Is It Anti Semitic to Defend Palestinian Human Rights.the Canadian Charger Version

8/8/2019 Is It Anti Semitic to Defend Palestinian Human Rights.the Canadian Charger Version.

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IS IT ANTI-SEMITIC TO DEFEND

PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS?

Edward C. Corrigan, BA, MA, LL.B.

(This article was submitted to The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to

Combat Antisemitism http://www.cpcca.ca/home.htm )

All across Canada and in the United States, there is an organized campaign to

suppress criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

The campaign is especially strong on university campuses where many voices have

been raised in support of human rights for the Palestinians.

One such example is the attempt to suppress the Public Interest Research Group,

founded by Ralph Nader, at the University of Ottawa for their support for

Palestinian human rights.

Similar anti-Palestinian campaigns have occurred at many universities in Canada

including the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and York

University.

An attack against a student group that was sympathetic to the Palestinians occurred

at the University of Western Ontario in 1982. The student group was refusedofficial recognition because of its support for the Palestinians and for sponsoring

Palestinian and Arab speakers. After this refusal a complaint was made to the

Ontario Human Rights Commission.

After a long battle, and with the support of the Canadian Civil Liberties

Association and its General Counsel Alan Borovoy, and a supportive editorial inThe Globe & Mail, the Ontario Human Rights Commission compelled the

University Students Council at the University of Western Ontario to issue a

statement of regret and to ratify the student group. The refusal was deemeddiscriminatory against Palestinians and persons associated with Palestinians. (See

"The Palestinian Question at the University: The Case of Western Ontario,

American-Arab Affairs, Summer 1987, pp. 87-98.)

Despite this successful legal precedent at Western Ontario there have been many

attacks against individuals and groups across Canada and the United States because


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compared the Israeli attack on Gaza to the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto. In

response to this attack, on Professor Robinson, more than 100 UCSB faculty

members signed a petition asking the university to dismiss the charges against

him. In addition, 16 university department chairs wrote letters to the University

authorities asking them to dismiss the case against Robinson.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, one of the founders of Independent Jewish Voices in Britain,

also used his position as a Member of Parliament in London, England to criticize

Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Members of Kaufmans family perished at

the hands of the Nazis and in the Holocaust. As one of the U.K.s harshest critics

of Israeli policies, Kaufman routinely compared the Jewish states treatment of

Palestinians to Nazi Germanys treatment of Jews. (See for example, We Cannot

Allow These Murders to Go Unpunished: We can demand these homicidal Israeli

soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes, by Gerald Kaufman, The Independent,

April 12, 2006).

This campaign to silence critics of Israel and to demonize supporters of the

Palestinians is most disturbing and a violation of free speech, academic freedom

and violation of Palestinian human rights.

It is also a violation of basic democratic rights when a government does it. For

example, the recent cuts to the Canadian Arab Federations funding by

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. The punitive action taken by

Minister Kenney is a denial of the fundamental freedoms and rights which are

guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Charter guarantees the right of free speech and freedom of conscience and

protects the individual and organizations from government sanction.

This campaign is also an attack on the numerous dissenting Jews who

support human rights for the Palestinians.

Canadian Jewish groups like Not in Our Name (NION) and Jewish Independent

Voices (Canada) and their support for the Palestinians and their criticism of theJewish State, are simply ignored. For political purposes they simply do not exist.

The mainstream media also rarely covers these alternative Jewish perspectives.

However, there are rare exceptions and sometimes views critical of Zionism are

published in the mainstream North American press. Here is one notable example:


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It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J.

Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable

equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state --

the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to

Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical

position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should

remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw

Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist

Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all

nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of

a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered.

Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a

right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything

exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the

prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the

oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out

against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To

question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is

founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable

conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as

the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse.

The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or

religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads

inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prisoncamp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the

problem is Zionism. (Zionism is the problem: The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state

is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace, by Ben Ehrenreich, Los

Angeles Times, March 15, 2009.)

Most of the rest of the World has a much more critical view of the Israeli


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occupation of Palestinian land and supports the right of Palestinians to self

determination.

For example in one vote at the United Nations, held on December 19, 2006 on the

Israeli Palestinian issue, the tally was 176 to five in favor of the Palestinians.

The countries that supported Israel were the United States, the Marshall

Islands, Palau and Micronesia.

Five countries abstained. They were: Australia, Canada, Central African Republic,

Nauru and Vanuatu.

The entire rest of the World voted in favor of the right of Palestinians to self-

determination. However, to read the mainstream North American press you almost

never hear of these one-sided votes.

All human beings are entitled to basic human rights. However, the well

documented human rights violations of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis,

by respected organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,

The International Red Cross, the United Nations, and even by Israeli organizations

such as B'Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Public Committee Against

Torture in Israel and by many Israeli journalists, are attacked and buried under a

barrage of criticism that they are biased, are unfair for singling out the Jewish State

or are even anti-Semitic.

My own record as a lawyer representing refugee claims for Palestinians from the

Occupied Territories made against Israel, is 28 positives to one negative or a

96.5% success rate.

However, in the eyes of the supporters of Israel this does not mean that there are

serious human rights problems in the Occupied Territories.

Israel can do no wrong. It is the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada that is

anti-Semitic and the Jewish members of the IRB who rendered positive decisions

on Palestinian refugee claims made against Israel are self hating Jews.

A Palestinian is simply an inhabitant or citizen of Palestine. There are Jewish,

Christian, Muslim and non-believers who are Palestinian. The indigenous

Palestinian Jews were opposed to the European Jewish settlers who were flooding

into Palestine with the support of Great Britain. A Palestinian is simply a national

designation like that of being Canadian or American.


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There is no racial, ethnic or religious criteria for being a Palestinian. Only by right

of birth, naturalization and descent that one becomes a Palestinian, just like in most

other countries.

The Jewish States citizenship and Immigration process are unique in the World.

To qualify as a Jew in the Jewish state one must meet a racial or ethnic criteria

or in the alternative, a religious criterion.

The Jewish Law of Return grants almost immediate citizenship rights to Jews from

anywhere in the World.

Palestinians who were born in the country and forcibly expelled are, for the most

part, forbidden to return.

The Zionist state of Israel defines itself as Jewish and structures itself to advance

the interests of Jews at the expense of non-Jews and especially against the

indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian population.

In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist

petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was departing for the Paris Peace

Conference.

The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. The signatories 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. Part of the petition read:

....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.

There is much controversy over what is Zionism and how to define the

Jewish State. As Akiva Orr writes,


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The Zionist movement and its State- ISRAEL, do not represent the Jewish

people. They never did.

They represent a particular trend within the Jewish people, namely- the nationalist

trend. To find out whether Israel is a Jewish State or a Zionist State one need only

ask any religious Orthodox Jew anywhere. His answer will be unambiguous: a

Jewish State must be ruled by Jewish religious law- Halakha. Israel is not ruled

by Halakha laws, but by secular laws. Therefore Israel is not a Jewish State. The

fact that it provides refuge to Jews does not make it a Jewish State . . . Zionism and

Judaism are different entities. They have contradictory qualities. (See

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=34734. Occupation Magazine, 25

July, 2009.)

The argument is often made that criticism of Israel, or more appropriately the self

described "Jewish State," the meaning of which is not defined, is anti-Semitic. Thefact that many Jews have criticized Israel and Zionism is deemed irrelevant. These

Jewish critics are attacked as "self-hating Jews."

There is no rational basis for the argument that criticism of the State of Israel and

the political ideology of Zionism is anti-Semitic. The logic for this view is

obviously flawed.

For example it makes no sense to accuse an individual who criticizes Apartheid

South Africa's racist policies toward the blacks as evidence of racism toward

Whites.

Or that criticism of the Nazi policy toward the Jews should not be allowed because

it is evidence of racism against Germans.

Similarly if you criticize American policy toward the Iraq war and torture at Abu

Ghraib Prison, or the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized discrimination against

blacks in the southern states, that you are racist against Americans. This argument

is obviously absurd and should not even need a response.

To quote one American Jewish academic on the comparison of Israels treatment

of the Palestinians to the racist Jim Crow laws in the United States: I grew up as a

white girl in the Jim Crow South and I have spent my adult life in the study of

racism; what I see when I go to Palestine is Jim Crow on steroids.( A Jewish

state - or Jewish values?, by Tema Okun, Mondoweiss, 21 July, 2009).


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It is a basic right to evaluate and to criticize a political ideology or political

movement and to review and even criticize a state's policies.

The argument should be evaluated on the merits and the truthfulness of the facts

presented. It is also a right to present alternative facts and to have a debate.

However, when one side wants to avoid debate, divert the discussion or suppress

the topic and launches personal attacks against their opponents, it is almost a

certain proof that they are hiding some uncomfortable truths.

Dr. Joel Beinin in an article, Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace,

published in the San Francisco Chronicle, on February 4, 2007, discussed the

campaign to silence critics of Israeli policy.

Beinin is a professor of History at Stanford University and is Jewish. He is active

with Jewish Voice for Peace. Here is what Beinin had to say about the campaign to

attack critics of Israels policies toward the Palestinians.

Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is

because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts.

An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which

Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker

Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannotlead to a lasting peace.

We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and

explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy

that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to

Palestinians and Israelis.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as the massacres, rapes and illegal

confiscation of Palestinian property, is well documented by Israeli historians.

These include Simcha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York:

Pantheon Books, 1987); Benny Morris, The birth of the Palestinian refugee

problem 1947-1949, (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1987); Nur

Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine

Studies, 1992); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins, (Olive Branch Press: New


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York, 1993); and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (Oneworld

Publications: Oxford, 2006).

There are many more Israeli authorities that confirm the ethnic cleansing of the

Palestinians in 1947-1949 and again in 1967. In fact it is still going on today in

what some Israelis call the slow motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. (For

example see Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing, By Uri Avnery, Counter Punch, 09

October, 2003.)

If the Palestinians, or their supporters, complain about the well-documented facts

surrounding the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, losing their property to which they

had legal title to, losing their personal belongings and even their bank accounts,

having 531 villages destroyed, losing their country and their right to a citizenship,

and then not being allowed to return to their homes in contravention ofinternational law; or complain about discriminatory policies of the Jewish National

Fund or the discrimination involved in the Jewish Law of Return; or complain

about the house demolitions, the more than 600 Israeli military check points in the

West Bank, the 42 years of military Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the

program of targeted assassinations, the well-documented cases of torture; and the

imprisonment of more than 11,000 Palestinians including women and children,

many held without charge under what is called Administrative Detention, or the

recent slaughter in Gaza, that these complaints and to expose these facts is anti-

Semitic!

The view that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, or its actions, is pure and simple

racism against Palestinians. The Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have many

legitimate reasons to criticize the policies and actions of "the Jewish State." A state

that aggressively, and repeatedly, attacks its neighbours and is slowly but

systematically ethnically cleansing its non-Jewish population is not above

criticism.

No state is above criticism. You should be very afraid of a political ideology thatyou must accept without question.

There is also much to criticize in the Arab world but it would be absurd to say that

one cannot criticize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women or its

human rights record, because it is racist against Arabs or is anti-Muslim. A person

who made such an argument would be laughed at. No one would take them or the


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argument seriously.

Yet this allegation of anti-Semitism is a frequent smear tactic that has been used

against individuals who have publicly supported Palestinian human rights.

These individuals include former US President Jimmy Carter, Arch Bishop

Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, Arnold

Toynbee, George Orwell and many, many others who have expressed public

support for the Palestinians. Most of the strongest critics of Zionism and Israel's

policies are Jewish.

The only Jewish member of Lloyd George's cabinet when Great Britain first threw

its weight behind Zionism in 1917, Sir Edwin Montagu, was adamantly opposed to

the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour Declaration and Zionismbecause he believed they were anti-Semitic. Montagu argued that Zionism and

anti-Semitism were based on the same premise, namely that Jews and non-Jews

could not co-exist.

Ironically, people like me who want Jews to remain in our society, be an important

part of our community and be safe from discrimination and racism are

diametrically opposed to the Zionist goal of ingathering all of the Jews to

Palestine.

Zionists want to save the Jews because they are not safe in the diaspora and facethe threat of persecution due to the intractable anti-Semitism that exists in non-

Jewish societies. To quote one Zionist commentator,

The Law [of Return] and the Clause and, for that matter Zionism and the Jewish

State are necessary so long as the threat to our people continues; so long, in other

words, as Diaspora exists.....So the Law of Return continues to be necessary for

Jewish survival, to serve its essential function in Zionist theory and practice. The

Law defines Israels Zionist mission, our state as protector and refuge for

threatened Diaspora Jewry. (Hands off the Law of Return!, by David Turner,The Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2007)

Without the history of Christian anti-Semitism that has existed in Europe and the

centuries of persecution of the European Jewish community political Zionism

would be considered a deranged and absurd political philosophy. Without anti-

Semitism Zionism has no legitimacy.


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Sir Edwin Montagu was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine the safety

of Jews in other countries. It appears that this fear was realized in that the safety of

the Arab Jewish community was undermined, to a large extent deliberately, so that

they would be forced to immigrate to Palestine to strengthen the Jewish presence

there.

Montagu's opposition to Zionism and the Balfour Declaration was supported by the

leading representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry at the time, the Board of Deputies

and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in particular, by three prominent British

Jews Claude Montefiore, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.

Many Jews are anti-Zionist and opposed the settlement of Jews in Palestine.

In fact historically Zionism was not supported by the majority of Jews. In theprocess of creating the state of Israel the political Zionists destroyed Palestine and

ethnically cleansed more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages

in order to create a demographic Jewish majority in their newly created Jewish

state.

There is a very respected and honored Jewish tradition of opposition to injustice

and human rights violations. There is no monolithic position for Jews when it

comes to Israel and the Palestinian issue.

Below is a link for my article "Jewish Criticism of Zionism" which lists more than160 Jewish critics of Zionism. This article lists many prominent Jewish

intellectuals that are extremely critical of Israel's policies towards Palestinians.

There is a long distinguished line of Jewish critics of Zionism and Israels

treatment of the Palestinians.

This list includes Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka,

Isaac Asimov, I.F. Stone, Norton Mezvinsky, Alfred Lilienthal, Silvain Levi, Eric

Rouleau, Tony Judt, Sara Roy, Ronnie Kasrils, Eric Hobsbawn, Saul Landau,Noam Chomsky, Hans Kohen, Eric Fromm, Bruno Kreisky, Pierre Mendes France,

Richard Falk, Harold Pinter (the Nobel prize winner for Literature), Philip Roth,

Michael Selzer, Don Peretz, Immanuel Wallerstein, Rabbi Michael Lerner, actor

Ed Asner and many other leading Jewish intellectuals and religious figures.

Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century and wrote


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on many topics. He expressed his views about Zionism in a number of pieces. One

example is found in the second volume of his autobiography In Joy Still Felt.

There, he tells of having dinner in 1959 with some friends and his wife. Asimov

wrote:

As usual, I found myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist and of not

particularly valuing my Jewish heritage....I just think it is more important to be

human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that

there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to

have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater

interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another,

the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.

Asimov also commented on Zionism in a chapter titled "Anti-Semitism" in I.

Asimov, his third autobiographical volume.

There, Asimov discussed how he was distressed by the capability of the

historically oppressed (such as the Jews) to in turn become oppressors if given the

chance.

Asimov wrote: "Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are

fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet

touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the

Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye."

Tens of thousands of religious Jews today are adamantly opposed to Zionism

including the orthodox Neturei Karta and the Satmar sects. Rabbi Yisroel Weiss is

the international spokesman for Neturei Karta. Hundreds of thousands of religious

Jews in Israel reject the secular political movement of Zionism which created "the

Jewish State."

There is an important book written by Dr. Yakov M. Rabkin, a professor of History

at the University of Montreal. It is titled A Threat from Within: A Century of

Jewish Opposition to Zionism, (Zed Books: London, 2006).

This book examines Jewish religious opposition to Zionism and details the long

history of religious opposition to Zionism as a political movement to establish a

Jewish state in Palestine. Rabkin describes present day Jewish religious anti-

Zionism as follows:


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...the rejection of Zionism in the name of the Torah, in the name of

Jewish tradition. Such rejection is all the more significant in that it

can in no way be described as anti-Semitic, recent attempts to conflate

any expression of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism notwithstanding.

At first glance this seems to be a paradox.

After all, the public almost automatically associates Jews and Israel. The press

continues to refer to the Jewish State. Israeli politicians often speak in the name

of the Jewish people.

Yet the Zionist movement and the creation of the State of Israel has caused one of

the greatest schisms in Jewish history.

An overwhelming majority of those who defend and interpret the traditions ofJudaism have, from the beginning, opposed what was to become a vision for a new

society, a new concept of being Jewish, a program of massive immigration to the

Holy land and the use of force to establish political hegemony there. (Yakov M.

Rabkin, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, (Zed

Books: London 2006), p. 2.)

Israels founders were in fact atheists who wanted to transform Judaism from being

a religion into a secular national movement based on race or ethnicity. This

explains why Jewish religious leaders were strongly opposed to secular Zionism.

Theodore Herzl was seen as an anti-Semite due to his hostility to religious Jews.

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.

An example of their views on Zionism is Palestine, a pamphlet published by the

American Council for Judaism, 1944, p.7 [American Council for Judaism Records

(1942-1968), American Jewish Archives. Cincinnati, OH] which stated as follows:

...the concept of a theocratic state is long past. It is an anachronism. The concept


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of a racial state the Hitlerian concept is repugnant to the civilized world, as

witness the fearful global war in which we are involved.

The American Council for Judaism was founded to expressly oppose

Zionism.

It was created in response to a 1942 Zionist Conference in the US, which proposed

the formation of a Jewish army in Palestine before the state was founded.

The Council send letters to various governments and officials expressing their

objection to such a notion as a religious state, especially since they believed that:

that Jewish nationalism tends to confuse our fellowman about our place and

function in society and diverts our own attention from our historic role to live

as a religious community wherever we may dwell."(America Council for

Judaism, Series A. Correspondence, Subseries 1: General, 1942-1953.)

Membership in the Council grew to more than 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.

The book, Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism 1942-1948,

by Thomas A. Kolsky, (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1990) is a history

of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism during the period just before the

creation of the Jewish State.

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.

Anti-Zionist Jewish author Alfred Lilienthal has suggested that "Zionist

infiltration" succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council. A separate organization was

subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism

(AJAZ).

The new group, which was based in New York, continued the original anti-Zionist

tradition of the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger served as

president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report until shortly

before his death in 1996.


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The American Council for Judaism is still in existence but has softened its strict

anti-Zionist position but today it is non-Zionist and highly critical of the Jewish

States policies toward the Palestinians.

Their publications frequently carry anti-Zionist Jewish criticism. Allan C.

Brownfeld is the Editor of Issues, their quarterly newsletter and also editor of their

Special Interest Report. Stephen L. Naman is President of the Council.

Adam Shatz, the literary editor of The Nation Magazine, has edited a book titled

Prophet's Outcast. The book contains essays written by 24 prominent Jewish

scholars and intellectuals which are very critical of Zionism and Israel's treatment

of the Palestinians. A copy of my review in Middle East Policy can be found at the

link below.

Another important book is The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent, editedby Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. It contains articles very critical of Israels

policies, written by 27 prominent Israelis.

The Forward was written by a prominent Israeli author and journalist Tom Segev.

The Introduction is written by Anthony Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning

journalist, who worked at The New York Times between 1969 and 2001. Lewis is

now the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. The link to my

review is found below.

There are many Israeli critics of Zionism and anti-Zionist Jews in Israel where theconflict with the Palestinians is most apparent.

These include Avraham Burg, former head of the World Jewish Agency and

former Speaker of the Knesset; Shulamit Aloni, a former Minister of Education;

Yossi Sarid a former Knesset member and past leader of Meretz; Uri Avnery

former Knesset member and leader of Gush Shalom; the late Israel Shahak former

Chair of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights; former General and

Knessett Member Mattityahu Peled; Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of

Jerusalem; Jeff Halper head of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions;Felica Langer, a well known human rights lawyer; Michael Warschawski, co-

founder of the Alternative Information Center; University of Oxford historian Avi

Shalim; Eitan Bronstein Chair of Zochrot, which means Remember, and works

to remind Israelis about the Nakba or Palestinian catastrophe; the late linguist and

journalist Tanya Reinhart; New Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe; Uri Davis, author of

Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, 1987); Tikva Honig-Parnass,


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editor of Between the Lines; and journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, A.B.

Yehoshua, Yitzhak Laor, Akiva Eldar, Meron Rapoport, B. Michael and Gideon

Spiro to name only a few of the many Israelis who are anti-Zionist, non-Zionist or

extremely critical of Zionism and Israels policies toward the Palestinians.

There was an interesting book review published in Haaretz,on February 29, 2008,

written by Tom Segev.

It was a review of a book titled, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?

(published by Resling in Hebrew). It is authored by Israeli historian Shlomo Zand

(also spelled Sand). Prof. Zand teaches history at Tel Aviv University. The book

became a best seller in Israel. Segev writes:

...in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long

time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile alsonever happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of

national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and,

most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and

myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he

asserts.

This information and arguments have been around for a long time but it is

interesting to see them published in one of Israel's leading daily newspapers and

presented in a book written by an Israeli historian. Here is how Segev summarizes

the arguments in Zands book:

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most

of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled

was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs,

many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors.

It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not

invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was

espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached

almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or,

if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to.

Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of

other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews

in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of the people


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of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but

shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish

kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in

North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became

Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from

European-born individuals who had also become Jews.

The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and

did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar

Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not

a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the

offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as

merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond

and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers.

According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and

historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions,

along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the

minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were

offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel. (An

Invention Called 'The Jewish People,' By Tom Segev, Ha'aretz, February

29, 2008.)

It is somewhat ironic that issues and subjects that relate to the Palestinians and

Zionism that are virtually taboo in North America are openly discussed in Israel.

These same subjects are much more openly discussed in Europe and in the rest of

the World. (For example see, New Israeli Scholars Face up to Israels Origins,

by Eric Rouleau and Are the Jews an Invented People by Eric Rouleau, Le

Monde diplomatique, 10 May, 2008; and A crisis in Judaism: For many Jewstoday, Israel is not a normal state it is a cause or ideal, and therein lies the

problem, By Brian Klug, The Guardian, 15 January, 2009; Israels war crimes,

By Richard Falk, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 2009;

Israels Lies, By Henry Siegman, London Review of Books, 29 January,

2009).


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Here is what noted financier, George Soros, writing in The New York Review of

Books, on April 12, 2007, had to say on this the lack of debate in the United States

on the Palestinian issue:

The current policy is not even questioned in the United States. While other

problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies

toward Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about Israeli policy is

much more open and vigorous than in the United States. This is all the more

remarkable because Palestine is the issue that more than any other currently

divides the United States from Europe.

. . .

For an example of the type of discussion that goes on in Israel is the following

statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "For sixty years there has

been discrimination against Arabs in Israel. This discrimination is deep-seated and

intolerable." Olmert made this statement while addressing a meeting of the Knessetcommittee that was investigating the lack of integration of Arab citizens in public

service. (see PM slams 'discrimination' against Arabs, By Elie Leshem and

Jpost.com Staff, Jerusalem Post, Nov 12, 2008).

Another example is the current Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (from the right-

wing Likud Party) who called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews

and Arabs in Israel. He urged the founding of a "true partnership" between the two

sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of "the

special needs and unique character of each of the sides."

The Speaker was reported to say all this in an address to be delivered at the

president's residence in Jerusalem on August 3rd, 2009. Quoting from Rivlins

prepared speech which was released to the media:

the establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a

real trauma for the Palestinians (in large part due to the shortsightedness of the

Palestinian leadership). Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the

Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line - a painthey feel the state of Israel is responsible for.

Many of them," Rivlin says, "encounter racism and arrogance from Israel's Jews;

the inequality in the allocation of state funds also does not contribute to any extra

love. (See Knesset Speaker: Establishment of Israel caused Arabs real trauma,

By Haaretz Service, Haaretz, 3rd August, 2009.)


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Can you ever imagine a top American or Canadian politician making statements

like these, or a leading Canadian or American newspaper publishing an article like

this one? If they did make statements like these what would be the reaction?

However, Rivlin still tried to focus the blame on the Palestinian leadership for the

problems and does not fully acknowledge Israel's part in the expulsions. These

expulsions and massacres started before the official declaration of Israels

Independence on May 14, 1948. And according to Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe

there were expulsions of the Palestinians from 30 villages after the War had ended

in 1949.

Rivlin also does not address the land seizures from Palestinians who fled or were

expelled from their homes but remained in Israel.

These individuals were considered Israeli citizens, but still lost all of their

property. These individuals are called present Absentees, an Orwellian phrase if

there ever was one.

Here is how one Israeli academic, Gabriel Piterberg, describes the phrase and how

it relates to Israel: How the founding myths of Israel dictated conceptual removal

of Palestinians, during and after physical removal. The invention of retroactive

transfer and present absentees as the glacial euphemisms of ethnic cleansing.

(See Erasures, by Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review, July-August 2001.)

Nor does Rivlin acknowledge that most of the Zionist leadership wanted all of

Palestine without its Arab population and this wish miraculously came true.

Palestinian leadership, inept as it was, cannot be blamed for everything.

Another important book on this topic is Reframing Anti-Semitism:

Alternative Jewish Perspectives published by the Jewish Voice for Peace.

It contains articles written by 8 Jewish American writers. One of the articles is

written by Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative

Literature at the University of California at Berkley.

Her article is on the question of whether criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Her

answer and article is titled: No, Its Not Anti-Semitic. The link to my review of

the Jewish Voice for Peace book is found below.


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Another book that examines Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israels policies is

Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-

Palestinian Conflict, edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon (Grove Press:

New York, 2003).

Kushner is an award winning playwright and Solomon a staff writer at The Village

Voice and a professor at Baruch College-City of New York. This book contains a

collection of 53 prominent American Jewish writers critical analysis of Zionism

and Israels policies.

This list includes such distinguished writers as Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Marc

Ellis, Naomi Klein (actually a Canadian) and Rabbi Arthur Waskow among many

others.

Another important book on Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israels

treatment of the Palestinians is A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish

Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (Verso: London, 2008).

It is edited by four prominent British academics, Anne Karpf, Brian Klug,

Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Rosenbaum. This book contains the highly critical

writings of 27 Jewish academics and thinkers on the issues of the Occupation,

Israel and Zionism.

There are a number of other anthologies and collections of writings fromanti-Zionist Jews.

These include Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer, (The MacMillian

Company: London, 1970); Zionism: The dream and the reality: A Jewish Critique,

Gary V. Smith ed. (Barnes & Noble Books: New York, 1974); Jewish Critics of

Zionism and The Stifling and Smearing of a Dissenter, by Moshe Menuhin,

(Association of Arab University Graduates, 1976); Judaism or Zionism, EAFORD

& AJAZ (American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism) eds., (Zed Books: London,

1986); The End of Zionism and the Liberation of the Jewish People, Eibie

Weizfeld ed. (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 1989); Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers:

Conversations with Jews against the occupation, edited by Seth Faber (Common

Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005).

Fabers book contains a series of interviews with leading American dissident Jews

Noam Chomsky, Steve Quester, Joel Kovel, Norton Mezvinsky, Ora Wise,


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Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Adam Shapiro, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi David

Weiss, and includes a speech and an essay by Marc Ellis.

Mordecai Richler, the late esteemed Canadian author, wrote an article

entitled "Israel marks 50th anniversary out of favor with many Jews,"

Toronto Star, February 15, 1998.

Many other Canadian Jews are opposed to Zionism or are critical of Israels

treatment of the Palestinians.

Many Canadian Jews were against the war on Gaza. These dissenters include

academics and writers Judy Rebick, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Rick Salutin,

Bernard Avishai, Howard Skutel, Yakov Rabkin, Klaus Herrmann, Janet Weinroth,

Judith Weisman, Michael Neumann, Alan Sears, Gabor Mate, Judy and Larry

Haiven, Michael Mandel, Ursula Franklin, Abbie Bakan, Mordecai Briemberg,Eibie Weizfeld, Zalman Amit, Rabbi Reuben Slonim, pianist Anton Kuerti, Ralph

Benmergui broadcaster and producer and Judy Deutsch head of Science for Peace

to name but a few.

The Jewish Outlook Society, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada,

publishes Outlook.

They describe their magazine as, An Independent, secular Jewish publication with

a socialist-humanist perspective. Carl Rosenberg is the Editor and Sylvia

Friedman is the Managing Editor. Harold Berson is in charge of circulation. Theyhave over 40 Jewish individuals, primarily living in Canada, who serve in various

capacities with the organization and their publication.

Outlook takes a critical view of Israels policies toward the Palestinians and

frequently publishes Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives.

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) (Canada) currently has more than 100 members.

Dylan Penner, Sid Shniad and Diana Ralph serves as coordinators for IJV. TheSteering Committee is composed of 24 Canadian Jewish activists including

Fabienne Presentey, Sandra Ruch, Andy Leher and Harry Shannon. The IJV is a

member-led organization, with chapters in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto,

Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax.

Here is what Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) said, in their February


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19, 2009 Press Release, about Stephen Harper Conservative governments

position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Minister Jason Kenneys

cutting off funding for English Second Language training programs run by

the Canadian Arab Federation:

We believe that Mr. Kenny [sic] and his Conservative government is threatening

CAFs funding because CAF stands for justice for Palestinian people and because

it expresses principled criticism of oppressive Israeli policies.

As Jews, we affirm that criticizing Israeli policies is NOT anti-Semitic. Anti-

Semitism refers to hostility and/or prejudice against Jews. Like any other

government, Israel has obligations under international law.

To responsibly raise critical concerns about the discriminatory, illegal, and brutal

policies of another government is an ethical imperative, which our governmentshould support.

However, the Conservative government has gone further than any previous

Canadian administration in endorsing illegal and brutal Israeli assaults

on Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged complete allegiance with Israel and

labels as anti-Semitic any criticism of Israeli actions (including the Gaza

massacre, house demolitions, use of illegal phosphorous and DIME weapons

against civilians, etc.).

As Jews, we believe this is a dishonest smoke-screen, a ploy to discredit principled

calls for humanity, justice, and compliance with international law.

There are hundreds, and probably thousands, of Jewish critics of Zionism and of

Israels policies toward the Palestinians who have published articles or written

books on the subject. Yet many Zionists, and their supporters, claim that there is a

monolithic Jewish position in support of Zionism, Israel and the occupation of

Palestinian land.

This claim of near universal Jewish support for the Zionist state and its actions

toward the Palestinians is so far from the truth that it is laughable.

One has only to open your eyes and review the written record to see that there is no

Jewish consensus on these issues and a great deal of criticism and outright


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opposition to Zionism exists in Jewish intellectual and religious circles, both in the

past and today.

Israel's supporters shamelessly use the argument that to criticize Israel is anti-

Semitic no matter what Israel does. This argument is almost entirely false and

politically motivated. Not to tell the truth, or to suppress discussion, about what is

going on in Palestine is racist and a crime against the Palestinian people and a

crime of silence and indifference not unlike the one committed against Jews in the

Second World War.

To quote George Soros on the use of anti-Semitism, a tactic he described the

most insidious argument, to silence the political debate on Israels policies toward

the Palestinians.

.....Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incurits wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish

community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it.

But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put

forward by the defenders of the current policies: that the critics of Israel's policies

of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and

Gaza engender anti-Semitism.

The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is

that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation.

Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent

some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has

protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish

community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.

Billionaire George Soros can hardly be considered a leftist. He is also

Jewish.

Here is what Ben Ehrenreich, the author of the novel "The Suitors, wrote in theLos Angeles Times on the issue of criticism of Zionism being anti-Semitic.

Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more

dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into

which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation,

they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can't be


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said.

It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical.

It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of

Amos has it, "turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."

Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine

would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean

the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.

(Zionism is the problem: The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis

and Palestinians from living in peace, by Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times,

March 15, 2009.)

There is clearly a wide range of opinion on Zionism that exists within the Jewish

community. This fact needs to be recognized. We also need to reject speciousarguments and reject false allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. We need to

fight for freedom of speech, academic freedom, critical inquiry and democratic

debate, at all universities and colleges, in the media, in the halls of political power

and all across North America. Individuals should be allowed to decide for

themselves questions about Zionism and the Palestinians based on open debate, the

facts and informed opinion not on suppression of debate, intimidation and

censorship.

This article will appear in a forthcoming issue ofOutlookmagazine published by

the Canadian Jewish Outlook Society.

Edward C. Corrigan is a lawyer certified as a Specialist in Citizenship and

Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of

Upper Canada in London, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at

[email protected] or at (519) 439-4015.

Documents

Is It Anti Semitic to Defend Palestinian Human Rights.the Canadian Charger Version