Friends and Readers,

I initially penned this newsletter to go out on June 1. In light of the horrific murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, I am sending this out today. I was unfortunately prescient. My heart is broken today. Pray for the souls of these two young people. This crime is an affront to every American and to Jews everywhere. May God protect us all.

Jonathan

Do Anti-Zionists Hate Jews?

As we were puttering around in the kitchen, Judi asked me a question. “I am confused by all the noise out there. Do you believe that anti-Zionism is automatically antisemitism?” (A gloss—Jew hatred is a better term to describe antipathy against Jews –another blog, another time.) 

“The answers are obvious,” I replied. 

Judi suggested, “You should write this up. Others will want to know.” 

Blame her for this essay. 

Let’s start with definitions before I delve into Latin and before I examine some claims and counterclaims. 

Definition: Zionism is the Jewish people’s national movement to restore Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people’s historic homeland, the land of Israel. 

If you take my definition at face value, you will notice that Bibi Netanyahu is not mentioned. Nor is this Israeli government. Nor is the war in Gaza. Nor are the settlements. Nor is the high-tech society that Israel has produced. Nor is the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. 

Zionism is simply the Jewish people’s national movement to restore Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people’s historic homeland, the land of Israel. Not hard. No need for nuance. 

And therefore, anti-Zionism is its opposite, the denial of the just cause of the Jewish people to live and govern themselves in their historic homeland. 

Now for the Latin. 

If you compare Jews to the world population at large, we comprise a rounding error in the Farmer’s Almanac. How many of us are there? I don’t know. Maybe 14 million, maybe 17 million? Count us as you please. 

A priori, it is silly today to criticize Zionism’s project, the State of Israel, as though history did not happen. Israel was founded in 1948 from a multitude of complex reasons. Today, Israel is the de facto home of half the world’s Jews. Ex post facto, Israel has been in existence for 77 years. 

Anti-Zionists demand that the world’s only Jewish state disappear. You can be a non-Zionist, though I would disagree with you. But an anti-Zionist stands in opposition to the achievements my people made these past 77 years.

Question for the anti-Zionists. Where should the nine million Jews whose families hailed from Leningrad or Baghdad or Bucharest or Cairo or Casablanca or Gandar, Ethiopia go? And what about those Israelis born in Tiberias who have one grandparent from Iran and another from France? Split her in half and send her back. Let’s not be silly. 

After 1948, we are in the world of ex post facto (Israel exists) and not a priori (before the fact). Generations of Jews have been born in Israel. Nine million Jews living in Israel need to live someplace. They are going to stay where they are, regardless of the chants and slogans of the Jew haters. “Go back where you came from!” is a non-starter. In the 1890s or 1910s, this could have been a possible discussion. But as we say colloquially that train has left the station with the horse that fled the barn on the way to the ship that has sailed. Anti-Zionists may just as well rant against the State of Alabama. But the Cherokee nation is not returning to Huntsville.

The Algonquian nation will not retake ownership of Manhattan. The Greeks are not going back to Turkey and the Pakistanis are not welcome in India. Rants aside, let’s be real, not foolish. 

Furthermore, as a Zionist, I support the Palestinian people with Zionist principles.

But first the facts—which ultimately don’t matter. According to the internet, the earliest mention of the term Palestine is in fifth century BCE Greek documents. It lived alongside the term Judea, which was used by Romans and Jews throughout the Levant. The Greeks called the area Syria-Palestina.

After the 135 CE Jewish rebellion against Rome, the Romans dropped references to Judea. Note. There never was an indigenous Palestinian identity with a history, literature and polity. Note. The Palestinians were not Arab. The Arabs traveled northward from Arabia and conquered Palestine in 638 from the Byzantine Christians, who then joined the Jews as a religious minority. 

This history stuff is good to know, but I believe that it does not matter today. Non-Jews living in Israel call themselves Palestinians and have created a national identity from their historical experience. They have a cohesive diaspora. As a Zionist, I encourage them even though their methods for pursuing their national aspirations have led them down a cul-de-sac. I want the Palestinians to be happy and successful in their nation building, so long as they are willing to leave the Jewish inhabitants of Israel to live in peace in the State of Israel. 

A major criticism leveled by the anti-Zionists is that Jews are simply a religious group like the other religions of the world and religions are not entitled to have countries. (Please don’t look behind the curtain at Vatican City, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, Norway, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand and a slew of other countries which have a formal connection between their national identity and nationally supported religions.) If the Palestinians can consider themselves a people in 2025, it is certainly kosher (not Latin) for us Jews to embrace our own peoplehood. We have done this since we had our first Israelite cousins’ club reunion with Joseph in Egypt. (See Genesis. The English translation is adequate.) 

We Jews are not a religion. We are, instead, a tribe with beliefs and practices. To be a Jew, you first need to belong to the Jewish people. God made God’s covenant with my people. The land of Israel was God’s promise for our fidelity. My people stood at Sina and affirmed God’s voice.

Peoplehood does not define Catholics or Protestants or Sunnis or Shias, but it is the singular definition of being Jewish. When Ruth the Moabite agreed to join her mother-in-law on return Naomi, she said, in this order, “Your people shall be my people, your God my God.”

Anti-Zionists claim that Jews today are not indigenous to the land of Israel. Reference the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish prayerbook, walk the stones of the Promised Land and gaze at the Temple Mount—the claims that Jews are not an indigenous people returning home is a willful denial of an indisputable historic fact. If it is good for indigenous people, for the first nations to return home, how marvelous is the miracle of the Jewish people’s return to Zion! 

Anti-Zionists claim that Israel has no right to exist, and they wish it away. Nations do not exist by any kind of right. They form out of sweat and blood, out of human striving. The United States of America does not exist because some monarch across the ocean signed a proclamation, or a makeshift assembly endorsed a declaration of independence. America exists because the colonies fought for their independence from Britain and later established institutions of governance that they agreed to support. 

We no longer live in a world of empire. Germany and Italy and Hungary and the Ukraine exist because they persevered against their overlords in Vienna. Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia exist because they overthrew first the Ottomans and then the Austro-Hungarians and then the Communists and created polities with institutions of governance. Algeria, India, Kenya, and the Congo exist because they cast off their emperors and created governments to provide rules and structure for their people (not always that successfully, but no matter). Nations exist, and it is pointless to argue their existence pro or con. 

To be an anti-Zionist today is to deny to Jews the same rights we champion in others. This double standard is antisemitism, plain and simple. 

I have worked with Jews and for Jews my entire life. We are no better and no worse than anyone else. If other groups of people can define themselves, then we Jews can also define ourselves. If other indigenous people are entitled to return home, then Jews are entitled to our homeland. If other people are encouraged to wrest a national identity from their overlords, then Jews should be applauded for the State of Israel, a singular achievement. 

Zionism is an achievement in human history that should be celebrated.

It is clear to me that those people who pillory the Jewish nation’s very being and proudly claim to be anti-Zionists have a particular bug against Jews and only Jews. That is a double standard, an impossible standard at this point in time.

As far as I am concerned, it is not unreasonable to call out that bug. anti-Zionism, for what it is: antisemitism. 

If I have been able to entice you to obtain my novel, Take My Dog, A Southern Detour Through the Apocalypse, thank you for giving the book a try. The response has been very positive. A little Stephen King, a little Flannery O’Conner and a little religious Southern slice of life comedy. Nobody has had a problem turning the pages.

The book is available through Amazon by copying this link in your browser. Amazon.com : take my dog a southern detour through the apocalypse. And if you enjoyed it, as everyone does, please give it a positive review.

Isn’t the cover by editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis just the best?!

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Please enjoy and stay tuned. Backwards and Forwards will appear, again, magically in your inbox in a few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a note at backwardsforwards.newsletter@gmail.com. 

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Whether we are going backwards or forwards, none of us is standing still. And successful people can move both forwards and backwards at the same time.

Until next time, shalom,

Jonathan