‘JEWISH SUPREMACY’ INVISIBILIZES JEWISH CRITICS OF ISRAEL

Originally, most Jews rejected the idea of a Zionist state

Supremacy is the state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status. The term ‘Jewish supremacy’ has been used to explain international support of Israel. [i] But Jews don’t think and act as one unified authority. In the US, Israel is losing support from Jews who don’t want to be identified with its persecutory, apartheid policies. [ii] More Jews are leaving Israel than are settling.

A little-known fact is that when it was first broached, the idea of Zionism was rejected among the very communities it was supposed to help.

History of Jewish anti-Zionism

Zionism – the idea of creating a separate state for Jews - originated in the 1880s in the face of the progroms - antisemitic violence against rural Jewish communities in Russian imperial territories. The ‘father of Zionism’ Theodor Hertzl (1860-1904) found little support for this idea among Jews themselves, according to his diaries. [iii] There were several reasons why.

Secular Jews in the late 19th Century preferred assimilation. They perceived Zionism as a threat to citizenship and equality in their native countries. Jewish magnates such as the Rothschilds had provided philanthropic funding for Jewish settlements in Argentina and Palestine but failed to answer Herzl’s requests to support the creation of a Jewish state.[iv] [v]

Most of the international Jewish Left prior to World War 1 believed Zionism was divisive and counter-revolutionary.

The idea of Jewish nationalism was also rejected on religious grounds. ‘The most eminent Orthodox rabbis of the first decade of the twentieth century, among them the Lubavitcher rebbe Sholom Dov Ber Schneersohn, issued powerful condemnations of political Zionism. In 1903 Schneersohn warned that the Zionists "have made nationalism a substitute for the Torah and the commandments.”’[vi]

After World War 1, the idea of a Jewish state found favour with the British branch of the Rothschilds. The Balfour Declaration, as it became known, was a letter sent on 2 November 1917 by the then Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to the Jewish community leader Lord Rothschild. The letter expressed support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

The Geopolitics of Zionism

Because the ideology of Zionism failed to gain support among Jews up until World War 1, it cannot be said that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 arose only from lobbying efforts. Mainstream academics agree that the motivation for British support of land for Jews was imperial: a foothold in the region was needed to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal within the United Kingdom’s sphere of influence.

Equally it cannot be said, despite widespread sympathy after World War 2 for the Zionist cause due to the horrors of the concentration camps, that Israel would have been established in 1948 without the geopolitical interests of rival major power leaders, none of them Jews.

Joseph Stalin of the USSR had targeted Jewish Bolsheviks. Nonetheless he was the first world leader to give the nod to Israeli state formation. Other members of the United Nations Security Council followed suit. Stalin subsequently sent Israel weapons that helped it win against Arab resistance, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Stalin was a realist. The United States was consolidating control over access to oil fields via oil corporations. The British had been an imperial power in the Middle East. Having Israel as an ally was a useful lever to ensure influence in the region.

At first the US wasn’t sure of Israel as an ally, going so far as to refuse support of the French, British and Israeli invasion to recapture Egypt’s Suez Canal in 1956.

It wasn’t until the Six-Day War in 1967 that Israel proved its worth as a strong military power capable of defeating a coalition of Arab states, primarily Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Keeping Israel out of the Soviet orbit during the Cold War cemented an Israeli-US strategic alliance.[viii]

By 1992, the Soviet Union was dismantled and Israeli and US policy goals had aligned. These goals included regime change and/or sanctions imposed on countries sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and inimical to American hegemony, such as Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Megarich Jewish organizations had sprung up to ensure that a pro Israel lobby funded Congressional campaigns to implement regime changes in the Middle East and continue the oppression of the Palestinian people. This lobby effectively over-rode US law which forbids external states’ involvement in its domestic government.

The Harassment of Jewish voices critical of Israel

The notion of Jewish supremacy perpetuates the illusion that all Jews support all Israeli policies. Undercutting the illusion are campaigns by Jews critical of Israel, which threaten Western support for Israeli aggression. This existential threat to Israel’s support has triggered a campaign of intimidation by which Jews seek to silence other Jews critical of Israel.

At the beginning of the millenia, the extremist Zionist group Masad2000 published a hit list on the Internet of 7000 ‘Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening’ Jews, mainly academics who had been critical of Israeli human rights violations and racism. It was called the S.H.I.T. list and employed vile insults such as ‘Judenrat.’

Yigal Bronner, an Israeli-born Professor at the University of Chicago, commented the list is "antisemitism itself, the real shit... undisguised and unambiguous hatred for Jews."[ix]

I was on the S.H.I.T. list until it was taken down. A few years later, a university dropped me from their adjunct schedule after an Israeli student lobby complained that my course content referred to the Occupation of Palestine. (According to Israel, there is no official occupation.)

Last year, the British Labour Party expelled a number of Jewish critics of Israel.[x]

The Tide is Turning

Today, the Neturei Karta, an Ultra-Orthodox movement within the anti-Zionist bloc, supports Palestinian sovereignty over the Holy Land and financial restitution for past losses.[vii]

The notion of Jewish supremacy is disempowering because it promotes the idea that the Jewish state is unassailable. Yet there are signs that Israel is losing the war in the court of global public opinion.

This year, for the first time, the United Nations is commemorating the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’ in Arab, in which at least 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948. On May 15, 2023, pro-Palestinian demonstrations were held around the world for the Nakba.

Israel is even losing favour among Christian evangelicals, the backbone of its support in the US Republican Party.

The Right of Return of refugees to their homelands is one of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Naturally, Israel resists the Palestinian right of return. Arabs already constitute 20% of Israeli population. If Palestinians refugees returned, their land and property restored, the demographic balance would be tipped in favour of Israeli-Arabs, and there would be no Jewish state.

A campaign for the Palestinian Right of Return would essentially revive the historic Jewish opposition to Zionism.

[i] For example, VT RADIO: Uncensored Alternative Foreign Policy Talk: Biden's Antisemitism Policy, Jewish Supremacy in Washington DC on Apple Podcasts

[ii] Poll finds a quarter of US Jews think Israel is 'apartheid state’ | The Times of Israel

[iii] . Project MUSE - Theodor Herzl's Diaries as a Bildungsroman (jhu.edu)

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Penslar, Derek Jonathan. “Zionism, Colonialism and Technocracy: Otto Warburg and the Commission for the Exploration of Palestine, 1903-7.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 25, no. 1, 1990, pp. 143–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/260725. Accessed 16 June 2023.

[vi] Goldman, Shalom (2009). Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land. UNC Press Books. pp. 272–73. ISBN 978-0-8078-3344-5.

[vii] . Accused of anti-Semitism, Ahmadinejad meets Jews | Reuters Neturei Karta | ADL

[viii] Kramer20171106-Mosaic.pdf.pdf (harvard.edu)

[ix] Antisemitism without bounds | Yigal Bronner | The Guardian

[x] Anti-racist Jews critical of Israel expelled by UK Labour during Hanukkah – Middle East Monitor