Sylvain Cypel | |
|---|---|
 Cypel in 2019 | |
| Born | 1947or1948(age 76–77) [1] |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Language | French |
Sylvain Cypel (born 1947/1948) [1] is a French journalist and pro-Palestinian activist.
Sylvain Cypel | |
|---|---|
| Cypel in 2019 | |
| Born | 1947or1948(age 76–77) [1] |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Language | French |
Sylvain Cypel (born 1947/1948) [1] is a French journalist and pro-Palestinian activist.
Cypel was raised in Bordeaux and Paris. His father was Jacques Cypel (1911-2000), [2] who had emigrated to France from his Ukrainian hometown of Volodymyr in the Volhynia region, [3] and grew up in an atmosphere where there were three options or forms of redress, for Jewish communities plagued by anti-Semitic antagonisms: one could become a Bundist, or join the Communist Party, or identify with Jewish nationalism in the form of the Zionist movement, [4] which itself fused two distinct currents – one advocating ethnic nationalism with a socialist orientation, and the other embodying the kind of chauvinistic ultranationalism typical of most Eastern European nationalisms. [5] His father, who had opted for the former, Zionist socialism in 1926, fled to France in 1938, [1] became a leader of the French Zionist movement and was for two decades the director of the world's last daily Yiddish newspaper, Unzer Wort (Our Word), until its closure in June 1996. [6] [7] He greeted Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 by telling his son that unless the Palestinian territories were restored to the Palestinian people, Israel would find itself in a colonial occupation that would prove fatal to Zionism. [8]
From an early age, Cypel was a member of a French Labour Zionist youth group and, after graduating from high school, left France for Israel in 1969. [7] He became a paratrooper in the IDF, [7] joined the Trotskyite-oriented Workers Alliance – Avantgarde[ citation needed ] and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He was particularly struck by similarities he observed between Israeli Jewish attitudes to Palestinians and the prejudices repatriated French settlers entertained about Arabs. [1] Overall, he spent 12 years in Israel, an experience which turned him into an Anti-Zionist. [lower-alpha 1] He dates his own sense that Zionism had betrayed itself with apartheid to an interview he held with the Israeli Attorney-General Michael Ben-Yair in the early 2000s. [9]
Both he and his wife were ostracized and lost jobs as a result of their views. [1] In 1998 he left the Courrier International magazine where he had worked for five years as editor-in-chief, and joined Le Monde as deputy head of the international section. He was then Le Monde's New York correspondent until 2013. [10] [11] He is also a corresponding member of Alain Gresh's online magazine Orient XXI.
Cypel has published two books on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He began writing the second on 14 May 2018, after observing that the Trump Administration's relocation of its embassy to Jerusalem was celebrated in the global press while, on the same day, the fact that Israeli troops kept conducting from a safe distance mass shootings of protesting Gazans, [1] was ignored, evidence, in Cypel's view, of the extraordinary ideological influence Israel has managed to exercise over world opinion. [12] In the book he argues that Israel practices apartheid, and is highly critical of the silence that he claims has fallen over the question of Palestinian human rights, namely Israel's "ability to deny basic rights to an entire people." [1] While he allows that many other countries have resorted to similar practices, he finds Zionism's version distinctive for three reasons:
It's true that the occupation has never reached the levels of terror inflicted upon Syria and Yemen, but three factors make it particularly oppressive: its initial basis (expelling people from their land by force); its long duration (seventy-plus years since that expulsion, fifty years of military occupation over most of those people); and finally, its modalities (the slow, but steady confiscation of land, the seizure of resources, the occupying authorities' deliberate policy of making Palestinians daily lives unbearable in hopes of making them eventually leave). [4]
He attributes the silence to the ideological success with which Israel has, by "blindfolding" Western support for what Cypel considers to be an ethnonationalist segregationist state, [13] managed to deflect critiques of its practices by associating such criticisms with anti-Semitism.
Never has Israel's ideological influence appeared so evident: from its impact on the "war on terrorism", which is of paramount importance and which Jean-Pierre Filiu has ably shed light on in a recent book, to this capacity to silence any criticism by the threat of having oneself immediately taxed with accusations of anti-Semitism. This diplomatic influence is expressed symbolically by the Israeli capacity to have adopted in important international circles a new definition of anti-Semitism, in which criticism of Zionism and Israel are included. [lower-alpha 2]
Cypel speaks of the growing disenchantment of American Jews with developments in Israel, [13] instancing as an example the Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin's remark in 2006, once thought to border on blasphemy:
Most piercing to me is the pain of watching a tradition, my Judaism, to which I have dedicated my life, disintegrating before my eyes. It has been said by many Christians that Christianity died at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor. I fear-God forbid – that my Judaism may be dying at Nablus, Dheisheh, Betein' or Khalil. [10]
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Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century that aimed for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people through the colonization of a land outside of Europe, with an eventual focus on Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of Israel as a Jewish state. It has also been described as Israel's national or state ideology.
Anti-German is the generic name applied to a variety of theoretical and political tendencies within the left mainly in Germany and Austria. The Anti-Germans form one of the main camps within the broader Antifa movement, alongside the Anti-Zionist anti-imperialists, after the two currents split between the 1990s and the early 2000s as a result of their diverging views on Israel. The anti-Germans are a fringe movement within the German left: In 2006 Deutsche Welle estimated the number of anti-Germans to be between 500 and 3,000. The basic standpoint of the anti-Germans includes opposition to German nationalism, a critique of mainstream left anti-capitalist views, which are thought to be simplistic and structurally antisemitic, and a critique of antisemitism, which is considered to be deeply rooted in German cultural history. As a result of this analysis of antisemitism, support for Israel and opposition to Anti-Zionism is a primary unifying factor of the anti-German movement. The critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer is often cited by anti-German theorists.
New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, typically manifesting itself as anti-Zionism. The concept is included in some definitions of antisemitism, such as the working definition of antisemitism and the 3D test of antisemitism. The concept dates to the early 1970s.
Zeev Sternhell was a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer. He was one of the world's leading theorists of the phenomenon of fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote for Haaretz newspaper.
Arab Jews is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. The term is politically contested, often by Zionists or by Jews with roots in the Arab world who prefer to be identified as Mizrahi Jews. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America.
Daniel Boyarin is an Israeli–American academic and historian of religion. Born in New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. He is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to Chava Boyarin, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC Berkeley. They have two sons. His brother, Jonathan Boyarin, is also a scholar, and the two have written together. He has defined himself as a "diasporic rabbinic Jew".
Non-Zionism is the political stance of Jews who are "willing to help support Jewish settlement in Palestine ... but will not come on aliyah."
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
Mondoweiss is a news website that began as a general-interest blog written by Philip Weiss on The New York Observer website. It subsequently developed into a broader collaborative venture after fellow journalist Adam Horowitz joined it as co-editor. In 2010, Weiss described the website's purpose as one of covering American foreign policy in the Middle East from a 'progressive Jewish perspective'. In 2011, it defined its aims as fostering greater fairness for Palestinians in American foreign policy, and as providing American Jews with an alternative identity to that expressed by Zionist ideology, which he regards as antithetical to American liberalism. Originally supported by The Nation Institute, it became a project of part of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change in June 2011.
Antony Lerman is a British writer who specialises in the study of antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, multiculturalism, and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a think tank on issues affecting Jewish communities in Europe. From December 1999 to 2006, he was Chief Executive of the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, renamed the Rothschild Foundation Europe in 2007. He is a founding member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, and a former editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a quarterly academic journal focusing on the sociology of race and ethnicity.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Criticism of Israel is a subject of journalistic and scholarly commentary and research within the scope of international relations theory, expressed in terms of political science. Israel has faced international criticism since its establishment in 1948 relating to a variety of issues, many of which are centered around human rights violations in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.
Labor Zionism or socialist Zionism refers to the left-wing, socialist variation of Zionism. For many years, it was the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizations, and was seen as the Zionist sector of the historic Jewish labour movements of Eastern Europe and Central Europe, eventually developing local units in most countries with sizable Jewish populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created by simply appealing to the international community or to powerful nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, or the former Ottoman Empire. Rather, they believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish working class making aliyah to the Land of Israel and raising a country through the creation of a Labor Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim, and an urban Jewish Proletariat.
Palestinianism is a term occasionally used to denote either the national political movement or Identity of the Palestinian people. It gained currency by its use in the works of Edward Said to describe a certain vein of theology opposed to Christian Zionism and that challenges Zionism and the right of Israel to exist.
Matzpen is the name of a revolutionary socialist and anti-Zionist organisation, founded in Israel in 1962 which was active until the 1980s. Its official name was the Socialist Organisation in Israel, but it became better known as Matzpen after its monthly publication.
Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.
Progressive except Palestine is a phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Pro-Palestinian advocates regard PEP as a type of political hypocrisy and an example of anti-Palestinianism, while critics of the phrase regard it as anti-Israel and a smear against the pro-Israel left.
Richard Marienstras was a French anglicist and France's foremost expert on Shakespeare.
The exploitation of accusations of antisemitism for political purposes, especially to counter anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel, may be described variously as weaponization of antisemitism, instrumentalization of antisemitism, or playing the antisemitism card. Such accusations have been criticized as a form of smear tactics. Some writers have compared this to playing the race card.
