The enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people, who infest social media, have developed a new meme. Whatâs needed, they assert, is âJudaism without Zionismâ.
This is the next step up from their mantra that âanti-Zionism isnât the same as antisemitismâ. Both statements are designed to deny that hating Israel means they hate Jews â perish the thought!
Some of their best friends are Jews, they maintain; itâs the Jewish state whose existence, alone of all the states in the world, that they oppose. Which apparently is absolutely fine.
This formula of âJudaism without Zionismâ is the strategy of Jew-baiters. The âgoodâ Jews, with whom they surround themselves as human shields against the charge of antisemitism, are those who hate Israel. The âbadâ Jews are those who love it.
âJudaism without Zionismâ is thus a weapon to divide diaspora Jews from each other and further hurt Israel by weakening the support it enjoys from Jews around the world.
Tragically, a small but noisy minority of anti-Zionist Jews have also adopted this stratagem. Whether those making this statement are Jews or non-Jews, it demonstrates their ignorance of both Zionism and Judaism.
Their attempt to separate them falls at the first hurdle because Zionism is an essential part of Judaism. Zionism is simply the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.
Those who think that Zionism started with Theodore Herzl in the 19th century are wrong. It took time for Herzl, a secular Jew, to tap into the Jewsâ unique relationship with the land of Israel.
This relationship isnât so strong just because ancient Israel was the Jewsâ national homeland centuries before the Romans, Christians, Arabs and Muslims colonised it.
Jews are the only people in the world who have retained an unbroken connection to their homeland since antiquity.
Time for a more muscular assertion of Jewish identity
melaniephillips.substack.com