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How ‘Zionist’ became a slur on the US left
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Became? Always was… even at the end of WW2. Albert Einstein, who was Ashkenazi Jewish himself, even opposed it. Taking away a native populace’s land and giving it over to outsiders has always been, and always will be, controversial.
Stealing people's land from underneath them and giving it to another people (especially based on religion or ethnicity) is both a crime against humanity and a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (created 6 months after establishing the state of Israel), but the west just accepted Zionism because the majority of jews were white Europeans, the colonialists who dominated the league of nations didn't consider brown people to be people, and none of them wanted to allocate any of their own land due to their own antisemitism.
Zionism has always been a crime. We were just lied to and told things were "complicated" by the same colonialist oligarchs who call the Islamic extremism their own historic crimes created and amplified "complicated".
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but there's a reason why European Jews were in such ample supply. It's hard to negatively judge early Jewish Zionism when many of the Jews in question were liberated from genocide and given their ancestral home back. The actions of the right wing government in Israel don't speak towards the large number of Israelis that oppose the actions of the government or their particular view of Zionism. The term Zionism has been co-opted by various groups to the point where it no longer carries meaning but instead becomes caricature for a certain type of villain.
Not too complicated. Zionism basically boils down to "Israel is Jew home country (for mythical reasons)" therefore "Jews should strive to achieve it". It may have other connotations but I don't think a lot of people are confused about this.
?
Israelites
Jewish diaspora
The presence of Jews in that area of the Middle East goes back over 3000 years until the expulsions. People don't dispute that modern-day Palestinians lived there prior to the 1940s - but people conveniently set arbitrary time limits of settlement to allow for one genocide and decry the other.
Politics in the middle east is not a simple case of "Israel bad." Both groups of people deserve a home and both are going to lose part of their national identity regardless of the outcome. A two state solution is the most prudent solution and arguing otherwise ignores reality.
I don't know if you really believe that the whole world except jews remain in their birthplace without getting displaced. Palestine was the homeland of Jews 3000 years ago and guess what it's not 3000 years ago anymore. If you read how israel is described and formed in it's earliest stages you will see how zionists believe it is their homeland because their magical book said so. That's not how it works mate. It's an old habit of the British Kingdom giving away places they dont own to other parties.
Do you also think anyone can go and occupy nothern africa because humans originated from there? Where do you draw the line?
I guess the point wasn't clear enough: Israelis and Palestinians both claim the land due to ancestry. Reasonable people understand the issue is complicated; displacement was a friendly replacement for massacred, forcibly removed, and slavery. You can clearly see that the intent of the creation of Israel was to redress a wrong perpetuated over millennia, regardless of the reality that it caused another migration of peoples.
Like you said, Zionism is just the belief in a divine ancestral claim (core, even, for Judaism) to the region. You can be flippant about it being based in religion and dismiss it from your position of privilege behind a keyboard, but there are radical religious people that believe the land is their birthright just as strongly as some Palestinians and are fighting over that. The religious extremists on both sides of the conflict frankly don't care about your opinions. A two state solution offers the best course for peace in the area, but the extremists from both sides need to be isolated and dealt with. Most Israelis and Palestinians are good people such in the middle of a shitty situation.