Category Archives: Nakba

Rabbi Brian Walt Imagines a Judaism Without Zionism

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My dear friend and colleague Rabbi Brian Walt just posted a transcript of his talk, “Affirming a Judaism and Jewish Identity Without Zionism” – a breathtaking piece that deserves the widest possible audience. I don’t know exactly how describe it except to say it’s at once an intensely personal confession, spiritual autobiography, political treatise and most of all, an anguished cri de coeur.

I finally had to admit to myself what I had known for a long time but was too scared to acknowledge: political Zionism, at its core, is a discriminatory ethno-nationalism that privileges the rights of Jews over non-Jews. As such political Zionism violates everything I believe about Judaism. While there was desperate need in the 1940s to provide a safe haven for Jews, and this need won over most of the Jewish world and the Western world to support the Zionist movement, the Holocaust can in in no way justify or excuse the systemic racism that was and remains an integral part of Zionism.

In the past I believed that the discrimination I saw – the demolished homes, the uprooted trees, the stolen land – were an aberration of the Zionist vision. I came to understand that all of these were not mistakes nor a blemishes on a dream – they were all the logical outcome of Zionism.

As a Jew, I believe in the inherent dignity of every human being. As a Jew, I believe that justice is the core commandment of our tradition. As a Jew, I believe that we are commanded to be advocates for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. Zionism and the daily reality in Israel violated each of these core values. And I could no longer be a Zionist. I will always be a person with deep and profound connection to Israel and my friends and family there, but I was no longer a Zionist.

I’m sure many readers will not agree with Brian’s conclusions. I’m even surer he will be attacked viciously by many for such “apostasy.”  As for me, I salute the courage it took for him to venture out onto such a precarious limb by sharing his thoughts.

Whatever your reactions, I hope you will be open to the challenge he lays before us.

The Nakba Isn’t Over

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There are many  in the Jewish community who view the Nakba as simply a historical fait accomplis. The attitude goes something like this: “Yes, during the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinians were displaced. That’s how nations get created. Today the state of Israel is just a fact – it’s time to get over it.”

The problem with this attitude – beyond the sheer injustice of it – is that the Nakba isn’t actually over.  In truth, government-sponsored displacement of Palestinians from their land has been continuing apace for the past 63 years.

One recent example: Ha’aretz recently revealed that Israel used a covert procedure to banish Palestinians from the West Bank by stripping them of their residency rights between 1967 and 1994:

(The) procedure, enforced on Palestinian West Bank residents who traveled abroad, led to the stripping of 140,000 of them of their residency rights. Israel registered these people as NLRs − no longer residents − a special status that does not allow them to return to their homes…

The sweeping denial of residency status from tens of thousands of Palestinians and deporting them from their homeland in this way cannot be anything but an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law. It’s a policy whose sole purpose is to thin out the Palestinian population in the territories.

The ongoing Nakba was also evident in news last month of a new military order that will enable the military to summarily deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank:

The order’s vague language will allow army officers to exploit it arbitrarily to carry out mass expulsions, in accordance with military orders which were issued under unclear circumstances. The first candidates for expulsion will be people whose ID cards bear addresses in the Gaza Strip, including children born in the West Bank and Palestinians living in the West Bank who have lost their residency status for various reasons.

Israel’s founders understood full well that the Arab population of Palestine was the most significant barrier to the creation of a Jewish state. At the beginning of the 20th century, the population of Palestine was around 4% Jewish and 96% Arab. Although the events of 1948 tipped that scale significantly, it’s common parlance in Israel to view the growing presence of Palestinians as a “demographic threat.” So it’s not difficult at all to understand why Israel continues to institute these kinds of “thinning out” policies.

In a lengthy (but highly recommended) +972 post entitled “Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba,” Israeli blogger Noam Sheizaf writes:

The Palestinians won’t forget the Nakba. In many ways, it seems that with each year, the memory is just getting stronger.

It’s an interesting, counter-intuitive phenomenon: one would expect that the the memory of displacement would fade as the event itself recedes into the past and new facts in the ground take hold. In fact, the exact opposite seems to be happening. There are doubtless many explanations for this, but primary among them must be the fact that displacement continues to be the very real experience of succeeding generations of Palestinians.

This fact was very much on my mind as I read news reports that thousands of Palestinian refugees crossed Israel’s borders during Nakba Day demonstrations last Sunday.  As I watched scores of unarmed Palestinians willing to face live ammunition as they jumped the border fences, it was clear to me that they weren’t simply commemorating a “long-past” event.

For them, as for Israel, the Nakba isn’t over yet.

A Reckoning for Yom Ha’atzmaut

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I’ve written before that as a Jew, I no longer consider Yom Ha’atzmaut to be a day of unmitigated celebration – but rather be an occasion for honest reckoning and soul searching.  In particular, I believe we need to struggle with the very meaning of independence itself. In our profoundly interdependent world, what does the concept of “independence” ultimately mean?  Is independence a one-time occurrence or an ongoing process? And, perhaps most painfully, in what ways has Jewish independence come at a very real cost to the rights of another people?

To help us reckon with these kinds of questions, I encourage you to visit the new website, #Nakbasurvivor.  This is an amazing new project from the Institute for Middle East Understanding that invites Palestinians to tell their family’s story of the Nakba over Twitter and YouTube. It’s a brand new effort, but already the stories seem to be pouring in. (Click above for one such story.)

As Jews, we know as well as people that memory is profoundly sacred – and that it is our duty to transmit our memories to the next generation so that we might be transformed by the lessons they teach us. As I watched these videos, I felt a myriad of emotions: a sense of honor that these sacred stories were being preserved and transmitted, a sense of pain that my own people’s independence came at the cost of another’s, and a sense of responsibility to acknowledge this memory – and to speak out against the injustices that still continue to this day.

When it comes to memory of the Nakba, there is no justice. This past year, the Knesset has passed legislation that makes it illegal for any Israeli communities that hold events commemorating the Nakba on Yom Ha’atzmaut. In other words, Israel has essentially criminalized the memory of 20% of its citizens.

Today, on the first Yom Ha’atzmaut since this law was passed, Nakba demonstrations have taken place across East Jerusalem and the West Bank. There have been widespread clashes with the IDF and numerous Palestinian casualties have been reported.  (In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud, a 17 year old was shot in the stomach with live ammunition – as of this writing, he has no pulse and the doctors are now fighting for his life.)

There will be no independence for anyone – Israeli or Palestinian – until there is justice. And there will be no justice until we truly honor memory, no matter how painful.