It is easy to dismiss most anti-Zionist Jewish activists as having little connection to Judaism. If your main involvement in Judaism comes when you say "as a Jew" before launching into a tirade against Israel, I feel perfectly comfortable in ignoring both the "as a Jew" and whatever follows about Israel. A notable exception among the anti-Zionists is Prof. Daniel Boyarin. Boyarin is a significant contemporary Jewish thinker, whose work on the Talmud and the origins of the Jewish-Christian split I take seriously. As such, there is reason not to simply dismiss his anti-Zionism, particularly as his anti-Zionism is clearly connected to his understanding of Judaism as a people that transcends politics.
In reading Boyarin's No-State Solution, I find it fairly unobjectionable in terms of what it says. I agree with him that it is important for Judaism to transcend crude ethno-nationalism. Jews living outside the land of Israel have an important role to play within Judaism and it is deeply problematic to claim that Judaism can only function within the borders of a political state ruled by Jews. Judaism is not merely a religion in the Protestant sense of a collection of beliefs held by an individual nor is Judaism simply a national group bound by blood. A properly functioning Judaism is one that can deal with the complexity that goes into the various ways that people live out a Jewish identity.
If I were reading Boyarin in 1924, I would have few disagreements with him. If I had lived back in the 1920s, political Zionism would not have been one of my goals. I would have been trying to strengthen Jewish life wherever Jews lived. Granted, recognizing the value of Israel as a spiritual center as well as a physical refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, I would have had a particular interest in promoting Jewish non-political life in Israel. In pursuit of this aim, I would have been attempting to cooperate with the British and the local Arab population. The deal I would have been trying to make with the Arabs would have been that they should allow mass immigration to Palestine along with some measure of local Jewish autonomy with the assurance that Palestine would eventually become part of a larger Arab federation. (I recommend Oren Kessler's Palestine 1936, which argues that this position was very much part of the mainline of Zionism during this period.)
My main objection to Boyarin is what is left out in his book. We are not living in 1924 but in 2024. This means that the Holocaust has happened. We know that there are people who wield the power of modern states who believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and that Judaism is a menace that must be exterminated. Whether Israel should have been established in 1948, the fact is that nearly half of world Jewry currently lives in the State of Israel. This state is surrounded by hostile Arab armies and terrorist groups, who have been influenced by the Protocols and desire to murder Jews. Saying that this is the result of the actions of Zionists does not help as it only makes it easier to believe that our opponents are serious about carrying out the mass murder of Jews. Back in 1924, it was easy to dismiss European anti-Semites as being delusional; what did the Jews ever do to them? If the Nazis could carry out the Holocaust based on pure fantasy, what might Hamas be willing to do if ever given the chance.
To be fair to Boyarin, his book was written before October 7th. That being said, I have no reason to assume that this past year has caused him to adapt his views. Far more problematic than anything he says is how he completely ignores what should be the primary question regarding the State of Israel as if it does not matter at all. Boyarin's unwillingness to even entertain the question of Jewish safety in the contemporary world, in Israel or anywhere else, collapses his entire argument. Once we begin to consider Jewish safety then one has to consider whether a Jewish willingness to break the limbs of Palestinian children throwing rocks is merely the manifestation of a macho fantasy of Jewish toughness or whether it is a pragmatic solution to save Jewish lives.
It is almost as if the lives of regular people do not matter to Boyarin. Even Palestinian lives only matter to him in the abstract sense of being victims of Zionism. He gets to live as an academic using trite truths that one should have no need of saying to hide moral monstrosities that no one should have the gall to defend. All this while claiming to care about human lives.
