Jewish critics of Zionism have clashed with American Jewish leaders for many years

Since October 2023, American Jews have been in a intense, heated debate due to Israel's war within the Gaza Strip.

According to media reports, American Jews are experiencing “the big break“Expansion”Cracks”, and stand at a “moral, political crossroads.”

While most American Jews proceed to largely support IsraelOthers protest violently against US support for Israel and demand a ceasefire within the Gaza war. They carry signs reading “Not in our name.”

Their slogan underlines the undeniable fact that American development aid to Israel long relied on the support of American JewsThe United States' unconditional support for Israel was based partly on the promise that Israel would make sure the security of American Jews – and all Jews – especially after the Holocaust.

But American Jews have never been entirely united of their support for Israel or of their visions of Israel’s role and Palestine should play a job in American Jewish life.

No consensus

My recent book “The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism“,” analyzes a century of debates amongst American Jews about Zionism and Israel.

My report begins in 1885, when the Reform Jewish elite, with the aim of full integration into Jim Crow America, Pittsburgh Platformwho rejected Jewish nationalism because they feared that doing so would make them the goal of anti-Semitic accusations of dual loyalty.

Two years later Theodor Herzl founded the fashionable Zionist movementand relied on the support of European powers for a contemporary Jewish state.

The Genocide of the Jewish population of Europe within the Holocaust The way American Jews view Zionism has modified fundamentally.

Many believed that only a Jewish homeland in what was then Palestine could prevent one other genocide. Others insisted that the teachings of the Holocaust meant that Jews shouldn’t help turn one other population group into refugees: the Palestinians then living within the country.

There were other themes that contributed to a brand new understanding of Zionism in American Jewish communities within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties. These include: the Nakbanamely the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians throughout the founding of the State of Israel in 1948; Israel’s treatment of immigrant Jews from the Arab and Muslim world, often called Mizrahi Jews; and the rise of Israel’s militarism.

Over the course of the twentieth century, leading Jewish politicians created a so-called consensus amongst American Jews on Zionism and Israel, partly by silencing American Jewish critics of Zionism.

From the late Forties to 1961 journalist William Zukerman was editor of the Jewish Newslettera publication that captured a few of the voices of Jewish opposition to Zionism, including his own. He reported on Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians and documented how American Jewish money financed Israel's military campaigns reasonably than supporting vibrant American Jewish communities.

Because Zukerman dared to publish these criticisms, he faced fierce opposition and eventually lost financial support and sponsorship from Jewish community organizations.

Concerned that Zukerman's dissent would cause “increasing problems” for American support for IsraelIsraeli diplomats wrote to American Jewish leaders and together persuaded some Jewish journalists to remove Zukerman's writings from their publications.

Liberation movements, American Jews and Zionism

In the Nineteen Sixties, as Jewish leaders emphasized the urgency of Jewish unity over Israel and Zionism and demonstrated growing intolerance toward dissent, anti-colonial activists gained momentum all over the world. From 1948 to 1966, Israel was all Palestinian residents placed under martial lawwhich limited their freedom of movement and their access to opportunities and resources. In the Nineteen Fifties excluded Palestinian employees from the Histadrutthe biggest trade union federation within the state.

Activists allied with the cause for Palestinian rights referred to Israel's alliance with the colonial power France throughout the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 and criticized Israel as an occupier after the 1967 war. They also spoke of Israel's growing Alliance with Apartheid South Africa within the Seventies.

Black and Arab leaders In the United States, people taught and learned inside these anti-colonial movements. Civil rights and anti-war activists brought recent perspectives to the debates about Israel and Zionism.

Raised in a liberal Zionist family, student Marty Blatt learned to fight for justiceBlatt was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. His grandfather had died in a Nazi prison camp. In 1970, he joined the anti-war movement at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“The Vietnam War was a terrible injustice,” said Blatt. From the movement and from members of the Israeli left, he learned that “Israel/Palestine was another great injustice.”

Because young American Jews like Blatt, who joined the civil rights and anti-war movements, had no exposure to Palestinian history in school, at home, or in synagogue, they learned these lessons for the primary time. When they then criticized Israel and American Zionism, they too encountered hostility from the Jewish majority society.

Blatt attempted to teach his fellow students at Tufts in 1973 with a course called “Zionism Reconsidered.” In it, he taught the history of Zionism, the Palestinian resistance, and Israel's Cold War alliance with the United States. He taught students that anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitism.

On March 13, 1973, in the course of the semester, members of the Jewish Defense League, a far-right, anti-Arab, Jewish nationalist group founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane,disrupted Blatt's classThey called it an “anti-Jewish scandal” and distributed a leaflet that read: “Since the time of Hitler, no university in Germany has dared to offer a course that presents a one-sided view of any national movement.”

Jewish leaders within the Boston area urged community members to jot down to the Tufts administration to finish Blatt's course. These letters used apocalyptic language to explain the damage his course had caused and compared it to the annihilation of the Jewish people. During this controversy, Blatt picked up the phone at some point and overheard someone who knew his family history within the Holocaust telling him, “Your parents should not have been saved.”

An article about Blatt and his course in Boston's Jewish Advocate was headlined “Tufts Anti-Zionist Course Viewed as Abuse of Academic Freedom.” Although Tufts stood behind Blatt's right to show the course for one more semester, which it still touts the university websiteAngry reactions to the teachings have been surfacing in community forums for years.

Divided on campus and beyond

Right now, college campuses are rocked by debates concerning the boundaries between student safety and free speech, and whether Criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism.

Young Jews, dismayed by the unconditional Zionist agenda of the Jewish campus organization Hillel, who founded Open Hillel in 2013, at the moment are energetic within the protests in Gaza as “Judaism according to our own ideas.” You could also be surprised to learn that in late 1972, before even starting his course, Blatt, together with others, Tufts Hillel Non-Zionist CaucusHillel then expelled her from the organization.

For greater than a century, some American Jews have embodied the concept that unconditional support for Israel and Zionism is “not in our name.” They have placed justice first as a Jewish value and have been motivated not by self-hatred or anti-Semitism but by a firm commitment to human rights and to Jewish safety and community.

Today's activists protesting against the destruction in Gaza are testing the edge of dissent and the boundaries of speak freely And academic freedomThey represent what they consider is a more just vision of Israel and Palestine and a more inclusive vision of a Jewish community in America where there may be space for dissent and serious conversations about Israel and Zionism and where Jews stand in solidarity with groups working for justice in Palestine, Israel and all over the world.