No, Anti-Zionist Jews Aren't Bad Jews

The relationship between Israel, Zionism, anti-Zionism, Jewish identity, and Jewish peoplehood has become a main topic of conversation again in American Jewish opinion circles and social media. The rhetoric has been heating up, as we can see from a number of recent essays, which argue variously that those who do not support the Jewish nation-state project are bad Jews, disloyal Jews, possible not worthy of the name "Jewish" -- at the very least complicit Jews. That is, if you are not pro-Israel, in the way they want you to be, it's not that you aren't a good Jew, in fact you are a kind of anti-Jew. And although this tired line of rhetoric -- one could cite literally thousands of pieces written in the last hundred years in which the gatekeepers of Zionist-Jewish identity try to write out of Judaism anyone who doesn't share their nationalist project -- has now become part of our collective argumentative history, it remains mistaken. Let's look at some of its assumptions, and ask why this new iteration is happening now.