Haaretz reports that Tzedek Chicago has officially designated itself an “anti-Zionist” synagogue, under the leadership of Rabbi Brant Rosen. According to its website, Tzedek Chicago is “anti-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day.”
Per Haaretz,
Asked to define clearly the terms that had changed in his synagogue’s statement, Rosen said that “a non-Zionist is someone for whom Israel and Zionism is a topic they are neutral on … it’s not an identity, it’s a descriptive statement.”
By contrast, he said, an anti-Zionist takes a more proactive stance and clearly “opposes the very concept of an exclusively Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine.”
Therefore, he added, the term “anti-Zionist” was a more accurate description of the values of his congregation. That opposition is both “ideological” and “institutional”: opposing both Jewish nationalist ideology and institutions carrying its banner “that have as their goal creating a Jewish demographic majority in the land,” he said.
For those unfamiliar with him, Rosen is an mainstay of Jewish Voice for Peace, having co-founded it rabbinical council, and a long-time supporter of the BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement against Israel. He played a key role on the defense committee for Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted of a supermarket bombing in Israel and fraudulently procuring U.S. citizenship.
Speaking at the rally following Odeh's guilty plea, he declared “You are not guilty,” adding, “Your strength and your courage and your kindness and your compassion really teaches all of us how to be in this world.”
The actual lesson from Odeh’s defense, however, should be that it is possible to murder two Jewish university students in a supermarket bombing on behalf of the PFLP, lie about it repeatedly to the U.S. immigration authorities, commit perjury in federal court, and still obtain the blessing of a credulous rabbi, whose antipathy toward Israel overwhelms other considerations of truth or integrity.
I have twice offered to show Rosen the overwhelming evidence of Odeh’s guilt, but of course he has declined.
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