Born in 1938, two days after Kristallnacht, I grew up during a period of rabid American antisemitism. In response, two relatives helped found the Anti-Defamation League. Learning of the atrocities Hamas committed in southern Israel, I was aghast like everyone. But I was not surprised. Israel has been hoisted on its own propaganda, regardless of the consequences. It has almost succeeded in silencing its critics, even – maybe especially – its Jewish ones, of whom there are many.
Six years ago, I published a novel based on the life of my grandfather’s sister, a Zionist who in 1922 left from what is now Moldova to join a kibbutz in British Mandate Palestine. After seven years there, she was deported with some other kibbutz members for supporting the 1929 Arab riots. Why were the Arabs rioting? Why were there Jews supporting them? In searching for answers, I came to understand the complexities within Zionism and the intrinsic problems with it.
I learned of Asher Ginsburg, for one, a significant early Zionist who went by the pen-name Ahad Ha’am. In essays like ‘The truth from Eretz Israel’ and ‘This is not the Way’ he debunked the common assertion that Palestine was ‘a land without people for a people without land’. While in favour of Jews establishing a connection with our ancestral homeland, he was vehemently opposed to establishing a Jewish-privileged state there. The father of what he called Cultural Zionism, Ha’am was at odds with Theodor Herzl, the driving force behind the more zealous Political Zionism, which gained in strength as European antisemitism intensified, ending in our Holocaust tragedy.
Ahad Ha’am’s wasn’t the only dissenting voice among Zionists, nor was my great-aunt my only connection with Israel. Born in 1938, two days after Kristallnacht, if thankfully safe in Chicago, I grew up during a period of rabid American antisemitism. In response, two other relatives helped found the Anti-Defamation League. As were all in my family, they were ardent Zionists. One, Philip Klutznick, was the principal benefactor for restoring the ancient city of Ashdod after the razing of Isdud, the Palestinian village that had replaced it. Klutznick eventually became president of the World Jewish Congress, but at some stage he began having second thoughts about Israel’s policies. These he recorded in a memoir called No Easy Answers. In July 1982, with Pierre Mendes-France and Nahum Goldmann, two other past Congress presidents, he released a Paris Declaration criticising Israel for refusing to negotiate with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). This was two months before the massacres of Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila.
What does this mean if you’re not prepared to negotiate with your enemy? Can this ever be productive? Or is it a convenient fiction? Never mind that Israel initially fostered Hamas as a foil to the PLO, now Fatah. Today reputable sources such as Seymour Hersh and Peter Rodgers have revealed that, before Hamas’s gruesome attack on October 7, Netanyahu had funded Hamas through Qatar to quiet them and thus allow his far-right coalition to concentrate on its depredations on the West Bank. But Hamas seized its moment instead.
Learning of the atrocities Hamas committed in southern Israel, I was aghast like everyone. But I was not surprised. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were driven from the country where they had been the majority, never allowed to return, while a Jew like me would have been welcomed as an immigrant and would be even now. For Palestinians who remained, the new Jewish state imposed a military occupation. In 1967 the occupation spread to the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza, developing into the brutal apartheid of today. Since 2007, Israel has imposed a punitive blockade on Gaza, destroying its economy, not to mention the damage done by four Israeli bombardments before this one. As a result of Israel’s exercising its ‘right to defend’, some 90 percent of men under 30 had been left unemployed. While accepting that Hamas has imposed its own autocracy on the people of Gaza, it was unreasonable to the point of arrogance on Israel’s part to expect them not to resist.
I’ve been a member of a small committee on Sydney’s northern beaches which had funded two men from Gaza to train here as lifesavers for establishing Nippers programs on the beaches there. The programs were underway when Israel retaliated for the Hamas attack. Like the rest of our committee, I’ve received a gut-wrenching letter from one of these men on the day of Israel’s reprisal. There has been no word since.
For years I’ve been critical of Israeli governments. But with their rigid, defensive dogmatism within Israel’s borders and its blindly accepting supporters in the Diaspora, Israel has been hoisted on its own propaganda, regardless of the consequences. It has almost succeeded in silencing its critics, even – maybe especially – its Jewish ones, of whom there are many. Who would know of Jewish Voice for Peace, Not in my Name, Jews against the Occupation, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, to name some. And who or what has been served by this silencing? Certainly not Israel, or Jews in the Diaspora. Certainly not the Palestinian people. And as for any hope of peace, how long must we wait for that?
Sara Dowse
Sara Dowse is an American-born Australian feminist, author, critic, social commentator, and visual artist. Her novels include Schemetime published in 1990, Sapphires, and As the Lonely Fly, and she has contributed reviews, articles, essays, stories, and poetry to a range of print and online publications.
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