Pretending to be a Zionist to attack the concept of a Jewish state

For decades, we have seen people who use their (real or constructed) Jewish identity to attempt to discredit Zionism.

But some of them hate Israel so much, they pretend to be Zionists in order to discredit Zionism!

From Haaretz:

Is it time for liberal Zionists, in the name of Zionism, to embrace the end of a sovereign Jewish state in Israel and instead seek the establishment of a binational one? Omri Boehm, an Israeli philosopher and associate professor at the New School for Social Research, believes so – making the case in his new book “Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel,” published this week by the prestigious New York Review Books imprint.

The book is an effort to reconcile Zionism with the diminishing prospects of a two-state solution. For decades, the Zionist left in Israel and its supporters in the Jewish Diaspora focused on the two-state solution as the only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel’s current government, however, has no intention to advance that solution, as Foreign Minister Yair Lapid recently reminded the European Union’s foreign ministers.

Boehm argues in “Haifa Republic” that the two-state solution is now impossible to achieve, and adjures those looking to prevent an apartheid reality on the ground to think outside its confines.

The most significant conclusion he invites readers to recognize is that without a two-state solution, one must consider another option: a binational state.

Unlike most proponents of a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, Boehm foregrounds his binational proposal in Zionism. 

We've looked at Omri Boehm before, and his positioning himself as a Zionist now doesn't exactly jive with his previous writings.

In 2016, in the New York Times, Boehm wrote that Zionism is "a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics." He clearly opposed Zionism, saying that having a nation that defines itself as Jewish is a violation of a liberal standard he made up: that liberal countries must have American-style separation of church and state. Otherwise, Boehm asserts, Zionists are hypocrites. 

Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

Boehm clearly rejects Zionism because of this false double standard - one that he that he defined. but that has no basis in reality.

Now he suddenly pretends to embrace Zionism - to make a faux-Zionist argument that a Jewish state must be replaced with a "binational" state with a Muslim majority that will limit Jewish rights!

This guy is a philosopher, but his logic consistently falls far short of the intellectual rigor of real philosophy.

Not surprisingly, Boehm is also an "as-a-Jew." He wrote another article where he cherry-picked Biblical sources out of context to assert, bizarrely, that Jews who consider Jerusalem to be a central component of Judaism are in fact akin to idol-worshippers. 

He asserts this insane theory, which couldn't withstand the arguments of a fourth grade cheder student, "as a Jew."

This sham philosopher creates his Jewish persona to argue against Judaism just as he creates a Zionist persona to argue against Zionism. If his arguments had merit, he wouldn't need to resort to redefining himself as a "As-a". The argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate) is a basic logical fallacy - and in this case it is argument from false authority, since Boehm is clearly not an authority on either Zionism nor on Judaism but he claims such authority as implicit in his arguments.

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