In response to a recent video criticizing Tucker Carlson, Mujahid Sarsur, author of the forthcoming book, Palestinians at the Holocaust Museum, writes:
I believe the efforts of pro-Palestinian human rights liberal Jews (including you, Michelle Goldberg, and Naomi Klein) to contribute to the Democratic/Republican establishment goal of dismissing Carlson as a bigot are extremely harmful to the Palestinian cause, and I believe such efforts, although primarily justified by focusing on Carlson’s statements that may be perceived as bigoted, partly stem from a need to defend a construct of a “Jewish peoplehood”—a construct which has been substantially shaped not by traditional Jewish ethics, but by the Zionist movement’s ethnocentric influence on the Jewish community.
My deeper point is illuminated by coining the term “anti-Zionist Zionist Jews”: a person who does not believe in the need for a Jewish state but still embraces the ideological structures underlying Zionism, wanting to defend and be part of a “Jewish peoplehood,” and unwilling to look at the link between that construct and the extermination of Palestinians.
The Palestine issue cannot be understood without a deep exploration of Jewish identity; few questions are more relevant to the Palestinians than “Who is a Jew?” In my upcoming book, I rely on the writings of Jewish and Israeli authors who illustrate how Zionism is ideologically dependent on the construct of “Jewish peoplehood” and who argue that Jews are no more than a faith group, to show how this construct is existentially linked to the future of Palestinians:
The concept of the Jewish people has been at the center of Zionist ideology and what it did to the Palestinians. Israeli intellectual Boaz Evron argues that “the problematic situation in which modern Israel finds itself is derived, inter alia, from assumptions and ideologies about the nature of the Jewish people and the Jewish state that have largely been refuted by historical developments.” Israeli historian Shlomo Sand writes that Israel’s attachment to an “unbridled ethnocracy that grossly discriminates against certain of its citizens, rests on the active myth of an eternal nation that must ultimately forgather in its ancestral land.” Professor of Jewish history, Yakov Rabkin, writes that what “underlies Zionist ideology” is “the concept of the Jewish people.” Israeli government policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians have always been about how to defend this “Jewish peoplehood” and whatever the definition of that peoplehood encompasses.
Indeed, Jewish identity does not only concern the Palestinians, but it is also existentially relevant to them. The Nakba—the destruction of over 500 Palestinian towns and villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian refugees—was a direct result of this vision of Jewish peoplehood that needs to be preserved and protected. The Gaza genocide was rationalized and justified by Israel and its supporters by the need to protect the “Jewish people.” When Israel commenced its genocide, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken came to Israel and explicitly cited his Jewishness to explain why he feels personally required to support Israel and its military.
By equating genocide with Jewishness, as the American Jewish establishment wants him to do, Carlson is challenging the essence of why Antony Blinken may not be a practicing Jew but feels part of a “Jewish peoplehood.” By extension, Carlson is also challenging you, Peter, and Goldberg and Klein to reflect on the essence of contemporary Jewishness. You are confronted with a choice: the easy route of dismissing him as a bigot or asking tough questions. What does it mean that the majority of synagogues and Jewish community centers have Israeli flags? What does the removal of these flags entail? How much of contemporary Jewishness is left without Zionism? Why do many American Jews insist on Jewishness as an “ethnicity” even though ample books have collapsed that idea? Why would 540 Columbia students feel a need to call themselves Zionists and defend Israel in the midst of the genocide?
Many in the Palestinian community view the Carlson phenomenon as miraculous because, for the first time, they see in Carlson the possibility that the structures that have been leading to the expulsion and extermination of Palestinians are being fundamentally challenged. Carlson is holding a sledgehammer and is destroying these structures. Dismissing him as a bigot helps stop this sledgehammer and, from the vantage point of many Palestinians, feels like a deeply Zionist act.
This is, of course, not to accept Carlson’s other views, but to focus on his impact on the Palestine issue as well as the Lebanese situation.
A brilliant analysis, by this Palestinian author, addressed to Peter Beinart, who published it under his very interesting site "The Beinart notebook", which I get by email myself, I'm forwarding it through our blog for better understanding of the original issue and causes of the Israeli/Palestinian dilemma.
As always my deep many thanks to all.
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