Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections

Edited by Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo, and Norton Mezvinsky. Amana Books, Brattleboro, VT, 1988. 339 pp. $19.95

Reviewed by Sheldon L. Richman

Since the mid-1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization has expressed its willingness to make peace with Israel on the basis of a two state solution. In recent months, the PLO has pressed this solution aggressively enough to win recognition from the US government. Since the new Palestinian state would be on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, this is a monumental concession: it appears to forego all pre-1967 claims, despite the fact that Israeli usurpation of property rights created the original Palestinian refugee problem.

This accommodation by Yasser Arafat and the PLO, helpful as it may be in defusing the Middle East bomb, has overshadowed a fundamental issue: the problem of Zionism. To grasp the difficulty inherent in Zionism, consider this: Zionism would be problematical even if the land the Zionists wanted was uninhabited.

One man who has understood this, and who has worked indefatigably to have others understand it, is Rabbi Elmer Berger. This book is a festschrift in his honor. Few people deserve to be honored for courage and resourcefulness in the service of justice as Rabbi Berger does. For over 40 years he has spoken out and written eloquently against the two headed perniciousness of Zionism—the violence it has done to the Palestinians and the damage it has inflicted on Judaism. Among his books and articles is the poignant Memoirs of an And-Zionist Jew. He was a founder of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism and later American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism, which he still heads. In an era so lacking in heroes, Rabbi Berger is an inspiration.

The book does him justice. It is indeed a feast in writing, and a suitable introduction to many issues involved in the Palestine/Israel question. It begins with Rabbi Berger's own classic essay, "Zionist Ideology: Obstacle to Peace," and includes new essays by Israel Shahak, Sally and W. Thomas Mallison, Naseer Aruri, Roselle Tekiner, Shaw J. Dallal, Benjamin M. Joseph, Cheryl A. Rubenberg, Ruth W. Mouly, and Norton Mezvinsky. They cover such topics as Zionism as a recidivist movement, the "who is a Jew?" controversy, the anti-Zionist democratic alternative, Palestinian attitudes toward civil liberties, the Israel-South Africa relationship, American efforts for Middle East peace, Israel's Christian supporters, American domestic treatment of Zionists and Palestinians, and Reform Judaism's attitude toward Zionism.

One comes away from this book with a stark sense of the fundamental illiberality of Zionism. As Israel Shahak explains, it was an explicit reaction against the individualistic Enlightenment and an atavistic attempt to restorethe stifling ghettosof 18th-century Poland. Zionism's fathers believed Jews could not live normal lives among gentiles—even in free, democratic societies—and propounded a notion of "Jewish people," rights that rejected the spirit of the age. Zionism, writes Shahak, "can be described as a mirror image of anti-Semitism," since it, like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world. Moreover, "both anti-Semites and Zionism assume anti-Semitism is ineradicable and inevitable." This attitude among Zionist Jews led to a capitulation to anti-Semitism in Europe, in lieu of a conviction to rally the world's liberal forces against it. Small wonder that some notorious anti-Semites, Eichmann, for example, have been attracted to the Zionist program. The results have been catastrophic.

Shahak's paper makes much of the last 40 years understandable. Given Zionism's premises, it is unsurprising that Arabs would have been seen as obstacles to be swept away ruthlessly and that the state of Israel would be run ostensibly for the benefit of "the Jewish people," no matter the cost in the fives and liberties of non-Jews. Some of the horrifying results are documented in Anti-Zionism. The record of callousness and dishonesty is appalling, all the more so because it was done in the name of Judaism. As Rabbi Berger writes in the first chapter, "Nationalist territorial Zionism's dehumanizing of Arabs has not been in response to or defense against Arab inhumanity to Jews ... The source of conflict was always Zionism." (Emphasis in original.)

Norton Mezvinsky's account of the early history of Reform Judaism is a needed antidote to the standard accounts of Zionism. If Zionism was an illiberal attempt to role back the Enlightenment so far as Jews were concerned, Reform Judaism was a glorious embrace of the liberal values of individual freedom and dignity. In 1885, Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh and adopted a platform that declared Judaism a religious community, not a people or a nation. "We recognize in the era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching realization of Israel's great messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men." Its first prayer book omitted the usual references to Jewish exile and the future restoration of Israel. Reform Judaism was, in other words, anti-Zionist. It foretold with perfect accuracy the violence that Zionism would do to Judaism even had there been no Arabs in Palestine. Without Rabbi Berger we'd be less knowledgeable of this "other"—the real—Judaism.

Sheldon L. Richman is a writer and editor in the Washington, DC area.

Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections Is available from the AET Book Club.