r/JewsOfConscience • u/AutoModerator • Oct 09 '24
AAJ "Ask A Jew" Wednesday
It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.
Please remember to pick an appropriate user-flair in order to participate! Thanks!
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u/Electrical-Wrap-3923 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 09 '24
Do you have to deal with estranged family as antizionists? Have you found “found family”?
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u/Dis-Organizer Matzpen Oct 10 '24
Sorry this is long, clearly your question hit a nerve
My extended family doesn’t talk to me anymore—they tried spamming me with bad hasbara videos for quite a bit but now have just stopped. At least they no longer comment horrible things on my social media. I still post a shana tova or whatever in the family WhatsApp and get one heart if I’m lucky. This is really painful because my family is quite close in an Israeli way (which isn’t the same in American Jewish culture—we literally spent every Shabbat together and that’s pretty common). I’m lucky that my immediate family is fairly left although they definitely secretly think I’ve lost it and have stopped telling me things
I tried to find “found family” for a while, but being Israeli in the US, the American Jewish community was just really tough, even anti-Zionists (maybe especially honestly). Many American Jews assimilated to white US culture in a way my family hasn’t—our traditions are different, our connection to heritage and lineage feels vastly different. Like many Israeli families, mine is pretty multi-cultural, and even though there’s so much to say about racism and the Ashkenazi hegemony in Israel, I grew up hearing stories from my aunt’s mom’s childhood in Iraq and my other aunt’s mom’s stories from Morocco, my cousin incorporated traditional Tunisian Jewish elements into her wedding, I have Chinese Jewish cousins, and Jewish diversity is just a lot more present in the culture, like my parents didn’t have to try hard to put me in a diverse school with Ethiopian and Yemeni and Russian Jews (etc). Even among Ashkenazim—in the US it feels really flattened to me, while my Grandpa was extremely proud to be a Galitzianer. I would say most US Jews don’t grow up enmeshed in non assimilated Jewish culture. Granted our Judaism has been colonized by Zionism so I’m not saying it’s perfect, just very different
Many US Jews who are active Jewishly are also higher socio-economic status than my family and I, and that has always made me uncomfortable. So I tended to gravitate to other immigrant kids growing up. I’m also lucky that I did grow up in an area with Jews from many different parts of the world including recent immigrants, but many became right wing, so as I got older and stronger in my politics mt Jewish community disappeared and the activists I tend to do actions with are great for that but not really great at community for me. Recently I’ve found community with other anti-Zionist Israelis here, and it’s the first time I’ve felt mishpacha in a while
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u/Electrical-Wrap-3923 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 10 '24
Thank you for sharing your answers. I hope you continue to find community elsewhere.
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Oct 12 '24
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox Oct 09 '24
My father, but less specifically because of Palestine and more because of him being an abusive fascist overall. His response to Gaza is about what you'd expect from a white Christian American man.
Not really
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Oct 09 '24
I've always wanted to ask this, so this seems like the opportunity...what are some aspects of the anti-Zionist movement among non-Jews make you kind of uneasy or that go too far? I mean, fundamentally, we're against the occupation and the human rights abuses and mass atrocities committed by officials of the State of Israel and pro-self-determination for Palestinians, not against the idea of a Jewish state, which i think is more of an issue that concerns Jews more so than us non-Jews should be concerned about
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Oct 10 '24
[deleted]
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u/twig_zeppelin Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
Agree! Anger at Zionism should be even more directly anger at Western Imperialism and White Supremacy, which is the core trauma of all this mess.
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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Oct 10 '24
I am against the idea of a Jewish state because I've read the Tanakh and the plain meaning of it is that God gave us a King in the same way that God gave us quail in the desert.
I am further against the idea of a Jewish state because it is not supposed to exist until after Eliyahu returns and heralds the Moshiach.
I am even further against the existence of the "State of Israel" because, in all things, to understand them one must go to the beginning and see how they have developed through to now. The Zionist Organization was quite clear that "Israel" was to be the home of the Jewish race and not the home of the Jewish people. The switch in language came in the third and final draft of the Balfour Declaration, and we may infer that this was due to the opprobrium the British Foreign Office had received from British Jewry. The Zionist project is plainly still a project of annexing Palestine as the homeland of the race.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Oct 10 '24
I want to push back on the idea that only Jews should engage with questions of a "Jewish state", sure the question "Is it good for the Jews" could probably be left for us, but Israel is not a Jewish state that happens to be implementing apartheid and colonialism, it is that because at its foundations it was created to serve one group of people over another group, that is everyone's concern.
To answer the question the pro-Palestine movement suffers from all the problems of any semi-popular left-wing movement, one thing I have particularly noticed is the romanticization/aestheticization of violence. There is a minority of people who treat it like a video game battle, make memes and jokes about "Chad Hamas, Virgin Israel, and cutesie cartoons of Hamas fighters, Even if you think 10/7 was justified (I do not), violence is still a grave and serious thing, that should be treated as tragedy in all cases.
There is also just the general simplification of valid arguments to the point they become problematic or just not true. For instance, very valid discourse about the Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli attempt to self-orientalize, and appropriate culture from Mizrachim and Arabs, gets turned into "Jews stole hummus from the Palestinians," Information about the existence of Palestinian Jews, i.e Jews whose families have been in Palestine since at least before the New Yishuv (prior to 1880), get turned into the claim I've seen lots of places that there "Indigenous" Jews who identify as, and politically with, Palestinians n the West Bank and Gaza right now,
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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Oct 10 '24
I was, in fact, banned from r/Palestine for saying that Khazar theory is an antisemitic conspiracy theory and that its proponents (Sand, Koestler, and Elhaik) are not the final word on it.
If you follow the line of reasoning implied by them wanting to get into this -- the way to delegitimize Israeli colonization and crimes against humanity is to deny any line of descent of Ashkenazic Jewry as a whole to the Levant -- it seems to be that the reason Israel is criminal is that Ashkenazic Jewry doesn't have a blood-and-soil connection to the land. The Palestinian case, likewise, then derives its justice because of their blood-and-soil connection to the land. This has immediate implications: the extermination of both the Ulster Scots and the Anglo-Normans, and retroactively the massacre of European Jewry by the Third Reich, are not just justifiable but desirable because they're not native to the land. We then find it hard to disprove ridiculous notions because Curtis LeMay's Firebombing of Tokyo becomes anti-colonial praxis as the Ainu were indigenous to Tokyo Bay.
I have been reading J.M.N. Jeffries' Palestine: The Reality (written in 1938) and I have come across something quite interesting: the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 was the third revision. Both previous revisions of the document (circa August and October 1917) specified Palestine was to be the homeland of the Jewish race, not of the Jewish people. Further, the two previous revisions specified that Palestine was to be transferred to control of the Zionist Organization immediately (by 1916 the ZO was an informal bureau of the Foreign Office of the British Empire; the Foreign Office, US State Department, and Zionist Organization collectively wrote the text of the Balfour Declaration).
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 11 '24
Jews whose families have been in Palestine since at least before the New Yishuv (prior to 1880), get turned into the claim I've seen lots of places that there "Indigenous" Jews who identify as, and politically with, Palestinians n the West Bank and Gaza right now,
Are you referring to the Mizrachim here or another group? Because I think it's relevant to note that the Mizrachim actually tend to be more conservative than Askenazi and have been generally very supportive of the war on Gaza.
Even a majority Muslim Israelis have supported Israel since the war began.7
u/Thisisme8719 Arab Jew Oct 11 '24
Even a majority Muslim Israelis have supported Israel since the war began.
What does that mean? In terms of supporting Israel's actions in Gaza? The vast majority of Palestinian Israelis thought Israel was going too far within the first few months of the war. It's now almost the entirety of the Palestinian Israeli population who thinks the war should end according to the recent IDI poll. That's also considering that Palestinian citizens of Israel can't even be forthright with their criticisms because of the Israeli Gestapo. Dozens were arrested within the first couple of weeks of the war, and the persecution is still going on.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 11 '24
Yes, I think I was looking at old polling: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-arab-minority-feels-closer-country-war-poll-finds-2023-11-10/ I can't seem to find specific polling from IDI that you are referring to, I'd like to see it. But it does look like you are right that that support has dropped significantly.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Oct 10 '24
Palestinian Jews are a specific group of Mizrachim (Mizrahim is a term invented by Zionists in th60s as a catchall for all Jews in Islamic lands).
Yeah, I think people just hear the word "Palestinian" and think they know what that means so they fill in the blanks. I don't expect everyone to know the nuances of of Israeli demographic or Jewish history, but there is a very real lack of curiosity and willingness to just repeat things.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 09 '24
not against the idea of a Jewish state
I mean a lot of anti-zionists are though. If being a zionist means you support a Jewish state, being an anti-zionist implies you do not support a Jewish state. That said, I think anti-zionists do need to be clear that even if they are against a Jewish ehtnostate, that they do not mean expelling all Jews from the region and installing a fully Palestinian government, which seems to be what a lot of young angry progressives are demanding without really understanding the implications. Personally it doesn't bother me because I know they mostly mean well and have very little sway in politics, but I really can't support the expulsion of Israelis from the region. I think the demands that are more practical and popular for those who are anti-zionist and anti-ethnostate is a coalition government in the region and giving citizenship to non-Jews.
The other tendency that makes me a little uneasy is how many anti-zionists seem to fall back on rhetoric about colonizers/indigenous people, mapping American ethno-politics onto a very different situation. First of all, the "colonizer" language won't get you anywhere because Zionists believe they are indigenous to the land. Second of all, a huge portion of the Israeli population are Arab who have almost the same racial makeup as the people living in Gaza. Talking about Israel with the language of American race politics is both ineffective and inaccurate, and most concerning, ends up painting the Jews as oppressors, rather than Israelis as oppressors, in the same way as progressives talk about white people as inherently oppressors by the nature of American systemic injustice. When you apply this to Jewish people it ends up sounding a like "the Jews run the world." South African apartheid is much more useful of a comparison in my opinion.
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u/conscience_journey Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
The colonizer/indigenous discussion is not American. It is international, applying to conflicts and oppression around the world.
Talking about the “genetic makeup” of Israelis, however, is applying a racial perspective rather than an anti-colonial one. It doesn’t matter what “genetic makeup” Israelis or Palestinians have.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
What I'm saying is that the way Americans talk about colonizer/indigenous issues is generally through the lens of Native American/White Colonial dynamics. There is a lack of understanding of the history of the region and the involvement of the British in establishing Israel. This leads to an oversimplification of the issues that paints Israelis as essentially white cowboys who showed up to push the poor Arabs out. Obviously there are elements of that but it is far too black and white, adds a troubling and inaccurate racial element in, and ignores the role of other world powers in the formation of Israel. But also, I'm saying that rhetorically it simply is ineffective, because if you try to argue this to Zionists you won't change any minds because they see the Jews as the indigenous population who is simply returning to their rightful homeland. I find it far more effective to talk realistically about the atrocities being committed now, not debating historical precedence, and what a practical de-escalation would be to the conflict.
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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
This leads to an oversimplification of the issues that paints Israelis as essentially white cowboys who showed up to push the poor Arabs out.
I mean...that is basically true of proto-Israel. It becomes quite a bit more complex after World War II and the Nakba, granted, but it's also true of modern olim, especially anglo olim.
With the advantage of perspective I think what we're seeing is that the Shoah generation and its immediate successors produced a distorted (undesired by the Zionist movement, this is part of why they hate Shoah survivors) view of the Zionist project. What we are seeing is that pre-1945 Israel and post-2015 (let's go for round numbers) Israel is far, far more continuous than many of us find comfortable to admit.
The two previous versions of the Balfour Declaration contained language (verbatim from the Zionist Organization) that immediately transferred full control of Palestine to the Zionist Organization, and which established Palestine as the homeland of the Jewish race.
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
I was listening to a podcast interviewing an Israeli and the host said, the other week he had a Palestinian on and that person said that things won't end until all the Israelis leave. And the Israeli said, where are they going to go? They are mostly refugees from WWII and have nowhere to go back to. I understand the perspective that this is settler colonialism, and that they stole the land from the Palestinians, and now oppress them, so I completely understand why the Palestinians are fighting back, and don't think that Israelis should be there at all, but at the same time, after WWII these Israelis were refugees with nowhere to go. I think the creation of Israel was misguided, and I wish that the US had invited all the Jewish refugees to come live in the US instead of creating Israel. I think that the fault is with the white supremicist, colonial ideology of all of the western world, thinking that they could just create a Jewish state in Palestine and it would be find and dandy, and that the people already living there didn't matter. My question for you is how do you expect these two groups to have one state together, when the hatred runs this deep? Especially after a genocide, I don't understand how the Palestinians are supposed to create a government with those who genocided them.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
So I totally agree with all of this. I will say, that a very large portion of the modern Israeli population have moved there (primarily from Eastern Europe) in the last few decades, they aren't all decedents of refugees. But even then, it would still be a horrible thing to drive all of them out of the country.
As for your question, I can't pretend I have a great answer. The best I can come up with is to look at what happened after World War II. The US now has great relationships with Germany and Japan. Why? Because we pumped tons of money into rebuilding their countries. In an ideal world, I think that the result of this conflict needs to be the Israeli government reforming as a non-ethnostate, allowing Muslim citizenship, and rebuilding the infrastructure in Gaza (likely with US funding). But that would require the Israeli government accepting responsibility, and ultimately defeat. But if people were serious about de-escalation this is what they would do. However, unlike WWII, the US benefits from this kind of chaos- our foreign policy goals have explicitly been to disrupt the potential for any regional hegemon who might be able to control the region's resources. Weak, splintered states in the middle east benefit the US government.
The reality is that Israel is not on a good trajectory even if the war ended tomorrow. They are experiencing brain-drain as the middle-class and wealthy leave the country, their economy has been stagnant because of the war, and they have a massive population of orthodox who don't contribute to the economy. Investors will not be keen to put money back into the country after this.
Radicalism tends to arise out of poor material conditions, so the best way to de-radicalize a population is to lift the population into the middle-class to the point where they aren't desperate enough to commit acts of violence. As I said, people have created governments with people that genocided them. After World War II there were still tons of former Nazis who worked in the government even as they were "de-nazifying." But if Israel and the west refuse to accept responsibility and reorganize the Israeli state then the cycles of violence will just start over again. And next time I suspect Israel will seem like even more of a radical fringe state.
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24
After World War II there were still tons of former Nazis who worked in the government even as they were "de-nazifying."
Yeah, but there were basically no Jews left in Germany at that point, so it wasn't the genocided trying to work with those that did it.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
Totally, and the dynamics were much different. We don't really have a good comparison for this situation. Still, there have been governments formed out of very hostile factions.
Frankly, whatever happens I don't see a peaceful path forward without some sort of outside coalition like the UN stepping in to moderate. And those institutions have been shown to be so toothless that I can't imagine even that happening at this point. It seems like things are going to get even worse before they get better.
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24
Yes. It's pretty awful. So many international institutions that do nothing. If they functioned we could have already arrested Netanyahu, Putin etc, tried and convicted them. Do you know much about Rwanda? I don't, but my impression is that places who have peace after genocide, it's because the place succeeded in wiping out the targeted population, but could be wrong as I really don't know much about it.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
I don't know a lot about Rawanda, no. But I think it's too broad to say that it's impossible to have peace after a genocide without wiping out the population, especially when the world has changed so much in recent years. Armenia and Turkey still exist, for instance, and Cambodia cooperates with China despite China supporting Pol Pot (though China has a much different approach to diplomacy than the west). But in this case I do think the only potential for peace would be for Israel to make massive concessions that they are not likely to do without tons of international influence. Giving back territory in Lebanon and giving Palestinians easy access to their holy sites at the very least. These things could be seen as a win for Palestinians and might smooth things over for a time, but it would require Israel accepting responsibility and losing the perception of invincibility that they desperately trying to maintain. Unfortunately much of this comes down to the fact that it's not just genocide, it's fighting over territory that is nearly impossible to share without peaceful relations.
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Oct 09 '24
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24
I think the demands that are more practical and popular for those who are anti-zionist and anti-ethnostate is a coalition government in the region and giving citizenship to non-Jews.
So one, non-ethnostate government? At this point, after a genocide, I don't see how these two groups are going to be able to exist together in one state. The hatred between them is too strong. I don't know how the Palestinians are supposed to work together with the people who genocided them. As far as the comparison to South Africa goes, the ruling white people were only about 10% of the population, so it is pretty different to Israel/Palestine, where it's closer to 50/50.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
I mean do you find the prospect of the Israelis being pushed out of the region all together more realistic, even if it was desirable?
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24
Do you mean do I find it desirable, or do I find it realistic? I don’t know to both questions. Why don’t you support a two state solution?
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
Back up to the context of the question I was answering, which was "what are some aspects of the anti-Zionist movement among non-Jews make you kind of uneasy or that go too far?" So my only real point was that people who are pushing for a one-state solution need to be clear that they are not asking for the Israelis to be forced out of the region but for the end of the ethnostate. Personally I'm a realist and don't have a strong feeling toward a one or two state solution, I just want peace. A two state solution is probably more realistic at this point, but what some anti-zionist activists seem to be asking for (to turn Israel into Palestine and run all the Jews out of the region) is neither desirable nor realistic.
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Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
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Oct 09 '24
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Oct 09 '24
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Oct 12 '24
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u/Scatman_Crothers Non-Jewish Ally Oct 13 '24
I'm a non-Jew who grew up in a heavily Jewish community with mostly Jewish friends where zionism was the default, and I'm trying to understand different perspectives and sort out where I stand as the current conflict becomes more troubling by the day. Please forgive me for any ignorance or if I don't express myself well, I'm here to learn.
My question is for anti-zionist Jews, at a very practical level, what does your ideal long term solution look like? Not so much the process of untying the gordian knot of the current conflict and political situation, but what is an end state that you view as both just and viable in an ongoing way?
A one state solution with both Israelis and Palestinians having equal rights? If so how could that be stable and not lead to hyperpolarization and possible destablization when there are a roughly similar number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in the 1948 borders and occupied territories? It seems like the parliament of such a country would likely be the Israeli coalition vs the Palestinian coalition, and whichever was in power at a given time would punish the other group.
Is there any sort of two state solution that is either not explicity zionist or that you could find acceptable?
A new Jewish diaspora? If so where do Israeli Jews go? Do you believe Jews would be safe in large numbers anywhere outside of Israel in its current or a reconstituted form, or the United States, given no other country hosts more than 3% of Jews globally?
When I backpacked Europe about a decade ago with a Jewish friend it made an impression on me how every synagogue we visited was a fortress of bulletproof glass, high metal gates, and men with machine guns. And a disappointing amount of anti-semitism seeped out in some of our interactions with Europeans. That's made me skeptical of such a solution, but I'm sure many here are more knowledgeable on the matter than I am from my anecdotal experience.
Any other solutions that I haven't mentioned?
Thank you
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u/acacia_tree Reform Ashkie Diasporist Oct 21 '24
A one state solution with both Israelis and Palestinians having equal rights? If so how could that be stable and not lead to hyperpolarization and possible destablization when there are a roughly similar number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in the 1948 borders and occupied territories? It seems like the parliament of such a country would likely be the Israeli coalition vs the Palestinian coalition, and whichever was in power at a given time would punish the other group.
The BDS National Committee and many other Palestinian advocacy groups, as well as people in the resistance itself advocate for a secular democratic state in which everyone has equal rights. Israeli society is incredibly racist. The reality is that once Palestine is returned to Palestinian rule (this includes Jewish people who lived in Palestine pre-Zionism), most Israelis will voluntarily exit. They won't want to live in a state with equal rights to Palestinians, they won't want to give back stolen land, they want their Jewish supremacist ethnostate. A lot of Israelis have dual citizenship in other places and they'll likely return there. People who want to live there with equal rights will stay.
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Oct 15 '24
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u/darps Non-Jewish Ally Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
Do you disagree in general with arguments for a majority Jewish state?
My context is especially the common pro-Israel argument that, regardless of social progress, an enduring peaceful existence as Jewish minority in other countries is ultimately not achievable due to antisemitism, and the only way to prevent another Holocaust long-term is a majority Jewish state.
Clearly it's a mile-long slippery slope from this conclusion to defending Israel as it exists, but I want to better understand the core of this argument.
Edit: Thank you for all the thoughtful responses! There's clearly a range of opinions on this matter. I'm not sure why my comment is being downvoted since I didn't see any direct criticism, so I'd appreciate to understand where it went off-base or offended people, or if it's otherwise undesirable.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
I think there are two components of the "argument for a Jewish state" that get conflated when they shouldn't
- The best way to ensure Jewish safety is to create a sovereign state with a Jewish majority
- Such a state needs to be a "Jewish state" that privileges Jews and pursues policies to create or maintain the Jewish majority.
1 leads to 2, but theoretically they are distinct and historically there have been people who advocatee the 1st and not the 2nd.
I think the 1st argument was a reasonable argument to make in the first half of the twentieth century, when European Jews had just experienced a massive pendulum swing, the greatest dismantling of Jewish oppression and integration of Jews into broader society in history followed by a massive reaction culminating in the greatest act of anti-Jewish oppression.
70 years later, seeing the success of Jews in the US in the US and the sangers Jews in Israel face, I don't think the argument holds up.
The second argument I completely reject. No state should prove to have one group of its citizens over others, and attempts to engineer demographics are usually disastrous
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u/daudder Anti-Zionist Oct 09 '24
Do you disagree in general with arguments for a majority Jewish state?
The problem is not in the majority as such. The problem is the lengths the Zionists have gone and are willing to go to keep it that way by force of arms and through ethnic cleansing.
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u/darps Non-Jewish Ally Oct 10 '24
Yes, I'd consider that part of the "slippery slope" arguments derived from this one, often in bad faith. Still that doesn't fundamentally invalidate this argument at its core, and going by responses there is no clear consensus on that. Thanks for responding.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 09 '24
enduring peaceful existence as Jewish minority in other countries is ultimately not achievable due to antisemitism
How is this even remotely true anymore, though? Israel is on the brink of a hot war in which case it will very quickly become the most dangerous place in the world for Jews in terms of Jewish deaths. The region will only become less stable as educated Israelis leave the country and the region is hit with droughts and heatwaves from climate change. The idea that another holocaust would happen somewhere like America, and the target would be Jewish people is absurd. Even after a year of genocide in Gaza, Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel, but both political parties are supporting mass deportations of South American immigrants in this election. But if there was mass migration from Israel, I guarantee Americans would accept them with open arms.
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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Oct 10 '24
I think (and this is from things that I've learned only within the past week or so) that the Zionist project, before November 1917, was quite open that they wanted to take all of Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish race. Not the Jewish people, but the Jewish race.
They changed their wording slightly, but this explains quite a bit of Israeli governmental behavior for the past seventy-five years, where they're found considering "racially"-Ashkenazic apostates to be Jews while considering many Orthodox converts in the United States to be non-Jews.
Jews are a diaspora people and we have been for 2,500 years. We didn't become Jews as we're known now until the Babylonian Exile.
And here's the other thing: the indigenous (i.e., Catholic) Irish had their own island. Did that save them from 700 years of occupation by the English? What about the Greeks or the Egyptians? How about the Poles? Or the Ukrainians? Or the Basques, or the Gauls? Or how about the peoples whose names have been forgotten to history because they were all wiped out?
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u/Klutzy-Pool-1802 Ashkenazi, atheist, postZ Oct 09 '24
I hope and feel the world has evolved beyond the point where another Holocaust could happen. I don’t personally fear another Holocaust or feel that a Jewish state is what’s keeping us safe. So that rationale for a Jewish state isn’t mine.
I don’t argue with people who do feel this way. I generally don’t argue with anyone’s trauma history or what they took away from it. I can very easily understand someone saying, “I will never again trust the world to protect us. We need to take matters into our own hands.”
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox Oct 09 '24
I think we do, certainly. But not in a way that requires us to subjugate another group of people, and not in the way that emulates our oppressors. Zionists internalized the European bourgeoise notions about race and empire and took them out on every Jew who wasn't themselves- and more importantly Palestinians. Autonomy doesn't have to mean a state.
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u/Cornexclamationpoint Ashkenazi Oct 11 '24
The countries where Jews largely live have maybe advanced beyond another holocaust, but the world certainly hasn't. In the last 30 years, there were genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, and Myanmar just to name a few.
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u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet LGBTQ Jew Oct 09 '24
Personally I'm skeptical about it on a conceptual basis for that stated goal. IMO all a Jewish-majority state does is concentrate us too much in a single place, making it more likely for another single Holocaust-like event to get all of us. It also fuels antisemitism on an inherent basis, since it provides a legal centerpoint and cover for any claim of "Jews controlling the world" (as we can see with a lot of "criticisms" of "Israel's influence on international politics"). It will also by its nature increase antisemitism abroad; even if Israel wasn't ethno-supremacist, apartheid, and genocidal, all countries do things some people consider bad, and a Jewish-majority state will have that criticism reflected back on non-state-member Jews (again, was we can see with current trends among the actually-antisemitic antizionist subgroup).
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u/darps Non-Jewish Ally Oct 10 '24
You raise an interesting point that I hadn't seen before. Yes, I suppose the logic of consolidating as many Jews as possible in a small geographical area for their own protection kinda falls apart there, especially in a post-nuclear world.
Of course some would use it to argue that's why Israel needs an armada of submarines carrying ICBMs just in case.
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u/Launch_Zealot Arab/Armenian-American Ally Oct 09 '24
I’m sorry if this is a dumb question: How do you deal with it when you find you need to work with someone with an Israeli accent for a bit? I’d rather not go into details, but I’m in that situation now and I feel like I should have found a way out because I’m extremely ill at ease about the whole thing. It’s something I could put out of my mind in the past, but now it weighs very heavily.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Oct 09 '24
I try not to assume people's politics. I know very left-wing Israelis, and the Israelis that you meet are the Israelis who chose to leave. Is there a very good chance they are staunch zionists, yes, but statistically speaking it's also likely that your white male Christian co-workers are Trump supporters.
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u/yungsemite Jewish Oct 09 '24
I don’t discriminate against people based on national origin or accent.
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u/Dis-Organizer Matzpen Oct 10 '24
I would not judge any Palestinian who has lived under occupation, siege, genocide, or racism within Israeli society for being unable to work with people who have Israeli accents, especially if they have personal experience being harmed by people with the same accent. But I would question someone whose people hasn’t been targeted by Israel being unable to work with someone with an Israeli accent (and frankly, my experience is that most leftists in the US can’t recognize it or Hebrew). Having an Israeli accent doesn’t indicate the person’s views, and we can’t choose where we’re born or what accent we have
If you know the coworker’s politics, I had a relevant experience. I had a non Palestinian coworker complain that someone she has to work with is a Zionist because the coworker mentioned she was feeling sad on 10/7. But at the same time, I know multiple people we work with are republicans (so also probably Zionist but not Jewish…). Unfortunately we rarely get to choose the people we work with, and some might have abhorrent politics. Weirdly, some people with abhorrent politics are also decent coworkers who do their part and interpersonally aren’t causing me harm. It sucks that we might have to work with people who want people, sometimes even our own people, dead, but if they’re not saying those horrible things on the job and aren’t triggering ptsd in anyway, I don’t see a way to avoid working with them
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u/BolesCW Mizrahi Oct 09 '24
Sounds to me like you're struggling with the contradiction or tension of workplace solidarity (which is fundamentally internationalist) versus anti-imperialist prejudice. While there is a good chance this particular Israeli (your guess based on accent) is a staunch ethnosupremacist, you don't actually know that, do you? Substitute any other nationality/accent for Israeli and look at how problematic your statement is.
Here you go: "how do you deal with it when you find you need to work with someone with a redneck accent?"
Or "how do you deal with it when you find you need to work with someone with a South African accent?"
Or "how do you deal with it when you find you need to work with someone with a Cuban accent?"
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u/Launch_Zealot Arab/Armenian-American Ally Oct 09 '24
These examples were very relevant two years ago. I don’t think they’re quite on point today in the midst of a genocide. That said, it’s true that I don’t actually know his politics. Thank you for your time and sincerity.
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u/lilleff512 Jewish Oct 09 '24
In the midst of a genocide... that this person has nothing to do with because they're not even in Israel right now?
How would you "deal with" someone with a German accent in America in the 1940s?
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u/Launch_Zealot Arab/Armenian-American Ally Oct 09 '24
I think I could empathize with a Jewish person who had misgivings about working with someone with a German accent during the 1940s.
All the same, points made about not knowing the person’s politics and the possibility that someone is here and not there precisely because of political differences with the prevailing zeitgeist from the old country are well taken.
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u/cupcakefascism Jewish Communist Oct 09 '24
Those examples aren’t comparable at all becauae there’s an incredibly high chance the Israeli has genocidal views and a very good chance they’ve actually served in the IDF terrorising Palestinians. That’s not the same for Southerners, South Africans or Cubans (??).
That doesn’t mean OP should go confront them, but it’s understandable for them to be ill at ease.
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u/BolesCW Mizrahi Oct 09 '24
There's also an extremely high chance that an Israeli who is not currently in Israel is away precisely because of the genocidal actions of Netanyahoo, his enablers, and the IDF -- especially if they are within the age range of reservists. A pro-genocide Israeli like you describe would have every reason to return home to help perpetrate it. I don't know this person and therefore cannot ask them about it, so I prefer not to speculate on their views -- just as I would not automatically assume someone with a redneck accent is in the Klan, a person with a South African accent is a Boer nationalist, or a person with a Cuban accent is a counter-revolutionary. You don't know them either, and are therefore free to indulge your anti-imperialist prejudices as well as OP. Which you have.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Oct 09 '24
Most Israelis I know in the US are somewhere in between, very critical of Netenyahu and the war, but also react strongly to criticism that is not very tempered with statements about "Israel's right to exist." Definitely would not use the word genocide
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u/watermelonkiwi Raised Jewish, non-religious Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
You don't even know what that person thinks of Israel. Maybe they moved out of Israel because they didn't like what it was doing. No one chooses where they were born. The kind of discrimination you're doing is what makes people afraid to immigrate out of fascist nations, it's bigotry, please don't do that.
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u/Klutzy-Pool-1802 Ashkenazi, atheist, postZ Oct 09 '24
If I’m too raw/traumatized to deal with someone from a particular country or ethnic group, regardless of the content of their speech, I’d find a way not to work with them. I’d quit the job if I had to.
If I were traumatized by the sound of a Hebrew accent because I was once imprisoned and tortured by Israelis, I’d get diagnosed with PTSD and ask for an accommodation.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 09 '24
I mean, while I get how it would bother you, would it be okay for someone to say they don't want to work with someone from Palestine? Not to say that what is Israel is doing is comparable to what Palestine has done, but on an individual level, a Palestinian is probably just as likely to hate Israelis as Israelis are to hate Palestinians. Personally in the interest of de-escalation I would do my best to push through the discomfort unless you hear them actual make discriminatory or hateful remarks, which wouldn't be acceptable in the workplace anyway.
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u/Launch_Zealot Arab/Armenian-American Ally Oct 09 '24
If the power dynamics, media bias, and dehumanization and misery indexes were flipped as well, I would at least understand. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but I would understand some misgivings or concern.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never heard dehumanizing language from anyone in my family even in their most private moments, though it seems to be pretty widespread among Zionists.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 10 '24
Well that's why I said "on an individual level." Personally, I don't think people should be judged based on the context of what their nation or ethnicity is doing, or if the media is biased toward them. If he is an outspoken Zionist, that is different, but without knowing that I don't think it's right to make assumptions. I think it's the same if you were working with a Russian, for instance. You just don't know for sure what their views are, so you would be judging him based purely on his nationality and ethnicity. I get why it makes you uncomfortable, but I think you have to be the bigger person in this situation, because anything else will just give ammo to the people crying about antisemitism, and continue the cycle of hatred.
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Oct 09 '24
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u/musingmarkhor Non-Jewish Ally Oct 10 '24
I remember seeing something that left me with a lasting impression. An interviewer was asking a Palestinian in Gaza about coexistence in the future. He responded with a very valid point. How could you come to a people in the midst of oppression and then ask them about coexisting with their oppressors? I would take this further. How are people expecting Israelis with their warped sense of history and reality to even be capable of coexisting with Palestinians, who they've been treating like less than human beings for decades? I'm sorry, but I can't really see the heroic nature of being anti-Bibi. Most Israelis are Jewish Zionists and have beliefs that reflect that in their actions. Isn't there a need for their minds to be liberated too? Isn't there also a great need for accountability from Israelis and their supporters around the world? What do these things look like?