The “Good Jews” Are Never Good Enough

An essay on the orthodoxies of self-negation, self-destruction, and the fringe that fall prey.

בס״ד — תדעו שהכל שכתוב פה זה רק לשון לתועלת למען שם שמיים

What is a “token”?

Across every minority group, there are a recognizable loud few sets of people, who dissent from the majority-consensus on the needs of their community. Discourse and debate are a vital practice for any society. However, some of these fringe voices act against basic community interests, under the guise of “a greater cause”. Generally, they may either have faced discrimination and internalized negative stereotypes about their people and after wished to prove themselves superior and acceptable in the eyes of their oppressors. Or, (in more prevalent cases today) they may have never personally known much discrimination for their identity and may simply be seeking attention and recognition. Yet, in doing so, they sacrifice the common welfare of their people in an exchange for special status from powerful majorities as…”the good ones”. These “tokens” are useful faces, exploited to legitimize and uphold unjust treatment against their people.

A Brief Survey of “The Good Jews”

Throughout world history, we have many numerable outliers who fit into this category. In the Jewish community alone, various individuals and groups come to mind. The earliest examples include the portion of Hebrews described in Parashat Beshalach (Exodus 13:17–17:16) who refused to emigrate from slavery in Egypt (c. 1313 BCE), Jewish Hellenists, such as Philo of Alexandria (d. circa 45 CE), converts to Christianity and messianic Jews, like Immanuel Tremellius (d. 1580 CE), and converts to Islam, i.e. Ka’b al-Ahbar (d. 652 CE) and Ya’qub ibn Killis (d. 991 CE). Each responded to setbacks of discrimination in their careers and personal lives by conforming to the mold of their societies. They ultimately paid the price, anyways, of being rejected — at various points in their lives. Their legacies are questioned and ridiculed by their patrons to this day.

The most extreme examples of such outliers include Jewish collaborators with the Nazis and the Gestapo, who rounded up their people and sent them off to death camps and turned in those partaking in the resistance: Jozef Andrzej Szerynski, Calel Perechodnik, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski “King Chaim the Terrible”, Abraham Gancwajch, Van Dijk, Stella Goldschlag, Max Naumann, and Rolf Isaaksohn. Many of them were executed for eventual desertion or for their atrocious crimes after World War II, or committed suicide years after.

There are also the likes of members of the Bund and the Soviet Anti-Zionist Yevsektsiya (Евсекция — Jewish Sections of the Communist Party), who liquidated Jewish communal institutions, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered Jewish leaders, and banned Jewish heritage and practices as a “threat to the state” or “to the revolution”: Alexander Tshemeriski, Esther Frumkin, Moses Rafes, Moyshe Litvakov, and more. These tokens met a sorrowful fate of being “purged” through imprisonment, torture, exile, labor in Siberia, and gunshot.

When all other options of supposed Jewish liberation (i.e. assimilation, revolution) were taken off the table by the destruction of diasporic European Jewry — as Theodor Herzl predicted — modern Zionism remained the response to antisemitism to succeed. Yet, the futile and disastrous attitudes of the Yevsektsiya, like many other token Jewish sentiments, live on.

In the United States, where most Jews outside of Israel reside today, a not insignificant string of assimilated multi-generational American Jews have reincarnated a pattern of cowering responses to antisemitism by conforming to a Yevsektsiya tradition of Anti-Zionism — opposition to Jewish peoplehood, refuge, and self-determination in any part of Israel-Palestine. As classical tropes of antisemitism endure: those of “Jewish power”, “greed”, “disloyalty”, “deceit”, and “bloodlust”, such tropes find their way into contemporary movements and pro-Palestinian and co-opted organizations as Anti-Zionism as well.

Today, there are a majority of Jews who stand proudly in favor of their community’s safety, there are quietist Jews latching onto intergenerational trauma who remain silent, and then there are Jewish tokens who see blatant hate packaged into a new “moral” form and wish to accommodate it, as their way out. At their core, Jewish Anti-Zionists are hopeful that by pursuing allegiance to non-Jewish majorities, including other minority populations seeking equity, they will reach long-awaited acceptance and beneficial alliances, peace and universal justice, wherever they currently reside. This devoted allegiance is in stark contrast to partnership, which denotes reached equal status.

The latter Jews involved in “the new revolution” of social justice movements find themselves hollowing out their identities and pride, or facing purge from non-Jewish majorities. Jewish consciousness and baseline self-esteem and safety are subjugated. But tale as old as time shows us that the “Good Jews” of society, in any given generation, are never good enough.

“The Good Jews” of Today

With the help of examples provided publicly by proud Jewish writers via Twitter, @Claire_V0ltaire, @The_Bear_Jew18, @JachnunEmpire, @kweansmom, and more, I present to you a brief but necessary series of “Good [Anti-Zionist] Jews” today that have never become good enough.

For ease of navigation, this is the order of individuals and groups covered. (Following is an analysis of underlying factors producing young Jewish Anti-Zionists in the 21st century):

• Mairav Zonszein
• Ofer Cassif
• Jewdas
• Peter Beinart
• Tasha Kaminsky
• Noam Chomsky
• Amira Hass
• Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch
• Ariel Gold, CODEPINK
• IfNotNow (INN)
• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
• Neturei Karta

Mairav Zonszein

Mairav Zonszein is an Israeli Anti-Zionist “senior analyst on Israel-Palestine” at the International Crisis Group and a frequent contributor to skewed token Anti-Zionist sources Jewish Currents and +972 Magazine. In a special case that Mairav condemned the murder of South African Jewish immigrant to Israel and civilian, Eli Kay, Anti-Zionist comrades taunted her, wistfully wishing that she had been killed by Palestinian terrorists as well.

In another screenshot, a Palestinian activist tweeted “stop putting Mairav on my timeline [sic]. think before you retweet. my people are suffering enough”. After condemning antisemite Roger Waters as unrepresentative of the “movement for equality and justice in Israel and Palestine”, Ali Abunimah (Director of ElectronicIntifada.net) reprimanded her saying that it isn’t her place to choose who is and isn’t part of the movement; that she is exercising ‘too much control’ and that it’s a “habit you need to work on unlearning”. Mairav caved in replying, “Point taken”. More on the above here.

Ofer Cassif

Ofer Cassif is the leading [token] Jewish member of Hadash, an Arab-dominated communist party in Israel, headed by Member of Knesset, Ayman Odeh. MK Cassif has come out in support of the violent acts of Palestinian terrorists throughout the years. He has compared Israeli soldiers targeted by Palestinian terrorists to Nazis being fought by partisans, has called at least three Jewish members of Knesset “Nazis“, and has even compared citizens parading with the Israeli flag to the Neo-Nazis of a 1977 demonstration in Skokie, Illinois (home to many Holocaust survivors). He has castigated and labeled Jewish pilgrims to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as “Christians” and “cancer”, among many other atrocious statements. In 2019, his support for terror nearly cost him a bill preventing his candidacy in the Knesset, but the bill stopped short at the Israeli Supreme Court. When initially being questioned on diplomatic access to a contested area in the South Hebron Hills on his way to protest, he assaulted an Israeli police officer. In a more recent video interview, MK Cassif expressed his intention to boycott Ukrainian President Zelenskiy’s speech to the Knesset.

An Anti-Zionist visiting professor at the University of Miami (Rula Jebreal) tweeted the footage and condemned MK Cassif for this and for claiming that “Ukrainians committed crimes against Russia”. While an agreeable condemnation, the tweet began with an attribution of this fringe pro-Russian stance to the “moral bankruptcy of ethno nationalism [sic]” (referring to all of Israeli Jewish society), while the Arab members of MK Cassif’s party and the Palestinian Authority have led the vocal support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in the region. Professor Jebreal’s condemnation also conveniently neglected Cassif’s history of antisemitic statements.

Jewdas

Jewdas is a radical leftist Anti-Zionist Jewish group based in the UK, that was founded in 2006 by “Geoffrey L. Cohen”. The anonymous fringe group has fetishized diaspora Jewish life as a Bundist alternative to Zionism. It has satirized and trivialized the need of refuge in Israel for a large majority of Jewry of post-war Europe, Asia, and Africa. Retweeting a libelous antisemitic claim on Israel’s power by aforementioned Ali Abunimah, Jewdas has gone so far as calling Israel a “steaming pile of sewage which needs to be properly disposed of” on Twitter. The organization has also aligned itself with the well-documented, systemically antisemitic bulk of the British Labour Party, against the voices and reforms of the Jewish Labour Movement.

When Jewdas made a post about the network of individuals and organizations that they affiliate with online (some of them surprisingly mainstream Jewish UK organizations), Anti-Zionist leftist author Asa Winstanley accused Jewdas of having their hand in the firing of antisemitic British professor, David Miller and the backlash against antisemitic comments by the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. “Good Jew credentials” revoked.

Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart, once a liberal Jewish-American Zionist and an outspoken, critical voice of the Jewish state, has salvaged his career by “getting with the times” — not only denouncing his own prior enabling of sexual harassment in the workplace, but through espousing leftism — namely, peddling Anti-Zionist aims of the destruction of Israel, favoring a transition into a binational one-state entity (an ideal that failed repeatedly in the Middle East). Beinart’s off-the-grid shift is also reflected by his partnership with token Jewish organizations and apologism for antisemites like Rashida Tlaib, Marc Lamont Hill, and others “for the sake of addressing antisemitism and justice”. The switch in a number of his views for appeal, including wider US foreign policy, is evident across his work — not only on the subject of Israel (an inverse regression). His pursuit of social justice and tolerance for communities except his own is a classic mark of Jewish Anti-Zionist soft-racism and disdain for Jewish empowerment. He is the author of The Crisis of Zionism, an active professor at the City University of New York, editor-at-large for leftist source Jewish Currents and a contributor/commentator for various major antisemitic outlets, like the New York Times.

When Beinart ‘crossed a red line’ and took the audacious liberty to criticize incitement of Israeli Arabs to terror from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a slew of fiery responses attacking Beinart and defending Hamas and civilian murder crowded his feed. Replies wrongfully conflating the Palestinian plight with that of Ukraine, criminalization of all Israeli Jews, and the encouragement of their murder as “colonizers” and “occupiers” flooded the replies to Beinart, threatening to cancel him from “the good Jews”. His critique wasn’t even a strict condemnation of Hamas, nor was it a criticism of terrorism in Israel-Palestine at large. It was a critique of inciting violence in Jewish-majority Israel-proper from Israeli Arabs, equal citizens under the law. Consequently, Beinart has since faced rejection and questioning in a plethora of Anti-Zionist organizations, including from fellow Anti-Zionist Jews, but continues to adopt their talking points to “catch-up”.

Tasha Kaminsky

Standing at 17,000 Twitter followers, Tasha Kaminsky is the co-founder of two Jewish communal organizations in St. Louis (the egalitarian congregation Ashreinu and center MaTovu STL). Tasha used to work for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but left on account of the Jewish civil rights group’s “collaboration with the police” (DEI trainings) and “upholding of the occupation of Palestine”. In August 2020, she also put up a monetary bounty for people to doxx and reveal the personal information of one of Twitter’s most prominent Jewish voices @Claire_V0ltaire. In order to back herself up and affirm her comprehension of Jewish trauma (TW), Tasha very personally disclosed on her Twitter that she was sexually assaulted for being Jewish, hid in bomb shelters from rocket-fire in Israel in 2014 (along with most of her Israeli family), and that a dear professor of hers, who taught her that Zionism “was poison to us as a people,” was killed in a 2016 terror attack in Tel Aviv. These are all deeply tragic experiences that the Jewish community can sympathize with. And yet, Tasha still has deemed doxxing and destruction of the home of half of the world’s Jews as the embodiment of corrective justice. In other words: internalized antisemitism. Like a handful of leftist American Jewish congregations whose clergy create a “kosher-stamp” for Israel-bashing, it is alarming that someone of her ideological bent is helping lead the Missouri Jewish community.

In an instance that Tasha condemned the “celebrating or condoning of [Israeli] civilian non-combatant deaths,” in April 2022, plenty of replies and quoted retweets castigated her, labeling all “Israeli settlers” (every Israeli citizen without distinction) as combatants worthy of death. This is unfortunately endemic within the pro-Palestinian movement. Did Tasha respond and uphold human dignity? No. She ignored it and kept going forward for #FreePalestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Noam Chomsky

Described as the “father of modern linguistics” and a founder of the field of cognitive science, Noam Chomsky has famously integrated his own way of thinking into academia very successfully. However, his own conceptions of history and politics have, depending on the subject, been very questionable contributions. Chomsky has misplaced his critical anarchist logic of US imperialism from the Vietnam War (a just argument) to deny contemporary global issues of non-Western crimes against humanity. Namely, Chomsky has downplayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the use of chemical weapons on civilians to uphold Assad’s Syria, the Bosnian genocide and the Uyghur cultural genocide by China in East Turkestan/Xinjiang. He has deemed criticism of the aforementioned as a ‘reactionary Western [imperial] impulse’. That all aside, Chomsky is contrarily cited as a golden shield for not only the above, but also those who wish to castigate the Jewish state and harm its people, namely having advocated for the arming of Hezbollah and having defended propagators of Holocaust denial. In this gross manner, he joins the likes of Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé, and Shlomo Sand — all guilty as well of horrible revisionism.

Despite having condemned Israel disproportionately, above states with much graver human rights records, and supporting some of Israel’s greatest attackers, Chomsky has also come under fire for allegedly being a “Cultural Zionist” and recognizing some Jewish affinities with the land of Israel. This includes criticism thrown against him by non-Jewish Anti-Zionists for having lived on a socialist bi-nationalist kibbutz of the Hashomer Hatzair movement in the 1950s, despite his subsequent berating of Israel and Zionism. As the record shows, Noam Chomsky is no Zionist, but his ‘leftist license’ and personal character have been rejected by his own ideological ilk many a time.

Amira Hass

Amira Hass was showered with accolades and awards for her journalism with Israeli left-wing newspaper Ha’aretz. Known for purporting the trendy “apartheid” libel against Israel for a number of Western audiences (although not the first) and whitewashing Palestinian terrorism (the murder of Israeli civilians to coerce political gains), Hass demonstrates a deep animus towards her people, girded by Palestinian support. She even lived full-time in Ramallah in the 1990s for a few years, with token PA acceptance. Hass conducted reporting locally — that is, until she ran into experiences of fundamentalist intolerance that prevented her from continuing to collect primary source disinformation there. Similar to many leftist Israeli journalists and authors, such as Miko Peled, Hass has been ostracized and condemned to “cancellation” in the Palestinian community.

During a leftist conference in 2014 at Birzeit University (known like many Palestinian institutions to often be hijacked by terror-affiliated student groups), Hass was asked to leave by two lecturers due to the university policy against the presence of Israelis. Moreover, in 2008 Hass traveled to the Gaza Strip on a protest ship. She was effectively kicked out by Hamas shortly after, due to threats on her life from her criticism of the terrorist organization. Once she returned to Israel, she was arrested by Israeli police for having traveled to Gaza (enemy territory unilaterally withdrawn from years before) without a permit.

Haaretz writer booted from Palestinian school because she's Israeli Jew

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch

Kenneth Roth is a lawyer and human rights activist, whose father fled Nazi Germany to the U.S. prior to the Holocaust. Roth most famously served as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022. Under Roth’s leadership, HRW not only grew nearly ten-fold in its staff, but the once reputable organization became a hotbed of antisemitic fixation on Israel as well. Unfortunately, Roth has engaged in various forms of antisemitic speech. In 2006, Roth attributed a biblical verse and the “primitive” nature of Israel to its response to aggressive Hezbollah rocket-fire. Many other such incidents followed. By 2011, in relation to the UN’s Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, HRW’s founder, Robert Bernstein gave strong remarks on Roth. On the Mission’s findings (the Goldstone Report), Bernstein said that Roth “seeks to minimize the importance of Judge Goldstone’s stunning retraction of his war crime accusations against Israel” and that “it is time for him to follow Judge Goldstone’s example and issue his own mea culpa”.

In 2014, an article in The Atlantic condemned a tweet by Roth, which blamed antisemitism on Israel’s alleged misconduct. After tweeting an advertisement equating war in Gaza with “Nazi genocide”, now Antisemitism Envoy in the US, Deborah Lipstadt called this “soft-core denigration of the Holocaust”. Again, during the 2021 Hamas-Israel war, Roth tweeted the same line of logic and then deleted the tweet, commenting after that his words were “misinterpreted” with no apology. Over the span of 18 months (2017–2018), 70 percent of Roth’s tweets that claimed “illegal” violations by a state were against Israel (reminiscent of the UN’s Zionophobic obsession). Similar to Amnesty International, HRW has had antisemitic scandals with general staff and committee members and has issued reports with inflammatory hyperbole of “apartheid” and “genocide”, all in an effort to make Israel the pariah state and the “Jew of the nations” for isolation and destruction.

Sources of funding help expose HRW’s agenda, as revealed by NGO Monitor and UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer. In 2013, Roth accepted a $470,000 gift to HRW from a Saudi billionaire in exchange for refraining from coverage on LGBTQ+ rights in the Middle East and North Africa. When exposed in 2020, the donation was shortly after returned. Likewise, Ken Roth’s cover for Iranian officials, Saudi officials, various terror groups, details regarding the Rwandan genocide, and other notorious human rights violators has stained his record. The initial revocation of a fellowship for Roth at Harvard this past year has served as case study of antisemitic outrage.

Despite his career-long smearing of the Jewish state and HRW’s advocacy for its dismantling, Kenneth Roth has still managed to be condemned as a “Zionist” by a whole range of Israel-haters, including shills for the Assad regime of Syria, staunch Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, white supremacists, and other conspiracy theorists.

Ariel Gold, CODEPINK

Ariel Gold is the former National Co-Director of CODEPINK, a self-described “women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars [sic] into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs”. However, Gold and her former organization have gone far from anti-war activism, instead demonstrating pity and support for some of the world’s most aggressive wagers of war, misogynistic regimes, and human rights violators alike. The organization has sent various delegations to meet with Hamas, al-Qaeda affiliates, the Taliban, Iranian leaders, and more — for which they have declared open support. Opponents of sanctions against such groups, but active proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, CODEPINK has been the subject of significant irony and hypocrisy on social media.

Gold has been arrested on a number of occasions for protesting, disrupting, and blocking entrances to Israel-related gatherings and events. For her activities in a frequent riot-zone of Palestinians (Bil’in) and for her BDS support, Gold was barred from entry into Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2018. She has mourned and defended terrorists and exploited her children for anti-Israel propaganda. But her bigotry and obsession hasn’t only been confined to her organization. Gold has also been involved in famed Palestinian organizations, student groups, and even interfaith associations. She has posted cartoons by Holocaust-denier Carlos Latuff, stated that US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was partially to blame for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and shared other classically antisemitic canards of Jews and money. CODEPINK was founded just over a year after the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001 on the United States.

When Ariel Gold surprisingly conceded the immorality of the BDS “Boston Mapping Project”, which blacklists in detail Jewish synagogues, community organizations, and neighborhood centers in the name of “boycotting Zionist institutions” for Palestine, a wave of vicious replies ensued against her as well as nasty justifications to attack the Jewish community at large. As expected, the Anti-Zionist movement’s true colors were shown again and Ariel Gold was made to be just another “cog in the machine” against the “progressive anti-establishment future”.

IfNotNow (INN)

IfNotNow (INN) was founded during the Hamas-Israel war of July 2014, Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, by a collective of young Jewish organizers. The name of the organization invokes the famous Jewish proverb by Hillel the Elder, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”. Their call to action began as a pursuit for Jewish youth to form protests against politicians, policies, and Jewish communal organizations found “complacent” or “upholding support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank”. IfNotNow’s aim to form a provocative, visible rupture from institutional Jewish life has gathered much media attention and co-optation. Adopting the early tactics of Jewish Voice for Peace (next section), IfNotNow intentionally maintained ambiguity regarding its official stance on Zionism in early stages. It first grew with the inclusion of self-described leftist Zionists, Anti-Zionists, Post-Zionists, and Non-Zionists to highlight the ills of “Israel’s crimes in the West Bank and Gaza”. The organization has received funding notably from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP).

INN has defined itself as lacking a hierarchical form of activist leadership, although this has been deeply contested by various chapters and members. Like Anti-Zionist Jewish groups in general, IfNotNow admittedly underrepresents non-Ashkenazi Jewry in its membership — and with historical reason (they are overwhelmingly Zionists). Its structural approach, Ashkenormativity, and its ambiguity or backtracking around fundamental issues to the conflict — including Israel’s existence — have produced backlash and decline in the long-term, as some of the core leaders have indicated. In smaller, but notable examples — IfNotNow has also misrepresented Israeli Arabs and Mizrahi Jews, who overwhelmingly associate with the latter terms and not ‘Palestinian(-Israeli’) or ‘Arab Jew’ respectively — echoing a political agenda. By 2020, various INN chapters broke off from the national organization over fragile, overly aggressive, or “insufficiently aggressive” ideology and tactics. One of INN’s first major actions was to recite the Jewish mourner’s kaddish in demonstration outside of a meeting for the Jewish Conference of Presidents. The recitation was a generic mourning of all casualties during the war of 2014, but disturbingly without discretion or disclaimer on the armed Hamas terrorists firing rockets to kill Israeli civilians. The same despicable call to action occurred in the May 2021 war, Operation Guardian of the Walls.

According to leftist Jewish source Jewish Currents, Simone Zimmerman, formerly the National Student President of J Street U and a UC Berkeley grad, gathered with other founding INN members in the first place due to disappointment over J Street’s partial support of Israel’s 2014 defensive against Hamas attack (J Street is a rather hyper-critical, but in name, “pro-Israel” lobby group). As the former “Jewish outreach coordinator” for presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, Zimmerman was thereafter fired from the position for using a firmly derogatory expletive in mention of Prime Minister Netanyahu on Facebook. Other founders and directors have included Max Berger, Elizabeth Warren’s former 2020 director for progressive partnerships (similarly fired), “lifelong Episcopal Christian” insistent on Jesus-denial, Seth Woody, and Yonah Lieberman, who despite his father’s decades of precious work at the ADL, has condemned the ADL in IfNotNow statements and hardline programming.

INN has also been criticized by the Jewish community for prioritizing staged sit-ins, protests, and defamatory acts for publicity, purposely keeping a strict policy of not engaging in closed dialogue with Jewish communal institutions. Simultaneously, the group has sought to indoctrinate Jewish youth across the U.S. in Jewish summer camps to adopt a false “education” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its quest for ever-increasing anti-Israel mobilization. This desperate push to demonize all kinds of Jewish institutions and insert a forced one-sided anti-Israel narrative has created many attempted disruptions of Jewish life. In this process, INN has also willingly ignored, omitted, and denied the impetus for Israel’s enduring security presence in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria and demanded an unequivocal cease to U.S. military aid to Israel (supporting proposed BDS legislation).

INN has also intentionally ignored and even denied the resurgence in antisemitic attacks in America, particularly from perpetrators that are people of color and pro-Palestinian supporters (documented during the 2021 Hamas-Israel war) as a “smear against Palestine advocacy”. Instead, they have gaslighted and reaffirmed support for civilian murder. Their demand for Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and end to the blockade of Gaza would jeopardize Israeli and Palestinian safety alike (similar to the devolvement of Gaza, post-Israeli unilateral disengagement in 2005). Past trainings of the organization have focused on little content with regard to the history of the conflict, but have asked of attendees to share personal stories and familial Jewish traumas before each other — a practice to shed ‘Zionistic impulses’ and to imagine a self-gratifying end goal of Palestinian liberation instead. Some have described this superficial ritual as cultic, others have described it as a manipulation of emotions and Jewish experiences.

During Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin for justice on the murder of Jacob Blake, the spray-painting of the words “Free Palestine” was found on the driveway of Kenosha’s Beth Hillel Temple — not unusual given BLM leadership’s anti-Israel stance and similar incidents in Los Angeles and elsewhere. INN initially spoke out against the vandalism as an ‘antisemitic conflation of Jews and Israel’. After many nasty gaslighting responses and antisemitic outcry, INN publicly apologized, dismissed the thought of standing up for Jewish safety, and forced reorientation of solidarity ‘back toward the more oppressed’. Regardless of its substantive arguments or really lack thereof, IfNotNow has shown that the proverb from which they are named need not be cited in full. They have no genuine concern to stand up for the Jewish community and its safety. They only have a call to serve the community’s attackers.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

The most widely known and prominent token Jewish Anti-Zionist organization in North America, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) was founded in 1996 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its originally stated goals included not only ending “the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem”, but also developing Jewish communities in diaspora that demonstrate that Judaism and Zionism are not inherently tied — in other words, outright political fabrication straying from Jewish tradition. Its largest non-grassroots donors are the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Schwab Charitable Fund, among others.

Since at least 2001, the organization called for a suspension of all US military aid to Israel and shortly after called for a boycott of Israeli companies and goods produced from the aforementioned disputed territories. By 2012, the organization officially declared its unequivocal support for the BDS National Committee (BNC), including economic, academic, and cultural boycotts of all of Israel, without distinction. In the past several years, after decades of hostile Anti-Zionist activism, JVP’s headquarters finally came out about officially being “Anti-Zionist”. JVP, like IfNotNow, has also made appearances at various pro-Palestinian rallies nationwide and led fringe boycotts against Taglit (Birthright) — free 10-day trips to Israel for young Jews around the world, meant to rekindle a connection with their roots and foster a sense of pride in their peoplehood amid increasing assimilation rates, especially in America.

While JVP stresses that its advocated methods of boycott are “non-violent” tactics to produce a peaceful solution in the region, the BDS National Committee it supports has membership including armed terrorist organizations. It has also claimed that foreign intervention has exacerbated conflict rather than alleviated it. Despite this, JVP’s record of statements, like that of BDS proponents at large, are firmly in support of “Palestinian resistance by all means necessary”, including armed terrorism, and have been a source of berating Israel and the condoning of incendiary Palestinian policies for a Judenrein region. This includes support for convicted terrorists that have murdered Israeli civilians, such as the PFLP’s Khalida Jarrar, Rasmea Odeh, and Marwan Barghouti. From university settings to churches and social justice movements (including Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March), JVP has become the most influential “shield” for Zionophobes and violent antisemites.

One of JVP’s newest campaigns, “Deadly Exchange”, has been used as a platform to repackage classical blood libel, accusing Israel and American Jewish organizations of culpability for police brutality in the United States. Israel is only one of over 24 countries that has police exchange programs with the US, and their program solely instructs on counter-terrorism (not community policing or crowd control). None of the charged officers found responsible for killing Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, or the many black and brown victims of American police brutality were trained in Israel. Yet, JVP easily sweeps these facts aside to demonize anyone with affinities with Israel. They tarnish the fight for racial justice and downplay the history and accountability of US police, with a history of brutality that long pre-dates Israel’s re-establishment.

The extremist group has agitated in many ways that are too elaborate to mention here, however, it is worth observing that the organization has come under fire by Palestinian activists for a number of reasons. As pictured below, Anna Rajagopal, a vehement Anti-Zionist Jew, tweeted Instagram story screenshots of major Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani. Kiswani’s statements attacked JVP for ‘platforming themselves above Palestinian voices and needs and profiting off of selective Palestine activism’. Rebecca Vilkomerson, JVP’s former executive director (left 2019) has also been the subject of this Anti-Zionist outrage. There wasn’t serious Anti-Zionist outrage when Vilkomerson spoke on a white nationalist podcast, but there certainly was when it was rumored that not only is Vilkomerson married to an Israeli and spent three years in Israel, but her husband works in an Israeli cybersecurity firm called Cyberpion (formerly employed by another firm, Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd.). If true, boycotting the state of Israel publicly in name, while having direct financial ties with security sector partners of the so-called “apartheid regime” indicates an irredeemable level of hollow tokenism and hypocrisy.

Neturei Karta

The Neturei Karta (Aramaic for “guardians of the city”) are the most advertised miniscule offshoot sect of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, with cultic insularity and peculiar political radicalism. Their membership is composed of only a few thousand out of 15 million Jews worldwide — a drop in the ocean. Even within Neturei Karta’s following, only around a hundred trophy Jews perceptibly appear in delegations to anti-Israel protests, gatherings, and other events (all men). Like CODEPINK, Neturei Karta has met with some of the worst human rights-violating and antisemitic individuals and regimes for appeasement and courtship of favor. These include Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, Hezbollah, various armed Palestinian terror factions, grassroots Palestinian organizations in the West, and Iranian officials, such as Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (essentially the Jewish people’s most pressing contemporary enemies).

Neturei Karta’s attendance of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in 2006 really became the last straw for any other remotely non-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox sect or Jewish group to tolerate the group at all. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the North American chapter leader of the organization, has been excommunicated by a plethora of communities. The Satmar sect — one could say being the most adjacent to Neturei Karta’s beliefs, minus the terror-sympathy, formally ruled a boycott of Neturei Karta for the outrageous moral breach of attending the conference. The highest Ultra-Orthodox rabbinical council in Jerusalem followed suit. According to the ADL, “NK leaders have not held back in their vitriolic rhetoric against the state of Israel, describing Israelis as Nazis, calling Israel a ‘cancer’ and accusing Zionists of controlling the media”. They have also labeled other Jews as “not Jewish” for not subscribing to their disturbing ideology and burned Israeli flags in regular demonstrations. Activist members of Neturei Karta, like Moshe Hirsch, served in Yasser Arafat’s PLO cabinet in the “Ministry of Jewish Affairs” and in 2013, a 46 year-old member of Neturei Karta was arrested by Israel’s Shin Bet (state internal security service) for allegedly attempting to spy on Israel for Iran. The Islamic regime of Iran has sworn itself to Israel and the US’s destruction since taking power in 1979.

Understanding the Neturei Karta means contextualizing it as an organization mobilized by extremist, narrow interpretations of Jewish scripture and law. Neturei Karta is emblematic of only the most fringe Jewish reaction to centuries of oppression. Dogmatically, their beliefs circulate around internalization and twisted embrace of the assigned role of oppressed exiled victim by Divine will for near perpetuity — until the indefinite arrival of the Messiah. This interpretation is not only at odds with contemporary Orthodox Judaism, it doesn’t stand the test of time with traditional Jewish exegetes of the centuries. No minority would tolerate a member of their community with signage saying “Social justice dictates our subservience to all nations from U.S. to Palestine” — nonetheless a denial of genocide or expressed support for those pursuing the community’s genocide today. To go full circle, even +972 magazine has put out an op-ed calling for the rejection of Neturei Karta for their ‘inadequate and self-serving’ motives for Palestinian solidarity.

When Neturei Karta recently sent a contingent to meet with members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group in Jenin this past January, various gunman threatened the Jews’ lives, driving past and recording them, while calling them “mustawtineen” (“settlers”) in the most dehumanizing and murder-justifying sense. In a separate case, a young man of Neturei Karta posed with a propaganda sign featuring a Palestinian flag and phrases to distinguish Zionism from Jews across languages. He was approached and recorded by a Palestinian in what appears to be a possible zone of demonstration in a largely Arab neighborhood. The Palestinian man taunts him in Arabic with intimidation and indignity, saying “Where are you? You’re in Palestine. Say Allahu Akbar. Say Allahu Akbar! This is Palestine. Arab Palestine,” creating a knee-jerk, uncomfortable exchange that essentially sums up Neturei Karta’s self-flagellating, nearly Christian, and masochistic ideology of passivity at the expense of their own people.

Other leftist Jewish examples and Anti-Zionist Israelis at large:

On Jews everywhere (yes, even the Anti-Zionist ones):

* “Icing on the cake”: Rashida Tlaib and Palestinian Christians

Anti-Zionism is so wild, even Rashida Tlaib (a Palestinian-American antisemite in US Congress) isn’t good enough for the revolutionary radicals (antisemites) in her community.

Who said equal rights for Palestinian Christians were welcome in Palestine (nonetheless any social minority)?

This list is by no means exhaustive. However, all of the significant examples of backlash experienced by Jewish Anti-Zionists from non-Jewish counterparts occurred despite their staunchly expressed Anti-Zionist views, disavowal or replacement of Jewish tenets, and so-called “allegiance to the Palestinian cause” for the destruction of Israel. The outright antisemitic and Zionophobic bigotry they received anyway is no less an expected demonstration of this pattern of fruitless Jewish tokenism and rejection. Some of these Jewish Anti-Zionists may eventually come to their senses and drop these pursuits (we welcome t’shuvah). Most may never wake up and stay stuck in this abusive dynamic, indirectly dragging their community along with them in a pathology. And if you think Anti-Zionist Jews (and some actual Palestinians) get too much hate from the anti-Israel world, think about how much hate progressive Zionists and non-Jewish supporters of Israel get on a regular basis. It reeks of fascism.

Excluded are clearly a few categories of others: (1) Jews that have declared their enduring Zionism but continuously single out Israel without any concern for the policies of Palestinians (i.e. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street), and (2) “post-Zionists” who seek to undo any Jewish aspect of Israel and effectively pave the way for the sectarian disintegration of the world’s only permanent Jewish refuge (i.e. David N. Myers, New Israel Fund). Lastly, while most examples mentioned thus far have not actively participated in physical anti-Jewish violence themselves, (3) there are insufferable nutjobs of evil, such as career-long synagogue protestor, Holocaust denier, and Christian proselyte of Ann Arbor, Henry Herskovitz, attorney-at-terror for Hamas and Hezbollah, Stanley L. Cohen, and Matthew Mahrer, a 22-year old would-be antisemitic shooter who was thankfully arrested with his accomplice last November. Mahrer is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. If you’ve read up to this point, you should know that family ties and Jewish experiences do not stop sick and evil people from committing atrocities against their own. Anti-Zionists Cohen, Herskovitz, and Mahrer demonstrate an ugly case that token collaboration for Neo-Nazism exists today. Nonetheless, self-evidently, each of the latter have faced their fair share of castigation from their beloved clients for their “benevolent” work as well. Their responses are an utter disgrace.

Unpacking Jewish Tokenism in the 21st Century

In unpacking the animating factors that motivate most young Jewish Anti-Zionists today, we can credit not only the trendy antisemites for inundating and popularizing another form of Jew-hatred yet again in (social media) culture, but also internal Jewish communal factors as well.

“Tikkunism”, a critical term referring to “tokenism” and assimilationist Judaism’s reductive emphasis on a single Jewish value of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) is one internal explanation. Funneling out not only the importance of apolitical Jewish ritual belief and spiritual practice but also purporting “social justice for thee, not me” partially untangles the empirical white savior complex of many Jewish Anti-Zionists who express their vitriolic bias “as a Jew”. However, this doesn’t explain the full picture, as most American Jewish congregations espouse a similar focus, but don’t embrace bigotry against Israelis or contravene pride and rights for Jews.

On the other hand, it’s too much an oversimplification to buy the narrative of Anti-Zionist Jewish groups that Jewish day schools, synagogues, summer camps, and trips to Israel simply overlook the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Palestinian narrative entirely. While imperfect, an actual inspection of overall Jewish education does not uphold this claim. Support for a two-state solution and criticism of Israeli policy, including on Palestinians is prolific in the pro-Israel world (without reciprocity from the pro-Palestinian world of their leadership on Israelis at all). We have to look deeper on a demographic and interpersonal level for a more holistic answer:

Jewish Anti-Zionists, though overwhelmingly white-functioning, assimilated, atheist Ashkenazim, have also increasingly come from interfaith/patrilineal Jewish families and mixed racial marriages in the past two decades. They may also be LGBTQ+ Jews. Others might be converts who halachically (according to Jewish law), have not partaken in or completed a formal conversion process. A handful of the above may initially have come from messianic or secular leftist political backgrounds, i.e. Marxism (embedded with antisemitic ideas) and have yet to learn more about Jewish values and indigeneity to Israel. For those who come from such “unconventional Jewish backgrounds”, exclusion or skepticism from the majority Jewish community can be a lived reality. Thus, they may be unaffiliated with Jewish institutions and detached from community because of this or due to their own beliefs. Separate, but not irrelevant, it’s also a fact that other Anti-Zionists LARP/pretend to be Jewish or converts to spread messages of hate, as also seen on the far-right.

While the majority of people within these unique demographics are proud Jews and Zionists, a handful of each of these groups acquire representation and leadership roles within Jewish Anti-Zionist organizations, without distinction. An abundantly-open umbrella of tolerance, ironically, sometimes promotes an analogous openness to intolerance and exploitation. However, in an increasingly diverse world, with limited inclusivity in mainstream Jewish community spaces, Anti-Zionist spaces like the latter grow.

Anti-Zionist activism for those of the above who are indeed Jewish may be a (petty) act of personal emotional revenge — spiting the majority of the Jewish community for alleged or real excessive gatekeeping. Many such individuals may have become disillusioned with any sense of belonging in the greater Jewish community, thus they have lashed out. A growing number of visible confessions affirm this. This “If I go down, you go down with me” mentality is a sad, but dangerous position that Jewish-identifying Anti-Zionists have to take some responsibility for — impostor syndrome turned vengeful and toxic. Zionophobic antisemitism (even internalized) is not justifiable and should not be cast onto anyone. So, too, the majority Jewish community should also take responsibility for our shortcomings by educating ourselves on inclusivity and these alienating out-group biases. By doing so, we can proactively build a stronger, more cohesive, and more vibrant Jewish community. There are many proud, young, and diverse Jewish leaders that are paving the way with love and Jewish unity. They should be amplified.

It’s important to reckon with deep psychological underpinnings. Tokens in Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, CODEPINK, and J Street may elect to partake in various pro-Palestinian organizations that endorse civilian murder of Jews as “legitimate resistance”, not always only out of a deep ideological conviction, but because these spaces may subconsciously provide some of the only (temporary and hallucinogenic) source of acceptance for them, “moral rectitude”, and outright flattery. Being a tool is of secondary importance in their minds, as they willingly accept psychological and even physical abuse from the masses. Human beings have rational faculties to guide us through life, however, most of us are fundamentally emotionally-driven. Anti-Zionist Jews are no exception, and this is empirically proven. We must not only take into account this psychological context, but also recognize the agency of Anti-Zionist Jews in actively promoting antisemitic ideas, demands, and actions.

*Note: Criticizing controversial and reactionary Israeli policies, including de facto expansion in the West Bank is not antisemitic, but claiming that all Zionists (over 90% of the Jewish people, according to Gallup and other polls) simply endorse all of the Israeli government’s decisions or have no right to defend themselves in their ancestral homeland is antisemitic. Palestinians deserve independence and this has been an accepted norm of modern Zionist leaders from the start. However, the Palestinian refusal to end ethnic violence and civilian murder and finally accept a Jewish state in any borders is what accounts for an enduring occupation of their areas (since the 1967 war to destroy Israel).

Jewish Anti-Zionist Excuses

Diving into the most plain assertion of Jewish Anti-Zionist tokens, we can also unpack further. Many of them today may assume innocence by repeating the talking point that “Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism” (a foundational lie for token Jewish opponents to the majority-consensus [IHRA] definition of antisemitism). Similar to the concept of “racial colorblindness”, it is problematic to assert that Zionism and Judaism have no connection (even if coming from ignorance, fear, or good intentions). Zionism: the belief in the Jewish right to revive self-determination in [at least part of] the indigenous, ancestral homeland of the Jewish people is an inherent element of Jewish heritage, not only because half of the world’s Jews live in and rely on the State of Israel for refuge and freedom, but because there would be no Jewish people without the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, over 3,000 years ago. Zionism isn’t only part of Jewish heritage. It is a moral value to embrace — not an abstraction to feign estrangement from.

To drive the point home, out of 613 laws in Judaism, only around 270 can be practiced today outside the land of Israel. Observant Jews worldwide have prayed for return (some even attempting return) to Israel from forced exile by many empires for centuries (secular and religious alike). The hypocritical, numerically microscopic ultra-Orthodox faction of Neturei Karta (less than a third of one percent of world Jewry) have only around 100 members who actively protest against Israel and have many more who’ve returned to live in Israel — only denying the State of Israel’s right to exist until the arrival of the Messiah.

For thousands of years, Jews have practiced land-specific Israelite rituals, including in diaspora for holidays like Sukkot, Shavuot, Hanukkah, Tisha B’Av, Pesach (Passover), and more, focusing on our connection with the land of Israel, its sacredness, the capital of Jerusalem, and our return. Among many more reasons, we can confidently affirm that Zionism is intrinsic to Jewish heritage.

Some Anti-Zionist Jews who actually recognize these innate ties, try to eliminate these parts of Jewish identity or try to fabricate new traditions in their place. Saying the mourner’s kaddish for neutralized armed Palestinian terrorists, performing justice Havdallah ceremonies in daylight while widely known to be meant for nighttime, manipulating the traditional Passover seder to omit the Exodus and the age-old saying “L’shanah ha’ba’ah bi’Yerushalayim” (“Next Year in Jerusalem!”), redacting mentions of the word “Israel” in Jewish siddurim (prayer books) and texts are but a fraction of losing practices. Ultimately, these are all losing practices because there is nothing that can save “The Good Jews” from antisemites.

What we’ve learned is that Anti-Zionism, like many fads of antisemitic and totalitarian conformity, is futile. No matter the alibi at the time or the place in question, to the antisemite, it’s not just about our insistence on specific elements of particularity and peoplehood that will never be acceptable, it’s about our existence at all.