Landmark event: 'LA Times' publishes a Jew embracing anti-Zionism

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"God bless the LA Times for its intellectual leadership. I'm proud to know the editorial page editor, Nick Goldberg. Today the page goes further than any MSM page in America and prints an amazing piece by Ben Ehrenreich embracing anti-Zionism as a Jewish tradition. The article is called "Zionism is the problem."

http://www.philipweiss.org/

Zionism is the problem

<snip>

The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.

"It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.

For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.

Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism."

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[Jefferson23]

1. Powerful and sincere, thanks for posting. Will be interesting to

see what responses the LA Times receives on this, and good for them!

Ben Ehrenreich wrote this for Obama, was printed by the LA Times too. He has a wonderful sense of humor, you may enjoy it as I did.



POWER AND ART: INAUGURAL ESSAYS

A wish list for the new president
So Obama wants to help the arts? Maybe start by revisiting this whole 'freedom of expression' thing, which is so old school.
By Ben Ehrenreich
January 18, 2009

1. Repeal the 1st Amendment. This may seem extreme, but let's be honest, it's not at all up to date. In this country, we are famously free to express ourselves, but despite such clever innovations as the Internet, no one will read, see or hear our work unless it can be profitably sold or can be displayed beside shiny advertisements.

This is an odd sort of freedom. It means censors are unnecessary. The market does their work effectively and with less controversy. The market, as Karl Marx observed, brilliantly obscures the true nature of social relations. Artists, as a result, find themselves confused as to their role (to chase truth? beauty? Wal-Mart?) and the place of their work in our society. This must end.

remainder in full here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-ben-ehrenreich18-2009jan18,0,3209060.story

[aranthus]

2. Utter BS

So bad one does not know where to start. And not even worth the time.

[cali]

3. agreed.

it's pretty piss poor.

[safeinOhio]

4. Who are the people of Palestinian?

http://www.alternet.org/audits/122810/controversial_bestseller_shakes_the_foundation_of_the_israeli_state/

[aranthus]

5. More BS

First of all, the idea that Zionism is based on a blood relationship to the Hebrews is not a Zionist idea. It's a racist anti-Zionist antisemitic idea. Second, there is a lineage between the Hebrews and modern Israelis if that matters. What really matters is that there is a Jewish people which has a continuity in Israel and outside of Israel. Third, while there may have been some conversion to Islam among Jews, there hasn't been much. Certainly not so much as to account for the Palestinians to be descendants of the Hebrews. Fourth, many of the people who claim to be Palestinians are relatively recent immigrants to Palestine. Fifth, those who are not are largely bedouin Arabs, clearly not descended from the Hebrews. I could go on, but would the truth matter to you?

[Lithos]

7. In a genetic sense

Palestinians are not Arabs. The notion of "Arab" is really someone who speaks Arabic and has little ethnic basis. Most of the conquerors from what is now Mecca/Medina who conquered practiced a top-down relation with those they conquered choosing to replace the leadership and leave the other classes alone, often with great (economic) incentive to convert to Islam.

Those who live in the West Bank as I recall are most closely genetically related to Jews than to any other group.

L-

[safeinOhio]

8. and sixth

You might debate the Tel Aviv University scholr Shlomo Zand. The question is, was there ever a Jewish people, or only a Jewish religion. The Eastern European settlers, nuttiest of the Zionist, may have the least claim to the land.

[Lithos]

9. The Khazar issue has long been debunked

n/t

[azurnoir]

10. You mean they never existed?

or that some a**hole decided to use the historical"quirk" for antisemitic purposes

[Lithos]

11. The Khazars existed

And their nobility did, ostensibly "convert", though it seems this conversion of the state was more for political than religious reasons and was fleeting. However, as I am sure you are aware, there is quite a bit of FUD out and about as to who were the Khazarian Jews, the true extent of their conversion, and that it might somehow be linked to specifically Russian or generically to Eastern European Jewry. Some of that has indeed been misused by those with an anti-semitic agenda, though I am sure that the idea was not necessarily originated by people with an anti-Semitic agenda. I've not seen any real breakdown of how the meme was spread, I just know it was misused by some.

The history of Eastern European Jews as originating from Germany is very well documented by tradition, names/language, but also by genetics. I also recall Khazaria was the particular meme which spawned the first study of genetic history of Jews to see if Jews were indeed of a related/common genetic group and to determine their point of origin. This showed I think the close genetic ties between the main Jewish groups (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, Kurdish) and the Palestinians, Samaritans, Lebanese, Syrians and the Bedouin. To show how close, I think the differences between several of the Jewish groups were farther apart than the differences between the Askhenazi and the Palestinians though I don't think I could lay my hands on that at the moment.

L-

[grassfed]

12. Paul Wexler - Yiddish Linguist Tel Aviv Univ

Wexler uses the relexification hypothesis to support his claim that ''the contemporary Ashkenazic Jews are not, in any significant sense, the direct descendants of the Palestinian Jews of the Roman period''. Specifically, he proposes that Yiddish underwent relexification twice: once in western Slavic (Upper Sorbian), and secondly in the eastern Slavic (Ukraine and Belarus') language area. This second relexification occurred relatively recently (he dates it to the 15th/16th centuries), which suggests that an eastern Slavic speaking Jewish population was already in place at an earlier date. This population was, in Wexler's view, descended from the Khazars and other groups of converts.
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2533.html

...not that "blood ties" matter of course. That would be racist.

[Lithos]

13. Wexler convinced very few people, if any, in his field

His theory basically states that Yiddish is not a direct derivative of Middle German, but is in actuality a relexified variant of a Turco-Slavic language obtained from the Khazars. This proposal has not gained any credence with any of his peers and his ideas to support a Khazarian interaction have been deemed fairly absurd. He only offers only linguistics as proof so that even if he is correct that there is a dominant Turkish influence in Yiddish due to relexification, it does not prove by any stretch descent from Khazaria as linguistics cannot prove descent of one group from another. If one assumed as such, then the Haitians would be French due to the dominance of French in the relexification of their various creoles. All linguistics can show is contact or interaction between language groups.

But more definitively, the recent studies of genetics shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Eastern Jews follow a direct trail via Germany back to Palestine.

L-

[grassfed]

14. Recent studies do not... but we aren't racists so it doesn't matter.

There are thousands of Khazar cemeteries in Russia, becoming more recent as they move WEST, decorated with menorahs and stars of David. The migration was indisputably east to west. There was never the numbers of Jews necessary in Germany to migrate east and create a Ukranian population of ten million Jews, not even close. Un-politicized (not tampered with) science is inconvenient for those plagued with a visceral investment in a racial connection to a mythical past.

[Lithos]

16. Again

1) The history of movement from West to East is WELL documented in multiple histories. It was the Radhanite merchants who were the leaders into Poland and Eastern Europe.
2) The DNA history proves it

The ideas of any significant Khazarian influence have long been discredited by historians especially since the definitive entry of DNA evidence. In addition, the scant archeological evidence of the Khazars indicates limited Jewish influence on the culture what influence that is there could easily explained not by conversion, but by settlement into Khazaria by other Jews. The Khazarian nobility adopted Judaism primarily as a means to stay above the religious wars occurring at that time (Christian/Islam), not because there was any great affinity. No evidence has ever been offered which indicates anything more than a shallow conversion with the majority of Khazars still retaining their shamanistic practices.

I would love to see your sources as most of those still pushing Khazaria as a in any pseudo-academic way are fringe and tend towards a secondary agenda.

L-

[Lithos]

6. How ironic

The editorial holds up as an ideal the Brit Shalom movement, which also espoused.... drum roll.... Zionism.

This just leads back to the circular notion of what people really mean when they use the word Zionism. In the article above, the author amply demonstrates the different meanings of Zionism here:

Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.

However, I think the author presumes incorrectly that each group rejects the idea of Zionism completely, but rather fails to understand each group carries their own endorsement and understanding of Zionism.

Zionism (and also Islamism) is nothing more than a word of convenience. Zionism is a placeholder where an extremely complex set of ideas, motivations and histories involving Israel, Nationalism, Humanism, Culturalism, Religion, and Ethnicity are reduced down to a single word. The exact weight of each of these associated meaning of course depend completely on the author and the audience. The problem occurs when there is a disconnect between the author and the audience's meanings.

Personally I do not like such words of convenience as they often serve to cloud and confuse and in a few cases serve as guises for those who desire to prey upon such ambiguity.

L-

[IndianaGreen]

15. This is not the kind of Zionism I grew up with

Of course, as Golda Meir once said, there wasn't such a thing as a Palestinians. We had Jordanians on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egyptians in Gaza. We just wanted to live in peace with our neighbors, was the accepted claim by Israel, before 1967, before the settlements.

History has now taken us to where we are now, and I don't recognize what passes for Zionism nowadays.