A cantor in Canada recently denounced what Israel is doing in Gaza as genocide. This is what ensued:

Many colleagues, friends, and loved ones have gone from praising my recent award as a ‘Rabbinic Human Rights Hero’ for my efforts to mobilize the Jewish community against the death penalty, to vilifying me for what they claim is parroting anti-Semitic canards….I thought I knew of vitriol and recrimination; I was wrong. For years, proponents of the death penalty have lodged heinous verbal attacks against me for my public activism as the co-founder of ‘L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.’ Even that could not have prepared me, however, for the deluge of hate and ridicule I have received throughout the Jewish world this past month. Now, I feel like a persona non grata when I enter many congregations and communities that previously embraced me as an ordained cantor.

It should go without saying that being attacked by fellow Jews for speaking up is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through or, in this country, to being fired or investigated or deported for one’s activism on behalf of Palestine. Criticism, vehement criticism, goes with the territory.

The reason I bring up this cantor’s story is that it speaks to one element of my disillusion not simply with Zionism but particularly with the liberal and social justice versions of Zionism. In my experience, the rule has basically been something like this. Fight for the rights of convicted murders on death row—or for civil rights or gay rights or women’s rights or labor rights—and you’re the golden child. Fight for the end of killing Palestinians? You’re not so golden. Land acknowledgments for the Lenni Lenape? Yes! Land acknowledgments for the Palestinians? Antisemitism! Black Lives Matter? Yay! Palestinian Lives Matter? Hmm, well, all life matters, Hamas Hamas Hamas.

This is more than simple hypocrisy or inconsistency, which is such a universal feature of the human condition that it feels silly pointing it out. It’s the zealous endorsement of justice outside the fold, and the self-congratulation for that zealous endorsement, coupled with the increasing refusal to deal with justice inside the fold. That’s what feels icky.

This isn’t just a post-October 7 development. I’ve been watching this show for years. With every passing year, I’ve seen progressive Jews take up every new cause and face of social justice. And with every passing year, as they’ve taken up a new source of misery to fight, they’ve grown more and more complacent about the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians. There once was a time when they might have been activists within Peace Now or for some sort of settlement with the Palestinians. But it’s safe to say that for the last 25 years or so, that’s been mostly lip service. “Of course I support a two-state solution. But…BDS is bad.”

What has most upset me most about these people—in fact, sometimes scared me—is not their commitment to Israel but the vehemence of their denunciation of those of us who refuse to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish supremacist state or who are willing to try different peaceful tactics, like BDS, to push for equal rights for the Palestinians. Or, as this cantor makes clear, who simply speak the truth.

From the very beginnings of my break with Israel, it has been this reaction, from liberal and progressive defenders of Israel, that has given me a terrifying window into what Israel, as a state, is capable of doing. After all, if this is how progressive American Zionists respond to rhetorical attacks on the Israeli state from fellow Jews, how must Zionists in Israel, armed with violent state power, many of them well to the right of these progressives, treat Palestinians within Israel or the Occupied Territories?