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"I no longer want to look at myself as a Jew"

Historian Shlomo Sand explains why he doesn't want to be a Jew anymore. His background is Jewish, and he views Israel as one of the most racist societies in the Western world.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

The country of which I am a national defines my nationality as "Jewish" under census. It also refers to itself as the state of the "Jewish people". This means that the country's founders and lawmakers view this state as the collective property of "the Jews of the world" – whether believers or not – rather than look at it as a democratic, independent state for its citizens.
The State of Israel defines me as a Jew. Not because I express myself in a Jewish language, sing Jewish songs, eat Jewish food, read Jewish books or do other Jewish activities. I am classified as a Jew because the state, through a background check of my family roots, has determined that I was born of a Jewish mother – who in turn is Jewish because my grandmother was there, again thanks to my grandmother. This is how it continues through an endless number of generations.
If only my father was seen as a Jew, I would be registered as an Austrian. I was born in a refugee camp in the city of Linz just after World War II. In this case, too, I could have claimed Israeli citizenship, but still: It wouldn't have mattered if I spoke, cursed, taught and wrote in Hebrew and attended Israeli schools. In the eyes of the law, I would have been Austrian.
Fortunately, or unluckily – depending on how you look at the question – my mother was identified as a Jew when she arrived in Israel towards the end of 1948. Because of this, I got the description "Jew" stamped in my identification papers. In addition – and this may sound paradoxical – I am not allowed to cease to be a Jew, according to Israeli law. It's not a free choice I have. My nationality can only be changed if I convert to another religion.
The problem is that I do not believe in a higher power.
[...]

Photo: Truls Lie

During In the first half of the 1900th century, my father left the Talmud school, stopped going to the synagogue and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis. Now I myself have reached a point where I feel a moral obligation to cut ties with Jewish self-centrism. Today, I am aware that I have never been a true secular Jew, and realize that such an imaginary description lacks any valid foundation or cultural perspective. It is an idea based on a shallow and ethnocentric worldview. In the past, I thought that the Yiddish culture I experienced during my upbringing in my family was a genuine expression of Jewish culture itself. Then I was inspired by Bernard Lazare, Mordechai Anielewicz, Marcel Rayman and Marek Edelmann, who all fought against anti-Semitism, Nazism and Stalinism without incurring an ethnocentric worldview. Because of this, I began to identify myself as part of an oppressed, rejected minority. In good company with socialist leader Léon Blum and the poet Julian Tuqim, I insisted on feeling like a Jew with an identity shaped by persecutions, murderers, crimes and their victims.
Now, I am painfully aware that I have submitted to a kind of allegiance to Israel, taken up in a fictional nation by persecutors and their followers, and appearing as part of the exclusive group of elect. Therefore, I now choose to resign and stop calling myself a Jew.
Israel will not change my official nationality from "Jew" to "Israelis". Despite this, I dare to hope that the Jewish community, Zionists as anti-Zionists, anyone who pursues their worldview with essentialist beliefs, will respect my desire and stop categorizing me as a Jew. But after all, their view of me means very little, and it means even less what the remaining anti-Semitic idiots think. In the light of the historical tragedies of the 1900th century, I no longer want to be part of a small minority in an exclusive club that others have no opportunity to become part of.

Photo: Truls Lie

When I refuse Being a Jew, I also represent an extinct species. When I insist that it is only my historical past that is Jewish, while my everyday life is Israeli – and that my future and my children's future will hopefully be guided by universal, open and merciful principles – I oppose the dominant, ethnocentric trend.
As a modern historian, my hypothesis is that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great, if not greater, than that between me and my own great-grandfather. That's probably for the best! Unfortunately, I live among many who believe that their successors will look like themselves in every way possible. To them, their peoples are eternal – a fortiori a race people like Jews.
I realize that I live in one of the most racist societies in the Western world. Racism is everywhere, but in Israel it is deeply enshrined in the law. It is taught in schools and universities and disseminated in the media. Above all – and this is the worst – the racists in Israel do not know what they are doing. That's why I feel no need to apologize. This absence of a need to answer has made Israel an important reference point for several global right-wing extremist movements – movements with roots in an anti-Semitic prehistory we know so well.
Living in such a society has become unsustainable, but I must also admit that it is just as difficult to create a home somewhere else. I am part of the cultural, linguistic and conceptual creation of the Zionist machine. I cannot change this. Based on my daily life and my basic culture, I am Israeli. I feel no appreciable pride in this, just as I feel no reason to be proud of being a man with brown eyes and average height. I am often ashamed of Israel, especially when I witness the cruel military colonization of weak and defenseless victims, who are not part of the "chosen people."

When I'm far away from Israel, I imagine my street corner in Tel Aviv, and I look forward to coming back.

Previously had I am floating, utopian dreams that a Palestinian-Israeli would feel as at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish-American does in New York. I wanted a life for a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be like a Jewish-French person in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian, African immigrants to be treated like British children of Indian immigrants stay in London. I wished with all my heart that Israeli children could be educated together in the same schools. Today, I know that this dream will require enormous changes. I know that my demands are exaggerated and almost rude, that utterly speaking these desires are seen as an attack on Israel's Jewish character – and thus as anti-Semitism – by Zionists and their followers.

Photo: Truls Lie

If we could begin to treat Israeli identity as political and cultural instead of "ethnic", we might also be able to create a basis for a more open and inclusive identity. According to the law, it is actually possible to be an Israeli citizen without being a secular "ethnic" Jew. One can be part of the dominant culture while maintaining one's own culture, one can speak one hegemonic language and cultivate another. You can take care of several aspects of your life and at the same time merge them with others. However, in order to strengthen this republican-political potential, one must abandon outdated views and learn to respect "the others" by treating them as equals. In addition, the Israeli constitution must be democratized.
And most importantly, if anyone should have forgotten: Before we start arguing about how we can change Israel's identity policy, we must first free ourselves from the perpetual occupation that leads us nowhere but to the road to hell. Our relationship with those who are second-class citizens is inextricably linked to our relationship with those living in suffering at the bottom of the Zionist rescue campaign's rank ladder. This is an oppressed people who have lived under occupation for almost 50 years. They have been deprived of political and civil rights in areas the "Jewish state" sees as their own. They are constantly abandoned and ignored by international politics. I realize today that my dream of ending the occupation and being able to establish a partnership between two republics, Israel and Palestine, was a fantasy fetus that underestimated the balance of power between the two parties.
It's starting to look like it's already too late. Everything seems to have been lost, and all serious attempts at a political solution are locked. Israel has become accustomed to this, and seems unable to stop its own dominion over another people. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not do what it takes. The agony of the world community's conscience prevents it from convincing Israel to go back to the 1948 borders. Israel is also not ready to officially incorporate the occupied territories – it would give the occupied population equal citizenship, resulting in a state of two nations. Israel is similar to the mythological snake figure who swallows a prey that is too large, but chooses to be suffocated rather than releasing it.

Photo: Truls Lie

Does this mean that I should also give up hope? I feel a deep inner discord. I feel like an outcast because of the growing Jewish ethnicity around me. At the same time, the language I speak, write and dream in is overwhelmingly Hebrew. When I'm abroad, I feel a nostalgia for this language, the language that is the tool for my feelings and thoughts. When I'm far away from Israel, I imagine my street corner in Tel Aviv, and I look forward to coming back. And then I don't go to the synagogue to muffle the missing – the prayers there are in a language that is not mine, and the people I meet there have absolutely no interest in understanding what "being Israeli" means to me.
In London, the universities there with their male and female students, and not the Talmudic schools (where there are no female students), remind me of the university area I work in. In New York, it is the Manhattan cafes, not Brooklyn with its many ethnic groups, that appeal to me, because they are similar to the cafes in Tel Aviv. And when I visit the bustling Parisian bookstores, I think of the Hebrew Book Festival that is held every year in Israel – and not the sacred writings of my ancestors.
My deep ties to this country just seem to convey the pessimism I feel towards it. Therefore, I often feel discouragement for the present and fear for the future. I am tired and feel that the last remnant of reason disappears from political action and that unpredictable sleepwalking is all that remains. But I can't allow myself to be completely fatalistic. I hold that when mankind managed to get through the 1900th century without a nuclear war, everything is possible – even in the Middle East.
We should keep in mind the words of Theodor Herzl, the man responsible for the fact that I am an Israeli: "If you will, it is no legend."
As a successor to the oppressors who made their way through the European hell of the 1940s without losing hope of a better life, I am not allowed to despair. Therefore, to create a better tomorrow, and no matter what my critics say, I keep writing.


True is a historian.

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