Marshall's view is, We can't divide over Israel because there are anti-Semites at the gate. He wrote during the Keith Ellison fight:
"[T]ruly the last thing the Democratic Party needs right now is a toxic internecine fight over Israel. And equally important, we are in an era when real anti-Semitism has been rearing its head in the United States in a way it has not done in [many years]."
I could go on to Jeffrey Goldberg, Jennifer Rubin, Brian Lehrer, Jonathan Chait, Dana Milbank, and Terry Gross (who disciplined Jimmy Carter for daring to say "apartheid"); to Time Warner (CNN) executive Gary Ginsberg who wrote speeches for Netanyahu, or Comcast (NBC) executive David Cohen who raised money for the Israeli army; to the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and People for the American Way.
I admire what these people are doing for our country during the rise of intolerance. But white nationalists have themselves pointed out that American Zionists in powerful positions have a reservation on liberalism when it comes to Israel. We only want what they want, a nation for ourselves, say those white nationalists. "I am a white Zionist," Richard Spencer said on Israeli television yesterday. JVP's Naomi Dann writes in the Forward today: "Richard Spencer Might Be the Worst Person in America. But He's Right About Israel."
American Jews need to get clear on the nationalism question. Are they for an ethnic state that seeks to shelter one ethnicity, even if that means driving out the minority and discriminating against that minority on an ongoing basis -- and having government coalitions composed of parties representing one religious belief? Or are they against that kind of arrangement? If they're against it here, they should be against it there, in what Cory Booker's largest donor calls the "Jewish Homeland" -- the country of Greater Israel, which is half Jewish and half Palestinian, with most of those Palestinians lacking all rights.
Charlottesville makes this conversation urgent because the hypocrisy of the Democratic leadership hurts resistance to intolerance. You can't be righteously anti-nationalist in the U.S. and evangelists for Jewish nationalism over there.
This is not just good liberal philosophy. It's the best policy to fight anti-Semitism. Israel's status as a human-rights abuser is now its global reputation; and Jews and Jewish organizations who blindly defend it are hurting the reputation of Jews. Tony Klug explained this at J Street a few months ago. The Palestinian conflict is now defining the Jewish reputation around the world and making Jewish life in other countries "precarious."
"[I]f Israel does not end the occupation sharply, and if organized Jewish opinion in other countries appears openly to back it, there will indeed almost certainly be a further surge in anti-Jewish sentiment, potentially unleashing more sinister impulses."
To stem those "sinister" forces, Klug said American Jews must pressure Israel to end the occupation or give Palestinians equal rights. Pretty much what happened in the South, a long time ago."
Liberalism and Zionism (as it has worked out anyway) are incompatible. That is why so many liberal Zionists have turned quietly into non-Zionists in recent years. We see this in the surging membership of Jewish Voice for Peace, and in the ways Bernie Sanders, Tom Friedman and Ayelet Waldman have stepped away from Zionism. Jeffrey Goldberg is in the halfway house.
Deep in their hearts, liberals know that we are in a different age from the mid-20th century, and that Zionism is an untenable ideology in an era in which the country is seeking to solidify minority rights and other progressive achievements. They need to say so out loud.
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