My Clash with Dan Cohen

Should anti-Zionism criticize Jews or should it try to create a distinction between Jews and Israelis? An online skirmish presented an opportunity to clarify my position on a cardinal issue

In recent days, something I wrote caused a stir in the online anti-Zionist space, involving the known anti-Zionist Dan Cohen and some Palestinian activists, with a spectacular contribution by Afif Aqrabawi (not to overburden with links, I will link directly to texts written by the two in a minute).

As anti-Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism are relevant and important these days, I will take the opportunity to expand a bit on what I think caused the heated disagreement, and how the anti-Zionist approaches we take differ from one another.

As it’s particularly germane here, I will also lay out one detrimental influence Zionism has had on cultural discourse, which functions as a real intellectual and psychological barrier to truth and justice, especially given Israel’s special role in Western everything.

Oh, and let me also add that this is not about disparaging or ridiculing Dan Cohen. I believe he’s mistaken in his approach, but I don’t believe there’s any malicious intent behind it. I also want to respect the contribution Dan and others have made to the Jewish and general anti-Zionist discourse years before I showed up. So I will disagree pointedly, but without being disrespectful.

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Should Jews be seen, and see themselves, as collectively accountable for the crimes of Zionism? I say yes. Dan Cohen says no

It all began with a text I posted on Twitter, which reads:

‘Let me solve a big great mystery for you. A truly gigantic one.

The Italian state represents the Italian people.

The Chinese state represents the Chinese people.

The Hungarian state represents the Hungarian people.

The Malaysian state represents the Malaysian people.

The Jewish state represents the Jewish people.

If you're an Italian, Chinese, Hungarian, Malaysian, or Jewish (or any other nationality), and you really hate what your country is doing - say, for example, genocide - it is your moral, human, and civic duty to make your objection heard loud and clear. If no serious internal opposition is registered, it means the collective approves of the steps and measures taken by their state on their collective behalf. It is not complicated.’ (Read the full tweet here).

Dan Cohen quoted my post and had this to say about it:

Now, personal insults aside (a nonconformist Arab Jewish thinker must have a really thick skin, and mine is practically an armour by now), Dan Cohen is making a serious ontological mistake here, which is just a fleshy way of saying he misunderstands the relationship between meaning and perception, and misreads the Jewish ‘room’.

I say meaning and perception because, in the world of humans, the meanings of things reflect what they believe to represent, and not neutral, objective, or aspired observations. If the color white stands for purity and black stands for grief for a certain community, what these two colors actually mean has no relevance (‘Black and white are not really colors‘, the smartass intervenes, but my point is exactly that if they are believed to be colors, politically that’s what they are, and that’s what counts).

Similarly, if Israel is widely believed to be the Jewish state, and if the majority of its residents are Jews, and if Jews in diaspora feel connected to it, then Israel is the state of Jews and needs to be seen as the political entity that represents them until proven otherwise.

In addition to Israel being the Jewish state, it also has tremendous support among Jews worldwide, and close to zero active and impactful Jewish resistance, even in days of open genocide.

I’m not getting into why this is the case; that’s another discussion altogether. To impactfully argue about anything, we have to first establish the simple facts of reality. And, simply speaking, Israel is the foremost political entity of, for, and by Jews, and a great majority of Jews worldwide identify with it enthusiastically, habitually, or reluctantly.

Since that’s the case, then Jews are - again, simply speaking - responsible and need to be seen and see themselves as accountable for Gaza’s genocide, as well as for decades of occupation, cancerous racism, ethnic cleansing, and indescribable cruelty directed at Palestinians and others as part of Zionism.

Even if we did not support it or personally partook in it, the humane and honest thing to do would be to acknowledge our collective responsibility and do everything that we can to denounce Zionism and legitimize, and build up, unabashed and unequivocal Jewish (and general) anti-Zionism.

I speak simply because I am a simple Arab Jew; equally, I recognize simple truths as the cornerstones of a shared humanity. I don’t to sophisticated, elegant bypasses and guilt-denying maneuvers.

My exchange with Dan Cohen went on for a couple more comments and interactions, but the real and unexpected star of the show proved to be Afif Aqrabawi, a Palestinian-Canadian activist (and scientist), who, in turn, quoted Dan Cohen’s quote of me, and spake thus:

There is nothing I can add to this level of clarity, sincerity, and integrity.

Humanity first, then everything else

There are many philosophical and autobiographical reasons for this, but I never cared much for collective identity, as in ‘this is what you now have to do, think, and say because you’re part of that group‘. As a matter of fact, I dedicated a serious part of my life and work to combating such ridiculous and atrocity-inducing concepts.

So when I try to understand or tackle an injustice, what this or that collective has to say about any of this plays very little into my consideration. I don’t aspire to be part of any group; I aspire to be myself.

I don’t like political collectives at all. They stink.

My approach to Zionism has virtually nothing to do with me being Jewish, except the firsthand knowledge I have about the circumstances and realities of Israel, Zionism, and Judaism. I don’t believe in mystical identities: I was born into a certain reality, and this coincidence says absolutely nothing meaningful about me, as the coincidental facts of your life say absolutely nothing about you (unless you let them define you).

I oppose Zionism not because it is Jewish ot anti-Jewish. I oppose Zionism because it is evil, sadistic and flamboyantly inhumane, and because, like all violent and supremacist belief systems, it is destructive for everyone it touches, victims and victimizers alike.

Free from the need to prove, maintain, or disprove the sets of meanings associated with my coincidental Jewish origins, defending the reputation of Jews, or anyone else, is not even a consideration for me. And, in general, image management is a disgusting and immensely morality-wracking habit. We should be focused on actions and relationships, not on images and reputations.

In my world, the biggest sinners have a path to redemption, if they truly seek it, and so I don’t believe in anyone, except under extremely rare conditions, being inherently good or bad.

From my point of view, speaking openly about Jewish responsibility and guilt, apart from promoting a truth-based conversation, actually helps Jews: it’s the things that we feel we’re not allowed to say that create fear, suspicion, and hostility. When we can discuss everything freely, no overbearing existential heaviness is allowed to intimidate and crush us, and the very notion of secret agendas becomes laughable.

The focus of our attention must be the suffering of Palestinians, made possible through vile racist norms and standards; as Jews have played the central role in creating this reality, it will be good for them, too, to be portrayed honestly and realize how grave and historic their crimes have been.

Truth is good for everyone.

The push to hide and cover collective Jewish criminality and inhumanity is the real danger, not only as it prolongs and deepens the immeasurable pain of Palestine’s precious innocents - who must always come first as the real victims - but also because it creates the false impression that Jews are a special set of people for whom a whole different set of rules applies.

This is antisemitism masquerading as the opposite thereof, just as putting women on a pedestal is chauvinism, and it will end very badly for everyone involved, as we can see happening to the US these very days and hours.

Undeniably, Zinism is catapulting the US into stratospheric madness.

How Zionist propaganda sabotaged cultural discourse in the West using one simple trick

Maybe it’s the wrong and misleading Holocaust propaganda, focusing on identities rather than on actions in a way that perfectly suits white Western colonialism, or maybe it is the Jewish exceptionalism Zionism has pushed in the US and the West, or, it could be old Jewish beliefs when disasterously married to political power and stripped from old moderating norms: it could be many factors working together, achieving an almost subliminal end-result in Western consciousness, which I’m going to describe using very simple words.

This thought-habit, or indoctrination, can be described as internalizing a defining, underlying rule for every conversation, thought, and social interaction, and which dictates that the highest and most crucial purpose of every human interaction is never to associate blame with Jews.

Under the influence of all the factors I mentioned, and maybe some I didn’t, this decree has been so successfully disseminated that Western society can be truthfully depicted as a cultural spece where every crime undder the sun, including the most henous and horrific, is less severe and worthy of condemnation compared to creating the impression that Jews may be collectively involved in wrongdoing.

In this twisted cultural atmosphere, Jews and their state have been granted an open license to commit any atrocity they feel like committing, simply because the cultural system does not have criticism of Jews as an option. Any other country is seen as representative of the nation whose collective political affairs it handles, except for the Jewish state.

Surely, this is a joke that has gone far enough.

The absurd and monstrous decree that I address here has been violently and relentlessly enforced by Western elites everywhere, all the time. The Jewish collective must never be depicted in a potentially negative way.

This is not ‘protecting the Jews‘. This is creating a human hierarchy and unleashing the worst criminals, as long as their Jewish, upon the rest of humanity, with the guarantee of eternal unconditional immunity.

Authentic anti-Zionism must have no regard for Jewish reputation. It should only be concerned with justice and the truth

To return to the opening and title of this essay, I think that what Dan Cohen and others like him are doing derives mainly from conformity with the Western decree that I’ve mentioned, combined with a naive rebelion against Zionism: if we insist it has nothing to do with Jews and Judaism, then we have won. The only problem is that it’s a futile quest: both in terms of popular support and cultural, philosophical, and religious background, Zionist relies heavily on Judaism and Jewish participation, and the desire to extricate Judaism and Jews them from the death grip of Zionism cannot be based on a die-hard insistence that nothing mutually links then.

The desire to make a group look like it’s evil and extermination-worthy is vile and must never be tolerated, but this is what Jews are now doing to Palestinians. To fix that, we don’t need to revert to antisemitic notions; we have to insist on the truth, and we have to demand that Jews at least have a chance to recognize their collective sinfulness and criminality, stop supporting Israel, and start going through the necessary steps to heal as a group of people, if that’s even possible for us.

Yes, the genocide has been this terrible.

Finally, coming to terms with the collective responsibility and guilt of the Jewish collective as part of an anti-Zionist revolution is an indispensable step to humanizing the Palestinians. Their catastrophe has been planned, carried out, and rammed through culture with the might of a collective. It adds another dimension of humiliation and horror to deny it, and make it look like Gaza’s holocaust, and the entire Palestinian hardship under Zionism, have only been just minor accidents, and nobody is really responsible, and it is not so serious we need to make the grieving and repentance a national thing.

I insist that this is a national responsibility and catastrophe. I insist that the horrors of this genocide, committed by Jews, are, in addition to the unforgivable destruction of another group, a collective disaster that rivals some of the worst things that happened to Jews and Hebrews throughout history.

In Gaza, we were not forced out of our humanity and dignity: we crushed and dismembered our humanity and dignity ourselves, gleefully, for the joy of an internationally supported genocide. In doing so, we have buried our collective soul under the rubble, alongside the dead Palestinian babies Jewish silence and complicity have helped murder.

The fact that there is so little recognition of this fact in Jewish circles, the fact that non-Jews are more horrified and alarmed by Gaza’s inferno, only adds another aspect to an unbelievably monstrous political, psychological, and cultural reality.

I will continue to tell my truth. If anyone wants to listen, they’re welcome. But I will not fabricate the truth to compliment a group of people who went on their comfortable lives while their people were brutalizing, with amazing barbarism, sadism, cruelty, and psychopathy, a group of people whose only sin was coincidentally being there.

And that’s all Palestinians ever did wrong: they were there when Zionist Jews and their depraved Western supporters decided it was a good idea to violently superimpose a white European Jewish state on the existing, living, open, beautiful Levant, and Palestine.

We cannot, must not, deny history. The Jewish collective is responsible for Zionism, the Nakba, a thousand massacres and the genocide of Gaza. Zionism has always been a terrible idea, and Jews have been allowed for too long to obfuscate their ties to it and its egregious criminality. This is a destructive norm, and we need to put it to rest, and quickly.