ESTHER FARMER
I am a Palestinian Jew. My father was born in Hebron, Palestine. His father, my grandfather, was a Turkish Jew who went to Palestine to avoid serving in the Turkish army. Unfortunately, Palestine was a Turkish “protectorate” and he was drafted into the army anyway. He did not believe in war, so his only choice was to emigrate to America.
My grandmother had always lived in Palestine; her father was a pharmacist/herbalist. His customers were both Muslims and Jews. At the time Muslims, Christians, and Jews considered themselves and were considered by everyone to be Palestinian.
When my grandparents and my father emigrated to America in the 1920s, they spoke Yiddish and Arabic. Yiddish was a bit of a family mystery since it has never been associated with the Middle East. Also, Yiddish was the language of the poor Jew, and it was not particularly encouraged after Israel was created. That has always seemed ironic to me, given that Israel was supposed to be about supporting Jews and Jewish culture. Yet the Zionist elites were willing to sacrifice a vibrant and alive language, along with a progressive cultural history with which the Yiddish language was associated, in favor of the scholarly Hebrew that, when I was growing up, was not the spoken language of most Jews.
My grandmother used to always say that Jews had no problems with Muslims until the British got involved. She was not a Zionist when she came to New York but later became more influenced by Zionism as she lived here. She was also very religiously observant.
After coming to America, the family lived on the Lower East Side and were very poor. My Turkish grandfather was considered a scholar and tried to prove that socialism was ordained in the Talmud. My father was a fur worker and was involved with labor leader and scholar Philip Foner and the early union organizing struggles in the fur and garment industry. The book that best described my father’s life was a novel by Mike Gold called Jews Without Money. My father went to City College, where he became more politicized and very anti-Zionist. After graduating, he was denied a teacher’s license because of his thick accent, so he went to work for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). My parents were atheists but, culturally, very Jewish. I remember them reading aloud the stories of Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish and even though my brother and I did not speak Yiddish, their laughter was so infectious we laughed right along with them.
Like many Jewish progressives during the infamous 1950s McCarthy era, my father was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was called to testify and refused to give information on his friends who had signed petitions to place American Labor Party candidates on the ballot. As a consequence, he lost his job with NYCHA and was blacklisted for over ten years. The authorities threatened to deport him back to Palestine, but Palestine no longer existed! They even made him prove he was a U.S. citizen.
These were very hard years for my family. My brother and I were really scared; stories of the Rosenbergs were all over the house, and the lesson was clear: If you were Jewish and a progressive, you were a threat.
I remember being terrified that the electric chair was waiting for my parents. We had the FBI at our door many times. Once, two big FBI agents came and, when my mother tried to shut them out, one of them stuck his foot in the door to stop her. I remember her saying, “Look, I’m very popular in this neighborhood, and so I’m going to count to three and then I’m screaming rape. One … two …” The two guys left before she got to “three.” My mother was fearless.
My brother and I did not advertise my parents’ anti-Zionism to our Jewish neighbors, since most Jews acted like you were less than human if you opposed Zionism. But my parents taught us about the deals the Zionists made with fascists, even supporting the decision to refuse entry to Jewish refugees during the war, in return for US support for the establishment of Israel. My father always said the Zionists love Israel and hate Jews. He said two other things that have turned out to be prophetic.
One was that the Zionist Jewish establishment made a deal with the devil. When you see the Zionists of America honoring known antisemites like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, you can see how true this has become. My father’s other belief, which has turned out to be extremely significant, is his questioning the rationale for a Jewish state altogether.
Esther’s parents, Harry and Ruth Gouldin, on their wedding, 1949
Photo courtesy of the author
He had the guts to question why a Jewish state was a good thing. He would say that Jews were nomads and that we took culture everywhere. He thought it would turn out to be a disaster for Jews and the world, given that Israel was being built on the backs of the Palestinians. He taught us that it simply was not fair to scapegoat Palestinians for the Holocaust, when they had nothing to do with it. He felt strongly that, because of the Holocaust, Jews were vulnerable to being used by powerful players who wanted Israel for their own interests. My father always identified as a Palestinian Jew.
My family was very active in the civil rights movement. It seemed to us that, the more Zionism took hold in the Jewish community, the more Jews moved rightward, politically. The first such milestone in this shift came during the notorious 1968 teachers’ strike in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, with Albert Shanker’s United Federation of Teachers refusing to support the demand from communities of color for community control of their public schools.
Instead of the striking teachers, my family supported the community. It was the first time we ever crossed a picket line, and my parents were viciously attacked. I was again very proud of their principled position and was shocked at the nastiness some of my teachers showed toward me for our position. It was quite a lesson to see how politics impacted people’s attitudes toward you as a person.
Soon afterward, I married and became involved with national liberation struggles allied with the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, who were explicitly pro-Palestinian. But the vicious onslaught by the FBI and the COINTELPRO operation against these groups made living in New York City too dangerous, and I, with my then husband and our two-year-old daughter, were forced to leave the city for a while.
Because of government surveillance and infiltration, activists were threatened with jail; there were divisive rumors spread by agents, people were set up to fight each other, and there was the constant threat of violence. Not to mention the murders of Black Panthers while they slept. I was at Brooklyn College at the time, where the campus was 95 percent white and Jewish. I was active in supporting people of color who were organizing to challenge the systemic racism in higher education and integrate the campus. The big fights were for Open Admissions, the establishment of one of the first Africana and Puerto Rican Studies departments in the country, as well as other ethnic and women’s studies programs. We were successful at establishing Open Admissions (also the ethnic studies departments). Open Admissions established a free and accessible higher education for all at the City University of New York. This was a major victory, lasting for seven years until the Reagan administration rolled back many of the gains.
During this struggle, we were in a major battle with the Zionist leadership of Brooklyn College, who opposed the aims of people of color at every turn. The right-wing Jewish Defense League was active at this time, and there were pitched battles between them and people of color—another example of how Zionism fueled antisemitism and resentment against Jews. Given the stance of Brooklyn College’s Zionist leadership during these years, I often felt ashamed of being Jewish.
At the same time, I have always been proud of my Jewish progressive history. For me, Israel is a historical example of immense and tragic proportions, showing what happens when the persecuted fail to find solidarity with others and become instead interested only in themselves. I am proud to come from a long tradition of anti-Zionist Jews whose history has been deliberately erased. We are part of the movement of Jews toward reclaiming the humanitarian and progressive politics and values to which Jews have historically adhered. My parents have been gone for many years, but their voices ring true today: We must always be Jews for Justice, not Just Us.
I feel closer to them than ever.