As Netanyahu speaks to Congress, it’s never been more important — or lonely — to be a liberal Zionist
Liberal Zionists are stuck between a fascist Israeli right and an anti-war movement rife with antisemitism
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads the weekly cabinet meeting at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv on January 7. Photo by Ronen Zvulun/POOL/AFP via Getty images
Last summer, my parents and my grandmother, in her early 90s and visiting from Israel, yelled with me and hundreds of others at a protest outside a synagogue in New Jersey. “Shame on Rothman! Shame on Rothman!”
We were peacefully protesting the presence of Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial coup, who was being hosted by the synagogue. I like to think our protest rattled Rothman: The wannabe authoritarian looked petulant the next day when he yanked a megaphone away from a protester in New York City. But more importantly, it was a prime example of how liberal Zionists must hold Israeli politicians accountable even as others demonize Israel and spread anti-Zionist sentiment.
For liberal Zionists like me, who believe loving Israel means defending and criticizing it, the challenge is to call out both the Israeli right and the American left, sometimes agreeing with their critiques of the other, while aligning with neither and fighting both. This week, as Netanyahu speaks to Congress, that means protesting Netanyahu while simultaneously protesting some of the other groups protesting him, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, ANSWER Coalition and the more than a dozen other organizations supporting a “national mobilization” to surround the Capitol and “Arrest Netanyahu.”
In my work in Democratic political communications, I’ve written speeches and essays for powerful Democratic politicians and activists, but I refuse to tamp down my fury at the pro-Palestine left’s rabid antisemitism in order to be welcomed into progressive spaces. I’m an Israeli-American with dozens of loved ones who live in the country, but I refuse to silence my disgust at the Israeli right’s ascendant fascism in order to be labeled an ally of the Jewish state. I worry about how Israel is often misunderstood by outsiders who aren’t from there, but I refuse to shy away from forcefully protesting Netanyahu’s craven leadership and his speech to Congress.
Right now, liberal Zionists are wedged between an Israeli right destroying a country we love and an American left anti-war movement full of antisemitism and conspiracy theories. Netanyahu is working to scuttle a hostage deal amid rising settler violence and the largest Israeli seizure of West Bank land in decades. At the same time, groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Within Our Lifetime deny or defend Oct. 7 as resistance, while the broader left dismisses antisemitism as a moral panic.
The Israeli far right and American far left share the same delusion of having a political project so important that all actions on its behalf must inherently be just. For the Israeli far right, Jewish sovereignty over “Greater Israel,” including the West Bank and Gaza, is a biblical destiny that turns settler pogroms or attacks on humanitarian aid convoys into messianic mitzvahs. For the American far left, the fight to free Palestinians from Israeli oppression is history converging toward liberation, a force powerful enough to warp the murder of Jews into a demand of justice.
Liberal Zionists must call out the twisted logic of both these groups. Yet this is harder than it seems.
When violence erupted between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters outside Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles earlier this summer, a five-minute walk from where my partner and I live, it would have been tempting to shelter in the safe harbor of certainty. But the binary thinking of either side didn’t represent reality.
Pro-Palestinian protesters should not have blocked access to the shul. Yet I know for a fact that it is possible to peacefully protest the Israeli right, or Israeli settlements — the shul was hosting an Israeli real estate event that allegedly included settlement properties — outside of a synagogue without blocking access to it, and that doing so is not automatically antisemitic. I know, because I did it last year with my family.
Many supporters of Israel, especially in the United States, are so incensed by unfair criticism of the country that they stay silent about serious wrongs. They feel unable to both publicly support and criticize at the same time. Three years ago, a then-leader of one of America’s largest Jewish organizations told me they wouldn’t vocally criticize Israel, even when they thought it warranted, because they didn’t want to pile on to attacks by the anti-Israel crowd. A mainstream American Jewish leader recently called on American Jews not to protest Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress for similar reasons.
This leaves liberal Zionists with a simple prescription that can feel agonizing to carry out — one that President Abraham Lincoln captured in an 1854 speech critiquing slavery: “Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.” In other words, we must sometimes criticize friends and agree with enemies. What we cannot do is suppress our dissent.
Calling out wrongs no matter where they come from can feel lonely. But even after Oct. 7, I’ve spoken with plenty of people who feel ill at ease among both the American left and Israeli right. I am not a “minority of one,” as George Orwell wrote in 1984. And if you are a liberal Zionist like me, then neither are you.
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