r/JewsOfConscience Jewish Anti-Zionist Oct 27 '24

Discussion Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

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u/comix_corp Oct 28 '24 edited Oct 28 '24

One other question I had. From what I can gather most of this sub are left wing people, either secular or religiously. How do you assess the anti Zionism / non-Zionism of the ultra orthodox like the Hasidic groups? A lot of them are opposed to Zionism but for reasons that seem less to do with supporting Palestinians and more to do with obscure theological reasons. Are any of them (besides neturei karta) sympathetic to Palestinians?

Btw I wrote this comment on Jewish anti Zionism for r/arabs a few weeks ago, if you have any corrections or feedback I would be very appreciative.

https://www.reddit.com/r/arabs/s/RoEBGmUyAF

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u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet LGBTQ Jew Oct 28 '24

I, personally, am more antizionist for antizionism's sake than I am for the sake of Palestine and Palestinians. I have a severe in-group bias that while I try to work on I don't think I will ever go away.

That being said, while I am primarily antizionist because I don't like concentrating the Jews into a single nation-state instead of being against genocide, I am still against genocide. It is entirely possible to hold sympathy in your heart for Palestinians even if its not the primary reason why you fight for them. I don't personally know enough Neturei Karta people to know where the different priorities lie between "Israel can't happen without Moshiach", "Israel is a Chillul Hashem", and "Palestinians deserve rights too", but I'd imagine the final point is still on their radar enough for it to count.

On the other hand, I DO NOT like them being promoted as "the" antizionist Jew standard. They hate me because I am secular and queer, and then promote themselves as the only messengers of "true Judaism" and then call me a "fake Jew" for who I am. In general I am fearful of promoting any right-wing and/or theocratic movement in a liberation movement, because they tend to hijack a movement and turn it into another right-wing horrorfest; see Zionism itself for a perfect example (which originally had Cultural Zionism and Labor Zionism as non-state-focused strains before being subsumed by the Revisionist-Religious chimera that is modern Zionism).