The Story Of The Jewish Bund / Molly Crabapple

Bundists and Zionists, they hated each other. They hated each other in the way that only people from a relatively small community can hate each other. And the Bund always saw that Zionism was an imperialist movement. They always called out the dispossession of Palestinians and they had a profound ethical critique of Zionism that was extremely prophetic. I think about a quote by the Bund's leader in interwar Poland, Henryk Ehrlich. Where he says, ‘If a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, it will be in a state of eternal war with the external enemy, Arabs; of eternal struggle over every scrap of ground with the internal enemy, Arabs; and will be waging a campaign of extermination against the culture of the non-Hebraeized Jews of Palestine’. Ehrlich asks, ‘Is this a climate in which democracy and progress will grow, or is this a climate in which reaction and chauvinism will flourish?’ Ehrlich asked that question in 1938. What is it? It's 88 years later and Israel is a state where government ministers wear noose pins and bake cakes for their birthday celebrating the hanging of Palestinians. I think anyone who looks at Ehrlich's words would know that he was dead right.