David Kaufman on Israel + Why Anti-Zionist Jews Are Whiter Than Zionist Jews
Israeli Pride Doesn’t Focus On Race; US, UK and EU Do
TIL: David Kaufman, a proud Jewish journalist I follow, is gay and Black. Unlike so many others, he doesn’t fixate on those aspects of his identity. He doesn't start every sentence with a declaration of who he is. Kaufman was speaking on a recent episode of the Live From the Table podcast, and what he said resonates with Israelis. Kaufman discusses visiting Israel as the reason he’s Zionistic, and not visiting Israel is why so many of our haters should be dismissed.
“It’s one of the reasons I’m very Zionistic. Everything ties. I grew up my whole life feeling extremely different. Everywhere I go, I’m very different. I don’t belong to a synagogue here because when I go to Jewish spaces, people always look at me quizzically—like, ‘What the f@#$ are you doing here?’
Even as I’m praying in Hebrew, they ask me, ‘Are you Jewish?’
One of the reasons I’m so Zionistic is that Israel is the only place in the world where I literally feel like everyone else. I get there, and for me—someone who’s spent their entire life felt on the sidelines—when I go to Israel, the relief I feel. It’s the only place where I can truly be myself.
All the things that people constantly probe me about here—relentlessly—and I’m not even saying [it’s] malicious, it’s just [how our highly racialized culture works]... You cannot escape it. For someone like me, it’s oppressive.
When I go to Israel, the moment I get there, I’m not the whitest Jew in the room. But I’m certainly not the darkest Jew there.
It’s not just Black Jews—there’s every shade in between. I’m not the darkest Jew in the room, at all. And that’s the point.
For me, when I saw October 7, the horror of seeing that… not to make it about me, but it went on and on. I was receiving notifications in Hebrew and was like, ‘Am I understanding this right? This can’t be real.’ Then it went into October 8. It took a long time to clear those motherf!@#ers out. I had this moment like, ‘Is Israel going to survive? Are they going to get to Tel Aviv?’
And my initial response was, “If there’s no Israel, I’ll never [again] know what it feels like (for the rest of my life) to truly feel like myself.” And that was an incredibly overwhelming experience.
When asked how he feels about Jews being labeled “white colonizers,” Kaufman didn’t hold back:
“I don’t like conversations in general where we use racialized terms for Jews. I don’t like the idea of ‘White Jews,’ ‘Black Jews,’ or ‘Jews of Color.’ We’re all Jews. I don’t engage in it—I ask, ‘What’s your motivation?’
Israelis don’t [operate with the same racial lens we have] in America.
Their goal (in saying white colonizers) is to justify the actions of Hamas. That’s where this all leads: any talk of Jews and race is a pathway to legitimizing our extermination.”
Read more David Kaufman at NYPost, Telegraph, Spiked Online, Tablet Mag and more:
Merit vs Identity
An argument should stand on its own merit, not on the identity of the person making it. The validity of an argument is determined by its logic and evidence, not by the speaker’s race, gender, or identity—and especially not by their family members’ identity.
This isn’t to say that you can’t raise anecdotes. It’s natural to say, “I experienced X, Y and Z.” But there’s a difference between offering personal insight and demanding authority solely through identity. One anecdote does not cancel out another.
Unfortunately, discourse is going backwards. People start every sentence by announcing their preferred identity. My first encounter with this was a podcaster I used to admire, Jesse Thorn. I’ve never heard Jesse Thorn bring up trans issues without declaring, “I have a trans daughter! Look at me! I have a trans daughter!” Despite being a vocal trans advocate myself, there’s something off-putting about the way Jesse constantly centers himself. His daughter Grace deserves to be treated as a person, not a prop. She can just be his daughter, not his “trans daughter.”
So then don’t call them your “trans kids” you lunatic
To Thorn, first she is trans. Then his daughter. Then 11.
Dear Jesse Thorn, Michael Che also does comedy.
Again, I’m very pro-trans. I have never thought insisting six year olds know everything is the way to improve the conversation.
Increasingly, identity is presented as more important than merit. LGBT+ spaces often require introductions with pronouns, even though some trans people just want to be treated like everyone else. Minorities are told they can’t be racist, even when saying racist things. And Israel—a country where the majority of citizens are not white, and the only country to mass-naturalize Africans—is branded a state of “white colonizers,” often by white people in Australia and UK, desperate to point fingers at anyone else.
To little surprise, the people most aggressively pushing identity-first narratives often do it for self-centered reasons. As the study Further Evidence for the Dark-Ego-Vehicle Principle: Higher Pathological Narcissistic Grandiosity and Virtue Signaling Are Related to Greater Involvement in LGBQ and Gender Identity Activism concludes, some activists use causes not to promote justice, but to signal moral superiority or feed narcissistic needs. These behaviors don’t strengthen movements—they alienate the public and fracture the cause from within.
The natural response to this should be for movements to say, “This is not about me.” But we are far from there. We are still at, “I care more about this issue than you! I went to more protests than you! I shared to social media more than you! I watched more TikTok videos than you!”
To echo what has essentially become my catchphrase: we all deserve better supporters.
The Privilege of Self-Hating
Kaufman said something I already knew but still felt proud to hear: Jews feel more at home in Israel than anywhere else. For him, it’s because American Jews are whiter than Israeli Jews.
The so-called anti-Zionist Jews—who I prefer to just call self-hating Jews—are typically the ones perpetuating harmful stereotypes. They are overwhelmingly white, privileged, and often benefit from nepotism. They lean into nebbish-y self-deprecation—think Seth Rogen, Hannah Einbinder, Adam Friedland and Ilana Glazer.
PS: Ilana Glazer has said she attended more Sunday school than Hebrew school, yet she’s treated as a spokesperson for Jewishness. Seth Rogen once implied Israeli Jews should just move to other countries. Hannah Einbinder once referred to being queer as a “tradition.” These are the kind of ultra-privileged elitists who’d say, ‘Just ask your Hollywood uncle for a job. It worked for me!’
I’m a cishet white Ashkenasi. I don’t fear saying it. It just doesn’t add or subtract from my arguments, because identity isn’t the point. Experience is. I was born outside the U.S., so to my classmates, I wasn’t a “white American.” I was a foreign Jew with an accent. I came to understand the privilege of US citizenship—something most African and Sephardi Jews lack. I even understood purchasing power through travels, realizing that much of the poorest Americans have more opportunity for success than middle-class Africans.
It’s not just that Sephardim outnumber Ashkenasim in Israel. It’s that Israel is the ONLY place in all of MENA with a growing Christian Arab population. The only one.
Consider why Sephardim overwhelmingly vote right, while Ashkenasi vote left. Consider why so many peaceniks from the Gaza envelope kibbutzim only abandoned ideas of peace after they were personally affected by Arab pogroms, which did not spare those who fought for Palestine.
That’s what makes the anti-Zionist posture so frustrating. It’s an ideological theater that completely ignores Jews who don’t have Western passports. The majority of Israeli Jews are Sephardim—considerably darker than their Levant and Egyptian, white-passing neighbors.
Take a look at this list of notable anti-Zionist Jews from Chat GPT:
Academics / Intellectuals: Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé, Shlomo Sand. All Ashkenasim.
Writers / Journalists: Max Blumenthal, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy. All Ashkenasim.
Religious / Ultra-Orthodox: Neturei Karta. An Ashkenasi sect that has included Holocaust deniers.
Others: Aaron Maté, Miriam Margolyes, Jonathan Glazer. More Ashkenasim!
*Watch Norman Finkelstein admit that he hopes the war on Israel never ends because he profits on it.
As Dr. Einat Wilf points out: "It is no coincidence that many of the most active Jews fighting the rising tide of Antizionism are of Soviet, Mizrahi, or Iranian background: they are only one or two generations removed from knowing exactly how the ‘We’re just antizionist, not against Jews’ playbook plays out."
Haviv R.G. echoed this in another episode of Live From the Table. Most American Jews don’t know their own history. They don’t know that international organizations like the Red Cross turned their backs on Jews during the Holocaust. They don’t know that a quarter of Israel’s early population were concentration camp survivors. To give my one anecdote for the day, Jewish friends in Florida didn’t even know what the Nova Festival was. They’ve traded Jewish memory for social media slogans—many of which are designed to alienate them from their own culture.
The affluent, white American Jew who doesn’t know their heritage finds it easier to attack their community than stand up for it. We must remember, they’re the ones with most to gain by throwing Jews under the bus. Self-haters do not speak for social movements.
If your activism begins and ends with identity, it’s not justice—it’s performance.
I’ll end this with the beginning of David Kaufman’s appears on Live From the Table, because, again—it’s not about me. It’s about us.
A lot of Jews think they can opt out of being Jewish. That they can opt out of antisemitism, or opt out of Zionism. But as I always say: Hamas doesn’t think you can opt out.
During the pre-Civil War era, there was this idea that house slaves—those who worked inside and often had lighter skin—had it easier than field slaves who labored outdoors. But at the end of the day, whether you were a house slave or a field slave, you were still a slave.
These Jews don’t seem to understand: whether you're a House Jew, a Field Jew, or a Court Jew… you're still a Jew.
When Hamas comes, they might say, “We thank you for your service.”
They’re still going to kill you.
