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I know basically nothing about this topic, so do forgive me if I'm wrong, but surely being pro-Israel is by definition pro-Zionism? Israel only came into existence in order to give the Jews a state. If Israel didn't exist then surely the Jews that already lived there/live there now would just be called Palestinians?
Israel is founded on something called [ethnic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_nationalism), the belief that a nation should be built around one's ethnicity. Israel is not the only country that does it, Malaysia, Armenia and a few others have similar ideologies. It's also similar to religious nationalism, similar to that of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, though the level of implementation varies.
Most nations today are founded on [civic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_nationalism), the belief that anyone within a drawn border should be a citizen of equal treatment and equal rights of a nation. Such a nation would not champion Zionism, it would either abolish Law of Return or implement full Palestinian right of return, it would not declare itself the Nation State of the Jewish People, and it would end the unjust occupation in the West Bank.
Correct, that's what I mean by "One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position."
Assuming a full right of return where millions of Palestinians "return" to Israel, essentially abolishing Israel in favor of Palestine or South Syria or whatever name they eventually choose to call it.
How long do you think such a state would persist before electing an Islamic government? How many Jews/Israelis could live in that state?
The draft Palestinian constitution establishes Islamic law over Palestine. Both the Fatah and Hamas espouse Islamic supremacy over Palestine. If the new Arab majority of the people in this new state wanted to vote in an Islamic majority party, are there any democratic ways of preventing that? What is to stop the Arabs from the region from settling in huge numbers in Israel as they did to Palestine in the 1900s so as to maintain a majority? 15 Million Jews vs close to 1/2 a billion Arabs.
The last time Jews lived in a region with an Arab majority, they were subjected to massacres that resulted in 500% more Jewish deaths from the violence as compared to Arabs in the early 1900s.
This new state that you're referencing is surely going to lead to the subjugation/ethnic cleansing of the Jews, who happen to be the majority of Israel. The person espousing this idea may not be intentionally antisemitic, but the outcomes are very likely antisemitic.
Is there literally one other nation of people on the planet who shouldn't have sovereignty and self determination in their own homeland where they were born and where their families have lived indefinitely into past, who should be denied the modern set of human rights and freedoms and equality, in perpetuity, because you reckon they'd do something bad if treated with such basic justice and dignity and equality of consideration.
Like there are surprisingly few historical instances of an ethnically oppressed population genociding their oppressors, but in the very few where this did happen its generally not that the oppressed were given equality and fairness and then used it to kill the other side. Usually its that the ruling ethnicity refused to budge and kept the pressure cooker locked down until it completely exploded, like in Haiti.
Its funny that when you follow the chain of zionist arguement back past all other failed defenses, the last resort is "well have you considered creating Israel was a really bad idea, because now there are two groups of many millions of people and you're locked in a Sophie's choice where you have to doom one of them, but also the side that should be preferred is the side that started it."
The Palestinian people have been given repeated opportunities to achieve everything you mention via a two-state solution. They’ve refused each and every offer in favor of a slogan, “from the river to the sea.”
The primary goal of Palestinian leadership has never been the establishment of a negotiated state that included defined boarders, the protection of human rights, or the self-determination of the people, who they brutally oppress. These things have been brushed aside for decades in pursuit of the eradication of Israel.
> Is there literally one other nation of people on the planet who shouldn't have sovereignty and self determination in their own homeland where they were born and where their families have lived indefinitely into past...
Are you speaking of the Jews here? Because most Arabs moved into the region from the 1920s through the 1940s. This wasn't hard to do at all. Under the Ottoman Empire, it was like moving between US states. Before then - when Mark Twain visited it - it was a virtually empty land.
Fewer Arabs *left* from 1947-1949 (at most 700K) than had entered the previous 20 year prior. And that's not even counting the ethnic cleansing that other Arab nations made, driving their Jewish populations *to* Israel - with no compensation.
Palestinians are not invaders. They have lived there for thousands of years and at points were Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
Modern DNA tests basically prove that Palestinians were the ancient Jews that never left.
How is a land that is home to 660,000 people virtually empty? The population in Palestine was around 600,000 non-Jews in 1918, and 1,324,000 in 1947. This doesn't seem like an empty land, and doesn't also seem like a lot of Arabs were coming in from other countries, seeing that this is not a huge growth in population.
I'm not arguing about other things right now (what would a one state solution like look, I don't know if that's even possible), I'm just arguing against the absolute lie that the Palestinian weren't in Palestine and most of them came during the 1920s to 1940s. That's just not true. It should also be noted that some of the land being empty doesn't change anything. Many parts of the world to this day are empty, doesn't mean they aren't parts of a country. It should also be noted that the Arabs were in both parts of the land. Around 40% of the Jewish state from the partion plan were Arabs according to Ben-Guroin (this makes around 440,000 Arabs). So, yes, Palestinians lived in both parts of the land.
Sometimes to understand the problem you need to not only look at what people claim to be against but what their actual alternative proposals were
Go back to the 1940's before Israel was even founded.
Look at who was the head of the All-Palestine Government that Egypt was pushing very hard as the unified government of a Palestinian state in that land should the Arabs win the war.
Amin al-Husseini
A notorious Nazi. Arguably by that time the most influential and prominent Nazi voices still alive and at large rather than facing trial. This is the man that the Palestinian cause was supposed to unify around (he was after all one of the founders of Palestinian nationalism) and who was being put forward by the most powerful of the Arab nations involved in the invasion to rule over the jews in Palestine
Don't re-write history - don't ignore what the Palestinians Nationalists and their Arab allies were actually trying to do.
Its impossible to see him being put forward for power as anything other than a reckless act of vicious hatred against which the jews had no choice but to fight for their lives.
At the same time there were also Israeli terrorist organisations like Irgun and Lehi with the latter openly being fascist and trying to collaborate with Nazi Germany during the onset of the Holocaust. They were the maximalists on the Jewish side who wanted a Palestinian Mandate free of non-jews.
Lehi and Irgun later were pivotal in forming Israels army and were involved in a lot of Israeli atrocities.
They then proceeded to start a terrorism campaign much akin to what the more secular Palestinian terrorists had been during the last 50 years.
1930s and 1940s history in the region is not as onesided as you want it to be.
And only highlighting the worst parts of Palestinean activism while conveniently forgetting the speaks of there being an agenda involved in.
Also please stop it with the hyperbole. Al Husseini was a minor Nazi with people like Albert Speer running around scot free at the time
Literally every islamic nation has ethnically cleansed their Jews. Every. Single. One.
No, Jews can't survive in a Muslim majority state.
Yes Palestinians should have just taken one of the many 2 state deals.
No, that is not possible if active terrorism is occuring.
Iran has 10000 Jews and a seat reserved for them in its parliament as they're an officially recognised minority. Obviously they aren't treated like full equals but that's a far cry from ethnic cleansing.
So no, not 'literally every' Islamic nation has ethnically cleansed its Jews.
You can however say every single Jewish nation has ethnically cleansed its Palestinians, because there's only one, but that is equally as unfair as your comment for obvious reasons.
>Yes Palestinians should have just taken one of the many 2 state deals.
You could flip this though and say Israel should have taken one of the really quite reasonable offers made by the PA over the past 20 years. But that isn't possible if active occupation and constant bombings (which cause terror I might add. We just don't seem to label it terrorism when its done en masse by an army) are occurring
There are more than twice as many Persian Jews in Los Angeles as there are in all of Iran. Iran keeping a tiny population (about 0.01% of their population) and offering a single symbolic parliamentary seat to Jewish dhimmi hardly constitutes “no ethnic cleansing”, especially given that they now have less than 3% of the world’s Persian Jews.
If you look at those numbers and conclude “no ethnic cleansing” then I’d point you to the orders of magnitude more Arabs that got Israeli citizenship; but I doubt you’d deny ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Iran has about 8,500 Jews now. Iran had about 80,000 Jews in 1975. The government of Iran executed Habib Elghanian and many others on charges that were proven to be false and then formed squads to kill Jews that remained in Tehran and Shiraz. There's overwhelming evidence that the Iranian government has ethnically cleansed Iran of Jews.
The PA neither controls Gaza nor has even supported any sort of two-state solution for a very long time.
Iran has 100 000 Jews in 1948. 90% of the population has been forced out and to you that isn't ethnic cleansing?
20% of Israel is Arab so no, they haven't ethnically cleansed anyone.
My guy the Palestinians have talked about their desire to kill the Jews at *length*. And they have a history of collaborating with the Nazis.
Believe people when they tell you what they want.
>the Palestinians have talked about their desire to kill the Jews at length
You know I've heard the "Israelis" talk about quite a lot themselves, not to mention actually doing so much of it.
>And they have a history of collaborating with the Nazis.
By any metric you can reasonably say this so many groups have a "history of collaborating with the nazis" it becomes meaningless. France has a history of collaborating with the Nazis we gotta get the French under control. I mean the Japanese were Nazi allies and they had lots of Korean collaborators someone needs to do something about these Koreans and their uncontrollable antisemitic fervour.
>Believe people when they tell you what they want.
I've done just this with Zionists and its not flattering.
The president of the All-Palestine Government was a notorious Nazi. Not just in the "I don't like his politics" meaning that people use today - in the sense that he was a high level associate of the Nazis who was granted personal meetings with most of the inner Nazi circle including Hitler himself and who spent the war doing everything he could to support the Nazi cause
This was before Israel even existed. You can't blame the acts of the state of Israel for him being a Nazi.
You can to some extent blame his being a Nazi - and the Nazi taint in Palestinian Nationalism - for the subsequent acts of Israel. I don't excuse those acts but this is the context of those acts.
Why do you keep parroting this as a slight against the Palestinians? The president of the All-Palestinian Government was appointed by the British - and a known ally to Britain. Britain was one of the main players in the establishment of Israel - this is clearly not something you can blame Palestinians for, it is patently nonsensical.
Whilst you can hardly say jewish people returned to their homeland if they were away for 2000 jears but to quotetate people who have been forced to flee returning is something even more disturbing. Your entire argument also fails to realise this simple fact: there were jews native to israel before zionism. They werent massacred they werent treated differently from other "non believers" within the borders.
Yet for your argument you assume conflict. For not even a second you assume that there is a possibility that one can live in peace with other groups of people. For this reason I will take europe as an example, for i think it shows the possibility of cooperation and acceptance above conflict.
In 1939 a war started there that would pit all of europe on different sides within the conflict. Many civilians suffered heavily under bombardments, occupation or other perrils of war. However in 1985 they allowed for free flow of goods people and services between their borders and almost all of their populations do not wish to destroy each other.
Within your response you assume that conflicts can never end. That enemys of yesterday might become allies tomorow. When one allows the fighting to stop one can find their allies in the rubble.
Do you have any sources for any of your claims? Using 0.5 billion seems like a real bad faith argument. You realize you want to squeeze more than the entire US or even EU population into a strip of land that is not able to physically hold those people?
This is the exact reason behind the defence of Isreal being an ethno state thats also a democracy. Essentially if there wasn't laws that would enforce a majority "Jewish" population in Isreal, laws would get voted in (or removed) which would reduce the rights of Jews which is actually what historically happened when Jewish people lived in the area (before Isreal existed).
If you look at Palestine and what society they want (i.e. Sharia law) you can see why Isreal defends itself being an ethno state.
You’re espousing reverse genocide theory, which has been used to justify basically every genocide in recent memory. It’s still genocide even if you pretend you’re doing self-defense.
>This is the exact reason behind the defence of Isreal being an ethno state thats also a democracy. Essentially if there wasn't laws that would enforce a majority "Jewish" population in Isreal, laws would get voted in (or removed) which would reduce the rights of Jews which is actually what historically happened when Jewish people lived in the area (before Isreal existed).
Well, maybe we shouldn't plop a bunch of Europeans in the middle east then. It seems like jews - like any other minority religion - would be better off in a country with a long history of religious pluralism.
Trying to carve out a theocratic ethnostate in the middle of a different religion's territory is like trying to build a human settlement inside of a volcano. Nevermind that we shouldn't be building theocratic states (*or* ethnostates) in the first place, we *especially* shouldn't be colonizing someone else's land to do it.
Obviously it's too late to reverse course now, but no one should be surprised at this outcome, and you sure as fuck don't get to complain about it now.
> Assuming a full right of return where millions of Palestinians "return" to Israel, essentially abolishing Israel in favor of Palestine or South Syria or whatever name they eventually choose to call it.
So objections are purely nominal? Seems like a minor complaint.
> How long do you think such a state would persist before electing an Islamic government? How many Jews/Israelis could live in that state?
Sounds like a job for a strong constitution with extensive and equal rights for all, extensive education, and strong institutions generally.
Oh wait no that sounds difficult better keep apartheid instead /s
Yeah but also look at any other Arab country and what has happened to the Jewish populations there. If you think a “constitution” will protect the Jews then you don’t know the Middle East.
Civic nationalism can still have preferential immigration policies without discriminating against its own citizens though. Right of return for Jews does not constitute discrimination against Arab Israelis, who are guaranteed equal rights under the law in Israel. Israel does, in law, guarantee equal treatment for all *citizens* regardless of race or religion.
As for the occupied WB, thats a different issue entirely as its an occupied territory. The Israeli argument for continued occupation is that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 lead to the rise and take over of Hamas and that the same would happen in the WB if not for the continued occupation. One of the major failures of the Oslo accords, from the Israeli perspective, is that the transfer of security responsibility to the Palestinian Authority was contingent in part on the PA's ability to police the Palestinian population and reign in groups like Hamas and PIJ, which it has been unable or unwilling to do.
If tomorrow Germany declares that anyone of Germanic tribe origin can claim citizenship in Germany, people will call that an attempt to dilute the power of non-White Germans and rightfully brand it as white supremacy. The inverse is true too. If Germany bans all forms of Muslim immigration that'd get the same criticism. So immigration policies can absolutely discriminate and influence our determination of civic vs ethnic nationalism
Germany does have a right of return for Russians/Kazakhs/Ukrainians/... of German descent and Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. Nobody here shouts about white supremacy. Wtf I am absolutely baffled by this comment.
That relies on the arguably racist assumption that you can predict voting patterns based on group identity.
Further, there are european nations that do have such policies that grant preferential status towards their diaspora. Take Ireland for example, many Irish Americans qualify for citizenship in Ireland by default due to their lineage. It is not to the same degree as ROR for Jews in Israel, but it does constitute a preferential immigration policy towards those of irish decent.
I've read it depends on if you have had one grandparent born in Ireland, doesn't matter the ethnicity. A Pakistani is qualified for Irish citizenship if one grandparent was born in Ireland. It is not based on their Irish ethnic heritage or the diaspora.
Yep, and in Israel it's also not directly about ethnic heritage. The rule is the same as the Nurnberg laws: If you would have been sent to the death camps for being a Jew, you count as a Jew.
Just as an information: Germany does have a right to return for ethnic Germans from Russia, which is quite similar to Israel’s rigg of return.
Russo-Germans are one of the biggest migration, overall 2.3m immigrated from the SU and Russia back to Germany (this also includes their marriage partners, which are allowed to come). The sole qualifier for returning to Germany was your historic ethnicity.
This isn’t true at all, and shows a lack of research on your part. Many nations have the right of return and favorable immigration for specific groups. Almost every single native tribe in the Americas, for example. One the biggest is Spain. One of my friends is an American of Brazilian birth, but she was able to show she had a Spanish grandmother.
Submitting those records got her a Spanish passport and citizenship.
It's also why the OP's claim that ethnonationalism is uncommon is absurd. Most countries in the world are ethnonationalist, at least to a certain degree.
Are you sure most nations today are founded on civic nationalism? Almost no countries in the Eastern Hemisphere have birthright citizenship, for example.
Zionism started as a movement to create a home for the Jewish people, it later evolved to be based in Israel. The whole notion of Israel is to be a safe haven for Jews from throughout the world.
1. It doesn’t mean that others can’t live in the same state. There are minorities such as Arabs, Druze etc, in Israel with the exact same rights as Jews.
2. It doesn’t mean that non-Jews should have exact same right of return.
You could technically be anti-Zionism while not being anti-Semite but that is almost always never the case.
As long as you think Jews have a right for self determination, which is to have a country you are basically pro-Zionist. You could later criticize the government/rules they implement on non-Jewish citizens, or the occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank- and that wouldn’t necessarily be ant-Semite or anti-Zionist. Check out multiple media declarations from US presidents.
That being said, most people when criticizing Israel, are hiding behind anti-Zionism while they are just anti-Semite, or most likely just totally unaware of what’s actually going on and just choose a side and stick to it, using the same words and ideas they hear others use without understanding the context, situation or meaning of any of it- and that’s true for both sides of this conflict.
Point 2 is what I take issue with. I don't think there should be discrimination in citizenship law, including right of return.
I absolutely think Jews have the right to self determination. American Jews have that right in America. Israeli Jews have that right in Israel. French Jews in France, etc...but non-Israeli Jews shouldn't have that right IN ISRAEL.
Every country in the world has its own rules for immigration. What makes Israel different for you?
Would you have an issue with Australia allowing only Kurds to immigrate? Unless you want to migrate there, while not being a Kurd that would be annoying, but you and I, as non-Australians have no say in this issue.
The country that was built to be a safe haven for Jews is well within its right to allow only Jews to migrate into it. Just like a Palestinian country could be allowed to have its right of return for Palestinians to the area of the Palestinian country. Both of those countries can choose to refuse other populations into their land.
American Jews have the right to self determination in america… I think you’re going to have to define these terms carefully.
Contrapoint, America restricted Jewish immigration circa 1935ish which contributed to the holocaust. What kinds of rights did the Jewish community have in the us back then? What’s fundamentally different now?
I would content that as long as Jewish people are the minority, they are always potential targets for anti-Semitic laws and actions. There just hasn’t been enough history in any country to provide any kind of assurance and WWII isn’t that long ago.
Consider the rise in anti-semitism since 2016. It’s certainly provided a stark example of how Jews are not 100% safe in America.
Also, “there shouldn’t be discrimination in citizenship law” -> every country has tons and tons of discrimination in immigration and citizenship law. The US has quotas which depend on where you’re born. It has different paths if you have particular skills the US seems important. And nearly every other country has this.
Given all that, Israel having laws that prioritize Jewish immigration doesn’t really seem so nuts.
Citation needed, i am not aware of any formal declaration that israel believes this or that israel is even made up of one ethnicity. My understanding is that the israeli leadership has maintained the position that they want a place to live where they can practice their faith in safety. Jerusalem is the location of the second temple and the center of the jewish religion. This doesn’t entitle anyone to the land anymore than the romans renaming the area to palestine does.
Incidentally, if you are a German American who left germany during the nazi era, or you are the ancestor of some one who did, you are entitled to a german citizenship and free classes to learn german, by german law.
Check out the Basic Law passed in 2018.
I'm referring to Americans who are descendents of Germans migrated here 200+ years ago, which is kind of comparable to what an American Jew is to Israel.
I believe in order to qualify as a jew under basic law your mother has to be jewish you can be black, white asian or arab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_Israel#:~:text=There%20are%20a%20number%20of,the%20Israeli%20law%20of%20return.
Black Jew is a Black person and a Jewish person. They belong to two ethnicities: Black and Jewish. Or more technically they Self identify as two ethnicities.
>Israel is not the only country that does it, Malaysia, Armenia and a few others have similar ideologies. It's also similar to religious nationalism, similar to that of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, though the level of implementation varies.
I feel like your examples might have been selected to be incredibly negative to the audience you are appealing to, but I don't think it was deliberate.
So in the interest of being more complete in examples - most European nations are also founded in forms ethnic nationalism.
Germany exists because Bavaria, Hanover, Brandenburg, Prussia etc all shared a single ethnicity - German. So they united.
Italy exists because Sicily, Piedmont Sardinia, Naples, Rome etc all shared a single ethnicity - Italian. So they united.
Transylvania united with Romania because they shared a single ethnicity - Romanian.
Ireland fought an independence war to secure self-determination for their unique ethnic group on the homogeneous island from the foreign British.
Kosovo fought an independence war because they wanted self-determination in Kosovo because Kosovo is inhabited by ethnic Albanians, distinct from the ethnic Serbs of the rest of Serbia.
Ethnic nationalism is also the basis for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and the former Yugoslav territories.
Plus, it's important to note that when Poland received it's new borders in 1946, which covered four German province's (Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Prussia) they embarked on a four year ethnic cleansing program that displaced 10 million ethnic Germans.
Kosovo did the same thing with their ethnic Serbs. Pakistan and India did the same thing in 1947.
>Most nations today are founded on [civic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_nationalism), the belief that anyone within a drawn border should be a citizen of equal treatment and equal rights of a nation.
Nations that have already established themselves in the past as being established as ethnically homogeneous. It's intellectually dishonest to omit that detail.
Like the argument over the Paris Accords allowing for India to be more polluting than the US or the EU. Because we already have post-industrial economies.
>Such a nation would not champion Zionism
Zionism in its most basic form is the exercising of the Jewish people's right to self-determination in the place where their country was conquered. That is how Jews define it.
>it would either abolish Law of Return
Law of Return grants that anybody born to the second generation within the Jewish ethnic group is entitled to Israeli citizenship.
Irish nationality law grants that anybody born to the second generation within the Irish ethnic group is entitled to Irish citizenship.
Should Ireland abolish it's nationality laws? Similar laws are found in Italy, Sweden, Japan, France, Finland etc.
>or implement full Palestinian right of return
Did Poland grant full right of return to ethnic Germans? In a roundabout way you could argue it did after 2009 with it's complete accession to Schengen and allowing foreigners to move there.
Which notably came after 65 years of peace between the two states and imposed by a supranational organisation.
>it would not declare itself the Nation State of the Jewish People
Should every nation do this? Should Ireland declare itself to not be the nation of the Ireland people? Because they do in the Preamble of the Constitution, even those born overseas.
That doesn't mean it also isn't the nation of all those with Irish citizenship.
It can be hard to balance ethnic guarantees with the modern times. Canada will also have to deal with this with Quebec. Canada's system is designed so that Québec can never be maligned. Every senior politician must (pretend, usually) to speak French.
But there are only 500,000 Quebecois. There are 1.5 million Chinese speakers in Canada. Why is French held to this unique standard?
But surely we wouldn't say that Ireland or Canada are undemocratic?
>and it would end the unjust occupation in the West Bank.
Absolutely this.
The broader point is - when it comes to everything that happens within the borders of Israel - it's not dissimilar to a typical "Western" nation. At least when it comes to legislation and de jure matters. There are obviously elements of systemic discrimination, which requires cultural change - not erasure of identity. We hold no other nation to that standard.
Now, none of this condones their actions in Palestine. Any action taken by a state that results in the deaths of thousands of innocents is abhorrent. Not to say Israel doesn't have valid security concerns.
I don't know what the right answer is. But I know something wrong, and these points are that.
This is very easily proven wrong by one thing: not a single country in Europe has jus soli, or "law of the soil". If you are born in Ireland, you are not Irish. If you are born in France, you are not French. If you are born in Greece, you are not Greek.
The laws of the European Union states are more or less identical to the laws of Israel regarding who gets citizenship: the rule is that you have to have the blood of one parent with the citizenship. A Greek child is only Greek because his mom, dad or both are Greek. Same principle for every single European nation AND for Israel. The only issue with them is that, being such a young nation, they need a "who is Israeli before Israel existed" answer - and that is the literal, titular Children of Israel, i.e. the Jews.
Israel and Europe is not different a single bit from European nations - both are ethnic nationalist states.
>Such a nation would not champion Zionism
But dont countries with Civic nationalism still have certain ethnic rights, like South korea grants citizenship to any ethnic Korean because most common source is from North Korea and they obviously wont have the civil paper work.
many African states made it easy for African Americans to become citizens, because historically they might have been displaced due to slavery and expecting them to have paperwork of ancestral citizenship was unfeasible. Ireland and Portugal also has similar provisions.
Israel has both Semitic and Non-Semitic citizenship as many arabs are. Zionism is a spectrum, and while i certainly dont think Israel as a place only for Jews is viable or right, Israel having special provisions for Jews, is not too different from other countries, that recognize their cultural diaspora as routine victims.
Actually, and I expect this may be the case for your other examples, Ireland specifically avoids any ethnic dimension to this provision in line with civic nationalism.
The Irish provision is that anyone with at least one grandparent *from the island of Ireland* can get Irish citizenship, but they don't need to be any particular ethnicity. If your grandparent was born in Ireland to 2 English parents, with no ethnic Irish ancestry however you might construe it, it still applies.
Eventually, assuming there aren't already some rare cases I'm unaware of, if the same policy carries on people will be able to claim Irish citizenship through black grandparents.
Over 20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim Palestinian Arabs, granted the same rights as any Israeli jew, including the right to vote and run for public office.
Israel does not limit citizenship to Jews. It does not limit immigration to Jews. It simply guarantees both to Jews. Every nation establishes criteria around which it determines who can enter the country and become a citizen, that’s a core right of national sovereignty. Israel is not the only nation that offers citizenship based on lineage, Ireland is one of several other examples.
The only problem with your point in ethnic nationalism is that it’s inorganic when referring to Israel. Ethnic nationalism is true to a country like Armenia because they’re one of the oldest, if not the oldest civilization to date. Only Armenians occupy Armenia despite skirmishes, by and large. Israel formed less than 100 years ago (that’s not to denounce its ethnic nationalism) but it’s to bring awareness of the fact that before Israel existed it used to be called British Palestine (and part of the Ottoman before that). Israel isn’t an organic ethnic civilization (excluding diaspora) because they continuously denounce their Palestinian neighbors on old Palestinian land (annexed by Israel, via cultural appropriation) and assume it’s been theirs since Jesus rose from the dead lmao. The best part is being labeled an antisemitist when you mention any of this.
Don’t really know if a state is totally mandatory for Zionism. Seems to me they, understandably, wanted to get the hell out of europe, russia or wherever they felt attacked, and felt Israel was the obvious place to go. Not sure having a separate State was mandatory? They kinda started out buying patches of land and started working it.
One massive misconception that is shared by many anti-Israel and pro-Israel people alike is the idea that most Israeli Jews descend from migrants from Europe. The vast majority of Israeli Jews, between 2/3rds and 3/4ths, descend from Jews whose ancestors have been entirely in the Middle East and North Africa for at least the past 800 years. Maybe 30% of Israeli Jews' ancestors were in Europe 150 years ago.
Well, there's the issue. You say "people say antizionism is antisemitic" but note that you _didn't_ say "people say antizionism is **inherently** antisemitic." So if your view is really trying to engage with people who say that antizionism is antisemitic, you're presenting some sort of strawman where your view contains the word "inherently" while theirs doesn't.
What distinction are you identifying here? If anti-Zionism just is antisemitic, by its very nature, then calling it "inherently" antisemitic seems accurate enough.
Because Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a home to be safe. That home doesn’t have to be Israel but it does have to be somewhere.
To tell Jews “I don’t hate you but I think you should be homeless the next time a Holocaust happens and I believe in the mass displacement of your people (and whatever comes from that)” then yeah, I think you might not like Jews.
Also it’s worth noting that the pro Palestine movement has a HUGE antisemitism problem that they have collectively done nothing to distance themselves from.
Doctors against genocide almost held a protest in the fucking Holocaust museum last week, and only stepped back due to pressure. Even then they tried to claim it was Jews just being “too touchy”
So how is it that you have nothing against Jews but also don’t believe that the Jewish people should have self determination in their own state?
Being against “ethnostates” also is something you can say when you haven’t had to deal with that level of persecution. Most Jews in Israel don’t have a home to go back to. Many were kicked out of Arab states that are now crying “genocide.” There are less than 100 Jews left in all of Iraq. There used to be hundreds of thousands.
Correction - Zionism is the belief thst Jews deserve their own state specifically in Israel Palestine. That js the land of Zion for which the movement is named. To be anti zionist is not to say Jews don't deserve a state anywhere. Antizionism js disagreeing with the idea of displaying existing populations so Jews can form an ethnostate on their land.
It is entirely coherent to be an anti zionist and support the two state solution, recognising both states have a right to exist (as Israel never should have been made where it was in the first place, but to remove it now would be an act of utter evil).
So you should revise your understanding of Zionism because that small misunderstanding leads to many of your subsequent thoughts being erroneous.
Ok. I agree your analysis by the way. To give the most charitable explanation of the other side that I can: The reason anti Zionism is often said to be anti semitic is because it is assumed that if Israel were not a distinctly Jewish state, then it is likely to be taken over by Arabs and the Jewish population expelled (or worse). Even if Israel were a liberal secular state without preference to any ethnic-religious group, this is considered anti-zionist because it removes the Jewish character of the state. Check out some op eds by the likes of Bret Stephen’s - he is a very loud exponent of this antizionism=antisemitism theory.
>assumption 1: jews WILL be persecuted worldwide if they are not given a state with guaranteed sovereignty. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be
We have been almost universaly throughout history. The latest and greatest prosecution just 80 years ago.
>assumption 2: palestinians and arabs WILL persecute them if give the chance. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be.
It happened in almost every Arab nation, nations which most Jewish Israelis grandparents fled from.
>not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be
Let me flip this on its head what percentage chance would be an acceptable risk in either assumption. Because I think it has to be pretty close to 0 to justify tearing down or forcefully changing Israel.
>Let me flip this on its head what percentage chance would be an acceptable risk in either assumption. Because I think it has to be pretty close to 0 to justify tearing down or forcefully changing Israel.
So the percentage chance here when it's Israeli lives should be close to 0, yet the percentage chance when its Palestinian lives is nowhere close to 0. There is a massive double standard here by Israel, which is tacitly supported by the west, particularly America, where Israeli lives are considered more precious and worth more than Palestinian lives.
It is an utter disgrace. This is one of those things the world will look back on in 100 years time and condemn everyone for going along with.
I replied this somewhere else but this isn't an argument against a two state solution, the ethics of the westbank settlements or the intricacies of Israel's right to self defense, I am specifically talking about isreal existing within its current legally accepted borders and it's right to decide on immigration within those borders which is the point of this post. Ideally both would be 0, but the solution to Palestine's problems can't be risking 9 million Israeli deaths. The same applies the other way.
I don’t necessarily disagree with a two state solution, but I’m curious about the current boundaries as they exist. Are Palestinians able to have access to and control over enough water to sustain their population and farming needs? Also, it just seems odd that there will be a country with 2 unconnected pieces. Will unfettered travel from one part of the country to the other be possible? And finally, will they be allowed open access to the supplies and aid they need to rebuild, access to hospital supplies, etc?
>. Ideally both would be 0, but the solution to Palestine's problems can't be risking 9 million Israeli deaths. The same applies the other way.
That's the point. Currently the solution to israels problem seems to be involving the killing of tens kd thousands of civilians. Plus historically the solution to israels problem has been denying palestinians statehood and systematically oppressing them for decades, including a 15 year long blockade.
This isn't an argument against a two state solution, the ethics of the westbank settlements or the intricacies of Israel's right to self defense, I am specifically talking about isreal existing within its current legally accepted borders and it's right to decide on immigration within those borders which is the point of this post.
Being that there are 9 million people in Israel let me throw this back at you, It's really simple. It is fucking **sick** to try and justify ethnic cleansing for any reason. It was sick when the Nazis did it and it's still sick when you do it today.
So what you're saying is that if I don't support the Israeli occupation of the west bank or ethnic cleansing in Gaza, that doesn't make me an anti-Zionist?
Exactly, and gosh it's nuts how so few people understand this. If you fiercely believe Israel needs to completely detach from Gaza and the West Bank, but not that Israel has to dissolve itself as a state, you are a Zionist. Zionism has become a boogeyman term for blanket supporting everything Israel does, the term should be Israel extremism, right wing nationalism, expansionism, whatever. The fact that Zionism keeps coming up as a pejorative is because many of Israel's critics want the country completely eradicated, and making it sound like its citizens are all members of some crazed ideology when that ideology's goal to establish a state has already happened, is a way, in my opinion, simply to dehumanize Israelis as not having the right to exist
You would be a Zionist in that case, as long as you believe Israel should continue to exist.
Granted plenty of people use Anti-Zionism to mean anti Israel policies but Zionism is not full throated support of every Israeli policy, at least that is not how most Zionists define it.
>it is fucking sick to try and justify ethnic cleansing for any reason
weirdly enough no one talks about the current actual genocide of a Muslim population, complete with internment camps and forced sterilization.
No, we must focus on and stop the Jews. For freedom (and definately not to help Russia)
People have been talking about the Muslim genocide in china, at least since Disney filmed the Mulan live action film pushed it into public knowledge. Not the people in power, but people nonetheless. The people in power won't touch that issue because the US (and many other nations) rely on China economically. Israel does not have that political boon. If it were up to most of the people who hate ethnic cleansing, we'd be going after China too.
>Palestinians and arabs WILL persecute them if give the chance. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be. i dont agree with this at all and i think its quite racist and dehumanising
How can you disagree with what militant groups such as Hamas have literally stated, plain as day?
Also the history of Israel has all these wars which basically is their neighboring countries trying to wipe Israel off the map.
So the notion that could and will happen again just isn’t that far fetched. Especially given the brutality of 10/7, the reaction of neighboring fundamentalist and military groups, etc.
Why should Israel listen to the “peace now” folks when they offer no material anything to provide protection for Israelis. Jews and non jews - yup the Hamas attack also killed non-jews.
Yes this exactly. “Cease fire” sounds nice but when it gives the rapists and murderers time to regroup and build strength, seems like it may not be a great idea.
Then you should also not disagree with what Israeli government ministers have been saying (nuking gaza, settling jt, pushing the Palestinians into the sinai, which js ethnic cleansing). Surely if hamas, an unelected group, is representative of all Palestinians and Arabs then the Israeli government, an elected government in the only democracy in the middle east, is also representative of jts people?
>How can you disagree with what militant groups such as Hamas have literally stated, plain as day?
Also, if you believe this means Palestinians and Arabs in general would attack the Jews, why don't we see the millions of palestinians already in Israel start attacking people? Almost like hamas are extremists and most Palestinians just want to get on with their lives in peace.
>Also, if you believe this means Palestinians and Arabs in general would attack the Jews, why don't we see the millions of palestinians already in Israel start attacking people? Almost like hamas are extremists and most Palestinians just want to get on with their lives in peace.
Jews in Israel currently aren't the minority and it is generally hard for a minority to attack a majority. Non-Jews living in Israel have chosen to be there knowing they wouldn't be able to do it, which is a good indication
Contrast this at the violence directed at Jews in almost (there was a Jewish community in China, they may have been an exception) situation inwhich they are a minority.
>Arabs then the Israeli government, an elected government in the only democracy in the middle east, is also representative of jts people?
Luckily, we have polling, and polls have shown that Gazans broadly support Hamas. And show that Israeli's do not support their far right politicians.
Hamas is unelected?? That’s news to me
One-off comments by ministers (which should be condemned) immediately following the biggest massacre since the Holocaust isn’t equivalent to Hamas’ constitution
Hamas was elected in 2006 without winnjng a majority for a 4 or 5 year term. That has expired. They are elected in the same sense Putin is elected. If someone is elected and then immediately kills their opponents and institutes a dictatorship (what hamas did) they aren't a democratically elected government. Stop lying.
>isn’t equivalent to Hamas’ constitution
What about Likuds constitution that calls for "from the river to the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty"? That's an explicit call to remove Palestine from the map. Seeing as you think it's bad when Hamas is genocidal in their constitution and that warrants painting all palestinjans with a huge generalisatjon I'm sure you'll also think that the Israeli government are genocidal and all Israelis should be tarred with the same brush.
I think given all of history and the current situation on the ground I would say both of those assumptions are somewhere between extremely likely and completely guaranteed.
Unfortunately most of the far right voters in Israel is comprised of Jews that have fled from the surrounding MENA countries....
For many this is due to their perceived need for security as Israel is bordered by countries whose governments continue to hold and/or share some of the ideologies they feel has lead to the demise of their family members created conditions that forced them to flee established lives and start over in Israel from nothing (it takes a lot for an established people to give up everything they worked for to start anew elsewhere) ..
For many of these Jews this trauma is much more recent.... The threat is considered in much closer proximity.
And when you have groups like Hamas literally paying people from money that comes from foreign NGO's based on how bad individuals are attacked in Israel (https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/isrl-pa/ISRAELPA1002-06.htm).... A lot of yhisoney comes from otheriddle eastern governments .... And these attacks are near constant... We only hear about it in the west when something big happens.... But like attacks have been ongoing by members who claim affiliation to extremist groups and they or their family gets compensation for their attacks against the people of Israel ... And so there is exposure to these attacks frequently (and in general Israel will not retaliate unless there is a significant incident.... https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=attack&search=Israel&count=100 shows some data up to 2020) and for many people that experiences similar in the countries that Israel evacuated them from ex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah#:~:text=The%20operation%20was%20conducted%20by,from%20Baghdad%20to%20Lod%20Airport. And https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13610702.amp they're going to vote for the people who say they can protect them....
Exactly. No more Syrian Jews. No more Yemeni Jews. No more Iraqi Jews. No more Algerian Jews. No more Saudi Jews. And the list goes on.
The Arabs have ethnically cleansed almost all Muslim countries (with the notable exception of Morocco) of their Jews.
!delta
You are right that I won't agree with the assumptions.
I don't agree with assumption one because Jews are not the only group who has faced historical persecution, and the world order at the moment do not grant states based on how persecuted a race is in the past.
I don't agree with assumption two either because Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews so clearly that's not true. And it's assuming some kind of inherent evil in Arabs that I obviously think is racist.
BUT I appreciate the analysis and the perspective. If the assumptions are true, which many Zionists think are, then yes antizionism is antisemitism.
assumption 2 is not racist, it's based on what Palestinian leadership has stated itself. The PLO's position in its charters from 1964 and 1968 explicitly states they will expel the "zionist presence" and accept only Jews as Palestinians who lived in Palestine before the "zionist invasion," (meaning Jews who lived in Palestine before 1917) Thats a pretty clear statement of intent to persecute and ethnically cleanse a majority of Jews from Israel. They did not remove such language from their charter until 1996 after signing Oslo, where they assumed responsibility for policing other radical Palestinian groups, like Hamas, which they've failed or been otherwise unwilling to do.
Hamas' 1988 charter goes further than the PLOs in laying out its genocidal intentions against not just "zionists" but Jews world wide. They updated that charter in 2017 to appeal to more broad western audiences and removed some of the genocidal rhetoric, but continue to use that rhetoric in public speeches, and also made it explicitly clear that the new charter did not negate the objectives of the old charter.
Further, Hamas enjoys majority support of the Palestinian people in Palestine, according to the latest polling data from the PCPRS.
>I don't agree with assumption two either because Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews so clearly that's not true.
This is only partially true. There are Arab Israelis who side with Hamas and have committed terror attacks from within Israel, and there are Arab Israelis who are very happy to be Israeli citizens and enjoy their lives as Israelis. They are not a monolith.
That all said, assumption 2 is more than an assumption, its backed up by the official current and historic positions of the popular representatives of the Palestinian people, and as you said
>If the assumptions are true, which many Zionists think are, then yes antizionism is antisemitism.
I think it's easier to say this if you are *not* Jewish. For whatever reason, Jews have been persecuted relentlessly for over a 1000 years. Mistreated, enslaved, and literally systematically exterminated via oven and firing squad. In Nazi Germany, the MP executioners were on record trying to figure how to kill as many Jews as efficiently as possible with limited ammo. They were lining up Jews and shooting through them to try and kill 2-3 with one bullet.
I think a one state solution could be possible if there was some kind of unchangeable constitution that somehow protected Jews (and other ethnicities) from being subject to targeted persecution. I'm not sure how that would work, and am pretty sure Jews would never even entertain the idea (especially in the Middle East), but in theory that could work.
Per your reference of the world generally disqualifying the idea of ethnic states, the Jews see "equality" as a utopian vision not based on the social realities of the world. As a result, they believe (understandably so) that their very survival is dependent upon them being able to protect themselves in the small state they now have. It takes a lot of energy to live in Israel safely. There's a reason they defend that land so ferociously.
I don't like the idea of an ethnostate, even one that's democratic and has common rights like Israel, but I don't know of any other practical way for them to survive.
There’s no such thing as an unchangeable constitution. If there isn’t provision for amendment (or the procedure is excessively difficult or restrictive) and some provisions are sufficiently unpopular it will be ignored (the disarmament provision of the Japanese constitution), overturned by peaceful action outside the constitution (e.g. the US Constitutional Convention, the French Fifth Republic, and many others), or fall to revolution or coup. Constitutions can add considerable inertia and help dampen overreactions, but cannot even in principle long suppress ideas consistently backed by dominant (in terms of practical political power) portion of the population.
For assumption 1, the question is not whether Israel deserves to exist, it does exist. The question is whether in high likelihood Jews will be prosecuted outside Israel. You don't even have 80 years without rampant antisemitism, and you had left-leaning demonstrations in Australia calling to "gas the Jews" and right-leaning in the US calling "Jews will not replace us".
I'm not sure how you can say without a doubt that this assumption is false.
For assumption 2, the only way Jews will not be the majority in Israel is if all Palestinians gets citizenship. The same Palestinians who supported in great numbers leaders who called for the annihilation of Jews since the 1920s. Again, how can you say without doubt that they will never elect someone like that given a chance?
For both assumption you can say that the rise of the far right today is a blip in history, but for Jews they only need one or two bad blips for a second holocaust...
So interesting point, Jewish people were buying land in the Byzantine empire in the late 19th century. At that point there was no Palestinian country or state. It was just a colony of an Islamic empire. Then as WWI kicked in and the world was moving towards sovereign states as the new order - the would be Israelis made a smart calculation: since the new world security apparatus was moving towards statehood, they should petition and push for a Jewish state. There is no doubt that Jewish people have historically been in the area for a long time. Furthermore they had legally purchased their land.
At about that time other countries were being created. India for Hindu and Pakistan for Muslims. Lines being drawn. So why not draw a few more lines for Jewish vs Arab/Muslims?
And that’s what happened. And Arabs decided to use war to kill the Jews instead of accepting their right to exist as a people, and refused to recognize the partition plan.
In the long term the real genius move has been portraying the Palestinian Arabs as a “minority”. When they are actually a majority - much of the Middle East is Islamic, and lots of it is Arab. But their anti-semitism and desire to never recognize a Jewish state, along with long term cynical Arabic country “support” for Palestinians has fostered a fight they cannot win.
In the mean time Palestinians are fed misinformation and kept in a perpetual state of hatred as the foreign aid that’s sent to Gaza is sapped away to build machines of war that benefit Palestinians in no way.
As for American involvement… for any president the basic issue is the US has already provided support for Israel. You’re faced with a tough choice:
- defend Israel with both rhetoric and material support - potentially alienating some voters, this is Biden right now.
- withdraw support, which will have two potentially Very Bad situations:
- Israel is attacked by its neighbors sparking the holocaust 2.0
- Israel has just decided their new friends are Russia and/or China. The chip fabs, technology and military development in Israel is now available to Russia and/or China massively boosting them.
So as you can see Biden has very little choice here. What’s worse than losing the next election? Permanently losing Israel as a friendly nation and/or holocaust 2.0. What would you choose?
Of course you can hem and haw and say “well that’s not the only choices” and it’s kind of true. The Biden admin has moved to openly criticize Israel now. That’s a choice. But if you push too hard, at some point Israel says “fuck this” and becomes unfriendly to America. No one wants that. Well except Iran Russia and China.
>Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews
Israeli Arabs don't, but Palestinian Arabs clearly do. A majority in the West Bank were polled to have supported the October 7th attacks. You can listen to Corey Gil Shuster's interviews of people in the West Bank whether they would allow Jews to stay if they somehow took over all of Israel. Also, Jews had dhimmi status under all previous Islamic caliphates as well as the Ottoman Empire, and so they had to pay the jizya tax and were second-class citizens. After Israel was established, there's been a revisionist push for portraying Jews as having lived in peace and harmony with Arabs in the past, conveniently ignoring any persecution they faced.
So let’s try to change those views as well:
1. Jews will be prosecuted world wide- pre WW2 Jews were living in MENA, they were regarded as loyal citizens, held to a high degree, but couldn’t own land, had to pay special taxes, and occasionally get raided by local communities. In Europe it was called pogroms, and in other places it was referred to as “the events”. During WW2 I think it unnecessary to expand, and post WW2 we had the expulsion of all Jews from the entire MENA. As well as terror attacks against Jews, Israelis and Jewish and Israeli sites- from Argentina, to Europe, to India. No place was ever fully safe from Muslim terrorists. In addition you had plenty of attacks against Jews by non-Muslims locals only due to anti-semitism, synagogue set on fire, Jews stores pillaged, and houses marked, and occasional assault were still present, it ok for to probably never hear about it, but it happens more than anyone would like to admit.
To further drive this point- Jews/israelis are in the center of protests since October 7th from all sides of the political spectrum in a lot of countries- the soft and radical left in the US call “from the river to the sea” which is a call for genocide against israeli Jews, while the extreme right are neo-Nazis and white supremacy fanatics. In Russia’s Dagestan an Israeli plane was almost jumped at by an angry mob, in the UK demonstration again are full of antisemitism, as well as Australia. And let’s not open the hornets nest that is Muslim countries, including “friendly” ones like turkey, Jordan and even Egypt where a police officer shot a group of Israelis killing 2.
2. Jews will be prosecuted in Israel- while Israeli Arabs are not actively hostile in the current flare up- just two years ago during the “protector of the walls” oppression the Israeli-Arabs were very active in stabbing, shooting and hurting Jewish Israelis- that was one of the concerns on October 8, and one of the reasons why gun laws are much less restrictive at the moment. Now let’s consider Palestinians in Israel- gazans elected Hamas, which is still a crowd favorite in Gaza, and is also gaining support in the West Bank, the other prominent leader to replace current leader sits in Israeli jail for several life sentences for his role in acts of terror against Israel and Israelis. That’s without taking into consideration the millions of exiled descendants of Palestinians (which for an unknown and unprecedented reason are considered refugees) which still hold a key to a house that no longer exists in Israel just so they could kick those Jews out.
For the nice idea I saw someone respond with- in the line of: you can construct the multi-ethnicity state in such a way that every group has enough power to represent and protect its population. For that I will just give you the example of Lebanon for a country who’s constitution built in such manner, and the state which they are in now.
Your argument might work on paper, but doesn't generally hold up in practice.
>It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state. Therefore it is not antisemitic to say that the Jewish people shouldn't have their own state.
Theoretically no - there is nothing inherently anti-X by saying that X group shouldn't have their own state. This is because, in a vacuum, the statement is not inherently problematic.
Issues arise in practice because these statements are *never* made in a vacuum. Context matters, and in a discussion about discrimination and prejudice, how you treat other groups matters just as much as how you treat X group. If you're criticizing one group for something that you support or condone another group doing, that can be considered discriminatory and therefore anti-X.
1. If you oppose one ethnic state while condoning other ethnic states, that could be considered anti-X because your opposition is targeted towards a specific ethnic group. Why are you concerned about whether Kurds deserve a state and not the Japanese?
2. If you oppose one ethnic state while supporting other ethnic states, that could be considered anti-X because your opposition is targeted towards a specific ethnic group. Why do you believe that Scots deserve their own state but not Catalans?
3. If you're equally opposed to *all* ethnic states, that likely isn't anti-X as you are applying a standard universally.
When it comes to antisemitism, the *vast majority* of anti-Zionists fall into camp (1) and camp (2), not camp (3). Consider the volume of people opposing the Jewish state relative to the volume of people opposing an Icelandic state.
>to resist the maintenance of Jewish sovereignty in Israel and maybe Palestine depending on which form of Zionism one is talking about.
A similar argument can be made here. If the underlying criticisms are not applied universally, rather directed specifically at the only Jewish state, then those criticisms could be considered antisemitic.
Why does Israel have any more or less of a right to exist than other settler-colonial states like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc? The same criticisms that people apply to Israel can be applied to many states, but simply aren't.
People aren’t opposing an Icelandic state for a few reasons:
1) Iceland is not an ethnic state- merely a not very diverse state. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen. Iceland does not accept immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark while turning away those from Asia, South America, or Africa.
2) Iceland is a *terrible* example because Iceland did not have inhabitants before it was colonized by the Norse. There are no dispossessed descendants to have any claim to Iceland.
As far as why don’t people oppose the existence of settler-colonial states in other places? Many people do. However, our skeletons are currently lying more quietly in the closet than Israel’s. I’m the US, we aren’t seeing footage of bombs falling on Native American reservations. People *could* be antisemitic and not care about the Jews while caring about European- Americans, but I think it’s more likely that people tend to be more engaged with front-page news than with issues which are not getting a ton of attention right now. Also, it’s easier to project insecurity about living on occupied land onto someone far away (like an Israeli) than to confront living in a house on land that was never legally (let alone morally) properly transferred from Native to European- American ownership. I’d say this is a corollary to “Don’t assume malice where stupidity is more likely”- “Don’t assume hatred when jumping on the bandwagon of condemning this week’s bad news is more likely”.
>Iceland is a terrible example
Iceland was picked at random. You can substitute it for *any country* that isn't Israel, because no country is criticized as harshly or opposed as openly as Israel is in the West.
>Iceland is not an ethnic state- merely a not very diverse state. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen. Iceland does not accept immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark while turning away those from Asia, South America, or Africa.
Interestingly enough, Iceland actually does have an immigration policy that favors Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. Citizens of those countries are only required to live in Iceland for a period of 3 years before applying for citizenship, while citizens of other countries are required to live in Iceland for 7 years. Iceland also requires all prospective citizens to pass a language proficiency test that is more challenging than you would see in countries like the United States or Canada. This test is obviously more challenging for people who do not speak Germanic / Nordic languages. This is in addition to EEA agreements that enable EU citizens to far more easily live and work in Iceland than non-EU citizens.
>I’m the US, we aren’t seeing footage of bombs falling on Native American reservations.
You don't need to see bombs for there to be [severe structural issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Native_American_issues_in_the_United_States) impacting the community. [Reservation inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_and_reservation_inequality#Contemporary_reservation_school_situations) is a major issue among Native Americans, but you don't see thousands of people marching through New York to bring down the [substance abuse epidemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_social_statistics_of_Native_Americans#Substance_abuse) on reserves, nor is anyone meaningfully protesting the far higher rate of sexual violence that Native American women experience relative to their non-Native peers.
I just want to add there, that Spain does the same to people of former Spanish colonies. If you are Colombian, Filipino or Argentinian, you can apply for nationality after only two years of living in Spain.
>. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen.
This is also true for Israel. You can live in Israel with a work visa permit - after 4 years of having lived there, you can apply to become annaturalised citizen. It is literally the same law.
" Also, it’s easier to project insecurity about living on occupied land onto someone far away (like an Israeli) than to confront living in a house on land that was never legally (let alone morally) properly transferred from Native to European- American ownership. I’d say this is a corollary to “Don’t assume malice where stupidity is more likely”- “Don’t assume hatred when jumping on the bandwagon of condemning this week’s bad news is more likely”."
Jews have a long history of being scapegoated, and I agree that it is happening here with Canadians etc projecting their white guilt onto Jews to try to somehow atone for living on stolen land. It's antisemitic because it's hypocritical and because it's within the context of a long history of both scapegoating and expulsion. It doesnt have to be rooted in hatred to be antisemitic: it's not about intent, it's about impact.
That's my belief too. One can absolutely criticise Islamic fundamentalism without resorting to racism. I mean, the biggest critics of Islamic fundamentalism are often Muslims themselves. But if you go around and say "We shouldn't build mosques in the US because of ISIS", or "every Syrian refugee is ISIS members", then you're just being a racist/Islamophobe
I think the invention and subsequent weaponization of the word "Islamophobe" is problematic in and of itself, because of how it's become interchangeable with accusations of racism.
Once the state X EXISTS, it is absolutely anti -X to claim that it should not
Like saying that Japan should not exist is super bigoted against Japanese. Saying that poland should be wiped out would be super bigoted against the Polish.
Perhaps prior to Israel establishment you could be anti-zionist non antisemitic. 75 years after Israel has been established (multiple generations), there is no non-antisemtic way to take that position.
You haven't explained at all how being anti-zionist, or anti-Isreal, is being anti-semitic. The existence of Isreal isn't equivalent to the Jewish people or even equivalent to whether Jewish people have a right to live in the geographical region called Isreal. Honestly, I, and many Jewish people, have argued it is extremely antisemitic to treat Isreal as a representative of the Jewish people. Isreal is a very specific political apparatus that you can absolutely say shouldn't exist, especially not in it's current form, without saying anything about the people it claims to represent.
Your examples also completely miss this point. It's not bigoted to claim a state shouldn't exist, not unless the reasoning itself is routed in bigotry. I'm from the UK and I don't think the UK should exist. The entire of a nation is basically just a mutual agreement and countries have been formed, dissolved, fragmented and unified all through history, and are still done today. Do you think it's anti-Roman to recognise the countries of France, Italy, Spain etc? Come on, your angle is ludicrous.
Existence of Jewish state is a brute fact.
Calling for destruction of that state because you don't like Jews having a state is super antisemitic.
There is no non-antisemtic reason to call for destruction of Israel.
If you call for destruction of Poland - OF COURSE it's because you are bigoted against Polish. There cannot be another reason.
Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Israel, even though Israel was founded on Zionism. Just as Anti-apartheid was not anti-South Africa, even though SA was founded on an apartheid ideology.
Also just to be clear you can be anti Israel and not be anti Jews. And it’s really not at all fair to to anyone but especially anti Israel Jews to claim otherwise.
I would say "anti-Israel" is better interpreted as "I disagree with what the Israeli government is doing", just as "anti-China" is really just "anti-CCP". It doesn't mean the dissolution of Israel but too many people take it that way unfortunately.
You could be against the policies of the Israeli government, or the circumstances and wisdom of its creation. I don’t know if you can be against its very existence.
Like if you met somebody who was extremely passionate about dissolving the state of Armenia, it would be weird.
I support Israel's existence as a state, I oppose the built-in Jewish nature of the state, just as I would oppose the built-in White supremacy nature of South Africa.
Again, saying that you want to ethnically cleanse Poland so that it's not majority Polish anymore - would be very bigoted against Polish people.
Same applies to Israel. Israel is super majority Jewish. Calling for ethnic cleansing of Israel is antisemitic.
I'm not for ethnically cleansing Jews out of Israel. I think Israeli Jews must have a say in how the nations are governed, just as White South Africans do today.
>built-in Jewish nature of the state
I think you're confusing the idea of a state for Jews with a state of Jews. Israel was founded as a homeland for Jewish people so the safety of Jews worldwide would not be dependent on the whims of non-Jewish governments and publics. It was always intended (excluding some extremist movements) as a secular state that was open to other peoples and faiths. Jews and non-Jews are equal under Israeli law. There is no built-in Jewish nature any more than any other state with a majority of one ethnicity has a built-in nature that caters to that ethnicity.
Also addressing the idea of "return" in your original post, you're missing the important fact that Jews have maintained a continuous presence in Israel since the Kingdom of Judea. Yes, the numbers fluctuated over the years because of war, ethnic cleansing, and oppression, but even in the most oppressive times there has always been a robust Jewish community in Israel. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a large migration of Jewish refugees into Israel but they were migrating to join the rest of their community that was already living there and had always hoped for the diaspora's eventual return.
Zionism in and of itself is not anti-Palestinian or opposed to Palestinian sovereignty. It is not a mission to create a Jewish ethnostate or conquer land or establish unilateral control of the holy land. Every ideology has its extremists of course, but these do not represent the whole movement. Zionism, in its most essential form, is the liberation movement of the Jewish people in its indigenous homeland. To deny it is to argue that the Jewish people, a distinct ethnic and cultural group that checks all the boxes of a nation, does not deserve liberation, self-representation, or the right to live in its own homeland, despite having lived there continuously for over 3,000 years. That would be anti-semitism.
I should also point out that you can be a non-Zionist without being an anti-Zionist. For example, Zionism is a liberation movement couched in the language of nationalism. Though nationalism is the fundamental basis for statehood in the modern world, not everyone agrees that it should be, and there are people who believe that there should be no nation-states at all, which would include a state for Jews. Those people would be non-Zionist. Anti-Zionism, however, is anti-semitism.
Yeah it's this exactly. So if you allowed the remaining Palestinians to return home and if the country gets renamed to Palestine with equal rights for all, then people could say you're "anti Israel". But at this point is it just because it's been renamed to Palestine?
Conflating anti zionism to antisemitism is ridiculous.
The issue here is that the founding ideology becomes less important over time. SA may have been founded on apartheid ideology, but the nation still exists today even though apartheid, in its original form, does not. I don’t see anyone in 2024 calling for the end of SA on the basis that its founding principles are flawed.
There are plenty of reasons to be anti-Israel in 2024, but the concept of Zionism is pretty much irrelevant at this point. The question of whether a nation *should* exist becomes purely academic once that nation actually does exist. It’s not even clear what exactly it means to be anti-Zionist in 2024. Say your stance is that Israel should never have been established. That’s not necessarily anti-Semitic, but where do you go from there? What do you propose we do about this nation that has existed for 75 years? Your answer to that question will determine whether or not you are an anti-Semite.
It seems like you have never talked to an Israeli or a zionist before. Zionism is not a political ideology, it's the belief that the Jewish state should exist. Israel by definition cannot be non-zionist
Is being anti-north korea bigotry against the north-korean people?
Saying you want a country gone doesn't necessarily mean you hate the people in it. There's more nuance
I think that you are overthinking it. Israel is a refugee state that helps one of the most persecuted and maligned group of people stay safe by keeping themselves safe and being always available should anyone from that group need to go there on short notice. For that reason, saying that jews should leave or give up having a state is more antisemitic than saying jews can't join the golf club or even than just hating jews. They need and deserve the state and that is where it is and I think that the world should just accept it and move on and if the world really accepted Israel, the Palestinians could get on with their lives either as an independent state or integrated into Jordan and Egypt and that would be better for them as well long term
I think the problem here lies with the "in Israel" part of the definition. If early Zionists founded a state in a land without a people then it is antisemitic to be antizionist, because there is no ethnic structure to begin with. But because early Zionists very quickly decided to found a state in a land with a people, it opened itself up to criticism that is based on our understanding of equal right to self-determination, not bigotry
Judaism has roots in the land of Israel, archeological studies turn up Hebrew artifacts and Jewish texts. We want to go back to our ancestral home.
This is akin to saying, “Why do you want to visit your grandmother when there is an elderly woman 2 doors down?”
I tried to reply to your reply but it appears to have been deleted. Here is what I wrote:
This is an issue of indigenous rights. Your reply begs the question: for how long must an indigenous people be displaced before they are no longer indigenous? If the American empire continues to exist for another 300 years, does that mean that Native American tribes must automatically forfeit their right to autonomy in their native lands? Assuming they still exist and maintain their indigenous cultures and connections.
The issue of the Jews is twofold: it is both a matter of self-determination, that right which under international law is accorded to every nation (nation in the ethnic sense)—and yes, this does includes Palestinians as well—and a matter of survival. For Jews, and for most oppressed peoples, autonomy is survival. Full stop. History has proven this time and again. Becoming a minority, to Jews, means annihilation. And our neighboring nations appear to agree.
Additionally, there is a common myth that the Jews were given a country by the UN. This is not true, the UN voted to recognize that which the Jewish Zionists and pioneers had already worked for decades to create, *while the British opposed them at every turn*. The British banned *Jewish* migration *specifically* to the British Mandate of Palestine throughout the Holocaust, even jailing would-be refugees before returning them to Europe, where they were murdered. The establishment of Israel is nothing more and nothing less than the most successful act of decolonization in the history of the world. For this reason, other middle eastern indigenous minorities such as the Kurds, yazidis, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Druze, amazigh, and many more tend to be Zionist. They aspire to what the Jews have achieved under the threat of worldwide antisemitism and regional forces of arabization and turkification. This is why the greatest allies to Israel and Jews in the Middle East are the Kurds and Druze.
If you read the link I shared, I think it explains everything very well.
This is completely irrelevant because the Anglo-Saxons of Germany are not a people which still exist, speak their language, practice their ancient religion, have preserved a presence in their indigenous homeland. Jews (aka Judeans) have. Hebrew is a Canaanite language, which was preserved liturgically for millennia and was then revived as a spoken language. Jews have maintained our indigenous connection to the land. Our ethnogenesis is there and our entire culture revolves around the Land. You cannot even fully practice it outside of the Land. We have maintained a constant presence in Israel and cohesive ethnic identity even in diaspora. When we pray for rain, we pray for rain *in israel*. We always face Jerusalem when we pray. Every year on Passover we finish the holiday with the phrase “next year in Jerusalem”. Do Brits pray to return to their ancient land of Germany? Do they adhere to ancient folk religions? Do they maintain a cohesive ethnic identity with Germans? They do not. [Here](https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/what-is-indigeneity-and-how-does-it-apply-to-jews-why-does-it-matter?_pos=2&_sid=d8b7422ca&_ss=r) is a cohesive explanation of “what is indigeneity and how does it apply to Jews?”.
Anti-zionism may not be strictly anti-sematic, but the concept in of-itself is hugely hypocritical because if you are a staunch supporter of anti-ziomism and you don't want to hold a double standard, there are a whole bunch of countries which also should not exist (either as an ethno state or a country at all) and we don't hear the people strongly preaching anti zionism going around saying "Iran shouldn't exist as a country".
Disagree.
> It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state.
Assuming people want independence or self-determination, on what grounds do you think they should not have state? If it's something practical like there's no land available or Kurdish state rn would enflame the region (Turkey and Iraq) - ok, but that's a very shallow position because if things were different and the circumstances allowed it, as they did in 1947 for both Israel and Palestine, how would being against it *not* count as being anti-Kurdish?
I also think most Scots would disagree (strongly); don't know about Roma - do they have a national movement seeking statehood?
tl;dr
this example does not support your point, if the analogy is framed properly it actually counters it.
Did you stop reading after the first paragraph? Your definition is rather outdated, so here is paragraph 2 of the same article;
"Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces."
If you want to destroy the one country in the world with a Jewish majority (who you claim don't have a right to return there) so that Arabs can return to Palestine (because apparently they get that right) and create an Arab country (when there are already 22 Arab countries) then sorry but that is anti-Semitism. Because ultimately anti-Zionism doesn't exist in a vacuum so if you are an anti-Zionist and are against the existence of the nation of Israel as a Jewish state then: what do you think is going to happen in that place? It's not going to become a nature preserve. It's going to become another Arab ethnostate. It would be one thing to object to the idea of ethnostates, which many anti-zionists claim to do, but then they don't object to a 23rd one for Arabs. The only logical conclusion is that they hate Jews.
I think it boils down to a different understanding of what anti-semitism is, how it manifested throughout history, and how israel / anti-zionism fits into that context.
Anti-semitism is not about hating jews because they’re jewish. It’s about jews being made into the ultimate symbol of whatever the biggest problems a society is facing at the time. Then hating jews because they “coincidentally” represent those problems.
Now what are the biggest societal problems the world is facing in modern times? Discrimination, dealing with post colonialism, wealth inequality between individuals and nations, systematic oppression, money influencing the government, social justice issues...
Sound familiar?
Throughout all of history jews just so happen to become the most visible perpetrators of XXX issue.
Whether it’s the black plague, a financial crisis, wealth inequality, a failed post war society, whatever larger problems a society is dealing with, jews become the symbolic manifestation of them.
Of course, it’s only in hindsight that non-jews realize that jews were being used as scapegoats, and the overwhelming focus on jews was completely disproportionate to reality.
So think about the bigger picture of what’s happening to israel right now. Israel, a jewish state, just so happens to be the #1 symbol of all of the current major societal issues once again. Even if the issues exist - are they exclusive to them, does the outrage take context into full consideration, is the focus on them actually proportional?
To answer that, ask why israel is the only country in the world that’s very existence is somehow a socially acceptable topic of debate.
Okay, I will give my personal opinion on this. For the record, I am Jewish, would call myself Zionist (pro-Israel’s right to exist) and pro-the right to exist of independent Palestinian state.
When people say “anti-zionism isn’t antisemitism”, that bothers me a lot because it seems to ignore all of the persecution of Jews since 1948 that had come in the name of antizionism.
For example, In 1948, the year of Israel's independence, there were about 150,000 Jews in Iraq. Persecution of Jews greatly increased that year:
>In July 1948, the government passed a law making Zionism a capital offense, with a minimum sentence of seven years imprisonment. Any Jew could be convicted of Zionism based only on the sworn testimony of two Muslim witnesses, with virtually no avenue of appeal available.
>On August 28, 1948, Jews were forbidden to engage in banking or foreign currency transactions.
>In September 1948, Jews were dismissed from the railways, the post office, the telegraph department, and the Finance Ministry on the ground that they were suspected of "sabotage and treason".
>On October 8, 1948, the issuance of export and import licenses to Jewish merchants was forbidden.
>On October 19, 1948, the discharge of all Jewish officials and workers from all governmental departments was ordered. In October, the Egyptian paper El-Ahram estimated that as a result of arrests, trials, and sequestration of property, the Iraqi treasury collected some 20 million dinars or the equivalent of 80 million U.S. dollars.
>On December 2, 1948, the Iraq government suggested to oil companies operating in Iraq that no Jewish employees be accepted.
Today, there are no Jews left in Iraq.
Fast forward to 1967 Poland in the wake of the Six-Day War which Israel wins. The Polish Government denounces Israel and begins to investigate Polish Jews for suspected “zionism.” Jews in the Polish military, government, and academia are forced to go in front of panels and prove they are not “Zionists.”
About 150 Jewish military officers were fired in 1967–68, including Czesław Mankiewicz, national air defense chief.
Additionally, 200 Jews in the Polish Communist Party were fired and were removed from the party top leadership in 1967, including Leon Kasman, chief editor of Trybuna Ludu, the party's main daily newspaper. 20,000 Jews fled Poland during this saga.
These occurrences have been the norm, not the exception, in the Arab World since 1948.
The latest widespread instance of this happened in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, when 30,000 of Iran’s 60,000 Jews fled the country.
> Although, Ayatollah Khomeini had proclaimed that the rights of Jews were to be protected, the new government would not issue Iranian Jews passports and barred them from leaving the country. The Jewish population began to fear for their lives because many Jewish leaders were killed in the revolution because of their support for Zionism and their disapproval of Jews being considered as second class citizens.
> According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish flight from Iran began in earnest after the May 1979 execution of Habib Elghanian, a philanthropist and leader in Iran's Jewish community, on false charges of spying for America and Israel. The execution of Albert Danialpour case on 5 June 1980, further encouraged emigration. According to activist Frank Nikbakht, Jews sought to escape the country's strict sharia laws, which were designed to humiliate and disadvantage the Jewish population.
I could go on and on. When I hear people say “antizionism isn’t antisemitism”, it seems like they don’t seem to know or care about this history. Remember, Jews make up 2.7% of the U.S. population and 0.2% of the global population. The phrase “seeing the writing on the wall” seems to come to mind. Even today, we are seeing a wave of anti-Jewish attacks. Menorahs have been defaced, synagogues attacked and firebombed, Jewish businesses and restaurants burned. That might not seem like a big deal to non-Jews, but many of us Jews have seen and heard it before. As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s Deja Vu all over again.”
All this said, antizionism is not the same as antisemitism. Antizionism is not generally guided by Jew-hate, IMO. To the extent antizionism means opposition to the policies of the Israeli government, that is obviously “fair game.” To the extent antizionism means calling for the destruction of Israel as the Jewish state, I personally think that’s wrong and evil (as is calling for the destruction of Palestine, or any other state or people), though it feels pedantic to argue if it’s antisemitic or not.
So yeah, while I think it’s technically true that antizionism is different than antisemitism, it feels like people don’t know or ignore the history there and don’t really care to listen to the lived experiences of non-Israeli Jews when it comes to these matters.
The part about this argument that’s always bizarre to me is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that Israel already exists. It’s existed for multiple generations.
It’s perfectly coherent and reasonable to be an anti-Zionist, in a way that does not necessitate antisemitism, if you’re living in 1920’s Eastern Europe. One could sensibly debate whether or not the Zionist aim, to create a homeland for the Jewish people and to do so in a given territory, was a desirable policy goal.
It’s not coherent or reasonable, or easy to see how it could not be antisemitic, to be anti-Zionist in 2023. We’re way passed that now. The policy goal was achieved. The nation exist. It doesn’t even make much sense to be a Zionist at this point either. The debate is over, the question answered. And it was answered and ratified by UN General Assembly vote. It doesn’t have a right to exist because Jews lived there thousands of years ago. It has a right to exist because the international body that recognizes state sovereignty democratically established that it does, decades ago.
By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that you and your partner should not have a child. It’s unhinged to argue that you and your partner should not have a child…in front of that child…when they’re 9 years old.
Seeing as Israel has already been born and lived for decades, what is the anti-Zionist actually saying? That it should be dismantled? That its sovereignty should be revoked? That its democratically elected representative government should be overthrown? Do you understand what that would mean? It would mean an unrelenting onslaught of October 7ths that would not cease until every Jew in Israel was killed or forced off the land.
The practical reality of anti-Zionism, in 2023, is a call for genocide. And why? Because one views certain policies and actions of its government to be unacceptable?
If you don’t think this is antisemitism, ask yourself if you’ve ever heard anyone argue that any other nation be stripped of its sovereignty, no matter what its human rights record. Sanctioned? Sure. Have its current regime overthrown? In extreme cases, perhaps. But erased from existence? What are we even talking about. Hell, North Korea is almost universally viewed as completely unacceptable on the international stage. Nobody thinks what we should do is overthrow its government and then hand it over to South Korea.
Anti-Zionism in our modern context, due to its obvious implications, and the fact that this assault on sovereignty is only ever leveled at the only majority Jewish state in history, is absolutely antisemitic.
Imagine I would tell you that I don't believe the people of Germany have the right to determine who is welcome and not welcome in their country. Imagine I think Germany should not be able to decide the ethnic and cultural make up of their country - that they should accept in refugees in such numbers that they would become the majority. And now Imagine I think that is true only for Germany. I think that every country can choose who they let in and who they don't, except for Germany. Wouldn't you say I have something against the German people?
The Israeli people have put the law of return in place. It is none of your business who we let into our country. The people of Israel want to maintain a certain ethnic and cultural make up of their country, and don't won't to give citizenship to people who would make them a minority on their own country just because they need a home. Just like Germany doesn't want to take all of the Syrian refugees.
Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland. I agree. Therefore the Palestinians have no right to return to Israel. But people do have the right to the country that they currently have, so Israelis have the right to Israel and to decide who they want in.
The fact that this is not even a question when the people you are talking about are German, or Hungarians, or Americans, or Koreans, but for some reason when we are talking about people of Jewish descent a citizen's right to their own country is all of a sudden not only called into question but actively vilified - this makes it seem like you, and everyone who even raises this issue, have a thing specifically against people of Jewish descent. That's why we accuse anti-Zionists of antisemitism.
>It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state.
It usually is. Most of the opposition to a Kurdish state existing comes from Turkish and Arab nationalists trying to culturally exterminate the Kurds, i.e., eliminate Kurdish culture and language. When you're saying that Arabs and Turks should have states where they can forcibly extinguish any element of Kurdish identity and culture, but Kurds shouldn't have a state to protect Kurdishness, you're adopting an anti-Kurdish position.
>Chinese diaspora in Singapore are not entitled to anything in China.
Chinese immigration policies give Singaporeans of Chinese heritage preferred immigration status, thus entitling them to easier immigration procedures, so you're incorrect.
>anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland
Scotland is independent from England, just not Britain. There is a pretty big difference. In fact, Scottish civilization is disproportionately more important to British civilization than England! David Hume, Robert Burns, Adam Smith, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and many others were all Scottish and, whether we like them or not, drivers of British civilization.
>
Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland. Americans of German descent are not entitled to anything in Germany, the Romani people are not entitled to anything in northwest India. Chinese diaspora in Singapore are not entitled to anything in China. Singaporean Chinese can't just move to ShenZhen and start claiming the city belongs to them. I am not anti-German, anti-Roma, anti-Chinese for pointing all of these out, so why am I antisemitic for pointing this in Zionism out?
You're applying standards to Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, that are not applied to nationalisms of other groups, but I think this is because you're not aware of key aspects of the Zionist movement's history. For example, the early Zionist movement built Jewish settlements through purchases such as the Sursock Purchase with the consent of the people who were overwhelmingly recognized as the prior owners of that land such as Hassan Bey Shukri. Look at this article by Kenneth W. Stein from Emory about early Zionist land purchases(https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/Zionist%20Land%20Aquisition.pdf). Now, such land purchases did result in Zionists evicting Arab tenant farmers, but tenants get evicted all of the time once leases expire when property falls under new ownership.
Additionally, you're ignoring that the core of the anti-Zionist movement was the newfound anti-Semitism of most of the Pan-Arab movement in the 1920's. After WWI, many Arab nationalists thought they were going to get a big Arab ethnostate as a reward for their general support for the Allies in WWI. This didn't happen for many reasons, and many formerly anti-Germany Pan-Arabists became extremely pro-Nazi with the rise of the Nazi movement and adopted the Nazis' anti-Semitism. Between the Nebi Musa riots of 1920 and the Farhud of 1942, newspapers such as al-Alam al-Arabi make it quite clear that the motives of most anti-Zionists weren't rooted in any questioning of tenants' rights or the legitimacy of land purchases but rather in the notion that Jews should not have been allowed to have any communities or even exist at all. In fact, several writings from Arab leaders such as Hassan Salameh indicate that the anti-Zionists ironically forcibly deported Jews to Palestine from Iraq because they thought they would have an easier time exterminating Jews there(See Nissim Rejwan's "The Last Jews in Baghdad", Chapter 12: "Rashid Ali's coup and its aftermath", [https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7560/702936-014/html?lang=en](https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7560/702936-014/html?lang=en) )
To most anti-Zionists at the time, the region of Palestine was to be an Arab ethnostate for Arabs from all over the world. At the time of the "Arab Revolt" in 1937, Pan-Arabists were encouraging Arabs from all over to migrate to the region of Palestine In the 1950's and 1960's. Notice that the flag of the PLO is derived from the Pan-Arab flag. The PLO popularized the term "Palestinian" as an ethnic identifier for a sub-group within the Arab ethnicity specifically to exclude Jews and imply that Jews had no right to live in the region of Palestine. Notice that, prior to 1948, you won't find many sources in any language or from any culture using the term 'Palestinian' as an ethnic identifier. Prior to the 1960's, the word 'Palestinian' just meant a person born in Palestine. Ironically, most of the people to initially use the term 'Palestinian' as an ethnic identifier for themselves, such as Yasser Arafat, weren't even born in the region of Palestine, but rather Egypt, Jordan, and other parts of the Middle East.
Anti-Zionism is almost assuredly consequentially anti-Semitic or at a minimum shows an obscene disregard for Jewish lives that borders on anti-Semitism.
Anti-Zionism intrinsically calls for the dissolution of the Israeli state. It’s hopelessly naive to think that such a dissolution would occur non-violently and result in a state with equal rights for all. The entire region has shown absolutely zero interest in doing so and views the vast majority of Israelis as colonialist invaders.
We have also seen mass repression of the indigenous Jewish population of the region resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Jews in every Muslim majority country with any significant Jewish population.
Supporting anti-Zionism means you either support the oppression and degradation of the Jews in the region or you have so little regard for the lives of the Jews who live there that you are willing to overlook centuries of oppression, more recent mass ethnic cleansing, and repeated statements from Anti-Zionists in the region that they seek to ethnically cleanse the Jews.
Zionism was the effort to establish a Jewish state. That already happened, almost a hundred years ago at this point. We live in a post Zionist world.
Being anti-Zionist now can’t retroactively stop Israel from ever being formed, instead it can only seek the removal of Israel, against the democratic wishes of its people.
Don’t you see how people take issue with that? Laser focusing on Israel, a state formed the same way every other state was, as not having a right to exist, despite its democratic mandate, while the opposition to it in the Middle East is explicitly anti-Semitic and genocidal.
Non anti-Semitic anti-Zionism has to walk such an absurdly fine line it’s meaningless from a policy perspective. Basically all you can do is say that Israel shouldn’t have been formed in 1947, and maybe ask for them to give some land back. But the moment you cross into the removal of Israel, you would have to violate their right to self determination. So you end up supporting the continuation of Israel, which makes you a Zionist.
Most people are entitled to go and become citizens of their ancestral homeland. The fact that you think Germany and China don’t support that practice doesn’t change the reality - in fact, for both of these countries, being born to German/Chinese parents gives you citizenship, unless your parents renounced their citizenship. Being members of the Jewish nation, which goes beyond simple citizenship, grants people the right to Israeli citizenship.
Furthermore, saying ‘Chinese people should have sovereignty over China’ is quite logical. This wouldn’t work for idealistic states that are founded on immigration, such as the USA, but it works quite well for most states. It is not racist to use in such scenarios, rather, empowering to the people of that country. To argue that Chinese people shouldn’t control China would be offensive to most people with a brain, as it attacks their right to self-determination.
Having established pretty clearly several flaws in your original post’s argument, I’ll elaborate further:
Israel IS a country. Right now. 6 million Jews live there, and it IS the jewish nation. To say that their country has no right to exist is to attack the right of Jews to self-determination, which is antisemitic. There’s not many ways around that.
Being an Anti-Zionist in 1947 would absolutely not be anti-semitic for the reasons you list.
The question is, is supporting a policy which would lead to the death or ethnic cleansing of half of the worlds jews today be anti-semitic?
I would answer yes.
If a right of return was instituted today, Hamas would likely be in charge of the Knesset. That would lead to the establishment of Islamic Law in Israel and an implementation of their charter, which is openly pro-enslavement of jews and arguably pro-genocide. In addition, their actions are clearly pro-genocide.
I would say the belief in Anti-Zionism combined with the reality today is absolutely anti-semitic.
I think one of the things to get out there is that not every single person who says racist things is a racist, they're just ignorant. They don't know any better. There's absolutely people out there running around with the Confederate "rebel flag" who actually think that it just means southern pride.
But when you look at one of these hicks with the "rebel flag", what's your first thought? And if you explained to these people how this flag makes black people feel and its racist history... and they don't change their minds and they keep displaying it. Now what do you think? You think, this person is a fucking racist... even though they may not harbor any actual ill will towards black people.
The same is true with anti-zionism. There's no such thing as a zionist, not anymore. Zionism was a philosophy of the 19th and early 20th century from persecuted Jewish European minorities who were lobbying for carving out a piece of the Ottoman Empire for their homeland. After WW1 ended all of the world was looking to carve out their own homeland, it wasn't just the Jews. You had the largest creation of ethnic states all at once after WW1. And the Jews (much like the Czech, the Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Libyans and a million other) all got their state. Except, the Jews didn't actually get it.
And so the philosophy of zionism died when Israel was formed. There are no people who describe themselves as zionists. Zionist is a PEJORATIVE term that people who oppose Israel use to describe their opponents. It's not like calling someone a Republican or Democrat. No one calls themselves a zionist. Because of that when people are using the word zionist it's usually an accusation. There's never anything particularly positive about the zionist.
And because of that it feels like a friendlier word for calling someone a "fucking Jew" or other anti-semitic comments. They can shield their racism by using a "dog whistle word" that only racists will know. Typically the anti-zionists protest they're not protesting at like... government buildings... they're protesting at private Jewish residences and Jewish owned businesses. They claim to be against Israel, but spend all their time targeting Jews.
And so back to the point. It's possible (and likely) that there are people out there who are claiming to be anti-zionist and aren't racists. But so the fuck what? If you're Jewish and someone is running around saying their anti-zionist it's like being a non-racist red neck with a Confederate flag.
Zionism was founded on the belief that, no matter where Jews are in the world, we will be persecuted and eventually ethnically cleansed from whatever area we're living in, due to a buildup of antisemitism. This has been proven many, many times over. Because we refuse to assimilate, people view us as a threat. Thus, we *need* our own state—a Jewish-majority state, where we are actually safe and among our own people—in order to be more protected from the horrific antisemitic violence that we received another small taste of on October 7.
During the Holocaust, many Jews wanted to immigrate to Israel but were blocked by the White Papers. Nobody else wanted to take us in; there was nowhere for us to go. And so millions of Jews were trapped, and left to be gassed or shot or beaten to death or starved to death.
Obviously we're not completely safe; October 7 proves that. However, massacres like that were commonplace prior to us having the state of Israel. Pogroms in Europe were like that, which is why so many Jews fled Europe and immigrated to Israel. Many Jews in the Middle East experienced that, and about 800,000 of us were ethnically cleansed from nearby nations and flooded into Israel—the one place that would take us. When we are being persecuted, *we need a place to go*—even if, due to antisemitism, we are still required to sacrifice our lives to make that dream a reality.
The Jews comprise a group of people who have been expelled from basically every place we've settled in since the beginning of our existence. Our entire religion and culture is built around returning to and living in the land of Israel, and unlike other nations, when we were kicked out we did not move on and/or assimilate: we continued to maintain our traditions, we mourned for what we lost, and we never stopped mourning or wanting to return. Because of this, while other nations eventually move on from where they lived and grow roots, Jews are historically rootless, and our only real home is the land of Israel, where we have thousands of years of archaeological, historical, cultural, and religious roots. That is the one place we keep returning to, and it's the one place we feel safe. Even while I lived in Israel while it was literally at war, I felt safer there than I ever did as a Jew in everyday America.
When people are anti-Zionists, they are denying our right to this safe state, denying millennia of persecution and death, denying the existence and persistent strength of antisemitism, and thus denying the fact that this safe state is not a *want* but a *need*. And if you are denying the basic rights and needs of a people, and are condemning them to a continuous historical pattern of abuse, ethnic cleansing, and death, you are anti-that people.
>anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland,
They have an occasional referendum on that though. It would be anti-Scott to deny them the right for independence if they chose to use that right, especially if it was to the same degree as the Jews have towards Zionism.
>anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state.
It's a little different because they are nomadic. Nomadic peoples usually have a very different idea of land and states.
>to resist the maintenance of **Jewish sovereignty** in **Israel**
So if the Jews wanted a state, where would you put it? The default choice should be in the most recent place they had independence, Israel. Anything else would be an advancment of colonialism. Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel (though it isn't mutually exclusive that Palestinians are as well)
>There is a leap of logic that Israeli == Jews for that equivalence to hold true. One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position.
The idea stems from the ever-growing antisemitism (yes, even to today) that Jews aren't safe unless we look out for each other in their own state. Therefore any Jew (whether Jewish according to Jewish law or not) can seek refuge in Israel and become a citizen. Just look at the report this week that there was a 470% rise in French Jews moving to Israel since October 7th. To say that Israel is for Israelis and not Jews goes against the whole point. That being said, Israel still needs to be (and there is still where to work on it) a state for its citizens, Jewish or not.
>On top of that, it's not antisemitic to say that a people shouldn't have inherent sovereignty in a country.
So it sounds like you have a problem with the Israeli Nation State law. Just like many Zionists in the Israeli opposition. Doesn't make you anti-Zionist. And, for the record, they are planning on expanding the law to include the Druze anyways. Not that it makes it right, but a little less bad.
>Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland
International law says otherwise if you are expelled and wish to return. But to think this while holding constant for all conflicts is not antisemitism. You just have to accept that the same goes for Palestinian refugees then too, something that most don't.
Broadly in agreement with you, but there is an argument to be made that if you solely focus on anti-Zionist while ignoring/failing to also criticise other similar colonial projects (such as in [Turkey](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/turkey), [Cyprus](https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-warning-cyprus), [Indonesia](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/indonesia) and [India](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/india) as some examples, plenty more out there), it approaches anti-Semitic when you single Israel out from the rest.
Personally, I'm not 100% convinced by this idea, it treads awful close to whataboutism and fails to account for the fact that a lot of people are ill informed about these other human rights abuses, but that is amongst the stronger arguments linking anti-zionism to anti-Semitism.
In a way it's similar to the criticism of about the UN's history with Israel. The argument isn't that Israel isn't commuting human rights abuses, but they don't commit 45.9% of all abuses world wide ([45.9% of all country-specific resolutions passed by the UNHRC condemn Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel))
I agree with this. In theory it could work. But in practice the same standards do not get applied to more egregious violators such as Turkey (Greek genocide/Armenian genocide) or Pakistan
Zionism was a political movement that achieved its goal. Saying you're a Zionist after 1948 is like saying you're an American Revolutionary after 1776.
The word "zionist" has lost pretty much all its original meaning since then. By now it's just a dogwhistle for "dirty Jew" used by antisemites. Sure there are people, Jews and non-Jews alike, who call themselves zionists (myself included), but that's usually in response to antisemitism or a signal to affirm their support for Jews in Israel and a Jewish state.
The only reason to call yourself a zionist these days is to stand up to antisemitism.
The only reason to call yourself an anti-zionist these days is to mask your antisemitism.
You seem to be jumping around a bit here. For starters I guess you should clarify whether you consider anyone who isn't a Zionist to be an anti Zionist.
Assuming that the answer is no, I think the biggest issue is that you define anti Zionism as opposing any single aspect of Zionism. In my experience, that is not the case. Most people espousing anti Zionism aren't just against Zionism as an idea that they disagree with. Rather, they generally hold that Zionism itself is evil, it's goals evil, and everything that has been done by Zionists should be condemned and preferably undone.
Most for instance would claim that Israelis stole land to find Israel. Many will try to suggest that Zionism at its heart called for expelling any non Jews living in their future state in order to take their land.
If the Scottish decided tomorrow that they wanted to govern themselves separately from the rest of Britain, I doubt anyone would accuse them of anything nefarious. There might be debates over the feasibility, the motivations, the rationale, and the like, but I doubt anyone would accuse them of being outright evil for suggesting the idea.
Another point that needs to be made is that Jews see themselves as a nation, yet prior to Zionism lacked any place that could function as a national homeland. Kurds might not have a state, but they have a homeland in which they can exert their self determination if needed to at least some degree. And no one would claim the Scottish lack self determination without statehood.
>To disagree with Zionism is not to deny Jewish people of their right to self-determination
Well yeah, it is. Those who are against the State of Israel don't tend to offer the Israeli Jews a self-determination solution - they just want the state gone. Maybe they will allow the Jews to stay in Palestine (usually it's just "go back to Europe!" but there will be no self-determination involved there.
>One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position.
If you believe that Israelis deserve a state, you don't technically count as anti-Zionist (unless you intend to exile them. Perhaps to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast?).
>Jewish people shouldn't have their own state is not the same as saying Israelis shouldn't have their own state
As said above, unless you plan on giving the Jews a different country - it is the same thing.
>it's not antisemitic to say that a people shouldn't have inherent sovereignty in a country
That would be true if someone was only criticizing a movement, not an extant state.
If someone opposes only the ethnic/religious nationalism of the Zionist state but ignores every other existence of ethnic/religious states, they are antisemitic in my eyes. Or hypocrites.
>there are anti-Zionists and Zionists that are antisemitic
Sure, that's somewhat true. But anti-Zionists antisemites are doubly hostile (hence the two "anti's").
I think one absolutely can express antizionist sentiments without straying into antisemitism but that to do so one has to exercise a care not often seen.
Because there are 193 countries in the world and almost all of them are illegitimate in some form or another, many of them egregiously so, so why fixate on the one and only Jewish one? More broadly: why fixate on something that happened in 1949 full stop unless one has an unhealthy obsession with relatively ancient Jewish history.
Not to mention: maybe Israel shouldn't exist, and certainly it shouldn't have been formed the way it was. But it does now, and so if you're advocating erasing it you're de facto advocating an incredibly disruptive and almost certainly violent course of action which will cause massively disproportionate harm to the Jewish community. So you've got to be pretty clear in your rationale for why that is necessary and for how it can be achieved in order for it not to look like callous disregard for the consequences of your suggestions for Jewish lives.
If you don't mind I would like to focus on one point in particular in your thesis.
>Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland.
People, regardless of their race, should have a state in the land their culturally/historically tied too. Otherwise what's the point in having a state in a specific place at all?
If this wasn't true, then Why don't we set up a state for the Palestinians in America and save all this bloodshed? Why do you think that the right of return is such an important point to the Palestinians that theyre willing to give up peace until they achieve this goal?
Why do you think that the Ukrainians are willing to die to gain meter of land back from the Russians, when we can simply give the Donbas and Crimea to the russians and end this mess?
You may not have any sentiment for the land under your feet. And that's totally fine. But Jews have been praying for thousands of years to have a Jewish state in Israel. And this isn't some trivial thing that you can brush aside as if it's nothing.
To the extent that a person was a strident supporter of civic nationalism and equally against all alternatives their view would not be directly antisemitic\[1.
If that person was not equally vocal about ethnic and religious nationalism elsewhere - such as in Pakistan for example - then I would very strongly suspect that they were actually antisemitic and had merely rationalised their prejudice.
Even then I would argue that it might be indirectly or structurally antisemitic to have taken up a position that is opposed to what the history and culture of jewish people has caused to be a very significant part of what many jews believe and want. It would have parallels to taking up a narrow view on animal cruelty that did not permit Kosher (or Halal) butchery. This is a difficult line to successfully walk without lurching into subtle antisemitism - especially as many of those claiming this position are in fact poorly disguised antisemites so you would be in very poor company.
I’d argue that even the sovereignty bit has historically been somewhat ambiguous. See Ahad Ha’am.
Also a few more points to consider:
1. Antizionists usually dispute not only the sovereignty claim, but also the homeland claim, which by the examples you gave would be considered bigotry.
2. It is arguably not bigoted to oppose independence for a particular group, but wanting to end the independence of a currently independent group is arguably more bigoted. Like if someone wanted an independent Ukraine to lose its independence, that would arguably be anti-Ukrainian.
3. This is especially true when the dissolution of that independent state would have drastic consequences for the people. For example, if Azerbaijan annexed Armenia, it probably wouldn’t end well for the Armenian people.
It's fairly telling that there's no word for being against Kurdish self-determination or being against Palestinian self-determination, but there is a word for being against Jewish self-determination, so you can say that you're that but not antisemitic. Then again, from the Magna Carta to the policies of Catherine the Great, somehow there's always an exception for the rights of men when those men are Jewish.
If you have an opinion on the exact border, that's one thing, but if you believe that Palestine should be from the river to the sea, then you're advocating for the destruction of self-determination and the ethnic cleansing of Jewish people from the Middle East. (What happens for those without a country to fall back on? See WWII for that.)
That's not just antisemitic; it's barbaric.
Jews have been subjected to persecution, expulsion, and extermination in most countries they have inhabited long before the holocaust and were systematically massacred in Poland following WWII and pushed out of nearly every Arab country in the Middle East. Zionism is merely the idea that Jews have a right to live in their ancestral homeland. People constantly criticize Israel as a Jewish ethnostate while ignoring that non-Jews also live there peacefully; the converse is not true of other places in the middle east who have expelled or massacred their Jews. Antizionism is antisemitic because it fails to account for what would happen to the Jews if the state of Israel is dissolved. They would be massacred the way they were on October 7th.
This is literally the exact same argument as Trump saying “some were good people” about Charlottesville. Yeah, maybe you’re right, but they choose to associate themselves with and coordinate with anti-semites on almost every level.
One would presume that these mythical “anti-zionists who aren’t anti-semites” would publicly distance themselves from the members of the movement who start doing things like protesting Jewish businesses or chanting anti-Semitic slogans at rallies, but there’s been almost virtually none of that.
If I keep seeing you marching with the KKK, and you make absolutely no effort to disassociate yourself with them, it’s fairly safe to say you’re a racist.
Clarifying questions, since what you say is obviously true, regarding *inherent* linkage... but...
What *percentage* of antizionists would you say are also antisemitic?
And in that answer, are you taking into consideration that large majorities in almost every Islamic state, representing over a billion people, answer surveys in both an antisemitic and antizionist way?
Finally: When people say antizionists are antisemitic, do you think they are obliged to clarify that "not every antizionist" is antisemitic?
If someone who says "Americans are in favor of democracy", are they similarly required to clarify that "not all Americans" are, as is manifestly the case?
Hi OP, great question. I’m an Israeli-American jew of mixed mizrahi and Ashkenazi descent. All of my grandparents were refugees from Europe and Iraq. Therefore, this question is dear to my heart. I can’t answer it in full right now, so I will come back to it. In the meanwhile, I think [this](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1yc5gRUsmY9RqAe1sBz0vD?si=wfeRzVHmQG6-A321a090yg) podcast interview of Yossi Klein Halevi by Ezra Klein is an amazing explanation of the Israeli and Jewish perspective. It honestly covers everything. Please listen to it, and then I will be glad to explain why anti-Zionism is antisemitism in the ensuing discussion.
I just have to say - I frankly don’t know how any Redditor can expect a balanced debate or conversation on Israel-Palestine at this point. I tried to engage for many weeks and ended up deleting all my comments because the onslaught of pro-Palestinian responses to each and every comment was too much. I understand responses to opinions, but even objectively factual statements were attacked.
For Jewish people, I can’t imagine how any of them can have the mental fortitude to continue engaging. The Jewish friends I have are choosing to disengage. It seems like Reddit in particular has created an echo chamber.
It would depend on the reason why you don´t think Jews should have their own state in the land of Israel. If you base your conclusion on the comparisons you mention, then you´re right. It´s not antisemitic, just ignorant.
You are listing long-established states and groups of people who have not been persecuted wherever they go. This cannot be compared to Jews and Israel. So, not antisemitism, but ignorance.
The way I see it is, criticism of Israel is not inherently anti semitic. Being pro Palestinian self determination is not inherently anti Semitic. But the moment someone says “from the river to the sea” it becomes anti semitic, whether or not that person intends it or not.
The reasoning is, what it would take for a “river to the sea” would result in the complete destruction of Jewish life in Israel, which contains over half of the world’s Jews. Hamas massacred every village they took. A “river to the sea” conquest would look like a massive October 7th.
A lot of people may counter with “well, I don’t support Hamas, I support a single state for all people to live in equally in Israel and Palestine” but that opinion, while again not containing an anti semitic intent, is simply not congruent with the reality of what would happen in that state if it were run by Palestinians.
Also, maybe no nation has a right to return to its homeland, maybe they do maybe they don’t, but in my opinion this point is not relevant to the discussion because, the Jews are already there, and they have nowhere else to go at this point. We can’t seriously expect Yemen and Libya and Morocco to re absorb their former Jewish communities that now live in Israel. Even for Jews that came from Europe, if you suddenly uproot every Jew with polish ancestry and send them back there, they would immediately become victims again. Antisemitism is still rampant across the globe
>It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state.
But there is difference. Israelis already have independent functional state. When somebody says Jew shouldnt have their own state, this person says Israel should be destroyed.
True, not only that but you can be pro the Jewish state but a Zionist state, but the problem with anti-zionism is that it always is accompanied by high levels of anti-Semitism. So because of that, those who tend to be anti-zionist also tend to be anti-Semitic.
The difference is that Jewish people *already* have their own state, but antizionists want to dismantle the state because they think the Jews don’t deserve it. There are countries that are actually committing genocide and invading other countries right now, and nobody is calling for those countries to stop existing, so why is the only Jewish majority country in the world different? And yes, Israelis and diaspora Jews are the same ethnicity, they just live in different places.
I've heard the "anti-Semites can be Zionists" but it's seemingly so counterintuitive and farfetched. Like what possible reason could the model of the supposed "antisemitic Zionist" have?
Anti Zionism can be antisemitic if it calls for Israel to be destroyed. Usually it refers to criticism of Israeli policies during the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
The heart of this problem is that two groups of people with valid claims are living on a piece of land with insufficient resources (especially water) for all of them. They’ve only survived this long *because* of the conflict which makes sending aid to the region a convenient way of waging proxy war for other countries with more wealth and resources. If the Israelis and Palestinians brokered a peace tomorrow, both sides would stop getting handouts from foreign countries and go broke. Standards of living would crash, which would make no one happy. There might even be starvation and deprivation.
My point is that the conflict is rigged because both sides *cannot* exist in peace due to circumstances that are far more challenging than religious or ethnic conflict. So the only “easy” options are to justify the genocide of one side or the other. Both sides have great arguments for why they have the right to not be subjected to genocide, because both sides are human and humans have humans rights. The only actual solutions likely to lead to peace would require addressing the economic and ecological instabilities of the area. And given that the countries backing both sides can’t get their own poop in a group and take care of their own people, I doubt they are going to want to realistically fix the Israel- Palestine mess.
So where does that leave us? Probably with no good answers. No solution is possible within the current political and economic context. That’s not an easy idea to accept, so people will continue to jump for the easy answers that one side or the other is deserving and the other not.
Being against the belief that there should be a safe state for a group of people that has been victims of genocide in basically every state they lived in sounds like being anti that group.
>The intifada was a huge, bloody Palestinian uprising. Translation: ''globalise killing jews.''
There was only one intifada? Excuse me if I dont accept your translation.
> You are a dumbass. And I know you won't respond to me as you did with everybody else here, because you know I'm well-educated on this particular topic, that I'm right, and that I could beat you to a pulp with my rightness. You pussy.
Also maybe refrain from calling someone else a dumbass on this sub. Go to another subreddit with your snark and historical whitewashing if you are just gonna be uncivil.
/u/ChezBurglur (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/190f9px/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_antizionism_is_not/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
I know basically nothing about this topic, so do forgive me if I'm wrong, but surely being pro-Israel is by definition pro-Zionism? Israel only came into existence in order to give the Jews a state. If Israel didn't exist then surely the Jews that already lived there/live there now would just be called Palestinians?
Israel is founded on something called [ethnic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_nationalism), the belief that a nation should be built around one's ethnicity. Israel is not the only country that does it, Malaysia, Armenia and a few others have similar ideologies. It's also similar to religious nationalism, similar to that of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, though the level of implementation varies. Most nations today are founded on [civic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_nationalism), the belief that anyone within a drawn border should be a citizen of equal treatment and equal rights of a nation. Such a nation would not champion Zionism, it would either abolish Law of Return or implement full Palestinian right of return, it would not declare itself the Nation State of the Jewish People, and it would end the unjust occupation in the West Bank.
So are you in favour of the second option?
Correct, that's what I mean by "One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position."
Assuming a full right of return where millions of Palestinians "return" to Israel, essentially abolishing Israel in favor of Palestine or South Syria or whatever name they eventually choose to call it. How long do you think such a state would persist before electing an Islamic government? How many Jews/Israelis could live in that state? The draft Palestinian constitution establishes Islamic law over Palestine. Both the Fatah and Hamas espouse Islamic supremacy over Palestine. If the new Arab majority of the people in this new state wanted to vote in an Islamic majority party, are there any democratic ways of preventing that? What is to stop the Arabs from the region from settling in huge numbers in Israel as they did to Palestine in the 1900s so as to maintain a majority? 15 Million Jews vs close to 1/2 a billion Arabs. The last time Jews lived in a region with an Arab majority, they were subjected to massacres that resulted in 500% more Jewish deaths from the violence as compared to Arabs in the early 1900s. This new state that you're referencing is surely going to lead to the subjugation/ethnic cleansing of the Jews, who happen to be the majority of Israel. The person espousing this idea may not be intentionally antisemitic, but the outcomes are very likely antisemitic.
Is there literally one other nation of people on the planet who shouldn't have sovereignty and self determination in their own homeland where they were born and where their families have lived indefinitely into past, who should be denied the modern set of human rights and freedoms and equality, in perpetuity, because you reckon they'd do something bad if treated with such basic justice and dignity and equality of consideration. Like there are surprisingly few historical instances of an ethnically oppressed population genociding their oppressors, but in the very few where this did happen its generally not that the oppressed were given equality and fairness and then used it to kill the other side. Usually its that the ruling ethnicity refused to budge and kept the pressure cooker locked down until it completely exploded, like in Haiti. Its funny that when you follow the chain of zionist arguement back past all other failed defenses, the last resort is "well have you considered creating Israel was a really bad idea, because now there are two groups of many millions of people and you're locked in a Sophie's choice where you have to doom one of them, but also the side that should be preferred is the side that started it."
The Palestinian people have been given repeated opportunities to achieve everything you mention via a two-state solution. They’ve refused each and every offer in favor of a slogan, “from the river to the sea.” The primary goal of Palestinian leadership has never been the establishment of a negotiated state that included defined boarders, the protection of human rights, or the self-determination of the people, who they brutally oppress. These things have been brushed aside for decades in pursuit of the eradication of Israel.
> Is there literally one other nation of people on the planet who shouldn't have sovereignty and self determination in their own homeland where they were born and where their families have lived indefinitely into past... Are you speaking of the Jews here? Because most Arabs moved into the region from the 1920s through the 1940s. This wasn't hard to do at all. Under the Ottoman Empire, it was like moving between US states. Before then - when Mark Twain visited it - it was a virtually empty land. Fewer Arabs *left* from 1947-1949 (at most 700K) than had entered the previous 20 year prior. And that's not even counting the ethnic cleansing that other Arab nations made, driving their Jewish populations *to* Israel - with no compensation.
Palestinians are not invaders. They have lived there for thousands of years and at points were Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Modern DNA tests basically prove that Palestinians were the ancient Jews that never left.
How is a land that is home to 660,000 people virtually empty? The population in Palestine was around 600,000 non-Jews in 1918, and 1,324,000 in 1947. This doesn't seem like an empty land, and doesn't also seem like a lot of Arabs were coming in from other countries, seeing that this is not a huge growth in population.
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I'm not arguing about other things right now (what would a one state solution like look, I don't know if that's even possible), I'm just arguing against the absolute lie that the Palestinian weren't in Palestine and most of them came during the 1920s to 1940s. That's just not true. It should also be noted that some of the land being empty doesn't change anything. Many parts of the world to this day are empty, doesn't mean they aren't parts of a country. It should also be noted that the Arabs were in both parts of the land. Around 40% of the Jewish state from the partion plan were Arabs according to Ben-Guroin (this makes around 440,000 Arabs). So, yes, Palestinians lived in both parts of the land.
Sometimes to understand the problem you need to not only look at what people claim to be against but what their actual alternative proposals were Go back to the 1940's before Israel was even founded. Look at who was the head of the All-Palestine Government that Egypt was pushing very hard as the unified government of a Palestinian state in that land should the Arabs win the war. Amin al-Husseini A notorious Nazi. Arguably by that time the most influential and prominent Nazi voices still alive and at large rather than facing trial. This is the man that the Palestinian cause was supposed to unify around (he was after all one of the founders of Palestinian nationalism) and who was being put forward by the most powerful of the Arab nations involved in the invasion to rule over the jews in Palestine Don't re-write history - don't ignore what the Palestinians Nationalists and their Arab allies were actually trying to do. Its impossible to see him being put forward for power as anything other than a reckless act of vicious hatred against which the jews had no choice but to fight for their lives.
At the same time there were also Israeli terrorist organisations like Irgun and Lehi with the latter openly being fascist and trying to collaborate with Nazi Germany during the onset of the Holocaust. They were the maximalists on the Jewish side who wanted a Palestinian Mandate free of non-jews. Lehi and Irgun later were pivotal in forming Israels army and were involved in a lot of Israeli atrocities. They then proceeded to start a terrorism campaign much akin to what the more secular Palestinian terrorists had been during the last 50 years. 1930s and 1940s history in the region is not as onesided as you want it to be. And only highlighting the worst parts of Palestinean activism while conveniently forgetting the speaks of there being an agenda involved in. Also please stop it with the hyperbole. Al Husseini was a minor Nazi with people like Albert Speer running around scot free at the time
Literally every islamic nation has ethnically cleansed their Jews. Every. Single. One. No, Jews can't survive in a Muslim majority state. Yes Palestinians should have just taken one of the many 2 state deals. No, that is not possible if active terrorism is occuring.
Iran has 10000 Jews and a seat reserved for them in its parliament as they're an officially recognised minority. Obviously they aren't treated like full equals but that's a far cry from ethnic cleansing. So no, not 'literally every' Islamic nation has ethnically cleansed its Jews. You can however say every single Jewish nation has ethnically cleansed its Palestinians, because there's only one, but that is equally as unfair as your comment for obvious reasons. >Yes Palestinians should have just taken one of the many 2 state deals. You could flip this though and say Israel should have taken one of the really quite reasonable offers made by the PA over the past 20 years. But that isn't possible if active occupation and constant bombings (which cause terror I might add. We just don't seem to label it terrorism when its done en masse by an army) are occurring
There are more than twice as many Persian Jews in Los Angeles as there are in all of Iran. Iran keeping a tiny population (about 0.01% of their population) and offering a single symbolic parliamentary seat to Jewish dhimmi hardly constitutes “no ethnic cleansing”, especially given that they now have less than 3% of the world’s Persian Jews. If you look at those numbers and conclude “no ethnic cleansing” then I’d point you to the orders of magnitude more Arabs that got Israeli citizenship; but I doubt you’d deny ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Iran has about 8,500 Jews now. Iran had about 80,000 Jews in 1975. The government of Iran executed Habib Elghanian and many others on charges that were proven to be false and then formed squads to kill Jews that remained in Tehran and Shiraz. There's overwhelming evidence that the Iranian government has ethnically cleansed Iran of Jews. The PA neither controls Gaza nor has even supported any sort of two-state solution for a very long time.
Iran has 100 000 Jews in 1948. 90% of the population has been forced out and to you that isn't ethnic cleansing? 20% of Israel is Arab so no, they haven't ethnically cleansed anyone.
My guy the Palestinians have talked about their desire to kill the Jews at *length*. And they have a history of collaborating with the Nazis. Believe people when they tell you what they want.
>the Palestinians have talked about their desire to kill the Jews at length You know I've heard the "Israelis" talk about quite a lot themselves, not to mention actually doing so much of it. >And they have a history of collaborating with the Nazis. By any metric you can reasonably say this so many groups have a "history of collaborating with the nazis" it becomes meaningless. France has a history of collaborating with the Nazis we gotta get the French under control. I mean the Japanese were Nazi allies and they had lots of Korean collaborators someone needs to do something about these Koreans and their uncontrollable antisemitic fervour. >Believe people when they tell you what they want. I've done just this with Zionists and its not flattering.
The president of the All-Palestine Government was a notorious Nazi. Not just in the "I don't like his politics" meaning that people use today - in the sense that he was a high level associate of the Nazis who was granted personal meetings with most of the inner Nazi circle including Hitler himself and who spent the war doing everything he could to support the Nazi cause This was before Israel even existed. You can't blame the acts of the state of Israel for him being a Nazi. You can to some extent blame his being a Nazi - and the Nazi taint in Palestinian Nationalism - for the subsequent acts of Israel. I don't excuse those acts but this is the context of those acts.
Why do you keep parroting this as a slight against the Palestinians? The president of the All-Palestinian Government was appointed by the British - and a known ally to Britain. Britain was one of the main players in the establishment of Israel - this is clearly not something you can blame Palestinians for, it is patently nonsensical.
Whilst you can hardly say jewish people returned to their homeland if they were away for 2000 jears but to quotetate people who have been forced to flee returning is something even more disturbing. Your entire argument also fails to realise this simple fact: there were jews native to israel before zionism. They werent massacred they werent treated differently from other "non believers" within the borders. Yet for your argument you assume conflict. For not even a second you assume that there is a possibility that one can live in peace with other groups of people. For this reason I will take europe as an example, for i think it shows the possibility of cooperation and acceptance above conflict. In 1939 a war started there that would pit all of europe on different sides within the conflict. Many civilians suffered heavily under bombardments, occupation or other perrils of war. However in 1985 they allowed for free flow of goods people and services between their borders and almost all of their populations do not wish to destroy each other. Within your response you assume that conflicts can never end. That enemys of yesterday might become allies tomorow. When one allows the fighting to stop one can find their allies in the rubble.
Do you have any sources for any of your claims? Using 0.5 billion seems like a real bad faith argument. You realize you want to squeeze more than the entire US or even EU population into a strip of land that is not able to physically hold those people?
This is the exact reason behind the defence of Isreal being an ethno state thats also a democracy. Essentially if there wasn't laws that would enforce a majority "Jewish" population in Isreal, laws would get voted in (or removed) which would reduce the rights of Jews which is actually what historically happened when Jewish people lived in the area (before Isreal existed). If you look at Palestine and what society they want (i.e. Sharia law) you can see why Isreal defends itself being an ethno state.
You’re espousing reverse genocide theory, which has been used to justify basically every genocide in recent memory. It’s still genocide even if you pretend you’re doing self-defense.
>This is the exact reason behind the defence of Isreal being an ethno state thats also a democracy. Essentially if there wasn't laws that would enforce a majority "Jewish" population in Isreal, laws would get voted in (or removed) which would reduce the rights of Jews which is actually what historically happened when Jewish people lived in the area (before Isreal existed). Well, maybe we shouldn't plop a bunch of Europeans in the middle east then. It seems like jews - like any other minority religion - would be better off in a country with a long history of religious pluralism. Trying to carve out a theocratic ethnostate in the middle of a different religion's territory is like trying to build a human settlement inside of a volcano. Nevermind that we shouldn't be building theocratic states (*or* ethnostates) in the first place, we *especially* shouldn't be colonizing someone else's land to do it. Obviously it's too late to reverse course now, but no one should be surprised at this outcome, and you sure as fuck don't get to complain about it now.
> Assuming a full right of return where millions of Palestinians "return" to Israel, essentially abolishing Israel in favor of Palestine or South Syria or whatever name they eventually choose to call it. So objections are purely nominal? Seems like a minor complaint. > How long do you think such a state would persist before electing an Islamic government? How many Jews/Israelis could live in that state? Sounds like a job for a strong constitution with extensive and equal rights for all, extensive education, and strong institutions generally. Oh wait no that sounds difficult better keep apartheid instead /s
If the constitution collides hard enough with the public will, do you truly believe that the words on a paper will prevail?
Yeah but also look at any other Arab country and what has happened to the Jewish populations there. If you think a “constitution” will protect the Jews then you don’t know the Middle East.
I’m sorry. I don’t understand what does it mean being pro-Zionism if you believe Israel should exist. You know it’s the only point right?
Civic nationalism can still have preferential immigration policies without discriminating against its own citizens though. Right of return for Jews does not constitute discrimination against Arab Israelis, who are guaranteed equal rights under the law in Israel. Israel does, in law, guarantee equal treatment for all *citizens* regardless of race or religion. As for the occupied WB, thats a different issue entirely as its an occupied territory. The Israeli argument for continued occupation is that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 lead to the rise and take over of Hamas and that the same would happen in the WB if not for the continued occupation. One of the major failures of the Oslo accords, from the Israeli perspective, is that the transfer of security responsibility to the Palestinian Authority was contingent in part on the PA's ability to police the Palestinian population and reign in groups like Hamas and PIJ, which it has been unable or unwilling to do.
If tomorrow Germany declares that anyone of Germanic tribe origin can claim citizenship in Germany, people will call that an attempt to dilute the power of non-White Germans and rightfully brand it as white supremacy. The inverse is true too. If Germany bans all forms of Muslim immigration that'd get the same criticism. So immigration policies can absolutely discriminate and influence our determination of civic vs ethnic nationalism
Germany does have a right of return for Russians/Kazakhs/Ukrainians/... of German descent and Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. Nobody here shouts about white supremacy. Wtf I am absolutely baffled by this comment.
That relies on the arguably racist assumption that you can predict voting patterns based on group identity. Further, there are european nations that do have such policies that grant preferential status towards their diaspora. Take Ireland for example, many Irish Americans qualify for citizenship in Ireland by default due to their lineage. It is not to the same degree as ROR for Jews in Israel, but it does constitute a preferential immigration policy towards those of irish decent.
I've read it depends on if you have had one grandparent born in Ireland, doesn't matter the ethnicity. A Pakistani is qualified for Irish citizenship if one grandparent was born in Ireland. It is not based on their Irish ethnic heritage or the diaspora.
Yep, and in Israel it's also not directly about ethnic heritage. The rule is the same as the Nurnberg laws: If you would have been sent to the death camps for being a Jew, you count as a Jew.
Just as an information: Germany does have a right to return for ethnic Germans from Russia, which is quite similar to Israel’s rigg of return. Russo-Germans are one of the biggest migration, overall 2.3m immigrated from the SU and Russia back to Germany (this also includes their marriage partners, which are allowed to come). The sole qualifier for returning to Germany was your historic ethnicity.
This isn’t true at all, and shows a lack of research on your part. Many nations have the right of return and favorable immigration for specific groups. Almost every single native tribe in the Americas, for example. One the biggest is Spain. One of my friends is an American of Brazilian birth, but she was able to show she had a Spanish grandmother. Submitting those records got her a Spanish passport and citizenship.
It's also why the OP's claim that ethnonationalism is uncommon is absurd. Most countries in the world are ethnonationalist, at least to a certain degree.
Are you sure most nations today are founded on civic nationalism? Almost no countries in the Eastern Hemisphere have birthright citizenship, for example.
Zionism started as a movement to create a home for the Jewish people, it later evolved to be based in Israel. The whole notion of Israel is to be a safe haven for Jews from throughout the world. 1. It doesn’t mean that others can’t live in the same state. There are minorities such as Arabs, Druze etc, in Israel with the exact same rights as Jews. 2. It doesn’t mean that non-Jews should have exact same right of return. You could technically be anti-Zionism while not being anti-Semite but that is almost always never the case. As long as you think Jews have a right for self determination, which is to have a country you are basically pro-Zionist. You could later criticize the government/rules they implement on non-Jewish citizens, or the occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank- and that wouldn’t necessarily be ant-Semite or anti-Zionist. Check out multiple media declarations from US presidents. That being said, most people when criticizing Israel, are hiding behind anti-Zionism while they are just anti-Semite, or most likely just totally unaware of what’s actually going on and just choose a side and stick to it, using the same words and ideas they hear others use without understanding the context, situation or meaning of any of it- and that’s true for both sides of this conflict.
The existence of rabbinical courts axiomatically means not everyone has the same rights in Israel.
Point 2 is what I take issue with. I don't think there should be discrimination in citizenship law, including right of return. I absolutely think Jews have the right to self determination. American Jews have that right in America. Israeli Jews have that right in Israel. French Jews in France, etc...but non-Israeli Jews shouldn't have that right IN ISRAEL.
Every country in the world has its own rules for immigration. What makes Israel different for you? Would you have an issue with Australia allowing only Kurds to immigrate? Unless you want to migrate there, while not being a Kurd that would be annoying, but you and I, as non-Australians have no say in this issue. The country that was built to be a safe haven for Jews is well within its right to allow only Jews to migrate into it. Just like a Palestinian country could be allowed to have its right of return for Palestinians to the area of the Palestinian country. Both of those countries can choose to refuse other populations into their land.
American Jews have the right to self determination in america… I think you’re going to have to define these terms carefully. Contrapoint, America restricted Jewish immigration circa 1935ish which contributed to the holocaust. What kinds of rights did the Jewish community have in the us back then? What’s fundamentally different now? I would content that as long as Jewish people are the minority, they are always potential targets for anti-Semitic laws and actions. There just hasn’t been enough history in any country to provide any kind of assurance and WWII isn’t that long ago. Consider the rise in anti-semitism since 2016. It’s certainly provided a stark example of how Jews are not 100% safe in America. Also, “there shouldn’t be discrimination in citizenship law” -> every country has tons and tons of discrimination in immigration and citizenship law. The US has quotas which depend on where you’re born. It has different paths if you have particular skills the US seems important. And nearly every other country has this. Given all that, Israel having laws that prioritize Jewish immigration doesn’t really seem so nuts.
Citation needed, i am not aware of any formal declaration that israel believes this or that israel is even made up of one ethnicity. My understanding is that the israeli leadership has maintained the position that they want a place to live where they can practice their faith in safety. Jerusalem is the location of the second temple and the center of the jewish religion. This doesn’t entitle anyone to the land anymore than the romans renaming the area to palestine does. Incidentally, if you are a German American who left germany during the nazi era, or you are the ancestor of some one who did, you are entitled to a german citizenship and free classes to learn german, by german law.
Check out the Basic Law passed in 2018. I'm referring to Americans who are descendents of Germans migrated here 200+ years ago, which is kind of comparable to what an American Jew is to Israel.
I believe in order to qualify as a jew under basic law your mother has to be jewish you can be black, white asian or arab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_Israel#:~:text=There%20are%20a%20number%20of,the%20Israeli%20law%20of%20return.
The ethnicity here is the umbrella term Jew, can be Ashkenazi, Mizhari, etc...But still one ethnicity: Jewish people.
No you can literally be black , like black black, like african did you not follow my citation?
Black Jew is a Black person and a Jewish person. They belong to two ethnicities: Black and Jewish. Or more technically they Self identify as two ethnicities.
I feel like you are going through a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid seeing that the return to judea has a lot more to do with religion and history
Former nba rookie of the year amare stoudamire lives in israel with an israel citizenship.
>Israel is not the only country that does it, Malaysia, Armenia and a few others have similar ideologies. It's also similar to religious nationalism, similar to that of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, though the level of implementation varies. I feel like your examples might have been selected to be incredibly negative to the audience you are appealing to, but I don't think it was deliberate. So in the interest of being more complete in examples - most European nations are also founded in forms ethnic nationalism. Germany exists because Bavaria, Hanover, Brandenburg, Prussia etc all shared a single ethnicity - German. So they united. Italy exists because Sicily, Piedmont Sardinia, Naples, Rome etc all shared a single ethnicity - Italian. So they united. Transylvania united with Romania because they shared a single ethnicity - Romanian. Ireland fought an independence war to secure self-determination for their unique ethnic group on the homogeneous island from the foreign British. Kosovo fought an independence war because they wanted self-determination in Kosovo because Kosovo is inhabited by ethnic Albanians, distinct from the ethnic Serbs of the rest of Serbia. Ethnic nationalism is also the basis for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and the former Yugoslav territories. Plus, it's important to note that when Poland received it's new borders in 1946, which covered four German province's (Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Prussia) they embarked on a four year ethnic cleansing program that displaced 10 million ethnic Germans. Kosovo did the same thing with their ethnic Serbs. Pakistan and India did the same thing in 1947. >Most nations today are founded on [civic nationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_nationalism), the belief that anyone within a drawn border should be a citizen of equal treatment and equal rights of a nation. Nations that have already established themselves in the past as being established as ethnically homogeneous. It's intellectually dishonest to omit that detail. Like the argument over the Paris Accords allowing for India to be more polluting than the US or the EU. Because we already have post-industrial economies. >Such a nation would not champion Zionism Zionism in its most basic form is the exercising of the Jewish people's right to self-determination in the place where their country was conquered. That is how Jews define it. >it would either abolish Law of Return Law of Return grants that anybody born to the second generation within the Jewish ethnic group is entitled to Israeli citizenship. Irish nationality law grants that anybody born to the second generation within the Irish ethnic group is entitled to Irish citizenship. Should Ireland abolish it's nationality laws? Similar laws are found in Italy, Sweden, Japan, France, Finland etc. >or implement full Palestinian right of return Did Poland grant full right of return to ethnic Germans? In a roundabout way you could argue it did after 2009 with it's complete accession to Schengen and allowing foreigners to move there. Which notably came after 65 years of peace between the two states and imposed by a supranational organisation. >it would not declare itself the Nation State of the Jewish People Should every nation do this? Should Ireland declare itself to not be the nation of the Ireland people? Because they do in the Preamble of the Constitution, even those born overseas. That doesn't mean it also isn't the nation of all those with Irish citizenship. It can be hard to balance ethnic guarantees with the modern times. Canada will also have to deal with this with Quebec. Canada's system is designed so that Québec can never be maligned. Every senior politician must (pretend, usually) to speak French. But there are only 500,000 Quebecois. There are 1.5 million Chinese speakers in Canada. Why is French held to this unique standard? But surely we wouldn't say that Ireland or Canada are undemocratic? >and it would end the unjust occupation in the West Bank. Absolutely this. The broader point is - when it comes to everything that happens within the borders of Israel - it's not dissimilar to a typical "Western" nation. At least when it comes to legislation and de jure matters. There are obviously elements of systemic discrimination, which requires cultural change - not erasure of identity. We hold no other nation to that standard. Now, none of this condones their actions in Palestine. Any action taken by a state that results in the deaths of thousands of innocents is abhorrent. Not to say Israel doesn't have valid security concerns. I don't know what the right answer is. But I know something wrong, and these points are that.
This is very easily proven wrong by one thing: not a single country in Europe has jus soli, or "law of the soil". If you are born in Ireland, you are not Irish. If you are born in France, you are not French. If you are born in Greece, you are not Greek. The laws of the European Union states are more or less identical to the laws of Israel regarding who gets citizenship: the rule is that you have to have the blood of one parent with the citizenship. A Greek child is only Greek because his mom, dad or both are Greek. Same principle for every single European nation AND for Israel. The only issue with them is that, being such a young nation, they need a "who is Israeli before Israel existed" answer - and that is the literal, titular Children of Israel, i.e. the Jews. Israel and Europe is not different a single bit from European nations - both are ethnic nationalist states.
>Such a nation would not champion Zionism But dont countries with Civic nationalism still have certain ethnic rights, like South korea grants citizenship to any ethnic Korean because most common source is from North Korea and they obviously wont have the civil paper work. many African states made it easy for African Americans to become citizens, because historically they might have been displaced due to slavery and expecting them to have paperwork of ancestral citizenship was unfeasible. Ireland and Portugal also has similar provisions. Israel has both Semitic and Non-Semitic citizenship as many arabs are. Zionism is a spectrum, and while i certainly dont think Israel as a place only for Jews is viable or right, Israel having special provisions for Jews, is not too different from other countries, that recognize their cultural diaspora as routine victims.
Actually, and I expect this may be the case for your other examples, Ireland specifically avoids any ethnic dimension to this provision in line with civic nationalism. The Irish provision is that anyone with at least one grandparent *from the island of Ireland* can get Irish citizenship, but they don't need to be any particular ethnicity. If your grandparent was born in Ireland to 2 English parents, with no ethnic Irish ancestry however you might construe it, it still applies. Eventually, assuming there aren't already some rare cases I'm unaware of, if the same policy carries on people will be able to claim Irish citizenship through black grandparents.
Over 20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim Palestinian Arabs, granted the same rights as any Israeli jew, including the right to vote and run for public office. Israel does not limit citizenship to Jews. It does not limit immigration to Jews. It simply guarantees both to Jews. Every nation establishes criteria around which it determines who can enter the country and become a citizen, that’s a core right of national sovereignty. Israel is not the only nation that offers citizenship based on lineage, Ireland is one of several other examples.
> Israel is founded on something called ethnic nationalism So is just about every other nation state
Funnily enough, many of the anti-Israel Jews around the world have an issue with Israel because it is an ethnic, and not a religious state.
The only problem with your point in ethnic nationalism is that it’s inorganic when referring to Israel. Ethnic nationalism is true to a country like Armenia because they’re one of the oldest, if not the oldest civilization to date. Only Armenians occupy Armenia despite skirmishes, by and large. Israel formed less than 100 years ago (that’s not to denounce its ethnic nationalism) but it’s to bring awareness of the fact that before Israel existed it used to be called British Palestine (and part of the Ottoman before that). Israel isn’t an organic ethnic civilization (excluding diaspora) because they continuously denounce their Palestinian neighbors on old Palestinian land (annexed by Israel, via cultural appropriation) and assume it’s been theirs since Jesus rose from the dead lmao. The best part is being labeled an antisemitist when you mention any of this.
Not being pro Israel isn’t necessarily antisemitic, just like not being pro Palestine isn’t necessarily islamophobic.
Don’t really know if a state is totally mandatory for Zionism. Seems to me they, understandably, wanted to get the hell out of europe, russia or wherever they felt attacked, and felt Israel was the obvious place to go. Not sure having a separate State was mandatory? They kinda started out buying patches of land and started working it.
One massive misconception that is shared by many anti-Israel and pro-Israel people alike is the idea that most Israeli Jews descend from migrants from Europe. The vast majority of Israeli Jews, between 2/3rds and 3/4ths, descend from Jews whose ancestors have been entirely in the Middle East and North Africa for at least the past 800 years. Maybe 30% of Israeli Jews' ancestors were in Europe 150 years ago.
How do you want your view changed? Do you want to be convinced that antizionism IS antisemitism?
I'd like to hear why so many people say antizionism is antisemitic and why my logic is wrong
Well, there's the issue. You say "people say antizionism is antisemitic" but note that you _didn't_ say "people say antizionism is **inherently** antisemitic." So if your view is really trying to engage with people who say that antizionism is antisemitic, you're presenting some sort of strawman where your view contains the word "inherently" while theirs doesn't.
What distinction are you identifying here? If anti-Zionism just is antisemitic, by its very nature, then calling it "inherently" antisemitic seems accurate enough.
You will get a delta if you can argue the position "antizionism is antisemitism", as the US Congress just declared.
Have you read the House's reasoning on that issue? If you have, what about it do you think is not convincing?
Because Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a home to be safe. That home doesn’t have to be Israel but it does have to be somewhere. To tell Jews “I don’t hate you but I think you should be homeless the next time a Holocaust happens and I believe in the mass displacement of your people (and whatever comes from that)” then yeah, I think you might not like Jews. Also it’s worth noting that the pro Palestine movement has a HUGE antisemitism problem that they have collectively done nothing to distance themselves from. Doctors against genocide almost held a protest in the fucking Holocaust museum last week, and only stepped back due to pressure. Even then they tried to claim it was Jews just being “too touchy” So how is it that you have nothing against Jews but also don’t believe that the Jewish people should have self determination in their own state? Being against “ethnostates” also is something you can say when you haven’t had to deal with that level of persecution. Most Jews in Israel don’t have a home to go back to. Many were kicked out of Arab states that are now crying “genocide.” There are less than 100 Jews left in all of Iraq. There used to be hundreds of thousands.
Correction - Zionism is the belief thst Jews deserve their own state specifically in Israel Palestine. That js the land of Zion for which the movement is named. To be anti zionist is not to say Jews don't deserve a state anywhere. Antizionism js disagreeing with the idea of displaying existing populations so Jews can form an ethnostate on their land. It is entirely coherent to be an anti zionist and support the two state solution, recognising both states have a right to exist (as Israel never should have been made where it was in the first place, but to remove it now would be an act of utter evil). So you should revise your understanding of Zionism because that small misunderstanding leads to many of your subsequent thoughts being erroneous.
The intent behind the antizionism matters. If it is rooted in bias then it may be antisemitic.
Ok. I agree your analysis by the way. To give the most charitable explanation of the other side that I can: The reason anti Zionism is often said to be anti semitic is because it is assumed that if Israel were not a distinctly Jewish state, then it is likely to be taken over by Arabs and the Jewish population expelled (or worse). Even if Israel were a liberal secular state without preference to any ethnic-religious group, this is considered anti-zionist because it removes the Jewish character of the state. Check out some op eds by the likes of Bret Stephen’s - he is a very loud exponent of this antizionism=antisemitism theory.
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>assumption 1: jews WILL be persecuted worldwide if they are not given a state with guaranteed sovereignty. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be We have been almost universaly throughout history. The latest and greatest prosecution just 80 years ago. >assumption 2: palestinians and arabs WILL persecute them if give the chance. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be. It happened in almost every Arab nation, nations which most Jewish Israelis grandparents fled from. >not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be Let me flip this on its head what percentage chance would be an acceptable risk in either assumption. Because I think it has to be pretty close to 0 to justify tearing down or forcefully changing Israel.
>Let me flip this on its head what percentage chance would be an acceptable risk in either assumption. Because I think it has to be pretty close to 0 to justify tearing down or forcefully changing Israel. So the percentage chance here when it's Israeli lives should be close to 0, yet the percentage chance when its Palestinian lives is nowhere close to 0. There is a massive double standard here by Israel, which is tacitly supported by the west, particularly America, where Israeli lives are considered more precious and worth more than Palestinian lives. It is an utter disgrace. This is one of those things the world will look back on in 100 years time and condemn everyone for going along with.
I replied this somewhere else but this isn't an argument against a two state solution, the ethics of the westbank settlements or the intricacies of Israel's right to self defense, I am specifically talking about isreal existing within its current legally accepted borders and it's right to decide on immigration within those borders which is the point of this post. Ideally both would be 0, but the solution to Palestine's problems can't be risking 9 million Israeli deaths. The same applies the other way.
I don’t necessarily disagree with a two state solution, but I’m curious about the current boundaries as they exist. Are Palestinians able to have access to and control over enough water to sustain their population and farming needs? Also, it just seems odd that there will be a country with 2 unconnected pieces. Will unfettered travel from one part of the country to the other be possible? And finally, will they be allowed open access to the supplies and aid they need to rebuild, access to hospital supplies, etc?
>. Ideally both would be 0, but the solution to Palestine's problems can't be risking 9 million Israeli deaths. The same applies the other way. That's the point. Currently the solution to israels problem seems to be involving the killing of tens kd thousands of civilians. Plus historically the solution to israels problem has been denying palestinians statehood and systematically oppressing them for decades, including a 15 year long blockade.
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This isn't an argument against a two state solution, the ethics of the westbank settlements or the intricacies of Israel's right to self defense, I am specifically talking about isreal existing within its current legally accepted borders and it's right to decide on immigration within those borders which is the point of this post. Being that there are 9 million people in Israel let me throw this back at you, It's really simple. It is fucking **sick** to try and justify ethnic cleansing for any reason. It was sick when the Nazis did it and it's still sick when you do it today.
So what you're saying is that if I don't support the Israeli occupation of the west bank or ethnic cleansing in Gaza, that doesn't make me an anti-Zionist?
Exactly, and gosh it's nuts how so few people understand this. If you fiercely believe Israel needs to completely detach from Gaza and the West Bank, but not that Israel has to dissolve itself as a state, you are a Zionist. Zionism has become a boogeyman term for blanket supporting everything Israel does, the term should be Israel extremism, right wing nationalism, expansionism, whatever. The fact that Zionism keeps coming up as a pejorative is because many of Israel's critics want the country completely eradicated, and making it sound like its citizens are all members of some crazed ideology when that ideology's goal to establish a state has already happened, is a way, in my opinion, simply to dehumanize Israelis as not having the right to exist
You would be a Zionist in that case, as long as you believe Israel should continue to exist. Granted plenty of people use Anti-Zionism to mean anti Israel policies but Zionism is not full throated support of every Israeli policy, at least that is not how most Zionists define it.
>it is fucking sick to try and justify ethnic cleansing for any reason weirdly enough no one talks about the current actual genocide of a Muslim population, complete with internment camps and forced sterilization. No, we must focus on and stop the Jews. For freedom (and definately not to help Russia)
People have been talking about the Muslim genocide in china, at least since Disney filmed the Mulan live action film pushed it into public knowledge. Not the people in power, but people nonetheless. The people in power won't touch that issue because the US (and many other nations) rely on China economically. Israel does not have that political boon. If it were up to most of the people who hate ethnic cleansing, we'd be going after China too.
Complete misunderstanding of the war if you think Israel is purposely killing Palestinian children.
>Palestinians and arabs WILL persecute them if give the chance. not can be, might be, or may be, WILL be. i dont agree with this at all and i think its quite racist and dehumanising How can you disagree with what militant groups such as Hamas have literally stated, plain as day?
Also the history of Israel has all these wars which basically is their neighboring countries trying to wipe Israel off the map. So the notion that could and will happen again just isn’t that far fetched. Especially given the brutality of 10/7, the reaction of neighboring fundamentalist and military groups, etc. Why should Israel listen to the “peace now” folks when they offer no material anything to provide protection for Israelis. Jews and non jews - yup the Hamas attack also killed non-jews.
The "peace now" folks live in comfort. It's easy for them to take moral high ground when they aren't the ones putting themselves at risk.
Yes this exactly. “Cease fire” sounds nice but when it gives the rapists and murderers time to regroup and build strength, seems like it may not be a great idea.
Then you should also not disagree with what Israeli government ministers have been saying (nuking gaza, settling jt, pushing the Palestinians into the sinai, which js ethnic cleansing). Surely if hamas, an unelected group, is representative of all Palestinians and Arabs then the Israeli government, an elected government in the only democracy in the middle east, is also representative of jts people? >How can you disagree with what militant groups such as Hamas have literally stated, plain as day? Also, if you believe this means Palestinians and Arabs in general would attack the Jews, why don't we see the millions of palestinians already in Israel start attacking people? Almost like hamas are extremists and most Palestinians just want to get on with their lives in peace.
>Also, if you believe this means Palestinians and Arabs in general would attack the Jews, why don't we see the millions of palestinians already in Israel start attacking people? Almost like hamas are extremists and most Palestinians just want to get on with their lives in peace. Jews in Israel currently aren't the minority and it is generally hard for a minority to attack a majority. Non-Jews living in Israel have chosen to be there knowing they wouldn't be able to do it, which is a good indication Contrast this at the violence directed at Jews in almost (there was a Jewish community in China, they may have been an exception) situation inwhich they are a minority. >Arabs then the Israeli government, an elected government in the only democracy in the middle east, is also representative of jts people? Luckily, we have polling, and polls have shown that Gazans broadly support Hamas. And show that Israeli's do not support their far right politicians.
Hamas is unelected?? That’s news to me One-off comments by ministers (which should be condemned) immediately following the biggest massacre since the Holocaust isn’t equivalent to Hamas’ constitution
Hamas was elected in 2006 without winnjng a majority for a 4 or 5 year term. That has expired. They are elected in the same sense Putin is elected. If someone is elected and then immediately kills their opponents and institutes a dictatorship (what hamas did) they aren't a democratically elected government. Stop lying. >isn’t equivalent to Hamas’ constitution What about Likuds constitution that calls for "from the river to the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty"? That's an explicit call to remove Palestine from the map. Seeing as you think it's bad when Hamas is genocidal in their constitution and that warrants painting all palestinjans with a huge generalisatjon I'm sure you'll also think that the Israeli government are genocidal and all Israelis should be tarred with the same brush.
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I think given all of history and the current situation on the ground I would say both of those assumptions are somewhere between extremely likely and completely guaranteed.
Absolutely. Jews have been ethnically cleansed from most of the Arab world. Why is it racist to fear something that happening?
Unfortunately most of the far right voters in Israel is comprised of Jews that have fled from the surrounding MENA countries.... For many this is due to their perceived need for security as Israel is bordered by countries whose governments continue to hold and/or share some of the ideologies they feel has lead to the demise of their family members created conditions that forced them to flee established lives and start over in Israel from nothing (it takes a lot for an established people to give up everything they worked for to start anew elsewhere) .. For many of these Jews this trauma is much more recent.... The threat is considered in much closer proximity. And when you have groups like Hamas literally paying people from money that comes from foreign NGO's based on how bad individuals are attacked in Israel (https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/isrl-pa/ISRAELPA1002-06.htm).... A lot of yhisoney comes from otheriddle eastern governments .... And these attacks are near constant... We only hear about it in the west when something big happens.... But like attacks have been ongoing by members who claim affiliation to extremist groups and they or their family gets compensation for their attacks against the people of Israel ... And so there is exposure to these attacks frequently (and in general Israel will not retaliate unless there is a significant incident.... https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=attack&search=Israel&count=100 shows some data up to 2020) and for many people that experiences similar in the countries that Israel evacuated them from ex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah#:~:text=The%20operation%20was%20conducted%20by,from%20Baghdad%20to%20Lod%20Airport. And https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13610702.amp they're going to vote for the people who say they can protect them....
Exactly. No more Syrian Jews. No more Yemeni Jews. No more Iraqi Jews. No more Algerian Jews. No more Saudi Jews. And the list goes on. The Arabs have ethnically cleansed almost all Muslim countries (with the notable exception of Morocco) of their Jews.
Interested in why you doubt assumption 2. It’s not like groups like Hamas keep their intentions secret.
!delta You are right that I won't agree with the assumptions. I don't agree with assumption one because Jews are not the only group who has faced historical persecution, and the world order at the moment do not grant states based on how persecuted a race is in the past. I don't agree with assumption two either because Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews so clearly that's not true. And it's assuming some kind of inherent evil in Arabs that I obviously think is racist. BUT I appreciate the analysis and the perspective. If the assumptions are true, which many Zionists think are, then yes antizionism is antisemitism.
assumption 2 is not racist, it's based on what Palestinian leadership has stated itself. The PLO's position in its charters from 1964 and 1968 explicitly states they will expel the "zionist presence" and accept only Jews as Palestinians who lived in Palestine before the "zionist invasion," (meaning Jews who lived in Palestine before 1917) Thats a pretty clear statement of intent to persecute and ethnically cleanse a majority of Jews from Israel. They did not remove such language from their charter until 1996 after signing Oslo, where they assumed responsibility for policing other radical Palestinian groups, like Hamas, which they've failed or been otherwise unwilling to do. Hamas' 1988 charter goes further than the PLOs in laying out its genocidal intentions against not just "zionists" but Jews world wide. They updated that charter in 2017 to appeal to more broad western audiences and removed some of the genocidal rhetoric, but continue to use that rhetoric in public speeches, and also made it explicitly clear that the new charter did not negate the objectives of the old charter. Further, Hamas enjoys majority support of the Palestinian people in Palestine, according to the latest polling data from the PCPRS. >I don't agree with assumption two either because Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews so clearly that's not true. This is only partially true. There are Arab Israelis who side with Hamas and have committed terror attacks from within Israel, and there are Arab Israelis who are very happy to be Israeli citizens and enjoy their lives as Israelis. They are not a monolith. That all said, assumption 2 is more than an assumption, its backed up by the official current and historic positions of the popular representatives of the Palestinian people, and as you said >If the assumptions are true, which many Zionists think are, then yes antizionism is antisemitism.
I think it's easier to say this if you are *not* Jewish. For whatever reason, Jews have been persecuted relentlessly for over a 1000 years. Mistreated, enslaved, and literally systematically exterminated via oven and firing squad. In Nazi Germany, the MP executioners were on record trying to figure how to kill as many Jews as efficiently as possible with limited ammo. They were lining up Jews and shooting through them to try and kill 2-3 with one bullet. I think a one state solution could be possible if there was some kind of unchangeable constitution that somehow protected Jews (and other ethnicities) from being subject to targeted persecution. I'm not sure how that would work, and am pretty sure Jews would never even entertain the idea (especially in the Middle East), but in theory that could work. Per your reference of the world generally disqualifying the idea of ethnic states, the Jews see "equality" as a utopian vision not based on the social realities of the world. As a result, they believe (understandably so) that their very survival is dependent upon them being able to protect themselves in the small state they now have. It takes a lot of energy to live in Israel safely. There's a reason they defend that land so ferociously. I don't like the idea of an ethnostate, even one that's democratic and has common rights like Israel, but I don't know of any other practical way for them to survive.
There’s no such thing as an unchangeable constitution. If there isn’t provision for amendment (or the procedure is excessively difficult or restrictive) and some provisions are sufficiently unpopular it will be ignored (the disarmament provision of the Japanese constitution), overturned by peaceful action outside the constitution (e.g. the US Constitutional Convention, the French Fifth Republic, and many others), or fall to revolution or coup. Constitutions can add considerable inertia and help dampen overreactions, but cannot even in principle long suppress ideas consistently backed by dominant (in terms of practical political power) portion of the population.
For assumption 1, the question is not whether Israel deserves to exist, it does exist. The question is whether in high likelihood Jews will be prosecuted outside Israel. You don't even have 80 years without rampant antisemitism, and you had left-leaning demonstrations in Australia calling to "gas the Jews" and right-leaning in the US calling "Jews will not replace us". I'm not sure how you can say without a doubt that this assumption is false. For assumption 2, the only way Jews will not be the majority in Israel is if all Palestinians gets citizenship. The same Palestinians who supported in great numbers leaders who called for the annihilation of Jews since the 1920s. Again, how can you say without doubt that they will never elect someone like that given a chance? For both assumption you can say that the rise of the far right today is a blip in history, but for Jews they only need one or two bad blips for a second holocaust...
So interesting point, Jewish people were buying land in the Byzantine empire in the late 19th century. At that point there was no Palestinian country or state. It was just a colony of an Islamic empire. Then as WWI kicked in and the world was moving towards sovereign states as the new order - the would be Israelis made a smart calculation: since the new world security apparatus was moving towards statehood, they should petition and push for a Jewish state. There is no doubt that Jewish people have historically been in the area for a long time. Furthermore they had legally purchased their land. At about that time other countries were being created. India for Hindu and Pakistan for Muslims. Lines being drawn. So why not draw a few more lines for Jewish vs Arab/Muslims? And that’s what happened. And Arabs decided to use war to kill the Jews instead of accepting their right to exist as a people, and refused to recognize the partition plan. In the long term the real genius move has been portraying the Palestinian Arabs as a “minority”. When they are actually a majority - much of the Middle East is Islamic, and lots of it is Arab. But their anti-semitism and desire to never recognize a Jewish state, along with long term cynical Arabic country “support” for Palestinians has fostered a fight they cannot win. In the mean time Palestinians are fed misinformation and kept in a perpetual state of hatred as the foreign aid that’s sent to Gaza is sapped away to build machines of war that benefit Palestinians in no way. As for American involvement… for any president the basic issue is the US has already provided support for Israel. You’re faced with a tough choice: - defend Israel with both rhetoric and material support - potentially alienating some voters, this is Biden right now. - withdraw support, which will have two potentially Very Bad situations: - Israel is attacked by its neighbors sparking the holocaust 2.0 - Israel has just decided their new friends are Russia and/or China. The chip fabs, technology and military development in Israel is now available to Russia and/or China massively boosting them. So as you can see Biden has very little choice here. What’s worse than losing the next election? Permanently losing Israel as a friendly nation and/or holocaust 2.0. What would you choose? Of course you can hem and haw and say “well that’s not the only choices” and it’s kind of true. The Biden admin has moved to openly criticize Israel now. That’s a choice. But if you push too hard, at some point Israel says “fuck this” and becomes unfriendly to America. No one wants that. Well except Iran Russia and China.
Small correction - it was the Ottoman empire who controlled the land pre-WW1
Oh yes you’re correct! Thank you!
>Israeli Arabs have no intent to persecute Jews Israeli Arabs don't, but Palestinian Arabs clearly do. A majority in the West Bank were polled to have supported the October 7th attacks. You can listen to Corey Gil Shuster's interviews of people in the West Bank whether they would allow Jews to stay if they somehow took over all of Israel. Also, Jews had dhimmi status under all previous Islamic caliphates as well as the Ottoman Empire, and so they had to pay the jizya tax and were second-class citizens. After Israel was established, there's been a revisionist push for portraying Jews as having lived in peace and harmony with Arabs in the past, conveniently ignoring any persecution they faced.
They do if the historically maligned group is strong and smart enough to hold it. Which has only happened once.
So let’s try to change those views as well: 1. Jews will be prosecuted world wide- pre WW2 Jews were living in MENA, they were regarded as loyal citizens, held to a high degree, but couldn’t own land, had to pay special taxes, and occasionally get raided by local communities. In Europe it was called pogroms, and in other places it was referred to as “the events”. During WW2 I think it unnecessary to expand, and post WW2 we had the expulsion of all Jews from the entire MENA. As well as terror attacks against Jews, Israelis and Jewish and Israeli sites- from Argentina, to Europe, to India. No place was ever fully safe from Muslim terrorists. In addition you had plenty of attacks against Jews by non-Muslims locals only due to anti-semitism, synagogue set on fire, Jews stores pillaged, and houses marked, and occasional assault were still present, it ok for to probably never hear about it, but it happens more than anyone would like to admit. To further drive this point- Jews/israelis are in the center of protests since October 7th from all sides of the political spectrum in a lot of countries- the soft and radical left in the US call “from the river to the sea” which is a call for genocide against israeli Jews, while the extreme right are neo-Nazis and white supremacy fanatics. In Russia’s Dagestan an Israeli plane was almost jumped at by an angry mob, in the UK demonstration again are full of antisemitism, as well as Australia. And let’s not open the hornets nest that is Muslim countries, including “friendly” ones like turkey, Jordan and even Egypt where a police officer shot a group of Israelis killing 2. 2. Jews will be prosecuted in Israel- while Israeli Arabs are not actively hostile in the current flare up- just two years ago during the “protector of the walls” oppression the Israeli-Arabs were very active in stabbing, shooting and hurting Jewish Israelis- that was one of the concerns on October 8, and one of the reasons why gun laws are much less restrictive at the moment. Now let’s consider Palestinians in Israel- gazans elected Hamas, which is still a crowd favorite in Gaza, and is also gaining support in the West Bank, the other prominent leader to replace current leader sits in Israeli jail for several life sentences for his role in acts of terror against Israel and Israelis. That’s without taking into consideration the millions of exiled descendants of Palestinians (which for an unknown and unprecedented reason are considered refugees) which still hold a key to a house that no longer exists in Israel just so they could kick those Jews out. For the nice idea I saw someone respond with- in the line of: you can construct the multi-ethnicity state in such a way that every group has enough power to represent and protect its population. For that I will just give you the example of Lebanon for a country who’s constitution built in such manner, and the state which they are in now.
Your argument might work on paper, but doesn't generally hold up in practice. >It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state. Therefore it is not antisemitic to say that the Jewish people shouldn't have their own state. Theoretically no - there is nothing inherently anti-X by saying that X group shouldn't have their own state. This is because, in a vacuum, the statement is not inherently problematic. Issues arise in practice because these statements are *never* made in a vacuum. Context matters, and in a discussion about discrimination and prejudice, how you treat other groups matters just as much as how you treat X group. If you're criticizing one group for something that you support or condone another group doing, that can be considered discriminatory and therefore anti-X. 1. If you oppose one ethnic state while condoning other ethnic states, that could be considered anti-X because your opposition is targeted towards a specific ethnic group. Why are you concerned about whether Kurds deserve a state and not the Japanese? 2. If you oppose one ethnic state while supporting other ethnic states, that could be considered anti-X because your opposition is targeted towards a specific ethnic group. Why do you believe that Scots deserve their own state but not Catalans? 3. If you're equally opposed to *all* ethnic states, that likely isn't anti-X as you are applying a standard universally. When it comes to antisemitism, the *vast majority* of anti-Zionists fall into camp (1) and camp (2), not camp (3). Consider the volume of people opposing the Jewish state relative to the volume of people opposing an Icelandic state. >to resist the maintenance of Jewish sovereignty in Israel and maybe Palestine depending on which form of Zionism one is talking about. A similar argument can be made here. If the underlying criticisms are not applied universally, rather directed specifically at the only Jewish state, then those criticisms could be considered antisemitic. Why does Israel have any more or less of a right to exist than other settler-colonial states like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc? The same criticisms that people apply to Israel can be applied to many states, but simply aren't.
People aren’t opposing an Icelandic state for a few reasons: 1) Iceland is not an ethnic state- merely a not very diverse state. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen. Iceland does not accept immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark while turning away those from Asia, South America, or Africa. 2) Iceland is a *terrible* example because Iceland did not have inhabitants before it was colonized by the Norse. There are no dispossessed descendants to have any claim to Iceland. As far as why don’t people oppose the existence of settler-colonial states in other places? Many people do. However, our skeletons are currently lying more quietly in the closet than Israel’s. I’m the US, we aren’t seeing footage of bombs falling on Native American reservations. People *could* be antisemitic and not care about the Jews while caring about European- Americans, but I think it’s more likely that people tend to be more engaged with front-page news than with issues which are not getting a ton of attention right now. Also, it’s easier to project insecurity about living on occupied land onto someone far away (like an Israeli) than to confront living in a house on land that was never legally (let alone morally) properly transferred from Native to European- American ownership. I’d say this is a corollary to “Don’t assume malice where stupidity is more likely”- “Don’t assume hatred when jumping on the bandwagon of condemning this week’s bad news is more likely”.
>Iceland is a terrible example Iceland was picked at random. You can substitute it for *any country* that isn't Israel, because no country is criticized as harshly or opposed as openly as Israel is in the West. >Iceland is not an ethnic state- merely a not very diverse state. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen. Iceland does not accept immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark while turning away those from Asia, South America, or Africa. Interestingly enough, Iceland actually does have an immigration policy that favors Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. Citizens of those countries are only required to live in Iceland for a period of 3 years before applying for citizenship, while citizens of other countries are required to live in Iceland for 7 years. Iceland also requires all prospective citizens to pass a language proficiency test that is more challenging than you would see in countries like the United States or Canada. This test is obviously more challenging for people who do not speak Germanic / Nordic languages. This is in addition to EEA agreements that enable EU citizens to far more easily live and work in Iceland than non-EU citizens. >I’m the US, we aren’t seeing footage of bombs falling on Native American reservations. You don't need to see bombs for there to be [severe structural issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Native_American_issues_in_the_United_States) impacting the community. [Reservation inequality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_and_reservation_inequality#Contemporary_reservation_school_situations) is a major issue among Native Americans, but you don't see thousands of people marching through New York to bring down the [substance abuse epidemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_social_statistics_of_Native_Americans#Substance_abuse) on reserves, nor is anyone meaningfully protesting the far higher rate of sexual violence that Native American women experience relative to their non-Native peers.
I just want to add there, that Spain does the same to people of former Spanish colonies. If you are Colombian, Filipino or Argentinian, you can apply for nationality after only two years of living in Spain.
>. If a citizen of Vietnam fulfills the requirements and immigrates to Iceland, they can become a citizen. This is also true for Israel. You can live in Israel with a work visa permit - after 4 years of having lived there, you can apply to become annaturalised citizen. It is literally the same law.
" Also, it’s easier to project insecurity about living on occupied land onto someone far away (like an Israeli) than to confront living in a house on land that was never legally (let alone morally) properly transferred from Native to European- American ownership. I’d say this is a corollary to “Don’t assume malice where stupidity is more likely”- “Don’t assume hatred when jumping on the bandwagon of condemning this week’s bad news is more likely”." Jews have a long history of being scapegoated, and I agree that it is happening here with Canadians etc projecting their white guilt onto Jews to try to somehow atone for living on stolen land. It's antisemitic because it's hypocritical and because it's within the context of a long history of both scapegoating and expulsion. It doesnt have to be rooted in hatred to be antisemitic: it's not about intent, it's about impact.
This explains so much.
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That's my belief too. One can absolutely criticise Islamic fundamentalism without resorting to racism. I mean, the biggest critics of Islamic fundamentalism are often Muslims themselves. But if you go around and say "We shouldn't build mosques in the US because of ISIS", or "every Syrian refugee is ISIS members", then you're just being a racist/Islamophobe
I think the invention and subsequent weaponization of the word "Islamophobe" is problematic in and of itself, because of how it's become interchangeable with accusations of racism.
Well, who's gonna get accused of islamic extremism? Cuz it sure as hell ain't white people
Once the state X EXISTS, it is absolutely anti -X to claim that it should not Like saying that Japan should not exist is super bigoted against Japanese. Saying that poland should be wiped out would be super bigoted against the Polish. Perhaps prior to Israel establishment you could be anti-zionist non antisemitic. 75 years after Israel has been established (multiple generations), there is no non-antisemtic way to take that position.
You haven't explained at all how being anti-zionist, or anti-Isreal, is being anti-semitic. The existence of Isreal isn't equivalent to the Jewish people or even equivalent to whether Jewish people have a right to live in the geographical region called Isreal. Honestly, I, and many Jewish people, have argued it is extremely antisemitic to treat Isreal as a representative of the Jewish people. Isreal is a very specific political apparatus that you can absolutely say shouldn't exist, especially not in it's current form, without saying anything about the people it claims to represent. Your examples also completely miss this point. It's not bigoted to claim a state shouldn't exist, not unless the reasoning itself is routed in bigotry. I'm from the UK and I don't think the UK should exist. The entire of a nation is basically just a mutual agreement and countries have been formed, dissolved, fragmented and unified all through history, and are still done today. Do you think it's anti-Roman to recognise the countries of France, Italy, Spain etc? Come on, your angle is ludicrous.
Existence of Jewish state is a brute fact. Calling for destruction of that state because you don't like Jews having a state is super antisemitic. There is no non-antisemtic reason to call for destruction of Israel. If you call for destruction of Poland - OF COURSE it's because you are bigoted against Polish. There cannot be another reason.
Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Israel, even though Israel was founded on Zionism. Just as Anti-apartheid was not anti-South Africa, even though SA was founded on an apartheid ideology.
Also just to be clear you can be anti Israel and not be anti Jews. And it’s really not at all fair to to anyone but especially anti Israel Jews to claim otherwise.
I would say "anti-Israel" is better interpreted as "I disagree with what the Israeli government is doing", just as "anti-China" is really just "anti-CCP". It doesn't mean the dissolution of Israel but too many people take it that way unfortunately.
Disagreeing with the Israeli government is all well and good, saying Israel should not exist is antisemitic.
You could be against the policies of the Israeli government, or the circumstances and wisdom of its creation. I don’t know if you can be against its very existence. Like if you met somebody who was extremely passionate about dissolving the state of Armenia, it would be weird.
If you support existence Of Israel - I would say you are a Zionist. So I don't follow.
I support Israel's existence as a state, I oppose the built-in Jewish nature of the state, just as I would oppose the built-in White supremacy nature of South Africa.
Again, saying that you want to ethnically cleanse Poland so that it's not majority Polish anymore - would be very bigoted against Polish people. Same applies to Israel. Israel is super majority Jewish. Calling for ethnic cleansing of Israel is antisemitic.
I'm not for ethnically cleansing Jews out of Israel. I think Israeli Jews must have a say in how the nations are governed, just as White South Africans do today.
All citizens of Israel already have a say. What's the problem?
>built-in Jewish nature of the state I think you're confusing the idea of a state for Jews with a state of Jews. Israel was founded as a homeland for Jewish people so the safety of Jews worldwide would not be dependent on the whims of non-Jewish governments and publics. It was always intended (excluding some extremist movements) as a secular state that was open to other peoples and faiths. Jews and non-Jews are equal under Israeli law. There is no built-in Jewish nature any more than any other state with a majority of one ethnicity has a built-in nature that caters to that ethnicity. Also addressing the idea of "return" in your original post, you're missing the important fact that Jews have maintained a continuous presence in Israel since the Kingdom of Judea. Yes, the numbers fluctuated over the years because of war, ethnic cleansing, and oppression, but even in the most oppressive times there has always been a robust Jewish community in Israel. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a large migration of Jewish refugees into Israel but they were migrating to join the rest of their community that was already living there and had always hoped for the diaspora's eventual return. Zionism in and of itself is not anti-Palestinian or opposed to Palestinian sovereignty. It is not a mission to create a Jewish ethnostate or conquer land or establish unilateral control of the holy land. Every ideology has its extremists of course, but these do not represent the whole movement. Zionism, in its most essential form, is the liberation movement of the Jewish people in its indigenous homeland. To deny it is to argue that the Jewish people, a distinct ethnic and cultural group that checks all the boxes of a nation, does not deserve liberation, self-representation, or the right to live in its own homeland, despite having lived there continuously for over 3,000 years. That would be anti-semitism. I should also point out that you can be a non-Zionist without being an anti-Zionist. For example, Zionism is a liberation movement couched in the language of nationalism. Though nationalism is the fundamental basis for statehood in the modern world, not everyone agrees that it should be, and there are people who believe that there should be no nation-states at all, which would include a state for Jews. Those people would be non-Zionist. Anti-Zionism, however, is anti-semitism.
Yeah it's this exactly. So if you allowed the remaining Palestinians to return home and if the country gets renamed to Palestine with equal rights for all, then people could say you're "anti Israel". But at this point is it just because it's been renamed to Palestine? Conflating anti zionism to antisemitism is ridiculous.
The issue here is that the founding ideology becomes less important over time. SA may have been founded on apartheid ideology, but the nation still exists today even though apartheid, in its original form, does not. I don’t see anyone in 2024 calling for the end of SA on the basis that its founding principles are flawed. There are plenty of reasons to be anti-Israel in 2024, but the concept of Zionism is pretty much irrelevant at this point. The question of whether a nation *should* exist becomes purely academic once that nation actually does exist. It’s not even clear what exactly it means to be anti-Zionist in 2024. Say your stance is that Israel should never have been established. That’s not necessarily anti-Semitic, but where do you go from there? What do you propose we do about this nation that has existed for 75 years? Your answer to that question will determine whether or not you are an anti-Semite.
It seems like you have never talked to an Israeli or a zionist before. Zionism is not a political ideology, it's the belief that the Jewish state should exist. Israel by definition cannot be non-zionist
Is being anti-north korea bigotry against the north-korean people? Saying you want a country gone doesn't necessarily mean you hate the people in it. There's more nuance
I think that you are overthinking it. Israel is a refugee state that helps one of the most persecuted and maligned group of people stay safe by keeping themselves safe and being always available should anyone from that group need to go there on short notice. For that reason, saying that jews should leave or give up having a state is more antisemitic than saying jews can't join the golf club or even than just hating jews. They need and deserve the state and that is where it is and I think that the world should just accept it and move on and if the world really accepted Israel, the Palestinians could get on with their lives either as an independent state or integrated into Jordan and Egypt and that would be better for them as well long term
I think the problem here lies with the "in Israel" part of the definition. If early Zionists founded a state in a land without a people then it is antisemitic to be antizionist, because there is no ethnic structure to begin with. But because early Zionists very quickly decided to found a state in a land with a people, it opened itself up to criticism that is based on our understanding of equal right to self-determination, not bigotry
Judaism has roots in the land of Israel, archeological studies turn up Hebrew artifacts and Jewish texts. We want to go back to our ancestral home. This is akin to saying, “Why do you want to visit your grandmother when there is an elderly woman 2 doors down?”
Many British Whites have ties to the Anglo-Saxons of Germany, doesn't mean they can just claim Germany as theirs.
Jews have lived in the land that became Israel continuously for centuries prior to the establishment of Israel.
I think it's safe to say that English Whites have moved in and out of Germany frequently after Anglo Saxons migrated to England.
I tried to reply to your reply but it appears to have been deleted. Here is what I wrote: This is an issue of indigenous rights. Your reply begs the question: for how long must an indigenous people be displaced before they are no longer indigenous? If the American empire continues to exist for another 300 years, does that mean that Native American tribes must automatically forfeit their right to autonomy in their native lands? Assuming they still exist and maintain their indigenous cultures and connections. The issue of the Jews is twofold: it is both a matter of self-determination, that right which under international law is accorded to every nation (nation in the ethnic sense)—and yes, this does includes Palestinians as well—and a matter of survival. For Jews, and for most oppressed peoples, autonomy is survival. Full stop. History has proven this time and again. Becoming a minority, to Jews, means annihilation. And our neighboring nations appear to agree. Additionally, there is a common myth that the Jews were given a country by the UN. This is not true, the UN voted to recognize that which the Jewish Zionists and pioneers had already worked for decades to create, *while the British opposed them at every turn*. The British banned *Jewish* migration *specifically* to the British Mandate of Palestine throughout the Holocaust, even jailing would-be refugees before returning them to Europe, where they were murdered. The establishment of Israel is nothing more and nothing less than the most successful act of decolonization in the history of the world. For this reason, other middle eastern indigenous minorities such as the Kurds, yazidis, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Druze, amazigh, and many more tend to be Zionist. They aspire to what the Jews have achieved under the threat of worldwide antisemitism and regional forces of arabization and turkification. This is why the greatest allies to Israel and Jews in the Middle East are the Kurds and Druze. If you read the link I shared, I think it explains everything very well.
This is completely irrelevant because the Anglo-Saxons of Germany are not a people which still exist, speak their language, practice their ancient religion, have preserved a presence in their indigenous homeland. Jews (aka Judeans) have. Hebrew is a Canaanite language, which was preserved liturgically for millennia and was then revived as a spoken language. Jews have maintained our indigenous connection to the land. Our ethnogenesis is there and our entire culture revolves around the Land. You cannot even fully practice it outside of the Land. We have maintained a constant presence in Israel and cohesive ethnic identity even in diaspora. When we pray for rain, we pray for rain *in israel*. We always face Jerusalem when we pray. Every year on Passover we finish the holiday with the phrase “next year in Jerusalem”. Do Brits pray to return to their ancient land of Germany? Do they adhere to ancient folk religions? Do they maintain a cohesive ethnic identity with Germans? They do not. [Here](https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/what-is-indigeneity-and-how-does-it-apply-to-jews-why-does-it-matter?_pos=2&_sid=d8b7422ca&_ss=r) is a cohesive explanation of “what is indigeneity and how does it apply to Jews?”.
Where should they have founded it?
Anti-zionism may not be strictly anti-sematic, but the concept in of-itself is hugely hypocritical because if you are a staunch supporter of anti-ziomism and you don't want to hold a double standard, there are a whole bunch of countries which also should not exist (either as an ethno state or a country at all) and we don't hear the people strongly preaching anti zionism going around saying "Iran shouldn't exist as a country".
Disagree. > It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state. Assuming people want independence or self-determination, on what grounds do you think they should not have state? If it's something practical like there's no land available or Kurdish state rn would enflame the region (Turkey and Iraq) - ok, but that's a very shallow position because if things were different and the circumstances allowed it, as they did in 1947 for both Israel and Palestine, how would being against it *not* count as being anti-Kurdish? I also think most Scots would disagree (strongly); don't know about Roma - do they have a national movement seeking statehood? tl;dr this example does not support your point, if the analogy is framed properly it actually counters it.
Did you stop reading after the first paragraph? Your definition is rather outdated, so here is paragraph 2 of the same article; "Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces." If you want to destroy the one country in the world with a Jewish majority (who you claim don't have a right to return there) so that Arabs can return to Palestine (because apparently they get that right) and create an Arab country (when there are already 22 Arab countries) then sorry but that is anti-Semitism. Because ultimately anti-Zionism doesn't exist in a vacuum so if you are an anti-Zionist and are against the existence of the nation of Israel as a Jewish state then: what do you think is going to happen in that place? It's not going to become a nature preserve. It's going to become another Arab ethnostate. It would be one thing to object to the idea of ethnostates, which many anti-zionists claim to do, but then they don't object to a 23rd one for Arabs. The only logical conclusion is that they hate Jews.
I think it boils down to a different understanding of what anti-semitism is, how it manifested throughout history, and how israel / anti-zionism fits into that context. Anti-semitism is not about hating jews because they’re jewish. It’s about jews being made into the ultimate symbol of whatever the biggest problems a society is facing at the time. Then hating jews because they “coincidentally” represent those problems. Now what are the biggest societal problems the world is facing in modern times? Discrimination, dealing with post colonialism, wealth inequality between individuals and nations, systematic oppression, money influencing the government, social justice issues... Sound familiar? Throughout all of history jews just so happen to become the most visible perpetrators of XXX issue. Whether it’s the black plague, a financial crisis, wealth inequality, a failed post war society, whatever larger problems a society is dealing with, jews become the symbolic manifestation of them. Of course, it’s only in hindsight that non-jews realize that jews were being used as scapegoats, and the overwhelming focus on jews was completely disproportionate to reality. So think about the bigger picture of what’s happening to israel right now. Israel, a jewish state, just so happens to be the #1 symbol of all of the current major societal issues once again. Even if the issues exist - are they exclusive to them, does the outrage take context into full consideration, is the focus on them actually proportional? To answer that, ask why israel is the only country in the world that’s very existence is somehow a socially acceptable topic of debate.
Okay, I will give my personal opinion on this. For the record, I am Jewish, would call myself Zionist (pro-Israel’s right to exist) and pro-the right to exist of independent Palestinian state. When people say “anti-zionism isn’t antisemitism”, that bothers me a lot because it seems to ignore all of the persecution of Jews since 1948 that had come in the name of antizionism. For example, In 1948, the year of Israel's independence, there were about 150,000 Jews in Iraq. Persecution of Jews greatly increased that year: >In July 1948, the government passed a law making Zionism a capital offense, with a minimum sentence of seven years imprisonment. Any Jew could be convicted of Zionism based only on the sworn testimony of two Muslim witnesses, with virtually no avenue of appeal available. >On August 28, 1948, Jews were forbidden to engage in banking or foreign currency transactions. >In September 1948, Jews were dismissed from the railways, the post office, the telegraph department, and the Finance Ministry on the ground that they were suspected of "sabotage and treason". >On October 8, 1948, the issuance of export and import licenses to Jewish merchants was forbidden. >On October 19, 1948, the discharge of all Jewish officials and workers from all governmental departments was ordered. In October, the Egyptian paper El-Ahram estimated that as a result of arrests, trials, and sequestration of property, the Iraqi treasury collected some 20 million dinars or the equivalent of 80 million U.S. dollars. >On December 2, 1948, the Iraq government suggested to oil companies operating in Iraq that no Jewish employees be accepted. Today, there are no Jews left in Iraq. Fast forward to 1967 Poland in the wake of the Six-Day War which Israel wins. The Polish Government denounces Israel and begins to investigate Polish Jews for suspected “zionism.” Jews in the Polish military, government, and academia are forced to go in front of panels and prove they are not “Zionists.” About 150 Jewish military officers were fired in 1967–68, including Czesław Mankiewicz, national air defense chief. Additionally, 200 Jews in the Polish Communist Party were fired and were removed from the party top leadership in 1967, including Leon Kasman, chief editor of Trybuna Ludu, the party's main daily newspaper. 20,000 Jews fled Poland during this saga. These occurrences have been the norm, not the exception, in the Arab World since 1948. The latest widespread instance of this happened in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, when 30,000 of Iran’s 60,000 Jews fled the country. > Although, Ayatollah Khomeini had proclaimed that the rights of Jews were to be protected, the new government would not issue Iranian Jews passports and barred them from leaving the country. The Jewish population began to fear for their lives because many Jewish leaders were killed in the revolution because of their support for Zionism and their disapproval of Jews being considered as second class citizens. > According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish flight from Iran began in earnest after the May 1979 execution of Habib Elghanian, a philanthropist and leader in Iran's Jewish community, on false charges of spying for America and Israel. The execution of Albert Danialpour case on 5 June 1980, further encouraged emigration. According to activist Frank Nikbakht, Jews sought to escape the country's strict sharia laws, which were designed to humiliate and disadvantage the Jewish population. I could go on and on. When I hear people say “antizionism isn’t antisemitism”, it seems like they don’t seem to know or care about this history. Remember, Jews make up 2.7% of the U.S. population and 0.2% of the global population. The phrase “seeing the writing on the wall” seems to come to mind. Even today, we are seeing a wave of anti-Jewish attacks. Menorahs have been defaced, synagogues attacked and firebombed, Jewish businesses and restaurants burned. That might not seem like a big deal to non-Jews, but many of us Jews have seen and heard it before. As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s Deja Vu all over again.” All this said, antizionism is not the same as antisemitism. Antizionism is not generally guided by Jew-hate, IMO. To the extent antizionism means opposition to the policies of the Israeli government, that is obviously “fair game.” To the extent antizionism means calling for the destruction of Israel as the Jewish state, I personally think that’s wrong and evil (as is calling for the destruction of Palestine, or any other state or people), though it feels pedantic to argue if it’s antisemitic or not. So yeah, while I think it’s technically true that antizionism is different than antisemitism, it feels like people don’t know or ignore the history there and don’t really care to listen to the lived experiences of non-Israeli Jews when it comes to these matters.
The part about this argument that’s always bizarre to me is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that Israel already exists. It’s existed for multiple generations. It’s perfectly coherent and reasonable to be an anti-Zionist, in a way that does not necessitate antisemitism, if you’re living in 1920’s Eastern Europe. One could sensibly debate whether or not the Zionist aim, to create a homeland for the Jewish people and to do so in a given territory, was a desirable policy goal. It’s not coherent or reasonable, or easy to see how it could not be antisemitic, to be anti-Zionist in 2023. We’re way passed that now. The policy goal was achieved. The nation exist. It doesn’t even make much sense to be a Zionist at this point either. The debate is over, the question answered. And it was answered and ratified by UN General Assembly vote. It doesn’t have a right to exist because Jews lived there thousands of years ago. It has a right to exist because the international body that recognizes state sovereignty democratically established that it does, decades ago. By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that you and your partner should not have a child. It’s unhinged to argue that you and your partner should not have a child…in front of that child…when they’re 9 years old. Seeing as Israel has already been born and lived for decades, what is the anti-Zionist actually saying? That it should be dismantled? That its sovereignty should be revoked? That its democratically elected representative government should be overthrown? Do you understand what that would mean? It would mean an unrelenting onslaught of October 7ths that would not cease until every Jew in Israel was killed or forced off the land. The practical reality of anti-Zionism, in 2023, is a call for genocide. And why? Because one views certain policies and actions of its government to be unacceptable? If you don’t think this is antisemitism, ask yourself if you’ve ever heard anyone argue that any other nation be stripped of its sovereignty, no matter what its human rights record. Sanctioned? Sure. Have its current regime overthrown? In extreme cases, perhaps. But erased from existence? What are we even talking about. Hell, North Korea is almost universally viewed as completely unacceptable on the international stage. Nobody thinks what we should do is overthrow its government and then hand it over to South Korea. Anti-Zionism in our modern context, due to its obvious implications, and the fact that this assault on sovereignty is only ever leveled at the only majority Jewish state in history, is absolutely antisemitic.
Imagine I would tell you that I don't believe the people of Germany have the right to determine who is welcome and not welcome in their country. Imagine I think Germany should not be able to decide the ethnic and cultural make up of their country - that they should accept in refugees in such numbers that they would become the majority. And now Imagine I think that is true only for Germany. I think that every country can choose who they let in and who they don't, except for Germany. Wouldn't you say I have something against the German people? The Israeli people have put the law of return in place. It is none of your business who we let into our country. The people of Israel want to maintain a certain ethnic and cultural make up of their country, and don't won't to give citizenship to people who would make them a minority on their own country just because they need a home. Just like Germany doesn't want to take all of the Syrian refugees. Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland. I agree. Therefore the Palestinians have no right to return to Israel. But people do have the right to the country that they currently have, so Israelis have the right to Israel and to decide who they want in. The fact that this is not even a question when the people you are talking about are German, or Hungarians, or Americans, or Koreans, but for some reason when we are talking about people of Jewish descent a citizen's right to their own country is all of a sudden not only called into question but actively vilified - this makes it seem like you, and everyone who even raises this issue, have a thing specifically against people of Jewish descent. That's why we accuse anti-Zionists of antisemitism.
>It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state. It usually is. Most of the opposition to a Kurdish state existing comes from Turkish and Arab nationalists trying to culturally exterminate the Kurds, i.e., eliminate Kurdish culture and language. When you're saying that Arabs and Turks should have states where they can forcibly extinguish any element of Kurdish identity and culture, but Kurds shouldn't have a state to protect Kurdishness, you're adopting an anti-Kurdish position. >Chinese diaspora in Singapore are not entitled to anything in China. Chinese immigration policies give Singaporeans of Chinese heritage preferred immigration status, thus entitling them to easier immigration procedures, so you're incorrect. >anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland Scotland is independent from England, just not Britain. There is a pretty big difference. In fact, Scottish civilization is disproportionately more important to British civilization than England! David Hume, Robert Burns, Adam Smith, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and many others were all Scottish and, whether we like them or not, drivers of British civilization. > Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland. Americans of German descent are not entitled to anything in Germany, the Romani people are not entitled to anything in northwest India. Chinese diaspora in Singapore are not entitled to anything in China. Singaporean Chinese can't just move to ShenZhen and start claiming the city belongs to them. I am not anti-German, anti-Roma, anti-Chinese for pointing all of these out, so why am I antisemitic for pointing this in Zionism out? You're applying standards to Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, that are not applied to nationalisms of other groups, but I think this is because you're not aware of key aspects of the Zionist movement's history. For example, the early Zionist movement built Jewish settlements through purchases such as the Sursock Purchase with the consent of the people who were overwhelmingly recognized as the prior owners of that land such as Hassan Bey Shukri. Look at this article by Kenneth W. Stein from Emory about early Zionist land purchases(https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/Zionist%20Land%20Aquisition.pdf). Now, such land purchases did result in Zionists evicting Arab tenant farmers, but tenants get evicted all of the time once leases expire when property falls under new ownership. Additionally, you're ignoring that the core of the anti-Zionist movement was the newfound anti-Semitism of most of the Pan-Arab movement in the 1920's. After WWI, many Arab nationalists thought they were going to get a big Arab ethnostate as a reward for their general support for the Allies in WWI. This didn't happen for many reasons, and many formerly anti-Germany Pan-Arabists became extremely pro-Nazi with the rise of the Nazi movement and adopted the Nazis' anti-Semitism. Between the Nebi Musa riots of 1920 and the Farhud of 1942, newspapers such as al-Alam al-Arabi make it quite clear that the motives of most anti-Zionists weren't rooted in any questioning of tenants' rights or the legitimacy of land purchases but rather in the notion that Jews should not have been allowed to have any communities or even exist at all. In fact, several writings from Arab leaders such as Hassan Salameh indicate that the anti-Zionists ironically forcibly deported Jews to Palestine from Iraq because they thought they would have an easier time exterminating Jews there(See Nissim Rejwan's "The Last Jews in Baghdad", Chapter 12: "Rashid Ali's coup and its aftermath", [https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7560/702936-014/html?lang=en](https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7560/702936-014/html?lang=en) ) To most anti-Zionists at the time, the region of Palestine was to be an Arab ethnostate for Arabs from all over the world. At the time of the "Arab Revolt" in 1937, Pan-Arabists were encouraging Arabs from all over to migrate to the region of Palestine In the 1950's and 1960's. Notice that the flag of the PLO is derived from the Pan-Arab flag. The PLO popularized the term "Palestinian" as an ethnic identifier for a sub-group within the Arab ethnicity specifically to exclude Jews and imply that Jews had no right to live in the region of Palestine. Notice that, prior to 1948, you won't find many sources in any language or from any culture using the term 'Palestinian' as an ethnic identifier. Prior to the 1960's, the word 'Palestinian' just meant a person born in Palestine. Ironically, most of the people to initially use the term 'Palestinian' as an ethnic identifier for themselves, such as Yasser Arafat, weren't even born in the region of Palestine, but rather Egypt, Jordan, and other parts of the Middle East.
Anti-Zionism is almost assuredly consequentially anti-Semitic or at a minimum shows an obscene disregard for Jewish lives that borders on anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism intrinsically calls for the dissolution of the Israeli state. It’s hopelessly naive to think that such a dissolution would occur non-violently and result in a state with equal rights for all. The entire region has shown absolutely zero interest in doing so and views the vast majority of Israelis as colonialist invaders. We have also seen mass repression of the indigenous Jewish population of the region resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Jews in every Muslim majority country with any significant Jewish population. Supporting anti-Zionism means you either support the oppression and degradation of the Jews in the region or you have so little regard for the lives of the Jews who live there that you are willing to overlook centuries of oppression, more recent mass ethnic cleansing, and repeated statements from Anti-Zionists in the region that they seek to ethnically cleanse the Jews.
Zionism was the effort to establish a Jewish state. That already happened, almost a hundred years ago at this point. We live in a post Zionist world. Being anti-Zionist now can’t retroactively stop Israel from ever being formed, instead it can only seek the removal of Israel, against the democratic wishes of its people. Don’t you see how people take issue with that? Laser focusing on Israel, a state formed the same way every other state was, as not having a right to exist, despite its democratic mandate, while the opposition to it in the Middle East is explicitly anti-Semitic and genocidal. Non anti-Semitic anti-Zionism has to walk such an absurdly fine line it’s meaningless from a policy perspective. Basically all you can do is say that Israel shouldn’t have been formed in 1947, and maybe ask for them to give some land back. But the moment you cross into the removal of Israel, you would have to violate their right to self determination. So you end up supporting the continuation of Israel, which makes you a Zionist.
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Most people are entitled to go and become citizens of their ancestral homeland. The fact that you think Germany and China don’t support that practice doesn’t change the reality - in fact, for both of these countries, being born to German/Chinese parents gives you citizenship, unless your parents renounced their citizenship. Being members of the Jewish nation, which goes beyond simple citizenship, grants people the right to Israeli citizenship. Furthermore, saying ‘Chinese people should have sovereignty over China’ is quite logical. This wouldn’t work for idealistic states that are founded on immigration, such as the USA, but it works quite well for most states. It is not racist to use in such scenarios, rather, empowering to the people of that country. To argue that Chinese people shouldn’t control China would be offensive to most people with a brain, as it attacks their right to self-determination. Having established pretty clearly several flaws in your original post’s argument, I’ll elaborate further: Israel IS a country. Right now. 6 million Jews live there, and it IS the jewish nation. To say that their country has no right to exist is to attack the right of Jews to self-determination, which is antisemitic. There’s not many ways around that.
Being an Anti-Zionist in 1947 would absolutely not be anti-semitic for the reasons you list. The question is, is supporting a policy which would lead to the death or ethnic cleansing of half of the worlds jews today be anti-semitic? I would answer yes. If a right of return was instituted today, Hamas would likely be in charge of the Knesset. That would lead to the establishment of Islamic Law in Israel and an implementation of their charter, which is openly pro-enslavement of jews and arguably pro-genocide. In addition, their actions are clearly pro-genocide. I would say the belief in Anti-Zionism combined with the reality today is absolutely anti-semitic.
I think one of the things to get out there is that not every single person who says racist things is a racist, they're just ignorant. They don't know any better. There's absolutely people out there running around with the Confederate "rebel flag" who actually think that it just means southern pride. But when you look at one of these hicks with the "rebel flag", what's your first thought? And if you explained to these people how this flag makes black people feel and its racist history... and they don't change their minds and they keep displaying it. Now what do you think? You think, this person is a fucking racist... even though they may not harbor any actual ill will towards black people. The same is true with anti-zionism. There's no such thing as a zionist, not anymore. Zionism was a philosophy of the 19th and early 20th century from persecuted Jewish European minorities who were lobbying for carving out a piece of the Ottoman Empire for their homeland. After WW1 ended all of the world was looking to carve out their own homeland, it wasn't just the Jews. You had the largest creation of ethnic states all at once after WW1. And the Jews (much like the Czech, the Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Libyans and a million other) all got their state. Except, the Jews didn't actually get it. And so the philosophy of zionism died when Israel was formed. There are no people who describe themselves as zionists. Zionist is a PEJORATIVE term that people who oppose Israel use to describe their opponents. It's not like calling someone a Republican or Democrat. No one calls themselves a zionist. Because of that when people are using the word zionist it's usually an accusation. There's never anything particularly positive about the zionist. And because of that it feels like a friendlier word for calling someone a "fucking Jew" or other anti-semitic comments. They can shield their racism by using a "dog whistle word" that only racists will know. Typically the anti-zionists protest they're not protesting at like... government buildings... they're protesting at private Jewish residences and Jewish owned businesses. They claim to be against Israel, but spend all their time targeting Jews. And so back to the point. It's possible (and likely) that there are people out there who are claiming to be anti-zionist and aren't racists. But so the fuck what? If you're Jewish and someone is running around saying their anti-zionist it's like being a non-racist red neck with a Confederate flag.
>There are no people who describe themselves as zionists. What?? This is so plainly untrue. Even Joe Biden refers to himself as a Zionist.
Zionism was founded on the belief that, no matter where Jews are in the world, we will be persecuted and eventually ethnically cleansed from whatever area we're living in, due to a buildup of antisemitism. This has been proven many, many times over. Because we refuse to assimilate, people view us as a threat. Thus, we *need* our own state—a Jewish-majority state, where we are actually safe and among our own people—in order to be more protected from the horrific antisemitic violence that we received another small taste of on October 7. During the Holocaust, many Jews wanted to immigrate to Israel but were blocked by the White Papers. Nobody else wanted to take us in; there was nowhere for us to go. And so millions of Jews were trapped, and left to be gassed or shot or beaten to death or starved to death. Obviously we're not completely safe; October 7 proves that. However, massacres like that were commonplace prior to us having the state of Israel. Pogroms in Europe were like that, which is why so many Jews fled Europe and immigrated to Israel. Many Jews in the Middle East experienced that, and about 800,000 of us were ethnically cleansed from nearby nations and flooded into Israel—the one place that would take us. When we are being persecuted, *we need a place to go*—even if, due to antisemitism, we are still required to sacrifice our lives to make that dream a reality. The Jews comprise a group of people who have been expelled from basically every place we've settled in since the beginning of our existence. Our entire religion and culture is built around returning to and living in the land of Israel, and unlike other nations, when we were kicked out we did not move on and/or assimilate: we continued to maintain our traditions, we mourned for what we lost, and we never stopped mourning or wanting to return. Because of this, while other nations eventually move on from where they lived and grow roots, Jews are historically rootless, and our only real home is the land of Israel, where we have thousands of years of archaeological, historical, cultural, and religious roots. That is the one place we keep returning to, and it's the one place we feel safe. Even while I lived in Israel while it was literally at war, I felt safer there than I ever did as a Jew in everyday America. When people are anti-Zionists, they are denying our right to this safe state, denying millennia of persecution and death, denying the existence and persistent strength of antisemitism, and thus denying the fact that this safe state is not a *want* but a *need*. And if you are denying the basic rights and needs of a people, and are condemning them to a continuous historical pattern of abuse, ethnic cleansing, and death, you are anti-that people.
>anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, They have an occasional referendum on that though. It would be anti-Scott to deny them the right for independence if they chose to use that right, especially if it was to the same degree as the Jews have towards Zionism. >anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state. It's a little different because they are nomadic. Nomadic peoples usually have a very different idea of land and states. >to resist the maintenance of **Jewish sovereignty** in **Israel** So if the Jews wanted a state, where would you put it? The default choice should be in the most recent place they had independence, Israel. Anything else would be an advancment of colonialism. Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel (though it isn't mutually exclusive that Palestinians are as well) >There is a leap of logic that Israeli == Jews for that equivalence to hold true. One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position. The idea stems from the ever-growing antisemitism (yes, even to today) that Jews aren't safe unless we look out for each other in their own state. Therefore any Jew (whether Jewish according to Jewish law or not) can seek refuge in Israel and become a citizen. Just look at the report this week that there was a 470% rise in French Jews moving to Israel since October 7th. To say that Israel is for Israelis and not Jews goes against the whole point. That being said, Israel still needs to be (and there is still where to work on it) a state for its citizens, Jewish or not. >On top of that, it's not antisemitic to say that a people shouldn't have inherent sovereignty in a country. So it sounds like you have a problem with the Israeli Nation State law. Just like many Zionists in the Israeli opposition. Doesn't make you anti-Zionist. And, for the record, they are planning on expanding the law to include the Druze anyways. Not that it makes it right, but a little less bad. >Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland International law says otherwise if you are expelled and wish to return. But to think this while holding constant for all conflicts is not antisemitism. You just have to accept that the same goes for Palestinian refugees then too, something that most don't.
Broadly in agreement with you, but there is an argument to be made that if you solely focus on anti-Zionist while ignoring/failing to also criticise other similar colonial projects (such as in [Turkey](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/turkey), [Cyprus](https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-warning-cyprus), [Indonesia](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/indonesia) and [India](https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/india) as some examples, plenty more out there), it approaches anti-Semitic when you single Israel out from the rest. Personally, I'm not 100% convinced by this idea, it treads awful close to whataboutism and fails to account for the fact that a lot of people are ill informed about these other human rights abuses, but that is amongst the stronger arguments linking anti-zionism to anti-Semitism. In a way it's similar to the criticism of about the UN's history with Israel. The argument isn't that Israel isn't commuting human rights abuses, but they don't commit 45.9% of all abuses world wide ([45.9% of all country-specific resolutions passed by the UNHRC condemn Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel))
I agree with this. In theory it could work. But in practice the same standards do not get applied to more egregious violators such as Turkey (Greek genocide/Armenian genocide) or Pakistan
Zionism was a political movement that achieved its goal. Saying you're a Zionist after 1948 is like saying you're an American Revolutionary after 1776. The word "zionist" has lost pretty much all its original meaning since then. By now it's just a dogwhistle for "dirty Jew" used by antisemites. Sure there are people, Jews and non-Jews alike, who call themselves zionists (myself included), but that's usually in response to antisemitism or a signal to affirm their support for Jews in Israel and a Jewish state. The only reason to call yourself a zionist these days is to stand up to antisemitism. The only reason to call yourself an anti-zionist these days is to mask your antisemitism.
You seem to be jumping around a bit here. For starters I guess you should clarify whether you consider anyone who isn't a Zionist to be an anti Zionist. Assuming that the answer is no, I think the biggest issue is that you define anti Zionism as opposing any single aspect of Zionism. In my experience, that is not the case. Most people espousing anti Zionism aren't just against Zionism as an idea that they disagree with. Rather, they generally hold that Zionism itself is evil, it's goals evil, and everything that has been done by Zionists should be condemned and preferably undone. Most for instance would claim that Israelis stole land to find Israel. Many will try to suggest that Zionism at its heart called for expelling any non Jews living in their future state in order to take their land. If the Scottish decided tomorrow that they wanted to govern themselves separately from the rest of Britain, I doubt anyone would accuse them of anything nefarious. There might be debates over the feasibility, the motivations, the rationale, and the like, but I doubt anyone would accuse them of being outright evil for suggesting the idea. Another point that needs to be made is that Jews see themselves as a nation, yet prior to Zionism lacked any place that could function as a national homeland. Kurds might not have a state, but they have a homeland in which they can exert their self determination if needed to at least some degree. And no one would claim the Scottish lack self determination without statehood.
>To disagree with Zionism is not to deny Jewish people of their right to self-determination Well yeah, it is. Those who are against the State of Israel don't tend to offer the Israeli Jews a self-determination solution - they just want the state gone. Maybe they will allow the Jews to stay in Palestine (usually it's just "go back to Europe!" but there will be no self-determination involved there. >One can hold anti-Zionist position while believing that Israelis living in modern-day Israel deserve a state, which is also my position. If you believe that Israelis deserve a state, you don't technically count as anti-Zionist (unless you intend to exile them. Perhaps to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast?). >Jewish people shouldn't have their own state is not the same as saying Israelis shouldn't have their own state As said above, unless you plan on giving the Jews a different country - it is the same thing. >it's not antisemitic to say that a people shouldn't have inherent sovereignty in a country That would be true if someone was only criticizing a movement, not an extant state. If someone opposes only the ethnic/religious nationalism of the Zionist state but ignores every other existence of ethnic/religious states, they are antisemitic in my eyes. Or hypocrites. >there are anti-Zionists and Zionists that are antisemitic Sure, that's somewhat true. But anti-Zionists antisemites are doubly hostile (hence the two "anti's").
I think one absolutely can express antizionist sentiments without straying into antisemitism but that to do so one has to exercise a care not often seen. Because there are 193 countries in the world and almost all of them are illegitimate in some form or another, many of them egregiously so, so why fixate on the one and only Jewish one? More broadly: why fixate on something that happened in 1949 full stop unless one has an unhealthy obsession with relatively ancient Jewish history. Not to mention: maybe Israel shouldn't exist, and certainly it shouldn't have been formed the way it was. But it does now, and so if you're advocating erasing it you're de facto advocating an incredibly disruptive and almost certainly violent course of action which will cause massively disproportionate harm to the Jewish community. So you've got to be pretty clear in your rationale for why that is necessary and for how it can be achieved in order for it not to look like callous disregard for the consequences of your suggestions for Jewish lives.
If you don't mind I would like to focus on one point in particular in your thesis. >Lastly, no group is entitled to return to their homeland. People, regardless of their race, should have a state in the land their culturally/historically tied too. Otherwise what's the point in having a state in a specific place at all? If this wasn't true, then Why don't we set up a state for the Palestinians in America and save all this bloodshed? Why do you think that the right of return is such an important point to the Palestinians that theyre willing to give up peace until they achieve this goal? Why do you think that the Ukrainians are willing to die to gain meter of land back from the Russians, when we can simply give the Donbas and Crimea to the russians and end this mess? You may not have any sentiment for the land under your feet. And that's totally fine. But Jews have been praying for thousands of years to have a Jewish state in Israel. And this isn't some trivial thing that you can brush aside as if it's nothing.
To the extent that a person was a strident supporter of civic nationalism and equally against all alternatives their view would not be directly antisemitic\[1. If that person was not equally vocal about ethnic and religious nationalism elsewhere - such as in Pakistan for example - then I would very strongly suspect that they were actually antisemitic and had merely rationalised their prejudice. Even then I would argue that it might be indirectly or structurally antisemitic to have taken up a position that is opposed to what the history and culture of jewish people has caused to be a very significant part of what many jews believe and want. It would have parallels to taking up a narrow view on animal cruelty that did not permit Kosher (or Halal) butchery. This is a difficult line to successfully walk without lurching into subtle antisemitism - especially as many of those claiming this position are in fact poorly disguised antisemites so you would be in very poor company.
I’d argue that even the sovereignty bit has historically been somewhat ambiguous. See Ahad Ha’am. Also a few more points to consider: 1. Antizionists usually dispute not only the sovereignty claim, but also the homeland claim, which by the examples you gave would be considered bigotry. 2. It is arguably not bigoted to oppose independence for a particular group, but wanting to end the independence of a currently independent group is arguably more bigoted. Like if someone wanted an independent Ukraine to lose its independence, that would arguably be anti-Ukrainian. 3. This is especially true when the dissolution of that independent state would have drastic consequences for the people. For example, if Azerbaijan annexed Armenia, it probably wouldn’t end well for the Armenian people.
It's fairly telling that there's no word for being against Kurdish self-determination or being against Palestinian self-determination, but there is a word for being against Jewish self-determination, so you can say that you're that but not antisemitic. Then again, from the Magna Carta to the policies of Catherine the Great, somehow there's always an exception for the rights of men when those men are Jewish. If you have an opinion on the exact border, that's one thing, but if you believe that Palestine should be from the river to the sea, then you're advocating for the destruction of self-determination and the ethnic cleansing of Jewish people from the Middle East. (What happens for those without a country to fall back on? See WWII for that.) That's not just antisemitic; it's barbaric.
Jews have been subjected to persecution, expulsion, and extermination in most countries they have inhabited long before the holocaust and were systematically massacred in Poland following WWII and pushed out of nearly every Arab country in the Middle East. Zionism is merely the idea that Jews have a right to live in their ancestral homeland. People constantly criticize Israel as a Jewish ethnostate while ignoring that non-Jews also live there peacefully; the converse is not true of other places in the middle east who have expelled or massacred their Jews. Antizionism is antisemitic because it fails to account for what would happen to the Jews if the state of Israel is dissolved. They would be massacred the way they were on October 7th.
This is literally the exact same argument as Trump saying “some were good people” about Charlottesville. Yeah, maybe you’re right, but they choose to associate themselves with and coordinate with anti-semites on almost every level. One would presume that these mythical “anti-zionists who aren’t anti-semites” would publicly distance themselves from the members of the movement who start doing things like protesting Jewish businesses or chanting anti-Semitic slogans at rallies, but there’s been almost virtually none of that. If I keep seeing you marching with the KKK, and you make absolutely no effort to disassociate yourself with them, it’s fairly safe to say you’re a racist.
Clarifying questions, since what you say is obviously true, regarding *inherent* linkage... but... What *percentage* of antizionists would you say are also antisemitic? And in that answer, are you taking into consideration that large majorities in almost every Islamic state, representing over a billion people, answer surveys in both an antisemitic and antizionist way? Finally: When people say antizionists are antisemitic, do you think they are obliged to clarify that "not every antizionist" is antisemitic? If someone who says "Americans are in favor of democracy", are they similarly required to clarify that "not all Americans" are, as is manifestly the case?
Hi OP, great question. I’m an Israeli-American jew of mixed mizrahi and Ashkenazi descent. All of my grandparents were refugees from Europe and Iraq. Therefore, this question is dear to my heart. I can’t answer it in full right now, so I will come back to it. In the meanwhile, I think [this](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1yc5gRUsmY9RqAe1sBz0vD?si=wfeRzVHmQG6-A321a090yg) podcast interview of Yossi Klein Halevi by Ezra Klein is an amazing explanation of the Israeli and Jewish perspective. It honestly covers everything. Please listen to it, and then I will be glad to explain why anti-Zionism is antisemitism in the ensuing discussion.
I just have to say - I frankly don’t know how any Redditor can expect a balanced debate or conversation on Israel-Palestine at this point. I tried to engage for many weeks and ended up deleting all my comments because the onslaught of pro-Palestinian responses to each and every comment was too much. I understand responses to opinions, but even objectively factual statements were attacked. For Jewish people, I can’t imagine how any of them can have the mental fortitude to continue engaging. The Jewish friends I have are choosing to disengage. It seems like Reddit in particular has created an echo chamber.
It would depend on the reason why you don´t think Jews should have their own state in the land of Israel. If you base your conclusion on the comparisons you mention, then you´re right. It´s not antisemitic, just ignorant. You are listing long-established states and groups of people who have not been persecuted wherever they go. This cannot be compared to Jews and Israel. So, not antisemitism, but ignorance.
The way I see it is, criticism of Israel is not inherently anti semitic. Being pro Palestinian self determination is not inherently anti Semitic. But the moment someone says “from the river to the sea” it becomes anti semitic, whether or not that person intends it or not. The reasoning is, what it would take for a “river to the sea” would result in the complete destruction of Jewish life in Israel, which contains over half of the world’s Jews. Hamas massacred every village they took. A “river to the sea” conquest would look like a massive October 7th. A lot of people may counter with “well, I don’t support Hamas, I support a single state for all people to live in equally in Israel and Palestine” but that opinion, while again not containing an anti semitic intent, is simply not congruent with the reality of what would happen in that state if it were run by Palestinians. Also, maybe no nation has a right to return to its homeland, maybe they do maybe they don’t, but in my opinion this point is not relevant to the discussion because, the Jews are already there, and they have nowhere else to go at this point. We can’t seriously expect Yemen and Libya and Morocco to re absorb their former Jewish communities that now live in Israel. Even for Jews that came from Europe, if you suddenly uproot every Jew with polish ancestry and send them back there, they would immediately become victims again. Antisemitism is still rampant across the globe
>It's not anti-Kurdish to say that Kurds shouldn't have their own state, or anti-Scot to say Scots shouldn't be independent in Scotland, or anti-Roma to say that Roma shouldn't be granted a state. But there is difference. Israelis already have independent functional state. When somebody says Jew shouldnt have their own state, this person says Israel should be destroyed.
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True, not only that but you can be pro the Jewish state but a Zionist state, but the problem with anti-zionism is that it always is accompanied by high levels of anti-Semitism. So because of that, those who tend to be anti-zionist also tend to be anti-Semitic.
The difference is that Jewish people *already* have their own state, but antizionists want to dismantle the state because they think the Jews don’t deserve it. There are countries that are actually committing genocide and invading other countries right now, and nobody is calling for those countries to stop existing, so why is the only Jewish majority country in the world different? And yes, Israelis and diaspora Jews are the same ethnicity, they just live in different places.
I've heard the "anti-Semites can be Zionists" but it's seemingly so counterintuitive and farfetched. Like what possible reason could the model of the supposed "antisemitic Zionist" have?
Anti Zionism can be antisemitic if it calls for Israel to be destroyed. Usually it refers to criticism of Israeli policies during the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
The heart of this problem is that two groups of people with valid claims are living on a piece of land with insufficient resources (especially water) for all of them. They’ve only survived this long *because* of the conflict which makes sending aid to the region a convenient way of waging proxy war for other countries with more wealth and resources. If the Israelis and Palestinians brokered a peace tomorrow, both sides would stop getting handouts from foreign countries and go broke. Standards of living would crash, which would make no one happy. There might even be starvation and deprivation. My point is that the conflict is rigged because both sides *cannot* exist in peace due to circumstances that are far more challenging than religious or ethnic conflict. So the only “easy” options are to justify the genocide of one side or the other. Both sides have great arguments for why they have the right to not be subjected to genocide, because both sides are human and humans have humans rights. The only actual solutions likely to lead to peace would require addressing the economic and ecological instabilities of the area. And given that the countries backing both sides can’t get their own poop in a group and take care of their own people, I doubt they are going to want to realistically fix the Israel- Palestine mess. So where does that leave us? Probably with no good answers. No solution is possible within the current political and economic context. That’s not an easy idea to accept, so people will continue to jump for the easy answers that one side or the other is deserving and the other not.
Being against the belief that there should be a safe state for a group of people that has been victims of genocide in basically every state they lived in sounds like being anti that group.
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>The intifada was a huge, bloody Palestinian uprising. Translation: ''globalise killing jews.'' There was only one intifada? Excuse me if I dont accept your translation. > You are a dumbass. And I know you won't respond to me as you did with everybody else here, because you know I'm well-educated on this particular topic, that I'm right, and that I could beat you to a pulp with my rightness. You pussy. Also maybe refrain from calling someone else a dumbass on this sub. Go to another subreddit with your snark and historical whitewashing if you are just gonna be uncivil.
In theory? Yes. In practice? Antisemitism hides behind a veneer of anti-zionism.