​Pluralism is the opposite of an Ethnostate

Image: the stealth art piece at my bus shelter, Columbus btwn 93rd and 94th ("Pluralsism is the opposite of an Ethnostate" added by me)

This post is for any compassionate Zionist friends in NYC (yes, JVP comrades, yes radical left comrades—they do exist), who although they have sometimes bristled at my anti-zionist posts, didn’t rank criminal Cuomo, despise Bibi and the Israeli hate machine as much as they despise dRump and know that Israel is starving an entire people to death, babies and all, permanently displacing any survivors, and destroying a whole culture—just as it was done to us 80 years ago... and who nevertheless think we need an ethnostate to be safe.

We love New York at this very moment in time, right? Whether we voted Mamdani or Lander first, we scrappy New Yorkers fought the big money, self-interested political machine. We kicked to the curb the guy who goosed women. We cheered as the handsome, young, newbie Muslim candidate embraced the earnest, experienced middle-aged Jewish candidate. Personally, I played their co-endorsement announcement over and over, and felt so freakin’ proud of being a lifelong New Yorker. We love the diversity in our city when it creates good will. It’s a lot of why we live here, right?

Compassionate Zionists, I propose that a pluralistic community is the opposite of an ethnostate. That an Israel-Palestine with equal rights for all is fundamentally similar to our vision for the best possible New York, where we diaspora Jews go out in the streets because ICE is kidnapping our neighbors, because Black Lives Matter, because we are all immigrants, too, and our beautiful city provided services for our mishpucha when they arrived on the run, and gave them a pathway to citizenship. It folded them into its midst and here we are.

Mamdani was the only candidate who gave the right answer to the inappropriate question of the candidates’ first trip. Only Mamdani would stay right here in our Big Apple, and do his job as the mayor. Of our Big Apple. Our pluralistic Big Apple. Protect everyone, including us Jews. I mean, Adrienne Adams… the Holy Land?? What a corporate suck-up. (I did rank her fourth, for her experience and for where she’s gotten herself as a Black woman politician, but not because I like her. I mean, I ranked Paperboy Prince fifth because they ran on a platform of love and creativity and they educated young ppl about the political process while entertaining the hell out of anyone who followed them. And bc they ran for office in clown make-up and yeah, the process is a clown show.)

Compassionate Zionist friends in NYC (and LA and Chicago and etc.), please consider that a pluralistic community of the kind you have chosen to live in is the opposite of a religious state. Please consider that epigenetic trauma informs how you hold on to the notion that Israel keeps us safe. Do you really think that a fundamentalist religious state abroad is keeping Jews safe? You do know that many people hate us even more now because Israel is murdering Gazan civilians, wiping out their culture, creating the kind of epigenetic and intergenerational trauma we suffer from (and Cambodians suffer from and etc. etc. fill in your genocide here). And because the dRump thugs are perpetuating the lie that Jewish identity of all different kinds is synonymous with Israel. We are not safer for having a religious state abroad. Anti-semitism is real. Not in the way dRump and company define it and exploit it for their evil agenda. But let’s focus on making us safe at home—in our diaspora homes. Give up the idea of a religious state. It’s good nowhere—not in Gaza, either. Okay, maybe at the Vatican, that tiny little island in the pluralistic waters of Rome. But I’m getting off track. Mamdani understands that all New Yorkers need to be safe right here in our five boroughs. So does Lander, btw—and I would describe him as a compassionate Zionist.
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I dunno. The Z-word seems to be used so differently by so many people. There’s so much energy lost on defining it. There’s a genocide happening. Call it by any other name and it would smell as foul. Staunch the blood flow. Defund the warmongers immediately. Then go to work on what to do in that wretched part of the world. And meanwhile, look to NYC for a little dose of hope for what we could be as a nation. With affordability and liberty and equality for all. I know I’m a hopeless idealist.