It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.
Please remember to pick an appropriate user-flair in order to participate! Thanks!
This is more for any Israelis on this sub - are or were there any Israeli celebrities who've spoken out against the occupation or the Israeli government in some way?
Okay I’ve been waiting for this. (I appreciate your patience with me mods).
I am an Arab Muslim and am highly involved with the Arab community in the west. Particularly young men (15 to 25). I am also educated in both the west and the Middle East so I tend to have perspectives rooted in my reality. So I do apologize if anything I say comes off as hateful or offensive. It’s not my intention and if you inform me I’ll be sure to rectify.
I have two main questions:
how do Jewish people feel about Arabs using the term semites? and by extension how do you feel about expanding the term antisemitic to Include Arabs?
Some organizations and positions in regard to antisemitism have been struggling with accusations (it actually happened) of racism and bigotry. For example, A local pride chapters antisemitism task force had to disband after its members were found to have been using the organization to keep queer Arabs out of the organization committee. As a result of this and other similar cases I’ve been approached with the possibility of expanding the role to include racism towards all Semitic peoples.
Would this be something you could see yourself participating in?
would the mods and the community at large consider allowing a certain number of Arab people direct access to the community?
I find myself often in need to ask Jewish people questions. While there are a few of you who have reached out I’m often looking for a wide variety of opinions to take into account.
There is a anti-Zionist rabbi who tries to make himself available to us but we don’t want to take everything he says to us as final nor do we want to bother him with every minor question about Judaism asked by a 15 year old. (I know google exists, but if we could trust 15 year olds or even 20 year olds with it, we wouldn’t be where we are as a species)
Often times people are not looking for the political and often Zionist rooted answers but are looking for the perspective of members of their community. (As a side note, if any Jewish people want to volunteer with the Arab communities in Alberta, Canada reach out!)
These are great questions! Thanks for taking the time to ask.
question 1
First and foremost, it’s ultimately not up to me to police how any individual or group of people wish to self-identify. On a few occasions I’ve described my own ancestry as “Semitic”, as my family comes from the Levant/Mid East. However, that term is typically now only reserved for describing a group of languages (which includes Arabic and Hebrew), and not as a name for an ethnicity. This is because “Semitic” as an ethnic term is rooted in European 19th century racial pseudo-science, the kind that would motivate western colonialism and the Holocaust. The ethnic term was never based in legitimate academic or scientific principles.
It would not be appropriate for anyone other than Jews to claim that the term “antisemitic” applies to them. I’ll paste a comment a made from another post, replying to someone who asked why we even use the term “antisemitic” when the term doesn’t quite make sense of you break down the exact meaning.
The term made sense in the context in which it was created. 19th century European racial pseudo-science, western colonialism, and orientalism. The term is acceptable because it has been used to refer to prejudice against the Jewish People for such a long time now. One of the most important aspect of language is for it to be understood by the largest amount of speakers. And “antisemitism” is simply the most widely understood term to convey bigotry against Jews.
The term also holds unique significance in the same way that the term “racism” does in an American context. “Racism” in the US context isn’t simply prejudice against others on basis of their race. It more specifically suggests the history of the slavery in the new world, white supremacy, and institutional bigotry against BIPOCs. “Antisemitism” isn’t simply prejudice against Jewish people. The term suggests a conspiratorial belief in which Jews plot to invade or ‘infect’ non-Jewish societies in order to extract their resources for their own tribal gain. This is a framework of bigoted conspiratorial belief specifically rooted in Christian Europe, but has now been able to spread all over the world.
So sure you can break down “antisemitism” to show that the term doesn’t make sense. But to do so is ignore the important meaning that the term holds and the system of belief it represents.
Question 2
You can feel free to DM myself any time you’d like!
in the spirit of this article,I’ve been thinking about starting a sub for anti-Zionist Arab-Jews (or Mizrahi if they prefer that identity) and non-Jewish Arabs.
how do Jewish people feel about Arabs using the term semites? and by extension how do you feel about expanding the term antisemitic to Include Arabs?
The very concept of "Semitic People" originated as racist European pseudo-science that was forcibly imposed on Jews in order to justify anti-Jewish hatred. While Jews did not choose to identify as Semites or create the term "antisemitism", the term has always meant "anti-Jewish". Expanding the term to include other "Semitic" people misunderstands this etymology and is offensive to Jews in that they did not even choose the term to begin with (and many Jews don't like using it for that reason).
The term has been used for around 150 years and there has never been consensus on an alternative, but you will see others used like "Jew hatred" and "anti-Jewish"
We're not hated because we're a semitic people, we're described as "semites" because we're hated by Europeans. Antisemitism as a term was the more respectable, objective, and "scientific" replacement for classical judenhass at a time when that was considered backwards. Antisemitism is specifically about imagining countless and unending schemes by the Elders of Zion to subjugate and racially mongrelize whatever Christ-fearing Nation we live amongst. It is from this worldview that the Nazis organized, gained power in the early 1930s, and then conducted their preemptive defensive strike against European Jewry from 1939 - 1944.
To put perhaps too fine a point on it, the Arab relationship to antisemitism is that the Charleston neo-Nazis would never have chanted "the Arabs will not replace us!", they would only have chanted "the Jews will not replace us with the Arabs". Now, it is possible for Arabs to experience antisemitism, but first we're going to have to convene the beit din so you can convert.
I certainly know the phenomenon you're talking about, where "Jewish safety" is used as a cudgel against Arabs. Expanding the definition of antisemitism without regard to its meaning sets off my antisemitism warning bells; on the other hand, explicitly identifying this kind of behavior as a particular variety of Arabophobia or Islamophobia is completely appropriate.
Answer 2:
I'm not a mod, but I'd be up for this personally, yes. Message me whenever you need.
I co-sign the answer from u/LaIslaDeEmu on question 1.
On question 2, I can also invite you to treat my DMs as open. And I don't take offense easily, so if there are questions you're not sure about how or whether to ask, send 'em my way.
(Side note, hi from your neighbour to the East! I attended a fundraising event for Islamic Relief a few weeks ago and met a couple of community organizers from Edmonton iirc, lovely guys.)
What do you mean? Like do we celebrate/observe holidays, consider mitzvot?
I think it would depend on the Jew and their connection to Jewishness. For me I celebrate holidays, am part of a community planning team, and I follow as many mitzvot as I can atm (hope to become more observant in the future).
Yes. I’m somewhere between conservative and orthodox. Becoming anti-Zionist actually led to me becoming more observant. I’d be curious how many of us on this sub are secular or observant.
What motivates you to continue Jewish practice and identity?
Why I'm asking: For me, it feels like nationalism has successfully coopted mainstream Judaism to such an extent that the zionists have basically "won." I feel uncomfortable in services now. Everything hits different. I feel like I'm supporting Israel just by being there - even if it's a shul that purports to be zionism-neutral I know there are statistically probably more Zionists than antizionists in the room. I've been exploring other faith paths. I guess this is half last ditch effort to find an argument to convince me to stay, half just curiosity about how others are coping.
There are more anti-Zionist Jews today than there were last year, and there were more last year than 10 years ago. Zionism has co-opted mainstream Jewish institutions for several decades. But it has lost the consensus among diaspora Jews and it seems like anti-Zionism among Jews will continue to grow. When will we reach a tipping point? Hard to say.
I hear your concerns about staying with the religion. You are absolutely right that it is hard to be in community with people who are supporting Zionism. There are a few congregations that are not Zionist, but mostly in major US cities.
Personally, when I think about the challenges of feeling lonely among the Zionist majority, I think of the prophets. They spoke out against the powerful institutions of their times, even ones that were supposedly legitimate and righteous, like the Hebrew monarchy. They did so because they knew they had Hashem’s justice on their side. Their example inspires me when the path seems lonely.
I don't go to shul myself. I maintain Judaism for me, and only for me. I might get together with friends/family for holidays, even the non-Jewish ones, but in general my relationship with Judaism is something I consider personal and separate from the need of community. Throughout all our history we've often needed to keep hidden and maintain small isolated pods; why not continue this today, even if the ones keeping us hidden are other Jews?
And personally the overwhelming existence of Zionism has actually made my Judaism stronger, if only because to exist as an antizionist Jew makes me feel connected to the tradition of internal, personal defiance to the majority that is uniquely inherit to Judaism as a religion. Being an anti-zionist Jew is itself an inherently radical act, and because it is a radical act it is inherently Jewish; how could I not feel more Jewish in continuing to exist?
Because our story, the Jewish story, is one of four thousand years (going back to Abraham, z"l) of stubborn loyalty to the One True God. When it wasn't the Zionist idolators, it was the Christians, when it wasn't the Christians it was the Zoroastrians or the Zaydis, before them it was the Romans, before them it was the Seleucid Greeks, and long before the Seleucid Greeks it was the Ba'al worshipers and those who tried to syncretize God.
I know exactly what you mean about your synagogue. I wonder the same thing too, about why I bother, sometimes. After all, we're immersed in a deeply sick culture that tells us that anything other than indulging in material hedonism is delusion -- this is broader than just dealing with the Zionist heresy.
It's important to recognize that we are just as occupied by Zionists as the Palestinians are. The weapons they wield against us are different, less obvious, and so the path to and necessity of our own intifada is murkier. I'll also say that Zionism is inextricably tied up with bourgeois society, and as bourgeois society goes through (a hopefully terminal) crisis of legitimacy and reproduction, so too Zionism is going through a crisis of legitimacy and reproduction.
There has never been a time where the Israeli government has claimed to represent Judaism as a religion. The Israeli Chief Rabbis are not even necessarily accepted by religious Jews in Israel, and are not accepted by any non-Orthodox groups.
Jewish peoplehood links Jews together as an ethnicity that includes people from many places in the world such as Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Western Asia, and many small communities in other regions. This links us culturally and includes Jews who are religious, secular, believe in G-d, atheist, assimilated to the local customs where we live or not, and the full spectrum of politics. This is what Israel claims to represent. I'd guess most people in here would strongly disagree it represents us, or at least say it does a very bad job.
Judaism is the religion the Jewish people practice. It's an ethno religion that has existed largely in diaspora (which is how we became such a diverse peoplehood). They don't claim to represent Judaism for a variety of reasons but probably the most obvious is that the religion specifically tells the Jewish people not to create a Jewish state.
Judaism is the religious tradition of the Jewish People. A Jew doesn't need to observe the religion or believe it in order to be considered part of the Jewish People. Israel's official national understanding of Jewish identity is in this cultural and ethnic sense. This is also why Israel's Law of Return includes those who have ethnic Jewish heritage but are not considered Jewish by either Orthodox or Reform religious standards.
Anyone know of any anti-zionist Jewish owned restaurants/businesses in NYC or Chicago or DC? Would be great to support these businesses!
otherwise is there a good way to tell if a Jewish business is anti-zio (In the absence of explicit giveaways like Israeli flags)?
i urge u not to decide whether or not to go to a jewish establishment based upon if they r zionists or not. If they dont make it clear and publicize their support for israel i dont think its fair to hold them to a different standard then any other business
it’s not that they “get a pass”, if they have widely publicized their beliefs and donate money to the idf or what not for sure don’t go there but if there’s an absence of that which the person was asking abt it’s not fair to just assume they r zionist and boycott them just cuz their jewish. In the absence of any explicit advertisements treat them like any other business and not refuse to patronize any jewish establishment just because ur unsure of if they r antizionist.
I’m not gonna go to places that r homophobic or pro trump or against the vaccine, but a lot of places don’t make their positions clear and i’m not gonna hold a business owned by jews to a different standard then any other place.
When zionists ask people who are pro Palestine why they would support a future Palestinian state but oppose a Jewish state, implying that those who do are antisemitic for holding a double standard, would an acceptable answer be that a Palestinian could theoretically be any religion while being Jewish is a specific ethno-religion?
Personally, Ive been educating myself for a while now on Israel's settlers colonialism, and come to question the narrative that having a state would be liberating for Jewish people and that states and national identities are eternal things that should exist forever as ethno-nationalist fiction.
Ive also began to question the implications of maintaining a jewish state in a region that historically wasnt majority jewish for millennia if ever, and of deciding who is or isnt Jewish in the context of a nation-state.
Basically, a state for Jews specifically would need to distinguish between who is or isnt Jewish and like all ethnonations create an "other" to define it against which inherently creates inequality.
Well, the problem in looking at things religiously is that -- if you'll allow me the comparison, and it's deliberately intended to be insulting to them -- Zionists are Jewish Hebrew Israelites. They're not Jews, in exactly the same way the Black Hebrew Israelites are not Jews.
Judaism forbids establishing a state in Palestine until the Messiah comes.
Further, a Jew's relationship to Eretz Yisrael is mediated by the Torah and is conditional on good conduct. We don't "own" the land, it was never "given" to us by God, but entrusted to us as caretakers so long as we merit it. This isn't up for negotiation, but when you listen to a Zionist speak they'll never tell you that. They'll talk about how they're connected to the land, not because of God, but because of their ancestry.
How do you deal with zionists being incredibly racist and bigoted against Palestinians, both online and irl?
Some weeks ago I had the misfortune of getting into a debate with a zionist who claims Palestine and Israel are "equally bad" because of the PA's "pay to slay" policy, justified the west bank settlements with the Oslo accords and collective punishment through demolishibg the homes of family members of suspected terrorists.
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u/IWantFries21 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 25 '24
This is more for any Israelis on this sub - are or were there any Israeli celebrities who've spoken out against the occupation or the Israeli government in some way?