Our guest is Rachel Timoner, Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. I’ve known her since college. Our political and religious trajectories have taken us in unexpected directions, and left us with different views about Israel-Palestine. I’m grateful she took the time to discuss them with me.
Topics include:
Is the BDS movement eliminationist?
Can a Jewish state be democratic?
Is Israel a settler-colonial project?
Does the left in the US help the left in Israel-Palestine?
Is it okay to call AIPAC “monstrous”?
Addendum from Rabbi Timoner:
Peter, thank you for this opportunity to correct a few things I said in our conversation. That format was hard for me – I do much better when I can write out my words and be precise.
First of all, when we were talking about BDS, I meant to give credit to Leo Casey, who wrote an excellent substack on the topic and whose ideas I drew from as I was speaking to you.
Second, at the end of our conversation, we were talking about how as American Jews we say that it’s not OK to blame all Jews for the actions of Israel, that in fact it’s antisemitic to do so, to conflate all Jews with the Israeli government. That is true. In that part of the conversation, I said that as Jews we are responsible for what’s happening in Israel. That could sound like something I don’t mean. We don’t have control or even influence over the Israeli government, as you and I so painfully know. I meant that I feel a special responsibility as a Jew – what I meant is that I want to see the Jewish people in the United States raise our voices more.
Finally, I was talking about antizionists and said something to the effect of if you’re someone who thinks that the one Jewish state should not exist, that the one place on earth designed to be a safe haven for Jews in the context of 2,000 years of murderous antisemitism should not exist, you have an added burden of responsibility to be extremely clear about calling out the antisemitism that is running through many anti-Zionist arguments, to be extremely careful not to hold Israel to a different standard than other countries, and to be extremely dedicated to the safety of the 7 million Jews who live there, most of whom have nowhere else to go, and ending antisemitism all around so that the Jewish people don’t need a safe haven anymore.
And what should have been added to that is … If you are a Zionist, if you believe that Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state despite the Nakba, and despite Israel’s treatment of Palestinians ever since, you — we— have an added burden of responsibility to be extremely clear in calling out the racism running through many Zionist arguments, to be extremely careful to hold Israel to the same moral standards we would hold any other country, and to be extremely dedicated to the freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people, urgently.
In other words, I would like to see anti-Zionists care as much about Jewish safety as they do about Palestinian freedom and Zionists care as much about Palestinian freedom as they do about Jewish safety. I’d like us to take all of the energy we are spending arguing with each other and use it instead to work together for maximal safety and freedom for everyone who lives there, and so that the people who live there are able to determine the governance structure that gets them that safety and freedom.
