Alice Rothchild: Zionist Fragility

The time is long overdue for liberal Zionists to find the courage to take a long hard look at their uncritical support for the actions of the Israeli state as it becomes increasingly indefensible.

Palestine solidarity activists, students, and scholars are facing an astronomic rise in attacks for calling attention to Israeli policies in the occupied territories, for naming the assault on Gaza a genocide, even for mentioning the health impacts of the massive bombing and killing campaign and calling for a ceasefire. Project Esther—a right-wing task force from the Trumpian Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and designed to crush the pro-Palestine movement—is about to make the repression much worse.

This creates a problem for liberal Zionists in the U.S., deeply allied with Israel but worried about the rightward political swing and distressed by the carnage in Gaza, violence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and the widening of Israeli attacks in the region. These progressive folks get all tangled up when words like “war crimes” and “genocide,” as well as ending military funding to Israel or support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, get mentioned in the very next sentence. Repeatedly, liberal Zionists respond to this reality with very illiberal behavior, pulling financial donations from universities and organizations, resigning from groups and institutions they otherwise support, condemning friends, children, and grandchildren for engaging in protests, encampments, and other unruly behavior, complaining that spaces are now “unsafe” for Jews, that “antisemitism” is rampant on college campuses. 

Historically, the price of Israel’s settler colonial origins is the hostility of the people who lost their land, homes, and lives towards the people who promulgated this catastrophe. Moshe Dayan, one of the founding Israeli generals, famously stated “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” The strategies of tolerance, negotiation, compromise, humility, respect for international law and human rights, were never woven into the Israeli psyche.

It is possible to be horrified by the suffering of those killed, harmed, kidnapped on October 7 or fleeing to bomb shelters as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian drones and missiles are fired over Israel, and at the same time, to call the brutal, unrelenting assault on Gaza a genocide. There are increasing reports in mainstream media as well human rights organizations from the United Nations to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, to B’Tselem. They document Israeli violations of multiple international laws about the rules of war, violations of the protected status of health care institutions and health care workers, massive civilian injuries and casualties, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, educational facilities, sanitation, water, and agriculture. 

At the same time, Israeli allegations promote the idea that Palestinians are savage, hypersexualized animals, capable of horrific acts of violence, and thus, deserving of slaughter. This tactic was common in the Jim Crow south with the descriptions of Black men attacked and lynched. The language is also mirrored in Trump’s depictions of undocumented people coming into the United States. The foundational racism is obvious. The double standard exists because of societal assumptions about who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad,” which men are inherently decent and which men are capable of egregious violent behavior. If Gazans are all “animals,” “terrorists,” “Jew-haters,” then it is much easier to kill them with a clear conscience. 

Exceptionalizing Jewish trauma only leads to a complete disregard for international law, proportionality in war, and the degradation of the Israeli military’s claim to be “moral,” to have any respect for the modern rules of warfare, the protected status of hospitals, the dignity of every human being, the safeguarded status of civilians. 

When liberal Zionists object to the use of the word “genocide” as “too political,” it reflects their inability to grapple with the historical and current truths about the Israeli government and military and their demonization of Palestinians as less than human. When folks attack people for advocating for a ceasefire, (which is the first step towards ending the assault and protecting what is left of Gaza and releasing hostages), they often charge them with “antisemitism.” This is a descent into a tribal abyss that cannot see the “enemy” as human; cannot imagine the day after when the war ends and over two million hungry, sick Gazans are faced with unimaginable trauma and vast needs to survive and remake their lives; cannot remember that the only time a significant number of hostages were released alive was during a ceasefire. 

The time is long overdue for liberal Zionists to find the courage to take a long hard look at their uncritical support for the actions of the Israeli state as it becomes increasingly indefensible and destabilizing, a pariah state that has lost its claim to be a so-called democracy (however flawed) that is endangering Jews in the country and abroad as well as Palestinians everywhere.

Alice Rothchild is a physician, author, and filmmaker with an interest in human rights and social justice. She practiced ob-gyn for almost 40 years and her retirement she served as Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School. In the 1970s, she was the Medical Director, Women’s Community Health Center, Cambridge, MA, where she performed abortions, and she served on the Rape Crisis Committee, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston.

First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.