Feel completely disconnected

[u/PattonSmithWood]

How do fellow, non-religious, anti Zionist Jews in this sub reconcile their anti Zionist views with their Jewish identity when 80/90% of contemporary Jews across the world are staunch Zionists.

I feel at a complete loss in terms of my identity. Extended family and relatives are 90% Zionists, they take literal pleasure in any and all harm to Palestinians. They are gleeful and boastful of the current genocide (and they proudly label it as such). They marginalise, shut down, bad mouth any relative who believes in Palestinian dignity, self determination and sovereignty. They call us self hating Jews and turncoats.

My values and some close family are completely, polar, opposite. We are more in harmony with the views of some prominent Jewish scholars and identities such as Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Mate, Miko Peled, Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim, Gideon Levy etc

I'm proud to be a Jew with faith in universal values of humanity. Although I am not an observant Jew, and am pretty much secular and atheist, I find myself increasingly aligning with some teachings of Torah Jews, specially their teachings about diaspora being essential to Judaism and spiritual Israel only being reinstated by the mashiach and not a group of atheists.

I know this is a bit of a rant, but I feel so out of place amidst contemporary Jews.

Would love to hear any experiences navigating this identity crisis.

[u/korach1921]

Define "staunch Zionist"

Those surveys are meant to give the illusion of mass Jewish consensus on support for the state of Israel. But the questions are usually as vague as "do you feel a connection to Israel?" or "do you think Israel has a right to exist?"

[u/crumpledcactus → u/korach1921]

The whole "80% of Jews are zionists" claim is BS. It's based on two surveys by Pew Research about one's emotional connection to Israel. Zionism isn't mentioned in the study, and most (50%+) of us are totally divorced from Israel.

The 80% figure is an isolation of the Orthodox sect, which is like 7% or less of Jewish-Americans, but the Orthodox hold a legal monopoly on Jewishness in Israel (inter-faith marriage is de-facto illegal), so Israel loves to repeat the lie that all Jews are zionists.

[u/teddyburke → u/crumpledcactus]

Yeah.

In America, those numbers don’t make any sense. I would say some form of “liberal Zionism” likely makes up the majority, which often just means, “I support Israel but don’t agree with what it’s doing” - which is pretty much reflective of American liberalism in general in how incoherent and ineffective it is.