Translated by Einat Temkin.
Ofra Rudner portrays the international solidarity movement with Palestinians as a detached group of people whose opposition to Zionism is nothing more than an empty slogan with no practical meaning.
In her view, anti-Zionists around the world are merely "wokies" demanding the expulsion of Jews from Israel, or at the very least the dismantling of the State of Israel, without offering any alternative framework.
These claims have no basis in reality.
The term "woke" emerged from the struggle of Black Americans against the violent systems of oppression surrounding them. "Woke" people are consciously aware of these systems and to the obligation to identify them explicitly in order to bring about change.
Similarly, many activists and organizations leading the struggle for Palestinian liberation — especially the boycott movement — have a very clear definition of the Zionism they oppose, and it is doubtful that supporters of Zionism could deny this definition, because Zionism has always meant far more than simply "establishing a national home for the Jewish people."
Supporters of the Palestinian cause insist on reminding us that Zionism, from its inception, pursued a "Jewish majority," and that the actions taken to achieve it were coercive from the very beginning. They point, for example, to the expulsion of Palestinian peasants from lands purchased during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods, or to organized violence against Palestinian laborers in order to remove them from construction sites in the name of promoting "Hebrew labor." Later on as well, they argue, Jewish privilege remained one of the foundational principles of the State of Israel.
In Israel, those belonging to the Jewish collective — more precisely, those eligible under the Law of Return — enjoy constitutional supremacy over the country's Palestinian inhabitants, including Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Even though Israel has no formal constitution, it does have laws that define the nature of the regime. The legal rights organization Adalah – The Legal Center For Arab Minority Rights In Israel — published a detailed document years ago regarding discriminatory laws in Israel. Chief among them are the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law, which allow any Jew, or even a non-Jewish relative of a Jew, to immigrate and obtain citizenship, while denying immigration or the right of return to Palestinian refugees of the Nakba and their descendants.
The simple and concrete demands of anti-Zionists stem directly from this analysis: every discriminatory law underlying the State of Israel must be abolished.
When the demand to recognize this fundamental discrimination is directed at the Zionist right and center, it is usually met with blunt and angry rejection.
But when it is directed at those who see themselves as the "Zionist left" or the "peace camp," it poses an impossible challenge, and is most often met with silence, discomfort, or evasion. Rudner's article is a good example of this. She attempts to portray opponents of Zionism as nothing more than the loudest and most obnoxious commenters she encountered on social media. Her claim (a correct one) that "you cannot turn back the wheel of history" is used to dismiss the demand for full constitutional equality and for practical correction insofar as reality allows.
The phrase "we have nowhere else to go" is merely a convenient excuse, because the organizations leading the struggle for Palestinian rights are not calling for the expulsion of Jews from this land. If anything, the statement raises the question of whether the author believes Jews cannot exist without constitutional supremacy over others.
Rudner tries to defend Zionism in the name of pragmatism, yet her proposal is astonishingly thin, amounting to little more than asking "how Arabs and Jews can live here together."
Not only does she ignore the fundamental inequality embedded in the State of Israel, as described above, but her article also contains no real political content in the spirit of the so-called "Zionist left": no demand for full withdrawal to the May 1967 borders, no acknowledgment of the growing international consensus that Israel is responsible for apartheid — a crime under international law — and no demand that Israel take responsibility for what B'Tselem בצלם, among others, defines as "our genocide in Gaza."
By contrast, anti-Zionists in the international solidarity movement with Palestinians — including many Jewish activists and Jewish organizations — do propose detailed alternatives.
One such alternative is the transition to a democratic and egalitarian state, similar to the constitutional transformation that took place in South Africa roughly thirty years ago. These voices also exist within Israel itself. For example, the Israeli organization Zochrot זוכרות ذاكرات has been developing practical frameworks for the return of Palestinian refugees within a future democratic order.
Clearly, such initiatives may provoke anxiety, at least as an initial reaction among average Israelis, including the average Haaretz reader. Yet even these Israelis recognize that the horrific status quo is unsustainable, and that deep processes of disintegration are taking place within Israeli society — processes that are already leading many citizens to emigrate, or at least to consider doing so. Fundamental change will in any case be imposed here by reality itself, and it is better to begin working now to ensure that this change is democratic and egalitarian.
It is true that establishing a new and equal constitutional and political framework requires serious thought and planning. But explicitly recognizing that the discriminatory Zionist regime generates hatred, exclusion, and violence does not require extraordinary intellectual effort. What is needed is only a small measure of humility, integrity, and willingness to part with positions of supremacy and privilege — that is the necessary first step. Political discourse that avoids this recognition is nothing more than an escape from reality. Discourse that begins with this recognition could lead to a reality in which "Arabs and Jews live here together," as Rudner herself hopes."
