I quit my job at the Jewish Community Center over a pro-Israel rally and they called me an anti-semi
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/community-called-semite.html
When I described how these three middle-aged adults talked to my comrade and me to a friend afterwards, he told me he was sorry I had to go through something so traumatic. “Traumatic” is a good word. These people are easily twice my age and were not afraid of making me feel the decades between us. They insisted that I do my research (How much more research do I have to do to conclude that Israel is an apartheid state?); they told my comrade, who is not much older than me, which is an important detail, that, in an Arab country, she would not be allowed to pursue her PhD (When she told them that that assertion was racist and xenophobic, they said that it was simply the truth.); and they told me I know nothing of Israel, Palestine, or the conflict. This last one really got to me; I have family in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, and I’ve been following this conflict for over twenty years, through no conscious choice of my own. When you’re part Israeli, you don’t get the luxury of not picking a side here. I really hope my boss, who I know for a fact is a Russian Jew, really appreciates the irony of being an Ashkenazi Jew with no business in the land of Israel, telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Oh yes, and they also called me anti-Semitic. Now, I may not be proud of the Israeli state, and I may have a tattoo, but I will always be proud of being Jewish. Jews have come a long way in this world and I am proud that we have survived, despite it all. But, to me, Jewishness is not a static, infallible thing that one should never question. On the contrary, Jewishness means questioning the status quo, which often means questioning other Jews, and living a life that does the least amount of harm. Just as I fight against the militarization of the police in the United States, so too do I oppose state-sanctioned Israeli terrorism against the innocent people of Palestine. Zionism may be carried out in the name of Judaism, but the Jewish thing to do, for me, will always be to oppose Zionism, just as it is our imperative to oppose all other racialized violence and injustice worldwide. I don’t think being a decent person is anti-Semitic.
Of course, there are definitely anti-Semitic ways to oppose Zionism, and they will always be wrong. There is a lot of anti-Semitism in the contemporary anti-Zionist movement, and it makes me uncomfortable, to say the least.
As our meeting drew to a close, I gripped the blue polo sitting in my lap. If I wasn’t prepared to quit my job already, this meeting certainly convinced me. I don’t remember exactly what I said as I handed my boss the polo and told him I had to resign, but I remember losing my composure as I expressed that I felt a profound sense of loss, that I felt my local Jewish community was abandoning me and its self-professed ideals of peace, and that, by severing ties with the JCC, I would be cut off from a community I had relied on for over fifteen years. I don’t think the peers I left behind at the JCC will ever understand how very betrayed I feel by the community, and I don’t think my white, Christian friends will ever understand how much I am losing by taking such a political stand. In this time, it is very important to keep my anti-Zionist Jewish friends close. We have to build and maintain community, because we’re definitely a minority.
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