‘Anti-Religious’ Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism

How do you like some of your tax dollars being spent by Israeli religious extremists to flatten Gaza and support illegal colonization of the West Bank in Palestine? Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are doing this, thus dragging the U.S.A. into the massive destruction of Gaza and making Jews much more unsafe around the globe.

When the House of Representatives’ Resolution 894 against anti-Semitism easily passed on December 5by a 311-14 vote it was important, and also symbolically obvious. Like racism and sexism, anti-Semitism has been and remains a cancer in our modern times.

However, although strongly supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, a surprising number of 92 Democrats simply voted “Present” on 894, thereby signaling support but some reservations.

How did this happen?

Resolution 894 stated five basic points, and one of them should raise our concerns without compromising this world-wide condemnation of anti-Semitism.

Point four in Resolution 894 asserts that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” This is simply untrue.

Before discussing the error, I know we all face an angry din of screaming politicians mixed with the agonizing cries of slaughtered Palestinian children and the shouts of massacred Israelis (and over 130 hostages still held by Hamas from October 7).

Rational dialogue hasn’t been possible given the incredible suffering and the emotional reactions on both sides. When we see how the implacably murderous Hamas faction as well as Netanyahu’s religious Israeli government focus on bloody retribution, logical and humane compromises become nearly impossible.

In the current impasse, including the “flattening of Gaza” by the IDF — as President Macron describes the massive Israeli bombings, we can see ugly theocratic thinking on both sides. Although many Israelis and most American Jews do favor a cease fire, revenge-oriented Netanyahu and his powerful minister Itamar Ben-Gvir refuse despite knowing the continued warfare actually elicits more global anti-Semitism. “Global anti-Semitism” is mentioned in three of Resolution 864’s five points.

Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was amenable with Cyprus or even British East Africa (Uganda) serving as a “safe haven” for persecuted ethnic and religious Jews.

It was only after the 1967 “Six-Day War” that Israel won physical control over the West Bank and the Sinai (Sinai later returned to Egypt). The so-called “settlements” outside the original 1948 area designated by the UN do constitute colonialism. It began very slowly under the radar and without violence — a stealthy and quiet annexation, and not until the 1980s did it significantly increase on President Reagan’s watch, a leader with notable support from American evangelicals. After about 1980 the U.S. government and the GOP did not discourage the slow Israeli infiltration of West Bank land that had never been inside the State of Israel’s 1948 political boundaries. Now, well over 600,000 illegal colonists have dug in there. Many of these Jewish colonies have been supported by funding from American Jews, some with dual passports, and American evangelicals eager for the rapture and second coming.

When Israel took over the West Bank and Jerusalem as an unintended consequence of the Six-Day War (started by Israel’s Arab enemies), there had been no official wish to keep the West Bank or Jerusalem. In his masterly The Accidental Empire, noted Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg wrote:

Colonialism is a loaded word today … Colonialism, like the [1967] conquest itself reflected a vacuum of [Israeli] strategy. It was born of a national strategy of evasion.

I’ve traveled to Israel three times and worked as an underwater archaeologist at Tel Dor on the coast in 1981. When I spent some days at kibbutz Ramat David in the Jezreel Valley with my friend Avner Raban I learned it had been founded in 1926 by non-religious socialist Jews. Like Herzl, there was little talk there of a theocratically inspired “religion-based right” to the West Bank lands inhabited by the Palestinians for centuries.

I have been and remain a staunch supporter of original political Zionism aiming to establish a safe haven for Jews all over the globe, and fully achieved in 1948. Despite the many wars since, the theocratic state of Israel has kept its independence with the committed support of the U.S.A.

Extreme religious Zionism under the corrupt Bibi Netanyahu and fanatic Ben-Gvir openly supports more colonial occupation of the West Bank (irredentism), and outright violence against West Bank Palestinians has significantly increased.

Along with many Americans and most American Jews, I oppose the continuing bloodbath in the Gaza Strip and urge an immediate cease-fire.

We should reject the simplistic linkage of religious Zionism with political Zionism, and oblige Israel to honor the 1948 border. Theocratic governments such as Iran and Israel are unable to exercise rational diplomacy, making this conflict essentially eternal.

“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord” in Torah (Deuteronomy 32:35), and we hear the same revelation repeated by Jesus in the Christian New Testament (at Romans 12:19-21). The deaths of 9,000-plus children and another 10,000 Palestinians is more than proportional to the 1,200 massacred Israelis on October 7, and these horrors reveal the depravity of theocratic responses.

Speaking out against religious Zionism is not anti-Semitic as Resolution 894 falsely declares.

Do Netanyu and extreme religious Zionists like Ben-Gvir acknowledge that they themselves are also causing sky-rocketing global anti-Semitism in their cruel retribution against Gaza?