A month ago, I argued that liberal Zionism was becoming politically homeless inside the Democratic Party. Tuesday night in New York is what the eviction looks like.
Okay, so I think you're saying there can be no Palestinian sovereignty in ANY part of Palestine. You seem to believe there is no option between either a Jewish-controlled geographic Palestine or an Arab-controlled Palestine. If that's the case, you're in effect calling for the end of the 1947 partition and the institution of formal Israeli control over all of geogaphic Palestine. This would mean abandoning decades of US support for the patition, which allowed Israel to be born in the first place.
Palestinian Arabs may want one state with a right of return, but Israel can prevent that--provided it has reliable support from the United States. Even Arab states accept the Jewish character of Israel, even if they don't embrace it. But if Israel defies the partition by expanding settlements and control over Palestinian territorities, she jeopardizes her support from the US. Don't just listen to Mike Huckabee.
As for "the desired outcome of progressives like Mamdani et al," the mayor and his followers on this question simply haven't thought it through. Israel isn't going to fold its tent on its own, and the US is not going to undertake some campaign to compel her to do so.
So, the foreign policy flowing from Gracie Mansion seems almost comical. Far more serious--but also not thought through--is Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza. The expansion of settlements and increased points of conflict will aggravate an already prolonged conflict without producing a resolution because the Palestinians, like Israel, are not going away.
American Jews are as Democratic as ever and are the more exasperated by Israel than anyone else. Because the Israel that we thought of as what zionism meant has clearly not been around for a long time and might just be gone forever if we don’t take Tough Love steps to save it.
And all us Americans have done is enable. Just like that rich kid whose parents complain that their son has a drug problem while they refill his credit card every month.
Why can't there be a Zionism that claims a PART of Palestine as a Jewish homeland open to ANY Jew, with or without a historic connection to Palestine, while leaving the other PART available for Palestinian sovereignty? Why must it be all or nothing?
Because that negates the Palestinian Arabs the "right of return" and powers the end of the Jewish majority State of Israel, which is the desired outcome of progressives like Mamdani et al. They don't want 2 states living side by side in peace and prosperity; they want 1 state in which Palestinian Arabs rule and the former Israeli Jews are dhimmi, exiled or dead, despite their pieties to the contrary.
They can't be "the critical kind" because they send strongly worded letters yet avoid direct criticism when it matters most. Like admitting the occupation amounts to apartheid, despite Arab citizens facing unequal rights and systems of segregation, and avoiding calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide, even though the world has spent years watching extensive bombings and the deaths of tens of thousands of children and many other Palestinians on their phones. All of that "criticism" is just grandstanding because, when meaningful criticism is needed, it's nowhere to be found.
For decades, Israel has been working to destabilize neighboring countries, either through its own military actions or with U.S. support, in hopes of expanding its occupation. History shows when states fail, militant groups fill the hole, many of them with hostile views toward Israel. Israel then points to those groups as justification for further military action.
Politics works like a pendulum. After years of these policies, an ineffective democratic government, and broad accusations of antisemitism it's not surprising that resentment has grown.
The world gave the Jews a state as a refuge, not as starting point to become a regional military power run by a far right, religious nationalist government that seeks to remove Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. What the world gave it can take away. It can’t physically remove Israel but it can turn it into North Korea.
Saying it’s all anti semitism may seem comforting but it avoids the real problem, which is that the world did not sign up for an Israel that acts this way. In fact, many jews did not sign up for a version of Zionism that advocates overwhelming military force to solve political problems. Is this unfair, is the left hypocritical? Yes. Would a more moderate Israel cause it to be accepted by all its enemies? No, but it wouldn’t be polling as the least popular country in the world. This is the world we are in, no matter how attached we are to the land of Israel, no matter what we think we deserve or what others have done .We have to deal with the world as it is not how we wish it was.
This needs to be a moment of real introspection for Israel and the Jewish people.
The world gave Muslim Indians Pakistan and the results are much more problematic than Israel - a series of military governments, a sharp reduction in the Hindu population, apostasy and atheism as crimes, and the 2024 expulsion of 2.2 million Afghan refugees back to a place where girls cannot attend school. In winter. That's the entire population of Gaza. And you didn't even know it happened until you read this comment. Somehow, none of this makes you threaten Pakistan to shape up or be treated like North Korea. Somehow, you treat Pakistan as a place where people live, where the government is bad and does a lot of bad things, but you feel no need to threaten it with a forced merger back into the British Raj. I mean, why not give both regions back to Britain as "punishment", now that we're at it? After all, if you can't behave, the West will have to teach you to be more civilized.
Here's an idea. How about if the Arab and Muslim world and the Palestinian nationalist movement stop attacking Israel's internationally recognized borders? How about if no rockets come from Lebanon or Gaza, no terrorist funding from Iran, no doublespeak on what Palestinian statehood means, and no bus bombings or attacks on JCCs? And THEN let's see whether Israelis can manage to elect a less crazy government.
I mean, we are surrounded by two giant oceans and have the strongest army in the world and we elected a crazy government. Will "the world" take away our seat at the UN? What about Russia? They started a war of aggression and they are somehow STILL THERE. We never should have "gifted" them a state.
Israel is just a place with people, like Pakistan or Turkey or Egypt except better for most people living there. It is a place. It does not represent you or Brad Lander - it represents its citizens. It's not a personal affront to your Jewish identity or reputation. There is no soul searching I need to do about Israel as an American Jew because I never saw it as anything other than a place with a bunch of refugees from authoritarian countries, surrounded by authoritarian countries who would ideally like to conquer it mostly because of hurt pride. There is no way it could ever represent American Jewish values or ideals and expecting that is ridiculous when Americans can't even do it. I am no angrier at Israel than I am at Pakistan for being itself. You should introspect on that reality.
I’m well aware of all of that. As I said in my post, the world is unfair and hypocritical, and you have given a pretty good example of why. And while everything you say is true and reasonable, we both know that you could get up in front of the entire world and say it and it would make you feel good and it wouldn’t change how the world views Israel or the Jewish people. We need to accept the world as it is and acknowledge that the Jews are going to be held to a different standard. That’s just a fact. And knowing that, as Jews, we have a choice. Does Israel do whatever it wants no matter what the world thinks knowing that the consequences mean turning Israel into a pariah state?
We the Jewish people can and should hold ourselves to the highest standard. That is our obligation and that is what we argue about amongst ourselves. But the world - which does not love us nor care if we survive - does not get the same privilege if their arguments are based on a desire to destroy rather than to build. If the world will only accept us if we are Jesus - eternally victimized, eternally teaching the moral lessons of victimhood - then by definition we have to ignore them. Because we will always be human. As long as Israel stands, as long as Jews are successful in any way, we will always be both oppressors and oppressed. And isn't every person and every people - in the end - in that exact same position? Isn't the most victimized person you can imagine still able to beat their child, hate another group in their heart, post terrible things online? We are not unique in having a history of victimization AND in having the power to harm. We are merely human. And in the face of a world that only accepts us as victims, who deeply loves the one Jew who sacrificed himself for the sake of the world - we need to insist that we are in fact human beings.
The world is hypocritical and unfair but in this case, we cannot satisfy its demands. When we try, the demands only shift and escalate because these particular demands were never in good faith. We cannot solve that problem by trying to be more and more and more good. It will only be seen as whitewashing and duplicity. When you look at the heart of this movement - not the followers but the leaders - what you find is a sincere belief that Jews are uniquely evil. They have always seen Israel as a pariah state regardless of its borders and behavior.
Yes, I would like a world in which Israel is not governed by an extreme right wing coalition with all of the racism and violence that generally follows that kind of government. I feel the same way about my own government. But I only have the power to influence one of those governments. Neither of us can make Israel behave in a way that would be easier and more comfortable for us as American Jews.
Given that, we can either insist on the full humanity of people whose governments do bad things or we can try to separate ourselves from Israel in the hope that a movement led by people who think Jews are evil will somehow see us as good.
People whose governments do bad things are fully human. We - in our victimization and our power to harm - are also fully human. It's always easier to defend the truth so let's stand there rather than try to pretend that if we can only get the target of racism to behave better, the racists will realize they were wrong.
Those can both be true at the same time. Many people, however, are not particularly committed to one view or another and are swung by the opinions of peers and media and by marketing.
TrackAIPAC are hardcore anti-semites. But their propaganda would have less reach if AIPAC was actually advocating for Israel and not for people like Netanyahu and Ben Gvyr.
Daniel Biss was not AIPAC's candidate and he was explicit about it. It didn't prevent his targeting or the hate he got. It's never enough and it's a fools game. Go after Likud for being failures but don't expect sympathy and understanding from the majority of gentiles.
Advertising works. And if you cooperate with the advertising of anti-semites, you help them sell their story. And AIPAC's heavy handed, pro-Republican campaigns are clearly counter-productive. Think of all the money they wasted trying to defeat Bliss - who is pro-Israel, but not pro-Likud, and how they didn't try to stop Chevalier. They are counter-productive for Jewish Americans and not an effective opposition to the Qatar lobby, because they have become captive to the Republican/Likud alliance.
What was the Democratic Party should split officially. It may mean that the Democrats lose or the Democratic Socialists (Bernie's real party) will lose -- but the millions of us who support whta the Democrats used to stand for wouldn't be homeless.
Option: The DSA has the cojones to join Bernie's Party -- the Independents--and create their own party aparatus insread of leeching off the Democrats.
"Goldman is a liberal Zionist of the critical kind — he co-led letters calling for sanctions on violent West Bank settlers, was an early backer of humanitarian pauses in Gaza, and opposed the war in Iran"
Surely you can see why conceding these sprawling acres of rhetorical ground allowed the antizionists to chew this "ideology" up and spit it out, yes? If you've already granted that Israel is a big meanie who does all these things, then you've already agreed with them, on purpose or by happenstance, on 90% of their talking points -- no amount of gay pride parades or techs startups will fix that. You've basically shot yourself in the foot and let them administer the final shot to the head.
Perhaps if the so called "liberal Zionist" movement was more concerned with the "Zionist" part of that label and not the former, they wouldn't have been (rightfully) pilloried and made irrelevant in all arenas of the debate. I for one am happy to lay another shovel of dirt on the grave of liberal Zionism. At least the Pali movement won't have J Street around to shine the swords they swing at me anymore.
The idea that the best way to defend Zionism among centrists and liberals is to deny a reality that most Israeli liberals find abhorrent is truly a pretty curious proposition. Who’s supposed to be the audience for that? People without internet access?
Okay, so I think you're saying there can be no Palestinian sovereignty in ANY part of Palestine. You seem to believe there is no option between either a Jewish-controlled geographic Palestine or an Arab-controlled Palestine. If that's the case, you're in effect calling for the end of the 1947 partition and the institution of formal Israeli control over all of geogaphic Palestine. This would mean abandoning decades of US support for the patition, which allowed Israel to be born in the first place.
Palestinian Arabs may want one state with a right of return, but Israel can prevent that--provided it has reliable support from the United States. Even Arab states accept the Jewish character of Israel, even if they don't embrace it. But if Israel defies the partition by expanding settlements and control over Palestinian territorities, she jeopardizes her support from the US. Don't just listen to Mike Huckabee.
As for "the desired outcome of progressives like Mamdani et al," the mayor and his followers on this question simply haven't thought it through. Israel isn't going to fold its tent on its own, and the US is not going to undertake some campaign to compel her to do so.
So, the foreign policy flowing from Gracie Mansion seems almost comical. Far more serious--but also not thought through--is Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza. The expansion of settlements and increased points of conflict will aggravate an already prolonged conflict without producing a resolution because the Palestinians, like Israel, are not going away.
Yeah, I still like the partition.
American Jews are as Democratic as ever and are the more exasperated by Israel than anyone else. Because the Israel that we thought of as what zionism meant has clearly not been around for a long time and might just be gone forever if we don’t take Tough Love steps to save it.
And all us Americans have done is enable. Just like that rich kid whose parents complain that their son has a drug problem while they refill his credit card every month.
Liberal Zionism is an oxymoron. Zionism is an inherently illiberal belief system
Had anyone branded a “Zionist Tears” mug yet? If not, I’m calling it!
Why can't there be a Zionism that claims a PART of Palestine as a Jewish homeland open to ANY Jew, with or without a historic connection to Palestine, while leaving the other PART available for Palestinian sovereignty? Why must it be all or nothing?
Because that negates the Palestinian Arabs the "right of return" and powers the end of the Jewish majority State of Israel, which is the desired outcome of progressives like Mamdani et al. They don't want 2 states living side by side in peace and prosperity; they want 1 state in which Palestinian Arabs rule and the former Israeli Jews are dhimmi, exiled or dead, despite their pieties to the contrary.
Sure buddy
They can't be "the critical kind" because they send strongly worded letters yet avoid direct criticism when it matters most. Like admitting the occupation amounts to apartheid, despite Arab citizens facing unequal rights and systems of segregation, and avoiding calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide, even though the world has spent years watching extensive bombings and the deaths of tens of thousands of children and many other Palestinians on their phones. All of that "criticism" is just grandstanding because, when meaningful criticism is needed, it's nowhere to be found.
For decades, Israel has been working to destabilize neighboring countries, either through its own military actions or with U.S. support, in hopes of expanding its occupation. History shows when states fail, militant groups fill the hole, many of them with hostile views toward Israel. Israel then points to those groups as justification for further military action.
Politics works like a pendulum. After years of these policies, an ineffective democratic government, and broad accusations of antisemitism it's not surprising that resentment has grown.
Sample Flyer
--------------
Resist Islamist Settler Colonialism
Freedom of Speech Works Both Ways
You write this like a horror story, like any of this is bad.
Being a genocide denier SHOULD be as disqualifying as being a Holocaust denier.
Americans waking up to the fact that Israel has been barbaric in its treatment of Palestinians for decade after decade is so damn refreshing.
The world gave the Jews a state as a refuge, not as starting point to become a regional military power run by a far right, religious nationalist government that seeks to remove Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. What the world gave it can take away. It can’t physically remove Israel but it can turn it into North Korea.
Saying it’s all anti semitism may seem comforting but it avoids the real problem, which is that the world did not sign up for an Israel that acts this way. In fact, many jews did not sign up for a version of Zionism that advocates overwhelming military force to solve political problems. Is this unfair, is the left hypocritical? Yes. Would a more moderate Israel cause it to be accepted by all its enemies? No, but it wouldn’t be polling as the least popular country in the world. This is the world we are in, no matter how attached we are to the land of Israel, no matter what we think we deserve or what others have done .We have to deal with the world as it is not how we wish it was.
This needs to be a moment of real introspection for Israel and the Jewish people.
Great reply!
The world gave Muslim Indians Pakistan and the results are much more problematic than Israel - a series of military governments, a sharp reduction in the Hindu population, apostasy and atheism as crimes, and the 2024 expulsion of 2.2 million Afghan refugees back to a place where girls cannot attend school. In winter. That's the entire population of Gaza. And you didn't even know it happened until you read this comment. Somehow, none of this makes you threaten Pakistan to shape up or be treated like North Korea. Somehow, you treat Pakistan as a place where people live, where the government is bad and does a lot of bad things, but you feel no need to threaten it with a forced merger back into the British Raj. I mean, why not give both regions back to Britain as "punishment", now that we're at it? After all, if you can't behave, the West will have to teach you to be more civilized.
Here's an idea. How about if the Arab and Muslim world and the Palestinian nationalist movement stop attacking Israel's internationally recognized borders? How about if no rockets come from Lebanon or Gaza, no terrorist funding from Iran, no doublespeak on what Palestinian statehood means, and no bus bombings or attacks on JCCs? And THEN let's see whether Israelis can manage to elect a less crazy government.
I mean, we are surrounded by two giant oceans and have the strongest army in the world and we elected a crazy government. Will "the world" take away our seat at the UN? What about Russia? They started a war of aggression and they are somehow STILL THERE. We never should have "gifted" them a state.
Israel is just a place with people, like Pakistan or Turkey or Egypt except better for most people living there. It is a place. It does not represent you or Brad Lander - it represents its citizens. It's not a personal affront to your Jewish identity or reputation. There is no soul searching I need to do about Israel as an American Jew because I never saw it as anything other than a place with a bunch of refugees from authoritarian countries, surrounded by authoritarian countries who would ideally like to conquer it mostly because of hurt pride. There is no way it could ever represent American Jewish values or ideals and expecting that is ridiculous when Americans can't even do it. I am no angrier at Israel than I am at Pakistan for being itself. You should introspect on that reality.
I’m well aware of all of that. As I said in my post, the world is unfair and hypocritical, and you have given a pretty good example of why. And while everything you say is true and reasonable, we both know that you could get up in front of the entire world and say it and it would make you feel good and it wouldn’t change how the world views Israel or the Jewish people. We need to accept the world as it is and acknowledge that the Jews are going to be held to a different standard. That’s just a fact. And knowing that, as Jews, we have a choice. Does Israel do whatever it wants no matter what the world thinks knowing that the consequences mean turning Israel into a pariah state?
We the Jewish people can and should hold ourselves to the highest standard. That is our obligation and that is what we argue about amongst ourselves. But the world - which does not love us nor care if we survive - does not get the same privilege if their arguments are based on a desire to destroy rather than to build. If the world will only accept us if we are Jesus - eternally victimized, eternally teaching the moral lessons of victimhood - then by definition we have to ignore them. Because we will always be human. As long as Israel stands, as long as Jews are successful in any way, we will always be both oppressors and oppressed. And isn't every person and every people - in the end - in that exact same position? Isn't the most victimized person you can imagine still able to beat their child, hate another group in their heart, post terrible things online? We are not unique in having a history of victimization AND in having the power to harm. We are merely human. And in the face of a world that only accepts us as victims, who deeply loves the one Jew who sacrificed himself for the sake of the world - we need to insist that we are in fact human beings.
The world is hypocritical and unfair but in this case, we cannot satisfy its demands. When we try, the demands only shift and escalate because these particular demands were never in good faith. We cannot solve that problem by trying to be more and more and more good. It will only be seen as whitewashing and duplicity. When you look at the heart of this movement - not the followers but the leaders - what you find is a sincere belief that Jews are uniquely evil. They have always seen Israel as a pariah state regardless of its borders and behavior.
Yes, I would like a world in which Israel is not governed by an extreme right wing coalition with all of the racism and violence that generally follows that kind of government. I feel the same way about my own government. But I only have the power to influence one of those governments. Neither of us can make Israel behave in a way that would be easier and more comfortable for us as American Jews.
Given that, we can either insist on the full humanity of people whose governments do bad things or we can try to separate ourselves from Israel in the hope that a movement led by people who think Jews are evil will somehow see us as good.
People whose governments do bad things are fully human. We - in our victimization and our power to harm - are also fully human. It's always easier to defend the truth so let's stand there rather than try to pretend that if we can only get the target of racism to behave better, the racists will realize they were wrong.
Eventually the Mossad will have to introduce themselves to these people
Perhaps if AIPAC was pro Israel instead of pro Likud …
Nah. Many people are just mad Israel didn't lose in 1948 and be destroyed in a War of Extermination.
Those can both be true at the same time. Many people, however, are not particularly committed to one view or another and are swung by the opinions of peers and media and by marketing.
Daniel Biss election and TrackAIPAC prove that for many if not the majority that it was never about AIPAC or Likud.
TrackAIPAC are hardcore anti-semites. But their propaganda would have less reach if AIPAC was actually advocating for Israel and not for people like Netanyahu and Ben Gvyr.
Daniel Biss was not AIPAC's candidate and he was explicit about it. It didn't prevent his targeting or the hate he got. It's never enough and it's a fools game. Go after Likud for being failures but don't expect sympathy and understanding from the majority of gentiles.
Advertising works. And if you cooperate with the advertising of anti-semites, you help them sell their story. And AIPAC's heavy handed, pro-Republican campaigns are clearly counter-productive. Think of all the money they wasted trying to defeat Bliss - who is pro-Israel, but not pro-Likud, and how they didn't try to stop Chevalier. They are counter-productive for Jewish Americans and not an effective opposition to the Qatar lobby, because they have become captive to the Republican/Likud alliance.
What was the Democratic Party should split officially. It may mean that the Democrats lose or the Democratic Socialists (Bernie's real party) will lose -- but the millions of us who support whta the Democrats used to stand for wouldn't be homeless.
Option: The DSA has the cojones to join Bernie's Party -- the Independents--and create their own party aparatus insread of leeching off the Democrats.
Ban #DSA
https://behindthenarrative7.substack.com/p/how-the-dsa-is-dismantling-america?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=bpnge
"Goldman is a liberal Zionist of the critical kind — he co-led letters calling for sanctions on violent West Bank settlers, was an early backer of humanitarian pauses in Gaza, and opposed the war in Iran"
Surely you can see why conceding these sprawling acres of rhetorical ground allowed the antizionists to chew this "ideology" up and spit it out, yes? If you've already granted that Israel is a big meanie who does all these things, then you've already agreed with them, on purpose or by happenstance, on 90% of their talking points -- no amount of gay pride parades or techs startups will fix that. You've basically shot yourself in the foot and let them administer the final shot to the head.
Perhaps if the so called "liberal Zionist" movement was more concerned with the "Zionist" part of that label and not the former, they wouldn't have been (rightfully) pilloried and made irrelevant in all arenas of the debate. I for one am happy to lay another shovel of dirt on the grave of liberal Zionism. At least the Pali movement won't have J Street around to shine the swords they swing at me anymore.
The idea that the best way to defend Zionism among centrists and liberals is to deny a reality that most Israeli liberals find abhorrent is truly a pretty curious proposition. Who’s supposed to be the audience for that? People without internet access?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-settlers-rampage-idf-soldiers-accused-of-aiding-violence-theft-against-palestinians/amp/
No one cares about their "defenses" and largely mock their mealy mouthed appeals at liberalism.
At some point their adopted home will completely dispense with them and they'll have to choose where to go if Zionism still means anything to them.
George McGovern is looking down and laughing at these clowns.