Can the soul of Judaism be saved?
"Judaism is not Zionism." This distinction has become an article of faith in the Palestinian movement. It's the shield with which we defend ourselves from accusations of antisemitism. ("I'm anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish!") It's the credentials our Jewish allies display as they join us in defying the political leaders of their own community. ("I'm a Jew but not a Zionist!") We repeat this mantra so often that one might be forgiven for thinking that not only are the two concepts distinct, but that Judaism and Zionism have no common threads connecting them whatsoever.
But is that distinction valid? Are Judaism and Zionism, as they exist today, truly separable? Ironically, this characterization of Judaism that we insist upon so strongly is vehemently rejected by the majority of mainstream Jewish institutions, who see Zionism as an inseperable part of their faith and creed. Israel and its supporters insist that its actions are carried out on behalf of the Jewish people, that Israel is the legitimate representative of Jews the world over, the realization of their millenia-old religious mission. Mainstream Jewish institutions across the Western world parrot this, placing Israel in such a central position in their theology that to oppose that genocidal state becomes tantamount to anti-Jewish hatred itself.
That tendency of mainstream Jewish institutions to conflate Judaism and Zionism is rarely if ever described as anti-Jewish or antisemitic. And yet, if supporters of Palestine ever talk about their ongoing holocaust in a way that holds the Jewish community as a whole responsible for it, or if a Palestinian drops the Zionist/Jew distinction and falls back on the customary use of the Arabic term "Yahood" (Jews) to refer to their oppressors, such language will usually be swiftly attacked as antisemitic, often even by those same anti-Zionist Jews who claim to be their allies.
Why is it incumbent upon Palestinians to insist on this distinction that most Jews themselves refuse as offensive and anti-Jewish? By all indications, the distinction between Zionism and Judaism is one that, for the most part, exists only in theory, not in any real way. Don't agree with me? Then show me the Jewish institutions that aren't supporting the genocide. Show me the anti-Zionist Jewish front, the mass of anti-Zionist Jewish orgs fighting to end their community's complicity in genocide. There are a small handful of groups, the well-known few organizations who always take pride of place in the Palestine movement, the anti-Zionist Jews whose voices carry more weight in "pro-Palestine" spaces than the voices of Palestinians themselves... but these anti-Zionist organizations are all marginal within the Jewish community, banished to the fringes of that community in basically every city where they exist.
It can be hard to see the distinction between Zionism and Judaism in practice. What's not hard to see at all is the fact that almost every Jewish institution in the Western world is actively and enthusiastically participating in a holocaust against the Palestinian people. The Jewish community plays a central and critical role in maintaining international support for Israel, from fundraising for the genocide, to encouraging and paying for its members to join the Israeli army, to lobbying institutions, business, media and government, from the USA to Australia, to support Israel and to punish its critics. It's no exaggeration to say that without this international network of support rooted in the Jewish communities of the Western world, the whole Zionist genocidal project simply could not exist.
If you live in the West, identify as Jewish, and want to be an ally of the Palestinian people, then your job first and foremost is to confront the fact that your community, the Jewish community, is drenched, dripping from head to toe, with the blood of the Palestinian people. Their erasure, from the Nakba to the present holocaust, has been perpetrated in your name, with the support of almost every one of your institutions and synagogues and leaders. Support for Israel and Zionism are treated as core tenets of Judaism by almost all of your institutions; for most of them, there is no Judaism without Zionism, and those Jews who disagree are swiftly cast out of even their own community spaces (as you know all too well).
In these circumstances, it's less a question of whether Judaism and Zionism are distinguishable, and more a question of: is there even a Judaism left to be salvaged from the wreck of Zionism?
Of course anti-Zionist Jews exist, and the role they play is important. It is acknowledged, it is valued, it is seen. But so long as the Jewish community continues to be preponderantly Zionist, so long as Zionism continues to enjoy near-unanimous support among Jewish community organizations and institutions and synagogues, the distinction between Zionism and Judaism will remain, as Marx would say, a "pious wish."
In truth, whether Zionism and Judaism are distinguishable is not up to me to decide; that's a decision the Jewish community, including its anti-Zionist members, must make. In that respect, I wish our plucky anti-Zionist Jewish comrades, outnumbered and outcast as they are, the best of luck in this formidable endeavour. And I would remind them that the character of Judaism can't be determined in words or intentions alone; it must be determined in real action, in actually changing the actual character of the actual Jewish community.
In my view, the only way to save the soul of Judaism is for anti-Zionist Jews to wrest the Jewish community — including its mainstream institutions — away from Zionism completely, and to banish Zionism from the Jewish community as anti-Zionism is banished today. Anything short of that is insufficient. If you claim the title of anti-Zionist Jew, then that is your historic task.