Mindful Zionism™️
When "Both/And" Becomes a Shield for the Status Quo
A Jewish teacher I deeply respect, the late Terry Patten, once said something that almost no one in contemplative circles seems to understand: that a genuine “both/and” position can include both nuance and polarization. Being “both/and” doesn’t mean there’s no conflict, or that you have to oppose anyone who’s opposed to things. True integration—the genuine Middle Way—often requires giving voice to strongly polarized positions, especially those which stand up for the oppressed.
I keep coming back to this, because I see a pattern endemic to Mindfulness and Buddhist spaces that I can only call Mindful Zionism—and Terry’s insight cuts right through it.
The most recent instance came through a private Facebook post by Melvin McLeod, the former editor-at-large at Lion’s Roar and Mindful magazine, which my wife Emily Horn shared with me. In it, he repeated an oft-cited Zionist talking point: that the state of Israel is under existential threat, and that the correct Democratic position is to support Israel—just not Netanyahu. I want to engage this seriously, because McLeod is not an outlier. He represents something structurally common in liberal contemplative spaces, and it deserves to be named.
The Myth of Existential Threat
“Israel has the right to exist.”
This existential threat talking point is 100% Zionist framing, and it is not credible. Israel is the world’s fourth most powerful military, backed by the first, and possesses internationally unaudited nuclear capability.
Any genuine threat to its existence would only emerge much later, and only as a consequence of its own extremely immoral actions—such as the live-streamed genocide still underway.
Angry people chanting “Death to Israel” do not constitute a credible military threat, any more than “Death to America” threatens U.S. sovereignty.
Israel does exist. You know what doesn’t exist? Palestine.
The “Bad Leader, Good People” Fallacy
The “bad leader, good people” frame collapses when the populace broadly endorses the leader’s most extreme policies. In Israel, polling shows that 82% of Jewish Israelis actively support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and almost half—47%—support their genocide. When I spoke with my new friend, Daniel Klein–a former Westbank Settler–he told me that it’s actually much worse than we think, even for those of us who think it’s bad. Under these conditions, how can one possibly claim that Netanyahu is the only problem?
This is the same distorted logic that allows American Neoliberals to insist that Trump is the singular cause of all our problems—that if he disappeared, everything would reset. The rise of both Trump and Netanyahu is symptomatic of deeper cultural failures. Those who blame only the elected leaders fail to grapple with how democracies actually function, fail to accept the historical formation of these countries (to the detriment of Native Americans and Palestinians), and fail to own their own responsibility for the harmful politics they’ve supported from the Left (See: Liberalism is the Near Enemy of Buddhism).
Progressive on Everything but Palestine
If you scroll through Melvin McLeod’s public Facebook feed, it reads like that of a dyed-in-the-wool progressive. There are posts that seem to support Palestinians. Yet his recent framing reveals what can only be called a Liberal Zionist ideology—and he is far from alone in this.
The problem with Liberal Zionism—as I discovered with my own Buddhist teachers—is that it wants the reassuring safety of a both/and position where everyone’s back is covered. It’s a way of seeming wise and inclusive, of being absolved of other ideological sins, of being universally liked. And it is tolerated by most peers precisely because the people holding it are in positions of influence and power, and they take a coherent position on most everything else. Zionism is accepted in America, even among many left-wing apologists, precisely because of how omnipresent it is.
McLeod’s position, as he explained it to me, is that anti-Zionism is equivalent to calling for the end of Israel. In other words, he’s an Anti-Anti-Zionist. Well: I am opposed to Zionism because of what it has wrought in actual practice. If that makes me anti-Zionist, so be it.
What McLeod & other Mindful Zionists don’t seem to get, is that asking Palestinians to accept Zionism is asking us to accept the legitimacy of our own dispossession. I’m sorry, but I don’t hate myself, my family, or other Palestinians nearly enough to accept their dispossession—either of land or life. I hold a principled opposition to an ideology which, in actual practice, has required the occupation, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide of the Palestinian people—as it has since Israel’s inception.
If a political ideal predictably and consistently produces a particular outcome every time it’s put into practice, then appealing to the ideal as separate from its consequences is motivated reasoning—a way of maintaining moral distance from outcomes that were, in hindsight, foreseeable from the start.
Both Nuance And Polarization Are Needed
“We have to grow into holding BOTH both/and AND either/or perspectives here. We have to be able to hold both nuanced and polarized perspectives.” – Terry Patten
This brings me back to Terry Patten’s insight. The real issue I have with Mindful Zionists is that they seem to care more about non-conflict and the preservation of their own mindful self-images than about actual people’s well-being. They are so opposed to public conflict—to being called out, to being corrected—that they continue making positions equivalent that are not equivalent at all in terms of the power dynamics at play. Israel exists, and always has existed, in a one-up power position relative to Palestine.
True integration, as Terry pointed out, often requires giving voice to strong, polarized positions—especially when those positions are standing up for the oppressed. Silence is complicity where oppression is concerned, and that absolutely applies to the Zionist talking points being amplified by people in McLeod’s position, talking points that exist to obfuscate Israel’s harms against humanity.
Despite everything, I am not calling for the State of Israel to be abolished. I don’t believe Jews should be punished or persecuted for Israel’s actions, nor that Israelis should be collectively punished—even in light of their overwhelming support for the collective punishment of Palestinians. An eye for an eye does not end the conflict, nor heal the deep intergenerational pain. “Hatred never ceases through hatred.” That is true. But it is not the whole truth. And invoking it—as Mindful Liberal Zionists often do—to avoid taking a clear moral position is precisely the problem.
For the Mindful Zionist, conflict avoidance ends up being conflated with equanimity, and anyone who is upset, like me, can be easily dismissed. But here’s the thing: The Middle Way is not the path of least resistance. Oftentimes it runs directly through the heart of conflict, not around it.
Context: This is part of a series of articles & conversations called Meditating on Palestine.
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