This is Palestine, in Your Inbox, the only Palestine newsletter that spends all week reading dense academic literature so you don’t pull a muscle in your scrolling finger 😁 .

A Brief History of Jewish anti-Zionism

Last week, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) published a report titled, “ADL tallied 665 anti-Israel incidents in the last academic year.”

… which is strange, because the ADL’s mission is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people,” not stop the defamation of the state of Israel.

Fact Check: The Jewish people ≠ the State of Israel. So let’s do a deepish dive into Jewish criticism of the Zionist movement before 1948.

Jews in the United States

• In 1885, Reform Jews in the US adopted the Pittsburgh Platform, which became the basic statement of Reform Judaism’s principles for 50 years. It defined Jews as a religious community; rejected the idea that Jews are a nation; & rejected the idea that Jews should move to Palestine.

• In 1919, After U.S. President Woodrow Wilson came out in support of the Balfour Declaration, 299 prominent American Jews signed a statement rejecting the idea of a Jewish Palestine. The American Jews saw themselves as Americans and didn’t appreciate attempts to confuse their identity and loyalty with another country.

• As late as 1933, only 1.5% of the American Jewish population were members of the Zionist Organization of America.

• In 1942, Reform Rabbis in the US founded the American Council for Judaism (ACJ) to fight Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They were concerned about the increasing intrusion of Zionism into Reform Judaism.

Jews in Palestine

• In 1907, Yehoshua Radler Feldman (1880–1957) called for Pan- Semitism with the local Arab population, a kind of "merger" between the two peoples in Palestine. He condemned Zionists for their maltreatment of the native population.

• In the 1920s, Jacob Israël de Haan became an anti-Zionist spokesperson for the religious community of Palestine and rejected Zionism primarily because of its secular, and therefore anti-Orthodox Jewish worldview, but also because he realized the Zionists were on a collision course with the indigenous Arab population of the land. He was murdered as a result of his anti-Zionist activism by the Haganah in 1924, with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who later became President of the State of Israel, giving the order.

• In 1921, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld founded the Edah HaChareidis to oppose “Zionist heresy.” [Today, the organization has tens of thousands of members and forbids voting in Israeli national elections for the Knesset, forbids accepting any money from the State of Israel and rejects Israel’s “Law of Return” that allows Jews anywhere in the world to obtain Israeli citizenship].

Jews in Europe

• Most Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism initially because they believed Jews should not live in the Holy Land until God decides so. They believed human action to hasten the arrival of the Messiah violated Torah law.

• In 1915, the liberal Jewish British cabinet member Edwin Samuel Montagu wrote that “when the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants.” [While Montagu opposed the Balfour Declaration as the only Jewish member of the cabinet, its lead proponent, Arthur Balfour, dismissed Jews as an alien & hostile people and sponsored legislation to keep Jewish refugees out of Great Britain].

• In 1935, Jewish socialists in Britain opposed Zionism as “a tool of British imperialism” and as a movement that was dispossessing the Arab peasants and is conducting a colonization by conquest with the aide of the British bayonets.”

Jews in the Middle East

• In 1909, the Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire, Haim Nahum, spoke out against Zionist activity in Palestine, as he believed it would enrage the Turkish and Arab populations. In the 1930s, as the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Nahum continued to speak out publicly against Zionist immigration to Palestine.

• From the early 20th century onwards, David Fresko, the editor of El Tiempo, a Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) daily newspaper in Istanbul, frequently published pieces critical of Zionist activities in the Empire as it was viewed as a separatist movement that undermined Ottomanist principles.

• In 1945, Jewish Iraqi Communists founded an anti-Zionist League to confront the hatred directed towards Iraqi Jews as a result of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. They called for the establishment of an independent, democratic Arab government to be elected in Palestine and a prohibition of Zionist immigration to Palestine and land sales to Zionists.

• In 1946, Jewish members of the underground communist Iskra movement, led by Ezra Harari, founded the Jewish Anti-Zionist League in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt.

…shifting gears….

Open Mic Palestine

I wanted to give a shout out to Open Mic Palestine, a “mixed mic” hosted in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron. Palestinian and non-Palestinian artists can share share spoken word, poetry, song writing, music, stand-up comedy, storytelling and more.

Now time to go work on a 5-minute set!!!!

Until next time, stay safe out there.

-Zach