A matter of historical record
Editor:
I am a longtime reader, and occasional photo contributor, of the Tucson Weekly. I am also Jewish. Recently, a letter to the editor titled “Reckless Allegations” by Anthony Zinman was published decrying another article, titled “Cultivating resistance and the butterfly effect,” by Brian Smith. I feel compelled, as a Jew whose heritage is invoked and weaponized by Mr. Zinman, to address some of the wildly inaccurate portrayals of history made in his letter.
I will start off with an assertion that as a Jew, Zionism makes me less safe in this world. People like Zinman do their best to conflate Judaism, which is a religion, a heavily diasporic ethnicity, and beautifully diverse culture — with Zionism, which is a political ideology. In the United States, there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jewish people, a point I bring up to reiterate the fact that Zionism and Judaism are not remotely the same thing, nor is one a subset of the other.
Mr. Zinman states that Zionism “merely means that (he supports) the right of the Jewish People to have self-determination, and that Israel has a right to exist.” I must say that I do not understand the first part of this statement. Jewish people, I would think most of us can agree, already have the right to self-determination. My Jewishness does not deny me the right to a passport. It does not keep me from worship. It does not deny me entry into public office. It does not bar me from entry to certain neighborhoods, streets or areas the way that
Palestinians are barred from living in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, or from driving on many roads in Israel. So, I am a bit confused as to how our Jewishness affects our self-determination.
This brings me to the second part of Mr. Zinman’s statement. This is the real crux of the conflict in general. Why do Zionists believe that Israel has a right to exist? There are several arguments for why. One is that we — the Jewish people — were promised the land in the Bible. I do not think we need to spend time on this argument. It is unabashed religious zealotry and does not have a place in contemporary political discourse.
Another argument is that the Jewish People deserve a homeland in Palestine after 2,000 years of diaspora, in which Europeans and the ancestors of modern-day Russia persecuted us through the most abject, horrifying violence and campaigns of extirpation, culminating in the genocide known as the Holocaust.
This argument rings hollow, however, when the reality is that every single Jew in Europe could have found a safe home in the United States were it not for regressive immigration policies implemented by our government which have continued to this day, like those that both the Democrats and Republicans ran their recent election campaigns on — building walls, abolishing asylum, closing the border. Mr. Zinman himself works for a party who’s most recent presidential candidate famously said to migrants escaping violence fomented by our own policies and decades of deposing democratically elected governments South of our border “...to those in that region thinking of making that dangerous trek to the United States Mexico border — do not come.” It is also must be noted that, if the Jewish People “deserve” a homeland as remuneration and reparation for atrocities committed against us, it should be in modern-day Germany, not Palestine, which had nothing to do with the Holocaust — repression of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire was not remotely similar in scale to the horrors of Europe — in fact quite the opposite, it was a place of widespread ecumenicism and religious tolerance for centuries.
So I must ask: Why Palestine for this state? If we can all agree that the Biblical claim of ownership of this land is a non-starter, what is the root of this right to exert absolute domination and control over this particular piece of land, especially when there exist, and existed at the time of the First Aliyah, political structures in which Jews were and are free to participate?
Thankfully, we have Zionist writers to explain this to us. The person who could be considered the true founder of the Likud Party, the one currently in control of the Israeli government, is Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a man born in Russia who emigrated to Palestine and became one of the most prominent and important contributors to the political philosophy known as Zionism.
American Zionists sometimes portray him as a “fringe” thinker, but the truth is that he is as venerated in Israeli culture as Thomas Jefferson is in the United States. For example, there are more streets named after him than anyone or anything else in the entire country. You may have heard of the “Iron Dome” missile system? This name comes from an essay Jabotinsky wrote in 1923 called “The Iron Wall.” You should read this essay. I beg you to read this essay, which underpins all contemporary Zionist thought. In it he outlines the moral justification for the complete and total takeover of Palestine, to quote, “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality.”
If this seems a bit self-referential and inadequate to you, well, yes, that is because it is. It’s “turtles all the way down” but for morality. Please do read the essay for the context surrounding this excerpt. You will find it adds nothing whatsoever.
I know I am already writing too much, but there are several other points Mr. Zinman makes that I feel must be addressed. In his letter he states, “The Palestinians and Arabs (sic) countries rejected the U.N. partition two-state solution in 1948 and instead launched a military campaign to destroy Israel.” It must be noted that the partition gave Israel 30% more land than the Palestinians, yet there were half as many Jews as there were Arabs within the greater boundaries.
A sour deal by any tongue but the Zionists’. And regarding the matter of the Arab armies attacking Israel after their declaration of statehood, this is propaganda that we, as Jews, were fed constantly as children. We learned it in Hebrew school, at Synagogue, from our parents and grandparents.
What this leaves out is the fact that for months leading up to the war nearly a million Palestinians fled over the borders of these countries covered in blood, clothes tattered, with nothing to their names but the clothes on their backs and the keys to homes they would never see again. The precursors to the IDF — the Lehi, the Haganah, the Irgun — committed countless massacres in towns like Dier Yassin, and, as documented by Israeli historian Benny Morris and verified by Israeli newspaper of record Haaretz, even undertook campaigns of mass rape, which they then intentionally publicized to encourage even more Palestinians to flee.
I began by asserting that Zionism makes me, as a Jew, unsafe. It makes me unsafe because people like Mr. Zinman, who conflate criticism of the state of Israel and its supporters with anti-semitism, encourage the general public to look at me as if I am committing the atrocities in Gaza.
I am Jewish, nothing can change that. But I did not bomb hospitals with patients inside. I did not massacre 5-year-old Hind Rajab’s family, then murder the ambulance drivers who tried to rescue her as she died cold and alone in the rain surrounded by the bodies of her uncle, aunt and four cousins. I did not bomb schools with hundreds of families huddled inside, or firebomb tent cities. I did not drop white phosphorus on children. I did not target and kill 141 journalists. In fact, I have been screaming as loud as I can for the liberation of the people who have been, for the past 125 years, demanding only that they be able to live peacefully and with full self-determination on the land in which they have existed for the duration of my people’s diaspora.
So, Mr. Zinman, when you conflate Zionism with Judaism, when you conflate criticism of the state of Israel with antisemitism, you bring violence upon our people. You tell the world that it is not a country committing these atrocities, not a political group that supports these horrors, but that it is Jews who are doing this. What do you expect? People have eyes. They see what is happening in Gaza. Indeed, I and many of my peers talk daily with people slowly starving to death there. We know what is happening even if you walk with blinders on. And you tell the world that it is all Jews who support this. How dare you. You are the antisemite, pinning these atrocities on your own people, and bringing shame to our ancient and proud heritage.
- Julius Schlosburg
A matter of force
Editor:
Although there are many things that might be said in response to the Dec. 19 letter to the editor, I would like to briefly address two opinions expressed in that letter.
First, the author of the letter refers to Israel’s “right” to exist. There is another way to look at Israel’s existence. Nationhood is not a matter of rights. As Ta Ne’hisi Coates suggests, no nation exists by right, but rather by force. This is true about the United States, and also about Israel. Israel’s existence and maintenance is not by “right,” but rather by force.
Second, the author of the letter writes that the situation of Israel and Gaza is complicated. However, it is not so complicated, if you look at maps of Israeli-controlled land compared to Palestinian land over the last 77 years. These maps show a dramatic expansion of the area controlled by Israel, and the consequently dramatic shrinkage and dissection of land for Palestinians. Once again, this growth of Israeli land is a matter of force. More than any complicated historical factors, this dramatic and forceful change in the political geography explains the current situation.
- Jessica Sampson
