Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semetic?

So, at Carleton last term, there was a discussion facilitated by peer educators from the Office of Intercultural Life. The discussion was called "Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semetic?" and it was a very, very heated night. The two things that struck me at the time were:

1. White men (regardless of heritage) felt as though they could speak for other people, groups as large as "the Jewish people," even. They did not feel the need to speak from their own experience.
2. People really like dichotomies, like "Jews/Palestinians" and "those who want violence/those who want peace."

Now, both of these things really bothered me at the time. I really, really strongly dislike when people speak for other people. Unless others have asked me what I think, they can't speak for me. Period. So unless the person speaking had gone around and asked every single Jewish person on the planet, I do not feel they can speak for "the Jewish people." And even if they had done that, people are dynamic and change; what they thought at one time could be completely different from what they think now. So really, I prefer to speak from my own experience or directly cite the people I hope to be allies with.

Furthermore, I think dichotomies are generally false. I believe that there is a greater diversity within groups than between them (this is what I was once told in a training manual). In a situation like the Israel/Palestine "conflict" (read: genocide) there is a wide array of voices saying distinct things. And "those who want violence/those who want peace"? Really? I won't go there, because I don't even know what that means.

So while the conversation definitely sparked thoughts in my head, I left feeling like I hadn't really learned much about the "conflict" itself. And I won't pretend I'm an expert, because I certainly am not. What I remember very vividly, however, was one particular part of the discussion. During this part, Israel had been defined as a political state, and one of the people participating in the discussion referenced religion. One facilitator immediately stepped in and informed speaker that this was not a discussion about religion. The other facilitator stopped them and said something like, "No, we can go there. Let's go there."

This was a bad. Call. And made the other facilitator quite angry. And I didn't understand why until I read this. One of the articles in it is called "The Forgotten '-ism'" and it talks about Zionism.

In the article, written by three Arab-American women, they begin by defining Zionism.

We define Zionism as a settler-colonial political movement that seeks to ethnically cleanse historical Palestine of the indigenous population and populate it as a Jewish-only state. [...] Among the claims that underlie hegemonic Zionism is that Jews have the right to possess al of the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. (99)

They talk a little more about Zionism and they think it's a not-such-a-good-thing.

This Zionist narrative is given credibility through the biblical notion that the Jewish people are entitled to the land because it was given to them by God. The Zionist movement has not only supported the creation of that state of Israel on Palestinian land, but has supported the creation of a Jewish-only state in that historically diverse land. Within this paradigm, Zionism constructs Jews as a race (or distinct ethnic group) and the state of Israel as a Jewish-only state, with non-Jews considered a "demographic threat." This exclusionary logic has produced the conditions for torture, home demolitions, restriction of movement, unemployment, poverty, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Any state that officially and legally privileges members of one "race" or "ethnicity" over another, and establishes national identity on the basis of race or ethnicity, is inherently racist. Therefore, Israel is a racist state that is founded upon a racist ideology that protects and preserves the rights of Jews only. That racist ideology is Zionism. (99)

But just to make things very clear, Zionism is not the product of religious thought.

Zionism was born through the writings of Theodore Herzl in Germany in the late 1880s. As outlined by Herzl, Zionism was to be a secular political project that defined "the Jews" as a people, a nation, and a race, rather than as a religious group. In the context of the fervent European anti-Jewish discrimination of the time, Herzl argued for the need to create an independent Jewish state for "the Jewish people" who, he argued, could never possibly assimilate in the countries they inhabited. Although multiple locations were suggested, the Zionist movement proposed Palestine as a site for a Jewish state, in a strategic move that would allow them to use the religious history of Palestine to justify their political goal of colonization. At every point of its genesis, the Zionist movement was informed and reinforced by nineteenth-century European colonialism and its white supremacist ideology.

Israel was not constructed to colonize the natives, per se, but to remove them entirely from their lands and to construct Israeli Jews as the authentic people of the land. (100)

So it was only after reading this that a little light bulb went off in my head. Of course! Religion has no part in this discussion because this is not a conversation about religion, but a conversation about colonialism and white supremacy.

And if you don't believe me, and even if you don't believe the women who directly wrote the article, I present quotes from Herzl himself:

From his diary: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country...expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

And another one, Herzl claims that the Zionism project's goal is "To go further than any colonialist has gone in Africa ... where involuntary expropriation of land will temporarily alienate civilized opinion. By the time the reshaping of world opinion in our favor has been completed, we shall be firmly established in our country, no longer fearing the influx of foreigners, and receiving our visitors with aristocratic benevolence." (Both quotes from page 101)

The article goes on to talk about the ADL, how it claims that "Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism" and the ways in which Zionist leaders have infiltrated the US government, higher education, political organizations, and industries. But I won't talk about that, I want to keep the focus local.

To talk a little more about racism and white supremacy, I think this notion of Zionism is largely absent from what I've seen at Carleton. I had a friend tell me that in conversations people actually ask her if there are "black Jews." In the world. And I'm pretty sure I've heard people assert that there aren't or be surprised when they hear that there are. And I don't know much about the JSC (Jewish Students of Carleton) but I remember having a conversation with people about how white the JSC is. And possibly even a conversation about how their services don't support all sects of Judaism. What I do know is: they party a lot. And I'm positive there is at least one strong Zionism supporters who is a faculty member at Carleton.