Troubled over Zionism

Jeff Green | Dec 20, 2023

Almost 40 years ago, I wrote my first Christmas editorial. I was an editor of a student paper, at the time, after leaving the Jewish community in Montreal where I was raised.
Where I grew up, Christmas was a day when we played hockey in backyard rinks. Ski hills would be closed in the morning, and open in the afternoon, so some people went skiing later in the day.
Other than that, it was a quiet day.
After living in Peterborough for a few years, where Christmas was a part of life but not part of my life, people I knew would tell me that Christmas was not a religious holiday - it was just a chance to buy presents, eat food, and visit.
In the editorial that I wrote that year, I said that was nonsense. I argued that whether people considered themselves Christians or not, they were born and raised in a country that was built under two distinct, Christian frameworks. That Christmas and Easter are national holidays reflects that assumption, and for people to get together and eat turkey and pass out presents on December 25th, which happens to be the day that Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, is not just convenience or coincidence.
My position on that question has not changed, but there is something I have learned in the intervening years.
Even though I think that people that come from a Christian background, even generations back, carry that with them, Christianity is essentially a choice. When someone says,” I am a Christian”, it is an assertion of a set of beliefs.
Being Jewish is not exactly like that. There is a premium on belief within Jewish communities, to be sure, but the identity is not based on belief. It is more of an odd conjunction of ethnicity, upbringing, and history, than a matter of belief.
There is history behind this. If my family had not emigrated in the first decade of the 20th century, every one of us would have eventually been rounded up and either murdered on the spot or sent to camps to be murdered a year or two later. And in 1939, Canada refused to accept Jewish refugees from Europe.
So, for me, being Jewish is part of who I am, and has nothing to do with what I believe in, what I do or where I live.
Then there is Israel.
In the community where I was raised in the 1960s, we raised money for Israel, we bought should you add oranges from Israel, we voted for politicians here because of how strongly they supported Israel. Support for Israel was not a question, it was a given. At synagogue, both on Saturday each week, and on major holidays, a new prayer had been added to the 5,000-year-old traditional service, a Prayer for the State of Israel, “May God Bless and Keep the State of Israel ...”
The war of independence in 1948 was celebrated every year, as was the 6-day war in 1967, the war that brought the West Bank under Israeli control.
The thinking in the community where I was raised (and this is still the thinking today) was that even though we were a successful community in Montreal, fifty years after arriving with nothing, that could all change.
There were strong, growing Jewish communities, integrated into commercial and financial and academic life throughout Europe in the early decades of the 20th century, in Berlin, in Paris, and in Kamionka Strumiłowa, a little town which was part of Poland from 1918-1939 (it is now in Ukraine).
It's the town that my father's family came from. By 1880, 55% of the inhabitants of the town were Jewish.
“During World War II, Jews of the town were murdered in mass execution perpetrated by an ”Einsatzgruppen” (mobile killing unit), is how the end of the Jewish community in Kamionka Strumilowa is described by Wikipedia.
The point is, that from the perspective of a Jewish community in Canada, like the one I came from, it was not irrational in 1965 to think that no matter how settled things are, Jewish communities can come under threat at any time, and because Israel is a Jewish country it is the only truly safe place for Jews.
The idea of a physical Jewish homeland began to take hold among Jews in Europe in the 19th century, and even at that time it was not universally endorsed. The concept of Zion has its roots in ancient prophecies of Isaiah in the Old Testament, and they are about the return of God to earth and what will happen at that time.
The idea of a Jewish state taking hold in Palestine through migration, politics, and ultimately what the Israelis call a “War of Independence” and Palestinians call “the Nakba” (the catastrophe, in English), has never been universally accepted in the Jewish community.
And many Jews who celebrated the founding of Israel when it was established have become disillusioned over time, and even more so since Benjamin Netanyahu became a force in Israeli politics 30 years ago.
Many tortured and inter-related elements have led to the deadly destruction that we are seeing in Gaza today, a campaign that is so brutal it is most accurately described as murderous and homicidal. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being killed or seriously injured, and the entire population is seeing their homes destroyed.
This is happening to them because of where they were born and where they live.
On October 7, under the banner of Hamas, terrorists entered Israel from Gaza. We do not know what their orders were, but some of them were tasked with bringing hostages back to Gaza, some were either explicitly or implicitly told to kill anyone they confronted, including children in their beds and anyone else they came across. There were claims made about some of the acts that were committed that have since then been discredited, but investigations into allegations that rape was a tactic are ongoing.
1200 people were killed in a few short hours. They were killed because of where they lived.
Until October 7, the Netanyahu regime maintained an alliance with Hamas, partly because his government and Hamas both opposed the establishment of two independent states in the region, and because it was in the interest of both of them to foment hatred for the 'enemy' on the other side of the border.
Since October 7, the Netanyahu regime, backed by an increasingly uneasy United States government, has embarked on a mission to kill every Hamas member, or supporter, in Gaza. They claim that since Hamas members are hiding in tunnels throughout Gaza, in hospitals and in refugee camps and apartments, victims should blame Hamas for their misery.
I leave it to others to talk about Hamas.
There are many Jews around the world who walked away from Zionism decades ago, who do not support militarisation in Israel, who saw the settlements in the West Bank as not only criminal but destined to result in never ending violence.
To a certain extent we remain quiet. I certainly have.
I know that the politics in Israel and the Middle East are complicated and inter-related with global transportation, oil, and religious factionalism in both Islam and Judaism, and that I am outside of all that, and have not done enough research to speak with any kind of authority.
I also know that anything I say can and will be used to foster hatred against Jews by those who are already inclined that way, and that the idea of the “dirty Jew” that grew into the Nazi extermination plot in the 1930s, has morphed, but has not died.
For me, being anti-Zionist basically has meant changing the subject when Israel is mentioned in family gatherings.
Yet, here we are in 2023.
Close to 20,000 Gazans have been killed since October 8, according to NBC news this morning (December 18). The Israeli government ordered and authorised the Israel defence forces to commit war crimes, and the Israeli defence forces have, and continue to carry out those orders.
By the time this war ends, the dead could number 25,000, 30,000, or more, but the war will end, hopefully sooner than later.
Most of the 2.5 million people in Gaza will survive, and they will rebuild. Life will return to something resembling normal, but all of the children who survive this attack will remember who perpetrated it. These children are descendants of people who have lived under occupation for 75 years, and now this.
What will they think of Israel and Israelis, and how will they act on that bitter rage?
Jews around North America are gathering to call for a ceasefire, in greater and greater numbers. They packed Grand Central Station in New York, and stopped traffic at a major intersection in Boston during rush hour last week. Jewish people are now speaking out against Israel, not only for what is happening now, but for the policies, going back to 1948, that have led to this.
None of this matters to Palestinians, however. They are too busy ducking bombs and looking for water to worry about angst in the Jewish community.
There are those who say that once this war ends, both the Netanyahu regime and Hamas will be gone, and finally there will be a chance for movement towards a peaceful, two state solution.
I hope I am wrong, but from the perspective of this moment, in time, I just don't see it.