Fighting “Zionism is just one particular manifestation of this larger fight against white supremacy and colonialism,” stated Chris Godshall at a May 19 Washington, DC, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) event. He spoke as a contributor to the new book Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism, whose launch at Busboys and Poets K Street location added yet more damning evidence about how JVP “Jew-washes” anti-Semitic hatred of Israel.
Well-known personalities in the capital area’s Israel-hating community contributed to an audience of about 60 who filled Busboys and Poets’ events room to listen to a panel of Godshall and his fellow contributors. Local JVP chapter leader Shelley Cohen-Fudge joined her gentile Episcopal anti-Zionist associates Steve France and Tom Getman. Zeina Azzam, Philip Farah, and Jamal Najjab represented the local Palestinian-American community.
Copious past evidence indicates that the book’s online description would have immensely pleased this audience. “Today Jews face a choice,” the promotion read, “between Judaism as a religion and the nationalist ideology of Zionism, which is usurping” the “ethical imperatives at the heart of Judaism.” The book’s collection of personal essays on how various individuals came to condemn Zionism intended to “demolish stereotypes of dissenting Jews as ‘self-hating,’ traitorous, and anti-Semitic.”
The Busboys and Poets panelists made a mockery of this contention, as they demonized and de-legitimated Israel, now the home of a plurality of world Jewry, or 43 percent of over 14.5 million Jews. The panel began with retired Temple University professor Carolyn L. Karcher, who has described in a previous interview about the book how since 2010 JVP has “become my main focus and activity.” She had falsely denounced Zionism as a “settler colonial movement” that solely “grew up in the late 19th century as a quest for safety” for Jews, as if they had not historically sought cultural self-determination as well as security in Israel.
While Judaism is intrinsically connected to its ancestral homeland of Israel, the interviewed Karcher had absurdly claimed that “Jewish identity…does not depend on identifying with a Jewish state.” This “fetishization of Israel” involved for Jews a “land that you were not born in and have no real connection to.” Rather, Muslim-majority Arabs, a population that developed following seventh-century Islamic conquests of the wider Middle East, are the “Indigenous people” of “Palestine.”
The interviewed Karcher had mentioned that several book contributors, “including me, were brought up as Zionists,” although she qualified her Jewish heritage by noting that people like her “grew up in completely secular families.” This ally of the radical anti-Israel group Code Pink further solidified her fringe Jewish status when she approvingly noted that some Jewish book contributors had been members of the likeminded, anti-Semitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). She also ridiculously praised as among “Palestinian leaders of the nonviolent resistance” Bassem Tamimi, a Palestinian who, along with his family, has incited and supported violence against Israel.
Unlike Karcher’s past comments, her fellow panelist, the leftist American University School of International Service professor Catherine Schneider flatly declared that “I was never a Zionist.” Her parents had been Communists and Socialists who had protested against the Vietnam War as an expression of their anticolonial beliefs. Joining Karcher’s slanders of Zionist Jewish national liberation as colonialism, Schneider thus claimed that her parents’ views on Israel “seemed really contradictory to everything they believed.”
Schneider has previously signed a petition against the Shalom Hartman Institute’s (SHI) Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI) that brings Muslim leaders to Israel. The petition condemned MLI for “ignoring Palestinian calls to isolate Israel” with Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) in affiliation with SHI, an “organization involved in efforts to thwart BDS.” With questionable commitments to open dialogue and academic freedom, the petition signatories made the
pledge to not give a platform to any MLI participant to speak about their experiences at our community centers, places of worship, and campuses and call on a complete boycott of MLI.
On the other hand, Schneider joined with other professors in signing a petition calling upon Israel authorities to allow the student Lara Alqasem to enter Israel. Later overruled by Israel’s Supreme Court, authorities had prevented her from entering Israel to study at Hebrew University due to her BDS ties. “Denying entry to foreign students based on political beliefs or ethnic heritage is an attack on academic freedom,” stated the petition.
Schneider’s fellow panelist Emily Siegel, who declared that she did not have “Judaism as a key part of my life as a religion,” is also a BDS supporter and, like Godshall, has previously compared Zionism to white supremacy. She is program director for the anti-Israel organization Eyewitness Palestine (EP), an organization that conducts propagandistic tours of Palestinian society that carefully observe BDS calls to boycott Israeli institutions or businesses. The radical anti-Zionist Jew Mark Braverman is indicative of the company EP keeps.
Panel speaker Noah Habeeb has perhaps even more tenuous connections to Judaism and Zionism, something that “never felt truly real to me” for a person who hardly understood Hebrew. Although he has written about his “Jewish American family,” he has also previously specified that his “father is of Lebanese descent and my mother is Jewish,” the basis of a “unique identity” that is “both Arab and Jewish.” Yet his “family is not very religious, and my suburban childhood synagogue of over 1,500 families always felt too large to be a genuine community,” thus so “long as I can remember, my family has been unsatisfied with our Jewish experience.”
Israeli authorities reciprocated this dissatisfaction in 2017 when they prevented Habeeb and his fellow anti-Israel activists, JVP’s Alissa Weiss and Shakeel Syed, from boarding their Israel flight at Washington, DC’s Dulles Airport. The latter has supported BDS against Israel’s “discriminatory, segregationist practices” and peddled anti-Semitic tropes that “America’s treasure is bled away to support the tyranny of the Israeli occupation.” He is also a national board member for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California (ISCSC), two radical Israel-hating, pro-jihadist organizations.
The JVP member Habeeb has defamed the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a “self-proclaimed ‘civil rights’ organization,” for organizing “deadly exchanges” of American-Israeli police training exercises. Like former EP tour members, he has propagated the blood libel that Israeli police incite their American colleagues to commit human rights abuses. The ADL is “in the business of training two of the world’s most racist, repressive and violent police and military forces,” he has written.
Habeeb and his fellow book contributors at Busboys and Poets want to destroy what they see as Israel’s irredeemably evil Jewish state. This undeniably anti-Semitic betrayal of Judaism would pose grave dangers to Jews in Israel and beyond were the book authors ever to achieve their goal of replacing Israel with an Arab/Muslim-majority single Palestinian state. Yet this prospect leaves the authors, who even include non-Jews, blissfully unconcerned. They advocate the delusion that Jews can survive by forgetting Zion and living in a permanent diaspora exile, as a concluding article will examine.
Buraq says
This is why Zionism and Zionists are hated.
Zionism works! The chances were few that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory lacking resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world’s leading universities seemed impossible.
Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism has revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations have planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history’s largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism’s future.
Indeed, by just about any international criteria, Israel is not only successful, but flourishing. The population is annually rated among the happiest, healthiest and most educated in the world. Life expectancy in Israel, reflecting its superb, universal health-care system, significantly exceeds America’s and that of most European countries. Unemployment is low, the economy robust. A global leader in innovation, Israel is home to R&D centers of some 300 high-tech companies, including Apple, Intel and Motorola. The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.
The democratic ideals integral to Zionist thought have withstood pressures that have precipitated coups and revolutions in numerous other nations. Today, Israel is one of the few States—along with Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.—that has never known a second of non-democratic governance.
Jealousy is at the heart of Jew hatred! Plain and simple!
mortimer says
Agree that on a purely logical, practical level, modern Israel is doing many things right and ‘punching above its weight’ as a small country in many fields of endeavor.
I wonder what America’s virtue-signalling secular Jews would conclude if they could see a film listing all the things Israel is doing RIGHT, rather than concentrating all the time on what they think Israel has done wrong in the past.
On balance, Israel is doing FAR MORE THINGS RIGHT than the worst criticisms of virtue-signalling Leftards and INSANE ISLAMISTS.
David says
Buraq, it is not jealousy of the jews, it is hatred demanded by the Koran.
gravenimage says
This is true, David–but Buraq is also right that many Muslims are enraged that Israel took a thin strip of marginal land and turned it into one of the most advanced nations in the world–and did so while under constant threat and attack from Muslims.
Peter Thurau says
“Anti-Semitism could become something if the Jews would take care of it.” (Alexander Roda-Roda)
mortimer says
The theory of Zionism is not based on ‘settlerism’, but on a 19th-century, perceived ‘natural right’ of distinct peoples to have their own homeland. This was the impetus for breaking up European and other empires and for establishing independent, national homelands. Jews always lived in the region in and around Israel, so they never ceased being the ‘indigenous’ people of the region. The Old Testament (and New Testament as well) is highly Zionist, referring in various ways to Israel, Israelite and Jerusalem almost 1,000 times.
The Koran clearly declares that Jews should dwell in the land of Israel and return to Israel. These decrees of Allah have not been abrogated by either the Koran or Mohammed, so logically, Jews are required by ‘Allah’ to dwell in Israel to this day.
Roland says
The leftist JVP people say “Today Jews face a choice between Judaism as a religion and the nationalist ideology of Zionism….” Yet they personally reject both Jewish religion and Zionism. This leaves them in the middle of nowhere. Why do they disingenuously claim to remaining Jewish according to Halacha, traditional Jewish law? At least, the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim have logically chosen the Jewish religion.
Wellington says
Oh, the old white supremacy and colonialism charge. Very tired. Very old. Very slanted.
And nothing said about Islamic supremacy and its colonialism. So, very hypocritical as well.
Westman says
If the 7th century brutal conquest by Islamists makes an “indigenous people” of “Palestine”, then we simply have a new “indigenous people” who have a much longer and actual historic claim to the land. The new/older indigenous (and indigenous means First People) people have been militarily challenged by surrounding nations, who lost, so it’s permanent. Islam, in its stunted mind, cannot comprehend that its days of successful conquest are over. Human Physical force is no longer adequate for conquest against intelligence-based warfare. Allah isn’t willing. Muslims should be asking, why? The Quran, itself, recognizes a Jewish homeland. The anti-Israel coalition doesn’t realize it is kicking against a bed of nails.
Clayton Norcroft says
Anti-Zionists are simply frothing at the mouth with the desire to label the state of Israel racist and colonialist. But it is a strange spectacle, this sudden jump from the popular leftist “race means nothing” mantra, to, in effect, “race means everything”. Pillorying Israel as racist has to mean, as a given, that the Jews are a race. That it is a fine and noble thing for one people, or “race”, to have a country (i.e. Palestinians) and a crime for another to do so ( namely, the Jews) doesn’t exactly register as a calling card from the moral high ground.
And if there is an instance of colonialism in this world’s history which included international attempts to secure national self-determination for the indigenous people in question, all of which were rejected in blood by the people who would have benefited from them, I haven’t heard of it. It would take one stretched-out-like-taffee definition of colonialism to cover that, I’m thinking.
Brigitte from Germany says
http://chng.it/7p8XbpCnbv
Please sign and share this important petition about I. Omar.
Thanks.
Brigitte from Germany says
http://chng.it/QhcJwjyqKn
And this petition about R. Tlaib too.
Thanks again.
gravenimage says
Jewish Voice for Peace: Not Jewish, Not Peaceful (Part One)
……………..
Just despicable. Israel is a civilized nation–the only one in the region.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Since pretty-much everything about Judaism only exists to affirm the Jewish people’s rights to Abraham’s lands (aka Zion; Israel) and the rest is advice on how to live there, it is impossible to separate any of it.
gravenimage says
Well, except for that whole founding the moral basis of the civilized world, of course…