A common Zionist belief is that Israel is a safe haven for Jewish people. The origins of Zionism are built around the idea that Jews can only experience safety through establishing a Jewish state. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, conceived of Zionism as a solution to European antisemitism, which he laid out in his 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State. Herzl wrote, “the Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.”
But a state doesn’t merely get founded—it needs to be founded somewhere. Vladimir Jabotinsky, a leading Zionist figure who helped establish Jewish paramilitary forces in pre-Israel Palestine, wrote, “Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible.”
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, viewed Jewish settlers as “more intelligent and diligent” than the Arab people. Ben-Gurion was also open about zionism as a colonial project, stating in 1938 “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. … Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.” Theodor Herzl said “National colonization will succeed”.
A Jewish supremacist state
All three men were hugely influential Zionists who were instrumental to the founding of Israel. Their stated goals were to create a Jewish state, but in their own words they acknowledge this state is built on the precarity of the Palestinian people.
The opinion that Israel is essential to Jewish safety is a rather mainstream one, not merely one espoused by hardline Zionists. US President Joe Biden has said “Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe.”
The fact that so many say Israel keeps us Jews safe necessitates asking a very important question: Why? Why should Israel be thought of as a haven for Jewish prosperity and safety when especially when Israel oppresses the most vulnerable Jews?
Welfare of Israeli holocaust survivors
Israel is currently home to some 147,000 Holocaust survivors as of April 2023. Germany has paid billions of dollars in reparations to help survivors of the Holocaust.
Despite this aid, Holocaust survivors in Israel are more likely to live in poverty than their Israeli peers who weren’t victims of the Holocaust. A full third of Holocaust survivors in Israel live below the poverty line, and over half of all Holocaust survivors in Israel require food handouts. Footage provided by “Unreported World” shows an interviewer speaking with at least thirteen Holocaust survivors at a single farmers’ market picking through discarded food at the end of the day, and another survivor living in an unheated, moldy laundry room.
Yemenite Children Affair
In Israel’s infancy, many Jews flocked there from all across the world, but the treatment Jews of colour received was by and large quite different from the treatment of white passing Jews. Jews from North Africa, the Middle East, and most specifically the Yemeni communities were not offered the haven that European Jews were promised.
The Yemenite Children Affair refers to the kidnapping of Yemeni babies from their families when they immigrated to Israel. There are at least one thousand confirmed cases of Israeli authorities kidnapping children from Mizrahi families, with some estimates putting the actual count upwards of 4,500. One out of every eight Yemeni children were kidnapped by the state of Israel. Most of the kidnapped children were adopted by European Jewish settlers, but some were even used for medical experimentation, with testimony being given under oath to the Knesset and pictures corroborating this claim.
Over seventy years later, Israel still refuses to properly acknowledge the state-sanctioned kidnappings. It took until the 1990’s before an official investigative committee was established on the Yemenite Children Affair. They published their findings in 2001,and a gag order was placed on everything the committee published until 2066. What we do know about the 2001 findings that were publicly stated is that “the commission concluded there was no basis to the claim that the establishment abducted babies”. Victims and their families face an additional hurdle in identifying their lost family as DNA kits such as those sold by Ancestry.com are forbidden for the public to buy without a court order under the “Genetic Information Law”.
To this day, demonstrations occur outside Israeli parliament on an annual basis to protest the continued failure of the state of Israel to declassify all documents the government has relating to the affair, properly investigate and inform the victims of the affair, and take responsibility for the crimes.
Ethiopian Jews in Israel
One of Israel’s first laws, passed in 1950 (just two years after Israel’s founding when Zionist paramilitary forces committed the Nakba), was the “Law of Return,” which grants every Jew in the world the right to move to Israel. Israel defines a Jew under this law as “a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.” Despite this simple definition, Ethiopian Jews are frequently deported, an extremely rare occurrence for Israel. In 2013 alone, Israel deported forty-six entire Ethiopian Jewish families with only sixty days notice.
Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has referred to African migrants as “infiltrators”, who have “either the choice to leave the country and take their money or to spend the rest of their life in an Israeli prison”. Ethiopian Jews are subject to racism and discrimination from the state of Israel on all sides of the political spectrum, and as CJ Werleman notes, every major electoral party in Israel refers to Ethiopian Jews as the “African Menace” and promises to “save Israel” from them. David Sheen, a journalist currently residing in Dimona, Israel, notes that “Ethiopian donkeys are given preferential treatment to actual Ethiopian humans, with preferential immigration status given to the former over the latter.”
Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel as recently as in 2004 were given contraceptives without their knowledge or informed consent. Ethiopian immigrants that speak up about the matter have reported intense pressure from Israeli authorities to keep their families small and that during the immigration process to Israel they were told they had to receive shots if they wanted to immigrate to Israel. Many reported being under the impression the shots were vaccines and were not told they were contraceptives.
LGBTQ+ in Israel
Zionists often tout Israel as a safe haven for queer folks, and especially in contrast to Palestine and the rest of the Arab world, using Islamophobic stereotypes to paint Israel as a bastion of human rights in the Middle East. The reality, however, is much starker. The 2016 Israeli Pride Parade paints a bleak picture and can be used as a case study to provide insight into queer Israeli life.
Pride attendees carried protest signs reading, “Standing together against hate crimes,” denouncing Lehava (an Israeli group that opposes Jewish-Muslim relationships), and calling attention to prominent rabbis referring to gay people as disabled and in need of therapy. Israel’s 2016 Pride also featured a memorial for Shira Banki, who was murdered at Israel’s 2015 Pride.
A 2022 poll found a full third of Israelis unwilling to work or study with trans people. As the Jerusalem post notes:
About 80% of the trans community were located in the bottom three deciles in the income distribution in Israel in 2019. Additionally, about 50% of transgender people in Israel have experienced physical violence at least once based on their gender identity and about 70% of the trans community experiences verbal abuse regularly.
In 2016, Beer Sheva (a city in Israel) canceled its Pride celebrations due to threats of anti-queer violence and insufficient commitment from police to ensure the safety of Pride attendees.
As Pride attendees showed, the treatment of queer folks in Israel is violent and abhorrent, and the cancellation of Beer Sheva’s pride in 2016 underscores the culpability of the state of Israel in the matter. The oppression queer folks face in Israel is not simply from violent far-right people individually oppressing queer folks, but from the government’s failure to ensure the rights of LGBTQ+ people are met.
Beyond Pride, a lack of fundamental legal rights for queer folks has long been a constant in Israel. In Israel, gay marriage is illegal, while discrimination based on sexual orientation is legal for employers. Non-binary is not a legally recognized gender identity under Israeli law. In May 2023, Israel put forth a new regressive policy removing a trans person’s ability to choose the gender identity of the officer searching them, instead mandating male officers will strip search trans people with ‘male genitalia’ and female officers will strip search trans people with ‘female genitalia’. The anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that passes Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is not a coincidence—there are plenty of openly homophobic Knesset members. Israel’s current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, publicly declared himself a “proud homophobe” and helped initiate the “Beast Parade,” an anti-gay demonstration in Jerusalem in 2006.
Israeli misogyny
Israel is not governed like a secular state. Rabbinic courts preside over specific civil matters, including divorce, wills, and conversion cases. The rabbinic courts follow a specific form of orthodox Jewish law which segregates women. Consequently, women are not allowed to be Rabbinic judges. Rabbinic courts have a reputation for barring women from testifying, even in abuse cases, and not granting women divorces. Not a holdover from earlier times, Rabbinic courts are in fact still gaining power in modern Israeli society: in February of 2023, a preliminary proposal passed the Knesset that would grant Rabbinic courts the power to officiate on all civil issues for the first time in fifteen years, and would give them equal status to the secular justice system.
Israeli women on average earn 68 cents for every dollar a man makes, part of what makes Israel rank firmly in last place for all OECD countries in gender equality index. Israel has many gender segregated regions and institutions, strongly correlating with the presence of the ultra orthodox Jewish community in Israel. For example, there are libraries in Jerusalem that have segregated visiting hours for men and women. There are even university courses entirely gender segregated in Israel.
Conscientious objectors
The Torah, specifically The Book of Bamidbar (Numbers) 1:3, states a minimum age for military service at 20 years old. Despite this, Israel has mandatory military service starting at 18 for all Israeli citizens. Israeli youth who oppose service in the Israeli military, the IDF, are given mandatory jail sentences. In April of 2013, an Israeli teenager who had already served over 100 days in jail for refusing military conscription was given his 8th sentence for an additional 14 days in jail.
In 1999, Amnesty International released a report on the unjust nature of the Israeli in specific reference to the refusal to acknowledge conscientious objectors.
Conscientious objectors who refuse to perform military service risk prosecution under Israeli military law. Many are jailed after receiving unfair summary trials in disciplinary hearings. Often conscientious objectors are repeatedly prosecuted and imprisoned. …In 1995 the IDF set up an internal committee, called the Conscientious Objection Committee, to examine the cases of male conscientious objectors. … All but one of the committee members are drawn from the ranks of the IDF. Some conscientious objectors, who were imprisoned for refusing to perform military service, were not even interviewed by this committee. Amnesty International knows of only four cases where the committee has accepted that the applicant is a genuine conscientious objector.
Vigilante violence against Yiddish speakers and forced assimilation
Hebrew was the first language spoken by the original Jews of 3,300 years ago, but it did not remain the language of Jews forever. Abram Leon, a Jewish historian on Jewish history, noted, “…even the songs and chronicles are in Aramaic, which shows that as early as the 5th century BC Hebrew was no longer a customary language for the Jews.” Over the next 2,500 years the Jewish people migrated all over the world and adopted the local languages of the regions they settled in, though often with a Judeo-dialect of the local language. Perhaps the most prevalent example of such a dialect is Yiddish, a Judeo-dialect of German spoken across Europe by European Jews since at least the 1300s.
As of 150 years ago, Hebrew was a dead language used only for Jewish prayers. Ben Yehuda, an early Zionist, invented modern Hebrew based heavily on Biblical Hebrew. But despite Ben Yehuda’s efforts to create a Jewish language for the Jewish people, many of the early adopters were simply unable to speak ancient Hebrew as it was originally pronounced, which impacted the way it is spoken today. Additionally, a modern Hebrew dictionary has over 100,000 words, compared to only 8,000 Hebrew words in the Torah, meaning in some senses modern Hebrew is more invented than revived.
Ben Yehuda’s intentions were not innocent. His invention of modern Hebrew was meant to establish a national identity for Jews in his Zionist image. Hebrew symbolized a commitment to nationalism and the creation of a Jewish ethnostate. As such, Zionists have a rich history of suppression and physical violence against Yiddish-speaking Jews.
Dr. Eddy Portnoy, a scholar on Yiddish in pre-1948 Palestine, gives a sample of the violence perpetrated by Zionists against Yiddish speakers in the 1930’s:
…opponents of the language would agitate outside the establishments, interrupting the films, throwing smoke bombs and stink bombs into the screening rooms. They would also set fire to newspaper stands that sold Yiddish newspapers. The exhibition also describes an event from 1934 in Tel Aviv where Hebrew Warriors arrived at a meeting of the Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists, smashed the windows and cut off the electricity.
Portnoy adds that between 1920-1948:
…there was a Zionist law stating that if you had lived in the land for more than two years, you were forbidden from speaking publicly in any language other than Hebrew. Anyone who violated this would end up beaten and bandaged, as evidenced by the photos of the wounded in the 1928 newspaper.
As Israel sought to invent a culture to legitimize its colonial project, Hebrew was a tool to separate the Jews who were committed to Zionism from the ones who clung to their “old lives.” Laws were passed banning theater productions and newspapers from being in any language but Hebrew. Israeli diplomats even needed to adopt Hebraize versions of their names (Benjamin Netanyahu’s father was born “Benzion Mileikowsky”).
Zionism as a movement, historically and to the present day, has had to manufacture itself. In doing so, it has had to redefine what a Jew is, who a Jew is, what a Jew speaks. The enforcement of these redefinitions of Judaism is not only inherently and deeply antisemitic, but was also enforced with violence and resulted in many Jews paying in fear, injury, and blood. Zionism and Israel are not for every Jew, but for the ones who exist in the invented hyper-nationalist image of who a “proper” Jew is.
Allyship with Nazi war criminals
Israel frequently uses the Holocaust as a way to not only justify its existence, but also to silence criticism. Israeli officials and prime ministers frequently reference the Holocaust in speeches about nearly any matter when it’s politically convenient, and it has been used repeatedly as a Zionist talking point as a justification for the establishment and existence of Israel.
Just four years after the end of the Holocaust, Israel recruited Nazi Walther Rauff, the inventor of mobile gas chambers inside trucks that killed an estimated 97,000 to 200,000 people. Israel sought intel Rauff had regarding Syria, and sought to place him as a spy in the Syrian government after the 1949 Syrian coup d’état. After this attempt failed Israeli officials helped him immigrate to South America, where he lived the rest of his life as a free man.
Otto Skorzeny joined Austria’s Nazi party at 23 years old in 1931, and in 1939 volunteered for the division of Germany’s army that served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard force. Later in his life he would be a valuable asset for Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, after being recruited by Israel in their battle against Egypt.
After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, many international Jews partook in international boycott of German goods to slow the economy of Germany and stifle the Nazi’s growth. Zionists took this as an opportunity instead and exploited the rise of Nazism for their own political gain. The Haavara Agreement was an agreement made by Zionists in Palestine and the Nazis to allow German Jews emigration from Germany to Palestine in exchange for economic benefits, namely not allowing German Jews to export currency, bolstering a fledgling German economy. The agreement resulted in the settlement of 53,000 Jews in Palestine and an economic benefit to Nazi Germany of around 800,000 USD adjusted for inflation.
Throughout its history, Israel has done everything in its military power to exercise control over Palestinian people, neighboring Arab states, and state enemies, even going so far as to recruit multiple high-ranking Nazi war criminals. Israel has always been a nationalist project, and more than actual Jewish freedom, more than justice served to Nazi war criminals, Israel is primarily concerned with its existence as a state—regardless of the crimes committed or the human toll.
Zionism at its core
After the October 7 attacks that killed 695 Israeli civilians, the state of Israel has responded with bloodshed, bombs, and white phosphorous raining down on the overwhelmingly civilian population of Gaza. In its rampage, Israel has killed roughly thirty-one own Israeli hostages, and on December 3, more were killed directly by Israeli gunfire after escaping Hamas and emerging bare chested and waving white flags in Gaza. Israeli troops shot two of them dead, and then murdered the last surviving hostage as he pleaded for his life in Hebrew.
Officials of the state of Israel have not been subtle about the intention to kill indiscriminately in Gaza. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said in a speech, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” The reference to Amalek in the Torah refers to God commanding King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, with this specific excerpt: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals.” Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel said “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible” and said explicitly that Gaza civilians are legitimate targets, as well as stating “we will eliminate everything”. Israel’s former permanent representative to the UN Dan Gillerman also called all Palestinians “horrible inhuman animals”.
Israel is a nation of trauma founded with the trauma of the Holocaust as a catalyst, and subjecting citizens to further cycles of trauma by forcing them to serve as soldiers. Rather than Israel being a safe haven for Jews the killings of October 7 show that all Israelis cannot expect safety while Palestinians are under occupation and apartheid.
Israel is a state that has Holocaust survivors as citizens living in poverty despite millions in reparations paid by Germany for them. It is a state that has kidnapped Jewish children from their Yemeni parents, has open hostility to queer people, and regularly deports Ethiopian Jews who are referred to as “The African Menace.” Israel has recruited multiple Nazi war criminals mere years after the Holocaust to bolster their military.
Israel will never be able to achieve safety for its own people because in the words of the founders of Zionism, it is a colonial movement that views Palestinians as less than. There can never be equality for Israelis in a society built on oppression of others. The same supremacist thinking that justifies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland is all too easily turned inward and applied to Israeli Jews who belong to an oppressed group—be they queer, conscientious objectors, or even Holocaust survivors.
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