What the non-Jewish left doesn’t understand about Jewish people

The Jewish Left has an extensive history with many notable thinkers and writers contributing to it. From figures such as Emma Goldman to activist groups like JFREJ (Jews for Racial and Economic Justice). However, it seems there is a disconnect between the Jewish and non-Jewish left. What the Goyishe Left doesn’t understand, is Zionism.

Zionism is the contemporary term for an old ideology. That ideology is the return of Jewish people from diaspora to Israel. This concept is fundamental to Judaism. While its most common interpretation cites the coming of the messiah as the catalyst behind mass Jewish migration to the promised land, that hasn’t stopped Olim throughout history from migrating back to Israel. Ethnic Jewish people all have some ancestry tying them back to the Middle East. From Ashkenazim to Mizrahim, to Beta Yisrael, there’s always some sort of Genetic evidence of Middle Eastern heritage. However genetics, blood quantum, doesn’t really matter that much when determining indigenous claim. You have to look at the culture. Surprise! Jewish culture is heavily tied to the Middle East. The historical context behind holidays like Hanukkah and Passover literally take place in Israel and Jewish connection to the land from a cultural perspective has never gone away. This is not a secret. Both Jews and Non-Jews have known about this for a very long time. This Middle Eastern heritage is one of the reasons Jewish people were discriminated against in Europe. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once calling Jewish people “The Palestinians living among us” in some of his antisemitic writings.

Aliyah, the word used for Jewish migration to Israel, is very old as well. Karaite Jews from Ukraine made a mass migration to Israel in the 10th century, one of the first groups to do so after the Roman expulsion. In the 13th century, Jews from France and England would do the same. And in the 15th century, many Sephardim would flee to Israel following the inquisition. The point being, Zionism is older than Herzl and it's certainly older than Israel. This is very clearly a very old and sacred concept within Judaism, as stated before. To ask Jewish people to abandon cultural Zionism is frankly at the least absurd, and the most antisemitic.

A History Lesson

Political Zionism, the Zionism of thinkers like Hess and Herzl, developed due to a loss of trust. The enlightenment in Europe had Jewish people at ease, if only for a moment. Concepts of secularism meant many Jewish people felt they finally had emancipation from discrimination and segregation in Europe. No more ghettos, finally they would be accepted into wider European Society. Folks like Benjamin Disraeli became prominent figures of European life. And they had us going for a bit, that is until the Dreyfus Affair. The Dreyfus Affair, for those who don’t know, was a scandal in 1894 that resulted in years of trials ending in 1906. It is the penultimate symbol of injustice in francophone society.

Alfred Dreyfus, a French Captain of Jewish Descent, was convicted of treason under the notion that he was passing along French intelligence to Germany, News of the trials swept across France and their colonies. Dreyfus’ Jewish heritage was not hidden and waves of pogroms were the result of that. Those pogroms, that pre-holocaust betrayal (we’ll get into that later), was the catalyst for the political zionists of Europe to convene in 1897 and establish the first Zionist congress. The betrayal of trust felt by Jewish people at the time meant that, although they may have wanted to stay in Europe, they knew they would always be othered as a minority group. So they opted for mass migration to Palestine. Then controlled by the Sick Man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, it was the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Although people like Herzl would suggest alternative locations, everyone was basically on the same page as to where the Jewish people would establish their state. However, that right there, that betrayal, that would be felt again in the 1930s and 1940s.

German Jewish people were relatively assimilated in comparison to their Eastern European counterparts. The holocaust was not something they thought would, or could, ever happen. It was a betrayal in every sense of the word for Germany’s Jews. After the holocaust Jewish people across Europe had nowhere to go. They couldn’t return to their homes as many of them had brand new, antisemitic occupants. They were homeless, stateless, people with two options. Palestine or the United States. The America first party had made it so Jewish immigration to America was difficult, often boats full of refugees were turned away when docking, leaving the occupants to fend for themselves back in Europe. For many Jews, the single option was Palestine and in three years, Israel. So that’s where they went.

In the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish people were experiencing similar Antisemitism. Many Jews from Syria were smuggled into Palestine to escape persecution. In 1941, with many Arab Muslims inspired by the Nazi Regime, Baghdadi Jews were subject to a massive pogrom known as the Farhood. Throughout the 20th century, Jewish people of mainly Mizrahi and Sephardi would migrate en masse to Israel to escape antisemitism. Known as the Mizrahi Exodus, over 60% of Israel’s Jewish population is Mizrahi or Sephardi as a result of this.

Conclusion

All of this is not to swing you one way or another in terms of supporting or not supporting Israel. Instead, it intends to paint a picture of the Jewish mindset towards Israel. As antisemitism rises among non-Jews, Zionism rises among Jews. It is a correlation that has been seen time and time again. This doesn’t make Jewish people “zionist baby killers who feast on the hearts of Palestinian babies for Shabbat dinner”, it makes them human beings who are trying not to be genocided every other half-century. To equate Jewish support for the single state guaranteed to have Jewish interests at heart as a colonial endeavor, or to say all Israelis are colonizers, is such an absurd claim and spits on Jewish history and the history of persecution faced by Jewish people. Jewish people from Yemen would not be here anymore if not for Israel. There are zero Jews in Yemen as of September 2020. Syria has 40 total Jews. Romania went from over 200,000 Jews to only 3,000. Russia saw the exodus of over 1.5 million Jewish people in the Soviet era, 61% of which would end up moving to Israel. The only two nations to exceed 1 million Jewish people are America and Israel.

What the Goyishe Left needs to understand about Jewish people and Judaism is that our feelings about Israel and the diaspora are complex. You need to be able to apply nuance for these things, which is something many people fail to do. You need to understand that liking Israel or liking the idea that there's a place in the world where antisemitism isn't an everyday occurrence doesn’t equal support for the IDF, it's not a vote for Netanyahu, and it's certainly not for you to police. The Jewish Left are some of the biggest proponents of Palestinian advocation and allyship I’ve seen aside from Palestinians themselves. We know how to call out Israel’s shortcomings without being antisemitic. So follow our lead and calm down because right now you aren’t helping.

Works Cited

Datta, Venita. “Jewish Identity at ‘La Revue Blanche.’” The Dreyfus Affair and Anti-Semitism, Berghahn Books, 1995, pp. 113–129.

Halperin, Liora R. Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc., 2018.

Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther. Operation Magic Carpet: Constructing the Myth of the Magical Immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, 2011.

Shavit, Ari. My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. Scribe Publications Pty Limited, 2013.

“Total Immigration to Israel from the Former Soviet Union (1948 - Present).” Total Immigration to Israel from the Former Soviet Union, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-immigration-to-israel-from-former-soviet-union.

Tsimhoni, Daphne. The Pogrom (Farhud) against the Jews of Baghdad in 1941. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2001.

Zohar, Zion. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times. NYU Press, 2005.

Silverman, Susan. “Israel and Judaism.” My Jewish Learning,

www.myjewishlearning.com/article/israel-and-judaism/.