The Link: Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism, And NEVER Was
The Link, published on a bi-monthly basis, is AMEU’s primary education and information tool. For the first two decades of its existence, The Link was virtually the only national periodical published for a diverse audience by an American non-profit organization that persistently challenged the prevailing myths and stereotypes about Arabs, Muslims and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
About This Issue
When the tenets of Zionism were first propounded in the late 19th- century, most Jews and Jewish organizations denounced them. They didn’t like Zionism telling them that they didn’t belong in their respective countries, and that they had to pack their bags and colonize another country far away. For Jews that sounded much like what an anti-Semite would say.
In the 1940s, British and U.S. intelligence came to a similar judgment: they saw Zionism as an offshoot of fascism, including Nazism. Tom Suarez, who spent long hours in The National Archives in England researching this previous classified information, wrote about it in our Sept.-Oct. 2017 issue of The Link.
Now, Allan Brownfeld, editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism, documents the history of Jewish rejection of Zionist thinking. This is Allan’s second feature article for The Link; his first, dating back to Fall 1977, is available on our website.
On page 7, Allan mentions Rabbi Elmer Berger, founder of the American Jewish Alternative to Zionism. In 1994, two years before his death, Berger wrote a feature article for The Link in which he recalled a meeting he had with Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, whose first question to him was how did you as a Jew come to your anti-Zionist position? Berger’s response, which forms the core of his article, is instructive, and one I recommend reading; see “Will ’94 Be ’49 All over Again?”, Jan.-March 1994, available on our website.
On page 15 we list several books and videos that complement our feature article. Also available are bottles of organic, extra dry Palestinian olive oil from Jerusalem, a nice gift for the holidays.
–John F. Mahoney, Executive Director