Letter to the Editor: Rabbi Dr. Scott B. Saulson

Letter to the editor,

Gobble Gobble: The “current” crisis.

The deliberate slaughter of Israeli infants is but an all too familiar page out of the recent and ancient books of Jew hatred, the fundamental desire of which is to rid the world of our people. Indeed, by any other name, “from the river to the sea” underlies the attacks on Jews and our institutions around the world. To associate this barbarism and Jew hatred in any way with the legitimate grievances of Palestinians is to befoul their cry for a place in the sun.

Asserting Zionism is colonialism is yet another manifestation of Jew hatred because it implies that Israel is not entitled to exist as a Jewish state. Even if the assertion were true, which it is not, how else explain the indifference and passivity of “bleeding hearts” and “political mobsters” in the face of egregious colonialism perpetrated by Russia and China, whose occupation of other peoples and their homelands has deliberately erased historic cultures and has premeditatedly imprisoned, tortured, and killed ordinary citizens? We may aspire to be a “light unto the nations” and, when we fail, we ought to admit our shortcomings and mend our ways, and we ought to be humble enough to accept constructive criticism.

Nevertheless, anti-Zionism, as well as antisemitism, always reveals its vitriol in the application of double standards and moral obfuscation.

And yes, Zionism is NOT colonialism. To the contrary, Zionism is an age-old yearning for national self-determination on a small parcel of global real estate on which Jews have continuously resided for millennia. In modern times, resurgent Zionism was an Anti-colonialism movement directed against all those who held sway over this parcel, including the British. Indeed, Zionists of every stripe were averse to exploitation by foreign powers of our people and our resources, both human and material. In the era between World War I and World War II, Zionism paralleled Arab national movements astir in Bagdad, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo.

Have there been Zionists whose aim mimicked the “from the river to the sea” mentality of the Hamasniks and their fellow travelers? Have there been Zionists who have wanted the whole “divinely promised” enchilada? Yes. Some of them are among most Israeli citizens who were pushed out of their birthplaces in Islamic lands. But from the outset, these maximalists were held in check by pragmatists and, among them humanists, who opted for territorial compromise — a compromise summarily and violently rejected across the Arab world, a rejection which lies at the very root of Palestinian suffering.

As we approach our American season of Thanksgiving, we have much to relish about our society’s accomplishments and our aspirations — especially the clear thinking and unflinching support of the Biden Administration. At its core, Zionism is our determination no longer to ask permission to breathe, in this season and in every season no longer to be someone else’s turkey.

Rabbi Dr. Scott B. Saulson, Atlanta