Feel completely disconnected

[u/PattonSmithWood]

How do fellow, non-religious, anti Zionist Jews in this sub reconcile their anti Zionist views with their Jewish identity when 80/90% of contemporary Jews across the world are staunch Zionists.

I feel at a complete loss in terms of my identity. Extended family and relatives are 90% Zionists, they take literal pleasure in any and all harm to Palestinians. They are gleeful and boastful of the current genocide (and they proudly label it as such). They marginalise, shut down, bad mouth any relative who believes in Palestinian dignity, self determination and sovereignty. They call us self hating Jews and turncoats.

My values and some close family are completely, polar, opposite. We are more in harmony with the views of some prominent Jewish scholars and identities such as Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Mate, Miko Peled, Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim, Gideon Levy etc

I'm proud to be a Jew with faith in universal values of humanity. Although I am not an observant Jew, and am pretty much secular and atheist, I find myself increasingly aligning with some teachings of Torah Jews, specially their teachings about diaspora being essential to Judaism and spiritual Israel only being reinstated by the mashiach and not a group of atheists.

I know this is a bit of a rant, but I feel so out of place amidst contemporary Jews.

Would love to hear any experiences navigating this identity crisis.

[u/Benyano]

Learn about family histories find ways to reconnect with your own Jewish culture, and get involved in anti-Zionist or diasporist Jewish organizing. There are a lot of great people doing work of all kinds in this broad movement, even if we’re still a minority of Jews. But we’re Jews, we’re comfortable being in the minority.

One good place for anti-Zionist Jewish political and cultural education is a podcast I (co)create, The Jewish Diapsorist. We’ve interviewed dozens of Jewish organizers and scholars from around the world doing this kind of work. Jewishness is alot more than religion or Zionism.

I’m not sure what your connection to Jewishness is, but music can be a good entry point. Daniel Kahn is a brilliant musician who’s lyrics make one think, and music could be described as Klezmer Punk.

[u/daudder]

It sounds like the values of your family members are not simply Zionist, but ultra-right, blatantly racist, apartheid and genocide supporting, Palestinian dehumanising, neo-Nazi Zionists. I.e., Kahanists.

While this represents a sizeable chunk of contemporary Zionists, it is only one part. The rest vary between apologists for all of the above, through supporting-but-denying the worst of the Zionist excesses, all the way to so-called liberal Zionists who propose a Palestinian bantustan.

While there is a chance that most or all of them are in fact of the rabid-racist type, there may be a range of opinions and you can form tactical alliances and friendships with the more moderate types and meet with them nausea-free.

If they are all, in fact of the rabid-racist type then you have no choice but to stay away from them and interact only with those whose values you can tolerate, even if you do not necessarily share.

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[u/dmg1111]

70% of Jews have no connection to mainstream Jewish life. It sucks that 85% of the 30% loom so large in everyone else's life.

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

For me I ended up needing to figure out what being Jewish meant to me and only then how that can logically conclude in anti-zionism; if you start trying to retrofit antizionism onto a Judaism based on Zionistic ideals you're going to have a bad time.

Growing up a huge chunk of the narrative around Judaism was about safety; we need to be safe from another Holocaust, another Pogrom, another Antiochus, another Haman. We value education -- not wealth -- because it can't be taken from us when we're expelled/need to flee. We have a complex series of passing down religious traditions so they can survive scattered after another country kicks us out. We don't make waves so as not to be seen and therefore despised.

Zionism was marked as a solution to this problem of safety. "If we have a state, we won't need a go-bag anymore!" "If we have a state, we won't need to worry about massacres anymore!" Etc etc.

The problem is not only did it attempt to achieve its goals through horrifically evil means, and not only did it fail to achieve its goals (considering the number of attacks even random Israeli civilians need to deal with), but it also went completely against most actual tenants/values of being Jewish -- both religious and otherwise.

Being Jewish has been about being in the Diaspora for 2000 years. Our entire culture and identity is based around being a distributed web of constantly shifting groups and practices -- of picking up enough of the local looks, genetics, and customs to survive while still maintaining enough of that separation to help our fellow Jew no matter where they are. Zionism took that from us but we can take it back.

[u/Artistic_Reference_5]

It depends where you live.

There are many groups of ant-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews and even anti-Zionist Israelis advocating for an end to the genocide. These groups often not only take political actions but socialize together.

I have local groups around me and other groups online. I have met amazing people there.

I will say I'm used to not fitting in to mainstream spaces including my family of origin for lots of other reasons, so if that's not your experience it seems understandable that it would feel more difficult!

[u/xarjun]

Learning about who I am and what I stand for, compared to who the 'Zionists' are and what they stand for was sufficient for me.

There is no way, in this or any other universe, that someone with my people's history would EVER tolerate the Zionists.

It is incumbent upon us as Jews to resist these evil supremacists just as we resisted others.

[u/korach1921]

Define "staunch Zionist"

Those surveys are meant to give the illusion of mass Jewish consensus on support for the state of Israel. But the questions are usually as vague as "do you feel a connection to Israel?" or "do you think Israel has a right to exist?"

[u/crumpledcactus → u/korach1921]

The whole "80% of Jews are zionists" claim is BS. It's based on two surveys by Pew Research about one's emotional connection to Israel. Zionism isn't mentioned in the study, and most (50%+) of us are totally divorced from Israel.

The 80% figure is an isolation of the Orthodox sect, which is like 7% or less of Jewish-Americans, but the Orthodox hold a legal monopoly on Jewishness in Israel (inter-faith marriage is de-facto illegal), so Israel loves to repeat the lie that all Jews are zionists.

[u/ContentChecker → u/crumpledcactus]

This x1000.

The ADL pushes that statistic all the time to give the appearance of consensus.

[u/teddyburke → u/crumpledcactus]

Yeah.

In America, those numbers don’t make any sense. I would say some form of “liberal Zionism” likely makes up the majority, which often just means, “I support Israel but don’t agree with what it’s doing” - which is pretty much reflective of American liberalism in general in how incoherent and ineffective it is.

[u/pomegranie]

I feel much the same way; most of my family is very Zionist, and though I still love them, I can’t respect it. When I became anti-Zionist it was hard to reconcile myself with Judaism, because it was my family who taught me to be Jewish. I think what changed things for me was learning about Judaism and Jewish history outside of Zionism—anti-Zionism, yes, but also our culture before Zionism was even invented. Even though it’s the popular thing now, it helps to remind myself that for most of our history, it was either unpopular or nonexistent. Best of luck with your family.

[u/Blochkato → u/pomegranie]

It's worth noting that not even all early movements within Zionism were necessarily right wing or colonial. Zionism itself has a rich and complex history together with a spectrum of historical and religious meanings which have essentially been erased in favor of the current strain of colonial ethnonationalism.

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[u/AugustIsFallling]

I don’t have any advice I just want you to know you’re not alone.

[u/CJIsABusta]

Zionism has been around for less than 150 years. Jews have existed for far, far longer without it, and will continue to exist after it.

We know our culture and history. Hanukkah is a holiday that commemorates resistance to oppression. And we know that it's the zionists who greatly dishonour it, and that it's the Palestinian resistance that honours it the most today, and we are honouring it too by rejecting zionism.

Zionists are traitors. They sold the Jewish people out to those who had oppressed us for centuries, to be their footsoldiers against the world's oppressed, and the Palestinians in particular, who were our natural allies against oppression, white supremacy and anti-semitism. The answer to anti-semitism has always been solidarity with the world's oppressed, and zionists ruined it. When the they stop being useful for imperialism and get discarded like all puppets end up, and when the imperialists show their true anti-semitic colours once again, maybe then they'll realize their mistake.

The real question is, what do we do about it?

[u/bgoldstein1993]

I was unable to reconcile. Until mainstream Jewish institutions reject the genocide regime, I denounce my former religion.

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