A Brooklyn Jew explains how to defeat zionism
I am so anti-zionist that one might wonder if I think any Jews can be great people. Of course I do. For example, I’m fond of Dr. Alfred Lilienthal and Jeffrey Blankfort. Both are intellectually gifted, and genuinely “great souls.” If you don’t know who these people are, you can see my old blog entries on Dr. Lilienthal at
http://thx1138.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/a-man-of-peace/
and on Jeffrey Blankfort at
http://thx1138.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/a-jewish-human/
Anyway, here’s another good one…
Joel Kovel, author of 10 books and over 100 articles. Kovel practiced psychiatry and psychoanalysis for 24 years, abandoning them in the mid-1980s partly because of dissatisfaction with the US health care system, and partly because he wanted to become more active in leftist political causes.
Last February (2007) he put out a book titled Overcoming zionism in which he advocates a single democratic state in Palestine. The cover has a cute photo of a Palestinian child and an israeli child walking hand in hand.
Kovel says the only way to defeat zionism is to “overcome” or transcend it, as opposed to attacking it militarily. Transcendence is achieved by reconciling opposites – Palestinians / israelis, zionist / non-zionist Jews, and Jews / Gentiles.
Here is a summary of a lengthy review from electronic intifada (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6885.shtml )
Kovel says zionism seeks "tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militarized and aggressive state." It cuts Jews off from their own history, and makes them base their identity on “anti-Semitism,” since this is the easiest way to unite them. zionism is based on “imperialist expansion and militarism.” It is infected with a “fascist malignancy."
zionists and their ilk are "the splinters under the skin of humanity."
“If you sign on to the idea of a Jewish state, you are taking the exceptionalism that is the potential bane of any state, and is the actual bane of Judaism. You give racism an objective and institutionalized character."
Exceptionalism means that zionists insist that moral laws don’t apply to them. This always leads to racism. zionists presume they have a right to transcend the laws of humanity. Thus, israel has "turned itself into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses."
Exceptionalism brings separation (the Afrikaner word is "apartheid"), plus alienation and estrangement, which is Kovel’s main focus.
Exceptionalism ruins everything it touches. For example, zionists claim that israel has an outstanding record on environmental issues, but Kovel says zionism’s ecological record is appalling. He says zionism is wrapped up in a drive to dominate nature, not just people. "Estrangement (caused by zionism) splits humanity from nature as well as itself. Hence the most severely estranged society will also be the most subject to eco-disintegration."
Kovel says zionism has a “bad conscience.” He points out that on three occasions the israeli state has been led by known terrorists: Menachem Begin (prime minister from 1977-83), Yitzhak Shamir (1983-92, with a break in 1984-6), and Ariel Sharon (2001-6). “Bad conscience” makes zionists harp on “Palestinian terror,” and also harp on israel as a “democracy.” It creates extreme hypocrisy and profound contradictions. For example, israel is a terrorist state that presumes to be morally superior to all other states, which is absurd. This contradiction ensures that israel will always be evil, always be corrupt, and always be unable to stand on its own. All israelis recognize this, albeit secretly. They all feel “a sense that something is noxiously wrong.” Kovel gives numerous examples from israeli political life to illustrate these points.
He condemns israelis that give lip service to leftist causes, while they support the extermination of Palestinians. He cites Benny Morris, a self-proclaimed "leftist" who in January 2004 gave an interview with Ha'aretz in which Morris said Ben-Gurion should have finished the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, that Palestinians should be put in cages, and that "the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians." (Newt Gingrich read that interview, agreed with it, and frequently quotes it. – AZ)
Kovel says the Jewish state would not have arisen without committing massive terrorism, and necessarily uses race hatred to justify the deed.
He says all defenses of zionism are “nihilist” and “paranoid,” while all “two-state” solutions are lies that zionists use to fill newspaper columns. Unless israel becomes unified, it will disintegrate.
Kovel rejects "the whole idea of a volkisch state for any singular kind of people, because people do better when they mix and mingle in conditions of a rich diversity." He finds an Islamist state or a Christian state as objectionable as a Jewish state, but he focuses on israel because the US/israel axis has created political Islam in its theocratic form. He says, “the best way to offset Islamic fundamentalism is to overcome zionism.”
How do we do this?
1. Speak the truth about israel -- i.e. counteract the propaganda of "the tentacular zionist lobby”
2. Deprive the zionist state of what it needs -- i.e. cultivate academic, cultural and economic boycotts
3. Bring Palestinians home -- i.e. foreground at all times the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees.
Kovel says #3 is the most important, because it dissolves the logic of Jewish exceptionalism.
Thus it will bring down zionism in a peaceful way.
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Wouldn't that be something? To get rid of zionism peacefully so we don't have blood on our own hands? -- AZ
