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  • Resistance Growing To Zionism's Corrupting Influence

    Salem-News.Com, Oregon
    May 2 2014

    Resistance Growing To Zionism's Corrupting Influence

    Allan C. Brownfeld Salem-News.com

    Narrow nationalism, in recent years, has corrupted this humane Jewish tradition

    (WASHINGTON DC) - Zionism, the philosophy of Jewish nationalism which
    believes that Israel is the "homeland" of all Jews and that those
    living outside of Israel are in "exile," has distorted American Jewish
    life and is driving large numbers of young people away from what is
    becoming an increasingly intolerant community.

    Many synagogues fly Israeli flags and have replaced God with Israel as
    the virtual object of worship, a practice akin to the idolatry
    practiced in the worship of the Golden Calf. In 1999, the Union for
    Reform Judaism adopted a resolution declaring that Israel, not God,
    "is central to our religion." Emigration to Israel---"aliyah"---was
    encouraged as the highest form of religious expression.

    Sadly, the organized Jewish community has turned itself, in effect,
    into a defense attorney for Israel, defending actions by the Israeli
    government which are vigorously opposed at home. When it comes to
    separation of church and state, Jewish groups have led legal battles
    even against voluntary, non-sectarian school prayer. Yet, in Israel,
    they embrace a society with no separation of church and state, one
    which is, in real terms, a theocracy. Non-Orthodox Jews have fewer
    rights in Israel than any place in the Western world. Non-Orthodox
    rabbis cannot perform weddings or funerals in Israel, and their
    conversions are not recognized.

    Religious Freedom

    Do these Jewish groups really believe in religious freedom in the U.S.
    as a matter of principle----or do they take this position as a
    minority defending its self-interest? When Thomas Jefferson and James
    Madison promoted the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, their
    advocacy was based on their belief in religious freedom as an
    essential element of a free society. Jefferson and Madison were part
    of a protected majority---but opposed a state-supported church of any
    kind. The same cannot be said for American Jewish defenders of
    Israel's theocracy.

    Defending whatever a sovereign state does is hardly the expression of
    a religious worldview, hardly the Judaism of the prophets, who called
    for justice for men and women of every race and nation. What was the
    Anti-Defamation League thinking when it opposed a congressional
    resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide? Turkey, as it turns
    out, was then an ally of Israel, and would have been offended by such
    a resolution. The ADL's concern was with Israel-Turkish relations, not
    with the victimized Armenians. And how does the ADL explain its
    opposition to the construction of a mosque in New York City. Surely
    something other than a commitment to religious freedom was on its
    agenda.

    The Israel which American Jewish groups defend---whatever the
    issue----may be far different than the one many American Jews
    envision. NEW YORK TIMES columnist Thomas Friedman (April 16, 2014)
    writes: "We're not dealing anymore with your grandfather's Israel, and
    they're not dealing with your grandmother's America either. Time
    matters, and the near half-century since the 1967 war has changed both
    of us in ways neither wants to acknowledge."

    More Religious Society

    Israel, Friedman points out, "has become a more religious society---on
    Friday nights in Jerusalem now you barely see a car moving on the
    streets in Jewish neighborhoods, which only used to be the case on Yom
    Kippur---and the settlers are clearly more brazen...there are a
    growing core who are armed zealots, who will fight the IDF if it tries
    to remove them. You did not go to summer camp with these Jews. You did
    not meet them at your local Reform synagogue. This is a hard
    core...There are now about 350,000 Jews living in the West Bank. It
    took 50,000 Israeli police to remove 8,000 settlers from Gaza , who
    barely resisted. I fear the lift in the West Bank to make peace there
    is now just too heavy for conventional politics and diplomacy."

    With regard to Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to mediate a
    peace settlement, Friedman is not optimistic: "The truth is Kerry's
    mission is less an act of strategy and more an act of deep friendship.
    It is America trying to save Israel from trends that will inevitably
    undermine it as a Jewish and democratic state. But Kerry is the last
    of an old guard. Those in the Obama administration who think he is on
    a suicide mission reflect the new U.S. attitude toward the region. And
    those in Israel who denounce him as a nuisance reflect the new Israel.
    Kerry, in my view, is doing the Lord's work. But the weight of time
    and all the changes it has wrought on the ground may just be too heavy
    for such an act of friendship. If he folds his tent, though, Israelis
    and Palestinians will deeply regret it, and soon."

    An article in THE NEW YORK TIMES (April 13,2014) asked the question,
    "Are Iran and Israel Trading Places?" The authors, Israel
    Waismel-Manor, a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, and Abbas
    Milani, who heads the Iranian studies program at Stanford, note that
    while Islamic extremists appear to be in retreat in Iran, religious
    extremism in Israel is on the ascent.

    They write: "As the winds of change blow across Iran, secular
    democrats in Israel have been losing ground to religious and
    right-wing extremists who feel comfortable openly attacking the United
    States, Israel's strongest ally. In recent months, Israel's defense
    minister, Moshe Yaalon called Secretary of State John Kerry 'obsessive
    and messianic,' while Naftali Bennett, Israel's economy minister,
    labeled Mr. Kerry a 'mouthpiece' for anti-Semitic elements attempting
    to boycott Israel. Israel's secular democrats are growing increasingly
    worried that Israel's future may bear an uncomfortable resemblance to
    Iran's recent past."

    Shift Toward Orthodoxy

    The authors believe that, "Israel's shift toward orthodoxy is not
    merely a religious one. Since the vast majority of Orthodox Jews are
    also against any agreement with the Palestinians, with each passing
    day, the chances of reaching a peace deal diminish. Nor is time on the
    side of those who want to keep seeing a democratic Israel. If Israel
    continues the expansion of settlements, and peace talks serve no
    purpose but the extension of the status quo, the real existential
    threat to Israel will not be Iran's nuclear program but rather a
    surging tide of economic sanctions...One of Israel's most popular
    singers, the Iranian-born Rita Jahanforuz, laments on her recent
    album, 'In this world, I am alone and abandoned, like wild grass in
    the middle of the desert.' If Iran's moderates fail to push the
    country toward reform, and if secular Israelis can't halt the
    country's drift from democracy to theocracy, both Iranians and
    Israelis will increasingly find themselves fulfilling her sad
    prophecy."

    In Israel, racism and religious intolerance are growing---with targets
    ranging from Palestinian Muslims and Christians to Africans seeking
    political asylum to Bedouin tribesmen to non-Orthodox Jews. In
    response, American Jewish organizations have been silent.

    Israeli Jews who are concerned about their country's escalating
    intolerance have expressed dismay with this silence on the part of
    their American counterparts. Daniel Blatman, a history professor at
    Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote an article in HA'ARETZ (March 7,
    2014) headlined, "If I were an American Jew, I'd Worry About Israel's
    Racist Cancer." The article's subhead read, "Amid the awareness that
    Israel is sliding toward an apartheid regime, the silence of Jews
    worldwide is deafening."

    In Blatman's view, it is not "the Iranian threat that endangers
    Israel's survival, it's the moral and ethical collapse of its
    society...The racist cancer after 47 years of occupation and
    domination of another people has spread deep into Israeli
    society...World Jewry must help Israel be cured of it. It must speak
    out and act...and cooperate with the shrinking groups of Israelis who
    have not yet lost hope that it's possible to stop this downside toward
    the abyss."

    "The King's Torah"

    Consider the reality of contemporary Israel, which American Jewish
    groups completely ignore. The year 2009 saw the publication of Torat
    Ha'Melech ("The King's Torah"), which the Israeli newspaper MA'ARIV
    described as "230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of
    non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of
    when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew."

    According to the authors, Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur,
    non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and may have to be killed in
    order to "curb their evil inclinations."

    The commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the rabbis argue, refers only
    to killing other Jews. In their opinion, "There is justification for
    killing babies if it is clear they will grow up to harm us, and in
    such a situation may be harmed deliberately and not only during combat
    with adults."

    Torat Ha'Melech was written as a guide for Israeli soldiers and army
    officers seeking rabbinical guidance on the rules of engagement.
    According to the authors, all enemy civilians---including women and
    children---can be killed. The rabbis also justify the murder of Jewish
    dissidents, a philosophy which emerged from the settlement of Yitzhar
    in the occupied West Bank, where Shapira helps lead Od Yosef Chai
    yeshiva.

    Shapira studied under Rabbi Yitzchok Ginsburgh, who defended seven of
    his students who murdered an innocent Palestinian girl by asserting
    the superiority of "Jewish blood." In 1994, when the American-born
    Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers
    at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Ginsburgh lionized Goldstein
    in a lengthy article entitled "Baruch Hagever" ("Baruch, The Great
    Man").

    Funds From Israeli Government

    These views are not those of just a few extremists. Instead, Od Yosef
    Chai has received funds from both the Israeli Ministry of Education,
    as well as from a U.S. tax-exempt group called the Central Fund for
    Israel.

    Extremist rabbis, it seems, are part of Israel's religious
    establishment. Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Hebron, for example, has
    achieved considerable influence inside the military. In 2008, when the
    Israeli army's chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Ronski, brought a group
    of military intelligence officers to Hebron for a special tour, he
    concluded the day with a private meeting with Lior, who presented his
    views on modern warfare, which includes collective punishment of
    Palestinians. Ronski himself has overseen the distribution of
    extremist tracts to soldiers, including "Baruch Hagever," and a
    pamphlet stating, "When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being
    cruel to pure and honest soldiers."

    Ovadiah Yosef, the Shas party spiritual leader and Israeli chief
    rabbi, declared, "It is forbidden to be merciful to Arabs. You must
    send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and
    damnable."

    There is much turmoil in contemporary Israel as the state plans to
    remove Bedouin from their traditional lands, continues to build
    settlements in the occupied territories and confronts black African
    asylum seekers, largely from Eritrea and Sudan, who had heard that
    there was a Jewish state across the Sinai peninsula that claimed to
    embrace the lessons of the Holocaust. One of those lessons was that
    you don't turn away refugees when they might be slaughtered when they
    return home.

    55,000 Asylum Seekers

    Today, there are 55,000 asylum-seekers in Israel. Knowing how bad
    deporting them all would look, Israel instead is "inviting" them to
    Holot, a desert facility built to "concentrate" refugees claiming
    status in Israel. At anti-refugee rallies, right-wing politicians have
    called them a "cancer" who threaten "the white man's country." Since
    last December, Israel has ordered more than 3,000 asylum-seekers, all
    of whom have resided in the country for more than four years, to
    report to Holot.

    Because it is not described as a prison, regular rules involving
    trials, judges and juries do not apply. According to Allison Deger's
    report in MONDOWEISS (March 28, 2014), however, "The facility is a
    wasteland encircled in a trench of sun-dried sewage, off a dirt road
    where the only nearby structures are another prison, an army base and
    a crumbling abandoned gas station...Africans are allowed to leave the
    jail---comprised of small temporary structures made from shipping
    containers, resembling trailer-offices on construction sites---for a
    few hours. Still, the inmates must check in with guards three times a
    day and are locked in at night."

    American Jewish groups in the forefront of promoting immigration
    reform in the U.S. have been silent. As journalist David Sheen, a
    Canadian living in Israel whose stay there has led to his
    disillusionment with Zionism, points out, "In all of 2013...the
    Anti-Defamation League did not have one word to say about Israel's war
    on African refugees. It wasn't just ADL---it was every single Jewish
    American mainstream group across the board. None of them had anything
    to say in criticism of the Israeli government as it moved to kick out
    all African asylum-seekers. And it's so ironic because here in the
    U.S., these mainstream Jewish groups, there's wall-to-wall support for
    immigration reform."

    Ignoring Plight of Palestinians

    Peter Beinart, a liberal Zionist who is concerned about American Jews
    ignoring the plight of Israel's non-Jewish population, notes that,
    "Groups like AIPAC and the Presidents' Conference patrol public
    discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel. Not
    only does the organized American Jewish community mostly avoid public
    criticism of the Israeli government, it tries to prevent others from
    leveling such criticism as well."

    But if the organized Jewish community persists in its defense
    attorney-like relationship with Israel, more and more American Jews
    are disassociating themselves from that posture.

    In its religion column by Mark Oppenheimer, THE NEW YORK TIMES (Feb.
    14, 2014) highlights a group of men and women it describes as "devoted
    to Jewish observance, but at odds with Israel."

    In the case of Charles H. Manekin, an Orthodox Jew who is philosophy
    professor at the University of Maryland, Oppenheimer finds one who
    "believes that his Orthodox faith calls him to take stands against
    Israel. Prof. Manekin, 61, became Orthodox in college and became an
    Israeli citizen in the 1980s. Yet...he denounced Israel's occupation
    of the West Bank. Although not a member of the American Studies
    Association, he was pleased when the group voted in December not to
    collaborate with Israeli academic institutions...'As a religious Jew,'
    he said, 'I am especially disturbed by the daily injustices
    perpetrated against the Palestinians."

    "They Are Human Too"

    Another person featured is Stefan Krieger, who teaches law at Hofstra
    University. He refrains from work on the Sabbath, keeps kosher, and
    studies pages of the Talmud every day. When it comes to Israel, he
    recalls that, "My parents were very sensitive to the issue of
    Palestinians. My mom had a book called 'They Are Human Too,' and my
    memory is she would take it off the bookshelf, as if this was some
    sort of scandalous tract she was showing me, and show me pictures of
    Palestinians in refugee camps...I think nationalism and religion
    together are toxic."

    Daniel Boyarin, who teaches Talmud at the University of California,
    Berkeley, attended Orthodox synagogues for 30 years. He believes that
    Zionism was always flawed: "The very concept of a state defined as
    being for one people was deeply problematic and inevitably going to
    lead to a moral and political disaster. Which I think it has."

    Corey Robin, who teaches political science at Brooklyn College and is
    a regular at a Conservative synagogue, says that, "There are lots of
    ways to be Jewish, but worshiping a heavily militarized state seems
    like a bit of a comedown from our past. I love being Jewish. I just
    don't love the state of Israel."

    Skepticism Toward Zionism

    Columnist Mark Oppenheimer points out that, "Skepticism toward Zionism
    used to be common. Before World War II, Reform Jews tended to believe
    that they had found a home in the United States, and that Zionism
    could be seen as a form of dual loyalty. Orthodox Jews generally
    believed, theologically, that a state of Israel would have to wait for
    the Messiah's arrival (a view some ultra-Orthodox Jews still hold). In
    the 1930s and 40s, the persecution of European Jews turned many
    American Jews into Zionists...'When Hillel was founded, it took a
    clear non-Zionist position,' said Noam Planko, who teaches Jewish
    history at the University of Washington. 'What you see is a shift in
    the American spectrum: from non-Zionism with a few Zionists, to a
    situation, by the 1960s, where the assumption is that any American
    Jewish organization is also going to be clearly Zionist."

    As the 21st century proceeds, Oppenheimer believes, that assumption is
    more and more open to question. In the case of Hillel Foundations on
    college campuses, censorship of views critical of Israel has led to an
    open rebellion. Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut declares that,
    "Anti-Zionists will not be permitted to speak using the Hillel name or
    under the Hillel roof, under any circumstances." Mr. Fingerhut seems
    unaware of the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism and seems
    not to understand that Hillel was established to promote Judaism---not
    Zionism.

    Early in 2013, the Progressive Student Alliance at Harvard University
    launched an effort, Open Hillel, to challenge Hillel's guidelines.
    It's petition was signed by more than 800 Jewish students from diverse
    perspectives. In December, Swarthmore College Hillel declared itself
    to be the first "Open Hillel"---that is, the first Hillel to reject
    the guidelines established by Hillel International concerning
    discussions about Israel. These guidelines, students at Swarthmore
    asserted in a resolution passed Dec. 8, 2013, present a "monolithic
    face pertaining to Zionism" and "stifle healthy debate."

    Burg Barred At Harvard

    Even Israeli speakers who are critical of that government's policies
    have been barred from Hillel. At Harvard, in November 2013, Avraham
    Burg, former speaker of Israel's Knesset and now a sharp critic of its
    occupation policies, spoke in an undergraduate dormitory after being
    barred from speaking at Harvard Hillel. "It's such a shame that
    Harvard Hillel would not allow an open discussion about Israel to take
    place within its walls," said Sandra Korn, who helped organize the
    talk. "Hillel should be a space for students to engage with Jewish
    issues regardless of religious or political beliefs."

    Jewish Community leaders at Wesleyan University issued a statement on
    April 2, 2014 standing with the Open Hillel movement. Hillel's
    policies of censoring dissenting views, they declared, "have resulted
    in barring speakers from groups such as Breaking the Silence and the
    Israeli Knesset from speaking at Hillels and has resulted in Jewish
    Voice for Peace and other Jewish organizations not being welcome under
    the Hillel umbrella...At Wesleyan, values of inclusion are central to
    our identity both as Jews and as participants in the larger Wesleyan
    community..In Hillel's guidelines, Jewish plurality gives way to
    Zionist unanimity, and we are acutely aware that many individuals have
    formed robust, meaningful Jewish identities that do not comport with
    traditional Zionist ideas."

    The students argue that efforts at censorship violate basic Jewish
    values: "We believe that dialogue and critical engagement are central
    Jewish values. Our community is founded on texts that are meant to be
    interpreted, argued over, and debated endlessly... Hillel draws its
    name from the great rabbinical sage who believed that all should be
    able to learn, and that discourse should be free and unbound by
    guidelines imposed from above...We believe Hillel International's
    deviation from these principles alienates members of our community and
    strays from Jewish tradition." Among those signing this statement were
    former Wesleyan Jewish Renaissance Fellows Danny Blinderman, Becca
    Caspar-Johnson, Sydney Lewis and Hannah Plum.

    Resignation From Hillel

    In Florida, in March, Rabbi Bruce Worshal, writing in the FLORIDA
    SUN-SENTINEL/JEWISH JOURNAL, announced his resignation from an
    honorary Hillel board to protest the bar on free speech. He declared:
    "It is with a heavy heart that I write this column. I have long been a
    supporter of the Hillel movement on college campuses...I also played a
    significant role in obtaining funding for the Hillel building on the
    Florida Atlantic University campus. I have served on the board of
    directors of my local Hillel of Broward and Palm Beach...I am publicly
    declaring that I am getting off the Hillel bandwagon."

    Rabbi Worshal noted that, "Hillel is no longer the Hillel of yester
    years. In 2010 the national Hillel issued guidelines as to what is
    permissible dialogue at Hillel...This has essentially banned all
    liberal Jews who love Israel but disagree with the current Netanyahu
    government from Hillel involvement...I refuse to let my Zionism
    dominate my Judaism. The love of Israel is only part of Judaism. The
    Zionist movement is only 150 years old; Israel is only 65 years old.
    Judaism has existed for thousands of years without both.
    Unfortunately, for too many years, American Jewry has made Israel the
    major part of its Judaism. It's a part, but not the major part."

    Voices of dissent within the Jewish community are increasingly vocal.
    In his book, "Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion," a
    former militant Zionist, Rich Forer, writes that, "Zionism, in its
    current manifestation, is out of control....It is the ideological
    force that enables the stealing of another people's land and enslaving
    them in a virtual prison...Israel does not represent Judaism or
    traditional Jewish values. Its Zionist foundation distorts the very
    essence of Judaism...The dynamic of the victim mutating into the
    victimizer has been a frequent feature of conflict throughout history.
    After the trauma of their European experience, it is a tragic irony
    that the Jewish people did not guard against this paradigm, that their
    leaders would become committed to safeguarding their people's future
    through a movement that required the subjugation of another people."

    Reverence For Human Life

    Forer expresses the hope that, "One day...Jews will realize that
    Judaism's most sacred tenets extol reverence for human life more than
    an emotional attachment to land, no matter how holy they believe that
    land to be." He cites Rabbi Schlomo Yitchaki, better known by the
    acronym Rashi, the most famous biblical commentator of the Middle
    Ages, who taught: "Where the Torah tells about the creation of the
    first human being...the earth from which Adam was formed was not taken
    from one spot but from various parts of the globe. Thus, human dignity
    does not depend on the place of one's birth nor is it limited to one
    region."

    Anna Baltzer, author of "Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman
    In The Occupation," grew up in a secular, unaffiliated Jewish
    household. She recalls that, "I knew where my allegiance lay. I saw
    Israel as a victimized country that simply wanted to live in peace but
    couldn't because of its aggressive, Jew-hating Arab neighbors...I
    first confronted an alternative narrative while traveling through the
    Middle East. I was taken in by families of Palestinian refugees, who
    told me their stories, They recounted tales of displacement, destroyed
    villages, land confiscation, imprisonment without trial and torture.
    When I first heard these accusations, I didn't want to believe them.
    In fact, at first I didn't...I set out to do some research to prove
    them wrong and quickly realized how little I actually knew about the
    situation."

    What she discovered, notes Baltzer, "shocked me beyond anything I had
    read or heard. I witnessed a system of complete segregation. There was
    one kind of road for Jews living in the West Bank and another for
    Palestinians. I saw Jewish Israelis paid to leave Israel and move to
    the West Bank, pushing off my Muslim and Christian neighbors simply
    because of their ethnicity and religion. I visited a Palestinian
    village that had been intentionally covered in raw sewage, forcing
    inhabitants to leave and clearing the surrounding area for subsequent
    Jewish-only settlement...The human rights violations I witnessed in
    Israel/Palestine are profoundly contrary to the basic tenets of
    Judaism. There is nothing Jewish about occupation and discrimination,
    and there's nothing anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic about recognizing and
    examining these practices; in fact, it's in line with a Jewish
    tradition of social justice."

    Passivity and Indifference

    Poet and essayist Irina Klepfisz was one of the organizers of the
    Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and
    Gaza. Her father, Michal Klepfisz, belonged to the Jewish Fighters
    Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was killed in 1943 while
    protecting other Jewish fighters who were trying to escape during an
    uprising against the Nazis. Explaining why she was driven to seek
    justice for the Palestinians, Klepfisz said: "Knowing that the world
    was passive and indifferent while six million Jews died, I have always
    considered passivity and indifference the worst of evils. Those who do
    nothing, I believe, are good German collaborators. I do not want to be
    a collaborator."

    In April, THE FORWARD asked its readers if the spending priorities of
    American Jewish charities match those of American Jews. The paper
    reported (April 18, 2014): "Judging by an informal but highly
    revealing poll of Forward readers, the answer is no. As in NO. As in:
    spend more money on education, culture and community, about the same
    on general advocacy and much less on Israel. The Forward's poll grew
    out of our groundbreaking series on the Jewish charitable network, in
    which we analyzed newly released tax documents filed by 3,600
    not-for-profit organizations to better understand an ecosystem with
    assets of roughly $26 billion. The largest share of donor money
    outside the federation system goes to organizations that focus on
    Israel, with health care and social services second and education
    third. But when we asked readers to register their choices...(they)
    responded with a dramatically different list of priorities. Education
    leaped to the top, while Israel dropped to fourth place."

    A long time donor to Jewish causes who has chaired federation and
    Israel Bond campaigns expresses concern about efforts to silence
    critics of Israel within the Jewish community. Larry Gellman, in an
    article headlined "A Donor Laments the Dwindling Size of the Tent"
    (Forward, April 11, 2014) writes: "I am saddened and frustrated by the
    recent decision of Federation and Hillel of Greater Philadelphia to
    co-sponsor a divisive film screening that demonizes a fellow Jewish
    group---in this case, J Street...The film 'The J Street Challenge,' is
    nothing more than a lengthy political advertisement, featuring
    testimony from like-minded right-wing pundits, and funded by
    well-known J Street detractors who are trying to move from the fringe,
    to defining the parameters of what can be discussed in our community."

    Gellman points to the fact that, "Our community has a vibrant
    diversity of opinion, and we should embrace that...If we disagree
    about the proper course for Israel to take, we should debate those
    differences openly instead of slinging mud...As a person who has
    worked so hard and invested so much in building our Jewish
    communities, it saddens me profoundly to see so many of the very
    organizations and people whom I believed shared common Jewish values
    and a commitment to open respectful conversation suddenly behaving in
    such destructive ways."

    "Israel Right Or Wrong"

    Those who have sought to enforce a code of "Israel, right or wrong"
    within the American Jewish community appear to be in retreat, which
    may be the cause of their increasingly desperate attempts to enforce a
    standard of orthodoxy upon all discourse regarding Israel. They are
    being challenged by those who believe that free speech and open
    discussion is an important Jewish value. Many of those engaged in that
    challenge may not be aware that Zionism---and the notion that Israel
    is, somehow "central" to Judaism---is a somewhat recent phenomenon.
    Historically, Zionism has been a minority view within Judaism, and is
    likely to become a minority view in the future.

    In 1841, at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Elohim in
    Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski declared: "This
    country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God
    our temple."

    In 1885, under the leadership Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the Union of
    American Hebrew Congregations, meeting in Pittsburgh, issued a
    statement of principles which declared: "We consider ourselves no
    longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect
    neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the
    sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any laws concerning the Jewish
    state."

    As one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th
    century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said: "Judaism is not a religion of
    space and does not worship the soil. So, too, the State of Israel is
    not the climax of Jewish history, but a test of the integrity of the
    Jewish people and the competence of Judaism"

    American Council for Judaism

    Since 1942, the American Council for Judaism has advanced the
    philosophy that Judaism is a religion of universal values, not a
    nationality, and has maintained that Americans of Jewish faith are
    Americans by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans
    are Protestants, Catholics or Muslims. Current developments and trends
    show us the prophetic vision of its founders.

    Among the Council's founders was Rabbi Morris Lazaron of Baltimore. He
    had been an early Zionist, captured by the romantic vision of the
    movement. After visiting Nazi Germany and seeing the effects of its
    nationalism, Lazaron became convinced that nationalism, a force
    leading the world to destruction, could not serve as an instrument for
    Jewish salvation. For Lazaron, the mixture of religion and state
    spelled disaster.

    Judah Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote
    a letter endorsing the Council's statement of principles: "It is true
    that Jewish nationalism tends to confuse people not because it is
    secular and not religious, but because this nationalism is unhappily
    chauvinistic and narrow and terroristic in the best style of Eastern
    European nationalism."

    Challenging The Zionist Consensus

    The intolerance of the organized Jewish community was reaffirmed in
    April when the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
    Organizations voted to deny membership to J Street, the dovish
    lobbying group which has been critical of some Israeli policies. THE
    NEW YORK TIMES (May 1, 2014) noted that, "A poll conducted last year
    by the Pew Research Center found that a plurality of American Jews did
    not believe the Israeli government was making a sincere effort to
    reach a peace settlement....The president of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami,
    said the vote sent a 'terrible message' to those who have concerns
    about aspects of Israeli policy...'It sends the worst possible signal
    to young Jews who want to be connected to the Jewish community, but
    also want to have freedom of thought and expression.'"

    Recently, the number of Jewish voices challenging the Zionist
    consensus which has emerged in organized American Jewish life is
    growing. There is a new understanding that the idolatry of the state
    of Israel has led to the distortion of a rich religious heritage. The
    founders of Reform Judaism, in particular, rejected the notion of a
    God confined to a particular "holy" land, embracing instead a
    universal God, the Father of all men, and a religion of universal
    values as relevant in New York, London or Paris as in Jerusalem.

    Universal Faith

    The Prophets preached a universal faith of ethical values for men and
    women of every race and nation. Narrow nationalism, in recent years,
    has corrupted this humane Jewish tradition. Today, more and more
    American Jews are seeking to return to that tradition, a vindication
    of the vision of those who have worked so hard to keep that philosophy
    alive. The Zionist moment in American Jewish life seems to have
    passed, although its retreat will be divisive and its assault upon
    those who challenge its premises will be harsh. That, after all, is
    how movements in retreat traditionally conduct themselves.

    -------------------------

    Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and serves as
    Associate Editor of The Lincoln Review and Editor of Issues. The
    author of five books, he has served on the staff of the U.S. Senate,
    House of Representatives and the Office of the Vice President.

    http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may012014/zionist-corruption-ab.php

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