UPZ plays games with "Final Status Issues Taboo" and other taboo games
The Union of Progressive Zionists announces “Final Status Taboo” in a clever pun on my all-time favorite game, Taboo, in which players attempt to describe final status issues, such as Jerusalem, right of return, etc., without loaded words like “holy,” “Dome of the Rock,” “wall,” “Israel,” “capital” or “religion.”
“While the premise of these events is play, this game has serious ramifications for our ability to move forward as a community in advocating for vigorous U.S. leadership in the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations necessary to ensure Israel’s prospects for peace and security in the future,” says Tammy Shapiro the Executive Director of UPZ.
Indeed, this is a variation of a game I play with myself all the time — “Zionist” taboo. I don’t use the Z-word word. I won’t use it around any group. It’s got too much baggage. However, despite how I refuse to call myself a Zionist, I put so much of my time and effort towards a two-state solution, one could argue that I’m more actively supporting the existance of Israel than many so-called Zionists who either (a) take a passive interest but don’t do anything about it or (b) believe that prolonging the unclear status of 6 million Palestinians under Israeli jurisdiction isn’t likely to backfire.
In either right- or left-wing Jewish settings, or especially among non-Jews, the Z-word has too many meanings, too many conflicting connotations. Heroic or villainous, it’s not worth the time of deconstructing my vocabulary, so I just do without it. “Two state” is the wording of choice, “a secure Jewish state alongside a viable Palestinian state” seems to avoid the troublesome yelling matches which occur when people read into my language something I didn’t intend in the slightest.
This offends a few commited left-wing Zionists, including people I greatly, greatly admire, because they believe so strongly in taking back the Z-word from the Messianists, the Likudniks, and the Christians. That fight is laudable, sure. But it’s not worth my time to make a pit-stop to save the Z-word on the way to fighting for peace in the Holy Land. And it has the added benefit of making it easier to get along with all kinds of people.
Sorry, Z-word, it’s just another reason to leave you behind.
Full info on UPZ’s project below.
In a coordinated campaign on campuses across the country, Jewish students will challenge the prevalent taboo in Jewish communities that prevents the discussion of topics typically relegated to the category of “final status issues” in the quest for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by playing a take on the popular party game “Taboo” called “Final Status Taboo.”
Students affiliated with the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ) will gather together on campuses through out the country on November 28th to play Final Status Taboo, challenging the larger Jewish communities’ unwillingness to openly discuss charged issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and borders, which, while potentially divisive, must ultimately be addressed as part of any tenable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The game is part of UPZ’s National Day of Action in support of the Annapolis Conference, the first U.S. brokered, face-to-face meeting between top Israeli, Palestinian and Arab leaders in seven years tentatively scheduled to take place the day before.
In the game, one player attempts to describe to the others a word or concept related to final status issues without use of the obvious descriptors. For instance, if the word is Jerusalem, the player must describe it without saying holy, Dome of the Rock, wall, Israel, capital or religion.
“While the premise of these events is play, this game has serious ramifications for our ability to move forward as a community in advocating for vigorous U.S. leadership in the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations necessary to ensure Israel’s prospects for peace and security in the future,” says Tammy Shapiro the Executive Director of UPZ, a national network of student activists organizing on campuses across North America for social justice and peace in Israel and Palestine, “Final Status Taboo aims to put these difficult issues out on the table for discussion in order to prepare us as individuals and as a community to make the tough sacrifices necessary to achieve lasting peace.”
“One can see the way the looming threat of having to discuss final status issues impedes progress in the actual negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, with each side scrambling to take issues which they will ultimately need to resolve off the table as a requisite for resuming negotiations,” adds Jackie Granick, chair of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance and UPZ board member, “By confronting these impediments to productive negotiation on our campuses and ultimately in our communities, we want to model the conversations that can and must take place between all parties to the conflict from the grassroots level on up to our leaders.”
Students will be participating at University of Maryland College Park, Harvard University, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Washington University and Stanford University. Other activities planned include teach-ins about final status issues and conducting surveys to assess if students’ are willing to make sacrifices for peace.
“they believe so strongly in taking back the Z-word from the Messianists, the Likudniks, and the Christians” Yeah, lets also take back “Zionism” from the 6 million who looked upon it as their salvation if they could only survive – and the Jews of the Pale, and Russia, and Eastern Europe who pre WWII fought to create Zionism; the early leaders of Israel, who were there because of Zions… excuse me, I’ve got to go, the urge to barf is just overwhelming.
“But it’s not worth my time to make a pit-stop to save the Z-word”
Well then the fascists, the communists, the pogromists, the inquisition, the Jews for Xtianity, the anti semites, the Muslims have won. Once you can’t defend the idea of a Jewish homeland in our biblical origins, you might as well pack it in, move the Jews to Madagascar, and officially end the religion.
>>“the Z-word has too many meanings, too many conflicting connotations. Heroic or villainous, it’s not worth the time of deconstructing my vocabulary, so I just do without it.”
I admit to not understanding why you would believe that there’s a big fuss about the dreaded Z-word. “Zionism” is the belief that the Jewish people possess the moral right to a self-determining sovereign polity in the homeland of Israel. That concept is the very conceptual basis of the country of Israel. If you can’t agree with something so basic….I’m not sure there’s too much in Judaism you can agree with, or with any other people’s right to sovereignty either.
The nefarious Z-word does not need to be “taken back” from “the Messianists, the Likudniks”–and goodness knows, they’re the wrong type of Jews–“the Christians” or anybody else. The word exists on its own and the word and meaning of “Zion” existed well before any of the above. It’s not very courageous to abandon a word simply because others have tried to hijack it or insinuate their own “conflicting connotations”.
Irrespective of Agent Z, the humor in the linked article is in its depiction of how many Jews can’t wait to engage in Final Status “negotiations” with….themselves. While Jewish students eagerly dabble in Board-Games-for-Peace, the Palestinians are for some reason announcing their rejection of that whole Jewish state thing…
“Zionism†is the belief that the Jewish people possess the moral right to a self-determining sovereign polity in the homeland of Israel.
From whence does such a right arise? If by self-determination you mean the process by which states gain legitimacy though a social contract, which is enacted by the mechanisms of democracy, it is unclear on what grounds (moral or otherwise) such a state is to gain an exclusive ethnic character as a right. In fact, I would argue that universal citizenship, predicated on universal human dignity, is a much stronger moral claim. As for the status of Israel as a homeland, if you are referring to divine promises as recorded in the bible, I’m not sure those are moral grounds on which to build a modern state.
Peoples do not have a right to sovereignty. Individual people, however, do have a right to representation, as a mechanism though which the limiting of their freedom under a state stays, in some sense, under their collective control. Those individuals may choose to practice collective political action to advance a set of interests, but the state as such must be a neutral field on which those interests play out.
Ethnic groups are not static entities, and as such they cannot form the basis of a political regime. Do Kurds have a right to sovereignty? Basques? Palestinians? African-Americans? Gays and Lesbians? The existence of a nationalist movement, as all of the above examples plus Zionism show, indicates a desire for to create an identity based sovereignty entity. That desire, however, is not a right under any robust political theory that I know of.
Dear Chorus, if you are arguing that there should be no nation states, ok, you wouldn’t be the first – no one seems to have gotten very far with the “no nation” concept (except perhaps John Lennon from a royalty collecting perspective), but fine.
But since Saudi Arabia and about 20 Muslim states base their “statehood” on their religious identity, should they disappear? Pakistan split off from the rest of India so it could have a virtually exclusive Muslim population – should it go away? Since the UK is officially Church of England and its head of state is also head of the CofE, should it be disbanded – there are many other examples of the intertwining of statehood and religion – but somehow you find that statehood for Jews alone, despite the unique historical necessity of a state for Jews (have you forgotten the holocaust, the pogroms, the Muslim destruction of Jewish communities after WWII) offends your moral principals.
This Jew has no intention of letting a world exist in which there is no Jewish state!
Its not states that are at issue, it is nation-states. So yes, I would like to see saudi arabia disentangle religion and statecraft.
Fine Chorus, suggest you go directly to Saudi Arabia and propose to them in person that they disentangle Islam and their nation. Now that takes guts – you up for it?
SA has less to do with Islam than to do with the Saudi royal family and their infinite wealth, who just coincidentally happen to include Mecca in their territory. Hardly my (or anyone’s) idea of a nation-state.
And you may cry “6 MILLION!!” all you’d like, the term “Zionism” was hijacked primarily from THESE souls (and more) by the very aforementioned figures. When you’re fulfilling G-d’s holy plan, everything just seems to fall by the wayside.
BTW, it’s not my fault that I can’t proudly call myself a Zionist because of these vile fellow human beings who also deem themselves as such. So we either go PC and come up with an alternate term, and ultimately lose the battle for our souls, or we take it back. Simple.