CELIBACY AND ANTI-ZIONISM: A VERY WEIRD CONNECTION

OUTSIDERS DON’T GET TO QUALIFY THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS AND HOW WE ACTUALIZE OUR IDENTITIES.

We’ll see about that …

As a gay man, you can imagine my response to the ridiculous idea purveyed for decades or centuries by the Catholic church that homosexuality is “objectively disordered.”

God, apparently, does make mistakes.

Oh stop! Don’t @ me. I’ve heard all the justifications that the infallible God is testing homosexual people and blah blah blah. But either God made me this way or he didn’t. And, if he did, what kind of game-playing does the church think God is engaged in? All of this forbidden sex nonsense is the invention of very fallible humans.

The position of the Catholic church (and some others) is that homosexuality is just fine — as long as you don’t act on it. How idiotic is that?

But, believe it or not, that’s not my point.

It struck me recently that the most radical of the atheistic leftists (and among them some of my best friends, of course!) have a great deal in common with religious fundamentalists. Extremists of every stripe have more in common than they care to admit.

The parallel hit me when I was faced, yet again, with the specious good Jew/bad Jew dichotomy. For a whole ton of activists these days, Jews are just fine. It’s Zionists they have a problem with.

This, of course, is nonsense on the scale of celibate homosexuality.

If you’ve got a problem with gays having sex, you’ve got a problem with gays, period. If you’ve got a problem with Zionists, you’ve got a problem with Jews.

The fact that you think you don’t have a problem is proof of just how big a problem it is.

Telling people it’s okay to be gay as long as we’re celibate is telling us that it’s not OK to be gay at all. Telling people it’s OK to be a Jew as long as you’re not a Zionist is to tell them it’s not OK to be a Jew.

Zionism is Jewish nationalism. The state of Israel is the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood. It is Jewish self-determination in action. To oppose Zionism, which is to oppose the existence of Israel, is to oppose a massive and core component of Jewish identity.

It is always amusing (actually, not amusing, infuriating) to hear activists insist that they know a Jew who isn’t a Zionist. This is routinely invoked as some extremely weird dispensation (to employ a relevant religious term).

Anti-Zionist Jews are an infinitesimally small minority and — I’m just going to say it — like gay people who have internalized the world’s homophobia and hate that part of themselves, pretty much every anti-Zionist Jew I have known or engaged with is pretty effed up and has a ton of unresolved stuff. So you can defend your anti-Zionism by using these tragic cases as shields, but it’s kind of a creepy thing to do.

More empirically (because calling people effed up is not exactly a professional psychiatric assessment, I know) there was an interesting survey this year that should contextualize this discussion.

The journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes published a survey and study by University of Toronto sociologist Professor Robert Brym. The significant survey at the heart of the piece questioned Jewish Canadians about their attitudes toward Israel. In response, 91% of Canadian Jews say they believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. (That is the definition of “Zionist.”) Six percent said they didn’t know. A whopping three percent said Israel does not have a right to exist.

I’ll leave aside the problem with the question, which is that Israel does exist and the idea that anyone’s opinion on that fact should matter a damn bit is to give credence to the idea that the lives of Jews should again be left to the whims of others. But anyways.

The other danger here is that, given the atmosphere in Canada, where Jewish institutions have been shot at and firebombed just this week, crazed individuals might see these numbers and determine that, yes, after all, Jew does = Zionist, and since Zionist = evil, firebombing Jews = righteous justice. We shouldn’t really need to make the case that shooting and firebombing anyone, for any reason is wrong. Though in an environment where the most hysterical rantings against Zionists are met by self-proclaimed “antiracists” not with calls for tamping down the incendiary language but by those very antiracists pouring more anti-Zionist fuel on the inferno, it might be worth reminding folks that “any means necessary” should not, actually, include arsoning synagogues and shooting at Jewish schools.

All that aside, Zionism is an intrinsic part of Jewishness. And just because your friend David is an anti-Zionist Jew does not grant you dispensation to negate the reality that David is an aberration.

And, besides, since when do decent people use others to justify their perverse positions in this way? My friend Louise has a kid with Down’s and she thinks euthanizing the disabled is fine. Just because some whackadoodle belongs to a group and expresses some wildly inappropriate idea doesn’t give a pass for decent people to jump on the same sick bandwagon.

Simple numbers suggest that a Canadian is likely to know more gay people than Jewish people. Maybe you know one gay person who opposes marriage equality (for whatever reason). Surely you know enough gay people to understand that this is a wildly marginal position. At best, you would laugh them off as a ridiculously unrepresentative kook. Their position on equal marriage is probably an attention-seeking device or has some boring ideological argument at its root. It doesn’t really matter, because anyone with a semblance of reason knows that almost every other gay person supports our right to marry.

But imagine what you would think of someone who straight-facedly makes the case against marriage equality because their friend Bruce is gay and he opposes it. You would rightly laugh in their face. It’s ridiculous.

That’s how you should respond to anti-Zionist Jews.

But back to the bizarre parallel I raised at the start.

You can have same-sex attraction and live a life of celibacy. (People of all orientations live lives of celibacy, willingly or otherwise!) But explicitly repressing that aspect of your identity because you believe it to be sinful or evil is a surefire sign of a disordered personality. Sexuality is an intrinsic part of every human’s identity and suppressing it is a recipe for disaster.

Zionism is an intrinsic part of every Jew’s identity. (BTW, if you don’t think Zionism is an intrinsic part of David’s identity, ask him about it. Zionism — specifically, his opposition to it — is pretty much his entire identity, if you know the David I’m talking about. But anyways.)

Telling a Jew you have nothing against their identity as long as they are not Zionist is remarkably analogous to telling LGBTQ+ people you don’t have a problem with them as long as they never express that core aspect of their identity.

Zionism is how a core aspect of Jewishness identity expresses itself in the world. If you don’t get that, you don’t get it.

But that’s your problem. Not theirs.

A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)