I am Jewish. My mom is Israeli. I have friends and family living in Israel right now. I lived in Israel for a year a few decades ago. I was there when Rabin was assassinated and things went from “peace in the middle east at last!” to “Bibi committing war crimes for a few decades.” I am so critical of the Israeli government’s actions toward Palestinians that I have had to mute all my family group chats since October.
But I have to agree that anti-Zionism feels like antisemitism. You can be critical of the Israeli government without the belief that Israel shouldn’t exist. You can want the Palestinians to have their own state without the belief that Israel shouldn’t exist. I’m not sure what anti-Zionists think would happen to all the Jews living in Israel if it were just magically given to the Palestinians overnight, but here’s a hint: Hamas, the people running Palestine, literally, factually want to kill them all.
No, I don’t think what Israel has done to the Palestinians for decades is in any way acceptable or moral. But any solution at this point will have to involve safety for everyone not just one side or the other.
That’s my $0.02. I expect to get a lot of flack for being so open about myself and my beliefs. I probably should have made a throwaway account but whatever. Hopefully this doesn’t bite me in the ass.
EDIT - Just to also add that I don’t think it’s black and white that all anti-Zionist are antisemites. But it FEELS that way. And I think part of the issue is that antisemites are using anti-Zionism to spread antisemitism.
I’m not sure what anti-Zionists think would happen to all the Jews living in Israel if it were just magically given to the Palestinians overnight, but here’s a hint: Hamas, the people running Palestine, literally, factually want to kill them all.
I don’t understand why you default to conflating the denial of a theocratic Jewish state to “hand over all the controls to Palestine.”
What part of opposing Israel as a state excludes current Israeli people from participating and organizing in a hypothetical one state solution?
Obviously, none of this is simple, and violence is not the answer, but I’m not sure why your idea of anti-Zionism focuses only on the most reactionary (and most likely to actually be anti-semitic) voices of anti-Zionism. This kind of language only drives polarization.
I think that there’s still a lot of conflation happening here.
I am anti-Zionist, insomuch as current-day Zionist adherents almost universally support Israel as having religious justification, which, given that Israel conducts colonialism, apartheid, and murder, means that they are tying their own religious beliefs to the aforementioned settlement, apartheid, and murder.
Nothing in Jewish scripture says that this state at this time will be the end-times land for the Jewish people. I would have no issue with Zionists who just believe that they have to actively work towards a Jewish state rather than expecting it to simply come into being, but tying that belief to a specific state as a movement opens it up to criticism based on that relationship.
If I meet a Zionist who says, “yeah, this is not a religiously-ordained state by any means we can tell. The actual land for Jews spoken of in scripture could happen 10,000 years from now. We don’t know.”, I’d have no problem with that viewpoint.
I’m anti-Israel (i.e. the specific, currently-extant state) for being a settler-colonial project that actively enshrines apartheid in its laws, and dehumanizes and subjugates and murders people. I’m also anti-Evangelical Christianity, in part because it also as a movement/ group of beliefs, supports Israel.
But any solution at this point will have to involve safety for everyone not just one side or the other.
The problem I have with this is that it frames the situation as though it’s 2 sides struggling against each other, when in reality it’s one side being oppressed by the other.
In order for them to be in a state of peace and mutual safety, Israel has to give up control that it currently has. It has to remove the violent programs it currently operates (like settlements and “trimming the grass”). It has to LOSE something (control, ground, capacity for violence) in order to reach a neutral state. And by neutral state, I don’t mean “equal power with the Palestinians”, I mean a state of not actively making Palestinians unsafe.
But most people making your argument are not open to admitting this; it is almost always based on the assumption that making the current state static would equate to mutual safety, which is false.
I think there is a communication breakdown that almost always happens when people talk about “Zionism” because I know for me, “Zionism” and a person “being a Zionist” goes far beyond simply supporting the continual existence of the state of Israel (which I do wholeheartedly). To me the word “Zionism” and supporting it is inexplicably tied to the actual original colonial project and its implementation which led to the formation of the state of Israel in the first place, uncritically so.
I am Jewish. My mom is Israeli. I have friends and family living in Israel right now. I lived in Israel for a year a few decades ago. I was there when Rabin was assassinated and things went from “peace in the middle east at last!” to “Bibi committing war crimes for a few decades.” I am so critical of the Israeli government’s actions toward Palestinians that I have had to mute all my family group chats since October.
But I have to agree that anti-Zionism feels like antisemitism. You can be critical of the Israeli government without the belief that Israel shouldn’t exist. You can want the Palestinians to have their own state without the belief that Israel shouldn’t exist. I’m not sure what anti-Zionists think would happen to all the Jews living in Israel if it were just magically given to the Palestinians overnight, but here’s a hint: Hamas, the people running Palestine, literally, factually want to kill them all.
No, I don’t think what Israel has done to the Palestinians for decades is in any way acceptable or moral. But any solution at this point will have to involve safety for everyone not just one side or the other.
That’s my $0.02. I expect to get a lot of flack for being so open about myself and my beliefs. I probably should have made a throwaway account but whatever. Hopefully this doesn’t bite me in the ass.
EDIT - Just to also add that I don’t think it’s black and white that all anti-Zionist are antisemites. But it FEELS that way. And I think part of the issue is that antisemites are using anti-Zionism to spread antisemitism.
I don’t understand why you default to conflating the denial of a theocratic Jewish state to “hand over all the controls to Palestine.”
What part of opposing Israel as a state excludes current Israeli people from participating and organizing in a hypothetical one state solution?
Obviously, none of this is simple, and violence is not the answer, but I’m not sure why your idea of anti-Zionism focuses only on the most reactionary (and most likely to actually be anti-semitic) voices of anti-Zionism. This kind of language only drives polarization.
I think that there’s still a lot of conflation happening here.
I am anti-Zionist, insomuch as current-day Zionist adherents almost universally support Israel as having religious justification, which, given that Israel conducts colonialism, apartheid, and murder, means that they are tying their own religious beliefs to the aforementioned settlement, apartheid, and murder.
Nothing in Jewish scripture says that this state at this time will be the end-times land for the Jewish people. I would have no issue with Zionists who just believe that they have to actively work towards a Jewish state rather than expecting it to simply come into being, but tying that belief to a specific state as a movement opens it up to criticism based on that relationship.
If I meet a Zionist who says, “yeah, this is not a religiously-ordained state by any means we can tell. The actual land for Jews spoken of in scripture could happen 10,000 years from now. We don’t know.”, I’d have no problem with that viewpoint.
I’m anti-Israel (i.e. the specific, currently-extant state) for being a settler-colonial project that actively enshrines apartheid in its laws, and dehumanizes and subjugates and murders people. I’m also anti-Evangelical Christianity, in part because it also as a movement/ group of beliefs, supports Israel.
The problem I have with this is that it frames the situation as though it’s 2 sides struggling against each other, when in reality it’s one side being oppressed by the other.
In order for them to be in a state of peace and mutual safety, Israel has to give up control that it currently has. It has to remove the violent programs it currently operates (like settlements and “trimming the grass”). It has to LOSE something (control, ground, capacity for violence) in order to reach a neutral state. And by neutral state, I don’t mean “equal power with the Palestinians”, I mean a state of not actively making Palestinians unsafe.
But most people making your argument are not open to admitting this; it is almost always based on the assumption that making the current state static would equate to mutual safety, which is false.
I think there is a communication breakdown that almost always happens when people talk about “Zionism” because I know for me, “Zionism” and a person “being a Zionist” goes far beyond simply supporting the continual existence of the state of Israel (which I do wholeheartedly). To me the word “Zionism” and supporting it is inexplicably tied to the actual original colonial project and its implementation which led to the formation of the state of Israel in the first place, uncritically so.