A letter to my formerly Zionist friend

Firstly, I am touched that you made the time to share your thoughts with us and I can tell how important it is to you to feel understood by your peers. Sharing thoughts in writing is perhaps a more constructive way of getting through this difficult period rather than the “banter” and quips which serve no-one.

One of the things I have always liked about you is your quirkiness, cheekiness and how it takes me back to being 16 again. Recently I have avoided seeing you for fear of being upset. I have been acutely affected by October 7 and everything that ensued. I felt that I couldn’t see you as we see world events so differently right now. It’s just too much. I hope we can find a way through.

I can see that you seem anguished by your own stance. I can imagine the alienation and antagonism which has become part of the fabric of where you are now. I can also see that you have been on a journey which has led you away from so many of your friends. To my mind, you have become infected by the world you inhabit professionally.

You said to me that you are offended by youngsters from London leaving school and joining the IDF.  When you say those words, I think of Tom, my friend’s son who is now paralysed down the left side of his face from an RPG in Gaza. Tom didn’t have time to be offended. He serves to protect Israel as it’s his duty to do so. And yet, you are offended, from the luxury of your north London life. You are offended by teenagers trying to protect the only Jewish state. I cannot imagine the intellectual gymnastics you have had to do to get to this point. Whilst you are immersed in the world of the woke left, teenagers (like ours) are dying and you’re offended.

I was sad to read what you say about the religious nationalists in Israel, calling them women with hair wraps. Certainly, they are not people like me, not people like you either. Are they the wrong kind of Jew? There is a word for people who feel uncomfortable when they see Jews and who then divide them into the “right kind of Jews” and” “wrong kind”. JVP would celebrate this. Do you feel the same when you see women in burqas in London? Are they the wrong kind of Muslim?

I would love to know from the people you refer to who have marched on Saturdays in support of Palestine – did they attend marches for people in Sudan, for the Muslims murdered in Syria, for the Uyghurs? Have you asked them? I think you know the answer.

I am glad that you have never felt any antisemitism from those people –  I am sure they have decided that you are the “right kind of Jew”. The idea that you say those marches are not antisemitic astounds me. The PSC applied to the Met Police for permission to march on  October 7 whilst Israelis were still being murdered, raped and kidnapped. Whilst ashes were still warm at Kibbutz Be’eri. Do you understand why they wanted to march? Tell me. For peace? I have seen those marches. I have had people make “cut throat” gestures at me. I have been spat at. How many genocidal and Nazi themed banners are acceptable to you? Is there an optimum number which is OK? I would say none. I wouldn’t march alongside anyone promoting murder and hatred. Yet you are OK with it. Is “globalise the intifada” what your friends want?

Moving now to thoughts about Israel. I am a Zionist but this doesn’t mean I agree with everything Israel does. There are many things I don’t like or agree with. There is no such thing as a perfect country. You talk about a village being called an Arab village on a trip to Israel years back. The Old City in Jerusalem has the “Jewish Quarter”. Is this problematic for you? What I find problematic is that there are 57 Muslim countries in the world and one Jewish state. And yet, people you have become influenced by are obsessed to the point of madness with what Israel does and doesn’t do. They hold Israel up to an impossible standard and not one applied to ANY other state. I guess you can see where this is going – there is a word for it.

My sense is that you are struggling with something akin to white saviour complex and I am sorry. I am sorry because of the way you describe your blissful teenage years in a Zionist youth movement which now make you feel ashamed. That is so sad.

I do not feel torn or anguished with where I stand. I will stand with the only country that will keep me and family safe if the world turns against us. I will criticise what it does but I do not have a vote in Israel so moaning from the sidelines achieves little. We all want peace and security but I don’t believe you would accept living next door to neighbours who repeatedly commit to murdering your family if you give them the chance. You don’t mention the multiple offers of a Palestinian state turned down time and again. Instead, you blame Israel – victim blaming. There is a word for this too. It breaks my heart that so many educated liberals are leaving Israel and I only pray that they will return one day.

When you list the voices you have been influenced by, I understand how you have got to this point. Tareq Baconi – a man who clearly believes not that the time for two states is over, but “that it never should have existed in the first place because Israel is and always has been illegitimate”. Does he say any other countries should be dismantled? Not that I can see. Pankaj Mishra who says the Holocaust has been “perverted to enable mass murder” and give Israel impunity. I appreciate that you have been trying to educate yourself but take a step back and ask yourself whether you have been infected by their rhetoric.

You say you don’t want Israel to cease to exist. Your words suggest otherwise. To double down in your criticism of Israel at a time like this – well, it must be hard being you. I think this is what I find so obscene – the doubling down, now, after a massacre. If you want to be “that anti-Zionist Jew”, please understand why friends like us don’t want to be around you. We are exhausted just living right now, we don’t have the bandwidth to argue with our own. Your colleagues hide behind a thin veil of anti-Zionism. I just can’t quite believe that you have joined them.

Without doubt, if the world does turn on us, you will be queuing up with your family to get on that El Al flight. You’ll be OK with the women in hair wraps then.

Ending with a Golda Meir quote “we have no place else to go”.