Jaicee said:
There's a lot to respond to here, but the bottom line is that, rather than simply distancing yourself from straight-up anti-Israel politics, you seem to be creatively reimagining the definition of Zionism so you don't have to, and that says a lot to me. Here you have reimagined "Zionism" as a term that means support for the particular government of Benjamin Netanyahu. That is not how proponents define it. Like when a Jewish student's path to class is blocked by protesters and they ask him or her if they're a "Zionist" before permitting passage, the Jewish student will not answer that question according to your definition of the term, they'll answer it according to the Anti-Defamation League's definition, as some variation or other thereon is embraced by basically every Jewish person in Israel regardless of their position on the left-right spectrum (including the anti-occupation peace activists) and by many living outside Israel as well. Anti-Zionism is not a factor in Israeli Jewish politics. That position, which is understood as opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, has no appreciable uptake there amongst the Jewish population and is thus what I would consider an unserious position. Even the left wing newspapers in Israel like Haaretz do not respect anti-Zionist attitudes. That is because, as simply yet succinctly put by Joshua Leifer of Dissent magazine, Zionism is commonly understood by Jewish people to simply mean "support for the political self-determination of, and a sovereign state for, the Jewish people". It does not mean support for the current war, Netanyahu, Ben-Givr, or the settling by Jews of land seized by Israel in 1967. It means recognizing that a nation called Israel has the right to exist as a majority-Jewish country. The 50,000 or so Israelis you see protesting the Netanyahu government every weekend these days demanding that the government reach a deal for the release of hostages at pretty much any price (including an immediate conclusion to the war) perfectly illustrates this spectrum of opinion. Anti-Zionist token Jews who are willing to debase themselves enough to chant along with slogans like "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!" and applaud and cheer speakers defending "the heroic actions of October the 7th", by contrast, are not taken seriously by many Jewish people anywhere. Those are indeed objectively self-hating Jews, sorry, and I say that as an atheist and fellow opponent of this war myself. I believe that we are fundamentally on the same side of the Israeli-Palestinian question in opposing this war and believing in a two-state solution recognizing both a nation of Israel and a nation of Palestine. I feel though that you're one more prone to getting wrapped up in the general aura of protests to the point that you can't think critically about the sum of their content, to which end you are here reflexively ignoring and justifying their more pernicious aspects in disingenuous ways. Another obvious example: in the OP, you layout your idea of the timeline of events leading up to this moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. It's tough not to notice the partisan skew of the telling, such as the omission of a minor little event known as the Holocaust from your timeline. Considering that the Holocaust was the event that first popularized Zionism among Jewish people, one might've thought it worth mentioning. Glaring omissions like that don't occur by accident. I'm trying not use the yes sometimes-overused term "anti-Semitism" here and I hope this doesn't come off as inappropriate tone policing in a context of slaughter and famine, but I can't help feeling like your general take on events, which is practically the only one represented on this thread, is not very sensitive to the typical perspectives and experience of Jewish people. |
I didn't mention the holocaust in the OP because it's common knowledge, a subject that's been beaten to death and now abused as a defense for the current war. Never again. I focused on the lesser known parts of history involving the conflict. But maybe the holocaust, WW2 and the direct aftermath isn't as widely known as I thought.
The holocaust was the big accelerator of course, and not letting go of the trauma from WW2 is a big part of the problem today. Which is also an indication that the current conflict will take many generations to solve. The trauma inflicted on Jews and the Jewish identity in WW2 has since been inflicted on Palestinians.
Zionism isn't just the desire to return to and live in Israel, it has sadly become much more. Hence I've tried to use the term neo-Zionism that appeared after the 6-day war in '67. The right-wing, nationalistic and religious ideology to exclusively settle all the lands between the sea and the river as stated in the Likud party charter from 1977.
But thanks to Neo-Zionism, Zionism in general has gotten a bad name which is what I mean by "Zionism has been hijacked" and where the anti-Zionist feelings come from. As I said, most are not opposed to Jews living in Israel.
Zionism is stained just like Hindus had their religious symbols (the swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck) taken away from them by Nazi Germany. How much further Zionism will be dragged down depends on what the ultra right wing Israeli government does next.
So the correct term is Anti-Neo-Zionism, but Pro-Palestine works better.
Anyway I haven't seen anti zionist token Jews chanting "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!" or praising October 7th. But I have seen many Jews critical of the current war described as self-hating Jews. That term has been hijacked / weaponized as much as Zionism and Anti-Semitism. Originally it was meant to mean those that reject Judaism in total. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/self-hating-jews/
The weaponization of the Holocaust, Zionism, Anti-Semitism, Self-hating Jews is what's now causing this huge divide or rather misunderstanding between Pro Palestine and Pro Israel protesters. Hence it's so important that they sit down and talk instead of barricading themselves behind their own definitions of these terms.
As that article concludes "The trouble is in distinguishing between what are legitimately anti-Semitic stereotypes, and what are merely warring political perspectives." Israel has politicized Zionism, and the rise of the political Neo-Zionism ideology is what has escalated this conflict rather than come to a solution like what happened in Northern-Ireland.
Never again, lest we forget -> It is happening again. It never ended, merely the roles changed.
It is indeed sad that Zionism now is commonly interpreted as Israel for Jews alone. Sad that anti-semitism now means any criticism of Israel's current politics. Sad that the term self-hating Jew is slung around to any Jew opposing Israel's current politics. It's sad that the likes of Netanyahu are invoking the holocaust in disproportionate self-defense as well as calling everyone Nazis that don't agree with them.
Language and symbols fail when terms get twisted and abused, lose their original meaning, get weaponized and flung around out of context. Do that enough and they become the new context, like the Swastika.
Time moves on. You can't simply turn the clock back to the original meanings or the land of Judea and Samaria before the Roman invasion. We need to find a way to move on instead of clinging to the past. Palestinians need to get over the Nakba, Jews need to get over the holocaust. Problem is the likes of Netanyahu are doing everything to prevent this from happening.
It's important to remember the past, even more important not to live by the past.
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