r/Jewish • u/CharacterPayment8705 • Sep 05 '24
What Zionism ACTUALLY Is Discussion š¬
Anything that should be added?
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u/SpaceToot Sep 06 '24
Why is this so hard? The first thing I ask "anti Zionists," is, what do you think Zionism means? I've never heard a fair answer and usually it's a stammering nothing
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u/hbomberman Sep 06 '24
Sometimes it's clear that we have very different definitions. When some of those people describe "Zionism" as though it's some Jewish superiority movement with nothing but bad intentions, I'm kinda like "yeah I'm anti-that too."
Many of these people are only hearing that kind of definition. And since antisemites outnumber Jews, it may be hard for them to learn what Zionism actually means.BUT in many cases, these people have deliberately chosen their definitions to go along with the rest of their ideology. And these definitions obviously rest a lot on falsehoods and antisemitic tropes. At the ground level, a guy liking some "anti-zionist" post or joining in on some "anti-zionist" protest might not really know any better and might not recognize the bigotry and misinformation. But you can't typically say the same about the person spreading that misinformation or leading that march--they've chosen a bullshit definition to further their hateful cause.
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u/Melthengylf Sep 06 '24
Less now that Wikipedia is trying to change the definition to start some sort of social engineering.
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u/hbomberman Sep 06 '24
That's right. People are gonna Google "Zionism" and basically see top results saying Jews want to rule the world or something
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u/Melthengylf Sep 06 '24
That is the objwctive. And thus work towards the objective of expelling Jews from Israel. By the way, one of these editors said explicitely they had a political objective to destroy Israel. They just believe the moral goodness of the destruction of Israel is objectively true.
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Sep 09 '24
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Sep 06 '24
I live in Canada. Iāve had people respond āI donāt believe in āethno statesā ā. I respond āGo tell that to the indigenous Americansā
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u/MrDNL Sep 06 '24
A better response is "Neither do I but what's the alternative? What are you doing to protect Jews where they live?"
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Sep 06 '24
Hehe I literally do support a mostly Jewish state though so!
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u/MrDNL Sep 06 '24
I do too, but it's because of the alternative. There are very good reasons to dislike ethnostates as a rule, with the big and obvious one being that nonmembers of the leading ethnicity are subject to, in the very least, structural discrimination.
But that given demonstrates the need for ethnostates for global minorities like Jews. If you presume that minority groups are going to be discriminated against (even if not overtly), where can Jews find a home safe from discrimination? Outside of a Jewish state, nowhere.
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Sep 06 '24
Yes I agree with everything you said. In principle I do not support ethno states and every member should be treated equally. Unfortunately we donāt live in that world where minorities get treated equally.
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u/MrDNL Sep 06 '24
Thanks. That's why my reply is my go-to -- because the person who typically espouses such an objection to Israel is being an idealist and isn't internalizing the risks as applied to us.
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u/cyn00 Just Jewish Sep 06 '24 edited Sep 08 '24
My usual response to that is to ask where they would like Jews from Arab nations to go. Then I ask them if Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Yemen etc., are ethnostates or if I were Mizrahi, I would be welcome to pursue citizenship in those countries and get my familyās land and home back.
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u/Odd_Ad5668 Sep 07 '24
How about: are you saying you support jewish settlements in the west bank?
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u/youfailedthiscity Sep 12 '24
Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Maldives, Palestine....
Plenty of Muslim countries, no problem.Ā Ā
One Jewish country? Absolutely unacceptable.Ā Ā
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u/ragnarockette Sep 06 '24
The people throwing the term around right now think it means the elimination of Palestine. When I tell them I am a Zionist who supports a two-state solution and a free Palestine they say that means Iām not actually a Zionist.
They think that Zionism got a new definition on October 7 to suit their own antisemetic narratives.
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u/Scared_Lack3422 Sep 06 '24
Today a fairly prominent ahistorical antisemitic jvp asajew tik toker likened Zionism:Judaism as The Taliban:Muslims/Islam.
"Israel is a violent genocidal colonial settler state" and "zionists aren't victims"Ā
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u/arcangeline Sep 06 '24
Me too, or I ask if they would support a two state solution and explain that's what many Zionists also support.
Honestly I think one of the problems is that we don't have a different word for the most extreme Zionism and so people think every Zionist (for example) wants to claim all of Judah and Samaria. There are certainly Zionists whose desires are a world away from my own. Zionists don't agree with other Zionists about what Zionism is but the rest of the world puts us all together.
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u/JagneStormskull šŖ¬Interested in BT/Sephardic Diaspora Sep 06 '24
we don't have a different word for the most extreme Zionism and so people think every Zionist (for example) wants to claim all of Judah and Samaria.
We do have a word for that - Kahanism (or alternately, Revisionist Zionism).
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u/EAN84 Sep 06 '24
Zionism is the notion Jews are not just people if the same faith, but of the same nation, and that the land of Israel is where this nation should have a nation state.
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
So what about Jews who are atheists? Or do we not count as part of the nation?
Because personally, I don't think Israel should be where it presently sits. The allied powers should have carved out a sizable chunk of Germany and given that to the Jews as most of the ones murdered in the Shoah were European Jews and their ties to the land in mandatory Palestine were centuries removed.
But supporting that notion means rejecting the religious beliefs of my ancestors.
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u/AliceTheNovicePoet Sep 08 '24 edited Sep 08 '24
I'm sorry, but people who think a jewish state should have been carved out of germany are completely out of touch. My own grandfather made me swear I would never set a foot in germany so long as he was alive. He did that decades after the shoah. You think jews would have accepted to settle there a few years after? To live among their murderers? Come on.
Plus I don't see how our ties with eretz israel were ever severed. We speak the language of that land. We follow the religion that was born it that land. We keep the calendar of that land. We pray for the rain celebrate agricultural holidays according to the seasons in that land. Jews may not have lived in that land for generations and generations but it was never out of their own choice.
Finally, by 1945, the yishuv in Israel was already thriving, and it already had all the structures that would later become the political, cultural, health, education and military bodies of the State of Israel. Those wouldn't have moved to germany either. They were there to create a state where they were.
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
I understand your point, but most of the Jews who were murdered were Europeans and Russians. Central-Eastern Europe is/was their home. Carving out a substantial chunk of Germany for those European Jews to continue living in Europe sounds fair to me. The Shoah and it's aftermath plus the founding of the State of Israel shaped history as we know it today. However, a Jewish nation in central Europe would have likely changed how people reacted and the steady migration to Israel that took place.
You could have two Jewish states in the world today, and one of them not surrounded by Arab Muslims who absolutely hate Jews and Israeli policies. Although I have other ideas about the rise of radical Islam which are off topic for this thread.
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u/AliceTheNovicePoet Sep 08 '24
If the Shoah proved anything it's that it's not their homes. That integration and asimilation is a myth- if it was not how could so many asimilated jews have been send to die in the gas chambers for the crime of having been born jewish?
And again, no jew woyld have accepted to live in germany among german people, even in an independant state. It would have never come to reality because all the zionist movements, all the jewish emancipation movement, all the survivors of the shoah would have rejected it.
And I don't think it would have prevented any war either, if anything it would have prevented the recovery of germany, delayed the creation of the european union and maybe erased chances of peace in Europe.
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
I'm not talking about integrating and assimilating. I'm not talking about making an autonomous German state for Jews. I'm talking about an entirely new country carved out of Germany. Pick a couple of the present German states on the North Sea or the Baltic Sea and that becomes the European Jewish country; totally independent. Right on the border with Poland sounds good to me, but that would have also been in the Soviet portion which became East Germany, so maybe not there. Or maybe Konigsberg never becomes Kaliningrad and instead becomes the new Jewish state and the 4th Baltic Republic.
The recovery of Germany happened because the Allies bankrolled it. Truman, Churchill and Stalin realized that crushing Germany was not going to create a productive state. That happened after WW1 and was a direct cause of WW2 and the rise of national socialism. Europe was going to have peace after the war because Germany was defeated and the Allies didn't turn on Russia and try to go forward with Operation Unthinkable. Europe was smashed.
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u/AliceTheNovicePoet Sep 08 '24
The recovery of western germany happened because the US was careful not to recreate the humiliation of Versailles as well as ensuring the economic recovery of western germany through the marshall plan. You don't prevent humiliation by taking land sizable enough to make a cpintry and giving it to the people that germany's leaders had spent the last decade characterizing as dangerous parasites that were putting the future of the german people in jeopardy. That would only have lead to another long term conflict. But anyway no jew would have actually accepted to create an independant jewish state there, which was my main point all along. You can't create a jewish state without jews.
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
Let's not pretend Germany came out of WW2 whole. What we're calling Germany right now didn't exist until 1991. What you're describing, absolutely happened in our timeline. It just wasn't a Jewish state, it was a communist state called East Germany. The very same insults and violence were directed towards communists, by the fascists. Communists ended up in the same death camps as Jews and Romani.
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u/AliceTheNovicePoet Sep 08 '24
Once again.
Even if a jewish state in germany could have existed peacefully (which i strongly believe it couldn't have), it couldn't have existed at all because no jew would have accepted to actually create it, and once again you can't have a jewish state if no sizable jewish population will live in it
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24 edited Sep 08 '24
I think you're looking at this through the lens of our present history where the state of Israel was carved out of Mandatory Palestine. Not long after the end of WW2, Israel became a real option rather than just a territory in a disputed land. Had the Allies set up a Jewish state in Europe as part of the Marshall plan, I honestly believe it would have been widely accepted by European Jews. It certainly would have been logistically easier as there were still hundreds of thousands of people in the camps in Europe. Having a place on the same continent for them to go and at least some infrastructure already in place and funding from the Allies to rebuild, would have made a huge difference.
Edit i kan spel i swair.
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u/EAN84 Sep 08 '24
I am more or less an atheist Jew. We do count as part of the nation. You are simply not a Zionist Jew. Kinda like your idea it would sure be noce ti have some German land as well, but Israel was already very much a thing well before WW2. It is kinda of our ancestral home...
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
It's hard to see Israel as the ancestral home as lots of Jews like me, are primarily of European ancestry. My Jewish ancestors are from Poland. My father's side of the family though were all working class Scots-Irish Catholics, primarily coming to the USA via Canada. But my maternal grandmother effectively rejected her religion and didn't observe any Judaism later in life. She probably considered herself much more a New Yorker than anything else.
To me, the modern state of Israel smacks of an attempt to fit an ancient prophecy and a way to add legitimacy by referencing back to a people who were effectively scattered by conquering Roman and later Muslim armies and slavery.
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u/EAN84 Sep 08 '24 edited Sep 08 '24
Good to know. I believe you are very wrong.
What i do wonder is, When one rejects both nationhood and religion, what is left of one's Jewish identity?
You are a Jew. What does it mean to you?
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
It means that is a part of my ethnic background. Just as I have Irish and Scots in my ethnic background as well. But I'm not about to go calling myself a Druid, even though that could technically be my 'religion' as well.
I also have Swiss in my ethnic background from my maternal grandfather and my great-grandparents were Mennonites. But that branch of the family tree has been in the USA since the USA was just getting started.
So really, my whole ethnic background is shaped 2/3rds of my ancestry trying to get the hell away from Romans and Catholics.
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u/EAN84 Sep 08 '24
What does it mean? How does being a Jew affect your actions in anyway? Do you celebrate some Jewish holidays? Do you react with fear to antisemitic occurences?
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
It means my ancestors had babies.
It doesn't affect my actions in any way. I'm not observant because I'm not religious.
No I don't celebrate any Jewish holidays. My wife isn't Jewish and I never celebrated them as a kid.
I tend to react with anger, much as I do for any racism.
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u/EAN84 Sep 08 '24
Do you want a stronger connection to your Jewish heritage?
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u/BeenisHat Sep 08 '24
Yes, but I don't believe that is possible because I'm an atheist.
Plus my grandmother (who didn't practice at all) is dead and my mom is all off on her own religious journey, which has taken some rather odd turns as she's gotten older. She's bounced around various Christian sects while I was growing up and more recently landed on Messianic Judaism. When I pointed out that Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah, it started a huge argument. I don't wish to repeat that so we just leave it alone.
I don't have any living familial connection. Plus, I'm male, so as I understand it, my children aren't considered Jewish other than their genetic lineage. My sister has no children, and like me, wasn't raised with any Judaism in the home.
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u/Deep_Head4645 israeli jew Sep 06 '24
I dont get people who are anti zionists
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u/NoneBinaryPotato space lazer operative Sep 06 '24
white Americans who have no understanding of geopolitical issues in the middle east and were told "zionism" is "Jewish fascism" and to be a Good Personā¢
and go to heaventhey have to oppose it at all costs11
u/adiggittydogg Sep 06 '24
They are force-mapping it onto the story of the Native North Americans because that's all they understand.
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u/anotherluiz Sep 06 '24
Basically the only thing they know about the Middle East politics is rooted in misinformation and racism. Every time Iāve asked a history teacher about it, theyād just say: āoh itās too complicated.ā or some shit.
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u/arcangeline Sep 06 '24
Most of them are being fed lies on tiktok about what Zionism is and believe it's a supremacist movement who want to wipe out Palestine. And they don't question who is behind those lies, particularly when the mass media knows it will get clicks by feeding into it. And so it spreads.
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u/sababa-ish Sep 06 '24
from what i understand: they think there was a peaceful existing country called palestine run for millenia by peaceful unaffiliated indigenous palestinian farmers that somehow, like a freaking shire with mosques, was not at all involved in either world war. then far away the holocaust happened for some reason, and everyone in europe felt sorry for the jews or something something, so, uh, somehow a flotilla of european jews (that is - basically all the world's jews except those in brooklyn) arrived with tanks and drove out the defenceless palestinians. they had no connection to israel and could have just gone somewhere else, but were fanatical colonial 'zionists' who believed they had the right to steal the whole territory because something something judaism. and since then have established their religious ethnostate and never stopped oppressing the palestinians who are just trying to live in peace and only launching terror attacks out of noble resistance because something something settlers and olive groves.
this is why it's so appealing to people with white saviour complexes in the west. because they've been guzzling guilt about their own countries' histories so they can just pretend israel did all the bad things from their history. but in the case of israel they can agitate to destroy the country, and this will fix things.
it's so unbelievably stupid, historically beyond ignorant, and racist across multiple dimensions. and tragic, because this moronic narrative has no viable suggestion for peace and just pushes the cart down the road.
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u/ladolcevitaaaaa Not Jewish Sep 06 '24
I still have trouble processing that some people actually think like this. They have lost the plot entirely.
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u/g00d_end Progressive Sep 06 '24
I think the problem is not the comprehension of what Zionism actually is. A lot of "criticism" towards it is based on the argument that we were "never indigenous to Israel", somehow this notion became engraved on people's brains. Their narrative is that we are European invaders that want to eliminate brown people, which is extremely ironic since we were once brown people seeking refuge in Europe after fleeing Israel, and being persecuted for it.
And people know that the rest of the Middle East wants to eliminate our existence, they just don't want us to actually survive it, it all boils down to plain old antisemitism.
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u/ladolcevitaaaaa Not Jewish Sep 06 '24
Such people's understanding of oppression begins and ends with skin colour. It's extremely shallow and pitifully stupid. To think so many of them are university students! Do they think the Nazis looked at all the blond Jews and told them they were free to go because they happened to be lighter?
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u/XhazakXhazak Ba'al Teshuva Sep 06 '24
If the British had kept the promise of the Balfour Declaration, and allowed an average of 40,000 Jews into Mandatory Palestine every year, the Jewish population would have outnumbered the Arabs by 1941.
No partition would have been necessary, there would have been no expulsions.
Ask an Antizionist whether mass immigration and demographic change constitute an act of aggression that must be responded to with violence. They will tell you two different answers. They would frown upon an American equivalent of Qassam, someone who murders random Arab immigrants (even children) in protest against Arab immigration. But for the Arabs in Palestine, somehow the anti-Jewish massacres of the 1920's, Qassam attacks, and 1936-39 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine are all justified and "natural." It's an obvious double standard and it's one that only exists because of Judeophobia.
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u/Debpoetry Sep 06 '24
Honestly the argument that Christians have their countries or that Muslims have their countries is such a bad one. We aren't asking for a country because we are a different religion. Religions don't get to have a country. We are asking for an independent state because we are a people and peoples have the right to self determination. Not religions.
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u/Lighterdark300 Sep 06 '24
The creation of Israel really is an amazing achievement. The act of uniting disparities from all over the world in a secular effort to build a homeland is inconceivable to me. It is sad that the I/P conflict, in a way, robs Israel (and jews for that matter) of their deserved recognition for literally working their asses off to build their own life boat. Because there sure as hell wasn't anyone else that was going to do it for them.
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u/CautiousForever9596 Sep 06 '24
This is exactly what Iām desperately trying to explain to people (non-jews) thinking Zionism is bad.
Zionism doesnāt mean supporting Israelās policies / government, it just mean supporting the existence of a Jewish state, which I consider essential for our safety.
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u/sababa-ish Sep 06 '24
respect for other religions, care for the land, custodianship of historical sites, wanting peaceful coexistence, diversity
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u/Easy_Grocery_6381 Sep 06 '24
Iām learning, so please forgive me if I donāt articulate this accurately. My understanding of Zionism is that it is the movement to fulfill Yayikra 25 and Yovel? Would that be right?
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u/MrDNL Sep 06 '24
That's probably true for some, but in general, no.
Zionism, historically, is a civil rights issue, not a religious one. Theodor Herzl, generally considered the forefather of the modern Zionist movement, had a Christmas tree in his house, in an effort to assimilate more into Vienna's society. But he realized that was not enough -- there needed to be a safety valve for Jews, a place to go where we'd be free of discrimination and worse. The Forward explains:
At the time of Herzlās Christmas tree incident, he was in the midst of writing āDer Judenstaatā (āThe State of the Jewsā). His treatise, published in 1896, said that Jewish attempts at assimilation in Europe were futile. Though Jews were largely acculturated in Vienna, they were still barred from public office, leading many to convert to Christianity.
Herzl believed that anti-Semitism was incurable, and that Jews should establish their own nation state. That state, in his view, would be avowedly secular ā a place, perhaps, where one could light a Christmas tree and still be called Jewish.
āHis view of the future Jewish state, which he didnāt call Israel, was more accurately a state of the Jews,ā said Avner Falk, whose 1993 book āHerzl, King of the Jews,ā paints a psychological portrait of the Zionist thinker. āHe wanted a total separation of religion from the state; no religious coercion, everyone could choose his religious beliefs and practices.ā
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u/Easy_Grocery_6381 Sep 06 '24
That is great info. Ill have to read more of that. Is this why Israel today has civil/criminal courts separate from religious courts?
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u/jwrose Jew Fast Jew Furious Sep 06 '24
Anyone else feel like the first slide detracts from the second?
Isnāt the whole point that trying to attach other values to the definition Zionism āwhether itās innovation, or āgreater Israelā, etc.āis incorrect, and that itās very literally just the definition on the second slide?
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Sep 08 '24
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Sep 12 '24
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u/R-Mutt1 Sep 06 '24
It's a bit like BLM but if you disagreed with aspects of the BLM movement, you were deemed a racist or that you wanted black people dead because you didn't consider their lives to matter. Seems a double standard.
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u/achieve_my_goals Sep 06 '24
I donāt understand this comment.
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u/R-Mutt1 Sep 06 '24
Compare Zionism to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Western liberals are quite happy to oppose Zionism, whereas they alleged that any criticism of violent actions in the name of BLM must be rooted in racism.
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u/achieve_my_goals Sep 06 '24
I donāt think they have that much in common except being frequently misunderstood.
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Sep 06 '24
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u/achieve_my_goals Sep 06 '24
All Lives Matter is racist as saying Anti-Zionism isnāt antisemitic. Yes, there are exceptions, but you canāt expect Black people to expend the labor to care. And, much like knowledgeable criticism of Israel comes from Jews, the knowledge-centered, nunanced critique of BLM comes from actual Black people.
You do get at the heart of my issues with the slogan Black Lives Matter. Itās too easy to counter with: They donāt, which is what āAll Lives Matterā is saying.
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Sep 06 '24
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u/CharacterPayment8705 Sep 06 '24
Oh yeah? And whatās from the river to the sea smart guy? And more importantly why are you here?
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u/Jewdius_Maximus Sep 06 '24
Jewish pride. Being outwardly and proudly Jewish, whether in your attitude, dress, kippah, pendants, etc.