Amongst older American Jews, this assertion of a Zionist consensus accommodates some reality. However amongst youthful American Jews, it’s false. In 2021, even earlier than Israel’s present far-right authorities took energy, the Jewish Voters Institute found that 38 % of American Jewish voters below the age of 40 seen Israel as an apartheid state, in contrast with 47 % who stated it’s not. In November, it revealed that 49 % of American Jewish voters ages 18 to 35 opposed Mr. Biden’s request for extra navy support to Israel. On many campuses, Jewish college students are on the forefront of protests for a cease-fire and divestment from Israel. They don’t converse for all — and perhaps not even most — of their Jewish friends. However they signify way over 2 %.
These progressive Jews are, because the U.S. editor of The London Overview of Books, Adam Shatz, famous to me, a double minority. Their anti-Zionism makes them a minority amongst American Jews, whereas their Jewishness makes them a minority within the Palestine solidarity motion. Fifteen years in the past, when the liberal Zionist group J Road was intent on being the “blocking back” for President Barack Obama’s push for a two-state answer, some liberal Jews imagined themselves main the push to finish Israel’s occupation of the West Financial institution and the Gaza Strip. Right this moment, the prospect of partition has diminished, and Palestinians more and more set the phrases of activist criticism of Israel. That discourse, which is peppered with phrases like “apartheid” and “decolonization,” is usually hostile to a Jewish state inside any borders.
There’s nothing antisemitic about envisioning a future through which Palestinians and Jews coexist on the premise of authorized equality moderately than Jewish supremacy. However in pro-Palestine activist circles in the USA, coexistence has receded as a theme. In 1999, Mr. Stated argued for “a binational Israeli-Palestinian state” that provided “self-determination for each peoples.” In his 2007 guide, “One Nation,” Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of The Digital Intifada, an influential supply of pro-Palestine information and opinion, imagined one state whose identify mirrored the identities of each main communities that inhabit it. The phrases “‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ are pricey to those that use them and so they shouldn’t be deserted,” he argued. “The nation could possibly be referred to as Yisrael-Falastin in Hebrew and Filastin-Isra’il in Arabic.”
In recent times, nonetheless, as Israel has moved to the precise, pro-Palestinian discourse in the USA has hardened. The phrase “From the river to the ocean, Palestine shall be free,” which dates from the Sixties however has gained new prominence since Oct. 7, doesn’t acknowledge Palestine and Israel’s binational character. To many American Jews, actually, the phrase suggests a Palestine freed from Jews. It sounds expulsionist, if not genocidal. It’s an ironic cost, provided that it’s Israel that right this moment controls the land between the river and the ocean, whose leaders openly advocate the mass exodus of Palestinians and which the International Court of Justice says might plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.
Palestinian students like Maha Nassar and Ahmad Khalidi argue that “From the river to the ocean, Palestine shall be free” doesn’t suggest the subjugation of Jews. It as an alternative displays the longstanding Palestinian perception that Palestine ought to have turn out to be an impartial nation when launched from European colonial management, a imaginative and prescient that doesn’t preclude Jews from residing freely alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbors. The Jewish teams closest to the Palestine solidarity motion agree: Jewish Voice for Peace’s Los Angeles chapter has argued that the slogan isn’t any extra anti-Jewish than the phrase “Black lives matter” is anti-white. And if the Palestine solidarity motion in the USA requires the genocide of Jews, it’s arduous to clarify why so many Jews have joined its ranks. Rabbi Alissa Smart, an organizer of Rabbis for Stop-Fireplace, estimates that apart from Palestinians, no different group has been as distinguished within the protests of the struggle as Jews.
