A View from the Golan: Interview with 'NonZionism'
Throughout the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran and its ‘resistance axis’ allies, I have covered perspectives from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. In contrast, the interviewee for this post is a resident of the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and the author of a very interesting Substack/blog entitled ‘NonZionism’, written from an Israeli Jewish perspective that is neither typical hasbara nor the disillusioned ramblings of a far-left ex-Zionist-turned-‘anti-imperialist’.
In this interview, which makes for an interesting cross-border dialogue between someone in Syria and someone in Israel, we discuss the author’s own intellectual trajectory, how he views Israel’s future and the state of political discourse in the country today, and how life in the Golan Heights has been affected by the war.
This interview was conducted on 14 April and is slightly edited for clarity.
A photo from the Golan Heights that I took a long time ago
Q: To begin with, could you explain a little about your personal story? Where you are from, your religious background, how you ended up in the Golan Heights?
A: I was born into what in Israel would be called a ‘traditional’ family in the UK, meaning not strictly religious in the sense of following Jewish law (halacha), but practicing orthodox Judaism to the extent that we practiced Judaism. This is relatively common in the UK, as opposed to the United States where the default form of Jewish identity is non-orthodox. At university, I became Modern Orthodox, and then after that I became Ultra-Orthodox. This roughly corresponded with moving from tepid Zionism, to less tepid Zionism to anti-Zionism. Then, after living in an Ultra-Orthodox community in London for six years, I became convinced of the truth of a radical version of Religious Zionism, which you call Kahanist for short, and I moved with my wife and then one son to Israel. We lived in Jerusalem for six years, and then moved to the Golan Heights. Over that period, I gradually, and then more quickly lost the political aspects of my faith that brought me here, though my religious opinions have changed relatively little. We moved to the Golan in order to escape the very high rents in most of Israel, and also because we like to be besides unspoiled countryside which is increasingly difficult in Israel.
Q: Yes, the rent rates and house prices in Israel are absurd. What has influenced your changes in your position towards Zionism over the years and where would you see yourself now, given that you call your blog ‘non-Zionism’ and don’t position yourself as an ‘anti-Zionist’?
A: Well, when I came to Israel I was one of those who wanted to completely transform the Israeli state into a religious vision. This would mean building the temple, establishing a theocratic government, and making Jewish law the law of the land. Because of that I was highly critical of actually-existing Israeli society, and, in fact, stopped identifying as a Zionist (even though in retrospect I was one). Then, I gradually came to believe that none of my dreams were going to happen, and that, to the extent they would be realised through the increasing political power of religious Zionism they would not be, ‘a light to the nations’, but something at best ugly and pathetic, and likely also quite dark.
Then when October 7th happened, I had a very visceral response to the violence used by Hamas and other Palestinians, and it caused me to seriously reflect on what was advocated by the far Right in Israel. I had been engaged in a mixture of ‘cope’ in thinking they didn’t really mean it and also thinking the ends would justify the means. It occurred to me that probably many Palestinians over the past few decades had been in the same mindset and I decided that, whatever happened, I would not be party in any way to something like that. To be honest, I thought the Israeli response was going to be more brutal than it was (and it would have been had it reflected popular opinion).
To answer the second part of your question, the more I learn about the history of Zionism, the more I see it as a bad idea, but one thing that has not changed at all, and, indeed, has only intensified is that I think that Palestinian nationalism has been a terrible ideology with no good consequences at all, and a long string of atrocities to its name. So, in as much as anti-Zionism means supporting Palestinian nationalism, I don’t want anything to do with that whatsoever. So what’s left is non-Zionism. I simply don’t believe in it. What I do believe, I don’t really know, but after a year and a half of blogging about it, I think I’m getting somewhere.
Q: In what sense do you see Zionism as a bad idea? I have to admit that if I were a Jew and I had a choice between the United States or Israel, I would choose the United States, because it does generally seem safer to be a Jew there, plus the high cost of living situation vs. low salaries in Israel. I am speaking of course from a material perspective in that regard. But explain your own perspective.
A: But I’m from the UK, which is, in many ways, a basket case, and it’s not very tempting to go back there. To answer your main question, though, it’s actually really simple. At the beginning of the 20th century there were perhaps 8 million Jews in Eastern Europe, and 500,000 people in Palestine. The plan of Zionism was just to go there, become the majority and the natives would go along with it, and even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to do much about it. What they failed to predict was that the Arab population would go through the same demographic explosion European Jewry had started 150 years prior because of basic sanitation, draining malaria swamps, fertiliser, all the usual stuff, which has happened everywhere by now. Because of that, the plan was doomed from the start, and everything since has been an attempt to deal with that. The ridiculous thing is that none of the early Zionists even considered this problem. They thought about obstacles to Jewish immigration, but it never occurred to them that even with mass immigration the Arabs would just outgrow them naturally.
Q: If I understand what was or is the mainstream ‘liberal Zionist’ case though (does it not still exist in some of the leftist quarters in Israel?), the idea is that it would be possible to maintain a Jewish majority state within what are Israel’s internationally recognised borders, while keeping the demographic problem confined to a Palestinian state at least within the West Bank. You yourself don’t think that’s a viable idea?
Also, while you say Zionism is itself a bad idea, do you believe that Israel as a Jewish state is at least worth maintaining because it’s now been around for 80 years, and most of the Israeli Jews there today have only ever known Israel as its home? I have to say one of the silliest things I see among leftist anti-Zionists is that Israelis can just go back to their countries of origin, as though e.g. Yemenite Jews would want to back to Houthi-controlled Yemen, leaving aside also how many Israelis are now born into families who trace lineages to multiple countries.
A: So, it’s viable to salvage Zionism via partition (which required ethnic cleansing) in the trivial sense that this is what actually happened. Part of my non-Zionism is trying to argue that, instead of being dissatisfied with that arrangement as right-wing Zionists are, we should realise that it actually ended up a lot better for us than it might have. We got away with quite a lot, partly because of the Holocaust, partly because of diaspora Jewry lobbying, and partly because the Arab world at the time was just very primitive and incompetent. So we should try to hang on to that rather than gambling on something better.
But, I do not actually believe ‘Israel as a Jewish state is at least worth maintaining’. In principle, I’m completely indifferent to the idea. We should do what’s best without any regard at all to how well it does or doesn’t conform to Zionist principles. In practice, I think maintaining the status quo while trying to get on better with other countries in the region is better than any other option, but not because it fulfils Zionism, just because it’s the option with the least death and destruction. However, obviously the Gaza war tests that theory. I value Palestinian life less than Jewish life and I’m not ashamed to say that. I don’t think we or anyone else are obligated to commit suicide because of past injustice, or even present injustice. But I don’t value it infinitely less. There’s a point when I think that this is so ghastly that we have to roll the dice on some kind of other arrangement. So what I’d like is for Israelis to calm down so we don’t get to that point.
I’m a conservative basically. It comes with age.
Q: In what ways could Israel try to get on better with other countries in the region? As far as Lebanon goes, for example, I very much understand the Israeli concern in the sense that Hezbollah is committed to ending Israel’s existence (the fact they call places like Tel Aviv ‘occupied’ is a pretty good indication), plus the fact that the Lebanese authorities and security forces haven’t proven reliable in disarming Hezbollah. Is there a different approach you would suggest there?
I think in the case of Syria there’s a stronger case to be made that Israel’s policy has been too hostile from the outset and is unproductive. For example the protection of the Druze is an understandable policy but it is not used to advance a way forward to resolve the issue. Similarly the ongoing incursions versus what might have been a better approach of taking a step back, making clear any attacks on Israeli territory would be met with retaliation and trying to cement terms through a ceasefire agreement.
A: The obvious thing is to be less brutal towards the Palestinians. This is not as simple as flicking a switch, because there are genuine security needs, which require checkpoints and the like. However, the truth is we haven’t been trying for decades, and since October 7th, we just let fanatics go around committing terrorism in the West Bank. Simply going back to basic standards of law and order would be something.
However, there is a more fundamental issue, which is that we literally don’t try to win over Arab cultural elites at all. We have Arab Israelis who are very patriotic, not the majority by any means, but tens of thousands for sure, and what we do with them is parade them before western audiences to show we are liberal, which used to work, but now doesn’t. It has never occurred to anyone to use them as ambassadors either to the Palestinians, or the wider Arab world. English is the single most important subject in the Israeli education system (outside of religious schools), partly for economic reasons, but also because it’s understood that we need to be able to ‘explain’ ourselves (the meaning of hasbara). But Arabic is completely neglected.
I personally am not a great fan of Arab culture. If I lived in Europe I would vote in favour of basically zero immigration from the Middle East (no offence), but we are here, and we have to deal with the people we have to deal with. Islamic history is a mixed bag, but there’s plenty to admire in its artistic and intellectual heritage. I’m not delusional about there being a huge amount of irrational hate for us in the Arab world, but you have to start from somewhere.
In Lebanon, plainly there is no point reaching out to Hezbollah and it’s supporters, but the fact is that most Christians there hate us too. We can blame them, and it’s true to a large extent, but we can only control what we do.
The dominant Israeli narrative is the opposite. “This is the Middle East’, so we should act like our neighbours: brutal, perpetually aggrieved, refusing to budge on anything. But how well has this worked out for them? While there’s a lot to criticise about the Labour Zionists who built the state and ruled it for the first three decades, they understood that the dysfunctionality of the Arab world was an argument *not* to act that way.
Q: There’s been increasing talk about Israel essentially heading into a ‘forever war’ approach: the constant military deployments and operations in neighbouring countries, the war with Iran but then the increasing talk of Turkey as the next main threat that has to be dealt with, by force if necessary. The ‘forever war’ in turn creates internal pressures that are likely to prove very harmful to Israel in the long-run: military conscription evasion, people leaving Israel for elsewhere (I can tell you that was a big problem here in Syria about military conscription and outward migration before the regime fell). Would that be a fair assessment?
A: Yes. I think that the majority of the electorate are completely delusional, because they don’t understand that basically all taxes are paid by people who (a) are overwhelmingly on the liberal end of Israeli politics and (b) have the skills to leave. The economy is extremely dependent on intellectual property and human capital, the most vulnerable economic assets to flight. These people pay insane taxes, insane rents, and then have abuse hurled on them by the majority who blame them for the Oslo Accords and October 7th, plus they are facing the prospect of being on a war-footing indefinitely, which for many of them means taking 2 months out a year to be in Gaza. I think a well-designed sanctions regime with incentives for these people to leave could crash the whole project in a year. The counter-argument is that, rationally speaking, they should have left already, so perhaps whatever is keeping them here, can keep them here for good.
The talk about pivoting to Turkey was really deranged. There was a lot of crazy euphoria in the first week of this war.
Q: You are often critical of Hasbarists on your blog. It does seem to me as though there has been a drastic decline in the quality of Hasbara over the decades. When I see how Hasbara is represented today in personalities like Eylon Levy, Eyal Yakoby and Adam Louis-Klein, I find myself asking whether these people realise that their goal should be to make Israel’s case to people otherwise neutral or unsympathetic, instead of just preaching to their already ideologically committed fans. What are your thoughts on this and why is Hasbara these days so terrible?
A: Adam Louis Klein is really something else, like some kind of weird performance art.
My diagnosis is this. Contrary to what many opponents of Israel claim, Israel has never put a lot of work into its international PR, because it didn’t need to. (Ashkenazi) Jews are intelligent with a verbal tilt, and a cultural (probably also genetic) disposition to being argumentative. Israel relied for decades on this free resource of Jews willing to argue for free on their behalf, perhaps with a grant here or there, and some training courses. The problem comes with social media when the incentives fall apart, because everyone is competing for likes, and the easiest way to compete for likes is to appeal to Jews and rile them up. The fact that precisely the things that get most likes from Jews are those that are most off-putting to almost everyone else sets up a very bad dynamic. There’s no getting round the fact that Jewish culture doesn’t encourage group self-introspection, and we relied on the general taboo on anti-semitism after WW2 to smooth over the dodgy issues.
There is also another important aspect, which is that Jews are getting dumber. Intermarriage is big in the diaspora, and the smarter ones disproportionately lose Jewish affiliation over the generations. This then leads to a vicious cycle where Jewish outreach caters to the dumber audience which makes it even more repulsive to the smart ones. So relying on big bank of freelance smarty pants to do free PR for Israel isn’t sustainable anymore.
Q: I want to come back to something for a moment on the Palestinians. Daniel Pipes advocates the notion of an Israeli ‘victory’ over the Palestinians: that is, that Israel needs to make the Palestinians sense they have been ‘defeated’ and can no longer end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state- not necessarily by military means. What do you make of that idea?
A: I used to believe precisely this. I still do, in a sense, but the question is: “When the Palestinians are truly defeated, what do they do?” The implicit answer by people who believe in this is ‘dissolve’. In short, you need a political solution to give them, and that can’t be perpetual occupation.
Another problem is that you can’t just defeat the Palestinians, you also have to defeat their backer, but they can always get a new one, hence the talk about pivoting to Turkey after defeating Iran (before we even did that).
There are options, but I think they would all essentially amount to abandoning Zionism.
Q: Do you think it’s a valid concern in the long-run that the situation in the West Bank- with routine settler attacks on Palestinian land and Palestinians that even some Hasbarists are denouncing as terrorism- combined with the widespread perception of a genocide perpetrated in Gaza, will lead to growing international isolation for Israel with disastrous consequences for the country?
A: Yes.
Q: Finally, let’s talk a little about the situation in the Golan. What’s it been like with the war’s impact on daily life? Or is the region relatively shielded from the impacts compared to other parts of Israel?
A: I think it’s the safest region. None of the Iranian bombs have come anywhere close to here., and even Hezbollah concentrates on Northern Israel and largely ignores us. I’m not sure if that’s because of some kind of idea that it is Syria’s job to liberate the Golan, because logistically they could easily hit us here. Of those rockets that do come, 95% are intercepted. If I recall correctly, we have less than 5 impacts in our town over the course of the whole three years, and these were mostly shrapnel.
We have a reinforced room that acts as a bomb shelter in our house, as does every house and flat built since the 1990s. The kids sleep there, and if there is a siren we all go there. During the heaviest periods of the war, this can be quite disturbing for sleep, but given what other people have to put up with, there’s really nothing to complain about.
Q: Has the war led to a discernible impact on prices of goods and commodities where you live?
A: There have been shortages, particularly of milk, but I’m not even sure that the war has been the determinative factor. We are quite a backwards country in some ways, and still have price controls. The price of living has gone up, but, to be honest, the most difficult issue for me personally, has been the strength of the shekel against the pound since I still earn most of my money from England.