Why I Am Not a Zionist

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I'd written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently I, and the poet I was to read with at the conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

We decided to hold our reading anyway in Washington, DC during J Street's inaugural conference at an alternative location. We were hosted by Busboys and Poets. The room filled with a spectrum of ideas. We read our poems and during the Q&A, no one was shouted down. Not the Israeli army Refusnik, not the liberal Zionist apologist, not the Palestinian student who asked us to include more about the Palestinian people in our poems, not just the land or idea of nation-state, a point beautifully made and incredibly profound. No one shouted down moderator Lalia Al-Arian, brilliant journalist and activist, whose father was a Palestinian political prisoner in America, now freed because of his daughter's persistence. The crowd was cool and civil, though broad in opinion.

Since the Second Intifada I have thought, wrote, and spoke about these issues, but over the course of these last several weeks, I have arrived at a new beginning. Prior to now, I muddled this issue in complexity. But I have come to realize it is actually simple and clear. I am a Jewish-American man in solidarity with Palestinian people. I am in solidarity with Israeli and American and all people who work and risk their lives and livelihood for justice. I am not restricted to working within the confines of the Jewish-American community. Justice and the resistance to imperialism is a global, human concern for all people down to struggle. For Jews, yes, but not Jews alone. For Palestinians, yes, but not Palestinians alone. It will take us all to push and demand governments and corporate interests to create fair, equitable living conditions. It will take all people to hold history accountable for the atrocities that occur.

This is analogy. America celebrates Columbus day even though Columbus and American settlers killed, enslaved and pushed Indigenous people off land they lived on. Tragically Indigenous people have been nearly wiped out of existence and pushed to the furthest margins of our culture that revels in amnesia. Main St., mainstream American culture does not expect Native Americans to celebrate Columbus, nor care or know or imagine if they do or not. Native Americans are not a demographic population Hallmark cares to account for. It is preposterous to think Jews would celebrate Kristallnacht, the night of glass when SS troops stormed and terrorized their German ghettos. In Israel, Independence Day is called Yom Ha'atzmaut. Communities gather to play music, dance and watch fireworks. The Chief Rabbinate has declared this day a Jewish holiday in which prayers should be said. But Palestinians remember 1948 and the formation of the State of Israel as al-Nakba, The Catastrophe. A day of murder, displacement, and forced Diaspora. A day families are torn apart and ripped away from their homes. A state sanctioned celebration of their dehumanization and second-class citizenship.

For this reason alone, I cannot believe in the integrity of the Zionist project. It's built on bodies and lies. It denies the existence of people and a people. One of its slogans, rooted in the same malicious revisionism as American History and Holocaust denial, is, A land without people, for a people without land. Columbus didn't discover shit. He enacted the desires of Empire and the fetishization of "discovery". The formation of the State of Israel is rooted in blood and deceit, is the same story as all colonies built in the name of Imperialism, Capitalism and Dehumanization. Therefore, I am not Zionist.

I am not Pro-Israel because in January Israel murdered over 1400 Palestinians. They bombed schools and hospitals. They bulldoze homes and bodies. Israel builds a separation wall, as Germany did, as the United States does between here and Mexico, as the rich do between themselves and the rest of us. I am not a believer in borders. I have been mistaken for Italian, Puerto Rican, Arab and Muslim, but I am a suburban Jew who sought out hip-hop cultural space across red lines and Chicago segregation. I learned borders are to be contended and crossed. Israel believes in borders. Israel practices apartheid. On one side, irrigated lawns and swimming pools in illegal Israeli settlements. On the other side, Palestinian disenfranchisement, people denied access to drinking water, medical assistance, jobs, the ability to earn an income or vote in the country that governs them, that limits their movement with passports, checkpoints and curfews and closes them into open-air prisons. I cannot be in favor of these practices, nor the state that enacts them. These practices are to be resisted, protested and pushed against. People whose bodies are legislated against, contained, detained, and maimed by state sanctioned terror are to be stood with and listened to.

This week has provided clarity. This is not a complex issue. There is the brutality of government(s) and the need for the liberation of a people, all people. I am a Jewish person who stands with Palestinian people relegated to second-class citizenship and Israeli soldiers who refuse to enact racist militarism. I am not a nationalist; therefore I am not a Zionist. I am against the oppression of any person and people. I am not a builder of walls. I believe in equity and democratic practice, therefore I am not pro-Israel. I am an advocate for truth, justice and reconciliation. I believe in this. I believe in this now. I believe in the work ahead.

 

 

Comments

[StCuthbert]

Mr. Coval, what's your definition of a Zionist? I do not think it means what you think it means.

[MosheDayanHero]

Once upon the time there was an Empire . Then it collapsed.
Many of its former subjects got offered a state or found other ways to build a state.
All agreed to what they got. Except one group who thought that they should get it all. Because of their greed they missed the self determination boat.
Now they have to ask, very, very politely their neighbors for some of the land they rejected before.
Cause now their neighbors from all sides are not very pleased with their behavior. Especially Jordanians, Lebanese, Israel Egyptians and Syrians.
Did I miss any one? Oh, yes, Americans, Europeans, Saudis, Kuwaitis are not to enthused either..
The punishment for being short-sighted is that they won't get all that much.

Realpolitik.

[MosheDayanHero]

For some perspective. Here's what Palestinians and their Arab supporters UNANIMOUSLY rejected in 1947. Betting that Jews wil be an easy prey. They bet wrong.
This is a map from the United Nations website.

http://domino.un.org/maps/m0103_1b.gif

never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunit­y...

[Tony Andrews]

Since when was giving up half of a territory a "missed opportunity" other than in Palestine?

If some outside authority says "half of your garden now belongs to someone else, and you, of course, can keep the other half" is that a "missed opportunity"?

[MosheDayanHero]

It is astonishing that there are people,who STILL think 65% of Palestine was not enough!
I suspect it is simply unwillingness to admit reality.
Lemme clue you in. You cannot ev en imagine how ecstatic Palestinians would be to get that deal now! The very same they so cavalierly walked away from in 1947. And the one that is no longer available.
Hows that for realpolitik.

[Thelonius]

Kenneth Bilby, a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, describes "MosheDayanHero's" heroic excapades in Lydda, Palestine, July 1948: "Moshe Dayan led a jeep commando column into the town of Lydda with rifles, Stens, and sub-machine guns blazing. It coursed through the main streets, blasting at everything that moved...th­e corpses of Arab men, women, and even children were strewn about the streets in the wake of this ruthless charge." Keith Wheller, a reporter for the Chicago Sun Times wrote "[as the attackers] tore through Lydda practically everything in their way died. Riddled corpses lay along the roadside."

"MosheDayanHero" while addressing Israeli students in March 1969: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population­." ( Ha'aretz, 4 April 1969)

[StCuthbert]

Relevance, Alpha?

[Tony Andrews]

Palestinians have, by Netanyabad­ababoohu's party's charter NO chance of a state.

NO chance.
ZERO possibility.

"The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel's existence, security and national needs."

The absolute best that they can hope for is some kind of provincial status in which they have theoretical control, but in which the Knesset has the factual control. It goes without saying, if you look for more than a moment at the Israel agenda, that the arabs of that province will be so categorized as to be ineligible to vote in Israel's elections.

THAT would, by no conceivable measure, be a "state".

Israel has postured a position of seeking a 2 state solution for years, while constantly expanding its illegal expropriations of land and imposing illegal occupations in the West Bank.
It has done very well, so far, in diverting the international community from seeing what is actually going on, which is the establishment of an Israeli state that extends from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean Sea.

[MosheDayanHero]

that's right, Palestinain can only have a peaceful demilitarazed state.
Neither Israeli, nor Jordan nor Egypt nor ( i suspect) lebanon would allow Palestinian state with a militarily and open standing invitation by PA and Hamas to roll out a woelcoming map to world Jihadists.
These neighboring states share their experience with tender mercies of Palestinian militants. Ah, thanks, but no thanks.

Not fair you say? Get used to it.
Small demilitarized state or none at all.
Try Jordanians if they're interested in re-unification. LOL.

[Tony Andrews]

Moshe,

What you, and the Likud Charter, are describing is by no measure a state.
At best it is a province.
"This is what you can have, under the control of the Knesset. Take it or leave it", is not negotiation.
Why is the Israeli government continuing to present the pretense that it will enter negotiations over statehood when it has no intention of so doing?

[Inoku]

Everyone celebrates the end of the Second World War, but only a tiny minority weep for the Sudeten Germans who were expelled forcibly from their ancestral homes following the fall of Nazi Germany. This is because we think they bore some collective guilt for their support of Nazism and their participation in an aggressive and unsuccessful war.

But wait, aren't those exactly the characteristics shared by the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine? The Arabs who supported Hitler's army and who started the war against the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, and lost? It is interesting that not only do people ignore this collective culpability for starting an aggressive war, but they also extend any privileges of compensation to these survivors' descendants. Furthermore, although sources differ on the percent, a sizable portion of the Arab refugees of the Israeli War for Independence were not forcibly removed from their homes, but ran away and abandoned their homes.

It is noteworthy that the Czechs and Slovaks would not sign the Lisbon Treaty unless they were given exemptions stating that their governments would not be required to allow Sudeten Germans to return to their properties lost when they were forced out of Czechoslovakia in the 40's. Precedent has been set: there is no "right to return:" not for the Sudeten Germans who were torn from their homes, and not for the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine who fled from theirs. It would be tragic if the Arabs were repentant, but their leadership says otherwise.

[Tony Andrews]

You really are walking, no, tramping on exceedingly thin ice.

The indigenous people of Palestine had a state imposed upon them by the British Mandate, the League of Nations and the United Nations.

It is the kind of imposition which neither you or I, or any sensible person, would approve in the 21st century.

To suggest that Palestinian arabs are complicit in their own demise because they had no means of effectively stopping what was being inmposed on them is, frankly, obscene.

[MosheDayanHero]

"The indigenous people of Palestine had a state imposed upon them by the British Mandate, the League of Nations and the United Nations."

"Imposed" on them?

Most of smart people are absolutely ecstatic to have their own state. As did Jordnains and Palestinain Jews and hundred of other ethnic groups. But not Palestinian Arabs,. Oh, no, Palestinian Arabs chose Jihad. They gambled and lost.

"Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunit­y."

[alexa07]

Kevin,
I commend your honesty, bravery to speak out despite your detractors. I am certain that the J Street Conference would have been better for hearing your poetry, but you didn't let anyone reasonable or unreasonable silence you. Fighting for the underdogs on this planet takes a certain kind of wonderful person. I wish you the very, very best.

[MosheDayanHero]

Jewish perspective is rather wide. We've endured Jewish anarchists, Jewish communists, Jewish neo cons.
A Jewish pro Arabist rap artist is neither here nor there.

[serz4u]

I am Jewish like you, and born in Israel to boot, and I don't support Israel's policies. But your epiphany about how simple this all is only a mirage... There are two sides to every major event (especially war): to the arrival of Columbus, yes, but also to the Revolutionary War, the American Civil War... you name it. There are winners and losers, those who benefit tremendously, and those who lose everything. In war there are atrocities, and never one side which is all "right" and another which is all "wrong." Calling every death in Gaza a "murder" is turning a blind eye to this (unless all war is murder, and maybe it is true, but this is not the argument you are making) I believe that Israel needs to give back what it took in '67. I don't see this happening, and believe the ongoing oppression is the cause of ongoing violence. But even if Israel gave it all up and more, this would not guarantee that it will not have to fight again. The situation is tragic--and I believe one of the sides is more responsible than the other, and more in a position to act--but it is not simple. You've taken it and boiled it down until there is no context and no detail, and no reality, and all that's left is the outline of what you believe. You've left out everything.

[Ergon]

Shalom, brother.

[MosheDayanHero]

The Zionist idea of a Jewish home has been realized half a century ago.
There now a Jewish state, successful, prosperous and free. More so than in Theodore Hertzl's wildest dreams.
Therefore, the argument whether one is or isn't a Zionist is hopelessly out of date.
Since most ideals of Zionists have been realized, one can now either support the result of its ideals- the existence State of Israel--- or not.
You've made your choice.

[Tony Andrews]

MosheDayanHero,

To disagree with the methodology of a state's interactions with its citizens and neighbours is very, very far removed from not supporting the existence of that state. If the necesary qualifier to supporting a state is that one must, per se, support that state's illegal and other objectionable practises, you exclude most of the citizens of most of the states on the planet from being "supporting" of their state.

I may well, do, in fact, love the country I live in.

But it is not, by some long way, perfect. I reserve, absolutely, the right (and the responsibility) to criticise it when it does objectionable things (supposedly on my behalf).

[TheLonelyGod]

Zionism is the belief that Israel should exist. It has no commentary on what Israel does.

Disagreeing with Israel is to be a dissenter. Disagreeing with Israel's existence is to be anti-Zionist.

[buddbo1]

I, believe as you do. That people should not be pushed aside, rights ignored, life taken at will, homes destroyed and taken over, basics rights denied, or the enslavement of any human for the benefit of another. To me, this understanding is greater than any religion being practiced by any group, as their religion has not crushed the hate that causes all the above not to happened. There is no good in any religion if it produces hate, there is no superior being on this earth that can demand others to be inferior to their will, for the human spirit will rise up in protest and war to defend itself. There is no reason to study history if lessons learned aren't practiced. History has only become a mockery to repeat performances !

[TheBaffler]

Thank you for your sane, principled, humane position.

[Thelonius]

Amen!!!

[MosheDayanHero]

Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel, not because they embraced the ideas of Zionism but because they concluded that the effort to destroy the Jewish state had failed and that refusing to come to terms with it was harmful to their national interests.

Peace will be acheivable when Palestinians,their leaders and supporters become convinced that that they cannot under any circumstances prevail over Israel through the use of force.

Palestinians have only one choice for a state--- leaver outdated revanchist ideas behind and agree to a small peaceful de militarized state next to neighbors that are already at peace-- Egypt and Jordan.

Nothing else is available, nothing else will be available.

Palestinains and their supporter should work hard to reduce Palestinian preoccupation with bankrupt revanchist ideas and antisemitism to build their state.