Last November, tens of thousands of American Jews rallied in Washington, D.C., for Israel and against anti-Semitism in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Some organized themselves into a self-proclaimed “peace bloc.” The idea was to show up and be part of the community for other Jews and Israel, but also to show support for the Palestinians and Israelis who live side by side. One of the protesters held a placard that read “Zionists for nuance and peace.”
The Peace Bloc is made up of liberal-minded groups that are committed to the Israel issue and, unlike left-wing Jewish groups, have not yet called for a ceasefire, but the gathering also includes speakers such as Christian Zionist pastors. It was only a small part of it. John Hagee compared Hamas to Adolf Hitler. But in a sense, the peace zone represented the center of American Jewish life. Half of American Jews are liberal, and the majority feel connected to or support Israel. Many do not particularly like or support the current Israeli government, and more than half even support at least some weapons restrictions. The majority supports a two-state solution, or the survival of Israel as a Jewish state next to a Palestinian state.
A year ago, liberal Jewish organizations that organized and participated as part of the peace bloc said that Israel has the right to respond to Hamas attacks, but the way it conducts war matters. For example, Americans for Peace Now, whose mission is to persuade Americans to support and adopt policies that lead to “comprehensive and lasting Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace,”・He said that Prime Minister Netanyahu should resign and that Israel should resign. This is to deliver fuel to Gaza. The group Trua: Rabbis’ Call for Human Rights said Israel’s priority was to recover those taken hostage.
A year later, with hostages still in Gaza and a conservative estimate of 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, I have been thinking about those in the peace zone. About what they thought of the past year and whether we made the move. Getting closer or further away from what they were looking for that day.
“Liberal Zionist is a term that is thrown around both by those who want to despise it and by those who want to claim that title,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, president of Tulua. “It means a lot of things to a lot of people.” She said she would rather be known for her beliefs. Neither Jews nor Palestinians have left the region, and any resolution to the conflict requires providing security for all and respecting human rights, including the right to self-determination and citizenship. .
“I think that’s the most moral point of view: respecting the dignity of all people,” she said.
After October 7, Jacobs said, “It was clear that there would be a military response. Israel’s military response was justified.” But the question is what kind of military response. she says. The response was just, she said, but the way the war was waged was not. Hamas has committed war crimes, which does not give Israel permission to do so.
Some attacks directly targeted Hamas leaders, while 2,000-pound bombs were used in urban areas to kill “family members and others who had no connection to Hamas because they lived on the same block.” ” sometimes.
“Using a bomb of that size in an urban area is a choice, a choice that Israel knows will result in excruciating deaths for civilians,” Jacobs said.
Last December, Trua called for a negotiated end to the war. The war that is actually being fought is unjustified and “the goal of ultimately destroying Hamas completely is not really possible,” Jacobs said.
APN head Hadar Susskind also avoids the term “liberal Zionist.” The term is often used in a negative sense, he says.
That was true even before the war. “Liberal Zionism promotes normalization that colonizes the mind as an effective propaganda tool,” an Al Jazeera editorial argued in 2019. As Israeli journalist Dimi Ryder wrote in a 2021 op-ed for Foreign Policy magazine: The two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is over, its former champions – mostly liberal Zionists and diplomats – clinging to an outdated political platform, and the Israeli right and far right are trying to shape reality the way they want. It leaves plenty of room for shaping. ”
A long-standing question is whether liberal Zionism even exists anymore. In 2014, The New Yorker published an article with the headline “Is Liberal Zionism Impossible?” (The question was prompted by “the recent war in Gaza.”) Ten years later, in March of this year, Railhouse’s headline asked, “Is liberal Zionism dead?”
The APN is a “Zionist organization,” Susskind said. “But I’m not calling us progressive Zionists.” He said the word is a lightning rod and different people have different definitions of what it means.
Like Jacobs, Susskind felt that the October 7 Hamas attack “required a military response.” But “what the Netanyahu government has done is also not the right answer.”
APN called for a cessation of fighting in November. In December, he signed a petition calling on the Biden administration to consider making aid to Israel conditional, stating that these conditions “require that U.S. taxpayer dollars serve our foreign policy objectives. “We explicitly guarantee that our aid is used against Israel, with concrete consequences if our aid is used contrary to our aid to Israel.” U.S. or international law. In January, he issued a statement saying it was time to end the war.
“We have to deal with reality,” Susskind said. “We have to respond to what’s going on.”
“I think anyone who cares about this has had a hard time getting through this year,” he said. The actions of Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah “require a different response than the traditional standby.” During the Democratic National Convention, I watched a video of Mr. Susskind and Mandy Patinkin. In it, Susskind said: I’ll do it here. So you can’t necessarily stop the bombing of Gaza, but you don’t have to give them bombs to do that. ”
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And this year, he said, it wasn’t just individual Jews and Jewish organizations who had to think differently and push themselves. “Elected officials also need to break out of their comfort zone.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, who hesitated to call for a ceasefire in the early weeks of the war, moved last month to block arms sales to Israel. Democratic politicians from the party’s liberal mainstream are also making moves this year that were previously unthinkable to many. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for an election in Israel in March. The Biden administration has introduced and expanded sanctions against certain violent West Bank settlers. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to attend Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
But it is also true that, despite the unprecedented moves, calls and statements, the Democrats at the highest levels of power have not fundamentally changed their relationship with Israel in general and their support for the Netanyahu government in particular.
And a year later, Israel’s war is growing, not shrinking. After months of exchanging rocket fire with Hezbollah, Israel invaded Lebanon by detonating explosives remotely. On Tuesday, Iran attacked Israel with a ballistic missile.
“We are really looking into the abyss,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, which aims to become a mainstream Jewish political organization. The group has been accused by some on the left of papering over an indefensible status quo, and by those on the right for not actually supporting Israel.
Ben-Ami said J Street is a Zionist organization but prefers to describe itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” “I don’t think the word (Zionist) is a useful word to actively say,” he said, adding: “It drives everyone crazy.”
And to him, this argument is an anachronism. If Zionism is a movement to create a state, and if a state exists, then the debate should be about what the state is and what it will become. “Are you not or are you not a nation?” Zionist. “Ben-Ami said he believes that the core of the left’s criticism is that they have abandoned the idea that there should be a state of Israel. “My answer to them is that Jews have a right to a homeland. It means never giving up on an idea.”
The organization signed a cease-fire call in March. Still, some J Street staffers have criticized the organization for not being critical enough of Israel and the war, and some have left.
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Last November, Ben-Ami told me that the kind of future J Street is trying to build cannot happen with Hamas in control of Gaza. In the same conversation, he told me that he hoped this would be the war that would end the conflict. A few months went by and I asked him what he wanted in a year.
“A year from now we can say: Thank God there was a ceasefire over 11 months ago. It sparked the beginning of political change in Israel.”
He hoped that Israel’s leadership would change and that the new leader would “do some of the necessary things,” including thinking about “the other seven million people” who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. He hoped to move towards a comprehensive, regional approach and architecture that provides safety for all.
“What are the odds of that happening?” he laughed, perhaps at himself, or perhaps at the gap between the vision he outlined and the world as it is.
“A year is a short time,” he said. He added that he hopes it will be possible sometime next Five.
