The Rev. Peter J. Miano
Antisemitism is a very real and repugnant form of prejudice and hostility toward Jewish people. However, it is often confused with legitimate moral critique of the State of Israel. Most recently the charge of antisemiticism is cynically trotted out to blunt morally informed criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza that are also dubiously referred to as self-defense. The confusion is the result of the incorrect and inappropriate identification of Judaism with Zionism.
Judaism is a religious system. It is rooted in and based on ancient writings including the Old Testament (or Hebrew scriptures) and, especially, the Talmuds. It is characterized by monotheism. It includes observance of certain rituals and adherence to moral and legal codes. Zionism, on the other hand, is a political ideology that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. Zionism postulates that Jewish people constitute a distinct people, i.e., an ethnically distinct identity, and that the organization of this distinct group of people into a nation state is not only historically and politically necessary, but that it is also a moral imperative. Paradoxically, proponents of zionism are usually Christian.
Critique of the State of Israel, especially its well known attempts to subjugate the Palestinian people, starting with its long history of trying to delegitimize the history of the Palestinian people, is hard to avoid these days. Israel’s notorious actions in Gaza render such critique unavoidable for morally astute people. To avoid it is a default of moral responsibility. Such critique, by itself, is no more anti-Jewish than critique of the State of Italy would be anti-Catholic.
Furthermore, the charge that critique of zionism is anti-Jewish is not merely a dubious and a cynical ploy to neutralize legitimate moral critique of Israel. It is a silly absurdity. Before there were any Jewish zionists, there were Christian zionists who misread the Bible. Zionism in its early stages was totally rejected by religious Jewish people. Did that make them anti Jewish? Most Jewish people did not adopt zionism until 1948 or later. Still today, many Jewish people vigorously reject zionism as blasphemy or as morally deficient.
Zionism is often associated with biblical literalism. A minority of Christian zionists are, indeed, biblical literalists. Today, however, the vast majority of zionists are Christians who, like Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, Donald Trump, a nominal Christian, and Hillary Clinton, a one time Methodist Sunday school teacher, are not biblical literalists. Rather, they are zionists, because first they are nationalists who, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, still think that exclusive national states are good, natural and inevitable ways to organize the world’s populations. Today, Christian zionists outnumbered Jewish zionists by at least 100:1. If anything, critique of zionism is critique of misinformed Christians.
If you, dear reader, also think nationalism is a good idea, consider that in the roughly 110 years since the start of WWI, over 200 million people have been killed in nationalist wars. If that is progress, the world needs less of it. Carnage on this scale is unprecedented in human history.
Zionism deserves and invites critique just like all other forms of nationalism, because the zionist enterprise has led inevitably to instability for all the people of the Middle East, including for Jewish people—zionists and non-zionists alike. What we are witnessing in Gaza now is the result of the misguided project of imposing an exclusive nationalist entity in a geographical area which, throughout history, has been impressively diverse. The population of the area controlled by Israel is more non Jewish than it is Jewish.
Recent history shows that force is the only way to accomplish the zionist agenda. No one in the history of humanity has ever capitulated to their own subjugation. No one is about to start doing so now. What we are observing in Gaza today is the result of the zionist effort to create a mono-culture out of a richly diverse population. It is a purely political problem with a purely political solution. There is no real military option that is also morally defendable. Critique of the military option is itself a moral imperative.