XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, alt.news-media   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.atheism   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   The popular Jewish fight for Palestinian liberation is often qualified   
   with an invocation of “Jewish values.”   
      
   “My Jewish values demand that I stand against genocide” (or   
   variations) is a popular phrase tossed around in speeches, statements,   
   and slogans — giving a legitimate Jewish seal of approval to whatever   
   comes next.   
      
   So say founders and representatives of Jewish organizations If Not   
   Now, Independent Jewish Voices, Na’amod, and Jewish Voice for Peace.   
   So say politicians such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. So say viral   
   tweets and popular videos.   
      
   Whether intentional or not, these organizations, individuals, and   
   sentiments have a common thread that aligns them with popular Zionist   
   groups and movements: an appeal to Jewish supremacy.   
      
   What exactly are Jewish values? Of course, Jewish values, like the   
   values of any religion, cover a wide spectrum from the liberatory to   
   the repressive. But if you asked Jonathan Greenblatt, Director of the   
   Anti-Defamation League, he’d likely say that this abstract notion of   
   “Jewish values” comes down to the necessity of defending the Jewish   
   community by pushing pro-Israel policy in the face of rising   
   pro-Palestine organizing, or that it comes down to supporting Zionism   
   itself. If you asked Israeli military leaders they would likely say   
   even the genocidal attack on Gaza has been guided by Jewish values.   
      
   And that’s the rhetorical benefit, and pitfall, of “Jewish values” —   
   they aren’t concrete agreed upon concepts or guiding principles, and   
   they change depending on who you ask. They’re made up.   
      
   The invocation of “Jewish values” is a malleable device used to   
   justify decisions, actions, and statements made by Jewish people —   
   whether in the fight for Palestinian liberation or against it. And   
   this is ultimately a self-serving and self-centering method of   
   navigating another people’s struggle for freedom.   
      
   And in the process, the elevation of “Jewish values” to validate the   
   Palestinian struggle is fundamentally an appeal to Jewish supremacy   
   rather than a firm stand against it.   
      
   This line of argument postulates a grand mythos of undefinable values   
   that seek to valorize Judaism as being inherently incompatible with   
   genocide—as being inherently moral, disconnected, or above the   
   violence being enacted in Palestine. But the truth is much more   
   sinister: that Judaism has been adapted to be a functional vehicle for   
   this violence.   
      
   Rather than actually confront the use of Judaism as a mechanism of   
   imperial rule, so-called Jewish anti-Zionists have worked around it by   
   claiming the authority to write it out of existence. In this failure   
   to address Jewish supremacy as a root of Palestinian genocide, Jewish   
   anti-Zionism claims a moral high ground and pardons itself from any   
   affiliation with colonialism.   
      
   We evade accountability and avoid the reckoning that Judaism is not of   
   unique importance in the world, that it is not a ‘chosen’ religion or   
   even inherently good. It also blindly ignores that Jewish values can   
   and are currently being used as yet another structure of power to fuel   
   a holy war that seeks to eradicate anything and everything that   
   opposes its propagation.   
      
   And singing the praises of “Jewish values” while nearly every single   
   Jewish institution materially endorses and funds genocide in Palestine   
   using the same tagline is, yet again, a mechanism of Zionism; so   
   agrees writer Em Cohen:   
      
   “[M]aybe we should stop extolling ‘Jewish values’ while essentially   
   every mainstream Jewish organization/institution upholds white   
   [E]uro-[A]merican superiority and philosemitism. Maybe extolling   
   ‘Jewish values’ as inherently morally good is a part of that project,   
   not disruptive of it.”   
      
   In continuing to hide behind “Jewish values”, we avoid the simple   
   truth that we have no right to anything: Not to claim a moral high   
   ground and not to someone else’s land.   
      
   By invoking “Jewish values”, we position ourselves not just as   
   non-actors in this genocide, but as saviors bestowed with the special   
   importance of Jewish imperative.   
      
   Ultimately, that savorism isn’t solely about Palestine; there, too,   
   exists a fight to save the soul of Judaism itself. The moral high   
   ground that “Jewish values” claims, also seeks to exonerate Judaism   
   from association with Zionism — and into existence is born a   
   fictitious Judaism unstained by the moral egregiousness of raping a 13   
   year-old boy with a pipe or murdering 274 Palestinians to free four   
   Israeli prisoners of war.   
      
   And when we engage in this internecine debate within the Jewish   
   community that seeks to save Judaism from those who conflate it with   
   Zionism it inevitably takes precedence over Palestinian liberation.   
   The struggle for freedom becomes secondary when the primary concern is   
   the discourse and struggle within the communal tent.   
      
   This can be seen even in the most notable of ‘anti-Zionist’ Jewish   
   figures who unabashedly celebrate the recent release of the Israeli   
   prisoners or who wish the Israeli prisoners well, before even uttering   
   a word about the Palestinians killed at Nuseirat. Or, in those who see   
   inherent innocence in the conscience of Israeli Occupation Force   
   officers. For more, yet, there is the blatant self-awareness of   
   wanting the Jewish community to “atone for the blood on its hands.”   
   Self-interest is too often the beating heart of Jewish anti-Zionism:   
   The internal fight against Zionism to save Judaism regularly dwarfs   
   the fight for Palestinian liberation.   
      
   But Palestinian liberation does not need Jewish anything, much less   
   the saviorism justified by “Jewish values.” As Palestinian organizers   
   have said for years: Jewish people will not liberate Palestine,   
   Palestinians will. And if Judaism exists without a notion of supremacy   
   afterward, that will have been a byproduct of Palestinian freedom   
   rather than a priority over it.   
      
   But this certainly doesn’t mean that we, as Jews, are exempt from the   
   labor of revolution — quite the opposite. Revolution requires of us a   
   radical decentering of self in the fight for liberation and the   
   recentering of communal struggle and collective freedom. Until we are   
   able to separate our individualism from the struggle, we only serve   
   Zionism—Jews don’t need “Jewish values” to justify our work toward   
   Palestinian liberation.   
      
   https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/no-need-for-jewish-values-in-the-   
   ight-for-palestine/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)