Aaron Gell in The New Republic:
If anti-Zionist Judaism has long sounded like an oxymoron, chalk it up to two factors: the Shoah, which convinced many Jews that they could never again entrust their welfare to a non-Jewish majority; and a remarkably effective effort by the Zionist establishment to weave the nation-state project into the fabric of Jewish life. But things change: A few days after October 7, I was biking along Brooklyn’s Prospect Park when I came upon a demonstration in front of Senator Chuck Schumer’s apartment building. I’d spent the week absorbed in the news, struggling to take in the immensity and cruelty of the Hamas attack and horrified by the ruthlessness of Israel’s military response. As demonstrators, many carrying signs reading NOT IN MY NAME, marched down the road to Grand Army Plaza, I noticed that some were wearing tallitot and yarmulkes, and I found myself overcome with emotion. This, the first post–October 7 protest by Jewish Voice for Peace—a group I had never even heard of—struck me as a welcome response to what we’d been seeing, and a deeply Jewish one. I ditched my bike and joined the throng.
I mention this in the spirit of full disclosure: I’m hardly an objective observer. I’m a secular Jew, with my own particular set of feelings about Israel—a confusing mix of esteem, curiosity, anguish, and sometimes shame.
More here.