Israel’s direction poses ‘existential threat’ to Judaism, UK’s leading progressive rabbis warn
Rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy say criticising Israeli government is not disloyalty but a Jewish obligation
@cstross the shift is finally coming. Decades too late. But it’s coming.
@timhollo
They start the article by saying “risks becoming incompatible with Jewish values”. I’m wondering which part of the last century of occupation, ethnic cleansing, displacement and general savagery could be considered compatible with Jewish values. And if we’re now at the “risking incompatibility” stage at what point do we cross into “nope” territory? Gas chambers and furnaces, camps with slogans?
This feels like damage control.
@Mogleg @timhollo They've been saying this in private for decades: what's new is that they seem to be giving up hope of change from within. (Israel *does* have a large non-right-wing minority but it's been in retreat since roughly 1977, around the time the US republicans threw in their lot with Likud via AIPAC's predecessors.)
@cstross
What troubles me is that they still can’t divorce themselves from the concept of the Zionist entity as a concept entirely. Admittedly this more public attitude marks a significant change in the public discourse we’re still far from decolonisation in Palestine, every step of the way a hard fought battle against forces trying to maintain an ethno-national apartheid enterprise yielding territory only when the position becomes completely untenable.
We’ve a long way to go yet
@Mogleg @timhollo When you grew up going to a synagogue with elders who had tattooed numbers on their arms from the Nazi camps it is UNBELIEVABLY hard to distance yourself from any promise of sanctuary in a storm. (Especially when the Arab nations went hard on antiemetic rhetoric from 1948 onwards and the west isn't much better.) It's driven by a visceral fear of being murdered—and it isn't entirely misplaced.
It's not at all misplaced, and there remains a virulent strain of antisemitism in much of the world even today - and it's growing rather than shrinking.
None of this excuses the actions of the government of Israel, of course. But one of the core messages of Zionism is:
"If we ever trust any non-Jews with our security again, they will inevitably betray us and lots of Jews will be killed."
And this message is very attractive to a great many Jews because it isn't actually _wrong_.
@juergen_hubert @cstross @Mogleg @timhollo
"An eye for an eye" has always been a terrible way to make friends, and nothing a civilized person should tolerate. Israel policy has always made that phrase really meek. But we tolerated it, and that proportion has grow so out of bounds no person with a modicum of empathy or decency can defend it anymore. And you can't have security when everybody despises you. Israel's policies are not making Israel more secure; they are making sure Israel will never be secure, at least not this century.
The fact that some of that permeates to innocent Jews everywhere only makes things worse.
