Can Zionists be anti-Zionists?
They certainly can. Just like Jews can be Antisemites.
Just imagine if we would have said after the murder of George Floyd or the Trump insurrection that we won’t be friends with the US anymore.
You could object that such faux pas generated much protest in the US. True, but the new policies agreed to by Netanyahu do the same here. How are demonstrations by the US People serious but ours not? Our still-sitting PM Lapid even called for local authorities to resist bigotry. That’s nothing?
Besides, not supporting Israel’s right to exist and sort out its own problems seems so much colonialist, imperialist, Western supremacy, and anti-Zionist, which we all know is antisemitic.
Even ‘just’ threatening Israel with withdrawal of backing speaks of an amount of distrust and disdain for the Israeli public we’re used to from Gentile leaders, not from Zionist Jews. Well, apparently, a Zionist Jew who continues to live outside of Israel is more than an oxymoron. Yet another indicator that Jews outside of Israel should not vote in Israel’s elections.
But, how can we accuse someone who always was a staunch supporter of the Jewish State of even any of these things? I don’t. His words do.
It’s even worse than this. We should let it slip when some uninformed Jew in the US would say something negative about Israel. But someone who always fought against anti-Zionism and antisemitism as a top US-Jewish leader should know better and be judged harsher for disloyalty. There is no such thing as: ‘I was honest all my life so now, I deserve to rob a bank.’
We, Israeli Jews, must reject any attacks on our sovereign, democratic State, by anyone and always, and especially from an armchair Zionist.
This moreover when the armchair stands in a country full of cruel racism and classism, stolen from the Natives and built with Black-slave labor without any compensation to rectify that and that just now reinstituted an abortion ban. Look who’s talking about returning to the Middle Ages! How about sorting out the mess in your own house before criticizing others!
To his credit, though, we must note that he was an early warner against Trump’s fascism and is still keeping it up. He’s clearly a good man.
And, maybe he’s just someone who habitually speaks loudly? So am I.
A person who singled out Israel for conditional support doesn’t need to be refused entry. But he must apologize first. The chutzpah.
A tree is known by its fruit. Only this tree has quite a variety of produce, so please don’t judge the trunk after one helping.
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