Two reasons the “I can’t be a Zionist because I’m a liberal” meme is false [View all]

[King_David]

Another day, another essay by a “former liberal Zionist”, this time Antony Lerman in the New York Times, decrying the fact that while it used to be okay to be a liberal Zionist, nowadays Israel politics is so right-wing that being a liberal Zionist is a contradiction in terms. Regrettably, the author sighs, he decided to choose liberalism.

This is silly (and pernicious). First, in practice today being a “Zionist” means that you support Israel’s right to continue to exist as a sovereign, Jewish state. One could be a liberal Zionist, who wants Israel to withdraw from the territories and achieve full equality for its Arab citizens, or one can be an illiberal Zionist, and support a vision of “Greater Israel” with a suppressed Arab minority. One can be a secular Zionist, or a religious Zionist. There are Christian Zionists, and even a few Muslim Zionists.

But the only feasible alternatives to Zionism are themselves illiberal–have a majority Arab state in which Jews are, at best, a suppressed minority, or force all six million Jews living in Israel to flee to whatever countries (if any) will accept them, or some combination of the two. The idea that giving up on “Zionism” makes you a “liberal” is false, unless creating yet another Arab dictatorship in what is now Israel at the cost of six million Jews’ lives and liberty, and of by far the most liberal state in their region, is somehow a “liberal” option.

Second, it’s entirely false that Israeli politics have taken a sudden swing to the right. The main issue, of course, is territorial compromise with the Palestinians. Israel has already withdrawn from Gaza (and also left Lebanon fourteen years ago), and also has given the Palestinian Authority control of parts of the West Bank, so it’s already more “left-wing” in that sense than it was in, say, 1988, when it was still supposedly okay to be a liberal Zionist.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/08/22/two-reasons-the-i-cant-be-a-zionist-because-im-a-liberal-meme-is-false/