A recommendation: Leonard Fein’s article in the current issue of Dissent. Fein offers a good summary of the current travails of left Zionism. It’s hardly new that Zionist liberals and social democrats often feel as if they are not only out of synch, but positively rejected, by both the left at large and by the larger Zionist movement.
Phoebe Malz, over at What Would Phoebe Do, comments that “If you think Israel as a Jewish state is a good thing, even if your ideal Jewish state would be downright communist, you have no place on the left.” Is she being descriptive or prescriptive?
I’m not out to convince the Left-at-Large that I’m one of them. My goal in this blog, and in my articles and books, is to show that you can be concerned about social justice, skeptical about the common wisdom, and critical of the status quo and still be a Zionist. More than that, I argue that you ought to be a Zionist. If Gershom and I can get you to consider that premise, we’re doing our job well.