Crys Alexandria
eootSrdpns84hc02p11r5a4im ugm4tmhct4ag89i :h6005l1c tA23uu88 ·
Another important read.
And why we must go deeper.
….
“The clearest expression of left Jewish exceptionalism in relation to Palestinians lies in its manifestation through self identified “anti-Zionist” Jews in academia and media, many of whom reproduce harmful narratives about Palestinians while remaining fully accepted within the broader political and intellectual movement. Good examples include the former co-founder of +972mag and current editor of New Lines Magazine, Lisa Goldman, Ariel Gold, Arielle Angel, Naomi Klein, and Zachary Foster, among others. They have, by and large, done “good work” to an untrained eye for Palestinians while simultaneously promoting anti-Palestinian hate.
“Yet Klein herself offered only a milquetoast apology after framing the visible expressions of joy from some on the left, people reacting to Gazans breaking out of a ghetto as “celebrating Jewish murder.” This framing rests on a series of assumptions that collapse under scrutiny; as if Jews cannot be perpetrators of violence; as if Israeli Jews were not, living in homes built on mass graves; as if they were not participating in or benefiting from a system that confines millions of Palestinians in a concentration camp.
Klein and others, as will be further outlined, continue to frame Jews exclusively as victims, even in contexts where power and violence clearly negate that narrative. Klein framed the Palestinian resistance to a century of violent Jewish supremacy, as the celebration of innocent Judeo Nazi Waffen SS soldiers being kidnapped from tanks, as “the killing of Jews” a day after October 7th.
“Angel herself, as editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, has spoken about the Israelis she knew and lost after October 7 with a distinct sense of comradery with her Judeo Nazi kin. As if only Jews get to be eternal victims even as they occupy land, even as the Israeli military mass murders Israelis with the Hannibal Directive and blames it on Hamas, even as “anti Zionist” Jews spread atrocity propaganda and somehow Jews are still victims. But the framing of Palestinian responses often described in muted or critical terms reveals a dissonance. It suggests that within “anti Zionist” spaces that position themselves as critical, there remains a undeniable void to confront the structural reality of Jewish domination that shapes Palestinian life and resistance. The result is a discourse that centers only Jewish vulnerability while struggling to account for Palestinian agency.
An unwillingness to interrogate how narratives are constructed, circulated, and sustained especially when they carry the weight of justifying ongoing violence is apparent. If “anti-Zionism” is to mean anything beyond a label, it must extend to a consistent refusal to reproduce the very frameworks that render Palestinian life conditional, their resistance illegible, and their voices perpetually mediated through Jewish institutions that have long spoken over them.
It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to suggest that all these Jewish women in media and the NGO sector supposedly “for a free Palestine” are enablers of the onslaught against Palestinians. They laid the groundwork for the now thoroughly debunked New York Times article titled Screams Without Words, a publisher best described as a propaganda outfit with an 11 million readership. This is the same New York Times that published titles like “How Bombing Iraq is Good for Iraqis”, etc.
“To add insult to injury, we must also hail these same Jews as the saviors of Palestinians people with moral conscience whom we must applaud. Anything less, and one is framed as an outlier, a “purity tester,” even when evidence to the contrary is staring everyone in the face.
“In any awakening to moral injustice around oneself, there are two defining stages. The first is recognizing wrong done and one’s own complicity. The second, and most logical reaction in a fair just world, would be an initiative to fight those structures of injustice however that is possible, no matter the discomfort. Yet anti Zionist Jews (the few not named here I would even consider anti-Zionist) have only reached level one. Level two remains as fantastical as a dream for almost all “serious” anti-Zionist Jews, who seek solely to show themselves as separate from their Judeo Nazi counterparts but never actively name Judaism and Jews, by and large, who are at every level of Zionism. The inability to name Jewish/Jews/Judaism is a mockery of a past and current reality in which Palestinians are being genocided by Jews, for Jews, by a Jewish state, under the banner of Jewish symbols.
“Palestinians are silenced for even naming Jews in their own genocide. Palestinians must eternally nuance Jews and European historical white supremacy, while Jews with machine guns wearing kippahs break down the doors of their homes, speaking in Hebrew.
At its core, this is a struggle over language: who is allowed to name power, and who is required to obscure it. When those most affected, Palestinians, are denied the ability to describe their own reality plainly, while Jews, are rewarded for euphemism, the result is not nuance but distortion.”
*link to full article in comments
Crys Alexandria
·
·
Authorhttps://imanishere.substack.com/.../jewish-exceptionalism...
IMANISHERE.SUBSTACK.COM
Jewish exceptionalism in the Palestinian solidarity movement
Jewish exceptionalism in the Palestinian solidarity movement
Reply
Laura Sabransky
by author
The book I'm reading right now -- Perfect Victims -- lays all of this out too, and eloquently. I didn't know Klein said that. The other thing not mentioned here is that there are Jewish people who are anti-Zionist who claim that the Jews in Israel carrying out Zionism are not really Jewish -- rather they are Zionists. They say that they are not really practicing the Jewish faith as intended, so they don't "claim" them. Meanwhile Israeli terrorists are carving the Star of David onto Palestinians' faces and making it very clear, as Iman says above that they are carrying out a genocide in the name of Jews. I'm so over Jewish people centering themselves and other Jews in this discussion. Even some anti-Zionists are so concerned with and seem to prioritize the image of Jews, it's gross.
Reply
Edited
Chance Fisher
·
This is sadly a common phenomenon but just to add some perspective there are many of us on the Jewish left/Non Zionist Jewish movement who work hard to combat “centering Jewish feelings” this comes up quite a bit on our Reddit thread “Jews of Coscience” the reality is that state power particularly when it’s akin to fascism doesn’t care about ethnic, religious, or national identity. Israel isn’t unique in this respect and it’s the end culmination of Zionism that we’re seeing. These atrocities are being carried out by and large by Israeli Jews as they attempt to incorporate all of our religious and cultural elements into the state ideology. Unfortunately you’ll always have people who refuse to highlight the very clear power dynamic in which Palestinians are clearly the oppressed, but I digress just know that many of us are in direct opposition to placing Jewish suffering and Jewish feelings above anyone else’s and we make conscious efforts not to do so.
Reply
Ed Feeny
·
·
by author
I'd be curious how you feel people like Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, & Miko Peled fit in. There are others, too.
Reply
Daniel 'Parnell' McCarter
by author
As a Gentile Christian supporter of Palestine, I find this take to be a turn-off. Humans often tend to have an affinity for their tribe. It takes courage to go against the grain and oppose the crimes of one's own kin. I admire how many Anti-Zionist Jews put principle over tribalism.
And by the way, Naomi Klein did apologize for her initial response to Oct 7.
I'd like to see more Christians and Muslims also speaking out against the crimes of their kin. When will more American Christians oppose the crimes of US imperialism across the globe? When will more Muslims oppose the persecution experienced by Muslim-to-Christian converts around the world?
Reply
==
==
==
==
==
No comments:
Post a Comment