Zionism is Jewish identity when Judaism isn’t

You know how there is a whole struggle going on over the Palestinian issue whereby anyone who criticizes Israel is labelled antisemitic, and so everyone has to clarify that they are not anti-Jewish but anti-Zionist, and go to great pains to explain this very obvious distinction? Of course, most of us see this as gaslighting and manipulation by the Zionists; nobody wants to be associated with antisemitism, because Nazis and so forth, so the Israelis deflect criticism by mischaracterising it as anti-Jewish hate speech. The era of identity politics makes that a potentially winning strategy. But I would like to look at it from another angle, because I think it is entirely plausible that many people are sincere in this belief; ie., that being anti-Zionism is the same thing as being anti-Jewish.

The reason is because it has become incredibly murky what even defines what it means to be a Jew. From the Muslim perspective, and from the rabbinical perspective, a Jew is someone who believes in and who, to one extent or another, follows the Taurah. A Jew is an adherent of Judaism. But in the modern era, the majority of people who are referred to as Jews, are secular, they do not believe in the Taurah, they do not follow Judaism, and a great many are atheist, they don’t even believe in God. Now, from an Islamic perspective, and again, from the Rabbinical perspective, these people are not Jews; they are a people of no religion, like any other group of people with no religion. This is how such people would have been regarded by the inhabitants of ancient Judea, and it is how they should be regarded today, regardless of whether or not they can somehow trace some miniscule thread of their DNA back to ancient Judea — it doesn’t matter. Palestinian Muslims and Christians can trace their DNA, a greater degree of their DNA, back to the Holy Land of antiquity; that doesn’t make them Jews.

But, even though a large percentage of Jews today are not religiously Jewish, ie, not actually Jews; many still strongly identify with being Jewish. So, what can that even mean? What is the basis of that identity? Well, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand suggests that secular or atheistic Jews base their identity on one of, or the combination of, three things: so-called Jewish blood — which is more or less an antisemitic myth, the Holocaust — which was the violent climax of antisemitism in Europe; or finally, the state of Israel — the justification for which is that Jews face antisemitism everywhere else in the world, and therefore need a homeland. So, almost any way you look at it, the basis for a non-religious jewish identity is derived from, if not directly defined by, antisemites. In other words, Jews who do not believe in Judaism are only really Jews because non-Jews who hate Jews insist that they are Jews, and they will not allow them to ever not be. Being in that situation, since Jewishness is being imposed upon them by antisemites, what are non-Judaic Jews supposed to do? They don’t believe in the Taurah, they don’t believe in God, their actual blood is a mixture just like everybody else; but to antisemites they will always be Jews. They cannot escape Jewishness in the eyes of non-Jews, despite themselves BEING non-Jews in every meaningful way; so what to do but identify Jewishness with Zionism? There isn’t any other way to make sense of the inescapable classification that is not inherently negating. They cannot gather around Judaism, they cannot gather around the Taurah, but they cannot avoid being gathered together, because no one will let them ever not be Jews; so they gather around the state of Israel, and turn the box everyone puts them in into a fortress.

So, if you really want to dissipate Zionism, you have to allow the people who you insist are Jews to have some other source of identity. An Atheist Jew is just an Atheist, a Jew who does not believe in or follow the Taurah, is just another person who does not believe in that book or follow it, just like anybody else. They are Americans, they are Germans, they are French, they are whatever else people define themselves as who do not have a religious identity. Because antisemites insist on there being a real Jewishness separate from Judaism, because they will scan through the directories of companies and count the names that end in -stein, or -berg, or what have you, and declare that Jews are over-represented and so on — despite the fact that many or most of these people have no religion whatsoever — antisemites are perpetuating Zionism; they are giving the people they insist upon defining as Jews no alternative source of identity; because there is no secular Jewish culture, no secular Jewish identity that is not essentially the by-product of anti-Jewish obsession, so all there is is identification with the “Jewish State”. Historically, and even now, actually believing, practicing, knowledgeable religious Jews — in other words, actual Jews — have not been Zionist. Zionism is a fake Jewish identity for secular Jews who are only Jews because non-Jews insist that they are Jews — so I am saying, stop with the insistence already.

Over half the global population of people defined as Jews self-identify as secular, non-religious, and at least 20% of Americans defined as Jews don’t even believe God exists. OK, so stop calling them Jews; by Islamic understanding, they would not be Jews, they would not be differentiated from any other non-religious people — because they are NOT different from any other non-religious people. Stop imposing Jewishness on them, because this forces them to create some alternative meaning to that identity, and that is going to be Zionism. So, for them, when you criticize Zionism you ARE being antisemitic, because, being Zionist is the only thing that forms the basis of Jewish identity when Judaism is removed from the equation. So, don’t let Judaism be removed from the equation, and if someone leaves Judaism, accept that they are simply not Jews, and let them just be like anybody else, and you will see Zionism fade away, because secular Jews would no longer need an identity that gives meaning to their nonsensical classification as Jewish.