Jewish Voice for Peace, an American organization that has been highly critical of Israel, announced recently that it is \u201canti-Zionist.\u201d It is certainly a matter of semantics, as the group\u2019s own executive director acknowledged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t change anything about our focus or our political analysis,\u201d said Rebecca Vilkomerson. \u201cIt just names something that hasn\u2019t been named before.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the one hand, at least the group is being honest and not hiding behind the ambiguity they had adhered to until now. On the other hand, it represents a progression in the evolution of the anti-Israel movement.<\/p>\n
Until just a few years ago, it was rare for people like those in JVP to say they opposed Israel\u2019s existence. They would claim they were merely opposed to a specific policy or direction of the Israeli government. Now, they admit, they don\u2019t think there should be an Israeli government.<\/p>\n
In the same interview in which Vilkomerson made the announcement, she also repeated that \u201canti-Zionism is not antisemitism.\u201d Again, a few years ago, people said \u201ccriticism of Israel is not antisemitism.\u201d This appears to be an evolution.<\/p>\n
In what intellectual framework is it acceptable to make a statement like \u201canti-Zionism is not antisemitism\u201d? The undercurrent of the sentence is that, under no circumstances, by any measure, in no way, is anti-Zionism connected with or affected by antisemitism. Progressive people \u2013 which is how JVP and many of Israel\u2019s other critics define themselves \u2013 would never dream of dismissing the potential of bigotry toward any other ethnic or cultural group.<\/p>\n
More egregiously, Vilkomerson overtly contradicts her very words, acknowledging that there are, indeed, antisemites in the movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, there are people who are antisemitic or anti-Zionist and there are people who mask their antisemitism with anti-Zionist language. That\u2019s a given,\u201d she says, \u201cbut that doesn\u2019t paint anti-Zionism as concept.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is what does<\/em> paint anti-Zionism as concept: it is a movement utterly unconcerned that there is antisemitism and that there are antisemites within it. The leader of JVP admits that her movement attracts antisemites but expresses not a whiff of displeasure or concern. It is what it is.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since [the advent of] Zionism there has been anti-Zionism within Jewish communities,\u201d she goes on. This is true. Zionism did not reach a consensus point among European and North American Jews until sometime around the Holocaust. When the implications of Jewish statelessness became the gravest in 2,000 years, a massive majority of Jews worldwide abandoned whatever ambivalent positions they had held and (almost entirely) united to create and support Israel.<\/p>\n There is no false corollary here: the state of Israel was not a \u201cconsolation prize\u201d for the Holocaust, as has been suggested on more than one occasion. No one gave the state of Israel to the Jewish people; our ancient homeland was won back through a bloody defensive war and has survived and thrived despite massive external opposition.<\/p>\n We will see if other organizations, including similar Jewish groups in Canada, follow JVP\u2019s suit. We will also continue to see primarily non-Jewish groups argue against Israel\u2019s existence based on an anti-nationalist idealism or more nefarious interests. As we watch these developments, it is worth wondering why, as the first target of a battle against the concept of nationalism, \u201cprogressive\u201d activists target Israel. Why not France? Why do Hungarians deserve their own country? What makes Norwegians so special that their nationhood is not called into question?<\/p>\n Closer to the point, Why do the Palestinian people deserve a homeland, which is the stated motivating purpose of JVP and so many other groups, while Israelis do not? Can people who declare \u201canti-Zionism is not antisemitism\u201d see how these inconsistencies, including the indifference to Jewish statelessness, might make their protests seem hollow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jewish Voice for Peace, an American organization that has been highly critical of Israel, announced recently that it is \u201canti-Zionist.\u201d It is certainly a matter of semantics, as the group\u2019s own executive director acknowledged. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t change anything about our focus or our political analysis,\u201d said Rebecca Vilkomerson. \u201cIt just names something that hasn\u2019t been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5773,4330,8707,3141,3597,8708],"class_list":["post-31864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-anti-zionism","tag-israel","tag-jewish-voice-for-peace","tag-jvp","tag-politics","tag-rebecca-vilkomerson"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}