Re: recent discussion on this thread about the (mistaken) idea, which quite a few people hold, that the word ‘Zionist’ particularly refers to Israelis with extreme, far-right, nationalistic views, this Haaretz article proposes removing confusion and ambiguity by referring to people with these views as ‘Kahanist’ instead.
Perhaps some people might find this argument objectionable on the grounds that ‘‘Zionist’’ has a clear meaning, but I thought this article was interesting and seems to usefully separate the issues.
^Opinion
David Schraub^
Jun 10, 2024
Forget Being anti-Zionists. Let's Be anti-Kahanists
The semantic fireworks on campuses around the world over anti-Zionism and its relation to antisemitism are a distraction from the debate we need to be having. The real danger is the growing power of Israel's racist far right and its consequences for Israelis, Palestinians and Diaspora Jew
Following Hamas' horrific attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel's bruising military campaign in the Gaza Strip that has followed, there has been an unprecedented surge in protest against Israel and in favor of Palestinian freedom and an end to the war in Gaza on campuses and in cities across the world.
Beyond the immediate demand for a ceasefire, however, on an ideological level these protests have often, though not always, labeled themselves “anti-Zionist”. That term, in turn, has generated the usual fireworks regarding the connection between "anti-Zionism" and "antisemitism.”
These debates are, eight months after October 7 and the ensuing Gaza war, well-worn, distinguished (if at all) only by especially raw feelings of passion and anger amongst all participants. But increasingly, it seems like we would be better off dropping this debate altogether, as a distraction from the real issues. Forget about being anti-Zionist. Let's be anti-Kahanist instead.
Shortly before October 7, I suggested (in my own contribution to the "is anti-Zionism antisemitism" debate) that it might be time to retire the terms “Zionist” and “anti-Zionist” outright. The problem is that “Zionism” is a term that has become beset with ambiguity: does it simply mean support for the idea of Jewish self-determination? Or does it mean carte blanche support for the most extreme right-wing policies of the Israeli government? Or is it somewhere in the mushy middle?
Both Israel's critics and backers often oscillate (intentionally or not) between these different meanings, generating confusion, misunderstanding, and alienation. For many (not all) Jews, "Zionism" simply means Jews having an equal right to self-determination as part of the community of nations. When they hear that the protesters are "anti-Zionist", they understand their project to be one that is fundamentally anti-Jewish in nature even where they might agree with the immediate criticisms of the Israeli government.
Whether or not the protesters share these Jews' understanding of what "Zionism" entails is largely beside the point. This disconnect is one that breeds unavoidable mistrust and division.
Kahanism,by contrast, is not ambiguous at all: an outgrowth of the legacy of the late American-Israeli militant, Rabbi Meir Kahane, it is an expressly racist movement that unabashedly promotes anti-Palestinian discrimination and inferiority and which justifies perpetual second-class (at best) status for Palestinians in the entirety of the land "from the river to the sea." And unlike Zionism, which is arguably a theoretical concept about Jewish self-determination untethered from any particular policy agenda, Kahanism is unquestionably a matter of social policy choices.
Anti-Zionism" tends to look to the past, asking foundational questions about the fundamental justness of there being an Israel at all. "Anti-Kahanism" is about the present, focusing on the policy decisions of the Israel that exists now and the structure of occupation, violence, and dispossession that afflicts Palestinians today. In the context of the war in Gaza, Kahanism represents the wing of Israeli politics and within the government itself, for which violence against Palestinians is a good in of itself.
Kahanism is the protesters blocking aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip. it is the ministers suggesting starvation as a weapon of war, it is the leaders insisting that there are “no innocents” amongst the Gazan civilian population. Kahanism is the decision to abandon the hostages in order to besiege Palestinians for longer; it is the preference for keeping Gaza in a state of desperate chaotic ruin forever rather than contemplate supporting the genuine steps towards Palestinian statehood and self-determination that might actually see Hamas defeated.
It is a disservice to the urgent need for justice surrounding these issues to tie them up in knots with purely theoretical debates over "should Israel exist"—debates that, since Israel is not going anywhere, serve primarily to stir up fear and anxiety over what people actually imagine Jews' political rights (or lack thereof) should be.
"Anti-Zionism", intentionally or not, serves to exclude a great many Jews whose sharp opposition to Israeli government policy does not manifest in opposition to Jewish self-determination outright. But there is no one excluded under the banner of "Anti-Kahanism" other than the far-right voices of extremism ideologically committed to perpetual besiegement, inequality, occupation, and apartheid.
And while it's true that anti-Zionists often use ambiguity over "Zionism" as a tool for excluding even liberal Jews whose criticisms of Israel don't include calling for its outright extirpation, it's also the case that many Jewish organizations have also exploited the ambiguity over "Zionism" to deflect from the need to seriously grapple with Israel's present reality.
For these groups, relitigating whether Israel's very existence is a sin is actually a far more comfortable space to be in than dealing with more nettlesome, but more pressing questions like how to arrest Israel's increasing attachment to far-right politics, how to reverse growing rates of expressly racist attitudes amongst young Israelis towards Arabs and Palestinians, how to respond to unconstrained growth of settlements, how to demand accountability for unchecked violence committed by Jewish extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians which have only surged during the war, and how to ensure that Israeli military and security operations in the Palestinian territories, including during the war in Gaza, adhere to basic international legal requirements.
When speaking in the register of "Zionism", one can avoid all of these issues and retreat back to existential questions about whether Israel should exist at all. By contrast, to be anti-Kahanist is to actively and unflinchingly oppose any politics that justifies perpetual occupation, that views equality as subversive, that treats democratic citizenship as optional, or that acts as if either Palestinian or Jewish lives do not matter.
On that note, rallying against Kahanism should not be seen as representing some meaningless sop—agreeing to ostracize an already-marginal fringe. In particular, it is a mistake to confine Kahanism to individuals who have shrines to the late rabbi in their backyard. Kahanism. We should think of Kahanism of applying to the entire suite of actors whose ideology and behavior leaves no room for Palestinian equality or self-determination in either Israel or Palestine. Understood in that light, we must rally against Kahanism precisely because it is an increasingly ascendent ideology.
In Israel Kahanism has surged past "mainstream" and become an outright political kingmaker. In a sign of how political norms have changed, the original Kahanist party, Kach, was banned from the Knesset for being racist and undemocratic. Today, the Israeli government is riddled with Kahanist sympathizers, including Itamir Ben-Givr (who literally was convicted of supporting Kach and who is an effusive admirer of anti-Arab terrorist Baruch Goldstein) and Bezalel Smotrich (who expressed support for segregated maternity wards in Israel dividing Jewish and Palestinian Arab mothers, and approved of calls to "wipe out" Palestinian villages in the West Bank in the midst a terrifying spate of anti-Palestinian violence).
These figures wield ever-increasing power over key governmental portfolios; if it might (or might not) go too far to say Netanyahu is himself among their number, it is incontestable that Netanyahu's government is beholden to them. To be anti-Kahanist does not require indulging in essentialist and unproductive assertions that Israel is "inherently" like this or "must be" like this. It only requires acknowledging the reality that Israel, right now, is like this, and think seriously about what policy responses are just and necessary to respond to the present moment.
"Zionism" has an ambivalent valence in many Jewish communities, and so where debates over Israel are polarized into "Zionist" vs. "anti-Zionist," the result isolates a great many Jews who are vocal critics of the Israeli government and fractures them off from campaigns that should very much be their own. Kahanism, by contrast, carries no positive undercurrents and represents no constituency that the broader Jewish community should display any interest in defending. By resetting the polarity of the debate away from Zionist/anti-Zionist and towards Kahanist/anti-Kahanist, we can create a movement centered around the present that unites rather than alienates everyone, but especially progressive Jews and Israelis, repelled by Israel’s far-right turn.
Yair Wallach, an historian put the matter bluntly, "'Zionism yes or no?' was a question for my grandparents. The question today is 'Kahanism yes or no?'" He could not be more right. "Zionism yes or no" is doing nothing for those of us committed to unwinding Israel's far-right turn and securing an equal and equitable future for Jews and Palestinians alike. Kahanism is the danger of today that we can and must rally against.