Arguably for the first time, a Palestinian perspective on Zionism is taking center stage in mainstream discourse

For decades, Joe Biden has proudly declared that he is a Zionist, and he has repeated that claim since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel. But for the student anti-war protests gripping the US, the words “Zionist” and “Zionism” have become a watchword – pejorative and emblematic of the violent state policies driving the war on Gaza.

On social media and in the streets, critics no longer call out supporters of the state of Israel as “pro-Israel”: they call them Zionist. Some university encampments have posted signs saying: “Zionists not allowed.”

Student protesters say that their criticisms of Zionism are rooted in the state of Israel’s displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Pro-Israel activists have responded by defending the term. “If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism,” a group of more than 500 Columbia University students recently wrote. “We are proud to be Zionists.”

  • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
    782·
    6 months ago

    The best thing to come out of all this is the veil finally being removed and a global conversation of separating antisemitism from anti-Israeli nationalism. It’s been so tiring seeing Israel conflate the two for decades.

    Having a wanton disregard for civilian life, shutting down news agencies… They’ve become the very thing they fought against nearly a century ago.

    • JASN_DE@lemmy.worldEnglish
      201·
      6 months ago

      It’s been so tiring seeing Israel conflate the two for decades.

      But it worked really well for them.

      • TryptaminevEnglish
        10·
        6 months ago

        Because the Zionists and the Antisemites and other Fascists are allies in doing so. They love the idea of ethnostates and they love the idea of monoculturalism and they love “their people” to be at threat outside “their country” so they can force them into that country.

        It is fascism through and through.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      103·
      6 months ago

      They’ve become the very thing they fought against nearly a century ago.

      Well, that’s the thing, it wasn’t they - those were completelly different people who just happenned to share the same religion and etnicity.

      Put aside the racist thinking (even the soft, closet version of racism that’s been pushed by libs in the last couple of decades under claims of being “positive”) that bundles all people of the same gender/etnicity/origin/sexual-orientation as being the same, all equally deserving and all implicitly victims or aggressors, and this situation is simply aggressors doing horrible, inhuman acts against other human beings, due to a mix of greed and extreme racism.

      The only kind of fair expectations and judgment is based on people’s actions, not other actions of other people of the same gender/etnicity/origin/sexual-orientation, and that different other people who happen to share with these violent sociopathic agressors a characteristic that is entirelly irrelevant for this behaviour of theirs, were themselves victims of another bunch of violent sociopathic agressors and fought the good fight, only has meaning for those people whose treatment and perception of other human beings is shaped by their race, i.e. for racists.

      If there is one thing all this has shown is that a lot of people turn out to have been running around with a deeply discriminatory view of others, including pretty straightforward racism, even though they believed they were no such thing (the opposite, even) because the discriminatory judgements the made of others were said to be “positive”.

      Those people might not have done it for bad reasons, but they still interiorised deeply discriminatory views of other human beings, a moral disfunctionality which was weaponized by Zionists to allow them to act against their victims with quasi-inhuman levels of racism and violence, all this well before the current situation in Gaza.

  • xenomor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    524·
    6 months ago

    “and about just as many view it as a belief in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (72%),”

    This, right here, is a big part of the problem. The notion of an ethnostate is antithetical to a democracy. You cannot be both. It’s definitionally impossible. A state practicing some of the mechanics of democracy does not make it a democracy. If the supremacy of one ethnic cohort is a fundamental tenet of your state, there is no amount of ‘liberalism’ or rhetoric that will turn you into a democracy. If you are part of this 72%, I implore you to examine the cognitive dissonance you are practicing. I strongly suspect that many of this 72% have not critically examined the fallacy of people’s claims of Israeli democracy. Of those that have, I suspect that many are intentionally misrepresenting the situation since afterall, actively supporting a violently oppressive ethnostate isn’t a great look.

    Edit: spelling

    • TunaCowboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      261·
      6 months ago

      Zionism is by definition a nationalist ideology, there’s no attempt to hide it, this just says that 72% of respondents don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

  • MataVatnik@lemmy.worldEnglish
    231·
    6 months ago

    Became? Always has been. However, Zionism becoming the same as Judaism is something relatively new.

  • graeghos_714@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    6 months ago

    Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to all the biblical lands. IMO everything else is semantics.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
    87·
    6 months ago

    Zionism means different things to different generations. To younger people, it’s about expansionist Israel trying to take over the West Bank and Gaza. They take Israel being a regional power for granted. For older generations, it means Israel facing existential threats from other regional powers. But Israel hasn’t faced an existential threat for decades. As bad as Hamas and Hezbollah are, they’re fighting asymmetric warfare and not actually going to wipe Israel off the map.

    There are, obviously, a few people who want decolonization but that just isn’t happening. It’s like demanding every white and black and Hispanic person in America go back to their homeland. Half the people have grandparents from different countries.

    And on the other side, Israel has to dismantle settlements in the West Bank. Or, what they deserve, is to be minorities in a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. No one will have that but me, though, so dismantling the settlements is the only realistic option.

    • TryptaminevEnglish
      81·
      6 months ago

      There are, obviously, a few people who want decolonization but that just isn’t happening.

      Which means by international law, that armed resistance to drive them from the land they stole is legal. There can be no peace without justice and justice means to give back all stolen land or make a fair agreement to buy it from the original owners.

      Also many of the Zionists came to Palestine within our lifetime. And we are talking about moving at best maybe 4 Million people as opposed to the 300 Million in the US. The best moment to end this terrorist land stealing was in 1948. The second best moment is now.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1313·
      6 months ago

      To brainwashed people it means creating an ethnostate because of some imaginary threat that requires severe mental gymnastics to make sense of because somehow Egypt and Jordan can exist but Palestinians and Lebanese cannot.

      To non brainwashed people israel is the Nazis committing Holocaust to expand their Lebensraum. Nothing more nothing less.

      For more information https://streamable.com/b7yvo0

        • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          83·
          6 months ago

          Being deemed an antisemite and banned by a Mod in a Lemmy community isn’t the powerful argument you seem to think it is.

          Considering that people are being accused of being antisemite if they demonstrate against the murder of children (an accusation which, curiously, implies that murdering children is a Jewish thing to do, making that accusation itself being the true antisemitism), that ban probably says a lot more about said Mod than about the person banned.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
              91·
              6 months ago

              I suggest you go read the rules about who can be a Mod in Lemmy: there are none.

              It’s prefectly possibly for a Lemmy Mod of a specific community to be a pro-Zionism extreme racist since the only qualification they need to be a Mod is having created that community or asked for and been given mod status from an existing Mod.

              Being a Mod requires no higher moral anything and a Mod’s opinion is morally no better or worse than anybody else’s.

              That Appeal to Authority Falacy of your is even ridiculous in your choice of Authority.

                • Aceticon@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  51·
                  6 months ago

                  Someboyd who uses Appeal To Authority falacies as “arguments” and keeps on trying to justify it, passing judgment on other people’s cognizance… Oh, the irony!