Israel does not act or speak for every Jew

The author has a point...

Israel does not act or speak for every Jew:

08/05/06 'SMH' ---I WRITE as a Jew and as a synagogue member. I write as one whose academic work continues to move through questions of Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust. Yet, I write with a growing sense of shame. The source of the feeling is simple: Israel claims that it continues to act in my name.

The Jewish community in Sydney and elsewhere insists on identifying themselves with Israeli actions. These acts are part of a tradition in which the state of Israel has set the measure for being Jewish.

The proof of this is the perverse logic in which responses to the politics of Israel - a politics that manifests itself in the bulldozing of houses in Gaza and the bombing of civilians in Qana - take the form of attacks on synagogues, Jewish cultural centres and Jewish cemeteries. Each time Israel acts in a certain way, security measures around synagogues are doubled.

Why? The straightforward answer attests to the victory of those who have linked and continue to link being a Jew to Israel and thus to those who conflate Judaism and Zionism.

The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this.These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.