Yes. But only if the forces of liberal democracy defeat those of far right nationalism - a challenge not just in Israel, but in the US and around the world.
I'm glad that J Street embraces disagreement. I'm no Jewish scholar - far from it - but I thought an integral part of Jewish study is to argue opposing points of view. What I currently observe is that zealously pro-Israel Jewish Establishment organizations and leaders call Jews who express disagreement with them disparaging names: "Self-hating Jew" and "puppet of antisemites" come to mind. I know they have also disparaged J Street itself. So, it seems that those who unquestioningly support Israel's depraved government, no matter what it does, are willing to discard this important Jewish value to do so.
What a great point, Carolyn. It is so highly un-Jewish to shut down debate. More so when that debate is about something as important as the future of Israel and the nature of our identity. Thanks for adding that into the mix!
Good point Carolyn. Some of us here in Cleveland are putting a paid advertisement in the Jewish news calling on the leaders of the Jewish community to speak out and demand action by the United States and Israel to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Personally, I am calling for a United Nations security council section 7 resolution restricted to humanitarian action. As much as I support J St, there are times when independent action needs to be taken by Jewish supporters of peace and justice.
And that is why J Street should begin to acknowledge that the actions of the settlers are state-policy under this Israeli government. Sanctions against individual settlers are not the ‘right’ response. These are not individual rotten apples. These are state actors enforcing an ethnic cleansing policy mandated by the state of Israel.
Oy vey what a mess we Jews are in today. Yiddish wasn’t even a consideration for a modern Israeli state but socialism clearly became its mantra and liberal Jews identified. The rawness of the holocaust and Jew as worker of the land meshed as well. And love for Israel gave entree into a modern Judaism where reverence for the Jewish state became inseparable from our religion. Yet statehood, a political state, is not a religion as I am finally recognizing and as Peter shows us even more so as a modern Orthodox Jew. The old model has long broken down. And honestly I wish I knew what comes out of this turmoil for us in the diaspora A return to an embracing of our ancient Jewish religion without the central focus on Israel? Peter makes this case rather achingly and what it has meant for him personally. Will
any of us care enough to look inward and honestly as well recognizing finally, that Israel the nation and the world is a very different place than it was 76 years ago. A very important discussion. Thank you for entertaining it.
A good one, Jeremy! As a liberal Jewish senior I tend to toggle between your and Peter's viewpoint and so appreciate this discussion. My own strongest personal belief is that Judaism needs to redefine itself in a fundamental and radical way, as radical as the shift from a Temple-based to a rabbinic culture, and, in this instance, away from the Israel-centered focus that has dominated the American Jewish world in our lifetimes.
For openers, America's Jews are Americans. They are not Israelis. My ancestors came here from England, Germany, Scotland and Ireland; and I have ZERO allegiance to any of those countries. Similarly, American Jews' ancestors came here from other countries, like mine did in the 1800s and before. None of my Jewish friends growing up in Los Angeles were immigrant Jews.
The multi-decade butchery of Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists is abhorrent, and not something that anyone should defend. Quite to the contrary, it has ratcheted up anti-Semitism globally to levels not seen since World War II, with far worse yet to come.
Our President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General George Marshall opposed the creation of Israel; and they were correct and omniscient. No Jew is safe anywhere in the world today because of Israel. My German ancestors came to America in the late-1840s; and Nazism was and is abhorrent to me.
For America's Jews, Israel's "Nazism" -- perpetrated by Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists -- should be equally abhorrent. And yes, the world agrees, as anti-Israel rhetoric and actions spike globally. Perhaps one photo tells a thousand words.
A timely post tonight from the New Yorker Daily by David Remnick. He writes that "the horrific scale of suffering among the Gazan's is nearly invisible in the Israeli media". Remnick writes that Israel is firmly in Netanyahu's MAGA-like grip and the activist left has all but disappeared.
Israeli's are in denial and trying to ignore the moral nightmare of Gaza.
Not promising for hopes that Zionism can coexist with liberal democracy.
I agree completely, Jeremy. After reading the Klein article I made these notes in anticipation of exactly those intra-family debates you refer to - I reprint them here if they are helpful to others:
1) Ehud Olmert is right (“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
2) Nation states based on an ethno-national identity are the norm in the world, not the exception. Klein misses this entirely. The USA, Canada, and Australia are exceptions.
3) Israel must become either an expanded democracy (a “bi-national” state) or there has to be a Palestinian state. This has always been known. The Zionist dream inherently envisions and incorporates a separate Palestinian state so that Israel may be a predominantly Jewish state (like France is predominantly French and Britain predominantly British and they are also determined to keep it that way).
4) We cannot be liberals for America and France and exclusionary ethno -nationalists for Israel. It’s grossly hypocritical. We can liberals as to both and must be.
Rabbi Donniel Hartman (Shalom Hartman Institute) argues how to reconcile democracy and political Zionism (in an Israel post-occupation where there is to be two sovereign states): Full equality for all citizens (a principle embraced in Israel’s Gmilat HaAtzmaot, Declaration of Independence) except (1) favoring Jews in matters of emigration to help ensure a Jewish majority, and (2) maintenance of a national Jewish calendar that marks traditional Jewish holidays like Purim as national (cultural or religious, depending on one’s sensibility) holidays.
Timothy You absolutely cannot conflate the actions of the Israeli government with the Israeli population. Your views about the existence of Israel are no different from the aims of the Nazis whom you claim to castigate.
With due respect, there is NOTHING moral about the heinous actions of Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists. Long ago, they morphed into the Jews' Nazi oppressors. Any Jews who defend the Apartheid state today are blind to the fact that it is the most-hated entity on earth; and that hatred is manifesting itself in a tragic hatred of all Jews. And the attempt by the Israeli thugs at OpenWeb to censor criticism globally only serves to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. Israel is a cancer on the world; and its demise will be cheered globally.
Wonderful piece Jeremy. To Peter’s point about “ethnostates,” America is exceptional in this regard. Most of the non Anglo European countries are “ethnostates” and have struggled tremendously with incorporating minorities. Our task as liberal Zionists is to have Jewish self determination with the greatest amount of ethnic equality compatible.
I've just finished listening to the remarkable conversation between Jeremy and Peter. However you choose between the different views of these men on the future of Israel, you have to be in awe of their commitment to the liberal values they both share, including the value of open debate.
As a non-Jew, I appreciate that the State of Israel has a meaning for Jews that I will never begin to understand.
But I am also a liberal Democrat and an American so I necessarily have a stake in this discussion. And a stake in Israel's war on Gaza which is carried out in the name of America.
For what it is worth, Peter's intellectual arguments in favor of a "one-state" solution - or against a ethno-religious Jewish State - persuade me. Although unlikely in my lifetime. A liberal Zionist state of Israel seems wishful thinking and contradicted by a very illiberal history.
Israel expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 in order to have a predominantly Jewish state. The United States corralled it’s indigenous population to make way for our settlers. We have struggled to be a democratic country. It is theoretically possible. (What is happening now shows that it is a constant struggle.) The problem is fear that any surrounding arabic population possesses an existential threat. There is some justification for that fear. The problem is exasperated by the ongoing dehumanizing treatment of the descendants of the expulsion (the nakba). All Israeli governments, not just the present one, have discriminated against Palestinians. Hence, resentment has built up. That feeds-back to enhance fear. In seeking a solution we can not ignore the history. As the people from standing together say, as long as there is struggle there is hope.
The answer is a resounding no. With all due respect to the Ben-Ami/Beinart and Douthat/Stephens equivocations, the core issue is, to paraphrase Reagan, "Israel is not the solution, it is the problem."
Jews have prospered worldwide despite their low numbers--0.02% of the global population--due to their disproportionate contributions to and success in science, the arts, business, entertainment, etc.
The disastrous Zionist adventure has been a sucker play from day one, colonial powers laying off a problem that Lawrence of Arabia was unable to fix by reimagining Mandate Palestine as a "reservation" to contain the Jews who survived the Holocaust and put the majority of them in one place so it would be easier to round them up again if the millions of Arabs who surrounded Israel didn't finish the job themselves. While we disapora Jews exhaust ourselves in debate, the world moves on. The global population has more than tripled since 1945 yet the Jewish population is still 2 million lower than it was in 1939. Even allowing for the losses suffered in the Holocaust, other countries and peoples took heavy casualties in WWII also. The only solution to the Gaza problem that would be acceptable to the "far right nationalists" that currently hold power is Israel is total eradication of the Palestinian popular from the river to the sea, including vaporizing Hamas and disappearing any threat from the Arab kids who have been radicalized during decades of occupations and genocidal tactics. This is unlikely to ever be achieved for many reasons, including the fact that there are more than two billion Muslims on the planet and most of them seem more inclined to target Jews rather than help out their Palestinian brothers. Meanwhile, as Israel becomes a pariah, anti-semitism grows everywhere and threatens disaspora Jews in every corner of the earth. You can't bring "liberal democracy" to a gunfight.
Sadly, nothing I (or seemingly anyone else) can think of. Dan Perry had a good column in The Forward July 11th in which he enumerated the challenges Netanyahu's version of Zionist Israel faces going forward. It's a lot, and he didn't get to the longterm consequences (PTSD, moral injury) that IDF conscripts and reservists will bring home after extended deployments during the Gaza war.
Timothy Regarding your response to my comment if you carefully what I emphasized there is a great distinction to be drawn between the government of Israel (Netanyahu, his Cabinet, the Knesset (parliament) and the settlers who commit heinous acts with the tacit support of the IDF/police) and the populace of Israel. Just as you would not say that the USA must be eradicated due to its history of violence and colonialism against its indigenous inhabitants and you would draw a distinction between the current government and the residents of the US, this standard must be applied to Israel as well, and I would posit any authoritarian regime that acts in a similar manner.
The relationship of the Jewish people to the State of Israel is an inextricable component of its identity and any wholesale rupture of its existence would eventuate in cataclysmic consequences not only for Jews and Israelis (20 % of whom are Palestinians) but for the region and the world at large.
Since you are so ready to condemn Israel are you equally prepared to condemn China/Russia/El Salvador/Venezuela/any of the other authoritarian and Communist countries?
You are welcome Timothy. I appreciate your sentiments on my comments.
I agree that apartheid policies have no place in any country including Israel especially Israel given the historical circumstances that engendered its creation.
Do you posit that if Israel would someday be willing to abandon its apartheid policies and grant Palestinians their own state that Israel would then have a right to exist?
Timothy thank you for your response. To answer your question of course Nazi Germany should not have been allowed to exist if D-Day failed. However Nazi Germany was defeated due in large part to US intervention and today Germany is a democratic country with extra special laws against Antisemitism.
One day the Netanyahu government will fall and it is hoped that more progressive voices will comprise the Knesset, Cabinet and Prime Minister’s Office. Rabin would have concluded a peace deal with Arafat I believe had he not been assasinated.
Please do remember that the emerging state of Israel was prepared to accept the UN partition plan in November 1947 and that the Arab states were not. Their subsequent invasion led to the 1948 War of Independence which is the term used by Jewish Israelis and the Nakba the Arabic word used by the Arabs. The war was both a victory at great cost to Israel and a catastrophe for the Palestinians at the same time.
Also please remember that at Israel’s founding there were many streams of Zionism some more humanistic and some more extreme.
I reiterate my last question to you: If Israel would someday renounce its policy of apartheid would it have a right to exist? By your reasoning the USA would not have a right to exist because it was founded by slave owners who conducted campaigns of dispossession and genocide as did their descendants against the Indigenous peoples and it was only relatively recently that the Native American boarding schools were closed which were physically abusive and genocidal.
I'm glad that J Street embraces disagreement. I'm no Jewish scholar - far from it - but I thought an integral part of Jewish study is to argue opposing points of view. What I currently observe is that zealously pro-Israel Jewish Establishment organizations and leaders call Jews who express disagreement with them disparaging names: "Self-hating Jew" and "puppet of antisemites" come to mind. I know they have also disparaged J Street itself. So, it seems that those who unquestioningly support Israel's depraved government, no matter what it does, are willing to discard this important Jewish value to do so.
What a great point, Carolyn. It is so highly un-Jewish to shut down debate. More so when that debate is about something as important as the future of Israel and the nature of our identity. Thanks for adding that into the mix!
Good point Carolyn. Some of us here in Cleveland are putting a paid advertisement in the Jewish news calling on the leaders of the Jewish community to speak out and demand action by the United States and Israel to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Personally, I am calling for a United Nations security council section 7 resolution restricted to humanitarian action. As much as I support J St, there are times when independent action needs to be taken by Jewish supporters of peace and justice.
Very true. It’s very uncomfortable being a J Streeter as we are shut down in both directions!!!
And that is why J Street should begin to acknowledge that the actions of the settlers are state-policy under this Israeli government. Sanctions against individual settlers are not the ‘right’ response. These are not individual rotten apples. These are state actors enforcing an ethnic cleansing policy mandated by the state of Israel.
Well said. Netanyahu and other Israelis want to "cleanse" Palestine of its Palestinians.
Oy vey what a mess we Jews are in today. Yiddish wasn’t even a consideration for a modern Israeli state but socialism clearly became its mantra and liberal Jews identified. The rawness of the holocaust and Jew as worker of the land meshed as well. And love for Israel gave entree into a modern Judaism where reverence for the Jewish state became inseparable from our religion. Yet statehood, a political state, is not a religion as I am finally recognizing and as Peter shows us even more so as a modern Orthodox Jew. The old model has long broken down. And honestly I wish I knew what comes out of this turmoil for us in the diaspora A return to an embracing of our ancient Jewish religion without the central focus on Israel? Peter makes this case rather achingly and what it has meant for him personally. Will
any of us care enough to look inward and honestly as well recognizing finally, that Israel the nation and the world is a very different place than it was 76 years ago. A very important discussion. Thank you for entertaining it.
Silence in the Face of Gaza's Starvation is Absolute Betrayal
of Holocaust Victims
By Orit Kamir
July 27, 2025, 12:48 PM
Originally published in Haaretz
In her childhood, my mother was starved by a dark regime. When the Nazi army occupied Poland
and Jews were pushed into ghettos, they were forced to make do with less and less food.
Eventually, food disappeared almost entirely. My mother was seven years old when the Lvov ghetto
closed in on her. Fortunately, both her parents were alive and did everything to ensure her survival.
The nutrition they managed to obtain for her was very meager: lengthy searches in the streets and
trash cans sometimes yielded potato peels or edible plants. My grandmother would cook them and
the water was drunk as soup. Proteins, sourced from various insects, were rare. Nevertheless, my
mother was lucky. Other children wasted away and died.
The Nazi regime reduced the ghetto's boundaries and squeezed its residents, whose numbers
dwindled daily, into increasingly smaller areas. My mother and her parents found themselves
sharing an apartment with a family named Mintzer, consisting of two parents and four children.
Both parents and the eldest son were captured in aktions and sent to extermination. Another son,
hungry and weak, fell ill and languished for many days until he breathed his last. My grandparents
tried to revive the two orphaned children who remained, but they couldn't help: they had nothing
to give. The entire Mintzer family was annihilated. Bella, the youngest daughter, was ten years old
when she died.
My mother somehow survived the starvation and the war, but the Mintzer children who wasted
away before her eyes remained with her always. They accompany me to this day. The survivors' guilt
doesn't dissipate and the scar still burns. On my first visit to Lvov, I searched for that building in the
ghetto and lit memorial candles for them. Who would have believed that eighty years after they
were starved to death, my country, the Jewish state, would decree that I bear real guilt for the
starvation and extermination of tens of thousands of children like them. The state that arose from
the ruins of that destruction has brought a hundred thousand children in Gaza to the danger of
death from starvation.
Whether our mother was there in body or not - we are all second, third, and fourth generation to
victims of starvation and extermination. And the one commandment the victims left us, all of us, is
simple: never again. Because every person, as a human being, has absolute and inviolable value,
"human dignity,
" and our supreme duty is to recognize and ensure it. Simply because they are
human. All the more so for children. They are always entitled to life, to protection, without question
and without qualification. This is the entire Torah and there is nothing else. And it dictates our
responsibility and our moral duty.
But in 2025, the Israeli army, on orders from the political echelon, is destroying Gaza and
exterminating its population. Neighborhood after neighborhood and city after city in the Strip are
destroyed to the foundations, and people are expelled with nothing and pushed to crowd into
increasingly smaller areas. Like then. After we destroyed all infrastructure, including hospitals, the
mortality is relentless. Families constantly shrink and thousands have already been erased from the
face of the earth. Others leave behind hopeless orphans, abandoned to their fate. Like then.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, Gaza's besieged population has also been deliberately
and systematically starved. Israel allows only very little food to enter the Strip, and what little is
allowed in is brought in a way that cannot reach all residents. Children, the sick, the elderly, people
weakened by hunger - cannot reach the four food distribution stations Israel created, instead of the
400 stations that operated before. We have decreed their fate to languish until they die of hunger,
weakness, and disease. Relatively strong young people who do reach the distribution stations to get
some relief are shot to death daily by Israeli soldiers.
There is no electricity, no gas, no clean water; if someone finds a potato peel - there isn't even a
way to cook it. And all this time, Israel prevents the entry of food, medicine, and other vital supplies
that could save lives, and which are available in large quantities at hand (because they are held by
UN organizations that Israel decided to boycott), and denies its actions - even now, as it tries to
make minor corrections at the margins.
This is conduct of incomprehensible cruelty. It creates horror beyond the ability to imagine, and this
allows most Israelis to deny it: if it's too terrible to be true - it's probably not true. And so they allow
the horror to continue happening.
What value does our freedom have if we don't use it to stop dispossession, killing, and
starvation? What do we need the rule of law for if not to ensure human dignity?
The Israeli public's silence is a betrayal not only of the entire world of values it claims to hold; it is an
absolute betrayal of Holocaust victims, in whose name we demanded a state for ourselves where
we could ensure our existence. It is a betrayal of the Mintzer family and the millions of other
families who were slaughtered and perished throughout Jewish history. It is a betrayal of the entire
long legacy of Jewish existence as a persecuted minority. It is a betrayal of humanity in general -
and of our collective identity in particular. It is such a monumental betrayal that it's hard to contain.
I don't usually invoke the name of the Holocaust, because too many bear it in vain, but now it's
unavoidable.
Those who rejoice in Gaza's destruction and annihilation, those who justify or rationalize the horror
with talk of revenge for the terrible massacre of October 7 - have lost their souls. But those who can
still feel human emotion must wake from the paralyzing slumber and shake off this unforgivable
betrayal.
You who cry out against the firing of the Shin Bet chief and the attorney general and the chairman
of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee - but fill your mouths with water regarding the
extermination and starvation we are carrying out in Gaza: your concern for Israeli democracy and
the future of the state pales against your silence in the face of mass extermination. What value does
our freedom have, which you fight for, if we don't use it to stop dispossession, killing, and
starvation? What do we need the rule of law for if not to ensure human dignity?
You who organize rallies to bring back the hostages, whom the government wickedly abandons
with unbearable evil - but don't address the destruction of the lives of another two million women
and men who are also languishing in Gaza alongside the hostages: what kind of human solidarity is
this, that applies only to the twenty "our" hostages, and closes its eyes to the fate of millions?
You who run WhatsApp groups with many participants and broadcast hope for a healthier and
saner future - and close your eyes to the unforgivable crime: what rosy future can there be here,
when the tens of thousands of children who died through our fault will accompany us wherever we
go?
And you who presume to lead, in various ways, the sane public - but are careful not to say
"controversial" things that might upset someone: shame on you. If children dying of hunger don't
disturb you enough to cry out without political calculations, what alternative are you offering? What
leadership?
Where are the Holocaust researchers from Yad Vashem? The Medical Association? The nurses?
Professional associations - of psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, social workers? Where are the
student organizations? When children become Muselmänner and die in agony because of us -
don't you think it's your duty to cry out until the horror stops? So what are you here for?
If a million Israeli women and men took to the streets, as one person, with an uncompromising
demand to end the war immediately - this horror would end. Even a monstrous and disconnected
government cannot ignore the entire public. When a million Israelis took to the streets, the
hostages will finally be returned to their homes; the lives of soldiers, 896 of whom have already
been sacrificed, will be saved; their souls will be saved from the insane trauma their state imposes
on them; and two million people in Gaza will be rescued from the inferno Israel has trapped them
in.
Despite the accelerated progress of the regime coup, which indeed deprives us, step by step, of
control over our lives and our state - we can still cry out and take to the streets. And this is what we
must do. If we wait longer - we may no longer be able to. The horror we allowed our state to
perpetrate in our name will haunt us for eternity, and there will be no forgiveness for it. All the
memorial candles in the world won't help.
Translated from Hebrew. Original article published in Haaretz on July 27, 2025
Everyone should read this!
A good one, Jeremy! As a liberal Jewish senior I tend to toggle between your and Peter's viewpoint and so appreciate this discussion. My own strongest personal belief is that Judaism needs to redefine itself in a fundamental and radical way, as radical as the shift from a Temple-based to a rabbinic culture, and, in this instance, away from the Israel-centered focus that has dominated the American Jewish world in our lifetimes.
For openers, America's Jews are Americans. They are not Israelis. My ancestors came here from England, Germany, Scotland and Ireland; and I have ZERO allegiance to any of those countries. Similarly, American Jews' ancestors came here from other countries, like mine did in the 1800s and before. None of my Jewish friends growing up in Los Angeles were immigrant Jews.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/americas-jews-are-americans/ ("America’s Jews Are Americans")
The multi-decade butchery of Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists is abhorrent, and not something that anyone should defend. Quite to the contrary, it has ratcheted up anti-Semitism globally to levels not seen since World War II, with far worse yet to come.
Our President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General George Marshall opposed the creation of Israel; and they were correct and omniscient. No Jew is safe anywhere in the world today because of Israel. My German ancestors came to America in the late-1840s; and Nazism was and is abhorrent to me.
For America's Jews, Israel's "Nazism" -- perpetrated by Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists -- should be equally abhorrent. And yes, the world agrees, as anti-Israel rhetoric and actions spike globally. Perhaps one photo tells a thousand words.
See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14939703/Reduced-skin-bones-Gaza-famine-hell-Horrifying-picture-shows-starving-child-plastic-bag-nappy-lying-exhausted-arms-desperate-mother.html ("Horrifying story behind photo of starving child in Gaza")
A timely post tonight from the New Yorker Daily by David Remnick. He writes that "the horrific scale of suffering among the Gazan's is nearly invisible in the Israeli media". Remnick writes that Israel is firmly in Netanyahu's MAGA-like grip and the activist left has all but disappeared.
Israeli's are in denial and trying to ignore the moral nightmare of Gaza.
Not promising for hopes that Zionism can coexist with liberal democracy.
I agree completely, Jeremy. After reading the Klein article I made these notes in anticipation of exactly those intra-family debates you refer to - I reprint them here if they are helpful to others:
1) Ehud Olmert is right (“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
2) Nation states based on an ethno-national identity are the norm in the world, not the exception. Klein misses this entirely. The USA, Canada, and Australia are exceptions.
3) Israel must become either an expanded democracy (a “bi-national” state) or there has to be a Palestinian state. This has always been known. The Zionist dream inherently envisions and incorporates a separate Palestinian state so that Israel may be a predominantly Jewish state (like France is predominantly French and Britain predominantly British and they are also determined to keep it that way).
4) We cannot be liberals for America and France and exclusionary ethno -nationalists for Israel. It’s grossly hypocritical. We can liberals as to both and must be.
Rabbi Donniel Hartman (Shalom Hartman Institute) argues how to reconcile democracy and political Zionism (in an Israel post-occupation where there is to be two sovereign states): Full equality for all citizens (a principle embraced in Israel’s Gmilat HaAtzmaot, Declaration of Independence) except (1) favoring Jews in matters of emigration to help ensure a Jewish majority, and (2) maintenance of a national Jewish calendar that marks traditional Jewish holidays like Purim as national (cultural or religious, depending on one’s sensibility) holidays.
Precisely! As is does in all European states.
I wonder if Ezra Klein believes Arab nationalism is compatible with liberal values.
Timothy You absolutely cannot conflate the actions of the Israeli government with the Israeli population. Your views about the existence of Israel are no different from the aims of the Nazis whom you claim to castigate.
With due respect, there is NOTHING moral about the heinous actions of Netanyahu, the "Settlers" and rabid Zionists. Long ago, they morphed into the Jews' Nazi oppressors. Any Jews who defend the Apartheid state today are blind to the fact that it is the most-hated entity on earth; and that hatred is manifesting itself in a tragic hatred of all Jews. And the attempt by the Israeli thugs at OpenWeb to censor criticism globally only serves to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. Israel is a cancer on the world; and its demise will be cheered globally.
Wonderful piece Jeremy. To Peter’s point about “ethnostates,” America is exceptional in this regard. Most of the non Anglo European countries are “ethnostates” and have struggled tremendously with incorporating minorities. Our task as liberal Zionists is to have Jewish self determination with the greatest amount of ethnic equality compatible.
What mindlessly stupid crap. International law requires abolition of the Zionist state.
https://open.substack.com/pub/handalacrucified/p/memorandum-on-the-legal-duty-of-non?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5fh12k
I've just finished listening to the remarkable conversation between Jeremy and Peter. However you choose between the different views of these men on the future of Israel, you have to be in awe of their commitment to the liberal values they both share, including the value of open debate.
As a non-Jew, I appreciate that the State of Israel has a meaning for Jews that I will never begin to understand.
But I am also a liberal Democrat and an American so I necessarily have a stake in this discussion. And a stake in Israel's war on Gaza which is carried out in the name of America.
For what it is worth, Peter's intellectual arguments in favor of a "one-state" solution - or against a ethno-religious Jewish State - persuade me. Although unlikely in my lifetime. A liberal Zionist state of Israel seems wishful thinking and contradicted by a very illiberal history.
Israel expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 in order to have a predominantly Jewish state. The United States corralled it’s indigenous population to make way for our settlers. We have struggled to be a democratic country. It is theoretically possible. (What is happening now shows that it is a constant struggle.) The problem is fear that any surrounding arabic population possesses an existential threat. There is some justification for that fear. The problem is exasperated by the ongoing dehumanizing treatment of the descendants of the expulsion (the nakba). All Israeli governments, not just the present one, have discriminated against Palestinians. Hence, resentment has built up. That feeds-back to enhance fear. In seeking a solution we can not ignore the history. As the people from standing together say, as long as there is struggle there is hope.
The answer is a resounding no. With all due respect to the Ben-Ami/Beinart and Douthat/Stephens equivocations, the core issue is, to paraphrase Reagan, "Israel is not the solution, it is the problem."
Jews have prospered worldwide despite their low numbers--0.02% of the global population--due to their disproportionate contributions to and success in science, the arts, business, entertainment, etc.
The disastrous Zionist adventure has been a sucker play from day one, colonial powers laying off a problem that Lawrence of Arabia was unable to fix by reimagining Mandate Palestine as a "reservation" to contain the Jews who survived the Holocaust and put the majority of them in one place so it would be easier to round them up again if the millions of Arabs who surrounded Israel didn't finish the job themselves. While we disapora Jews exhaust ourselves in debate, the world moves on. The global population has more than tripled since 1945 yet the Jewish population is still 2 million lower than it was in 1939. Even allowing for the losses suffered in the Holocaust, other countries and peoples took heavy casualties in WWII also. The only solution to the Gaza problem that would be acceptable to the "far right nationalists" that currently hold power is Israel is total eradication of the Palestinian popular from the river to the sea, including vaporizing Hamas and disappearing any threat from the Arab kids who have been radicalized during decades of occupations and genocidal tactics. This is unlikely to ever be achieved for many reasons, including the fact that there are more than two billion Muslims on the planet and most of them seem more inclined to target Jews rather than help out their Palestinian brothers. Meanwhile, as Israel becomes a pariah, anti-semitism grows everywhere and threatens disaspora Jews in every corner of the earth. You can't bring "liberal democracy" to a gunfight.
What do you bring?
Sadly, nothing I (or seemingly anyone else) can think of. Dan Perry had a good column in The Forward July 11th in which he enumerated the challenges Netanyahu's version of Zionist Israel faces going forward. It's a lot, and he didn't get to the longterm consequences (PTSD, moral injury) that IDF conscripts and reservists will bring home after extended deployments during the Gaza war.
Timothy Regarding your response to my comment if you carefully what I emphasized there is a great distinction to be drawn between the government of Israel (Netanyahu, his Cabinet, the Knesset (parliament) and the settlers who commit heinous acts with the tacit support of the IDF/police) and the populace of Israel. Just as you would not say that the USA must be eradicated due to its history of violence and colonialism against its indigenous inhabitants and you would draw a distinction between the current government and the residents of the US, this standard must be applied to Israel as well, and I would posit any authoritarian regime that acts in a similar manner.
The relationship of the Jewish people to the State of Israel is an inextricable component of its identity and any wholesale rupture of its existence would eventuate in cataclysmic consequences not only for Jews and Israelis (20 % of whom are Palestinians) but for the region and the world at large.
Since you are so ready to condemn Israel are you equally prepared to condemn China/Russia/El Salvador/Venezuela/any of the other authoritarian and Communist countries?
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
With due respect, the Apartheid state of Israel has no moral right to exist. NONE.
See, e.g., https://open.substack.com/pub/jeremybenami/p/answering-ezra-kleins-challenge-can?utm_source=direct&r=bu8l8&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=139797445 ("Answering Ezra Klein’s Challenge: Can Zionism and Liberalism Be Reconciled?")
FDR and General George Marshall opposed its creation, and they are correct and omniscient. The sooner that its existence ends, the better.
You are welcome Timothy. I appreciate your sentiments on my comments.
I agree that apartheid policies have no place in any country including Israel especially Israel given the historical circumstances that engendered its creation.
Do you posit that if Israel would someday be willing to abandon its apartheid policies and grant Palestinians their own state that Israel would then have a right to exist?
Thank you again, Ken.
Should Nazi Germany have been allowed to exist, if D-Day had not been successful?
I posit that both Nazi Germany and Israel were founded by inhumane Barbarians; and neither had or has the right to exist.
Timothy thank you for your response. To answer your question of course Nazi Germany should not have been allowed to exist if D-Day failed. However Nazi Germany was defeated due in large part to US intervention and today Germany is a democratic country with extra special laws against Antisemitism.
One day the Netanyahu government will fall and it is hoped that more progressive voices will comprise the Knesset, Cabinet and Prime Minister’s Office. Rabin would have concluded a peace deal with Arafat I believe had he not been assasinated.
Please do remember that the emerging state of Israel was prepared to accept the UN partition plan in November 1947 and that the Arab states were not. Their subsequent invasion led to the 1948 War of Independence which is the term used by Jewish Israelis and the Nakba the Arabic word used by the Arabs. The war was both a victory at great cost to Israel and a catastrophe for the Palestinians at the same time.
Also please remember that at Israel’s founding there were many streams of Zionism some more humanistic and some more extreme.
I reiterate my last question to you: If Israel would someday renounce its policy of apartheid would it have a right to exist? By your reasoning the USA would not have a right to exist because it was founded by slave owners who conducted campaigns of dispossession and genocide as did their descendants against the Indigenous peoples and it was only relatively recently that the Native American boarding schools were closed which were physically abusive and genocidal.