Flowers of Evil: Varieties of Anti-Zionism
This timeless article, written by my father John F. Rothmann and his colleague David G. Dalin years before I was born, is a reminder of how amazing, and tragically relevant, their words still are today.
It was originally published in The American Zionist in April–May 1980. The original text is republished below because of its continued relevance today.
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Flowers of Evil: Varieties of Anti-Zionism
By David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann
On November 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. Condemning both Zionism and “Zionists” as well as the State of Israel, and in the guise of fighting racism, this resolution introduced a new form of anti-Semitic rhetoric at the United Nations. The vote, moreover, came but a few weeks after then Uganda President Idi Amin, while addressing the General Assembly, called on the American people “to rid their society of the Zionists,” demanding the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations, and “the extinction of Israel as a state.”
[David G. Dalin served as National Public Affairs Coordinator of the Zionist Organization of America, and is presently the Assistant Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco. John F. Rothmann is President of the San Francisco District of the Zionist Organization of America.]
Cuban President Fidel Castro would later adopt this same theme as President of the Organization of Non-Aligned Nations. At that organization’s summit, held in Havana, Cuba in September 1979, Castro repeatedly attacked “Zionist aggression” and denounced “persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are practicing against the Palestinian people.” To Jews in the United States, and throughout the world, the anti-Jewish message underlying these recent developments seems to be unmistakenly clear: The term Zionism is being used by its opponents as a code word for Judaism and Jews.
In the decade following the Six-Day War of June 1967, the emergence of “anti-Zionist” propaganda has more than occasionally “served to legitimate the open expression of a good deal of anti-Semitism that might otherwise have remained subject to the taboo against anti-Semitism that prevailed in American public life” since the end of World War II, according to Norman Podhoretz in a Commentary article. “Some of the public utterances that pass for legitimate discussion,” suggested Benjamin Epstein and Arnold Forster in Midstream, “mask a real hostility to Jews as Jews; they are often couched in language or contain innuendo that is plainly anti-Semitic.” The U.S. resolution against Zionism was just one such utterance of recent years. In the name of anti-Zionism, public expressions of anti-Semitism, from a variety of sources, were surfacing anew.
The purpose of this article will not be to defend Zionism as a legitimate national liberation movement of the Jewish people, but rather to discuss, and analyze, the vigorous campaign that is being waged by those who call themselves anti-Zionists. The anti-Zionist forces, from wherever they may come, are increasing their activities. Their efforts are having an effect on how people around the world relate to Zionism as an idea and an ideal, and to the reality of contemporary Israeli politics and policy. Our purpose here will be to define these anti-Zionist
forces. There are, we suggest, five major categories or variants of anti-Zionism: (1) Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism; (2) Jewish anti-Zionism; (3) Socialist anti-Zionism, the most contemporary variant of which Seymour Martin Lipset has so aptly described as the “socialism of fools”; (4) Soviet anti-Zionism; and (5) Arab and Moslem anti-Zionist rhetoric and propaganda. We shall examine each variety separately.
Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism
Most of the voluminous anti-Semitic literature published in recent years quote, or paraphrase, extensively from the classic anti-Jewish document of modern times, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Indeed, the inspiration for, and the “political message” of much of contemporary anti-Jewish literature is attributable, in one form or another, to the writings of the “Learned Elders.” Take, for example, a recently published article entitled “A Sensational Analysis of the Zionist Jew Plan for World Power,” distributed by the Christian Nationalist Crusade in December 1975. This article, like so much of the “literature” of this genre, was taken from the Protocols. The Protocols, as well as many facsimiles thereof, are easily obtainable in most American cities.
“Proof positive” of the International Zionist conspiracy may be found in the Tenney Reports on World Zionism. This three-part report—”Zion’s Fifth Column,” “Zionist Network” and “Zion’s Trojan Horse”—was prepared by Senator Jack B. Tenney, a former member of the California State Legislature. Tenney repeatedly stated that he was anti-Zionist, but not anti-Semitic, and even went so far as to say that “anti-Semitism is amoral and un-American.” His report, however, belies the myth that one can differentiate between being anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish. As the titles of the chapters in his book (“The Rothschilds,” “The Chosen People,” “Jewish Revolution” and “Jewish Network Un-American”) indicate, anti-Zionism and anti-Jewishness are always one and the same.
Anti-Semitic anti-Zionist material is easily obtainable. Publishing houses such as Standard Publications and the Noontide Press distribute such materials by mail order, while the Christian Nationalist Crusade, founded by the late Gerald L.K. Smith, continues to spew out this hateful and vicious material, whose underlying themes—e.g., an international Zionist conspiracy, Jewish control of the media and government, and Jewish “dual loyalty”—are reiterated in pamphlet after pamphlet.
Jewish Anti-Zionism
There are two basic extremes in Jewish life which produce Jewish anti-Zionism. The first is represented by the nearly defunct American Council for Judaism, and the one-person crusades of Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal (Middle East Perspectives), Rabbi Elmer Berger (Jewish Alternatives to Zionism) and Moshe Menuhin (The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time), whose steady flow of anti-Zionist publications, purporting to oppose Zionism from within the Jewish community, enjoy a small, if not miniscule, public support and audience.
A second source of Jewish anti-Zionism stems from the Neturei Karta, an ultra-religious movement centered in the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem, but also enjoying a substantial following in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Through its supporters in New York, the Neturei Karta have begun to wage a campaign to convince the American public of the evils and illegitimacy of Israel and Zionism. Their position has been, for example, articulated in a New York Times advertisement entitled Zionism: The Enemy of the Jewish People, taken out in 1970. This ad, which proclaimed that “Zionist politicians and their fellow-travelers do not speak for the Jewish people,” stressed three key points that underly the movement’s anti-Zionist ideology: (1) Jews do not need a State of their own in our time, e.g., before the coming of the Messiah; (2) Jews are enjoined by their religious laws to be loyal to the country of which they are citizens; and (3) Jews, who are loyal to their faith and tradition, have nothing to do with Zionist sponsored boycotts against individual enterprises or against entire nations. Through the publication and distribution of such newspaper advertisements, and through numerous articles and pamphlets such as Jews Not Zionists (recently published by Friends of Jerusalem, American Neturei Karta), the leadership of the tightly-organized Neturei Karta movement has sought to sway public opinion—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—to its virulently anti-Zionist position.
The Neturei Karta’s bitter opposition to Zionism and the Jewish State has expressed itself in a variety of forms. According to one of the movement’s more bizarre formulations, the emergence of Nazism was a “direct result” of unwarranted Zionist agitation and nationalist demands. Some Neturei Karta leaders have even suggested that “many more Jews might have been saved from the death camps but for Zionist political ambitions and aspirations.”
Although both these extremes—the Bergers and the Lilienthals, and the Neturei Karta—vigorously repudiate the anti-Semitism of the Protocols and denounce them as the notorious forgery that they are, they do come to the same essential conclusions as the more avowedly anti-Jewish anti-Zionists. They all believe in the existence of an international Zionist conspiracy, that Zionists control the media and government and that Zionists give their first loyalty to Israel, rather than to the United States. For example, in his book The Other Side of the Coin, Alfred Lilienthal entitled some of his chapters “Dual Loyalty,” “The New York Times, et al.,” and “Magazines, Radio and T.V. too.” Both these extremes of Jewish anti-Zionists speak of Zionist control of the Congress and of American politicians. Although they are small in number, their words are quoted by all other anti-Zionists as irrefutable evidence of “the Zionist conspiracy.”
Socialist Anti-Zionism
In the 135 years since the initial publication of Karl Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question,” much of Socialist literature has included attacks on Judaism and the Jewish people in its radical critique of Capitalism and modern Capitalist society. The veritable tradition of nineteenth century Socialist Anti-Semitism, as well analyzed by Max Geltman, Julius Carlbach, Shlomo Avineri and others in various publications, has found more recent expression in flagrant and irresponsible attacks upon Zionism and the State of Israel by a number of Marxist writers and intellectuals.
“The solution to the Jewish question is indissolubly bound up with the complete emancipation of humanity that can be brought about only along the road of international socialism.” So writes George Novack in his pamphlet, A Socialist Answer to Zionism. While vigorously denouncing anti-Semitism, such Socialist literature claims to be only anti-Zionist. Supporting the claim that the Palestinian (Arab) resistance movement is a struggle by the Palestinian people for self-determination, they are equally vigorous in their denial of the right of Palestinian Jews to their self-determination. In fact, they go so far as to determine that Zionism has failed the Jewish people. The right of the Jewish people to self-determination, a right granted to all other peoples, is thus denied by the Socialist movement. Thus, for example, in the polemical diatribes of Maxime Rodinson and Noam Chomsky that so simplistically link Zionism with Western imperialism, Zionism’s character as a national liberation movement is conveniently overlooked so that the basic legitimacy of Zionism and Israel is undermined. The identification of Israel with Western capitalism’s oppression of the Third World has similarly been central to the anti-Zionist arguments of Socialist writers such as Chomsky, Isaac Deutcher and Herbert Marcuse, as to the less “polished” anti-Zionist propaganda produced by SDS and the European Socialist New Left.
[Pull quote: “All of the Anti–Zionist factions believe in the existence of an international Zionist conspiracy.”]
One wonders why these virulent critics of Zionism do not apply the same standards to all national liberation movements, Jewish as well as Third World. Why are the Jewish people expected to be the first, if not the only, group to give up their right to national liberation for the sake of international socialism?
Socialist anti-Zionist material is most easily available on the college and university campuses of America. Although distribution is limited, often to Marxist book stores and campus tables, the supply of material is plentiful.
Soviet Anti-Zionism
Since the founding of the Bolshevik Party by Lenin, its leadership has been actively, and unequivocally, opposed to Zionism. “Zionism,” according to Lenin, “is absolutely false and essentially reactionary. Not only national, but even racial peculiarities are denied to the Jews by modern scientific investigation.” Even when the Soviet Government seemed to most vigorously support the establishment of the State of Israel, it “took exception” to the Zionist philosophy. And as Lukasz Hirszowicz has recently noted in Soviet Jewish Affairs, “while Soviet spokesmen have firmly rejected the charge that Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda contains anti-Semitic elements,” the unrelenting nature of Soviet anti-Zionism, often couched in the most blatantly anti-Semitic terms, is irrefutable. The charge that Jewish Zionists seek world domination has, of course, found its crudest expression in the Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a tract from which Soviet anti-Jewish propagandists have continued to plagiarize from
the days of Stalin until today.
Since 1975, when the Soviet Government, with the help of Arab and several Third World countries, was able to obtain the United Nations Declaration equating Zionism with racism, the Soviet Union has stepped up its anti-Jewish propaganda campaign. Borrowing heavily from the infamous Protocols, these Soviet writers have revived old anti-Semitic stereotypes and arguments to support their allegations about the “Zionist conspiracy” to control international finance and capital, impede the quest for peace in the Middle East and, generally, wreak havoc on international order. One Soviet propagandist claims: “. . . International Zionism is striving to get into its hands the military-industrial complex as the most profitable sphere of business. From this it becomes understandable why Zionism is a rabid opponent of the relaxation of tensions and of a peaceful settlement of one of the dangerous international crises, the Middle East crisis. . . .”
Spearheaded by the Soviet Union, this form of anti-Zionism has a particular effect on the nations of Eastern Europe, and has a powerful impact throughout the world because of Soviet Russia’s status as a major superpower. Publications such as Caution: Zionism by Yuri Ivanov, Zionism: Instrument of Imperial Reaction and Deceived by Zionism are readily obtainable, not only in Russian, but in English and numerous other languages as well.
[NOTE: Page 11 of the original article was not included in the provided scans, so there is a gap in the text at this point between page 10 and page 12.]
Soviet anti-Zionism has been applied within Russia on a consistent basis. Purges and trials have become common practice. Allegations of an international Zionist conspiracy may be found in countless newspapers and magazines. As Shlomo Avineri has pointed out, accounts of the anti-Jewish purges in Poland in 1968, as well as “Soviet writings about Czechoslovak liberals during the Prague Spring,” referred to many of the Jews under attack as Zionists, “even though it was known that they had never been involved in activities that could be labeled “Zionist” by any stretch of the imagination.”
Arab and Moslem Anti-Zionism
The Arab and Moslem world seems not to care where the anti-Zionism comes from, or what ideology may be represented. They will readily take any anti-Zionist position and make it their own. The Protocols are published and distributed freely. Jewish anti-Zionists, such as Alfred Lilienthal, are quoted and their works are published by Arab publishing houses. Socialist positions, although edited for domestic consumption, are distributed widely. Soviet anti-Zionism is quoted with evident respect and authority, although communism as it exists in Russia and Eastern Europe is not in itself particularly popular.
Arab anti-Semitism, as Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein have noted, is far from a new phenomenon. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, first translated into Arabic in the
1920’s, has become a veritable best-seller throughout much of the Arab world. Indeed, in 1970, the Lebanese newspaper Al Anwar listed a new edition of the Protocols on the top of its non-fiction best sellers. A 1968 edition of the Protocols, published in Kuwait in English, French and Spanish, was distributed to hundreds of postmaster generals throughout the world by the Kuwait Ministry of Posts, Telegrams, and Telephones, along with a letter suggesting its use in postal libraries. The line between such traditional anti-Semitism and Arab “anti-Zionism” has been a thin one. As Forster and Epstein, among others, have pointed out, the attempt to deny the Jewish people their right to national self-determination and territorial independence is in fact the new anti-Semitism of the Arab and Moslem world. Arab anti-Zionism has consistently been one of the most vicious and unrelenting variety; Article 22 of the PLO Covenant, for example, reads in part as follows: “Zionism is a political movement organically related to world imperialism and hostile to all movements of liberation and progress in the world. It is a racist and fanatical movement in its formation; aggressive, expansionist and colonialist in its aims, and fascist and Nazi in its means. Israel is the tool of the Zionist movement and a human and geographical base for world imperialism. It is a concentration and jumping-off point for imperialism in the heart of the Arab homeland . . . the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the Zionist and Imperialist presence and bring about the stabilization of peace in the Middle East. . . .” A Declaration of the International Symposium on Zionism, held in Baghdad, Iraq in November 1976, read in part: “Zionism is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The Palestinian struggle to establish in its place a secular progressive Palestinian society, all of whose citizens enjoy equal rights, irrespective of religion, colour or ethnic origin, deserves the active support of free peoples throughout the world. We particularly invite the cooperation of anti-Zionist Jews and hope for better understanding from citizens of Western countries in the struggle to combat Zionism.”
A variety of Arab and Moslem organizations are engaged in distributing anti-Zionist propaganda throughout the cities and university campuses of the United States as well. This anti-Zionist propaganda campaign has been centered in the 10,000-member Organization of Arab students, represented on more than 125 campuses, whose well-tutored membership is “financed and primed for propaganda by their home governments before being sent to the United States,” according to Forster and Epstein. The sharp increase in Arab anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda within the United States since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 has been attributable to the growing recognition that Arabs had heretofore lost the “propaganda war” in the United States and were resolved to wage an “information campaign directly to the American people to counteract Zionist influence in Washington.” As part of this campaign, full page ads condemning Israeli Zionist “aggression and imperialism” are placed with increasing frequency in newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. With a seemingly unlimited amount of petro dollars with which to finance their anti-Jewish propaganda efforts, Arab anti-Zionist spokesmen and polemicists have been distributing their anti-Semitic materials to ever-growing audiences throughout the United States and Western Europe. At the Islamic Conference held at United Nations Headquarters in New York City in October of 1979, American Moslem leaders were quoted as “urging their followers to become politically active and demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel” and to “seek to divert America’s approximately $15 million per day given to Israel to be invested in the economically depressed areas such as Harlem, Watts,
Philadelphia and our inner cities of America,” in an article in San Francisco Examiner.
Today, one of the greatest threats to the Jewish people is the cry of anti-Zionism. From the Soviet Union to Iran to the college and university campuses of America, anti-Zionism has an impact on Jews and non-Jews alike. Anti-Zionism is a threat because it denies the Jewish people alone among all the nations of the world the right to self-determination. It is a threat because it is only a cover for age-old anti-Semitism.
Zionism is a valid, legitimate national liberation movement. As the forces of anti-Zionism continue to articulate their position, it is all the more vital that the Zionist movement is strengthened. The best answer to anti-Zionism is an affirmative, knowledgeable Zionist movement. We must meet the challenge.
— THE AMERICAN ZIONIST, April-May 1980
