Israel and Palestine; Debunking Myths with The Minyan.

Surrounding the ongoing Israel and Palestine conflict is a haze of misinformation and misconceptions. These myths and misconceptions are often used to bolster support for Israel’s actions and disparage the Palestinian people. Common media narratives portray Israel as a besieged state, whose only interest is protecting their national sovereignty. I was interested in debunking some of the more common tropes so I reached out to The Minyan podcast.

The Minyan pride themselves as being an Anti-Zionist Marxist-Leninist Jewish podcast. And to my knowledge, they are the first of their kind. The Minyan is headed by Talia, Yaakov, Tim and Pres. The group’s inspiration to form The Minyan was due to the fact “there was a lot more to say about Jewish life, history, and culture from a historical materialist perspective.” Fortunately, The Minyan is always ready to debunk Zionist propaganda and graciously agreed to sit down for an interview.

Before addressing some of the most common myths and misconceptions surrounding Palestine and Israel, we have to address the dominant ideology u upon which the state of Israel was founded. I am talking about Zionism. Frequently, when opponents of Zionism make public statements denouncing the treatment of Palestinians, they are met with a viscous backlash and wrongly labeled as an anti semite. These crucial voices of discontent are often silenced and deplatformed.

The most recent and notable example being journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin. Before a speaking engagement Georgia Southern University Abby refused to sign paperwork agreeing not to support a boycott of Israel. Her refusal to sign the paperwork disqualified her from speaking.

To confront the state ideology of Israel is to dive into a sea of media backlash. Nevertheless, defining and surveying Zionism remains a crucial task to anyone who wishes to gain insight into the current crisis in Palestine. In order to gain such insight, I asked the Minyan to provide a definition of Zionism, and why Judaism and Zionism are not necessary one in the same. Is it possible to criticize Zionism and not be an anti semite?

One only needs to explore the history of Zionism or of 20th century Jewish history to see how patently ludicrous it is to equate Zionism and Judaism. Most early Zionists were not only disconnected from Jewish religious or communal life, but the Zionist movement was met with outright hostility from most Jewish religious denominations, whether the orthodox rabbinical establishment or the modernist reform movement that was gaining traction in the United States at the time. The ideological union of Jewish institutions and Zionism that is hegemonic today simply did not exist at the time — and yet the Zionists gave the arrogance to tout themselves as the voice of all the Jews of the world, past and present.

Beyond the religious sphere, there was an array of political tendencies among the more secular Jewish groups from whom the Zionists arose., As far as Jewish-centered politics, the Jewish Labor Bund promoted a sort of social-democratic cultural-autonomist movement, advocating for cultural, linguistic, and to some extent political-economic autonomy within a larger socialist state. Their concept of doikayt (hereness), was developed as a direct challenge to Zionism, arguing that the home of Jewish communities in diaspora are exactly where they are, and not in an Israeli state, that culture, not statehood, was the basis of any national group.

Then, nearest and dearest to our hearts in the Minyan, are the many Jews who joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks, fought in the Red Army, and built up the USSR. In fact the Bund split over support for the October Revolution, with a large faction joining the Bolsheviks as the Kombund.

This group would later form the core of the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish section of the CPSU, whose mission included combatting Zionist agitators among the Jewish masses in the USSR. How could all of this be true if Zionism and Judaism were one and the same? Were these thousands of Jews, Jews who agitated Jewish workers in Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe, while Zionists were fabricating the artificial language of modern Israeli Hebrew, Jews who sought not to imitate and join the ranks of the anti semitic imperial powers but to smash them and overturn them forever, proud Jews, were they not Jews at all?

Jewish children in every country are told that Zionism is Jewish Self-Determination and that it must be advanced at any cost — idealism in the service of empire. A material analysis reveals the truth: Zionism is a settler-colonial project that seeks to eradicate the Palestinian people in order to fully establish a bourgeois ethnostate for a narrowly defined, white supremacist vision of the Jewish people, in which any cultural affinity with non-European peoples has been expunged so that Jews can participate in imperialism not as victims or cynically positioned middlemen but as fully vested partners. It is nothing short of fascism framed as a road to freedom for an oppressed group of peoples, and it must be constantly opposed if there will ever be any true liberation in this world.

Myths are often central to founding of every nation state. In nation states that practice some form of apartheid or segregation, these myths become more essential. For example, The United States celebrates its so-called “pioneer spirit” and manifest destiny, which as the story goes, conquered an untamed and uninhabited land. Of course, just a brief examination of history proves this narrative to be blatantly false. But when dealing with the myths of a nation, facts are not always important to the believers.

Continuing on our debunking tour of pro-Zionist talking points, the Minyan addressed the myth that Israel was a blank slate of a land. Therefore, Palestinians have no real claim to the land, since it was largely void and undeveloped. Does this notion hold any credibility?

There’s a few important points to be made here, although a comprehensive history of the founding of the state of Israel would be beyond the scope of this interview. We’ll get to it at some point on the podcast but it’s a long, complicated mess. What is critical to keep in mind, though, is that the Zionist project is an ongoing settler-colonial process, which began prior to the turn of the 20th century and is ongoing today. The official declaration of Israeli independence is only one step in a process of dispossession, forced expulsion, military occupation, and flat out murder that began long prior to 1948 and continues right now.

As for the idea that there was no Palestinian identity prior to Zionist colonization, this is the sort of ahistorical sleight-of-hand that hasbara (pro-Israel propaganda) excels at. Zionists insist that since there has never been a Palestinian nation-state, there has never been a cohesive Palestinian identity, because the Zionist project is premised on falsely equating an ethno national bourgeois state with legitimacy — and, of course, there never has been a Palestinian nation-state. If this is true, what do the documented references to Palestine or Filastin, throughout even the Ottoman period, when no administrative or governmental unit bore the name, refer to? It is a social grouping, based on a shared history, territory, economy, language, and culture.

In short, following the thesis laid out in Stalin’s “Marxism & The National Question,” Palestine is a nation. A nation without a bourgeois state, but a nation nonetheless. A nation imperialized by the Ottomans, and then the British, and then the Israelis, but yet still a nation.

This nation was also a nation of Jews, just as much as it was a nation of Christians, Samaritans, Druze, Baha’i, or any other religious minority living among the Muslim majority of Palestine. There were all the ups and downs of a multi-ethnic society, but Palestinian Jews were fully integrated into the Palestinian nation. They were no less a part of the national fabric of Palestine than their Muslim neighbors until Zionist agitation ripped them out, forcing the false dichotomy of Arab-vs-Jew upon the Arab Jews who had lived in Palestinian communities since time immemorial.

As communists, we understand that the bourgeois state does not create a nation. As bourgeois nationalists, who from the inception of their movement sought to enter the ranks of the European imperialist powers, Zionists can only conceive of the social world through the frame of the nation-state, Zionists absolutely deployed the same “empty land” lies that European settlers have used to justify settler-colonialism on Turtle Island and elsewhere.

Never mind that many Zionists, including Theodor Herzl, candidly admit in their letters and journals and speeches to the need to dispossess the indigenous population of Palestine in order to accomplish their aims. The romantic image of the empty land, fertile, waiting for the heteronormative settler to come and both figuratively and literally “make the desert bloom,” became ubiquitous in hasbara, even today in many U.S. Zionist institutions.

As The Minyan rightfully demonstrated, we can clearly see that much like the founding narrative surrounding the United States, the founding myth of Israel proves to be false. In both cases the land upon which the United States and Israel was created, was neither vacant nor undeveloped. The original inhabitants had to be forcibly removed to make way for settlers.

Occasionally pro Israel advocates will acknowledge the forcible removal of Palestinian. However, this does not waiver their support in Israel. The logic being that the ends justifies the means. And in their opinion, the end result was a liberal, LQBTQ friendly, progressive, and democratic state. Albeit with a few skeletons in the closet. The common narrative explains that Israel is the only democracy in the region and supports liberal values, unlike those Palestinians. Proponents will proudly exclaim Tel Aviv has a large annual gay pride parade, the Israeli Defense Force is vegan friendly, and therefore the good far outweighs the bad.

The progressive Israel line remains a very effective piece of propaganda. Supporters will often compare a “progressive” Israel to an intolerant Palestine. The logic being that Palestinians are backwards in their attitudes towards women, and the LGBTQ community so therefore their repression is justified. I asked the Minyan to explain why the notion of a progressive Israel inaccurate?

This is the epitome of pinkwashing, using supposedly progressive actions in regard to gender and sexuality as a shield against accusations of human rights violations. The IDF recently launched a social media campaign touting itself as the world’s most trans-inclusive military in the world. The hypocrisy is sickening. Are trans Palestinians liberated when they’re forced to live without access to medical care on the other side of a West Bank checkpoint? Are gay Palestinians living in Gaza free while in an open-air prison? Are Ethiopian Jewish women treated with equality when they are the victims of white supremacist violence within Israel? How about when they were forcibly sterilized? It’s absurd.

Yishai Schlissel is a horrifying case study in this situation. Upon his release from prison after doing 10 years for stabbing 3 individuals at the 2005 Jerusalem Pride Parade, he published an open letter to his community on the occasion of the 2015 Pride Parade, saying “It is the obligation of every Jew to keep his soul from punishment and stop this giant desecration of God’s name next Thursday.”

The Jerusalem police were not warned that he would be returning to Jerusalem. While our host Tim was visiting Jerusalem with a Jewish youth group, on the same day they visited the Western Wall, they were stuck in traffic, but assuming that it was simply because of the pride parade, no one made anything of it. Later Tim learned that the reason for the backup was that Schlissel went on a stabbing spree at the Pride Parade yet again, wounding 6 individuals and tragically ultimately killing one (HY”D). While we certainly can not come to conclusions about entire societies due to the actions of single individuals, it is clear that Israel does not have the protections or education in place for LGBTQ Israelis that any truly progressive state needs to prioritize.

This comes as no surprise since bourgeois progressivism, like bourgeois democracy, is always a sham, but in Israel it’s particularly farcical. An apartheid government cannot, by definition, be democratic; it excludes the entire subjugated population under its rule from political life. And the veganism campaign is just disgusting. Anyone who positions the worth of the Palestinian people as beneath the worth of farm animals is as much an imperialist as an IDF soldier or a West Bank settler. Returning to the LGBTQ issue, though, it should be obvious but it bears stating outright: queer liberation for an oppressor class alone is no liberation at all. It is rainbow imperialism at its most obvious.

The Minyan skillfully debunked several of the major myths surrounding Israel and Palestine. In short, there cannot be a democratic progressive state, if a group of people is living in the world’s largest open-air prison. The supposed liberal values of democracy, tolerance, and equality, become a hollow joke against the backdrop of apartheid.

The Israel propaganda machine constantly serves up new lines and myths for talking heads to regurgitate across corporate media outlets. However, it is my hope that this article can serve as a voice for those who are frequently shunned and ignored. I urge readers to check out The Minyan pod for more content, and consider becoming a Patreon supporter. If readers have any more questions they can contact The Minyan at prolesminyan@gmail.com.