Is liberal Zionism dead?

 

Before you read this column keep in mind that I still consider myself a liberal Zionist.

But here's the dilemma as clearly stated by Roger Cohen in the New York Times: "I am a Zionist because the story of my forebears convinces me that Jews needed the homeland voted into existence by United Nations Resolution 181 in 1947… What I cannot accept, however, is the perversion of Zionism that has seen the inexorable growth of a Messianic Israeli nationalism claiming all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River; that has, for almost a half-century now, produced the systematic oppression of another people in the West Bank; that has led to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements on the very West Bank land of any Palestinian state; that isolates moderate Palestinians like Salam Fayyad in the name of divide-and-rule; that pursues policies that will make it impossible to remain a Jewish and democratic state; that seeks tactical advantage rather than the strategic breakthrough of a two-state peace; that blockades Gaza with 1.8 million people locked in its prison and is then surprised by the periodic eruption of the inmates; and that responds disproportionately to attacks in a way that kills hundreds of children."

Cohen concludes: "This, as a Zionist, I cannot accept…This corrosive Israeli exercise in the control of another people, breeding the contempt of the powerful for the oppressed, is a betrayal of the Zionism in which I still believe."

Many have ceased believing. There has been a spate of Jewish intellectuals who have renounced their belief in the Zionist concept in opinion pieces in the New York Review of Books, the Times, Haaretz and sundry other publications. More on this later.

This is not a new phenomenon. The rise of the Zionist movement in the United States produced a counter-reaction with the founding of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ) in 1942. Its premise was that Judaism is a religion, not a nationalist movement, and that in the 20th century any nation premised on religious identity would inherently be anti-liberal. Certainly it would be susceptible to that danger, but I did not see any country, including my own, welcoming survivors of the Holocaust. To me this alone justified Israel's existence.

The ACJ was founded by Reform rabbis and attracted such luminaries as Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Norman Thomas and Dorothy Thompson. After the founding of the state in 1948, and especially after the Six Day War of 1967, the organization fell into decline, although it still had many adherents as late as 1975. In that year I assumed the pulpit of the historic Touro Synagogue in New Orleans. Upon arriving I noticed that the Israeli flag was missing in the sanctuary. I purchased one and put it on the pulpit, whereupon it was immediately removed and I was informed by the board that, "That's the flag of a foreign nation." By the new millennium the ACJ was reduced to a few thousand members.

As a liberal Zionist I understand the core premise that I am an American by nationality, not a pseudo-Israeli, and a Jew by religion. Zionism has always been a double-edged sword for American Jewry. It gave us great pride and a feeling of empowerment after the Holocaust, but it also allowed many Jews to define their Jewish commitment in nationalist rather than religious terms. Why join a synagogue or worry about tikun olam (repair of the world) if you can fulfill your Jewish impulses by contributing to the UJA? I understood this problem while raising money for Israel as an executive director of a Jewish Federation for 13 years.

Zionism comes in many forms, from right-wing neo-fascistic to a liberal peace-oriented variety. The challenge for a liberal Zionist today is to remain liberal and committed to Judaism as a religion and still support Israel, believing that it, too, can reflect our liberal commitments. If not, ultimately the liberal Zionist will have to choose between his or her liberalism and Zionism. For me the choice is simple. I would have to choose my liberalism, which I believe comes from my core religious beliefs.

But I'm not there yet; however, even a mainstream and respected Jewish historian as Jonathan Sarna has admitted in 2010 in a Times article on the American Council for Judaism: "My sense is that they believe that events are proving they were right all along. Everything they prophesied — dual loyalty, nationalism being evil — has come to pass. I would be surprised if vast numbers of people moved over to the ACJ as an organization because of its reputation. But it's certainly the case that if the Holocaust underscored the problems of Jewish life in the Diaspora, recent years have highlighted the point that Zionism is no panacea."

Which brings us back to those intellectuals who have renounced their Zionism. In a recent Op-Ed in the Times, Antony Lerman writes: "Liberal Zionists embrace Israel as the Jewish state. For it to remain so, they insist it must have a Jewish majority in perpetuity. Yet to achieve this inevitably implies policies of exclusion and discrimination." He further argues that a de facto single state already exists, a proposition that the settlers affirm. He continues: "Since liberal Zionists can't countenance anything but two states, this situation leaves them high and dry." Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and special envoy to the Kerry peace negotiations, recently came awfully close to this same conclusion: "(the) Gaza War may have put another nail in the coffin of the two-state solution."

Thus Lerman and other ex-Zionists, including the late Tony Judt, the New York University professor, support a one-state solution where Jews and Arabs live as equals. Good luck. History has not been kind to dominant ethnic groups sharing a single state. Lebanon is in shambles. Iraq, without a strong dictator, is destined to splinter. Yugoslavia blew apart into six countries (seven, if you include Kosovo). After 66 years of conflict between Jews and Palestinians focused on one piece of land, what sane person grounded in reality can believe that they could co-exist in harmony under one government?

The reality is that without a two-state solution Israel is destined to become an undemocratic state focused on maintaining Jewish power by repressing its Muslim minority, or even its eventual Muslim majority. At that point no liberal can remain a Zionist. Since most American Jews are liberals, Judaism in this country will be radically altered, for better or worse — and there is hope that it will be better.

But, as I stated at the beginning of this column, I am a practicing liberal Zionist. By definition I must believe, until the facts so overwhelm me, that the two-state solution is still alive, even if it is only on life support. That's the reason I still contribute to Americans for Peace Now (APN), which supports Shalom Achshav, the Israeli peace movement, and J Street, which lobbies for U.S. government support for an equitable peace for Israel and the Palestinians.

It gets harder, but no one says that life is easy. I believe that liberal American Jews should not throw in the towel at this point of history as long as there is a chance that the current Israeli coalition could tumble and that Israel could decide to recognize the need for a separate Palestinian state as its neighbor — living in peace.

Rabbi Warshal is the publisher emeritus of the Jewish Journal and the author of the recently published "Provocative Columns: A Liberal Rabbi Reflects of Beliefs, Israel & American Politics, Volume II,"