Friday 18th October 2024
Two weeks ago, I read a piece in The New Statesman titled “What is Zionism? Why the State of Israel is Central to Jewish Identity” by Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of Britain.
I didn’t expect it would be anything other than the typical, historically distorted, dehumanising, and warmongering screed that Mirvis has repeated over and over in the last year, in any forum to which he is permitted access. And that’s exactly what the article was.
A few moments did surprise me somewhat, particularly Mirvis’s desperate attempt to reframe Zionism as a modern anticolonial project in a bid for the hearts and minds of his “progressive” audience. The Rabbi references “the colonising Romans” and offers the mind-bending reflection that “It is extremely sad that the existence of a Jewish state in a land within which the Jewish people were indigenous long before the dawn of both Christianity and Islam should be seen as controversial in any way.”
After closing the tab to return to actually meaningful perspectives, the article left my mind; an irrelevant and momentary distraction at a time of spiralling Israeli violence in Gaza and Lebanon…..more
