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December 19th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
We’ve spent the last year or two emphasizing Palestinian voices. That’s a priority for us given the bigotry that Palestinians face in U.S. political culture and the dreadful consequences for foreign policy.
But as our mission evolves, I want to go back to why I started this work and what continues to drive me. Mondoweiss originated inside the Jewish community and to this day some of our staff have roots in that community. In 2005 I needed to express my shame over the Jewish establishment’s role in shaping foreign policy, treating Israel as a “villa in the jungle” of the Middle East and thereby favoring any militant action on Israel’s behalf. As our friend Marc Ellis said then, official Judaism has replaced the ark on the altar with a Merkava tank.
Will you help me, and the entire Mondoweiss team, continue to build on our foundations and continue to evolve with a year-end gift today?
That understanding was born of a kind of Jewish devotion. I grew up believing that Jews had a special place in the formation of modern civilization, and I still believe that. Jews played a large role in the arts and industries that were so central to American culture when I was a boy, and that sense of specialness, what we now call exceptionalism, shaped my thinking as an adult. I’m still proud of the habits my tradition cultivated in me. They were lofty and moral in my view.
But with the rise and eternal peril of the Jewish state, Jewish public culture has been transformed. Advocates for Israel say that 95 percent of American Jews support Israel, and while that number is obviously an exaggeration, it is no doubt the case that a large majority of Jewish organizations today exist in some measure to make sure Israel keeps its backing from the United States, both in aid and in diplomatic backing. Even as younger Jews wake up to the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, the Israel lobby has enlarged its role to policing such views in the Democratic Party and serving notice to countries across the Middle East that the road to Washington leads through Jerusalem. In a word, you must get right with Israel in order to gain access to the U.S. government.
In our journalism, we don’t accept that framing. We insist that Palestinian human rights must become part of the western narrative of the Mideast.
Exceptionalism has become a monstrous fantasy of Jewish nationalism. The things I love about Judaism, the things that made me, are today often disdained as signs of weakness. And look around you, communities everywhere are trying to overcome their own crumbling ideas of exceptionalism in an era of globalized discrimination, inequity and climate crisis. The old ways don’t serve us anymore.
So writing for Mondoweiss has had ever-refreshed meaning for me not just because we have worked for the liberation of Palestinians, and worked against militarist American policy, but because I feel I am working to redeem my community from a long nightmare: its commitment to militant nationalism. Call it a romance, but those ideals have animated my work.
And I know I’m not alone. Many other Jews are engaged in Palestinian solidarity because they love their traditions and want the better angels of our nature to prevail. I still see my part in that struggle as addressing the role of my community, both angrily and lovingly. And journalistically: seeking to uncover the facts and truth about the ways that Zionism has transformed Jewish life and affected American foreign policy. I feel I owe that much to fellow citizens of this planet. I am today one of the privileged; and I am using that privilege to stand for human rights.
And I am incredibly thankful that your support allows me and our entire staff to continue in this crucial task. Please make a year-end donation today – it will be instantly matched by other generous supporters!
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