In a recent episode of Bad Hasbara, a ground breaking podcast that describes itself as the “world’s most moral podcast”, hosts Matt Lieb and Daniel Mate discuss Jewish anti-Zionist support for Palestinian liberation, together with guest and fellow Jewish anti-Zionist activist, Sim Kern.
Kern, author of upcoming book Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation, describes how as an “anti-Zionist Jew you are going to get backlash” from Palestinians who view Jewish activists as placing themselves centre in the struggle. Both Kern and the hosts are at pains to point out this is not their intention and that they view Palestinians as the principal leaders in their own liberation.
However, centre in the struggle is exactly where Kern, Lieb, Mate and other anti-Zionist Jews should be, right alongside Palestinians. The Jewish anti-Zionist voice is crucial for liberation of Palestine, but it is also crucial for Jews. As Haim Bresheeth courageously spoke outside the residence of Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, (before she likely asked the Home Office to arrest him), “Israel has not only colonised the Palestinian people… more importantly they’ve colonized the Jewish people everywhere. They have colonized Judaism. The tradition, the beliefs, the religion, the experience of Jews for 2,000 years was colonized by Zionism.”
Bresheeth is quite right, and it is a joint struggle that includes Jewish liberation from the grips of Zionism. Jews have as much right to be centre stage as Palestinians, and the sooner Palestinians embrace this fact, recognising that most Jews need liberation as much as they do, the sooner will Palestine be free and restored to what it once was… a land of equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Courageous and powerful, Haim’s arrest is paradoxically encouraging. It shows the Zionists are fearful, which in turn shows they are weak. Only through cruelty and force can they sustain their immoral and inhuman domination, and then only for a limited time.