Thoughts on anti-Zionism?
I have been pretty consistently pro-Palestine and critical of injustices perpetrated by Israel, but the anti-Zionist stance has always seemed to me to be counterproductive.
On the issue of just the legitimacy of the state of Israel, here's my basic stance: All land controlled by all governments was taken at some point through conquest (this is not a whataboutist stance, it's a tautology), but in the post-colonial era we all decided that might isn't right and that a mixture of international law, norms, and democratic principles should dictate the legitimacy of territorial claims. So, the Ottoman empire fell. The British seized control of the land of Palestine and retained a moderately weak mandate over the land (moderately weak in the sense that they were the essentially undisputed administrators of the land and had a military presence, but the territory would likely try to break away if the British tried to exercise significant control over it). With this moderately weak mandate, they pushed for the creation of the state of Israel that, by extension, I would consider a moderately-weakly legitimate state under the pre-WWII paradigm. Israel fights a defensive war against the Arab states and succeeds, converting the state of Israel as defined by the original 1948 partition plan from a weakly legitimate state into a properly legitimate state. At this point, the post-WWII frameworks kick in, and all the developments in the conflict past this point should be a function of that lens (ie. Palestine wrongfully denied sovereignty, illegality of settlements, etc.).
Zionism, in the most basic sense, is the belief in the creation of a Jewish state of Israel. There are more extreme and moderate versions of it, but that's all that it is at its core. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the creation of a Jewish state of Israel (I would not consider opposition to settlements or, strictly speaking, even to the accession of new territory into Israel proper past the 1948 borders after the two wars to be anti-Zionist itself). The anti-Zionist stance before the establishment of Israel was reasonable, but past that point is primarily a claim of one nation over the land of another nation. It's perfectly understandable at the end of the day for the Arabs and, particularly the Palestinians, to be upset about the whole situation and even to feel that a great injustice was done unto them. But that should all be relegated to the world of international affairs between established states. Ultimately, in my eyes anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic, but it's definitely anti-peace.
I'm opposed to any state based on religion. The fact that it involved turfing out the existing peoples just makes it worse.
I take issue with this statement as it reduces past injustices to irrelevance. It is very much a present issue when Jews have the right of return, but people who lived on the land face enormous obstacles.
But on the other hand, there must be a half-life on this concern, right? Hypothetically speaking, if Israel had never been founded and a fully-fledged Palenstine stood in its place, a Zionist invasion would be quickly condemned. Such a coup would have essentially no legitimacy, as you claim.
But if Israel continues to exist for the next 400 years, nobody is going to take Palestine's right of return seriously. (Assuming that a two-state solution is eventually realized -- if Israel were to maintain the status quo for the next 400 years, they would lose whatever moral authority they still possess.) And you don't need to consider hypotheticals to realize this is the case -- nobody is calling for the US to be dismantled on the basis that the land was stolen from Native Americans.
Israel has been around for 75 years. That's long enough that people have lived full lives without ever leaving Israel, but that's also short enough that some of those Palestinians originally displaced are still living today. It lies in the gray area of legitimacy, which is why I think reasonable minds disagree about its status.
In law we call it Statute of limitations.
But resentments persist over time. Look at Cyprus or the Balkan states. The Catalans and the Basques still want independence.
The statute of limitations is not an appropriate theory here, because it rests on an ability to pursue redress of grievances in an impartial venue with sufficient authority to decide and enforce the controversy.
Since no such venue exists to litigate concerns, there is no legitimate time limit.
@psi asserts that claims must diminish over time as with a radioactive halflife.. I recognize that in some ways they do and in some ways they don't. History and geopolitics decide, but claims are effected by a function of power and motivation as well as legitimacy and sometimes moral suasion.. Motivation to assert those claims can diminish over time measured in centuries.
That’s a reasonable observation.
You don’t frame the issue as one of morals or shoulds, or justice, and that’s deft.
I’ll assert, however, that moral/justice imperatives only diminish when ascertainable facts do.
As a result, for example, the extant nations occupying the Americas in 1490 have a justified moral claim to the lands inhabited by the descendants of Europeans.
There are ascertainable facts about William the Conqueror and his Norman followers. Are there comparable claims for the descendants of Saxons?
I'm somewhat pressed for time tonight, but I am not indifferent to the Palestinians, or the Native Americans.
Well, there is a reason they called him William the Bastard.
I think intervening history squelched the motivation and that the Saxons came out alright.
The issue is distinct for other reasons beside time alone, as well, not least of which is the lack of factual means to identify the particular saxon descendants suffering harms.
It seems to me that adverse possession might be a better comparative concept.
Possibly so although Adverse Possession in UK derived common law systems requires a formal owner who sleeps on their rights and doesn't protest while someone else uses it in an open and notorious way.
I've heard it argued by credible people that this is the plan. Create facts-on-the-ground or a new normal. It only takes a couple of generations.
Clearly the current regime's strategy towards addressing Palestinian grievances has been to ignore them, so I think this is self-evident. Nevertheless, I'll push back some: governments are largely incapable of planning 40 years into the future, let alone 400, and it remains to be seen what the lasting impacts of this war will be. International pressure might force Israel to finally negotiate with Palestinians. Hell, domestic pressure might force a reckoning, too -- above all else, citizens of a state demand security, and it's clear that the Netanyahu government was unable to provide that.
Generally, Zionist migration can and should be reasonably supported (ie not preventing Jews from migrating)....the jewish right to return is codified in all of the Abrahamic religions, though many Christians claim they get to supercede because Jews don't accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. The bigger problems lie in the 'how and why,' because we see the problems that arise out of building and maintaining ethno-religious-states.
The concept of a Jewish "right to return" outside of the legal context of the Israeli state is a very strange and shaky concept. Just because each of the Abrahamic religions refer to the historical existence of an Israeli kingdom, does not mean there's a right to return to that land in any international-legal or moral sense.
Religion as a whole resides on shaky ground. Doesn't stop people from trying to kill each other over it.
I support full open borders, so limiting migration is a problem regardless of the reasons why.
All due respect, but if you're operating on the ultimate framework on having full open borders, I'm not sure how much relevance there is to your view on a foreign country's sovereignty.
I don’t see how a religious claim should result in everyone automatically supporting it. There’s zero legitimacy to all religious claims as far as I’m concerned.
I am extremely dubious that Islam recognizes a Jewish right to return and would like some sort of source on that. That's a pretty big claim to make.
This is the texts that are being referred to, interpret as you like. I’m not claiming anything either way.
https://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=5&verse=20&to=26
https://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=17&verse=101&to=104
Sorry, I forgot to include another section: https://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=17&verse=101&to=104
Like I said, I'm not claiming anything either way, but those two are what I always see being brought up on this topic as evidence that the Quran supports the right of return. I do not believe that there is any kind of general consensus on the validity of that interpretation.
No, that wasn’t me. That was u/vord. I’m just providing context for the relatively common claim, not arguing for the validity of it.
Edit: fixed reference, it was vord who said that, not tealblue.
Couldn't you say much the same for most of the surrounding Islamic countries?
About religious states? Yes, very much so. And many of us do.
There can never be peace and justice for all in a non-secular state. Non-believers, at best, will always be second-class citizens.
Having a state religion enables all sorts of injustice with people you disagree with, because "God is on our side." It's used to justify killings of atheists, LGBTQ, and anybody whom threatens the authority of the religion or the state. It is usually one of the main justifications for subjugation of women, and things like rape culture are subsequently enabled by that.
It's abhorrent in the USA when people falsely claim the US is a Christian nation, and it's even worse when the religion and state are officially intertwined. It falsely mixes the policies of the state and the people.
We should be specific. Being a constitutionally religious country does not mean that the nation was conceived on the basis of religion. The only other country that was founded on the basis of religion is Pakistan.
It's not just religion though. "Jewish" is pretty unique in comparison to "Muslim" or "Christian" since it is not just a religion, but also an ethnicity. And I think everyone here agrees that any and all ethnicities should be protected from persecution - the answer to this in the 20th century was to create the state of Israel. There are endless amounts of arguments both for and against this, but now 75 years later, those are the cards we have been dealt and we need to take it from there.
That said, those injustices continuing through 75 years are not irrelevant. But literally no one has been able to fix it, and those living there (both Israelis and Palestinians) are unable to agree on almost anything when it comes to either one-state or two-state solutions, and significant percentages of the populations of both want to eradicate the other. It is by no means fair, what has happened to Palestinians for three quarters of a century - but it has also been way too long for it to be fair to tell millions of Israelis to go live somewhere else.
I have no solution to this, however I do think this is one of those rather rare occasions that it actually is a "both sides" type discussion.
"Ethnicity" is a very vague term. What makes "Jewish" an ethnicity but not "Muslim" or "Christian"? I don't know, but I would guess Chinese Jews have more in common with Chinese Christians than American Jews, and American Jews have more in common with American Christians than Brazilian Jews.
This actually probably isn't true on the whole. A large part of what makes Judaism an ethnicity is the result of how uncommon it is for people to convert to Judaism (it's a pretty elaborate process and conversion of people who are not "descendants of Abraham" doesn't really make sense in the context of the scripture). The people that you're describing, Chinese Jews and Brazilian Jews, mostly came from the same small number of European and Russian settlements, and the vast majority of them only entered China and Brazil in the last hundred years. This isn't unique to China and Brazil, it's true of the entire Jewish Diaspora, but those are as good examples as any:
There are ~3,000 Jews in China, essentially all of whom live in Shanghai, and essentially all of whom fled to China during the Holocaust. There are only 91,000 Jews in Brazil, which was actually one of the more popular destinations for Jews fleeing the Holocaust because of existing Jewish communities there. I can say with absolute certainty that I could, upon meeting a Brazilian Jew, immediately begin sharing stories of loving-but-overbearing mothers and loving-but-outstandingly-argumentation grandfathers, because there's a near certainty that their great grandparents fled the Russian and Polish pogroms, like my grandmother's family did, or Nazi Germany, like my grandfather's family did. That means two things: (1) Our ancestry is literally shared; we almost certainly can trace our ancestry back to the same specific communities without going more than five generations, and (2) our lives and cultures have been shaped by the same, immensely powerful forces.
I think people often get deceived into thinking that Judaism is like other globally distributed religions, like Islam or Christianity, by how global the Jewish community is. But Islam and Christianity spread by adding new members, who already belonged to other cultures. Judaism spread by a single group of people being divided and evicted over, and over, and over. There are differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, but they're not like the differences between native Germans and native Spaniards, they're like the differences between Irish Catholics in Ireland and Irish Catholics in the United States.
I have met Jews from all over the world, and the comfort and affinity I feel to them (despite the fact that I, to be clear, do not actually practice Judaism as a religion, nor have any faith in its scriptures) far surpasses that of any given American Christian. Obviously I have a large number of American Christian friends, but it is notable that, despite living in a country whose Jewish population is 2% (edit: this originally said 0.2%, which is the global Jewish density, not the American one) of its total population, half of my closest friends are Jewish.
I hope this helps explain what this means when people say that Judaism is an ethnicity, not just a religion. It's a complicated topic, but it's not just lip service; it's quite meaningful.
That was very interesting. I had no idea. Thank you.
I mean, the very fact that you can have "secular Jews" at all (and there's no denying this is an incredibly common thing) is the easiest evidence for this. I was raised a WASP, but am no longer religious, so I am not Christian anymore. If I had instead been born Jewish but was still no longer religious, it would not be accurate to call me no longer Jewish -- neither in common parlance nor according to Israeli immigration law.
Historically I would assume that the focus on conversion in both Christianity and Islam is why neither is an ethnicity -- it's literally incentivized to convert people regardless of their ethnicity in both religions. The opposite is the case with Judaism -- conversion is rare and it's only done when initiated by the potential convert, without proselytizing. This isn't to say there isn't any ethnic diversity within Judaism, but it makes a lot of sense why there's a lot more within Christianity and Islam.
I don't know either. This is simply the way it is so I was just adding context
The jews whose families were expelled from countries like Iran have fewer options
I believe Israel is accurately described as a colonial project, we can't pretend colonization is a bad thing and forget about Israel. I don't see how the situation is all that different to apartheid South Africa.
If a one state solution existed that had equal rights for arabs and jews, then I'd be all for it. When the 5.3 million Palestinians of Gaza and the West bank are allowed to vote, when the millions in the palestinian diaspora are given the "right to return" then I'll support the state's "right to exist".
But Jewish people in Israel only make up 7 million, and they would never let that happen, because they are an ethnostate.
It's a joke that some random American born to a Jewish family can fly over to Israel and become a citizen, while Palestinians are cooped up in Gaza and the West Bank.
I see you may not be aware of the context of the right of return, so I thought I might share my perspective growing up in a diaspora community, having spent a good amount of time with Israelis growing up.
The thing with the right of return for Jews has to do with the incredible collective trauma around the holocaust for the Ashkenazi minority, and their expulsion from the surrounding states for the Sephardic Jews. Particularly for the holocaust, a typical person to emigrate might have lost their entire family to antijewish hatred, and they're only now reaching the third generation past that. The Sephardic experience was more varied, and I lack the research to comment on it, but what little I know is that many communities spent generations as second class citizens.
They all see Israel as an escape valve for the quite literally hundreds of times in history where the Jewish minority have been killed, endangered, or removed from their home countries. Think of the effect on culture that, the most valuable skill for being a Jew in much of the last thousand years has been knowing when to flee, and having an escape route planned.
According, when people use the phrase "Never Again" I think they often don't realize it has a bit of a different meaning for particularly Israeli Jews, but also those in the diaspora. In thar can often mean "Never again will we let ourselves be victims", or even "Never again will we let ourselves be victims without fighting back".
I love a one state solution in theory -- everyone in the region living together in peace. What I struggle with though is how it would work. Generations of fighting and terror attacks later, large portions of both sides hate each other. October 7th solidified that -- the kibbutzim they attacked were among the most left-leaning parts of Israel, with many peace activists who worked with Gazans to build bridges, or escort those who needed medical care to Israeli hospitals. And per above, a huge portion of the Jewish community has a historically well-founded terror of being a minority. And while I'm not as familiar, I can't imagine that the Palestinian trauma is much less complex at this point.
What's better? I don't know, and it's why seeing the exchanges online is so exhausting to me. There seems to be no good route towards peace and safety for everyone.
It's difficult to entertain this viewpoint when Israel continues to support settlements in the West Bank, and likely seek to annex Gaza, if not at the end of this war, then within our lifetimes.
There are 5 million Palestinians that live in their territories, I take absolutely no reservation when I describe what Israel is doing as genocide.
Likud and their allies will never accept anything less than claiming all of the land, they don't care how many Palestinian or Israeli lives are lost in the process. Hamas may want the same thing, but Hamas aren't supported by the international community.
I don't view the end of Israel as any more apocalyptic than the end of South African apartheid.
Is this so impossible though? I mean, it's difficult to see it working, certainly, but it's tje most likely out of all the other scenarios. None of the participants can completely annihilate everyone else so that there's no revenge coming back in a few generations time. Any compromise short of completely healing the historical, generational and collective trauma is just biding time until revenge.
So. If democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, then perhaps peace is the least likely solution except all the others.
The Rwandans made it happen between the Tutsi and the Hutu peoples. It's probably harder than just continuing to fight forever. But it can be done......Can't it?
Indeed, and it was achieved through a civil war, mass, truly mass incarceration, and mass reeducation. There was pacification and it was achieved by violent and coercive means.
And post conflict they are once again well integrated, well regarded, and well protected in Europe. The world is turbulent but it is possible to reconcile violent and bitter history.
On a significantly diminished scale, yes. Prewar Germany had over half a million Jews out of 65 million total, modern Germany at most 225,000 out of 80 million. The more significant point is that the Dreyfus Affair and the Holocaust showed no matter how well integrated your Jewish community is, antisemitism can ramp up really fast. It makes sense why many Jews would fear living alongside a different ethnic group having a demographic majority over them; even the best relations could sour at any time.
The current status of Jews in Germany matters little to the 6 million in the ground. Depending on how you count, ther are at most 275,000 remaining and 120,000 practicing.
But people can't see the future, and much of immigration happen with the holocaust very close in the rear-view mirror. Without the benefit of hindsight, If you were the sole survivor of your family in 1945 in a displaced persons' camp (which, unfortunately due to low resources, were not much better than the original camps themselves for a period after the war ended), can you imagine choosing to go back to your old city and trying to pretend that everything was normal? There were pogroms in Poland in 1946 (and then again in 1968) .
Given the context of the holocaust and hundreds of years of pogroms and discrimination before it, can you understand why people felt the only safe place to immigrate might be the only place in the world with a Jewish majority and a military forming solely to protect it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/israel-population/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-palestine-population/
Jews only make up 73.5% of the population of Israel. That amounts to 7.3 million Jews and 2.6 million non-Jews. Palestine on the other hand has 5.4 million people with a negligible number of Jews living there, making a total of 8 million non-Jews in the combined territory. Consider also that the Arab population in the area is growing faster.
I am decidedly philosophically against the concept of ethnostates, but what are the practical outcomes of making Jews a minority in a state that would be quickly governed by non-Jews, a large number of which have substantial animosity towards Jews?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-93-of-palestinians-hold-anti-jewish-beliefs/amp/
We don't apply this logic to any other colonially-founded states, and this train of thinking is what has driven Israel to the right over the decades. We can still recognize the atrocities without putting Israel's legitimacy as a state in the balance each time.
Those 5 million Palestinians have no say in what the government that controls their borders, water, food and electricity does.
South Africa didn't used to let non-whites vote, apartheid ended and SA still exists.
Israel does not need to be an ethnostate to exist.
If Israel's legitimacy is in the balance on the basis of being a Jewish state, then shouldn't that logic drive us to undermine the legitimacy of the Pakistani state? I should be very clear that Israel has committed great crimes against humanity over the years and it can be credibly argued that they are outright genocidal. But it's counterproductive to peace to reignite this specific question each time.
Israel's legitimacy is in the balance because it's an ethnostate. I oppose the idea of religious states in general, which includes Pakistan, but the situation in Israel is not directly comparable to Pakistan on that level.
The differences being Pakistan wasn't colonised, unless you count the Mughals 500 years ago, and that Israel acts on the basis of ethnicity not religion, I can't convert to Judaism and become a Israeli citizen. Though I don't suspect the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in Pakistan is great, I don't think it's equivalent to the treatment of Palestinians.
Is it fair to say that Israel was entirely colonized itself either? You had extensive migration from within the surrounding region to Israel (nearly half of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi). Pakistan had large influxes of migrants from places in India that the native inhabitants would have considered "foreign".
I suppose part of my argument, that you might disagree with, is that "colonization" has existed in many forms over human history. Pakistan was once the land of the River Valley civilization, then it was once one of the centers of Buddhism, then it was conquered by Muslim states, then the British. What makes the people who migrated during the periods of Muslim conquest "native" but the Jewish migrants not? IMO it just comes down to the principle that we all agreed to stop colonizing at a certain point, and the formation of Israel happened in the middle/slightly before that transition.
My understanding is that people who convert to Judaism can become Israeli citizens.
It seems you're right, which honestly makes it more fucked up, and less to do with Ashkenazi Jews and the holocaust. I could theoretically become an Israeli but a Palestinian American can't.
Why? If you convert to Judaism, you face the same threat as someone who has not converted -- anti-semites will go after you either way. Judaism discourages converts (so the actual numbers here are actually fairly small). Likely, you've married, or plan on marrying in to a Jewish family and raising Jewish children.
There's an understanding in the oral torah that people convert to Judaism because their soul was already Jewish. Converting in a way accepted by the rabbinate is a process that legally must take at least 9 months and 300 hours of study (and in reality, a conversion by a community that will complete in 9 months is much less likely to to be accepted by the rabbinate), and often takes multiple years -- frankly, most immigration paths to other countries are easier than learning a new way of living.
My reference that I double checked with: https://lawoffice.org.il/en/aliyah-based-on-conversion/
Yes, though it would need to be a conversion accepted by the rabbinate, if I recall.
No one is putting the legitimacy of Israel as a state in the balance any more than they put legitimacy of South Africa as a state in the balance. Many of us want policy change to enable more equitable for jewish Israelis and Palestinians. One doesn't mean the end of the other unless you're implying that the top down apartheid is a necessary mechanism for the state.
I think it's fine to point out similarities, but it's wrong to say the situations are wholey similar.
For one, there was no real legitimate claim for the original white south Africans to be in south Africa in the first place. Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews. They were the first permanent inhabitants to the area, and were systematically removed from that land multiple times and to multiple degrees starting from 600 BCE until the early 20th century. That aspect bears no similarities to the Boers in South Africa, and is far more similar to Native Americans in the US.
I think a lot of times the abhorrent behavior of Israel, especially in the last 20 years towards Palestinians gets wrapped around the axles and the fact that Jews are originally from the area gets wallpapered over.
My understanding is that genetic evidence indicates that both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims have ancestors who were Canaanites, for what it's worth.
Relevant Article
They used to be fully able to vote though, and they then voted for a terrorist organization who took their rights away in Gaza, and in the West Bank the current leader is only slightly better but is still a Holocaust denier.
no, not really, not by any meaningful definition of "fully".
Palestinians living in the territories that Israel occupies and controls (Gaza and the West Bank) have never had full voting rights in the Israeli government. they have always had second-class voting rights of only being able to vote for the local government of their occupied territory.
I assume you're referring here to the election 17 years ago? the one that took place before roughly half the current population of Gaza had been born?
what's the expiration date on the "they elected Hamas once, so they don't deserve voting rights" excuse? if we're still debating a one-state vs two-state solution in 2043, will the 2006 election of Hamas be relevant?
Hamas would get elected again, per a poll from yesterday: "if new parliamentary elections were held today with the participation of all political forces that participated in the 2006 elections, only 69% say they would participate in them, and among these participants, Fateh receives 19%, Hamas' Change and Reform 51%, all other lists combined 4%, and 25% say they have not yet decided whom they will vote for. Three months ago, vote for Hamas stood at 34% and Fatah at 36%. Vote for Hamas in the Gaza Strip stands today at 52% (compared to 44% three months ago) and for Fateh at 21% (compared to 32% three months ago). In the West Bank, vote for Hamas stands at 50% (compared to 24% three months ago) and Fatah at 18% (compared to 40% three months ago)."
Oh and also, they are almost completely denying Hamas' crimes: "95% think Israel has committed war crimes during the current war, only 10% think Hamas also committed such crimes"
You are putting words in my mouth with this. I neither think nor said anything to that effect.
Unfortunately in discussion about this one must almost always put disclaimers about what position you hold and so I must say that I find the Israeli response to 7/10 completely disproportional and all their settlements and actions in the West Bank should be condemned.
We see people vote for fascists when they feel their safety threatened.
This has long been the excuse for Israel's far right government. Despite international support and the might of the US military behind them.
Palestinians have absolutely had the greater existential threat, and their choice to vote for extremists is reflected by this.
This is why the entire notion of "defeat Hamas by killing them all" is ridiculous and should be laughed at. You are only making Hamas stronger by murdering peoples innocent children.
Israel and the Zionism movement have badly coopted my culture. There is terrible schism between Jews who recognize this campaign as a disgusting abdication of responsibility and those who think it is "cleaning". I am loathe to associate myself with eugenicists and genocidaires, and I feel ejected from Judaism.
Surely there'd be a lot of others who feel the same as you? Is it possible to find them and support each other through this and onwards?
I made a reply to a different top level comment that gives a perspective on why a large majority of Jews, even in the diaspora, believe Israel must continue to exist as a state with a right of return.
https://tildes.net/~talk/1cv9/thoughts_on_anti_zionism#comment-bh7j
I think the complaints that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic are valid to a degree. It does seem that the intense focus on Israel is driven by how the actors in its conflict agitate popular biases. This is not a new point at all.
It has been noted that nearly half of all UN condemnations are against Israel, and the rest collectively for countries like Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Russia, China, Venezuela, etc. — like, is Israel really responsible for 50% of all human suffering? And that far, far more violent conflicts get only a tiny fraction of the same attention, ire, and protests. In the same vein, the Palestinian cause galvanizes the Islamic world — yet numerous bloodier conflicts involving Muslims draw tepid reactions.
So it begs the question: is the international reaction really about Palestinians, or is it deep down really just about Jews?
I think that Zionist Israelis perceive these double standards as a justification that a nation state with military power is the only reliable political organization that can secure and protect the rights and interests of Jews as an ethnoreligious group in a world that is massively biased against it.
Personally, I don't think that the intense spotlight on Israel is primarily due to anti-Semitism (though that's probably a contributing factor). That land has been notoriously a point of fixation and contention throughout history.
I have extremely conflcted feelings. I am against atrocities on all sides, including 'total war' by the state of Israel in the current Gaza conflict.
The situation in the West Bank with the settlers reminds me of the history of settlement in the US. There were people who were sympathetic to the natives and people who were honest and wanted to adhere to existing treaties at whatever moment. Those people were always outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the opportunists and the exterminationists who created new facts on the ground.
I have said here before that if I could rewrite history, the Allied powers would have carved territory out of Germany for a state for jewish people in reparations for the holocaust. That way the religious zionists could go be a minority in Palestine without adding all of the secular jews and refugees to the mix.
The situation in Israel is more complex because there are so many citizens who were expelled from Middle Eastern countries after Israel was created. Many Israelis like the Palestinians have nowhere else to go.
Honestly I don't see how the settlements can be justified or attenuated in any light. It was always an illegal and profoundly immoral seizure of land.
I am not trying to justify them. I am saying that once you start taking land, it is hard to effectively stop until you are forced to.
Why? It's not like the early days of the colonial US, where the administration had little ability to physically stop settlers from expanding. Israel is a modern nation that can very easily criminalize settlements and physically stop people from entering the West Bank as settlers.
I need to go get some work done. But the coalition behind Netanyahu includes groups that are 100 percent in favor of even more settlements.
In my preferred future, Israel does roll back the settlements, not just stop new ones. We will see what actually happens. Many people are just selfish and those people vote.
I suppose, but saying it's hard to stop the settlements absolves Israel of responsibility when Israel is completely responsible for it.
I think saying its hard to stop the settlements is acknowledging a current political reality, not absolving Israel of what it is doing. It is hard to stop the settlements for exactly the reason you raise: Israel is completely responsible, and Israel is a sovereign state.
I'm not convinced that nothing can be done, given that the US has done little to nothing to meaningfully pressure Israel to stop. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem with no concessions and Biden has repeatedly said that US support for Israel is unconditional, which makes any pressure positively toothless.
Where’s the political will to do so? Any Israeli administration enforcing a policy of no new settlements would be voted out. Sometimes, it’s the will of the people, not the unaccountable machinations of government that is bad.
As it stands, the apartheid state of Israel cannot continue to exist in peace. There is no way to subjugate a group of people like this without reaching a boiling point. Whether it is a two-state solution or not, if the land of the Palestinians continues to be stolen, the Palestinian people continue to be imprisoned without trial, and their homes are occupied by settlers, peace will not be possible.
I think the best way to lower the stakes might be to be very clear that it's not up to us. The people in other countries who make proclamations about whether counties should exist or not are engaging in a sort of power fantasy, like playing a strategy game or maybe participating in a model UN. They don't have that power, they're just pretending. Zionist or anti-Zionist views are a lot less important when they're all talk.
That is, as long as people don't get so worked up about their fantasies that they actually do something harmful. Lowering the stakes is important. In the US, hate crimes are probably the worst problem we have to worry about, and I don't mean just graffiti either.
You can make a slippery-slope argument that anti-Zionist views could lead to hate crimes. Seems like it's a "tell" but it's not proof.
If we're just talking about fantasies, here's my strategy game hot take: how about a zero-state solution? Everyone leaves, nobody gets "right of return" and the whole area becomes an ecological park or something. Holy places get preserved and people can make temporary visits.
It's probably a terrible idea, and nobody has that kind of power anyway. Slightly more seriously, I think the best thing other countries could do is provide easy immigration for anyone who wants to get out voluntarily.
But that's not up to us either. It's just engaging in another power fantasy where we control immigration.
Can you post a source to this please. That would have definitely been front page news where I'm from but I have never heard of this before.
They are almost definitely describing the bombing campaigns in alternative terms and not actually talking about lining people up in front of firing squads.
edit: maybe I'm wrong about what they are saying: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/12/13/civilians-sheltering-inside-a-gaza-school-killed-execution thx @dubteedub
If he had that I would assume he would have led with it. For now I am assuming that is majority baseless speculation and 3rd or 4th hand sources.
Al Jazeera is Qatari state media.
I really do not want to traumatize myself by watching videos like that so I guess I'll have to take your word for the dead babies claim.
I really have to dispute your claim about killings like this being targeted though atrocities do hit the headlines and a former judge was also on the front page here, saying Israeli soldiers as well as Hamas soldiers should be tried for war crimes. Civilians ultimately always get caught and that is of course one of the great tragedies of war.
Actual unbiased sources, I will read this. Thank you very much for these links!
So according to that article, this journalist received death threats on social media but that does not mean this was a "targeted assassination". Israel has dropped tens of thousands of bombs (which is of course ridiculous and far beyond defensible as a proportional response which I also said elsewhere), and one of those happening to hit this journalist's building is not enough to say that he was directly targeted. However I also said, in the comment just above which you conveniently cut off in your quoting me, that such actions are already being said by many people should be tried because they are war crimes.
I was also not disputing that Israel does assassinations. I was disputing that they specifically target journalists and such- in your wiki link, all of the ones listed since 7/10 are Hamas personnel. I think every halfway sensible person agrees that this war should be condemned. Like, basically everyone agrees that this is awful, so rhetoric like mass execution, ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc. just does not help when it's at best debatable whether any of those apply. Because if Israel was actually trying to do an ethnic cleansing, they are doing a really poor job of it. This article is a month old but the experts here also all have very different points of view on whether or not it is a genocide: https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-experts/
I think maintaining precision and avoiding definition drift is important. If you're opposed to the views of people who consider themselves Zionist, you're not automatically anti-Zionist. It's not even a broadly anti-Israel stance, in the way someone might be anti-China. Anti-Zionism is belief in the disestablishment of a Jewish state of Israel.