISM

Edward C. Corrigan

Mr. Corrigan has a law degree from the University of Windsor and a

Master's in political science from the University of Western Ontario.

He advises the reader: "This article is not intended to be a

comprehensive study of Jewish criticism of Zionism but only an

introductory survey. The author owes a debt to many people in the

Jewish community for assistance and would like to thank David Finkel

and especially Harriet Karchmer for her help with the material on

Orthodox Jews. The writer, of course, bears all responsibility for the

material and any errors or omissions."

The Palestinian uprising or intifada and the Israeli campaign to

suppress it have caused considerable anguish for many Jews around the

world. A large number of Jews have even begun to reassess their

support for Israel and critically analyze the ideology of Zionism

which legitimates the Jewish state. One example of this phenomenon is

a statement that appeared in The Nation on February 3, 1988. It was

endorsed by 18 prominent American Jews.

The advertisement called upon American Jews to "dissociate from

Israel." It expressed the concern that "the close identification in

the public mind between Israel and Jews -- an equation vigorously

fostered by both the Zionist movement and the American Jewish lobby,

which has come under its control -- threatens to stigmatize Jews

everywhere." The ad called for a two-state solution and for

negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization.1

The statement also discussed past discrimination against the Jews and

the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust adding:

How tragic that in our own time the very state established by Jews in

the aftermath of this evil has become a place where racialism,

religious discrimination, militarism and injustice prevail; and that

Israel itself has become a pariah state within the world community.

Events taking place today are all too reminiscent of the pogroms from

which our own forefathers fled two and three generations ago -- but

this time those in authority are Jews and the victims are Moslems and

Christian Palestinians.

Those endorsing The Nation statement included Professor Yigal Arens,

the son of Moshe Arens; Mark Bruzonsky, former Washington Associate,

World Jewish Congress, who now serves as chairperson for the

organization; Professor Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor MIT; Rabbi

Susan Einbinder, Colgate University; Jane Hunter, publisher of Israeli

Foreign Affairs; Jeremy Levin, former CNN Beirut Bureau Chief and

former hostage in Lebanon; Professor Don Peretz, Department of

Political Science, SUNY; and Henry Schwarzschild, of the American

Civil Liberties Union. The subsequent organization they formed, the

Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME), has, in the short time

that it has existed, attracted well over a thousand signatures

endorsing their statement. These include academics at 125 U.S.

universities.2

JCOME has challenged pro-Israeli American Jewish leaders to conduct a

joint poll to see what American Jews really think about Israel and the

Palestinians. To back up their challenge JCOME cited evidence which

suggests that there is a divergence of opinion between American Jews

and the pronouncements of their "official" leadership. As one example

of a difference in opinion JCOME pointed to a poll which showed that

29 percent of American Jews favor negotiations with the PLO.3 However,

while this new organization is important, Jewish criticism of Israel's

policies and Zionism is not new. They both have deep roots within the

Jewish community.

It is clear that the ideology of Zionism has had a profound impact on

Jews. Today most Western Jews support its objective of establishing

and securing a Jewish state in the territory formerly known as

Palestine, even though the majority do not follow its precepts and

immigrate to Israel. Historically Zionism was the subject of intense

debate. Zionism has always meant different things to different people.

It could be interpreted in a religious, political, national or racial

light depending upon the circumstances. For some, Zionism was a

solution for the age-old problem of anti-Semitism, while for others

merely an excuse for getting rid of the Jews. As Hannah Arendt

explained, "The Zionist Organization had developed a genius for not

answering, or answering ambiguously, all questions of political

consequence. Everyone was free to interpret Zionism as he

pleased . . . ."4

Zionist leaders have put off indefinitely the attempt to resolve the

resulting conflicts and even contradictions generated by different

interpretations of Zionism. This explains why the "Jewish state" has

no constitution and why many fundamental questions about the nature of

Israel remain undefined. The avoidance of a battle over conflicting

definitions of what is a Jewish state is one of the reasons why Israel

has a vested interest in maintaining the state of war in the Middle

East. This interest has been openly acknowledged by a former president

of the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann:

On the day when peace comes, the leftist movement will undoubtedly be

very strong in Israel, and it will be anti-Orthodox. A great cultural

battle will then break out which, like Ben Gurion, I want to avoid at

this moment: as long as war prevails, that kind of internal struggle

would be terribly dangerous. But after the hostilities the first thing

to do will be to separate religion and state. Today we confine

ourselves to telling the leftists: "Don't make a fuss on this

question, you will be obstructing our defence policy, which requires

national unity" -- and the leftists, being good patriots, give way.

But after the peace they will resume the debate.5

Prior to World War II the majority of Jews were non-Zionist, and a

large number were openly hostile to Zionism. As Nahum Goldmann wrote,

"When Zionism first appeared on the world scene most Jews opposed it

and scoffed at it. Herzl was only supported by a small minority."6 It

was not until the full horror of the Holocaust was realized that the

great bulk of the Jewish community came to support Zionism.

Jewish history is rich in its diversity of ideas and ethical dissent.

Many of the Hebrew prophets were "solitary voices" who criticized

their people for betraying the great principles of their faith. The

prophet Amos, for example, advanced a new interpretation of the

"Chosen People" thesis. He wrote: "From all the families of the earth

I have chosen you alone; for that very reason I will punish you for

all your iniquities." Amos' concept of "chosen" did "not imply the

assurance of victory or prosperity" but rather that of "the burden of

more severe punishment for 'normal' unrighteousness."7

Amos was even more revolutionary in reinterpreting the meaning of the

"Promised Land." To quote Hans Kohn:

Through his mouth the Lord proclaimed that the children of Israel were

unto Him no better than the children of the Ethiopians. True, God had

brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt; but equally He brought the

Philistines (then Israel's hereditary enemies) from Caphtor, and the

Syrians from Kir, guiding each one into its land.8

In Amos' view all peoples were entitled to the land they occupied in a

spirit of equality and sharing. No one people had special God-given

rights.

One of the most critical moments in ancient Jewish history was when

Jochanan ben Zakkai, the leading representative of Judaism in his day

and the disciple of Hillel, "abandoned the cause of the Jewish state."

At the time, the city of Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans and

heroically defended by the zealots. Zakkai escaped from the city by a

ruse, and with the agreement of the Roman commander, established a

Jewish academy at Jabne. Judaism survived while the Jewish state was

destroyed.9

In the more recent period, Ahad Ha-am (Hebrew for "One of the People"

and the pen name for Asher Ginzberg), one of the greatest Jewish

thinkers of this century, was also highly critical of Zionism.10 He

drew attention to the fundamental and neglected ethical dilemma of

Zionism, namely the presence of the Arabs. In his 1891 report, The

Truth from Palestine, he pointed out that "there was little untilled

soil in Palestine, except for stony hills and sand dunes." Ahad Ha-am

also warned the Jewish settlers against arousing the wrath of the

large native Arab population:

Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite!

Serfs they were in the lands of the diaspora and suddenly they find

themselves in freedom, and this change has awakened in them an

inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and

cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and

even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable

and dangerous inclination.11

Ahad Ha-am wrote this statement when Zionist settlers formed only a

tiny portion of the population of Palestine. He also gave the

following warning: "We think. . . that the Arabs are all savages who

live like animals and do not understand what is happening around. This

is, however, a great error."12

Ahad Ha-am worked tirelessly for an intellectual and spiritual revival

of the Jewish people. His belief in Zion was of a spiritual and

prophetic nature. In 1913 he attacked the Zionist labor movement's

racial boycott of Arab labor:

Apart from the political danger, I can't put up with the idea that our

brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of

another people; and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is

so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall

achieve "at the end of time" power in Eretz Israel? If this be the

"Messiah," I do not wish to see his coming.13

Israel Zangwill, one of Herzl's earliest and strongest supporters,

eventually turned against the idea of establishing a Jewish state in

Palestine. Ironically it was Zangwill who coined the phrase "a land

without a people for a people without a land." It was this phrase that

became the potent rallying call for Zionist settlement in Palestine.14

It was not until 1904 that Zangwill realized that there was a

fundamental problem with the Zionist program. In a speech given in New

York in that year he explained:

There is. . . a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his

eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already

its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly

populated as the United States, having 52 souls to every square mile,

and not 25 percent of them Jews; so we must be prepared either to

drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers

did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population,

mostly Mohammedan.. . . This is an infinitely graver difficulty than

the stock anti-Zionist taunt that nobody would go to Palestine if we

got it. . . .15

Zangwill and many other leading Zionists split from the movement in

1905 when the Zionist Organization turned down the British offer to

settle Jews in Uganda. Incidently, this proposal was supported by

Herzl. The dissidents set up the Jewish Territorial Organization to

pursue alternative settlement proposals. Zangwill was elected leader

of the new body. The organization was, however, dissolved in 1925.16

Sir Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of Lloyd George's cabinet

when Great Britain first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, was

also adamantly opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked

the Balfour Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-

Semitic. Montagu based his argument on the fact that both Zionism and

anti-Semitism were based on the premise that Jews and non-Jews could

not co-exist. He was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine

the security of Jews in other countries.17 Montagu's opposition to

Zionism was supported by the leading representative bodies of Anglo-

Jewry, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in

particular, by Claude Montefibre, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.18

RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM

Much of the fiercest opposition to Zionism came from the Jewish

religious community which attacked its secular nationalism. Akiva Orr,

who characterizes himself as a Jewish refugee from Israel, describes

this conflict between religion and secularism as follows:

The State of Israel is a secular state: its law, its legislative

assembly (the Knesset), and the majority of its population are non-

religious. This is hardly surprising as Israel came into existence due

to the efforts of a secular political movement motivated by non-

religious nationalism, namely political Zionism. In its early days

Zionism came into fierce conflict with religious Jewry. The Zionists

rejected religious submissiveness; the religious saw the atheist

attempt to create a secular Jewish state as blasphemy.19

A nonreligious Jewish identity is antithetical to a religious

definition of Jewishness. This fact presents an irreconcilable

contradiction between the religious and secular streams in the Jewish

community. Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and many other

leading Zionists were non-believers who actively sought to reformulate

the basis for Jewish existence on race and territorial nationalism.20

This process would thereby "normalize" the existence of the Jewish

people.21 The anti-religious component of political Zionism explains

the vehement opposition of most devout Jews when the movement first

emerged.

For religious Jews the restoration of Zion could only be brought about

by divine intervention; human attempts to reestablish Israel were

heretical. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the religious leader of

nineteenth century German Orthodox Jews stated that it was a sin to

promote Jewish emigration to Palestine.22 Zionists were called by

Rabbi Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld of Brisk "ruffians" and "evil men."23

In 1898 Rabbi Sonnenfeld wrote that Zionists have

asserted view that the whole difference and distinction between Israel

and The Nations lies in nationalism, blood and race, and that the

faith and the religion are superfluous. . . . Dr. Herzl comes not from

the Lord, but from the side of pollution.24

Other leading Jewish religious leaders who opposed Zionism included

Moritz Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna,25 Dr. Herman Adler, Chief

Rabbi of Great Britain,26 the Lubbavitscher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem ben

Schneersohn,27 the Holy Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes,28 and Rabbi Isaac

Mayer Wise, the leader of the American Reform Movement.29 Many more

Jewish religious leaders were opposed to Zionism.30

Religious Jews in Palestine and the Orthodox Jewish organization,

Agudas Yisroel, founded in 1912, also opposed the political Zionist

colonization program in Palestine. They protested, to the British

Mandatory Administration, against the Zionist claim to represent the

entire Jewish community.31 Nathan Birnbaum, an early Zionist, who is

credited with coining the term Zionist, later broke with the movement

and became a devoutly Orthodox anti-Zionist Jew. For a brief time he

served as one of Aguda's spokesmen.32

On June 30, 1924, Jakob Israel De Han, a member of Aguda's executive

committee, was assassinated in Palestine by underground soldiers of

the Haganah. He had "violently denounced Zionism in cables to British

newspapers and attacked the Balfour declaration" and British colonial

officials who were "pro-Zionist " De Han became a martyr to

Jerusalem's anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.33

In time, the Zionists managed to win much of the Orthodox Jewish

community to their cause. This was done in part by granting the

Orthodox political and economic concessions and by implementing a

proportional representation system in central Zionist organizations

and in the Israeli Knesset. This type of political mechanism gave the

Orthodox Jews an important role in determining the course of Jewish

affairs in Zionist institutions.

The various religious parties in Israel today represent Orthodox

Jewish opinion that has accommodated itself to the Zionist view.

However, the religious orientation of these parties is frequently at

odds with the majority secular-national interpretation of "Jewishness"

in Israel. This contradiction is the source of much political conflict.

34

It can even be said that the Israeli ultra-orthodox religious parties

which participate in Israeli politics are still anti-Zionist, despite

that involvement. The ultra-Orthodox parties are Shas (the Sephardic

religious party), Aguda (the Hasidic) and Degel Hatorah (the Flag of

the Torah or the "Lithuanian party"). They are supported by between

250,000 and 300,000 Orthodox Israeli Jews and won 13 Knesset seats in

the 1988 election.35

These three religious parties are opposed to the Zionist aim of

creating a secular Jewish homeland, and as such are considered by some

as anti-Zionist. This view is held despite the fact that they support

the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and bargain for

financial support from the state. The National Religious party, which

won five seats in the 1988 Israeli election, is considered Zionist and

over the years has become increasingly nationalistic.36

While much of the Orthodox religious Jewish community was eventually

won over to the extent of giving at least nominal support to the state

of Israel, significant pockets of resistance remain. The Neturei Karta

("Guardians of the Walls") in their large enclaves in Jerusalem's Mea

Sharim Quarter and in Bnai Brak near Tel Aviv, preserve Orthodox

Jewry's fierce opposition to Zionism. They refuse to have anything to

do with Israeli state authorities.37 The following is an excerpt from

a Neturei Karta advertisement that appeared in The New York Times on

June 15, 1981:

Besides the millions of Jews who are non-Zionist, there are many

hundreds of thousands of Jews who are fervently anti-Zionist. They are

opposed to Zionism and the very existence of the Zionist state because

Zionism seeks to change the essence of Judaism and substitute

chauvinism and militarism and loyalty to the Zionist state for the

lofty and unchangeable principles of the Jewish faith. The Jewish

nation was not founded by Zionist politicians but the character of

Jewish nationhood was determined on Mount Sinai and the Jewish people

as well as every individual Jew are bound to fulfill the Mitzvos

(commandments) of the oral and written law of the Torah. Jews are

certain that the Jewish redemption will come with the coming of the

Moshiach. The establishment of the Zionist state before that time is

heretic and indeed blasphemous. Our greatest rabbis have taught us

that Zionism is one of the worst calamities that has ever befallen the

Jewish people.38

The intensity of the ultra-Orthodox's opposition to political Zionism

is fierce. Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, for example, argues that Zionism is

causing a genocide of the Jewish people by destroying the religious

and spiritual basis for Jewish existence.39 Rabbi Moshe Leib-Hirsch

summarized the extent of Neturei Karta's opposition to Zionism by

stating, "We will not accept a Zionist State even if the Arabs do."40

Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe, until his death in 1979, at the age

of 91, was also implacably anti-Zionist and "influenced Orthodox Jewry

in the whole of Transylvania." After World War II, and a brief stay in

Jerusalem, he emigrated to New York. Many of his followers congregated

there and new members joined his flock. Rabbi Teitelbaum opposed

Zionism not only on halachic grounds but also because he believed that

"Zionism forestalled the Messiah. . . brought the Holocaust and other

calamities on the Jewish people." In his view the Jewish state

"condemned itself through its own lifestyle and politics."

Teitelbaum's 40,000 chassidim are found largely in Williamsburg, New

York, and in Jerusalem.41

In January 1986 the non-Zionist Central Rabbinical Congress of the

United States and Canada, representing Orthodox and Hasidic Jews,

issued a statement attacking Zionism and Israel's policies towards the

Palestinians. It included the following:

It is our duty to denounce those who invoke the name of the Almighty

in vain. It is our holy obligation and our moral responsibility to

call on them: Stop using these falsehoods and heresies to justify

yourselves and your misdeeds. The Jewish faith, as transmitted by the

Almighty to our forefathers has not and will never countenance the

zionist and nationalistic doctrines of the state of Israel. These

false doctrines are compounded of atheism and anti-religious zionism,

ideologies alien to Judaism. Let them not be misrepresented to the

world as Jewish.42

Reform Jews in the United States were also opposed to Zionism. Their

Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 stated their opposition to the

establishment of a Jewish state very clearly: "We consider ourselves

no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect

neither a return to Palestine. . . nor the restoration of the laws

concerning the Jewish state."43

With the emergence of the Zionist movement their position even

hardened. In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR)

declared:

.. . . we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a

Jewish state. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's

mission, which from the narrow political and national field has been

expanded to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and

universalistic religion first proclaimed by the Jewish prophets. . .

44

It was not until 1937, and after the rise of Hitler, that the CCAR

changed its position on the question of Zionism. This reversal,

however, also spawned another anti-Zionist Jewish organization.45

In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other prominent

American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with the

express intent of combatting Zionism. Included in the Council's

leadership were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J.

Rosenwald, the former chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who

became president of the Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its

executive director; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York

Times; and Sidney Wallach of the American Jewish Committee. Membership

in the Council grew to over 15,000. Its members were highly articulate

and greatly angered the Zionist leadership, who wanted the American

Jewish community to present a united front on the Palestine question.

46

Even after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1947 the

American Council for Judaism continued to oppose Zionism vocally. The

magazine, Issues, was their principal vehicle of communication.47

Issues was joined in its opposition to Zionism by The Menorah Journal

edited by Dr. Henry Hurwitz48 and William Zukerman's Jewish Newsletter.

49

After Israel's spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war,

however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the

American Council for Judaism. Alfred Lilienthal suggests that "Zionist

infiltration" succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council.50 A separate

organization was subsequently established in 1969 called American

Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ). The new group, which is based

in New York, continues the original anti-Zionist tradition of the

American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger is currently the

president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report.

51

One of the most articulate and vocal critics in Canada today of

Israel's policies towards the Palestinians is Rabbi Reuben Slonim. He

is a spiritual Zionist in the tradition of Ahad Ha-am. His criticisms

of Israel's policies eventually led to a break with his congregation

in Toronto. However, he does have a small, but devoted, following

among the Canadian Jewish community.52 In 1983 he wrote:

Today we Jews are losing [the] humanism and universalism of Judaism,

all for the sake of Jewish statehood. We love Israel, and so we

should, but we are so blinded by that love that we are willing to pay

a prohibitive price for it. We condone acts we would declare

unconscionable anywhere else in the world: nuclear weapons are wrong

but necessary for Israel; apartheid is wrong, but for the sake of

Israel's survival we will tolerate it; human rights are critical, but

not for the Palestinians; we have a right to a state but Palestinians

do not. Our racism towards Arabs would be regarded as anti-Semitism if

others spoke of us in the same light. In all things we need to

remember that the Jewish people and the Jewish state are but

instruments, not ends in themselves; that what is good for the world

is good for the Jews, not what is good for the Jews is good for the

world; that the ultimate goal of the Jew, if he be truly Jewish, is to

serve humanity.53

NON-RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM

Not only Orthodox and Reform Jews were opposed to Zionism. In March

1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist

petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was leaving for the Paris

Peace Conference. The petition was signed by 31 prominent American

Jews. These included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey;

Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H.

Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president

of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy's Jesse I. Straus; New York Times

publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco.54

The petition read in part:

.. . . we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the

re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as

utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed

purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish.

Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion," it is

contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was

waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases.55

Albert Einstein was also anti-Zionist. He made a presentation to the

Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, which was examining the Palestine

issue in January 1946 and argued against the creation of a Jewish

state. Einstein also later turned down the presidency of the state of

Israel.56 In 1950 Einstein published the following statement on the

question of Zionism.

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the

basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.

Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential

nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an

army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am

afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the

development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against

which we have already had to fight without a Jewish state.57

Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and twenty-five other

prominent Jews, in a letter to The New York Times (December 4, 1948),

condemned Menachem Begin's and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party as

"fascist" and espousing "an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious

mysticism and racial superiority." The same theme is echoed in William

Zukerman's 1934 article in The Nation, "The Menace of Jewish Fascism.

"58 This is also the premise of Michael Selzer's book, The

Aryanization of the Jewish State.59

For most Western Jews and many other people, the connection of Zionism

to fascism and racism is odious and inappropriate. However, this theme

is a recurrent motif in the debate on Zionism within the Jewish

community. Even David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and first

prime minister, wrote an article in 1933 entitled, "Jabotinsky in the

Footsteps of Hitler."60 Vladimir Jabotinsky was the founder of

Revisionist Zionism and the mentor of Menachem Begin.

Professor Richard Arens, the late brother of Moshe Arens, the Israeli

defense minister and leading figure in the Likud party, has also

equated Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with the Nazi

persecution of the Jews.61 Hannah Arendt, when writing about the trial

of Adolph Eichmann, pointed out the irony of attacking the Nazis'

Nuremberg Laws of 1935 when certain laws in Israel regarding the

personal status of Jews were identical to the infamous Nazi code.62

Morris Raphael Cohen, the distinguished philosopher, went so far as to

argue that "Zionists fundamentally accept the racial ideology of anti-

Semites, but draw different conclusions. Instead of the Teuton, it is

the Jew that is the pure or superior race."63

Other leading Jewish intellectuals who opposed Zionism include Louis

D. Brandeis (see Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism), Martin Buber

(coauthor, with J.L. Magnes and E. Simon, of Towards Union in

Palestine: Essay on Zionism and Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 1947), Isaac

Deutscher ("The Non-Jewish Jew," in The Non-Jewish Jew and Other

Essays, 1968), Simon Dubnow (Nationalism and History: Essays on Old

and New Judaism, edited by Koppel S. Pinson, 1961), Morris Jastrow

(Zionism and the Future of Palestine, the Fallacies and Dangers of

Political Zionism, 1919), Emile Marmorstein ("A Bout of Agony," The

Guardian, April 1974), Moshe Menuhin (father of Sir Yehudi Menuhin and

author of The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time), Claude Montefiore

("Nation or Religious Community?" reprinted in Selzer, Zionism

Reconsidered), Jakob I. Petuchowski (Zion Reconsidered, 1966), and

Franz Rosenzweig.64 Hans Kohn, who was one of the world's leading

authorities on nationalism, posed the following questions on the

issue.

Might not perhaps the "abnormal" existence of the Jews represent a

higher form of historical development than territorial nationalism?

Has not the diaspora been an essential part of Jewish existence? Did

it not secure Jewish survival better than the state could do?65

Erich Fromm, the eminent scholar, also was critical of Zionism. He

stated that the Arabs in Israel had a much more legitimate claim to

citizenship than the Jews. Fromm also wrote:

The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic

political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in

which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would

be a madhouse.66

Bruno Kreisky, the former chancellor of Austria, who died in July

1990, was well known for his attempts to bring about reconciliation

between Israelis and Palestinians. ln a 1974 interview with an Israeli

paper he stated: "There is no Jewish race; there are only Jewish

religious groups. Israel was only the ancient, religious fatherland of

Jews, but not their true fatherland."67 In another interview,

conducted in 1985, Kreisky said, "In the struggle between Israel and

the Palestinians I am on the side of the underdog -- the

Palestinians."68

Present-day Jewish opponents of Zionism who have published books on

the subject include Rabbi Elmer Berger (The Jewish Dilemma, 1945),

Noam Chomsky (The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the

Palestinians, 1983), Marc H. Ellis (Towards a Jewish Theology of

Liberation: The Uprising and the Future, 1989), Roberta Strauss

Feuerlicht (The Fate of the Jews, 1983), Georges Friedmann (The End of

the Jewish People, 1967), Maxim Ghilan (How Israel Lost Its Soul,

1974), Alfred M. Lilienthal (What Price Israel? 1953), Norton

Mezvinsky (The Character of the State of Israel, 1972), Cheryl

Rubenberg (Israel and the American National Interest, 1986), and

Michael Selzer (The Wineskin and the Wizard, 1970). Several

collections of articles are also useful in understanding the scope of

debate within the Jewish community and especially the strength of

opposition in Jewish intellectual circles. These collections are

Jewish Critics of Zionism by Moshe Menuhin; Zionism Reconsidered,

edited by Michael Selzer; and Zionism: The Dream and the Reality -- A

Jewish Critique, edited by Gary V. Smith.

Lilienthal's The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace? is one of

the classic expositions of the Jewish anti-Zionist position, and as a

historical work it is virtually encyclopedic. Lilienthal, who also

edited the newsletter Middle East Perspective (1968-1985), Rabbi Elmer

Berger and Noam Chomsky have to be considered the three preeminent

American Jewish critics of Zionism.69

Many Jews have opposed Zionism because they believe that there is a

moral contradiction in trying to create an exclusionist Jewish nation-

state out of a universal religious ethic. They have also opposed

Zionism because of what it has done to the Palestinians and how they

believed this violence would transform Judaism.

A large number of Socialist and Marxist Jewish scholars are also

opposed to Zionism. These include Peter Buch, (Zionism and the Arab

Revolution, 1967), Steven Goldfield (Garrison State: Israel's Role in

U.S. Global Strategy, 1985), Abraham Leon (The Jewish Question, 1973),

the famed Orientalist Maxime Rodinson (Israel: A Colonial-Settler

State? 1973), Jon Rothschild (editor of Forbidden Agendas: Intolerance

and Defiance in the Middle East, 1984; coauthor, with Nathan

Weinstock, of The Truth about Israel and Zionism, 1970), and Nathan

Weinstock (Zionism: False Messiah, 1979). A rising generation of

American leftist Jewish thinkers, including Joel Beinin ("From Land

Day to Peace Day.. . and Beyond," in Intifada: The Palestinian

Uprising against Israeli Occupation, edited by Zachary Lockman and

Joel Beinin, 1989), Lenni Brenner (Zionism in the Age of the

Dictators, 1983), David Finkel (editor of the Detroit-based magazine

Against the Current, whose "Occupation and Resistance: A Look Inside

the Israel-Palestine Crisis," appeared in Changes, July-August, 1982),

Norman Finkelstein ("Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The

Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial," in Blaming

the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited

by Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens, 1988), Christopher

Hitchens (writer of a bimonthly column in The Nation),70 Zachary

Lockman ("Original Sin," in Intifada, edited by Lockman and Beinin),

Joan Mandel71 and Hilton Obenzinger,72 are also highly critical of

Zionism.

There also exists in the Soviet Union an active Jewish anti-Zionist

organization. It is headed by General David Dragunski.73 Despite

reports to the contrary, this organization is still in existence.74

The West tends to dismiss such bodies, but one should remember that

historically there has always been a powerful anti-Zionist Socialist

and Communist tradition within the Jewish community.

Many Jewish intellectuals were prominent leaders in the Socialist

movement, and in many respects they represent a competing stream of

thought in the world Jewish community. Leon Trotsky, for example,

attacked Zionism as "reactionary," a "blind alley" and "a bloody

trap."75 Rosa Luxemberg also was anti-Zionist and as a result was

attacked with the accusation of "self-hatred."76 Ephraim Sevela, a

Soviet Jewish emigrant to Israel, has written a book about his

disillusionment with Zionism in which he concludes that Israel is not

a Jewish homeland.77

The Jewish workers' Bund movement was also anti-Zionist. The Bund was

a large and well-organized Jewish socialist, autonomist party that

existed in Lithuania, Poland and Russia between 1907-1948. It favored

a secular East European Jewish nationalism and rejected a world Jewish

national identity.78

Over time Socialist Zionists managed to reduce leftist Jewish

opposition to the Zionist program by emphasizing the utopian and

socialist aspects of political Zionism. The kibbutz experiment of

collective farming and the large role labor played in the early years

of the state figured prominently in the campaign to win support from

the left for the Jewish state. But with the shift of the political

character of Zionism to the right and with Begin's and Shamir's rise

to power in Israel, and with the increased repression of the

Palestinians, the left has lost much of its enthusiasm for the Zionist

experiment.

For many critics of Zionism the parallels between Israel's treatment

of the Palestinians and South Africa's handling of its black

population are striking. Dennis Goldberg, a white South African and

member of the African National Congress, was released from Pretoria

prison in 1985 to immigrate to Israel when he agreed to fore-swear

violent opposition to apartheid.79 He was also highly critical of

Israel's close military and economic ties with the white-supremacist

state. Goldberg later emigrated from Israel to Great Britain. Mark A.

Bruzonsky80 and Micah L. Sifry81 have made similar comparisons.

Israel: An Apartheid State, by expatriate Israeli Uri Davis, also

equates Israel with South Africa.82

OPPOSITION IN ISRAEL

It may surprise some, but much of the opposition to Zionism today is

centered in Israel. It is there that the realities of Zionism's

confrontation with the Palestinians are most painfully apparent. Local

Jewish opposition to Zionism also has a long history.

Several important Jewish religious leaders in Palestine were opposed

to Zionism and the creation of Israel. Rabbi YosefTzvi Dushinsky, the

Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, and Rabbi Zelig Reuven Bengis were

opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. These two rabbis stated

their opposition in a presentation on June 16, 1947, before the U.N.

Commission on Palestine when it convened hearings in Jerusalem. They

feared that "a Jewish state would be a rallying point for anti-

Semitism and thus an actual danger to the Jewish people."83

In July 1949 Rabbi Amram Blau and Rabbi Aaron Katzenellenbogen sent a

memorandum to the Secretary General of the United Nations on behalf of

the Neturei Karta in Jerusalem. They called for the

internationalization of Jerusalem and asked for U.N. passports and

protection for their community.84

Judah L. Magnes, who was president of Hebrew University in Jerusalem

during the Palestine Mandate, was also opposed to the creation of a

Jewish state.85 In 1936, Magnes, together with other leading Jewish

Palestinian humanists, including Pinhas Rutenberg and Moshe Smilanski,

advocated the creation of a bi-national state. The Zionist

establishment rejected this proposal. These prominent Jewish

intellectuals then founded the Ihud (Union) group to oppose the

partition of Palestine.86

Shortly before the creation of Israel, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber,

on the behalf of the Ihud Association, made the following statement

before the Anglo-American Palestine Commission Inquiry: "We do not

favor Palestine as a Jewish country or Palestine as an Arab country,

but a bi-national Palestine as the common country of two peoples."87

The Ihud, however, abandoned the idea in 1948 after Magnes' death, and

after war had broken out in Palestine.88

Mordechai Avi Shaul was one of these early Jewish humanists who

continued to oppose the Jewish state after its creation. In 1935 he

helped to establish the League of Civil and Human Rights in Palestine,

"whose original purpose was to oppose British oppression of Jews and

Arabs under the Mandate." He continued to work for equal rights for

Arabs in the Jewish state.89

Reb Binyomin, a prominent writer, strongly criticized actions that

occurred during the creation of the Jewish state. In 1953 he wrote:

After the State of Israel was established, I began receiving news

about the terrible things perpetrated both during and after the

Israeli-Arab war. I did not recognize my own people for the changes

which had occurred in their spirit. The acts of brutality were not the

worst because those might have been explained somehow. . . Far more

terrible was the benevolent attitude towards these acts on the part of

public opinion. I had never imagined that such could be the spiritual

and moral countenance of Israel. . .90

Another old Jewish settler, Nathan Chofshi, who also witnessed the

birth of the Jewish state, did not like what he saw. In 1959, in a

reply to a rabbi who "parroted" the official version of the

Palestinian exodus from Israel, he bore witness to the campaign to

expel the Palestinian population. Chofshi also stated the following:

We came and turned the Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare

slander and malign them, to besmirch their name; instead of being

deeply ashamed of what we did, and trying to undo some of the evil we

committed, we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify

them.91

In 1962 Moshe Machover founded the Israeli Socialist Organization

(known as Matzpen after its publication) with other Israeli leftists.

He described Zionism as "the equivalent of what in other places is

known as white supremacy. Here [in Israel] there are exact parallels

in terms of Jewish supremacy."92 Matzpen, however, splintered into

several political factions and together with other small left-wing

anti-Zionist Israeli groups the divisions greatly diminished the

strength of non-Zionist Jewish forces within Israel. All of these

"radical" groups came under political attack from state authorities.93

In 1975 Charles Glass estimated that 5-8 percent of Israel's Jewish

population fell into the anti-Zionist category. Most of this

opposition was of a "leftist" variety. However, Glass also stated that

"they represent 50 percent of the only significant debate in the

country."94

Ehud Adiv, Dan Vered, Yehezkel Cohen, David Cooper and Rami Livneh are

five Jewish Israelis who have been sent to prison for working against

the Jewish state. Livneh was sentenced to ten years in prison for

meeting with a Fatah member near Nazareth to discuss political issues.

His case was adopted by Amnesty International.95

Adiv, Vered, Cohen and Cooper were members of the Revolutionary

Communist Alliance-Red Front. They were critical of Matzpen and some

of the other leftist anti-Zionist organizations for their lack of a

political program. Their belief in activism led them to participate in

an underground Palestinian-Israeli organization. This resulted in

their being convicted of helping to form an "espionage and sabotage

network." The "Red Front Trial" was a shock to Israeli society which

was used to the image of its Jewish youth ready to defend The Nation

under all circumstances.96 As Charles Glass commented:

While the Red Front probably never presented a security danger to the

State of Israel, its psychological threat was enormous. Here were Jews

born and raised in Israel, Adiv himself from a kibbutz, working with

Arabs for the overthrow of the state! Young Israelis could not help

but ask why.97

The 1986 disclosure by the former Israeli nuclear technician,

Mordechai Vanunu, of Israeli's nuclear arsenal can be seen in a

similar light. Israeli authorities launched a massive campaign to

discredit Vanunu in the eyes of Israel's Jewish population while his

trial was conducted in total secrecy. He was convicted of treason and

sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.98 The stiff penalty given Vanunu

for revealing what has been an open secret for years is a harsh

reminder that the Jewish state is tightening the noose around internal

dissent.99

One of the leading Israeli anti-Zionists today is concentration-camp

survivor Israel Shahak, who currently heads the Israeli League for

Civil and Human Rights. Shahak takes the view that "the State of

Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of the term: In this

state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and

legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of

their origin."100 He also indicates:

I would say the only human response to Holocaust is to try not to be

like Nazis, in word or in deed. What brought the Holocaust was the

racist attitude towards Jews, the division of German society into Jews

and non-Jews on grounds of race. This is exactly the same thing that

is happening in Israel.101

Many view this type of comparison as inappropriate, but other Israeli

Jews have drawn the same parallel. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the

renowned scholar of Judaism and philosophy and the editor of several

volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, has expressed similar concerns:

The big crisis of the Jewish people is that the overwhelming majority

of the Jews genuinely desire to be Jewish -- but they have no content

for their Judaism other than a piece of colored rag attached to the

end of a pole and a military uniform. The consciousness and the desire

to be Jewish did not vanish, rather they are transformed today into a

Judeo-Nazi mentality.102

Other leading Israeli critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies

towards the Palestinians include Professor Danny Amit ("There is a

basis for an Israeli-Palestinian strategy of joint struggle," MERIP

Reports, May 1983), Uri Avnery (Israel without Zionists, 1968), Yoram

Binur (My Enemy, My Self, 1989), Uri Davis ("Journey Out of Zionism,"

in Journal of Palestine Studies, summer 1970), Boaz Evron ("Holocaust:

The Uses of Disaster," in Radical America, fall 1983), the late Simha

Flapan (The Birth of Israel, 1987), Isaac Hasson ("Can Israel Be a

Democratic State?" in The International Humanist, December 1987),

Amnon Kapeliouk (Sabra and Shatilla, 1984), Peretz Kidron ("Truth

Whereby Nations Live," in Blaming the Victims, edited by Hitchens and

Said), Felicia Langer (With My Own Eyes, 1975), the late Livia Rokach

(editor of Israel's Sacred Terrorism, 1980), Ur Shlansky ("Eyewitness

in Gaza," in Radical America, fall, 1983), Professor Jacob Talmon

("Self-Determination for Palestinian Arabs: An Open Letter," in Jewish

Liberation Journal, November-December 1969), Georges Tamarin (The

Israeli Dilemma: Essays on a Warfare State, 1973), and Lea Tsemel

("The Political Prisoners," Arab Studies Quarterly, spring/summer

1985). This list is by no means complete.

Many Israelis have also refused to serve in the army on political

grounds. These include Marius Shattner, Irith Yacobi and Reuben

Lassman.103 In 1973 Giora Neumann was sentenced to eight months

imprisonment for refusing military duty. At his trial Neumann said

that he had to be loyal to his values, and that the Israeli military

had become a "persecuting army" of occupation which "uproots and

exiles people."104

Over 2,000 Israeli reserve soldiers signed a petition requesting not

to serve in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The opposition to war among

Israeli reserve soldiers formalized itself into an organization called

Yesh Gvul ("There is a limit").105 Gideon Spiro, one of its founders,

wrote:

It was the first time in Israel's history that Israeli reserve

soldiers said to the government: We are not going to a war which

violates all democratic and humanistic norms; which violates all

international charters to which Israel is a signatory, especially the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights; which contradicts the essence

and spirit of the Israeli Declaration of Independence; and which

involves the criminal bombing of civilian populations.106

Yesh Gvul is not a pacifist organization and does not question the

need for an army for Israel's defense. However, its members argued

that they were not prepared to support a war they viewed as illegal,

and they were not prepared to hide behind the defense of "we acted

under orders" in an attempt to justify that illegality. One hundred

and fifty Israelis were court martialed for refusing to serve in

Lebanon.107

Yesh Gvul has also been active in opposing Israeli policies towards

the Palestinians. Over 600 Israeli reserve soldiers have signed a

petition indicating their refusal to serve in the Occupied

Territories. At least 37 "refuseniks" have been sent to prison and

approximately 100 reservists have been released from service after

refusing to help crush Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the

territories.108

The board of directors of the state-operated Israeli television

network has decided to prohibit reports of Yesh Gvul demonstrations.

Israel has only one television network. This decision was seen by many

Israelis, including those who were opposed to Yesh Gvul, as an ominous

attack on freedom of expression.109

Israel's invasion of Lebanon also prompted Jacobo Timerman, the world-

renowned author and human-rights activist, to sharply criticize the

actions of Israel. He asked, "Why are the Israelis incapable of

recognizing the high degree of criminality in their army's campaign

against the Palestinian people?"110 In 1988 Timerman attacked

"hypocrisy" in Israel:

Israel's great hypocrisy consists in disguising her policy of

occupation with security arguments similar to those utilized by the

Argentine generals to justify their bloody dictatorship. The real

objective of Israel's policy is to expel all Palestinians and seize

their lands. . . . There is a second hypocrisy shocking in its

obscenity: the utilization of the Holocaust to justify alleged Israeli

fears of a new extermination. It is used as an excuse for the policy

of wiping out the Palestinian identity which has been implemented in

Israel for the past 20 years, as if an unproven future danger were

sufficient reason to commit crimes against a defenseless nation today.

111

The 23 years of occupation that has been imposed on the Palestinians

in the West Bank and Gaza has also left its mark on Israeli society.

The occupation has been opposed by many Jews.112 Professor Leibowitz,

for example, made the following comment:

It is both understandable and natural that an enslaved people will

fight for its freedom against an occupying power with all the means at

its disposal, and without regard for their propriety; this phenomenon

is recognized to be part and parcel of the wars of liberation of all

peoples. We use the term "terrorism" to describe the acts of the

Palestinian people, and call their fighters "terrorists." But our rule

over a resistant people could not persist were it not for the use of

means which are considered to constitute war crimes throughout the

world -- and even plain criminal acts. We do not view these acts as

terrorism; they are considered to be policy because they are being

implemented by a legal government and a state arm. "Aberrant acts" by

necessity become the norm because, far from being a side effect of an

occupation regime, they are its essence.113

While Palestinians have been long subjected to restrictions, Jews have

largely been free from overt state interference, although the Jewish

press is censored. However, there are signs that the tactics which are

used to control Palestinian opposition are being extended to Jewish

dissent.

In February 1987 Michael Warschawsky, an anti-Zionist Israeli and

director of the Alternative Information Center was arrested. The

Center was closed down and its files seized. The organization provided

information on human-rights violations in the Occupied Territories to

the media. The Center was a constant irritant to Israeli authorities,

who wanted to present a benevolent image of the occupation to the

world and "manage" coverage of the suppression of the Palestinian

uprising. Several foreign journalists who witnessed the raid claimed

that "what's happening here is similar to the police treatment of

foreign correspondents in South Africa."114

Warschawsky was charged with security offenses for assisting

proscribed "terrorist" organizations. The charges included "rendering

typing services to students and women's organizations" which were

claimed to be "front organizations for the Popular Front for the

Liberation of Palestine." Other offenses included rendering typing

facilities for several Palestinian newspapers that are not even banned

by the authorities. The Israeli newspaper Hadshot reported that one of

the charges leveled against Warschawsky was that he had helped in

"preparing and distributing instructional material related to the

interrogation method of Shin Bet [israeli General Security Services],

which teaches potential detainees how to behave when they are arrested

and thereby harms the activities of the security services. . . ."115

The information was to help Palestinian detainees resist torture

techniques practiced by Israeli security services. In the words of one

Israeli: "It is clear why Mikado [Warschawsky] was arrested. . . so

that the Jews can say: With our hands on our hearts, we didn't

know."116

Warschawsky was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment. However,

widespread outrage at the harshness of the sentence caused the

authorities to reduce it to eight months after an appeal was heard.117

On February 18, 1988, Derech Hanitzotz/Tariq A-Sharara, a joint Hebrew/

Arabic newspaper operation, was shut down by Israeli authorities. The

paper was left-wing and extremely critical of Israeli policies towards

the Palestinians. Four editors and the publisher, all Jews and three

of them women, were arrested: Yakov Ben Efrat, Roni Ben Efrat, Michal

Schwartz, Hadas Lahav and Asaf Adiv. It was the first Hebrew-language

newspaper to be closed under the security laws.118

Hadas Ladav was released after 12 days of solitary confinement without

charges being brought. She reported that the detainees were subjected

to "emotional torture,. . . humiliation and.., sexual harassment" from

the investigators. Ladav stated after such an ordeal, "one does not

leave the same person as one went in."119 There were also reports of

more severe types of punishment being inflicted on the remaining

prisoners. The dissidents were held without bail and charged with

security offenses similar to those leveled at Warschawsky.

The term Palestinian is simply that of a national designation which

includes not only Christians and Muslims but also Jews, and other

religious and even non-religious groups. The first British governor of

Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, reported that virtually all indigenous

Palestinian Jews were adamantly opposed to European political Zionism.

120 Ilan Halevi, a Jewish Palestinian, is a top-ranking member of the

PLO. He is the PLO ambassador to Europe and its representative to the

Socialist International.121

It is also interesting to note that the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta

religious sect has asked for affiliation with the Palestine National

Council. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch has even offered to serve as minister for

Jewish Affairs in a Palestinian government-in-exile.122 Rabbi Hirsch

argues:

We are as Palestinian as Yasser Arafat. There are Jewish Palestinians,

and there are Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians. In

regard to issues relating to the Palestinian people, we also have our

interests. If a state is established we would like to have our

representation in the government.123

Two little-known facts are that the PLO helped protect the Beirut

Jewish community (and also the American embassy) during the Lebanese

Civil War,124 and it was the Israelis who destroyed their synagogue

during the siege of Beirtut.125 Nor has it been widely publicized that

nine Palestinian Jews were among the victims of the Sabra and Shatila

massacre.126

There are also a small number of Palestinian Jews still living within

Palestinian society. Esther Ramahi is one such individual. She prefers

to live in the squalor of the Jelazoun refugee camp, a few kilometers

from Ramallah, with her Moslem Palestinian family rather than with her

Jewish daughter and all the comforts of modern Israel.127

Like the Palestinian Jews, many Arab Jews (also called Oriental and

Sephardic) were initially opposed to political Zionism. European

secular Zionism was a totally alien ideological concept that was in

direct conflict with their Jewish religious and their Arab cultural

background. Kohavi Shemesh, a former leader of the Black Panthers, an

Israeli anti-Zionist Oriental Jewish organization, has stated that,

contrary to popular belief, "There wasn't any large-scale anti-

Semitism in the Arab countries."128

The long-simmering Arab-Israeli dispute and Israel's military actions

in the name of the "Jewish people" have all but virtually destroyed

what was once a thriving Jewish-Arab community. Today, only remnants

remain. It was, of course, in Israel's interest to strengthen the

Jewish foothold in Palestine by ingathering Jews from the Arab world.

Naim Giladi, an Oriental Jew and one of the founders of the Black

Panthers, has been working on the subject of Mossad operations in the

Jewish-Arab community to "facilitate" Jewish-Arab immigration to

Israel.129 One example of this campaign to "encourage" Zionist

immigration were the bombs set off in Baghdad in 1950 to terrorize the

Iraqi-Jewish community into fleeing their home of 2,500 years.130 This

question is also the subject of Marion Woolfson's Prophets in Babylon

where she argues, from an anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, that the

Jewish Arabs were victims of Zionism.131

RECENT OPPOSITION

One of the more recent manifestations of Jewish anti-Zionism is a

public advertisement that contained over 200 names, including that of

Harry Cohen, a British member of Parliament. The original ad was

published in The Manchester Guardian (October 31, 1987) on the

occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. More

names were added to a subsequent version published in the magazine,

Jerusalem. The ad stated that "the state of Israel does not represent

all Jewish people, neither legally, morally nor in any other way." The

statement also charged that "the Zionist structure of the state of

Israel is at the heart of the racism and oppression against the

Palestinian people, and should be dismantled."132

In other countries Jews are also expressing concern about Israel's

policies towards the Palestinians and about the direction that Zionism

is heading. In Canada there are several Jewish organizations that are

sharply critical of Israel's policies. One of the most active is Jews

for a Just Peace. Yossi Schwartz, an Israeli, has served as spokesman

for the organization. The group is part of a small but growing number

of Canadian Jews who are voicing their opposition to Israel's

treatment of the Palestintans.

At a rally organized by Jews for a Just Peace, held in April 1988 in

front of the Israeli Consulate in Toronto, Schwartz denounced Israeli

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as a "terrorist," a "fascist" and an

enemy not only to the Palestinians, but to the Jewish people too." He

said "the real heroes are Jews who refuse to serve in the Occupied

Territories and Lebanon." "Petition for Palestinian Rights -- Against

the Israeli Law of Return -- for the Palestinian Right to Return,"

Jerusalem, May 1988, pp. 3 1 -- 33. Their address do Bradford Resource

Centre, 31 Manor Row, Bradford, UK BDI 4PS. The demonstration drew a

crowd of "about 300 people, including Arabs... as well as members of

the New Jewish Agenda." The demonstration was reported to have been

"orderly."133

In France, 155 Jews have endorsed an advertisement calling for the

French government to recognize the new Palestinian state declared at

the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers on November 15,

1988. The ad stated: "Now that the right of Israel to exist has been

recognized by the Palestine National Council, nothing is against

negotiations starting between the representatives of the Israeli and

Palestinian peoples." They also declared their support for the "peace

forces which are fighting bravely in Israel against those who wish,

among other things, to expel the entire Arab population."134

The "father" of the proposal to issue a declaration establishing a

Palestinian state is Jerome Segal, an American Jewish peace activist

who has long been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.135 At

the present time there are also a number of prominent Jewish

journalists who are extremely critical of Israel's policies towards

the Palestinians. These include Gerald Ca-plan of the Toronto Star

("Mindless cheerleaders for Israel?" May 13, 1990), Anthony Lewis of

The New York Times ("Israel: It's Time to Speak Out about Injustice,"

October 22, 1989, one of many examples), Nat Hentoff of The Village

Voice ("The Silence of American Jews," June 29, 1982; reprinted in

Journal of Palestine Studies, summer/fall 1982), and Eric Rouleau of

Le Monde.136 However, the diverse nature of Jewish opposition to

Zionism, in the West at least, and conflicting approaches to politics

makes this opposition relatively incoherent and very difficult to weld

into a viable alternative Jewish political force. Zionism clearly

dominates the activist and organized elements of the Western Jewish

community.

Support for Israel has virtually become a litmus test for loyalty to

the Jewish community, and the role of religion has clearly diminished.

Anti-Zionist Jews are simply defined outside of the community, and if

they become vocal they are attacked as self-hating Jews, and sometimes

even as "Kapos" (Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in the

concentration camps), for betraying the new belief system.

I. F. Stone, the award-winning American Jewish journalist, who died on

June 18, 1989, wrote:

.. . . Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry.

In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance

of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds

itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be

legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist. Jews might

fight elsewhere for their very security and existence -- against

principles and practices they find themselves defending in Israel.

137

At the very least, some of the criticisms that I. F. Stone, Albert

Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals and religious leaders have

leveled at Zionism and at the creation of a "Jewish state" seem to

have been borne out.

There is no monolithic Jewish position on Zionism. Many Jews have

opposed Zionism in the past, and many still do today, whether it is

from a religious, leftist, liberal or humanist perspective. It would

not be inappropriate to say that Jewish critics of Zionism and of

Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are the ones who are

upholding the great Jewish tradition of ethical dissent and moral

leadership. It also can be argued that Zionist Jews who place power

above morality are, in fact, the historical aberration.

1 "Time to Dissociate from Israel," The Nation, February 13, 1988, p.

19.

2 See "Jewish Committee on the Middle East," The Washington Report on

the Middle East, November, 1988, p. 19; The Progressive, February

1989, p. 2; and The Nation, January 29, 1990, p. 119. For more

information on JCOME see Mark Bruzonsky, "American Jews and the

Intifada," Middle East International, July 8, 1988, pp. 18-19. JCOME's

address is P.O. Box 18367, Washington, D.C. 20036, telephone (202)

362-5266.

3 "A Challenge to American Jewish Spokesmen," The Nation, May 21,

1988, p. 732.

4 Hannah Arendt, "Zionism Reconsidered," The Menorah Journal, Autumn

1945, reprinted in Michael Selzer, Zionism Reconsidered: The Rejection

of Jewish Normalcy (London: The Macmillan Company, 1970), p. 217.

5 Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, translated by Steven Cox

(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978), pp. 71-72.

6 Ibid., p. 77.

7 Cited in Hans Kohn, "Zion and the Jewish National Idea," The Menorah

Journal, Autumn-Winter 1958, p. 19.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 32.

11 Ahad Ha-am, The Truth from Palestine (1891), quoted in ibid., p.

33.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 34.

14 Israel Zangwill, "The Return to Palestine," New Liberal Review, 11

December 1901, p. 627, cited in David Gilmour, Dispossessed: The

Ordeal of the Palestinians (London: Sphere Books, 1982), p. 44.

15 Israel Zangwill, The Voice of Jerusalem (London: William Heinemann,

1920), p. 88 quoted in Hani A. Faris, "Israel Zangwill's Challenge to

Zionism," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1975, p. 85.

16 Aryeh Rubinstein (ed.), The Return to Zion (Jerusalem: Keter Books,

1974), p. 63.

17 See "Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the

Present (British) Government: Submitted to the British Cabinet August

1917," reproduced in From Haven to Conquest, Walid Khalidi ed.

(Beirut: The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971), pp. 143-151.

18 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1972), p. 400; See also Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New

York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), p. 163. For an example of Wolf s

views see "The Zionist Peril," Jewish Quarterly Review, October 1904,

pp. 1-25.

19 Akiva Orr, The unJewish State (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), p. i.

20 Marion Woolfson writes "the Zionists whose claim to the land of

Palestine was based on a Divine promise, made some four thousand years

ago, were self-proclaimed agnostics." Prophets in Babylon (London:

Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 12; See also Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht,

The Fate of the Jews (New York: Times Books, 1983); and Dan E. Serge,

A Crisis in Identity: Israel and Zionism (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1980), p. 3; and Orr, p. 9.

21 "[T]o be a people like all other peoples," Hannah Arendt, "Zionism

Reconsidered," The Menorah Journal Autumn 1945, reprinted in Selzer,

p. 230. See also Orr, p. 6.

22 Emile Marmorstein, Heaven at Bay: The Jewish Kulturkampf in the

Holy Land (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 79-80. See also

Laqueur, p. 407.

23 Laqueur, p. 410.

24 Marmorstein, pp. 79-80.

25 I. Kolatt, "Anti-Zionism," Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel,

Raphael Patai, ed. (New York: Herzl Press, 1971), p. 48.

26 Ibid.

27 "Statement by the Lubbavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem be Schneersohn,

on Zionism (1903)," Selzer, pp. 11-18.

28 "Statement by the Holy Gerer Rebbe, the Stas Emes, on Zionism

(1901)," Selzer, pp. 19-22.

29 Rubinstein, p. 60. For more information on Rabbi Wise see Israel

Knox, Rabbi in America: The Story of Isaac M. Wise (Boston: Little,

Brown & Co., 1957).

30 For a collection of the sayings of leading rabbis against Zionism

see M. Black (ed.), Doten sifte yeshenim (3 vols., New York: 1959),

cited in Laqueur, p. 407.

31 Laqueur, pp. 407 and 409.

32 Selzer, pp. xxi and 251. For an example of Nathan Birnbaum's views

see "In Bondage to Our Fellow Jews," in Selzer, pp. 1-9.

33 Laqueur, p. 410.

34 See for example Emile Marmorstein, "Religious Opposition to

Nationalism," International Affairs (London), July 1953, pp. 348-359;

also Namal L. Zucker, "Secularization Conflicts in Israel," Religion

and Modernization, Donald E. Smith ed. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale

University Press, 1974), pp. 67-94; Timothy Phelps, "Religious

struggle tears Israel," Toronto Star, August 10, 1986, p. B3; Patrick

Martin, "Split in Israeli society underlined by rise of religious

parties," Globe and Mail, November 5, 1988, p. A5.

35 See Avishai Margali, "Israel: The Rise of the Ultra-Orthodox," The

New York Review of Books, November 9, 1989, pp. 38-44.

36 Ibid.

37 Charles Glass, "Jews Against Zionism: Israeli Jewish Anti-Zionism,"

Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 1975/ Winter 1976, p. 58.

38 "Jewish Mass Protests Against Zionism," The New York Times, June

15, 1981. The address of this organization is American Neturei Karta,

Friends of Jerusalem, Rabbi E. Schwartz, P.O. Box 1030, New York, NY

10009. For a more recent example of a Neturei Karta's ad, see "One

State of Palestine," The New York Times, May 10, 1989, p. A30.

39 See Moshe Schonfeld, Genocide in the Holy Land (Brooklyn, New York:

Bnei Yeshivos, 1980).

40 Rabbi Moshe Lieb-Hirsch, Yediot Aharonot, February 21, 1975, p. 8

(English translation: Israleft Biweekly News Service, No. 57, March 1,

1975, p. 11) cited in Glass, p. 58. For more information on the

Neturei Karta see Yerachmiel Domb (ed.), The Transformation: The Case

of the Neturei Karta, 2nd Edition (NY: Hachomo, 1989). To order, write

to P.O. Box 190-231, Brooklyn, NY 11219-0004.

41 "Satu-Mare," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 14, p. 909; see also David

Birkan, "Diary. . . of a People," Canadian Jewish News, August 14,

1986. For more information on the Satmar see Solomon Poll, The Hasidic

Community of Williamsburg (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) and Israel

Rubin, Satmar: An Island in the City (Chicago: Quadrangle Books,

1972).

42 Statement of the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States

and Canada, January 11, 1986 (85 Division Avenue, Brooklyn, New York

11211, tel. (212) 384-6765). Reproduced in The Jewish Guardian, vol.

2, no. 10, Winter 1986, 5746, pp. 4-5. The Guardian's address is Box

2143, Brooklyn, New York 11202.

43 Rubinstein, p. 60.

44 Knox, p. 114, quoted in Alan R. Taylor, The Zionist Mind (Beirut:

Institute for Palestine Studies, I974), p. 72.

45 Rubenstein, p. 61.

46 Evan Wilson, Decision on Palestine (Stanford, California: Hoover

Institution Press, 1979), p. 27. Wilson served on the Palestine desk

of the State Department during most of this period. See also Moshe

Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time (Beirut: Institute of

Palestine Studies, 1969), pp. 325-361. According to Rabbi Elmer

Berger, Adolph Ochs, the previous publisher of The New York Times, was

anti-Zionist all of his life and the paper's "editorial position in

those days was rather consistently anti-Zionist." However, Berger

indicated that at the time the Council was formed Sulzberger was anti-

Zionist but did not publicly affiliate himself with the organization.

Elmer Berger, Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew (Beirut: Institute for

Palestine Studies, 1978), pp. 13-14. For more information on the

Council see Thomas A. Kolsky, Jews Against Zionism: The American

Council for Judaism, 1942 -- 1948 (Philadelphia: Temple University

Press, l990).

47 Moshe Menuhin, Jewish Critics of Zionism (Detroit: Association of

American Arab University Graduates, 1976), p. 29.

48 Menuhin, The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, pp. 364-368.

49 Ibid., pp. 362-364.

50 Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace?

(New Brunswick, New Jersey: North American, 1982), p. 872.

51 For more information contact American Jewish Alternatives to

Zionism, 347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 900, New York, NY, USA 10016. Tel.

(212) 213-9125.

52 See Reuben Slonim, To Kill A Rabbi (Toronto: ECW Press, l987).

53 Reuben Slonim, Grand to be an Orphan (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin &

Company, 1983), p. 175.

54 Lilienthal, pp. 768-769.

55 "Jewish Anti-Zionist Petition Presented to President Wilson in

1919," American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism Report No. 52, p. 138.

The text of the statement is reproduced here at pp. 135-139.

56 Wilson, p. 72.

57 Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical

Library, 1950), p. 263. For a discussion of what Alfred Lilienthal

calls the "kidnapping" of Albert Einstein by the Zionists, see

Lilienthal, pp. 340-343.

58 William Zukerman, "The Menace of Jewish Fascism," The Nation, April

25, 1934, reprinted in Zionism, the Dream and the Reality: A Jewish

Critique, Gary V. Smith ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974), pp.

91-96.

59 Michael Selzer, The Aryanization of the Jewish State (New York:

Black Star Books, 1967).

60 David Ben-Gurion, "Jabotinsky in the Footsteps of Hitler," cited in

Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? (New York: Vintage Books,

1974), p. 89.

61 Rosie DiManno, "Israeli policies like Nazi persecution Arens'

brother says," Toronto Star, September l9, 1983 (published only in the

Metro edition). See also John Motavalli, "The Arens brothers, agreeing

to disagree," The Middle East, March 1983, pp. 19-20.

62 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: The Viking Press,

1964), pp. 7-8. For an example of her views see, "The Jewish State:

Fifty Years After -- Where Have Herzl's Politics Led?" Commentary, May

1946, reproduced in Smith, Zionism: The Dream and the Reality, pp.

67-80.

63 Morris B. Cohen, "Zionism: Tribalism or Liberalism?" in Selzer,

Zionism Reconsidered, p. 67.

64 For a hostile appraisal of Rosenzweig see "Franz Rosenzweig as a

Critic of Zionism," Conservative Judaism, Fall 1967, cited in Zionism

Reconsidered, Selzer ed., p. xx.

65 Kohn, p. 45.

66 Jewish Newsletter (New York), May 19, 1959, cited in Woolfson, p.

13.

67 Bruno Kreisky interview, Ma'ariv, January 20, 1974, quoted in

Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II, p. 434.

68 Yishayahu Ben-Porat, "Interview with Bruno Kreisky," Yediot

Aharonot, May 24, 1985, reproduced in Jerusalem, January 1986, p. 36.

69 All three of these individuals get "special" mention in Amy Kaufman

Goott and Steven J. Rosen (eds.), The Campaign to Discredit Israel

(Washington: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, 1983),

listed respectively on pp. 118-119, 100-101 and 102. The only other

American Jewish critic of Zionism who merited a special heading was

Edmund Hanauer, the founder of Search for Justice and Equality in

Palestine, P.O. Box 3452, Framingham, MA 0l701. The late Haviv

Schieber's Holy Land State Committee also gets special mention under

the organization category, pp. 68-69.

70 See for example, "Minority Report," The Nation, August 7-14, 1989,

p. 159. Here he discusses Yitzhak Shamir's past dealings with the

Nazis and the LEHI (Stern Gang) proposed alliance with the Nazis. For

discussion of Hitchens' recent discovery that his mother was Jewish

see his article, "On Not Knowing the Half of It, My Jewish Self:

Homage to Telegraphist Jacobs," Grand Street, Summer 1988, pp.

121-136.

71 One of the producers of "Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian

Family" distributed by Icarus Films, 200 Park Avenue, New York (tel:

[212] 674-3375). For a discussion of the making of the film and the

attempts to get it shown in the United States see Joan Mandel, "Making

A Documentary in Palestine and Taking It Home," Red Bass, No. 12

(1987), pp. 36-39.

72 Co-author with Steve Goldfield, "South Africa: The Israeli

Connection," American-Arab Affairs, Fall 1986, pp. 106-129. Both

Obenzinger and Goldfield are editors of Palestine Focus, P.O. Box

27462, San Francisco, CA 94127, tel. (415) 861-1552.

73 "Soviet anti-Zionist Jews reject Western claims," London Free Press

(Canada), May 17, 1984, C8. For an example of their views see Zionism:

Instrument of Imperialist Reaction (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency

Publishing House, 1970).

74 See Andrew Rosenthal, "Soviet Anti-Zionist Agency May Go," The New

York Times, December 8, 1987, p. A16; and Wolf Blitzer, "Soviet anti-

Zionist panel will be disbanded by year's end," Jerusalem Post

International Edition, November 26, 1988, p. 5. Their address: Soviet

Anti-Zionist Committee, 119270, Moscow, Frunzenskaya, Quay 46

(telephone, 245-6106). It is still headed by Dragunski.

75 Leon Trotsky, On the Jewish Question (New York: Pathfinder Press,

1970), pp. 28, 18 and 12.

76 Laqueur, p. 253 and p. 435.

77 See Ephraim Sevela, Farewell Israel (South Bend, Indiana: Gateway

Editions, 1977).

78 "The Bund," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. IV, p. 1502.

79 "South African rebel outrages Israelis," Toronto Star, March 8,

1985, p. A9.

80 Mark A. Bruzonsky, "Israel is too much like South Africa," Chicago

Sun-Times, September 11, 1985, p. 36.

81 Michah L. Sifry, "Israel and South Africa," The Nation, February

13, 1988, p. 194.

82 Uri Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Press, 1987).

83 Yosef Becher, "Neturei Karta: the anti-Zionist Jews," Middle East

International, February 7, 1986. Rabbi Becher is a leading spokesman

for the Neturei Karta in the United States.

84 "Memorandum of the Neturei Karta to the Secretary General of the

United Nations on the Question of Jerusalem, July 18, 1949,"

reproduced in The Guardian, April 1974 Nisson 5734, pp. 12-13. Also

found in International Affairs (London), July 1952, pp. 358-359.

85 See Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes, Arthur

A. Goren ed., (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

86 Glass, p. 78.

87 Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, "Testimony Before the Anglo-American

Inquiry Commission," in Arab-Jewish Unity (Westport, CT: Hyperion

Press, 1976), p. 12.

88 Taylor, p. 107.

89 Glass, p. 78.

90 Kohn, p. 42.

91 Jewish Newsletter, 9 February 1959, cited in Gilmour, p. 74.

92 Glass, pp. 63-64.

93 Ibid., pp. 61-75. For a survey of criticism of Zionism from an

Israeli Socialist perspective see Arie Bober ed., The Other Israel:

The Radical Case Against Zionism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972).

94 Glass, p. 57.

95 Ibid., p. 72. Also see Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East?, p.

174.

96 Glass, pp. 69-71. See also Kokhavi Shemesh, "Thy Destroyers and

Ravagers out of Ye will Come," Matzpen, January 1973, reprinted in Uri

Davis and Norton Mezvinsky (eds.), Documents from Israel 1967-1973

(London: Ithaca Press, 1975), pp. 123-126.

97 Glass, p. 71.

98 "Vanunu jailed 18 years for treason," The Globe and Mail, March 28,

1988, p. A11. For a discussion of Vanunu by a Canadian anti-Zionist

Jew see Mordecai Briemberg, "Prisoner of conscience," The Globe and

Mail, September 30, 1988, p. A7.

99 For example see Peter Pry, Israel's Nuclear Arsenal (Boulder, CO:

Westview Press, 1985).

100 Israel Shahak, "The Racist Nature of Zionism and the Zionistic

State of Israel," The Link, Winter 1975-1976, p. 10. For an example of

the work of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights see Report

on the Violation of Human Rights in the Territories during the

Uprising, 1988 (Tel Aviv: The Israeli League for Human and Civil

Rights, 1988).

101 Glass, p. 77.

102 "Professor Leibowitz Called for Counter Terror: 'Had I been

Younger I Would Have Done It My Self,'" Yediot Aharonot, February 13,

1983, cited in Uri Davis, "Israel's Zionist Society: Consequences for

Internal Opposition and the Necessity for External Intervention,"

Judaism or Zionism (London: Zed Books, 1986), p. 200. See also Joe

Franklin, "Interview with Yeshayahu Leibowitz," American-Arab Affairs,

Fall 1988, pp. 75-77.

103 Glass, p. 69.

104 'The Case of Giora Neumann," Davar, July 12, 1972, as reported in

Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 1972, pp. 148-149.

105 Gideon Spiro, "The Israeli soldiers who say 'There is a limit,'"

Middle East International, 9 September 1988, pp. 18-19. Yesh Gvul's

address is P.O. Box 6953, Jerusalem, 91068, Israel.

106 Ibid., p. 18.

107 Ibid., p. 19.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid., p. 20.

110 Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, translated by

Miguel Acoca (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 165.

111 Jacobo Timerman, "The Dialectics of Hypocrisies," El Pais (Spain),

March 19, 1988, p. 9. Translation.

112 For a more extensive discussion of this question, see Michael

Jansen, Dissonance in Zion (London: Zed Books, 1987).

113 Politika, #20, quoted by Yosef Algazi in "Forward: The 21st Year

of the Occupation, the Sixth Month of the Uprising," Report on the

Violations of Human Rights in the Territories during the Uprising,

1988, p. 5.

114 "We Will Not Be Gagged," News from Within (published by the

Alternative Information Center, P.O.B. 165, West Jerusalem, Israel),

February 24, 1987, pp. 1-2 and 9; and Gad Lior and Yitzhak Rabiheh,

"Israeli 'Democracy' in Practice," Yediot Aharonot, February 17, 1987,

translated and reprinted in above, pp. 2-4.

115 Ibid., p. 9.

116 Bardugo, "Speak No Evil," Kol Ha'ir, February 20, 1987, translated

in Ibid., p. 8.

117 See Michal Warschawsky, "The Border, The Law and Peace," News from

Within, November 29, 1989, reprinted in Against the Current, March/

April 1990, pp. 12-13.

118 Lili Galili, "Hadas Lahav: The Shin Bet tried to make me 'crazy,'"

Haaretz, May 26, 1988, translated and additional material provided by

The Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Chicago, 220 S. State Street,

#1308, 1 Quincy Court, Chicago, Illinois, 60604. Tel. (312)987-1830.

119 Ibid.

120 Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1945),

p. 340 cited in Henry Cattan, The Palestine Question (New York: Croom

Helm, 1988), p. 34.

121 Brendan Weston, "An Interview with Ilan Ha-levi: Both Jew and PLO

Member," The Arab World Review, April 1988, p. 16. For an example of

his work see Ilan Halevi, A History of the Jews: Ancient and Modern,

translated by A. M. Berrett (London: Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed

Books, 1987).

122 Press release: Tevet 20, 5748, January 10, 1988, from Seven-man

Neturei Karta Supreme Council. See also Ed Krales, "Orthodox Jews

Oppose Israel," Palestine Focus, July-August, 1987, p. 8.

123 Ibid.

124 The leader of the Lebanese Jewish community is reported to have

said: "The Lebanese Jews are grateful to Mr. Arafat. We have no need

of any outside protection because no one has touched a hair on our

heads. We reject Israeli reports that the community is in any danger.

We want no outside protectors, Israeli or otherwise. We simply plan to

go on living as we always have, as Lebanese." Quoted in Lilienthal,

The Zionist Connection II, p. 782. Also see Paul Martin, "Palestinians

send food to Jews besieged in Beirut synagogue," The Times (London),

November 4, 1975, p. A5. See also "PLO guarded our embassy U.S.

admits," Toronto Star, May 16, 1985, p. A12.

125 "Beirut's Only Synagogue Is Casualty of the Israelis," The New

York Times, August 12, 1982, p. A17.

126 "Nine Jews said to be among massacre victims," The Jerusalem Post,

September 30, 1982.

127 Ron Jourad, "Bitter conflict on West Bank cuts through family

ties," The Globe and Mail, November 22, 1988, p. A9.

128 Israleft Biweekly News Service, November 20, 1972, p. 7, cited in

Glass, p. 65.

129 For an example of his work see Naim Giladi, "The Iraqi Jews and

Their Coming to Israel," The Black Panther, September 11, 1972,

reprinted in Documents from Israel 1967-1973, Davis and Mezvinsky

eds., pp. 126-133.

130 Feuerlicht, pp. 230-232.

131 Woolfson, pp. 15-17.

132 "Petition for Palestinian Rights -- Against the Israeli Law of

Return -- for the Palestinian Right to Return," Jerusalem, May 1988,

pp. 31-33. Their address c/o Bradford Resource Centre, 31 Manor Row,

Bradford, UK BDI 4PS.

133 Ancil Kashetsky, "Jews for a Just Peace urges Israeli withdrawal,"

The Canadian Jewish News, April 28, 1988, p. 34. Jews for a Just

Peace's address is P.O. Box 647 Station P, Toronto, Canada, M5S 2Y4.

134 "Appeal by Jews for Peace between Israeli and Palestinian States,"

Le Monde, December 10, 1988. Reproduced in Jerusalem, December 1988,

pp. 15-16. Their address is B. Liberman, Grapp B.P. 15507-75326 Paris,

France Cedex 07.

135 Christopher Walker, "Jewish philosopher masterminded plan," The

Times (London), November 15, 1988, p. 7. See also Jerome Segal,

Creating the Palestinian State (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1989).

136 For an example of his work see Eric Rouleau (with Abu Iyad), My

Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle, translated by

Linda Butler Koseoglu (New York: Times Books, 1981).

137 I.F. Stone, "For a new approach to the Israeli-Arab Conflict," The

New York Review of Books, August 3, 1967, reprinted in Smith, p. 210.