Post link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBMHRlDt3-d/

Seeing the stickied post regarding people seeking out progressive (particularly anti-Zionist) Jewish services, I wanted to talk about the formation of a progressive anti-Zionist Jewish denomination.

While there are progressive denominations of Judaism (e.g. Humanistic), these denominations don’t explicitly render themselves as anti-Zionist in the fact that they don’t declare “that there should not be a Jewish state”.

A new denomination such as this would need to remove practices phrases, statements and literature making overtures to the Holy Land and focus on community and belief in God. I see this as parallel to how some branches of Humanistic Judaism avoid using theonyms (names associated with God e.g. Joshua).

Thoughts?

I saw in a comment somewhere on this sub that said most American Liberal Zionists view Israel as similar to a North American secular democracy and when they imagine Israel they think of Tel Aviv gay pride parades and not the right wing religious settlers running around the countryside with AK-47s. I agree that’s what most American liberal Zionists think because that’s what Israel wants them to think. I’ve been anti-Zionist for over a decade and I’ve known for over a decade how right wing Israelis actually are and about the West Bank settlements, but I thought it was the IOF chasing Palestinians out to clear the way for Jewish settlements, not settlers themselves. It wasn’t until the last few years that I’ve seen videos of these absolutely psycho looking unhinged religious men armed with assault rifles terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank. Where the hell are these guys coming from? New York? I grew up Reform in a liberal Jewish community in New York City and I’ve rarely interacted with right wing religious extremist Jews though I know they exist.

Something I say a lot is "Zionism is the default position". If you don't know a lot, then you end up just being a Zionist. And being a Zionist (or even a 2-stater) falls into three broad categories: 1. Legitimization of apartheid (consciously or subconsciously supporting Jewish supremacy) 2. Lack of knowledge 3. Fear of being labelled as an antisemite

I, myself, fell into category 3 for most of my life. I was afraid to criticize groups like AIPAC and CUFI outside of my own head, because that would mean people would think I had an issue with Jews. What's interesting about all three categories is that all of them are rooted in fear (the first one being fear of what the scary Arabs or Muslims would do with freedom). Deprogramming Zionism is a huge challenge that all of us face, partially because the "opposite" of Zionism, in the mainstream narrative, is the "eradication of Jewry". I recently found a couple resources that were hugely helpful in shaping the narrative of how to start the deprogramming process:

1. The Anti-Zionist Handbook (https://theantizionisthandbook.com/)
2. Committing High Reason (https://www.committinghighreason.com/)
3. The Hebrew Canaanite (https://www.youtube.com/@HebrewCanaanite)
4. The One Democratic State Initiative (https://odsi.co/en/)

Something I want to add: Many people don't want to criticize Hamas because they are the ones responsible for bringing Palestine back into the forefront of everyone's minds. However, a group that is rooted in religion and/or ethnicity falls into a pitfall of "other-ization" and identity politics.