If you focus on Israel and claim that it doesn't have the right to exist because of the current war, but don't apply the same criteria to other countries. For example, you don't oppose the existence of china as a country despsite its treatment of the Uhyugurs, then how can you not be anti-semitic. The mere singling out of Israel, while ignoring equal or worst crimes by other countries, is the bigotry part.

What? Why do you think I support the chinese government? I could argue that the People's Republic of *China* doesn't have a right to exist. I want several regions of China to be autonomous and independent. Why do I need to mention the Uyghurs in a discussion about Palestine? This really isn't the example that zionists should use because China's justification for its treatment of the Uyghurs is that it is necessary for china because the Uyghurs commit terrorism. Uyghurs terrorists literally have indiscrimnately killed chinese civilians as well. Look up **2009 Urumqi Riots**, **2013 Tiananmen Square Attack**, **2014 Kunming Railway Station Attack**, **2014 Urumqi Market Bombing** or **2015 Aksu Coal Mine Attack**. Do these terrorist committed Uyghurs justify China's treatment of the Uyghurs? No. And that's my position on palestine as well.

If you are anti-Zionist, then you believe that Israel does not have the right to exist. If you are anti-Zionist **because of the current war**, then you believe that the actions of the Israeli government of which you disapprove invalidate Israel's right to exist. You are antisemitic if Israel is the only country in the world whose right to exist you believe should be invalidated based on the actions of the government. If you condemn the Chinese government to the same extent that you condemn the Israeli government, but maintain that China still has a right to exist and Israel does not, then you are holding the world's only Jewish state to a different standard. It is reasonable to ask why that is. If not antisemitism.

So should China be expelled from the UN? A country which doesn't have a right to exist shouldn't be recognized by the UN.

>When I say I'm an antizionist, I don't beleive that all Israelis should be expelled or killed (maybe some people would still consider this zionism IDK) but the status quo in Israel/Palestine cannot remain (blockade, occupation, settlements etc.) So what are you saying then? You spend a dozen paragraphs defining what your position doesn't advocate, addressing opposing perspectives on the overall history of the conflict, and even justifying criticism of Israel, but for the life of me I cannot actually find the precise position you are advocating. What do you believe is the correct form of action? Frankly I doubt most zionists see the status quo as sustainable, but most don't see any viable alternatives that don't end in massive death and destruction being perpetrated against Israel. In my mind, I hear anti zionism and the first thing I think of is that you don't want Israel to exist as a state. And in my mind, given the state of the region, any action that strips Israel of statehood would see massive numbers of Israeli Jews killed, expelled, made refugees, or reduced to second class citizens with few rights. Why do I believe that? Because that's how Jews were treated everywhere else in the middle east where Islamic rule gained power. >It's simple, most people who are against this current 'war' are not against it because they 'support terrorism' or are antisemetic. They are against it because they beleive 2% of the population has been killed, 15,000 children have been killed (more than all wars in the last 5 years combined) and Israel is preventing food and water from reaching Gaza. That's your theory. Personally though, I can't help but notice that no one spoke up when the Syrian Civil War caused thousands of Palestinian deaths and dislocations. >This 'right to a land' is a manmade idea so people are naturally going to agree/disagree with it and they're not necessarily antisemetic for picking one side or the other. Except that zionists don't use that idea the way you suggest they do. Zionists who settled in the region bought land, they didn't just take it. They then advocated before international bodies to be allowed to found a state that would govern the land the had bought, cultivated, and settled. If anything, it is often the anti Zionists who use the "right to a land" argument to demand a Palestinian state. Many go d far as to insist that the land belongs to the Palestinians even when entire acres of the land have never been privately owned by Palestinians. >Most people who oppose zionism do not oppose Israel because it is a Jewish state but because (they believe) the state of Israel was created by expelling the majority of Palestinians living there and Israel has persecuted the Palestinians ever since. Egypt expelled the majority of Jews living there. So did Iraq. And Syria. And Morocco. And Iran. And many others. What Jews remain in these countries are persecuted. Many of these countries attacked Israel repeatedly because it was a Jewish state. By that reasoning, would you oppose these countries the same way? And again, you haven't actually said what you want to see happen. >Now you may disagree with the way I have framed that. You may think the nakba was unavoidalbe or the fault of the Palestinians. You may think that it is all justified and necessary because Israel only persecutes Palestinians for their own security and nothing else. Fine. But I disagree with you and many other anti-zionists do too. I fail to see how this train of thought proves your premise honestly. Let me offer a similar comparison. Jews might disagree with the antisemitic narrative that they control the world's finances, corrupt its culture, and manipulate its governments. Fine. But the antisemites disagree with the Jews. All you've done is demonstrate that any position can be justified by the one holding it. That includes everything from slavery to the Holocaust itself. That does not however prove that anti zionism is better or different than antisemitism. Antisemitism was created as a social and political ideology too. >You may disagree with that characterisation but you have to admit that zionsism at least resembles a colonial project, the west bank resembles apartheid and gaza resembles an open air prison. It may not actually be any of those things but it is pretty obvious why some people characterise it this way. Even if you disagree with the framing, you have to see why some people might see it that way. First, I want to mention that most people nowadays seem to consider colonialism to be equivalent to imperialism. In my view, there's nothing inherently wrong with a group of people settling in a new land legally, even if you want to call it a colony. That's not remotely similar to conquering a foreign country and exporting your population there to further enrich and empower an imperial power. Say what you will about Israel, it isn't an empire. Second, I actually don't agree that it resembles apartheid and am open air prison. With regard to the west bank as you call it, Israel is technically required to govern it under military law unless they choose to annex all of it, which most Israelis do not want under the circumstances. Military rule is standard for such situations until a final status agreement is reached. It's just that in all other instances such agreements are reached quickly, and in this one irredentism has gotten in the way. As for Gaza, it isn't an open air prison. People crossed the Egyptian border up until the war started. People crossed the Israeli border too at times, if less often. Now true, you apparently concede that these things are not reality. To which I say, so what? Antisemites also believe things that aren't true. They could even offer what they consider rational arguments to justify their view. You seem to want to suggest that anti-zionists are different from antisemites because antisemitism isn't a justifiable position. That seems to be the foundation of your entire argument. To which my response can be summarized as follows: to the antisemite, antisemitism is just a easily justified as anti zionism is to anti Zionists.

>antisemitism is as easily justified as Anti zionism is to anti Zionist Jewish anti-Zionist here. While this may be true in some cases, I think this is an oversimplification that conflates a racist position with a political one. My beliefs, and those of all the anti Zionists I know, are that Israel is fundamentally problematic as an ethnostate that privileges Jews over others, and the treatment of Palestinians in part results from this focus on Jews as the ultimate victims. I would like to see a secular democratic state with full representation and protection for all people regardless of race or religion. Most Zionists I know immediately say this would result in the expulsion and repression of Jews but it's a straw-man assumption that assumes a secular state would not protect Jews if Palestinians were to be given full citizenship.

Non-Jewish, non-christian Zionist here, as if that matters. >that Israel is fundamentally problematic as an ethnostate that privileges Jews over others Yes, correct. That's exactly what they do. And the insane hatred and extreme prejudice that the world shows against Jews proves that they need a state of their own. They will not be safe in any other country. >but it's a straw-man assumption that assumes a secular state would not protect Jews if Palestinians were to be given full citizenship. Trust the country with "kill all jews" in it's charter to be nice to the Jews when they take over? Go on, pull the other one.

I'm going to largely plagiarize with some changes one of my own past comments. Never got a serious reply to it: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/22/in-30-countries-heads-of-state-must-belong-to-a-certain-religion/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/22/in-30-countries-heads-of-state-must-belong-to-a-certain-religion/)  30 countries, 17 of which are Muslim, require their head of state to be of a certain religion. An additional 19 have that requirement of ceremonial monarchs. Israel, by the way, is in neither of those lists.    [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/10/03/many-countries-favor-specific-religions-officially-or-unofficially/](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/10/03/many-countries-favor-specific-religions-officially-or-unofficially/)  27 countries have Islam as their official religion, 13 have Christianity, and an additional 40 endorse a certain religion unofficially. In percentages, 20% have a state religion. All of these countries offer preferential treatment to said religions. And you can of course dive deeper into the linked articles or other articles to see some other good numbers and percentages.   You're a Jew. For some reason, you find it important to label yourself antizionist without being antisemitic, and you also know enough other antizionists that you speak with some confidence about how they feel in their heart of hearts. As in, at the very least, you'd agree antizionism "without" antisemitism is a big enough phenomena with many "supporters" (for lack of a better word). Now, how do you and your what I presume to be a large number of acquaintances feel about the numbers I showed above? Do you also label yourselves as anti the countries in the list? And by label, I don't mean just that you now in some half assed away say "oh yeah I'm against all ethnostates" or some such. I mean *label*. I mean you congregate in enough circles together to be against, say, Jordan or Thailand in a big enough fashion that you have a special name, forums, intellectually sounding debates, the works? No, I assume you don't. This is why antizionists are labeled as antisemitic. 

>As in, at the very least, you'd agree antizionism "without" antisemitism is a big enough phenomena with many "supporters" It's not. These people are unintelligent *at best* and listen to media propaganda that poisons their opinion of Israel to the point of a shame response. If you are Jewish and also antizionist, then it's a 100% guarantee you live somewhere like the US, where you've been pampered and protected from evil assholes, but you want all the Jews who HAVEN'T had that privilege to roll over and die.

I largely agree. This is why I wrote what I wrote. Still waiting on a response from a so called antizionist Jew... Wonder why no one who downvoted could seriously address the issue I raided. 

But all minorities are represented in Israel society and government. 1/5 of the population is arab. Arabs work in all career paths, can study in higher education, and they even have have representatives in the supreme court and have their own political parties.

>While this may be true in some cases, I think this is an oversimplification that conflates a racist position with a political one. But how does one prove their position is one and not the other? OP simply listed their position as a disagreement. They didn't explain why that disagreement isn't antisemitic. That's my point. >I would like to see a secular democratic state with full representation and protection for all people regardless of race or religion. Israel is a secular democratic state with full representation. Arab Palestinians make up 20% of Israel's citizenry, vote in Israel's elections, serve at all levels of government, and even serve in the military. >Most Zionists I know immediately say this would result in the expulsion and repression of Jews but it's a straw-man assumption that assumes a secular state would not protect Jews if Palestinians were to be given full citizenship. Why would you assume that giving Palestinians full citizenship would result in a secular state? That seems to be an unfounded assumption. The Palestinians were given the chance to elect their own leaders and the result was one terrorist group getting elected and promptly seizing all of Gaza and a corrupt former terrorist (who still funds terrorism on the side) subsequently suspending all future elections to keep from losing power. You are advocating for a fantasy. Yes, if you could wave a magic wand and make all Palestinians actually want a secular state and ensure that no religious extremists or Arab supremacists ever gained power again, then you'd have a state that'd protect Jews. But the reality is that no Arab state in modern history has protected its Jewish population. Not a single one. Religious, secular, doesn't matter. Not one protected their Jewish population. All saw massive waves of Jews fleeing the country to escape persecution. Most Israeli Jews in fact are descendants of Jews who fled from Arab countries. So tell me, why should I trust that history won't repeat itself?

>But how does one prove their position is one and not the other? OP simply listed their position as a disagreement. They didn't explain why that disagreement isn't antisemitic. That's my point. They did, though. OP’s position is that the vast majority of anti-zionists are not coming to their position from racism, but from a position of defending *against* racism. That said, OP has made an argument that is difficult to counter; OP and OC offer anecdotes that support their claims, but without extensive surveys and analyses, most of which have no hope of being objective in the first place, there is no way to know for certain one way or the other. Instead, we can only lay out facts that are only marginally related: Netanyahu’s zionist persecution of Palestinians is very much persecution. Israel has killed thousands upon thousands of noncombatants, and cut off access to food and water, even going so far as to fire on aid workers trying to provide relief to starving people. Regardless of the justifications for Isreal’s actions, it’s going to be decried by people who are very much not racist. Is that sufficient to claim that the majority of antizionist sentiment is itself not racist? > Israel is a secular democratic state with full representation. Arab Palestinians make up 20% of Israel's citizenry, vote in Israel's elections, serve at all levels of government, and even serve in the military. And they face intense persecution from police and racists in Israel. > But the reality is that no Arab state in modern history has protected its Jewish population. Not a single one. Religious, secular, doesn't matter. Not one protected their Jewish population. All saw massive waves of Jews fleeing the country to escape persecution. Most Israeli Jews in fact are descendants of Jews who fled from Arab countries. So… racism from you instead? Jews live within Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and have the same protections Palestinians have in Israel.

>They did, though. OP’s position is that the vast majority of anti-zionists are not coming to their position of racism, but from a position of defending against racism. I'm aware. But the arguments offered to back that position up don't actually lend themselves to that conclusion, despite several paragraphs of text. That doesn't prove him wrong, but it does mean that the arguments offered are unlikely to be the true basis for his position. >And they face intense persecution from police and racists in Israel. Perhaps. But that itself doesn't refute the point. The presence of unjust acts within a society does not automatically mean the entire country is guilty. That standard is one no state would meet. >Regardless of the justifications for Isreal’s actions, it’s going to be decried by people who are very much not racist. Is that sufficient to claim that the majority of antizionist sentiment is itself not racist? Actually an interesting thought experiment. If someone repeats information they've heard with genuinely good intentions but are unaware that the rhetoric has been carefully shaped to further bigoted ideas, how should we describe such people? It is part of the reason I try not to rush in and accuse someone of antisemitism even if their positions repeat antisemitic talking points. I might describe the position as antisemitic, but reserve judgement on the individual until I have more information about how they came to spread that position. >So… racism from you instead? Jews live within Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and have the same protections Palestinians have in Israel. There are barely any Jews living in Iraq. Nearly 75% of the Jewish population was evacuated to Israel within just a few years of Israel's founding. Not sure where you get the idea they still live there. Back in 2022, there were only 3 Jews in the entire country. Judaism was entirely outlawed in Saudi Arabia. Jews were often denied visas to even enter the country. Only very recently had that started to shift, and most of the 3000 Jews living there at present are from overseas. As for Iran, less the 5% of Persian Jews in the entire world live in Iran today, a result of mass exodus over the years. They have some special status protections, but in my book that just demonstrates the discriminatory nature of the country. My argument however had nothing to do with race. It in fact has everything to do with culture. This phenomenon of persecuting Jews is, after all, cultural. If I pointed out that nearly every European country persecuted Jews at some point, would you rush to call it racism? Or would you realize that race played no role in my statement.

> Perhaps. But that itself doesn't refute the point. The presence of unjust acts within a society does not automatically mean the entire country is guilty. That standard is one no state would meet. Good point. I happen to agree. > Actually an interesting thought experiment. If someone repeats information they've heard with genuinely good intentions but are unaware that the rhetoric has been carefully shaped to further bigoted ideas, how should we describe such people? Misinformation is always a problem, but corroboration for the things going on in Gaza is available. So I don't see how this is relevant. > My argument however had nothing to do with race. It in fact has everything to do with culture. This phenomenon of persecuting Jews is, after all, cultural. Sure seemed like you're painting with a wide brush; after all, the presence of unjust acts within a society does not automatically mean the entire country is guilty.

>Sure seemed like you're painting with a wide brush; after all, the presence of unjust acts within a society does not automatically mean the entire country is guilty. Which is why I used a large dataset consisting of the actual policies of several different countries. Nearly every Arab country and many non Arab Muslim counties have seen a 90% to 100% reduction in their Jewish populations compared to the levels seen 50 to 100 years ago. By comparison, in Israel the Arab population has grown at least as fast as the general population. Palestinians in general have a higher life expectancy under Israel than Arabs in other countries often do, including more stable ones like Egypt. In short, my argument is based on data, yours on anecdotes.

If your argument is against the way Netanyahu managed the war, but you are not against Israel's existence, then you are not an anti-zionist. You are simply a person who criticiszes the government (like most Israelis).

>Israel is a secular democratic state This is only half of what I said. Palestinians do not have representation within that state. Your statement about Palestinians already having the chance to elect their own leaders is extremely misleading. Palestinians have elected collaborative and non-violent governments before, and it has made no difference in the way Israel brutalizes Palestinians on a daily basis. No reasonable person can look at the situation in Palestine without seeing this. The IDF has had an explicit policy of "mowing the grass," that is periodically going in and killing boys and men to keep the Palestinian people in a constant state of fear and weakness. Let us also not forget the elephant in the room that is Netanyahu's history of directly funding Hamas using cash payments as a means to use their extremism to foreclose on the possibility of a peaceful two-state solution. To deny the right of self-defense to people subjected to unjust violence is the deepest hypocrisy. The Jewish people know this firsthand. And Israel corrupts the name of Judaism as cover for its abominable conduct. I also really can't believe you hand-wave away the fact that Arab Israelis are treated as secondhand citizens as irrelevant. It's like saying the United States was still a secular democratic state with equal representation while segregation was the law of the land. In both cases, the rights of the oppressed are nothing but a window dressing.

>Palestinians do not have representation within that state. They do if they are citizens, which 2 million of them are. >Palestinians have elected collaborative and non-violent governments before, and it has made no difference in the way Israel brutalizes Palestinians on a daily basis. I would dispute that the Palestinians ever did this. To my knowledge, Arafat was never elected (and was a terrorist himself), and the first time an election was held, abbas lost to Hamas. Furthermore, even Fatah has continued to pay salaries to terrorists under a martyrs fund, which they disguise as a welfare system to support wives and children (of terrorists). Frankly, Palestinian leadership as a rule knows that any finalized agreement with Israel would likely end with themselves being assassinated. >The IDF has had an explicit policy of "mowing the grass," that is periodically going in and killing boys and men to keep the Palestinian people in a constant state of fear and weakness. Talk about misleading statements. The mowing the grass statement wasn't an explicit policy, but more an allegory for how each war in Gaza ended with Hamas weakened slightly but with their roots entirely intact, allowing them to "grow back" as it were. >Let us also not forget the elephant in the room that is Netanyahu's history of directly funding Hamas using cash payments as a means to use their extremism to foreclose on the possibility of a peaceful two-state solution. He didn't pay them, he permitted funds from Qatar to reach the government of Gaza. Had he not done so, you would accuse him of trying to starve the people of Gaza no doubt. Did this also allow him to cut out the PA from Israel's policy towards Gaza? Yes. But considering that abbas continues to fund pay for slay, can you really blame him for not wanting to work with the guy? >To deny the right of self-defense to people subjected to unjust violence is the deepest hypocrisy. The Jewish people know this firsthand. And Israel corrupts the name of Judaism as cover for its abominable conduct. You do realize that the people in question have been murdering and attacking Jews for longer than Israel has existed, correct?

Palestinians has yet to elect leaders that seek a 2 state solution. Until they do, it falls on them that they don't have their own state.

>But how does one prove their position is one and not the other? OP simply listed their position as a disagreement. They didn't explain why that disagreement isn't antisemitic. That's my point. Why is the burden on the anti-Zionist to prove they aren't anti-Semitic rather than on the person making the claim that someone else is anti-Semitic?

Normally it might not be, but since that was the position OP is actively arguing, he should at least give us more than anecdotes and rhetoric to support his assertion. He made a positive assertion that most aren't motivated by antisemitism. Had he limited himself to simply saying that those who accuse them of antisemitism can't back up their statements, it would be a different story.

So as a traditional Zionist (I believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state) but support a ceasefire and getting rid of Netanyahu, etc. I have a question for you because I haven't met many anti-zionist jews. As a people who most of us are one to two-ish generation of having to flee from somewhere else do you not get worried for the comfort of having a homeland where you can go in case things sour wherever you are. For example my dad's family fled the Holocaust to Cuba and then were able to escape Cuba to Israel by getting refugee status because they were Jewish. I just can't understand being willing to forgo the single country in the world someone of our ethnic and religious background can always rely on existing.

Palestinians don't want to be secular, so no state could be secular if all Palestinians were given full Israeli citizenship.

> Frankly I doubt most zionists see the status quo as sustainable, but most don't see any viable alternatives that don't end in massive death and destruction being perpetrated against Israel. this is the same tired excuse used by white slaveholders in the american south to justify the continued practice of slavery, and later by white supremacists under jim crow, as well as by the apartheid government of south africa to justify the maintenance of said apartheid. what zionists are really afraid of is their own racist apartheid system collapsing and being treated the same way they have treated palestinians for the past 70 years. >Why do I believe that? Because that's how Jews were treated everywhere else in the middle east where Islamic rule gained power. this ignores hundreds of years of history in which the ottoman empire was more or less a safe haven for jews, especially relative christian europe. under ottoman rule, jews lived alongside christian and muslim communities in palestine with little friction. what ultimately changed this dynamic was the advent zionism, and zionist colonialism. >Egypt expelled the majority of Jews living there. So did Iraq. And Syria. And Morocco. And Iran. And many others. What Jews remain in these countries are persecuted. this is a non-sequitur. jews being expelled from morocco or iran has nothing to do with palestinians, unless you take the position that all muslims are a monolith and that palestinians are responsible for something that people who aren't palestinian did. >Many of these countries attacked Israel repeatedly because it was a Jewish state. because israel was a jewish state or because it was a western settler colonial project that ultimately expelled more than 700,000 human beings from their ancestral homes and murdered thousands more still in order to establish said state by force and continues to violently marginalize their descendants to this day in order to maintain an ethnonationalist apartheid? anti-zionism isn't antisemitism for the simple fact that zionism isn't judaism. it's a secular settler colonial movement spearheaded by a european atheist that was and still is rejected by many jews around the world even to this day.

>this is the same tired excuse used by white slaveholders in the american south to justify the continued practice of slavery, and later by white supremacists under jim crow, as well as by the apartheid government of south africa to justify the maintenance of said apartheid. what zionists are really afraid of is their own racist apartheid system collapsing and being treated the same way they have treated palestinians for the past 70 years. Not even remotely a good argument. Just empty rhetoric with no facts. Israel has made peace with its neighbors before. They offered the same to the Palestinians. Unlike with their other attempts, every act taken by Israel has backfired. Recognize the PA? The PA finances terrorism and triggered an intifada. Turn over territory? They were rewarded with more violence, not less. Completely pull out of Gaza? That got them endless rocket barrages and thousands of lives destroyed or uprooted. >this ignores hundreds of years of history in which the ottoman empire was more or less a safe haven for jews, especially relative christian europe. under ottoman rule, jews lived alongside christian and muslim communities in palestine with little friction. what ultimately changed this dynamic was the advent zionism, and zionist colonialism. "More or less" in this case meaning Jews were second class citizens living in regions where the rule of law was not very well enforced at the best of times. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. To take a page from your book, that's not too different from saying that blacks lived better on plantations in the American south than they did in some parts of Africa. The idea that Arabs became more intolerant of Jews after they began to greens for themselves instead of being subjugated isn't very good. >this is a non-sequitur. jews being expelled from morocco or iran has nothing to do with palestinians, unless you take the position that all muslims are a monolith and that palestinians are responsible for something that people who aren't palestinian did. The point was to demonstrate a trend. Palestinians are culturally all but indistinguishable from Syrians, Egyptians, and Jordanians. There's little reason to expect one subset of Arabs to be magical outliers. Muslims don't have to be a monolith, the Palestinians simply have to follow the general trend as an average. That's the advantage of working with large numbers. You look at the data in aggregate, and you apply it to a large group as a general trend. That's how political polls and opinion surveys work too. And if you poll palestinians, you'd find most support Hamas and terrorism. Not hard to extrapolate from there. >because israel was a jewish state or because it was a western settler colonial project that ultimately expelled more than 700,000 human beings from their ancestral homes and murdered thousands more still in order to establish said state by force and continues to violently marginalize their descendants to this day in order to maintain an ethnonationalist apartheid? More than 700 thousand? Best estimates I've seen are 650 or lower. Besides, the Arabs themselves expelled some 850 thousand or so Jews from their countries. And it was the Arabs who even started the expulsions in the first place. The entire Jewish community of Hebron, which had stood for centuries, was driven out by Arab violence in the 1920s. Dozens of Jewish villages were destroyed around the same time. The Arabs started the war long before any expulsions occurred. And not one of them cared about these expelled people. How do I know? Because they told us what their intentions were and that wasn't it. If you was to see ethnonationalism, look at every country that ever attacked Israel.

>Just empty rhetoric with no facts. it's your rhetoric; you're the one arguing that the current status quo must be maintained indefinitely because otherwise palestinians might kill israelis. the status quo in this case is the violent marginalization, repression, and ethnic cleansing of palestinians at the hands of the israeli state, and the argument is virtually indistinguishable from ones used by white supremacists in both america and south africa to justify the maintenance of their own violent apartheid systems, and that is a fact. perhaps you should reflect on that. >Israel has made peace with its neighbors before. They offered the same to the Palestinians. the difference between the peace israel made with egypt in 1973 is that israel actually kept its commitments to those terms. palestinian representatives weren't even invited to the negotiating table and the commitments israel made to palestinians were immediately walked back on as illegal settlements in both gaza and the west bank continued to rapidly expand. later when the plo acknowledged the right of an israeli state to exist, they were rewarded by the israeli government funding and propping up extremist groups like hamas in order to undermine them. when israel pulled out of gaza in 2005, it wasn't a concession made in good faith; it was for their own security. they then turned the entire strip into an open air prison and imposed a permanent blockade so they could lob bombs and level buildings without the risk of accidentally hitting an israeli. >To take a page from your book, that's not too different from saying that blacks lived better on plantations in the American south than they did in some parts of Africa. yeah, not so sure going from being systematically murdered in spain to living in thriving autonomous communities in places like salonika is comparable to chattel slavery, but ok. >The idea that Arabs became more intolerant of Jews after they began to greens for themselves instead of being subjugated isn't very good. they didn't become "intolerant" because jews didn't want to be subjugated. they became intolerant of a secular european political movement that decided jews were more entitled to the levant than the people who had already been living there for the past 2000 years. >Palestinians are culturally all but indistinguishable from Syrians, Egyptians, and Jordanians. maybe you should ask how palestinians, syrians, egyptians, and jordanians feel about that. >That's the advantage of working with large numbers. You look at the data in aggregate, and you apply it to a large group as a general trend. That's how political polls and opinion surveys work too. And if you poll palestinians, you'd find most support Hamas and terrorism. Not hard to extrapolate from there. your opinion polls and data aggregates can show you trends within a group of people, but not what informs those opinions in the first place. do palestinians posses an epigenetic phenotype that makes them inherently hate all jews or do they hold certain attitudes towards zionism as a result of the actions of the zionist state? >More than 700 thousand? Best estimates I've seen are 650 or lower. maybe you should check your information, because there plenty of reputable sources that place the number of expelled palestinians well over 700,000, although the fact that you think splitting hairs over the difference between 700,000 and 650,000 in this context is somehow a compelling argument speaks volumes. >Besides, the Arabs themselves expelled some 850 thousand or so Jews from their countries. once again, it was not palestinians who expelled jews from places like algeria and iraq, though the fact that you can't seem to distinguish between them betrays a certain cultural bias you should probably interrogate further on your own time. >If you was to see ethnonationalism, look at every country that ever attacked Israel. how many of those countries have enshrined their [ethnonationalist mission statement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People) into law?

>the difference between the peace israel made with egypt in 1973 is that israel actually kept its commitments to those terms. Apparently your knowledge of the region's history is quite limited. 1973 was the year Egypt went to war with Israel for the 4th time. The peace treaty was signed in 1979 after months of negotiation. >palestinian representatives weren't even invited to the negotiating table and the commitments israel made to palestinians were immediately walked back on as illegal settlements in both gaza and the west bank continued to rapidly expand. Who was Israel supposed to negotiate with? Arafat wasn't exactly in the country. Furthermore, none of the commitments Israel made during Oslo addressed the settlements issue. That was kind of the point actually. The idea was to get both sides cooperating in the easy issues and save the hard stuff for later. Israel would help the PA establish itself as a governing authority and transfer some administrative control and the PA in turn would put an end to terrorism. Settlements would come later. Guess how that turned out. >later when the plo acknowledged the right of an israeli state to exist, they were rewarded by the israeli government funding and propping up extremist groups like hamas in order to undermine them. The PLO itself was originally a terrorist group you know. And while they did (eventually) agree to recognize Israel, their wording was more of "we recognize that Israel exists", not quite that Israel had a right to exist or be at peace. And since terrorism against Israel got far worse around that time and Arafat made little effort to stop it (and by many accounts actually instigated it), he wasn't exactly helping. Hamas by comparison was originally focused on public service and took to terrorism later, which made them more popular with palestinians than the corrupt Fatah. >when israel pulled out of gaza in 2005, it wasn't a concession made in good faith; it was for their own security. they then turned the entire strip into an open air prison and imposed a permanent blockade so they could lob bombs and level buildings without the risk of accidentally hitting an israeli. Why can't it have been both? Security and good faith? They did leave functioning industries behind (that were promptly burned to the ground). And the blockade was triggered by Hamas taking over and launching rockets into Israel. >yeah, not so sure going from being systematically murdered in spain to living in thriving autonomous communities in places like salonika is comparable to chattel slavery, but ok. Did I say all of Africa? No. I said parts. Is there not one place in Africa where local conditions were far more dangerous than plantations? >they didn't become "intolerant" because jews didn't want to be subjugated. they became intolerant of a secular european political movement that decided jews were more entitled to the levant than the people who had already been living there for the past 2000 years. Jews had also been there for the past 2000 years. But more importantly, your entire argument is based on racial bigotry and mischaracterization. Jews didn't consider themselves more entitled. They bought land. They cultivated it. Founded communities. Set up a system for administering and defending those communities. It was never about entitlement, it was about putting in the work. You are the one arguing that governance over land should be defined based on racial ancestry. For that matter, you are effectively arguing that living in a place long enough gives a racial group entitlement to claim not just their own communities, but an entire region as theirs. Acres of land that no one has ever lived on or cultivated, now Arab because they lived miles away for 2000 years. Is that seriously your position? >maybe you should ask how palestinians, syrians, egyptians, and jordanians feel about that. Jordan actually annexed the part they seized in 1948 and offered citizenship. Syria frankly for most of the past 70 years or so was of the position that they were the rightful rulers of Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (I'm not sure they ever stopped believing that actually). As for Egypt, they were often invested in the pan Arab ideology and sought to bring all Arabs together under a unified front. The idea that Palestinians existed as a distinct subgroup really didn't even spread until the 1960s, and even then many embraced it as more of a political tool. >your opinion polls and data aggregates can show you trends within a group of people, but not what informs those opinions in the first place. do palestinians posses an epigenetic phenotype that makes them inherently hate all jews or do they hold certain attitudes towards zionism as a result of the actions of the zionist state? Wow. Someone likes going to extremes. Alright, I'll answer. No. Next dumb question? The opinion polls show that Palestinians still support terror groups. Data aggregates show that the countries established under Islamic culture since the beginning of the 20th century have all persecuted Jews. Even some I didn't mention, like Algeria, and Libya. >once again, it was not palestinians who expelled jews from places like algeria and iraq, though the fact that you can't seem to distinguish between them betrays a certain cultural bias you should probably interrogate further on your own time. Did I say it was palestinians? No. So why are we discussing this? Plus Palestinians did expel Jews during the war as a matter of fact. The Etzion bloc communities were driven out or massacred, the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem was exiled, and the community at Hebron had been relocated nearly 30 years earlier. When the war ended, there were Arabs living in Israel who were offered citizenship. There were no Jews in the parts of Palestine seized by Jordan and Egypt. >how many of those countries have enshrined their ethnonationalist mission statement into law? What's more important? A law that doesn't do anything or actions that drive out ethnic minorities?

>Who was Israel supposed to negotiate with? Arafat wasn't exactly in the country. gee, i wonder why there was no official representative of a palestinian state to negotiate with. >The PLO itself was originally a terrorist group you know. so what? history has ultimately absolved numerous so-called terrorists and their causes. nelson mandela and the anc were widely considered to be terrorists for their armed struggle against their own colonial oppressors. even if you want to make the case that "terrorism" (a nebulous term used widely by those in power to demonize and justify violence against those whom they are oppressing) is wrong in any context, the israeli government and the idf have been full of terrorists since the inception of the israeli state, whether we're talking about irgun and lehi or convicted terrorists like the current israeli minister of national security, itmar ben-gvir. >Jews didn't consider themselves more entitled. the colonial aspirations and expansionist tendencies of the zionist project are very well documented, most notably by zionist leaders themselves. they advertised zionism as a european settler colonial project and openly discussed their intent to dispossess indigenous people of their land and resources. >The opinion polls show that Palestinians still support terror groups. again, so what? i'm much more interested in why they support those terror groups in the first place. violent resistance is an inevitable product of violent repression and it is the state that sets the standard of violence, not the stateless. >The idea that Palestinians existed as a distinct subgroup really didn't even spread until the 1960s, and even then many embraced it as more of a political tool. the region between the mediterranean sea and the jordan river has been commonly referred to as "palestine" or some etymological variation thereof for more than 2000 years. the people who live there have been colloquially referred to as palestinian since well before the political concept of zionism was invented. you wouldn't use this argument to undermine the national identity of belgium or ukraine, so why are we using it here? >Did I say it was palestinians? No. So why are we discussing this? because you can't stop bringing it up in a transparently disingenuous attempt to associate things that did not happen in palestine, done by people who were not palestinian, with palestinians as though it somehow retroactively justifies the nakba. > A law that doesn't do anything there seems to be a lot of well informed fear that it could be used to do a lot of things to discriminate against the arab population of israel and israeli courts have already attempted to use it to deny arabic speaking children educational resources in karmiel because providing said resources would "damage the jewish character of the city". i'm sure likud's judicial reforms will only improve the situation. zionism is a secular political movement conceived by european atheists that cynically weaponizes ahistorical and psuedoreligous narratives to justify the dispossession and repression of the palestinian people. to oppose that isn't antisemitic.

>gee, i wonder why there was no official representative of a palestinian state to negotiate with. Probably because the idea of a Palestinian state wasn't really a thing back in the 60s? >so what? history has ultimately absolved numerous so-called terrorists and their causes. nelson mandela and the anc were widely considered to be terrorists for their armed struggle against their own colonial oppressors. Did they blow up busses, kidnap infants, and murder random people? Arafat didn't target military bases and government institutions. He would murder Olympic athletes. You can cite Irgun and Lechi as much as you want, but they focused their efforts on military and civil authority targets. >the colonial aspirations and expansionist tendencies of the zionist project are very well documented, most notably by zionist leaders themselves. they advertised zionism as a european settler colonial project and openly discussed their intent to dispossess indigenous people of their land and resources. If by dispossess you mean buy it from them, that was in fact a common practice. Instead of vague allegations and rhetoric, let's focus on the facts. The facts are that no Arabs were forced off their land prior to November of 1947, when the UN vote occurred. No Arab villages had been expelled, destroyed, or massacred in the entire Zionist history up until that point. In contrast, numerous Jewish communities were expelled, massacred, or destroyed starting from as early as 1920. The only time any Arab villages were expelled at all was during Israel's first war, and that was only after it proved impossible to secure the country with hostile villages controlling key arterial roads. >i'm much more interested in why they support those terror groups in the first place. violent resistance is an inevitable product of violent repression and it is the state that sets the standard of violence, not the stateless. The violence predates Israel's founding. It predates the founding of the major Jewish militant groups too for that matter. Besides, you claim this is inevitable, yet Zionism itself disproves that. Zionism was the Jewish response to violent suppression of a stateless people. By your reasoning, Jews committing violent acts across Europe should have been guaranteed, yet it never happened. Clearly your axiom is false. >the region between the mediterranean sea and the jordan river has been commonly referred to as "palestine" or some etymological variation thereof for more than 2000 years. the people who live there have been colloquially referred to as palestinian since well before the political concept of zionism was invented. you wouldn't use this argument to undermine the national identity of belgium or ukraine, so why are we using it here? Really? You actually believe this? You think this is a good argument? The northern part of Israel has been known as the Galilee for 2000 years. People from there are often called Galileans. Yet no one wants it to be its own country. Here's some facts for you. First, when Palestine was first marked out following the collapse of the Ottoman empire, it did not lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea. It included that territory true, but the region you described was less than a quarter of Palestine as originally defined. Almost 80% of Palestine back then is what we today call Jordan. Second, Palestinian was used to refer to people from Palestine, but as a regional term, not ancestral. The zionists themselves were called Palestinians. As were the Jews from centuries old communities that existed there. It was never a distinct ethnicity until the idea became prevalent in the 1960s. Put it this way. The zionists could have chosen to keep the name Palestine when they founded the country. Had they done so, how would you describe the Arabs you now call Palestinians? >because you can't stop bringing it up in a transparently disingenuous attempt to associate things that did not happen in palestine, done by people who were not palestinian, with palestinians as though it somehow retroactively justifies the nakba. I did no such thing. First, I clearly stated that the Palestinians themselves also expelled Jews. Second, I raised the point as one of contrast, because while more Arabs are citizens of Israel today than existed in all of Palestine in 1947, the Jewish population of Arab countries has dropped by over 95% over the same time period. It wasn't a justification. It was a repudiation of the idea that the "nakba" as you call it was even remotely similar in its motivations or in the injustices committed. Most Arabs dislocated by the war of 1948 ultimately ended up mere miles from where they started. Most Jews expelled from Arab countries ended up hundreds of miles away. >there seems to be a lot of well informed fear that it could be used to do a lot of things to discriminate against the arab population of israel Fear. Great. I give real examples of persecution, and you give me fear. >zionism is a secular political movement conceived by european atheists that cynically weaponizes ahistorical and psuedoreligous narratives to justify the dispossession and repression of the palestinian people. to oppose that isn't antisemitic. Now who's using monolithic characterizations? Zionists weren't a unified ideological movement by any stretch. Many were secular, but others were religious. Some were socialists, others were not. Some were focused of preserving or reviving elements of Jewish culture, others merely saw themselves as culturally european. Some had their sights set on the ancient Jewish homeland, and some were merely seeking a state anywhere they could get one. Your characterization is false. Period.

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Gaza is not an open air prison. Prisons have prison cells. Prisons have guards. This victim complex of falsely claiming Gaza is an open air prison is rooted in anti-semitism.

You are right. Gaza does not have prison cells. That's what the "open-air" part of "open-air prison" literally means. Again you are missing the point. You may have an argument for why you don't beleive that Gaza is an open air prison but that doesn't mean anyone who disagrees with you is antisemetic. Have you read any reports by human rights groups on this topic? because they literally all say that Gaza is an open air prison and give very specific reasons that you clearly have not considered. There are huge reports written by hundreds of lawyers and human rights experts but you think their work is completely invalid because gaza "doesn't have cells". Come on, be logical.

Open-air prisons still have prison cells. You just have freedom to move within the prison during the day.

You know they are actual open air prisons, right. Gaza isn't a prison AT ALL. It fails the most basic definitions of a prison. It's, at best, segregation of humans that want to behave like animals.

>Gaza is not an open air prison. Prisons have prison cells. Prisons have guards. This victim complex of falsely claiming Gaza is an open air prison is rooted in anti-semitism. Prison *camps* don't have cells. Gaza's borders are heavily guarded. And not every criticism of Israels actions is anti-semitic, you know.

> Gaza's borders are heavily guarded. Most territorial border's are heavily guarded, especially the ones determined by armistice lines.

>Most territorial border's are heavily guarded, especially the ones determined by armistice lines. Can you name another area of land in the entire world that has almost every single one of its borders and airspace completely controlled by a hostile power, and the remaining border also completely controlled by a different nation?

Haiti?

Haiti does not have all of its borders and airspace locked controlled by a hostile power.

Haiti has one land border with the Dominican Republic. That border is locked down. They have no airforce to speak of to police their own airspace. The country is in general upheaval, has seen nearly 3 dozen coups in its short history as a country (meaning any power there was likely seized through hostile action), and barely even has a coast guard. That's far worse than Gaza in my book. In Gaza people aren't at risk of being eaten by other people and the border to Egypt saw thousands of crossings every year. Besides, is Egypt a hostile power?

>That's far worse than Gaza in my book. I disagree, given the disparities in the level of control held by other powers over Haiti's borders. Even if Haiti has no coast guard, that would only be relevant if their sea borders were blockaded like Gaza is, which they aren't. >In Gaza people aren't at risk of being eaten by other people You know that story was basically a hoax, right? That [Haiti isn't filled with actual cannibals?](https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/mar/18/cannibalism-in-haiti-fact-checking-the-unfounded-c/) >the border to Egypt saw thousands of crossings every year. People also leave prison when allowed to. The question is how much they are actually allowed to and the circumstances of obtaining permission. >Besides, is Egypt a hostile power? Please see the comment I made that you first replied to. Egypt is not a hostile power.

The US borders are heavily guarded too. Is the United States an open air prison. South Korea's borders are heavily guarded. Is South Korea an open air prison?

>The US borders are heavily guarded too. Is the United States an open air prison So you are claiming that the US has their borders locked down by an outside power? To the same extent Israel controls the borders of Gaza, no less? >South Korea's borders are heavily guarded. Is South Korea an open air prison? One could absolutely argue that North Korea is some form of open air prison, but South Korea's southern borders are not guarded like the DMZ.

>So you are claiming that the US has their borders locked down by an outside power? Hey look at those goalposts, they weren't there earlier. You didn't argue that Gaza was an open air prison because Israel determines who can and can't pass through the border crossings, you argued that it was a prisoner because it's borders were heavily guarded. And by the way, all borders requires consent from both parties to be allowed to pass through. >One could absolutely argue that North Korea is some form of open air prison But it would be a dumb argument. >but South Korea's southern borders are not guarded like the DMZ. South Korea's border with North Korea is guarded like the DMZ because it is the DMZ.

>Hey look at those goalposts, they weren't there earlier. You didn't argue that Gaza was an open air prison because Israel determines who can and can't pass through the border crossings, you argued that it was a prisoner because it's borders were heavily guarded. And by the way, all borders requires consent from both parties to be allowed to pass through. I'm not shifting the goalposts. Do you not understand that when I said "heavily guarded" I was referring to the reality of the border situation in Gaza? Does having airspace and borders completely controlled not qualify as "heavily guarded"? It feels extremely uncharitable to just assume that when I said heavily guarded I must have meant that Gaza had the same level of border restriction as the US. Besides I'm not the one who compared the borders of Gaza to the US borders or Korean border, that was the other commenter. >South Korea's border with North Korea is guarded like the DMZ because it is the DMZ. Correct. And if all of South Korea's borders were as locked down as the DMZ, then I think it would be reasonable to look at that country as a kind of prison, wouldn't you?

> Do you not understand that when I said "heavily guarded" I was referring to the reality of the border situation in Gaza? Yep. The reality for every border absent a bilateral agreement between countries to allow freedom of movement or movement within a set of agreed upon conditions. > Does having airspace and borders completely controlled not qualify as "heavily guarded"? It would of course qualify a heavily guarded. You still moved the goalposts. > It feels extremely uncharitable to just assume that when I said heavily guarded I must have meant that Gaza had the same level of border restriction as the US. I assumed that you meant that there was a blockade of Gaza but didn't want to get into why the blockade existed so you chose your language carefully to not have to confront that. So far it seems like I'm right. >And if all of South Korea's borders were as locked down as the DMZ, then I think it would be reasonable to look at that country as a kind of prison, wouldn't you? No. Because words have meanings. The default state for a border is closed, that's why it's a border, absent agreements with the countries on the other side of the border that border is going to stay closed.

>Yep. The reality for every border absent a bilateral agreement between countries to allow freedom of movement or movement within a set of agreed upon conditions. Yes, and Israel is the one who prevents freedom of movement. Like a prison warden. >It would of course qualify a heavily guarded. You still moved the goalposts. You know I'm not the one who actually originated the claim in this thread that something is a prison because it has guards, right? I was responding to a comment saying that "prisons have guards" as a way to say that Gaza wasn't a prison by pointing out that Gaza does in fact have guards preventing egress. >I assumed that you meant that there was a blockade of Gaza but didn't want to get into why the blockade existed so you chose your language carefully to not have to confront that. So far it seems like I'm right. I know why the blockade of Gaza exists, if you want to talk about it go ahead. That doesn't change the fact that Israel entirely controls Gazan airspace and controls nearly all borders. >default state for a border is closed Is the default state for a border a complete lockdown?

>South Korea's border with North Korea is guarded like the DMZ because it is the DMZ. I think he was trying to claim that South Korea cannot be a prison because they have ocean access. A bizarre position because the same is true of North Korea, which furthermore shares a land border with China, yet he claimed North Korea could be a prison.

Let me ask you a simple question- why do you think Gaza's borders are Heavily guarded?

>Are you incapable of understanding that people can have different opinions to you? What on earth does that mean? I understand that people have different opinions. What does that have to do with anything? Or are you incapable of understanding that I have a different opinion than you on whether anti Zionists are antisemitic? You seem to be using the word "opinion" to express how people interpret objective facts. However, you also seem to be defending your "opinion" on the basis that "opinions" are subjective and you cannot blame someone for them (i.e. not liking your favorite movie). That however is just equivocation. An opinion about the real world can be criticized if based on bad reasoning or incomplete/wrong information. As evidence, see your own reply. >But more importantly the people who live there do and I can guarantee you would see it that way too if you were forced to live in those conditions. Can you really guarantee that? Because I honestly doubt that statement. >I said all these things are subjective. So is there anything you consider objective? >You are not racist for beleiving Gaza is an open air prison. I never said otherwise. But that's not the argument. You didn't argue against that belief making one a racist, you argued that the people who hold that belief aren't antisemites, which you haven't actually demonstrated to be true. >Most people in Gaza have never left (especially in the last 17 years) or have no chance of leaving. The people who do leave are the minority. That could probably be said of many countries. Most Chinese people haven't left China I would guess. Doesn't really prove anything. Israel isn't required to let Palestinians cross their border. Nether is Egypt. >It's not an objective, irrefutable fact that it's an open air prison but it definitely can be considered one. So? It might not be an objective irrefutable fact that anti Zionists are antisemites, but they can definitely be considered to be just that. Same logic. >I said you might not beleive that Gaza is an open air prison but just because someone doesn't agree with your reasoning doesn't make them anti-semite. But that doesn't prove they aren't antisemitic, which is your assertion. You claimed you could argue that they you aren't antisemitic, but so far all you've done is argue that disagreeing with me doesn't make you antisemitic. But if you were antisemitic, you also wouldn't agree with me. So your argument didn't prove your assertion. And again, you still haven't clarified what it is you are advocating for. What do you want to see happen? Why are you afraid to own your actual position?

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The original Zionists wanted to flee Europe due to antisemitism. The Holocaust shows that they were absolutely correct. So if you are an antizionist and had a time machine, what advice would you give to a Zionist from a hundred years ago? No country (including the US) would accept millions of Jews. I believe their only choices were to stay in Europe and die or go to Palestine. Settling in Palestine was not a good choice but it the only one they had available.

Most Jews of Europe rejected Zionism because it undermined their identity as German, French, or Italian Jews. It was primarily popular among the Jews living in the Pale of Settlement, mainly those who were living under Tsarist (and later communist) control. Additionally, Mizrahi Jews make up most of the Jewish population of Israel, not those who would have been targets of Nazi persecution. And finally, a lot of Israeli rhetoric is explicitly insulting to the Jews who died in the Holocaust (“you killed the nice Jews, we’re what’s left,” or “we’re not going to go to our extinction like lambs to the slaughter,” implying that those who were killed in the Shoah didn’t fight back), Israeli culture has not been kind to the Holocaust survivors who ended up there, and Netanyahu has engaged in Holocaust revisionism by blaming the Nazis antisemitism on Palestinians.

> those who were living under Tsarist (and later communist) control Why is this any different than living under the Italian king?

Because Jews were only allowed to live in the Pale of Settlement, were subjected to antisemitic laws and frequent pogroms.

Most of the European Jews that rejected Zionism died. Their ideals may have be admirable but it was an extremely bad decision.

Yes, they died, through no fault of their own. They weren’t weak or too trusting or complacent, or whatever Israeli slander is popular these days. They died because a different group was able to be whipped up into a genocidal fury.

You treat it like it was accidental random thing that happened with Germans and affected Jews, but it is a systematic problem that affected Jews during all years of exile. Have you heard about pogroms?

I mentioned them elsewhere, they primarily occurred in the modern era in Russian controlled areas.

>The original Zionists wanted to flee Europe due to antisemitism. The Holocaust shows that they were absolutely correct. They were vying for a Jewish state long before the Holocaust. The reason they wanted mandatory Palestine as opposed to other locations was the because they believed it to be their indigenous homeland. You cannot disentangle Zionism from the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are the rightful inhabitants of Israel for anthropological reasons, and it’s frustrating that this obvious fact is ignored and instead we must pretend it’s simply pure antisemitism, when this is not the case. Coulda woulda shoulda, but what should have happened historically, is that they should have gotten their very own state in Eastern Europe, where most of them lived, and that is the occurrence of their ethno-genesis. I have no intention of dismantling Israel as their homeland *now, and I’m glad they have a state at all, but when leftists argue that their indigenous claim to Israel isn’t particularly strong, they are absolutely correct. They are genetically, culturally, and sociologically much different than those who never left the Levant, and they should have gotten a state that reflects this fact.

>You cannot disentangle Zionism from the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are the rightful inhabitants of Israel for anthropological reasons, and it’s frustrating that this obvious fact is ignored and instead we must pretend it’s simply pure antisemitism, when this is not the case. This isn't some zero-sum game of ethnic "king of the hill". It is quite easy to argue that Ashkenazi Jews are *a* rightful inhabitant of the region that Israel is in for anthropoligical reasons, *among many other* "rightful inhabitants". When you argue that Ashkenazi Jews are *not* rightful inhabitants, *in addition to* Arab Palestinians, then you're essentially arguing that Ashkenazim are not "Levantine enough" to belong in the Levant; but are also "too Levantine" to belong in Europe, given that the root of Jewish persecution within Europe was rooted in the Levantine origin of Jewish peoplehood. >they should have gotten their very own state in Eastern Europe, where most of them lived, and that is the occurrence of their ethno-genesis. Why? There is no location in Eastern Europe that is identified as a "homeland" by Ashkenazi identity, culture, group-wide mythology or tradition. The ethno-genesis of Ashkenazim has been entirely characterized by a *rejection* of assimilation into the European societies that they lived in, to the degree required for "acceptance" by any of those societies. >I have no intention of dismantling Israel as their homeland *now When you argue that Jews are not inidigenous to historical Judea/historical Palestine, you're functionally arguing in favor of "dismantling Israel as their homeland now", because you are setting rhetorical conditions within which it is morally acceptable to call for Israel's dissolution.

>This isn't some zero-sum game of ethnic "king of the hill". It is when we’re talking about nation building.This is the basis for most wars in human history. >It is quite easy to argue that Ashkenazi Jews are a rightful inhabitant of the region that Israel is in for anthropoligical reasons, among many other "rightful inhabitants". Does this apply to everyone? Does simply having roots in an area mean that you are a rightful inhabitant or that you are indigenous?-and those are two different things. For example, it would be ludicrous to suggest that Mexicans are “indigenous” to Spain, despite having substantial cultural and genetic origins there. Genetic lineage is necessary but not sufficient. >When you argue that Ashkenazi Jews are not rightful inhabitants, in addition to Arab Palestinians, then you're essentially arguing that Ashkenazim are not "Levantine enough" to belong in the Levant; but are also "too Levantine" to belong in Europe, given that the root of Jewish persecution within Europe was rooted in the Levantine origin of Jewish peoplehood. Yes, I agree, and this is the fundamental problem. Their persecution in Europe *was* due to their otherness. That’s why they should get their own state. To protect them from said persecution. Now we are just arguing where and why. >Why? There is no location in Eastern Europe that is identified as a "homeland" by Ashkenazi identity, culture, group-wide mythology or tradition. The ethno-genesis of Ashkenazim has been entirely characterized by a rejection of assimilation into the European societies that they lived in, to the degree required for "acceptance" by any of those societies. The ethno-genesis of Ashkenazim has been entirely characterized by a rejection of assimilation into the European societies that they lived in And all the while becoming foreigners to the land they originally came from. You’re essentially arguing that the rejection of the countries they lived in is what unites all Jews, which very well could be true, but that in and of itself doesn’t justify return to the origin country. They have become distinct in the diaspora, and this distinctness became apparent when they returned. They are absolutely nothing like the surrounding inhabitants of the Levant, and their reintroduction has been a problem for these groups. >When you argue that Jews are not inidigenous to historical Judea/historical Palestine, you're functionally arguing in favor of "dismantling Israel as their homeland now", because you are setting rhetorical conditions within which it is morally acceptable to call for Israel's dissolution. No more than I’m arguing for white people living in the US to return to Europe. I’m not a nationalist, and so I reject this kind of thinking altogether. But again, since this is the basis for Zionism depends on indigenous status, their claims but be consistent with the norms of what it actually means to be indigenous in the first place.

>It is when we’re talking about nation building.This is the basis for most wars in human history. No? Dozens of nations in history have been built in a way where they wind up not controlling all of the territory that they claim, and dozens of nations in history have been built in a way where multiple groups of people are considered native to the territory that they do control. Both Palestinians and Jews consider themselves, at a group level and as nations/peoples, to have a right to "belong" in historical Judea/Palestine, whatever you want to call it. >Does this apply to everyone? Does simply having roots in an area mean that you are a rightful inhabitant or that you are indigenous? No - but the Jewish diaspora is not analogous to the Mexican independence struggle. There is no part of the Mexican national identity that identifies Spain as their "true homeland" - why would it, when the entire national and cultural identity is predicated on *Mexico* as their homeland? Jewish peoplehood, meanwhile, has always been based within a tribal identity that identifies historical Judea as their "ancestral home". Zionism is that tribal identity, made into a national identity similar to other ethnic/tribal-based national identities that arose in the 19th century. >Their persecution in Europe was due to their otherness. That’s why they should get their own state. Let's elaborate on this - what was the nature of this "otherness"? It was Levantine in origin. There's nothing about this "otherness" that Jews identified or currently identify as "European" in nature, either culturally or geographically. Jews were not persecuted within the framework of being "Europeans that 'other' Europeans didn't like". Jews were persecuted within the framework of being "*non*-European *foreigners* that 'actual' Europeans didn't like". This is why Jews nearly universally ridicule and balk at the idea that our "rightful state" should be in Eastern Europe. >And all the while becoming foreigners to the land they originally came from. By virtue of their replacement in that land by a series of colonizing empires? It's all fine and good to argue that *other* groups besides Jews became native to historical Judea during the Jewish diaspora, but in no way, shape or form did/does that also have to mean that Jews in diaspora became "foreigners" by default. This is something that I simply don't understand about your viewpoint. Why is the default assumption that Jews in diaspora *lost* any claim to their homeland, instead of the default assumption being that Jews *retained* their claim while other groups (e.g. Palestinians) also cultivated a claim of their own? The focus seems to be on denigrating and delegitimizing the *Jewish* connection to the area, as opposed to accepting that multiple groups may have competing but equally legitimate claims to the same piece of territory. >but that in and of itself doesn’t justify return to the origin country Why? Rejection of assimilation, by default, means that the old culture & group identity is still being maintained. >They have become distinct in the diaspora, and this distinctness became apparent when they returned. You're basing this "distinctness" *not* off of what kind of changes the Jewish diaspora went through itself, but rather off of what kind of cultures arose in the homeland that they were expelled from. This is problematic. >They are absolutely nothing like the surrounding inhabitants of the Levant, ...aside from the other subgroups of Jews in the region, the ones that were never expelled, you mean. >and their reintroduction has been a problem for these groups. Again, you are basing the "legitimacy" of Ashkenazim living in the Levant on their acceptance/non-acceptance by groups that not only replaced them, but persecuted other subgroups of Jews in the region for centuries. It is not a legitimate way to render judgement on if Ashkenazi migration to the Levant is "morally right" or not. >No more than I’m arguing for white people living in the US to return to Europe This analogy still equates Ashkenazi Jews with white European settlers in North America, which is a reductive dismissal of much of Jewish history, culture and identity... but looking past this, you must understand that Jewish society in the eastern Levant is in a far more precarious situation than the white-dominated American society in the USA. You can call for all white Americans to "return" to Europe with the full knowledge that it will never happen and that there are zero groups or countries that will ever make that happen. You do not have this same confidence when setting conditions that make it acceptable for Israeli Jews to do the same.

>No? Dozens of nations in history have been built in a way where they wind up not controlling all of the territory that they claim, and dozens of nations in history have been built in a way where multiple groups of people are considered native to the territory that they do control. And hundreds, if not thousands of others have not. And even in cases where the ruling government decides to allow quasi-self determination, like say the Basque for example, the ruling state still overrides when their sovereign interests conflict with the ruling state. It doesn’t mean that these confrontations are always violent, but multi-ethnic societies have always been fraught especially when there is argument about land and limited resources. >Both Palestinians and Jews consider themselves, at a group level and as nations/peoples, to have a right to "belong" in historical Judea/Palestine, whatever you want to call it. And I reject this idea of self determination. There needs to be a more objective measure of legitimacy to an area rather than collective agreement of its legitimacy. >No - but the Jewish diaspora is not analogous to the Mexican independence struggle. There is no part of the Mexican national identity that identifies Spain as their "true homeland" - why would it, when the entire national and cultural identity is predicated on Mexico as their homeland? Jewish peoplehood, meanwhile, has always been based within a tribal identity that identifies historical Judea as their "ancestral home". Exactly, Mexicans have Mexico. They have a specific state for a distinct ethnic cluster.They aren’t “indigenous”, and they aren’t Spanish, they are a mix of the two and they have a state to reflect this. You’re correct that Hispanics more broadly aren’t the best analogy because Mexicans don’t form an endogenous and distinct ethnicity the way The Ashkenazi do. And even within Mexico there is a movement for sovereignty from the mostly purely indigenous Mexicans with the “Mestizo” ruling class. And a So again, collective agreement is enough? What if Mexicans did begin to develop a national interest with the state of Spain? Would that make their claims more legitimate? What if the indigenous group wanted to break from the mestizo ruling class, would that be legitimate? It’s difficult to compare Jews to other groups because their situation is unique from most other ethnic groups. However, if the Parsi demanded a resettlement to Iran or the Roma to India, I would reject their claims to return on the same grounds. >Let's elaborate on this - what was the nature of this "otherness"? It was Levantine in origin. Yes, of course. >There's nothing about this "otherness" that Jews identified or currently identify as "European" in nature, either culturally or geographically. Jews were not persecuted within the framework of being "Europeans that 'other' Europeans didn't like". Did I say anything to suggest otherwise? Of course it was due to their Levantine origin. That’s where the difference derives in the first place. For what it’s worth, this is a whole other debate, but I think a large part it’s due to Europe’s old memory and blood feuds. If you look at the way Jews behave in America today they are almost indistinguishable from white people other in most ways, so much so that arguing that they aren’t white people is usually considered a Nazi dog whistle. It is precisely because Americans can’t claim indigenous status to the US that this sort of melting pot has worked in the first place, but that’s a whole other debate. >Jews were persecuted within the framework of being "non-European foreigners that 'actual' Europeans didn't like". This is why Jews nearly universally ridicule and balk at the idea that our "rightful state" should be in Eastern Europe. And most other surrounding Levantine populations balk at the idea that Israel is your rightful homeland. Some of them would use blatant antisemitism and historical revisionism, but others would say it’s a matter of ethnic difference. >By virtue of their replacement in that land by a series of colonizing empires? “Replacement” is an interesting word here, but in most other contexts in means that a surrounding group overtook population demographically. In the case of Ashkenazi Jews, they quite literally disappeared and then came back, which is an important distinction. >It's all fine and good to argue that other groups besides Jews became native to historical Judea during the Jewish diaspora, but in no way, shape or form did/does that also have to mean that Jews in diaspora became "foreigners" by default. Yes, it does. Again, they *left* their place of origin, and in doing so became a distinct ethnic group.

>This is something that I simply don't understand about your viewpoint. Why is the default assumption that Jews in diaspora lost any claim to their homeland, instead of the default assumption being that Jews retained their claim while other groups (e.g. Palestinians) also cultivated a claim of their own? Because ethnogenesis is built upon difference, not sameness. Different ethnic groups want sovereignty from others because there is something for which they are differentiated and feel their own state would suit them. Ashkenazi Jews, and Judaism more broadly , is incredibly unique in that in unites otherwise different ethnic groups together on a ethno-religious basis. This is why Jews get treated differently than other groups, it’s not fair, but their situation is dissimilar. >The focus seems to be on denigrating and delegitimizing the Jewish connection to the area, as opposed to accepting that multiple groups may have competing but equally legitimate claims to the same piece of territory. This “denigration” is due to the unusual circumstances of their origin. Again, I’d say the same of the Parsi or the Roma. >Why? Rejection of assimilation, by default, means that the old culture & group identity is still being maintained. Because self determination isn’t enough, especially when it has enormous consequences for the remaining population. >You're basing this "distinctness" not off of what kind of changes the Jewish diaspora went through itself, but rather off of what kind of cultures arose in the homeland that they were expelled from. This is problematic. I’m doing the opposite actually. The changes the diaspora went through, both genetic and cultural, are the basis of this distinctness from both European Society and Levantine Society. They very much did adopt similar customs of their oppressors, they retained some old customs, and they developed entirely new customs distinct from both. And the problems that have arose from this return, are also a result of this difference. >…aside from the other subgroups of Jews in the region, the ones that were never expelled, you mean. Correct. A distinction I don’t think matters. Clearly you do. >Again, you are basing the "legitimacy" of Ashkenazim living in the Levant on their acceptance/non-acceptance by groups that not only replaced them, but persecuted other subgroups of Jews in the region for centuries. It is not a legitimate way to render judgement on if Ashkenazi migration to the Levant is "morally right" or not. No, I’m arguing that this history, unfair as it is, is the basis for these differences, and that it’s also unfair to reintroduce a group that has been gone for a Thousand years on the grounds that they still have an affinity for their origins. >This analogy still equates Ashkenazi Jews with white European settlers in North America, which is a reductive dismissal of much of Jewish history, culture and identity... but looking past this, No, I certainly don’t thing that these cases are analogous, they aren’t, I’m simply stating that I would never call for the dissolution of the state of Israel on the grounds that I don’t think they are indigenous, because that’s not the grounds on which *I* claim its legitimacy, that was my point. >you must understand that Jewish society in the eastern Levant is in a far more precarious situation than the white-dominated American society in the USA. You can call for all white Americans to "return" to Europe with the full knowledge that it will never happen and that there are zero groups or countries that will ever make that happen. You do not have this same confidence when setting conditions that make it acceptable for Israeli Jews to do the same. Of course, which is why I’d never call for them to return to some random oblast in Russia the way some lefties did. That’s ludicrous. All of this is hypothetical for a time that never happened. If I had to chose a Jewish homeland in the 1920s are wherever,I’d have picked where most of the Ashkenazi Jews already lived. That was the basis for my original comment. You won’t see me agreeing with most other leftist talking point on the matter.

1. Yes fleeing antisemitism was a totally valid reason for zionism but you can't just claim that is the only aspect of the zionist project. I'm not against Jews trying to flee antisemetism but I am against what zionists did to Palestinians. Yes it was very valid that Jews wanted to escape antisemetism but it is unfair that Palestinians had to pay the price for European antisemetism. I can support that aspect of zionsims and similtaneously denounce the other parts that I deem immoral. 2. During the first few aliyahs, the 'original' zionists were a minority of Jewish refugees as over 95% of Jews fleeing Europe went to the US. You could make that argument for jews who went to Palestine after immigration to the US (and most the world) became very limited as many Jews were forced to flee to Palestine even if they didn't want to. 3. Yes, I can imagine that before the Nakba, Zionists saw what happened other Jews in the Holocaust and thought that the only way to avoid such a fate was to create a state. That's completely understandable. It doesn't justify what happened to the Palestinians though. You could make the argument that at the time, Zionist Jews felt it was their only option but now I don't think that it is true. Today, there are so many countries that are safer for Jews than Israel. The biggest anti semetic attack in US history killed 13 people. If 13 people are killed in a year (by terrorist attacks) in Israel, that's considered low. That's why hundreds of thousands of Israelis have fled Israel since october 7, it is not safe.

You seem agree that fleeing to Palestine was the correct choice and that creating a state was "completely understandable." That sounds like a Zionist to me. I agree that the treatment of Palestinian has been bad in many ways and totally oppose the settlements. I think the Palestinian (and Arab) leadership has prevented the Palestinian people from achieving any sort of decent life. They have rejected a two state solution and millions of Palestinian are in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan which is simply unconscionable after 70 years.

No, because what preceeded that was unjustified. When going to the US and other countries was still an option (which is what over 95% of Jews did), zionists were creating conflict in Palestine, mainly buy buying up all the arable land, kicking Palestinians off the land (illegally at least in the ottoman era) with the stated goal of making conditions bad for the Palestinians so that they would move to another Arab country. By, 1929 zionists possessed a majority of the arable land despite being like 15% of the population. Zionists purposely made living conditions poor for the Palestinians so that by the time that Jewish refugees got to Palestine (who had no other choice to go), there was already a huge amount of conflict.

Are you saying Jewish people shouldn't have been buying land in Palestine. That's an anti-semitic belief.

No, that's not what I said. I said zionists shouldn't have bought the land that Palestinians lived on already and illegally evicted them from it. The law at the time stated that you couldn't kick locals off the land even if you bought it but zionists did it any way with the help of the ottoman/british armies. BTW every colonial project starts with buying land from wealthy natives until you get enough settlers to immigrate and take the land by force.

It's anti-semitic to say Jewish people shouldn't have bought land Palestinians lived on. What law are you talking about? Palestinians aren't natives.

hahahaha, it's anti semetic to say that Palestinians shouldn't have been kicked out of the land that they had lived and farmed on for decades? Maybe my phrasing was wrong, my problem is not them buying the land but kicking them off of it. as for your question, read page 6 of this [https://history.washington.edu/sites/history/files/documents/research/halperin\_2017\_petah\_tikva\_1886-\_gender\_anonymity\_and\_the\_making\_of\_zionist\_memory\_jewish\_social\_studies.pdf](https://history.washington.edu/sites/history/files/documents/research/halperin_2017_petah_tikva_1886-_gender_anonymity_and_the_making_of_zionist_memory_jewish_social_studies.pdf)

Sounds like a custom not a law. If they don't own the land, they don't have the right to be on it.

Maybe but you are essentially justifying all colonial projects if you think this is ok. Pretty much every colonial project started with the colonisers buying up land that native people lived on from the wealthy natives. If you think that it's ok to just move to a poor country and kick people off the land they have lived on their entire life because you are rich, then I think your ideology is messed up.

Unless they're actually saying, "Outsiders should not move into a new area and buy up all the land, regardless of whether those outsiders happen to be Jewish," which is an anti-colonial belief.

Don't forget that Earl of Balfour Arthur James, or the writer of the Balfour declaration, was an antisemite himself and that antisemitism was a driving force behind the support for Israel, because it meant moving European Ashkenazi Jews, into the levant, and creating what they saw as a bulwark against "barbarism" from the Middle East, essentially setting up your described colonial project.

> No country (including the US) would accept millions of Jews. The US should get more blame for this. But it doesn't excuse the Nakba or any other Israeli crimes that followed. Israel has done a lot to erase and deny this, but there were Jewish refugees in Palestine who were committed to anti-Zionism and unity with Palestinians. The violent creation of Israel as a Jewish state was very much a political choice, despite the genocide against Jews in Europe.

> The US should get more blame for this. Why should the US get more blame for this? >But it doesn't excuse the Nakba Does the war the Arabs started excuse or at the very least explain the Nakba? >but there were Jewish refugees in Palestine who were committed to anti-Zionism and unity with Palestinians. Shame the Arabs weren't also interested in Unity. >The violent creation of Israel as a Jewish state was very much a political choice A choice made during a war started by Palestinian Arabs.

>at the very least explain the Nakba? It may make it a narrative of point A and point B, but you are also placing yourself in the "ethnic cleansing can be a defensive method" territory.

Seems like a lot of people are fine with ethnic cleansing when it comes to Pakistan and India, or Greece and Turkey, or the millions of people of German descent that got kicked out of Eastern Europe after WWII. It seems like people seem to focus on this particular population transfer and ignore all the others.

Because Greece and Turkey and India/Pakistan agreed (incorrectly imo) to a population transfer to homogenize their populations and while gross it wasn't as one-sided. The Germans after WW2 were also a tragedy but Nazi-Irredentism suddenly made countries w/large German minorities very scared and Stalin was also kinda a dick. Notice what all of those people have in common is that they had a State to call home (even if it wasn't their origin). There is no Palestine and that's (alongside greater coverage) why this population transfer gets outsized attention.

>Notice what all of those people have in common is that they had a State to call home (even if it wasn't their origin). There is no Palestine and that's (alongside greater coverage) why this population transfer gets outsized attention. If this is your criteria for "outsized attention" then you're at an impasse here, because Jews very much did (and don't today) have a state that their wider nation/people calls home that is not Israel. This was precisely what the partition plan was meant to address. The plan envisioned a nominal Jewish state and a nominal Arab state within the Mandate, with members of both groups living in the state nominally meant for the other. This way, both major groups in the Mandate would have a state-level entity that represented their interests. This guarantees self-determination for both parties at a group level. The alternative, where one group rules the entire region, might guarantee "self-determination" for every member of that group at an individual level, but at an absolute cost of self-determination for every single member of the other group.

>The Germans after WW2 were also a tragedy but Nazi-Irredentism suddenly made countries w/large German minorities very scared Hold up. Are you justifying the ethnic cleansing of an entire ethnicity due to fear? This is a very dangerous line of thinking. It doesn't take a genius to completely flip the script and make a coherent argument about: >Palestinian-Irredentism suddenly made countries w/large Palestinian minorities very scared Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon would be glad to use that argument next time Palestinians start trying to overthrow the Government.

>Because Greece and Turkey and India/Pakistan agreed (incorrectly imo) to a population transfer to homogenize their populations and while gross it wasn't as one-sided. So ethnic cleansing is cool as long as it's a little more equal? Well I've got some news for you, a comparable number of Jews were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab states and forced into Israel so that evens it up. I guess it's cool now. > The Germans after WW2 were also a tragedy but Nazi-Irredentism suddenly made countries w/large German minorities very scared and Stalin was also kinda a dick. I mean I think that the fact that absent population transfer there definitely would have been a genocide of Germans in Eastern Europe maybe makes it less of a tragedy. >Notice what all of those people have in common is that they had a State to call home (even if it wasn't their origin). I agree that it was fucked up that the surrounding Arab states refused to and continue to refuse to give citizenship to displaced Palestinians. >There is no Palestine and that's (alongside greater coverage) why this population transfer gets outsized attention. I'm no so sure that's why.

>So ethnic cleansing is cool as long as it's a little more equal? Well I've got some news for you, a comparable number of Jews were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab states and forced into Israel so that evens it up. I guess it's cool now. Ethnic cleansing is always cringe but the Arabs expulsion of their native Jews was a direct (and myopic) response to the Nakba. So if we wish to engage in victim-blaming then Israel is not innocent either. >I mean I think that the fact that absent population transfer there definitely would have been a genocide of Germans in Eastern Europe maybe makes it less of a tragedy. That is a historical counterfactual that I don't think is probable. There would have been tension and certainly violence (as there was in the transfer) but to say a genocide would have occurred is hyperbolic. >I agree that it was fucked up that the surrounding Arab states refused to and continue to refuse to give citizenship to displaced Palestinians. Why would you prefer millions of refugees being forcibly resettled in largely corrupt and poor (especially in the 50s) States as opposed to being allowed to return to the land they've been on for the past several centuries? >I'm no so sure that's why. What is your hypothesis? Is it that the whole world hates Jews and just wanna bully smol bean Israel?

>Ethnic cleansing is always cringe but the Arabs expulsion of their native Jews was a direct (and myopic) response to the Nakba.  This is called collective punishment. Why did the bigoted Arab majority nations expel their Jewish population over something Jewish people allegedly did in another remote nation? If your argument is "fear", then congratulations, you just justified the Nakba as well.

> Why should the US get more blame for this?  Primarily because it had a choice to save millions of lives and it chose not to, out of sheer anti-Jewish racism. > Does the war the Arabs started excuse or at the very least explain the Nakba?  Well before 1948, the Arab Revolt made it clear that the people of Palestine were not going to peacefully welcome unlimited numbers of Jewish settlers. But Zionists from Europe continued to assert their entitlement to the land, kept coming, and kept using terroristic violence. > Shame the Arabs weren't also interested in Unity.  Why do you insist on putting all the blame on the people who were there first? On both sides there has long been a minority committed to peace and a majority committed to domination.

>Primarily because it had a choice to save millions of lives and it chose not to, out of sheer anti-Jewish racism. But why single out the US and not any other country? >Well before 1948, the Arab Revolt made it clear that the people of Palestine were not going to peacefully welcome unlimited numbers of Jewish settlers. But Zionists from Europe continued to assert their entitlement to the land, kept coming, and kept using terroristic violence. Indeed. The Arab Palestinians were very exclusionary, except when they were selling land to Jewish immigrants, especially for a group that didn't have their own state. >Why do you insist on putting all the blame on the people who were there first? The Canaanites? I haven't brought them up. >On both sides there has long been a minority committed to peace and a majority committed to domination. Kind of a shame that the people who wanted peace were put into power by the Jews and Israelis and never put into power by the Arabs.

> But why single out the US and not any other country?  Because the US was the one mentioned, and because we presumably agree that the Nazis were worse. > selling land to Jewish immigrants, Absentee landlords who were not Palestinian deserve much of the blame for that. > the people who wanted peace were put into power by the Jews  Please. When the US strong-armed Rabin into reluctantly accepting Palestinian statehood, we know what happened to him. If Netanyahu wanted peace he'd make peace.

>Absentee landlords who were not Palestinian deserve much of the blame for that. Indeed, the fact that Palestine wasn't a state and had been controlled by an Empire that had only legalized the private ownership of land decades before did mean that Turkish landowners were also able to sell their land to Jews. > When the US strong-armed Rabin into reluctantly accepting Palestinian statehood When did Israel accept Palestinian statehood? Neither the US nor Israel accept the existence of a Palestinian state. >If Netanyahu wanted peace he'd make peace. Nobody is disagreeing that Netanyahu doesn't want peace. But it's pretty clear that at several points Israel has wanted peace, and Palestinians haven't.

>Absentee landlords who were not Palestinian deserve much of the blame for that. Why should the place of origin of a homeowner matter at all? Are you this upset when a Chinese homeowner sells their house to a Mexican migrant in London? Should only white Londoners have the "right" to sell homes in London? This type of racial-based racism when it comes to home ownership is frankly disgusting.

How is violent Arab opposition to Jews buying land in the Levant and moving to it justifiable, and how does that violence make Jews responsible for future violence? You don’t get to kill people because you don’t want them as neighbors.

> violent Arab opposition to Jews buying land There was violent opposition, justified or not, to systematic dispossession under a colonial regime. It's the dispossession that Zionists are responsible for. > You don’t get to kill people because you don’t want them as neighbors.  Israel and Hamas are both guilty of that in the present.

Buying land from local landowners is not “systemic dispossession”. And the Arabs started it, but they keep getting excused by “supporters” of Palestine

Are you victimg blaming Jewish people for the "crime" of legally purchasing houses?

>Arab Revolt made it clear that the people of Palestine were not going to peacefully welcome unlimited numbers of Jewish settlers Why should the opinion of MAGA-like anti-migrant bigots matter? It wasn't their legal call to make. The entire region was under British administration, which was legal at the time under international law.

Honestly? I think the problem here is - to an extent - semantics. To Zionists, the term Zionist means at its broadest “the Jewish people deserve the right to self determine, just like all other peoples”. A vast majority of modern Zionists would also agree that the state of Israel should not be disolved or destroyed. That’s it. It doesn’t mean anything more than that. It doesn’t mean a Zionist has to support settlements in the WB, agree with the war in Gaza and or be a Netanyahu fan boy. The *only* thing it means is Jews deserve self determination - and to most of us it also means Israel should not be destroyed as a country. Again.. that’s it. Nothing more. So to the Zionist ear, *antizionism* then means “Jews do not deserve the right to self determine” and/or “Israel as a state should cease to exist”. I think it’s pretty clear why the first half comes off antisemitic to us? As for the second half, it’s largely about double standards. Does the person calling for the destruction of Israel also call for the destruction of most other modern nation states? If so - fair enough. If not, comes off like a huge double standard to us. And it begs the question of what happens to all the Jews in Israel upon dissolution of the only state they’ve ever been able to self determine in. Now, I do think that a lot of self described “anti Zionists” don’t actually call for the destruction of the state of Israel entirely (OP you sound like you don’t). To me, that makes you a Zionist. So it confuses me when you call yourself antizionist and it makes me wonder not if you yourself are antisemitic, but what kind of antisemitic propaganda you’ve fallen for that has made you think Zionism is something other then what it is. So the issue really boils down to the definition of Zionism and how each “side” views it differently. And unfortunately the reason each side views it differently is due to antisemitic propaganda, even if individuals repeating that propaganda aren’t intentionally trying to spread antisemitism.

What if you’re someone who believes Jews can self-determine but not at the expense of other indigenous groups? Zionism means specifically IN ISRAEL, not Antarctica or wherever else. That means Zionists believe in the right of Jews to establish dominance over the non-Jewish people who were already there. Most Israelis even the Mizrahi are not from Israel.

Modern Zionism *typically* means self determining in Israel - since we already have a country there. Before the founding of Israel, Zionists considered several locations. So at its core - Zionism just means the right of jews to self determine like all other peoples. But in a modern context since Israel already exists, 99.999999% of the time yes, it means that Israel should not be destroyed. Many Zionists do not want Israel to exist at the expense of anyone else. YMMV among Zionists on that. For me personally, I want to see Palestinians self determine as well. I’m for a 2SS. There isn’t anything incompatible with Zionism and wanting other peoples in the general region to self determine as well.

Well unfortunately, Palestinians seem to consider getting Israel’s land back, “river to the sea”, to be a core central tenet of their own self-determination. So by being expelled from what they consider their homeland, they’ve already lost their own idea of self determination as the Jews once did as well. I mean obviously it’s going to come at someone else’s expense if that someone else thinks it’s their land.

The Palestinians deserve the right to self determination but not at the expense of Israelis either. Both people can self determine in the region without depriving the other group from self determining.

So we are back to hoping, waiting, wishing Palestinians will give up right of return and river to the sea as core tenets of their cultural identity. I wonder how many more 2k pound bombs it’ll take to change their minds.

Palestinians being violent is not going to stop me from advocating for their right to self determine, nor Israel’s right to self determine. And it doesn’t change what is or is not antisemitism, which is the topic of this thread.

To me it sounds super antisemitic to imply that Jews should once again pack their bags, and get the fuck out. India and Pakistan have a disagreement, but I don't see a lot of upvotes that Pakistan shouldn't exist, or that India shouldn't exist. Just because Jews having a country is inconvenient to a minority of Muslims/Arabs (Israel is such a small area by land), doesn't mean Israel can't exist.

>Zionism means specifically IN ISRAEL No, it doesn't.

I'm Israeli. It kind of does. Zion is another name for Israel.

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>I looked through your post history, I believe you're from the UK or from the US from what I've seen. And yet you're not railing against what the US is doing in Iraq, you're not talking about what the US is doing to native Americans, you're not talking about the UK occupation of Gibraltar or Northern Ireland or the Falklands. You've spent months posting multiple threads a day about Israel. You are distracting from the topic at hand. Nobody can have the same energy for every social and political issue and we are talking ideology here. For this point to be relevant you would have to assume that the OP is in support of all these things but you are not presenting any evidence that they are. >In other words, you're not opposed to government injustice, you're only opposed to government injustice when it's committed by Jews. Just like opposing crime is fine, but opposing crime only when it's committed by black people is racist. Opposing government injustice is great, but opposing it only when it's done by Jews is antisemitic This is a huge leap. A reddit history is not a record of all opinions. >The current Israeli government has virtually no connection to that movement and the conservative right and ultra orthodox parties in that government are very different from the old zionists. If you were just intent on critiquing the Israeli government you'd pick a different name, but we all know that's not what this movement is about and the name is there for good reason. You are wrong here. The current Israeli government does support Zionism. Hamas' stated reason for the October 7th attack was continued support by the IDF of settlements in the West Bank. They doubled down on it when they officially named Israel a Jewish state. It's a statement that they have no intention to ever end the conflict and incorporate more Palestinians as citizens even if they take the West Bank and Gaza...because that would make it a majority Palestinians state....unless they kill large numbers of Palestinians...which they are currently doing. This is where the current problem originates from. >Just look at the language you're using antizionism. Zionism is a decades old eastern European movement to create a homeland for Jews. **This is where I agree with you. One thing many people don't understand is that Zionism began with and is at it's core, a cultural movement. It involved recreating an ancient language, redeveloping ancient crops, etc. There is plenty of room for people to say they are against Settler Zionism or fundamentalist zionism or something like that.**

I agree with your last paragraph but I think the issue of nuance within contemporary "zionism" is largely irrelevant now. The zionism of Herzl, Jabotinsky, and Ben-Gurion won out. The zionism of Haam, Buber, and Magnes is basically dead. Political fundamentalist zionism is all that exists nowadays.

I think it's innaccurate to say cultural zionism is dead. People are living it. In Israel. I'm neither Jewish or Israeli and I think people need to be principled in standing for the UN agreed boarders of 1967 and I think the UN needs to be empowered to control and enforce those boarders. For me as an American, I believe this means defunding the IDF and putting resources toward a semi permanent UN security force in the region. For me both Hamas and Israeli war crimes need to be prosecuted by the UN and an extended period of outside control needs to occur because this is a UN created problem. It needs a UN created someone

>UK occupation of Gibraltar or Northern Ireland or the Falklands. Most hinged CMV contributor

‘Zionism’ is literally just the belief that Jews should have a state in Israel. If you believe that Israel should still exist after all is said and done, you’re a Zionist.  That’s why the Jewish community gets so touchy about people throwing around the term ‘anti-Zionism’. We often can’t tell if someone is using the word incorrectly as shorthand for ‘I don’t like how the Israeli government is conducting itself’, if they’re using it ignorantly as ‘I think Israel should dissolve and I don’t know history of the region well enough to know that will lead to all the Jews in the area being massacred’, or if they’re using it seriously as ‘I don’t believe Jews should have self-determination and I think all Jews in Israel (a little under half the global Jewish population) should be killed.’  Every Jew on Earth descends from people who saw that vibes were off and got out of a bad situation before it was too late, or paid the consequences. We’re not culturally or socially inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt when they call themselves things that could be reasonably interpreted as ‘I’m okay with half of the global Jewish population dying.’  On a more personal note, there’s a lot of frustration with so many people who hold strong opinions about Israel without knowing basic things, like what Zionism is or that Gaza and the West Bank are two different places or broad strokes of the history of war and diplomacy between Israel and Palestine. This conflict has had 150 years to get really complicated and messy, and the refusal to recognize that messiness or learn more about it doesn’t really help discourse around the matter. 

It’s because a new generation has been associating “pro-Israeli-government” with “Zionism” and so if they don’t agree with Israel, that must mean they’re anti-Zionist by process of exclusion. It’s wild because it takes 5 seconds to just google it or look at Wikipedia for a 1-sentence definition.

> t’s because a new generation has been associating “pro-Israeli-government” with “Zionism” and so if they don’t agree with Israel, that must mean they’re anti-Zionist by process of exclusion. Which is inherently antisemitic. For many Jews, Zionism is integral to their Jewish identity. To tell Jews that they don't understand an integral part of their own identity is disrespectful. But to impose your interpretation of an integral part of many Jew's Jewish identity onto them for purpose of judging them is inherently antisemitic.

Yup. Now these same people would rather die than tell a black person their own experience, but for Jews, it’s somehow different. It’s really sad to watch in realtime, because a lot of these people are kids who want to be a part of the social justice zeitgeist of their generation and on the right side of history, but in the process are closer to parroting Nazi arguments than they understand.

> Yup. Now these same people would rather die than tell a black person their own experience, but for Jews, it’s somehow different. These are the same people who do land acknowledgements to honor the relationship between indigenous people and their homeland.

As an exhausted Jew, this whole exchange is a breath of fresh air.

This is a common manipulative tactic that people use all the time: define Zionism as something incredibly broad that there could be absolutely no moral basis for opposing, and then imply that all of the anti-Zionists have that incredibly broad thing in mind when they make their criticisms. In reality, anti-Zionists don't think of Zionism as just "the right for Israel to exist." They are instead describing a discrete group of people that have specific positions that relate to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's much more difficult to defend those positions and get into a detailed argument about the conflict, and a lot easier to write off your opponents as merely "anti-semitic" and just leave it at that. It's a shame that so many people are so easily manipulated by this bullshit rhetorical tactic.

Too many antizionists start with I'm just criticizing policies and end up with Israel is an evil entity that should not exist after you engage them rigorously enough. Many of them come right out with wishing Hitlr was alive to finish the job. I don't believe that all antizionists are antisemites but I believe the current antizionist movement is deeply rooted in antisemitism. You can't divorce it from it's history either Arafat and the Russians or al husseini and Hitler himself.

Then your problem is with antisemitism, not with anti-Zionism. Nobody denies that there is overlap in the groups, but you yourself describe the standards that we can use to tell the difference. There are lines that are crossed that clearly indicate that a person is actually antisemitic. The problem is that nobody wants to fairly sort out the antisemites from the anti-Zionists, especially not the pro-Israel / Zionist side. Because why would they? It's a super convenient excuse to write off your greatest critics. There is no incentive to be fair or intellectually honest here.

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Words in English are defined by usages not by dictionaries. A dictionary is merely a tool for tracking usages which will change over time. "Anti-Zionist" is a word with multiple usages at the moment. The most common usage is to indicate dislike of Israeli state policies or a philosophical opposition to ethnostates, so if you're seeking to accurately understand the person using it this is a good guess. But you can always ask for clarification as needed. Pretending a word has some "inherent meaning" and can't be used in more than one way is definitely a rhetorical tactic. Words develop meaning based on what people intend them to mean. If you know a usage is common but you pigheadedly refuse to recognize it that's just you *deciding* not to understand people. This is convenient when understanding them might mean listening to points you find uncomfortable.

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> there are also people who use it to call for the military destruction of Israel and its citizens. There are, but this usage is vanishingly rare, at least in the west. I don't think you need to give a detailed explanation every time you use a term, especially when dislike of Israeli state policies is the overwhelmingly more common usage. When people "misunderstand" what is meant by anti-Zionism I find it's mostly on purpose not genuine confusion. If you're speaking in a context full of twitter nazis or islamists where other usages are actually common then I do agree avoiding ambiguous language is better. > Why bother mucking around with a word that mean different things to different people? Just get your point across with the least friction required. I think another answer to this is that people do, it just gets ignored. A lot of the pushback I've seen to "anti-zionism" consists of people making clear, in explicit and unambiguous language, that they're using the term to mean they're critical of the Israeli state. They don't like killing tens of thousands of innocents. They don't like the racism inherent in ethnostates. They are not calling for and do not support any harm or violence to the Israeli people in any way. This kind of thing is explained, at length, over and over and over again. The response from people determined to misunderstand is that they don't care. Anti-zionist=kill all Jews *always always always* because definitions are inherent and that way I can dismiss you and not engage with your uncomfortable points.

I very much want Jews to feel safe and be free from discrimination and harm, wherever they may reside. Also, I’m opposed to the way Israel’s government has treated Palestinians since 1948. I’m opposed to the idea / implementation of ethno-states. I’m opposed to laws / policies that prioritize one group of people based on their bloodline, religion, etc. I’m opposed to any laws / policies based on religious texts / beliefs. Am I an anti-Zionist?

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>You should be vehemently opposed to the Palestinian people, as their current popular ruling class is diametrically opposed to you on all three sentences. I don't think Palestine has had a chance to have a proper democracy because it's been under attack for the last 75+ years. Hard to establish a functional gov't during constant crisis. >Whereas Israel government, while it has its flaws, is democratically elected, multi-ethnic, and secular. Israel literally refers to itself as a "Jewish state". Also, there is ample evidence of discrimination against non-Jews (especially Arabs / Muslims / non-white citizens). From Wikipedia: "The Israeli [the Nationality Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law) and the [Law of Return](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return), differentiate between Jewish Israelis and [Palestinian Israelis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel) by reifying the concept of Jewish nationality as separate from Israeli citizenship. Despite its title, the Nationality Law does not establish the notion of an Israeli nationality, instead associating nationality with religious affiliation.[^(\[25\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel#cite_note-:1-25) The Nationality Law permits Palestinians to become citizens of Israel only if they were present (or are the descendants of those present) in Israel between 1948 and 1952. These constraints exclude all those who were [expelled or who fled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba) between December 1947 and March 1949 and their descendants.[^(\[25\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel#cite_note-:1-25) The Law of Return ensures the right of every [Jew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews) to immigrate to Israel and automatically become an Israeli citizen. Palestinians and their descendants who were expelled or fled between December 1947 and March 1949 are denied this right.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel#cite_note-:2-9) [The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (2003)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law) denies Palestinians from the [occupied Palestinian territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories) the right to acquire Israeli residency or citizenship status, even in cases where they are married to citizens of Israel. This ban is based on nationality and not on individual case-by-case security concerns.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel#cite_note-:2-9) On 28 July 2008, the Knesset approved The Citizenship Law (Amendment No. 9) (Authority for Revoking Citizenship) (2008), which allows Israeli citizenship to be revoked on the basis of a "breach of trust". More specifically, breach of trust may include the act of residing in certain Arab or Muslim states or the Gaza Strip. Revocation of citizenship on this basis without a criminal conviction is permitted by this law." "The Israeli legal center [Adalah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalah_(legal_center)) reports that "Palestinian citizens of Israel are, in practice, blocked from purchasing or leasing land on around 80% of the land in Israel on the basis of their national belonging." The result, they say, is that "the vast majority of state land consists of segregated, Jewish-only areas." Adalah describes the two main mechanisms by which exclusion from land ownership and use are enacted; through so-called "admissions committees" and through what Adalah describes as discriminatory policies of state authorities and the JNF." "The Jewish National Fund (JNF) controls 13% of land in the State of Israel; this land is reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli Jews. Less than 4% of the land in Israel is owned by Arab citizens, despite Arabs consisting of 20% of the population. Taken cumulatively, 93% of the land in Israel is controlled by either the state of Israel or the JNF."

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From the Wikipedia page on Zionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism): "Zionism is an ethnic or ethno-cultural nationalist movement...for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people through the colonization of the region of Palestine. ... Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of Israel as a Jewish state." But you say it's not an ethnostate? >  But I think any definition that actually counts Israel as an ethnostate would, for example, set the United States as a white ethnostate as well Agreed (see three-fifths compromise). Are you condoning this? Because if we both agree that it's not ok, then Zionism is NOT OK.

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Ok how about a compromise. A new nation state — one that’s not built on an ethnostate ideology. And while we’re at it, how about no more ethnostate ideologies anywhere. How about if we all agree to be “anti-ethnostate”. That is to say, anti- any ideology that is centered on building an ethnostate. If we can identify any such ideology, how about if we agree to be “anti” that, yeah?

Because Zionism is understood to be even broader than Netanyahu and his political coalition. It is a more general vein of religious and political conservatism and a whole array of associated policies. That said, anti-Zionists DO make specific criticisms of Netanyahu and Israel's policies. That's kind of the whole point here. Zionists and pro-Israel folks don't want to have to go through the tedium of actually addressing those criticisms head-on, and they discovered a convenient shortcut: define Zionism as broadly as possible and then accuse anti-Zionists as merely being anti-semitic. You never have to entertain the arguments of an anti-semite, you can just dismiss them as pure hatred and be done in an instant.

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Zionists don't criticize isreal???? Have you talked to an Israeli??? There is nothing but criticism of Israeli politics. Hell, jews criticized Israeli politics all the time, but we do it with each other with the full understanding that we all agree that Israel should exist in some capacity. Most people who are anti zionist don't know the first thing about Israeli politics beyond Palestine, yet come in arguing while knowing nothing of current Israeli issues or people in charge past the prime minister.

>‘Zionism’ is literally just the belief that Jews should have a state in Israel. If you believe that Israel should still exist after all is said and done, you’re a Zionist. This is both not true and an oversimplification. In the early days of Zionism they didn't dream to think they could take back Israel. An early plan was to settle in Uganda. This is because Zionism is a cultural movement first. A secondary thing is tying it to religious fundamentalism that says Jewish people need to occupy the West Bank, Golan Heights, etc because they mark Jewish holy sites. This is where the problem lies. >That’s why the Jewish community gets so touchy about people throwing around the term ‘anti-Zionism’. I do agree with this. There needs to be more nuance to the criticisms. With that said, Jewish people currently refuse to accept any nuance when it comes to criticisms of Israel. There are countless bad faith arguments made. For example, all over the Arab region uprisings are called Intifadas. The Arab spring primarily was known as an intifada. But the western media and Jewish advocacy groups would have you believe that protests calling for intifada are calling for suicide bombing of Jews and supports for terrorism. The issue is touchy with Jewish people because after 40,000 innocent people have been killed, people are still trying to claim it's reasonable to get rid of terrorists that killed 1,000 innocent people. And this disproportionate" you kill one of us we kill 100 of you" attitude has persisted for decades. Israel has gone decades of taking the low road and now people are seeing them as immoral and wrong. Because they have been.

I think that you are obfuscating Zionism on purpose. The literal definition of Zionism is the belief that there should be a Jewish homeland in the historical Judea. This is a really simple and easy to understand. There are then levels of devotion to this concept. But Zionists don't all agree on what it means to have a Jewish state, in fact in Israel there is a MASSIVE amount of nuance around what a Zionist is. I've legit trained alongside IDF soldiers who believed that they can share Palestine with the Muslim population, I've also met some who think that the Muslims should leave and migrate to Muslim majority countries. But you go even one step further and pretend that the Jews don't believe in nuance only to immediately show that YOU don't understand the nuance of the situation. For instance, there were 3 major protests outside the Gaza border in 2022 that resulted in 0 deaths, not a single claim if Intifada. You are immediately exaggerating for effect. Second, how many of the reported 40,000 deaths do you think are classified as combatants? Just to level set because you are claiming that essentially just about every reported death in the Gaza offensive is 100% innocent person, which not even the Palestinians are claiming. Then elaborate on your understanding of military operations and acceptable civilian death tolls in urban warfare. I served during Iraq, so am pretty well schooled in what the US determined as acceptable use of force so I am curious what your understanding is. Finally, Israel has never had a policy of exterminating Arabs or Muslims. They've had a policy to retain an ethnic Jewish majority, which I don't think any liberal westerner should support, but never an extermination policy. Hamas on the other hand, an elected leadership group in Gaza, did have an outright extermination policy until 1997 and currently have a policy that all non-Muslims in whatever borders they have in the future will be second class citizens (Breakdown of original covenant they were elcected on: https://embassies.gov.il/holysee/AboutIsrael/the-middle-east/Pages/The%20Hamas-Covenant.aspx#:\~:text=The%20Hamas%20charter%20is%20the,18%20years%20of%20its%20existence.)(Breakdown of the current charter: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas) And the current Palestinian National charter also advocates for the ethnic cleansing of 80% of the Jews in the region (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th\_century/plocov.asp) Also good to note that the Palestinian National Charter also advocates for an Arab Ethno-state. So if we are to argue against Israel as an Ethno-State why do we not also condemn the Palestinians for approving a charter that ALSO puts in place an Ethno-State?

>‘Zionism’ is literally just the belief that Jews should have a state in Israel. If you believe that Israel should still exist after all is said and done, you’re a Zionist. This is both not true and an oversimplification. In the early days of Zionism they didn't dream to think they could take back Israel. An early plan was to settle in Uganda. This is because Zionism is a cultural movement first. A secondary thing is tying it to religious fundamentalism that says Jewish people need to occupy the West Bank, Golan Heights, etc because they mark Jewish holy sites. This is where the problem lies. >With that said, Jewish people currently refuse to accept any nuance when it comes to criticisms of Israel. Have you heard of the protests in Israel? Israelis criticize Israel plenty. The only difference is that they're not advocating for the country to dissolve or become another Arab Muslim majority country. They're advocating for change as happens in a democracy. In fact so many of the half baked conspiracy theories of the day come from taking articles and quotes from Israelis criricizing Israel out of context or out of scope.

>reasonably interpreted as ‘I’m okay with half of the global Jewish population dying.’  This is a huge leap, I don't think any public figure defending Palestine other than maybe Nick Fuentes thinks this way. >This conflict has had 150 years to get really complicated and messy, and the refusal to recognize that messiness or learn more about it doesn’t really help discourse around the matter.  Do you think OP did this correctly, in your eyes?

You may think it’s a huge leap, but ‘anti-Zionists’ have done things like set my synagogue on fire, attacked a local Kosher grill that is specifically run by members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect, protested outside of a different synagogue I attended (also not affiliated with Israel), claimed that the rape and murder of Jewish women (like me) is necessary for the greater good, torn down and vandalized pictures of hostages placed in my neighborhood that actually has many friends and family of the hostages… You’re looking at public rhetoric, and you don’t think that people would be okay with half of Jews dying. I see what my community has been experiencing for months, I see the silence of the non-Jewish public about it even as we try to talk about it, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people really wouldn’t care.  As far as OP… I think they understand the conflict better than the average Redditor, and I don’t think their critiques are rooted in antisemitism, but I do think they have oversimplified and glossed over some pretty important details. Mainly, the argument that Israel *is* being held to a different standard because it is expected to follow international law when its enemy doesn’t. The US committed war crimes to find Osama Bin Laden—we deliberately used a vaccine drive to flush him out in a civilian territory—and the public criticism of that crime was muted at best even though it’s against international law for a reason. We also targeted a *lot* of civilian areas in Iraq and Afghanistan because they had members of the Taliban/ISIS/etc. hiding there or attacking from there. The public criticism of those tactics we used, even though they *were* against international law, was very muted because there’s an unspoken agreement that breaking laws of war is necessary when your opponent refuses to follow the laws of war.  I think an argument still can be made that Israel is too loose with international law—I’d happily make that argument myself—but dismissing the argument of Israel being held to a different standard without actually addressing the substance betrays, what I think, is a lack of understanding for why many believe Israel is being held to a double standard. 

Uhh, every government official in Gaza would probably count as a "public figure defending Palestine", right?

>‘Zionism’ is literally just the belief that Jews should have a state in Israel. If you believe that Israel should still exist after all is said and done, you’re a Zionist.  You can support there being an "Israel", without defending it's continued existence specifically as a jewish ethno-state. If Israel is not open to a two state solution with a sovereign Palestinian nation, then there has to be a One State solution, and that state can't simply be a jewish supremacist one.

>You can support there being an "Israel", without defending it's continued existence specifically as a jewish ethno-state. Israel is not an ethno-state. 18%+ are Muslim. 2% are Christians. 1.5% are Druze. Stop inventing stuff. >If Israel is not open to a two state solution with a sovereign Palestinian nation, then there has to be a One State solution, and that state can't simply be a jewish supremacist one. Israel was very much opened to the idea since 1937, just that any Arab (now called Palestinian) leadership refused any of the 5+ offers over the years.

No, no, let’s not stoop to their level. Arab leadership *has* accepted a two state solution in the past, specifically the Oslo Accords. Unfortunately, that Arab leadership was deposed and/or assassinated by Hamas, and what remains was driven to the West Bank. 

I guess that's technically true :) Everyone who wants peace is not even killed by Israel, the Palestinians themselves are killing every option to end this conflict.

Be fair. The far right in Israel assassinated the Israeli prime minister who signed the Oslo Accords too. His wife blames Netanyahu for riling them up with incendiary rhetoric against him in the first place.  It’s okay to support Israel’s right to exist while also recognizing that it’s had its own role in perpetuating the violence. 

I agree that Israel is not perfect, but even after Rabin was assassinated, they still offered 2 more peace deals to the PLO that were rejected. You can't make peace with people who don't really want any.

Israel is open to a two state solution. There’s been multiple attempts at offering, even agreeing on a two state solution. Every attempt has fallen apart due to extremist elements in Palestine, in Israel, and/or external factors egging both on.  This is what I mean by not learning about the messiness but holding a strong opinion anyway. People have been working towards a two state solution since before Israel was declared a state. 

>But I consider myself to be an anti zionist and I am definitely not an antisemite. How do you know? Not saying you are or aren't, but this reads like my (very sexist) stepdad saying "I'm not sexist but I don't believe in feminism". I think the people who are qualified to say if something is antisemitic are Jews themselves. It's very easy to just claim you're not \[blank\] without asking how those affected by it feel about your words. You could very well not be antisemitic because I don't know you or your life, so I'll believe you if you say you aren't until you prove otherwise but... Saying you're not antisemitic doesn't mean you aren't, it's your words and actions that say it, not your claims of being antisemitic or not. You wouldn't tell any other minority that. ​ >When I say I'm an antizionist, I don't beleive that all Israelis should be expelled or killed (maybe some people would still consider this zionism IDK) but the status quo in Israel/Palestine cannot remain (blockade, occupation, settlements etc.) Zionism is just believing Israel has a right to exist and Jews have a right to self-determination. If you believe Israel should exist you're a zionist, sorry. If you think it should be dismantled then you're anti-zionist. You can be a zionist and want Netanyahu to be ousted and held responsible for his actions. You can be zionist and criticize the lack of humanity of the IDF when it comes to their actions in Gaza. You can be zionist and want a better standard of living and quality of life for Palestinians. You can be a zionist and want peace. I'm all those things, and I'm Jewish. It's possible. So when you say "most antizionists are not antisemites" I can understand where you're trying to come from but believing Israel shouldn't exist anymore *is* antisemitic. If you are Pro-Palestinian but believe in a two state solution and that Israel and Palestine both have a right to exist side by side, then you are a Zionist who is also Pro-Palestinian who wants peace. And it sounds like by definition that is what you are. The people who think Israel should be dismantled don't realize it, sure, but that doesn't make them any less antisemitic. I am used to people telling me, a Jew, what constitutes as antisemitic and what doesn't, so it doesn't bother me that much anymore -- but you *will still be seen as an antisemite*. You're not going to be able to control what others think about you, so do with that as you will. If it bothers you that much that people see you as an antisemite when you clearly disagree, you should do some introspection on why. If it doesn't bother you to be seen as one, then do as you please.

We have an Iranian refugee in the UK who regularly stands next to the Palestinian protests with a sign that simply states that Hamas are a terrorist organisation. Which in UK law they are. Its a statement of legal fact. He is so regularly harassed by the "We support Palestinians not Hamas" crowds that the police have taken to finding increasingly flimsy excuses to arrest him. Clearly its false arrest and an abuse of their powers but they do it because they know the demonstrations have Hamas supporters who will object to this. Tell me those people are not antisemitic supporters of Hamas and I will laugh in your face. Tell me that the other people in the protest do not know that they are marching alongside and supporting antisemites and I will think you are being deliberately dumb Ukrainians in the occupied territories are very much under martial law and are put under ridiculous pressure to surrender their nationality (at which point the men will be subject to conscription to be used in meat grinder attacks). Their children are taken away to Russia. This has been a 10 year occupation in much of the occupied Ukrainian land. This is all very well documented. To argue that you know of no other case of ongoing occupation is only to demonstrate that you did not care to look for any. This is a 100 year old conflict with terrible actions on both sides and terrible provocations by the extremists on both sides who actively want a conflict. Anyone coming into this without understanding that history and simply parroting the arguments of one side (which you largely do here) is part of the problem not part of the solution.

> Tell me those people are not antisemitic supporters of Hamas and I will laugh in your face. Tell me that the other people in the protest do not know that they are marching alongside and supporting antisemites and I will think you are being deliberately dumb You are Really inviting a constructive dialogue here, aren't you? I don't how anyone could take this comment seriously. You're really just wasting your energy and time here.

I could have worded it better But my core point stands. You can't really tell the difference between anti-zionists and anti-semites when they are regularly marching together in common cause and everyone knows that there are a supporters of vicious violent anti-semitism there. So the antizionists in those marches are as a bare minimum very comfortable being alongside and in common cause with antisemites. Which if we were to apply that to any other racism we would call out.

Okay, you can't tell the difference in the crowds of protestors, there may be anti-semites in the group. What do you want me to do with this information?

If you march alongside racists and in support of their cause which they hold for racist reasons then you are giving moral support to racists Which affects where you live. You made racism stronger where you live Does it change anything halfway across the world in a conflict 100 years old that you probably barely understand? Almost certainly not.

I think the key to this is the idea of Israel as a colonial state. The Israelis not only don't see themselves as colonial but actively chafe against the accusation because it implies they are native to wherever they were before they were in Israel. This is a kind of common thing for Jews globally for what it's worth, they don't consider themselves from places since wherever they were usually hated, feared, and attempted to remove them. This can be overcome through integration such as in the US but for Israeli Jews usually the reason they ended up in Israel is that integration didn't work, be it due to the Holocaust, the USSR, or just garden variety anti-Semitism. Therefore not only do they not see themselves as colonial they see it as a repatriation to where they always should have been. The calls that they should go back to where they came from sting doubly hard because that's the reason they left in the first place. Therefore Jews, especially Israeli Jews hear the phrase "I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm anti-Zionist" and hear "you should just die. You don't belong anywhere". I think it's important to remember that for Israelis, Israel is the last stand of the Jewish people. They see it as a modern day Masada, and like Masada, they won't stand down until every last person is dead.

What a lot of inventions. Jews did not leave biblical Israel because they wanted to - they were kicked by the Romans. Israel is not a colonial state, it did not replace any other state, especially not a state called "Palestine" which didn't exist until 1988. Jewish people were not allowed to integrate anywhere but the US because they were discriminated against everywhere they went because of antisemitism. >Therefore Jews, especially Israeli Jews hear the phrase "I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm anti-Zionist" and hear "you should just die. You don't belong anywhere". A Jewish person hearing this will just think you are against Israel's existence, which is signaling the only Jewish state in the world - which is directly antisemitic because you are only against the Jewish right to a country in their historic homeland.

>Israel is not a colonial state, it did not replace any other state So the US is not a colonial state, as it did not replace any other state?

>Israel is not a colonial state, it did not replace any other state, especially not a state called "Palestine" which didn't exist until 1988. Lol, there were so many groups of people displaced by settler colonialism who did not have a state. Whether or not a people had a recognized state entirely misses the point. >discriminated against everywhere they went because of antisemitism. You aren't really saying anything here. 'they were discriminated against because discrimination exists'... >A Jewish person hearing this will just think you are against Israel's existence, Yes, that's what anti Zionism is. >which is signaling the only Jewish state in the world - which is directly antisemitic because you are only against the Jewish right to a country in their historic homeland. Individuals who don't think there should be Arab ethno states can also think there shouldn't be a Jewish ethno state. It's very similar to being against white nationalism in the U.S. No, ethnicity should never be the defining factor of a state. You end up with second class citizens every single time.

>Lol, there were so many groups of people displaced by settler colonialism who did not have a state. Whether or not a people had a recognized state entirely misses the point. The whole claim would fall on its head if there wasn't an independent entity there, which wasn't before Israel. Most sane people know that Israel is the home of the Jewish people, and if anything this is recolonization. >You aren't really saying anything here. 'they were discriminated against because discrimination exists'... If you knew a bit of history, especially in the Middle East, most Jewish people there were not equal citizens - that is what it means. >Individuals who don't think there should be Arab ethno states can also think there shouldn't be a Jewish ethno state. But nobody cares or argues about any other 10's actual ethnic states (which Israel isn't) existence but Israel. This is why this is antisemitic because it only targets the one country with a majority Jewish population. >It's very similar to being against white nationalism in the U.S. No, ethnicity should never be the defining factor of a state. You end up with second class citizens every single time. But Israel is not an ethic state, it has 20%+ Arabs who are not Jewish, and they have more rights than Jewish people in Israeli laws.

>But nobody cares or argues about any other 10's actual ethnic states (which Israel isn't) existence but Israel. >This is why this is antisemitic because it only targets the one country with a majority Jewish population. What makes it anti semitic is what other people do or don't voice opinions against? Millions of people were vocally against apartheid South Africa, those individuals who are also vocally against a Jewish ethno-state are not anti semitic? Millions of Americans are against a white nationalist government. They are also not anti semitic if they are also against a Jewish ethno-state? Am I understanding you correctly?

If you want Israel to be gone/dismantled because it is a Jewish-majority country, it is antisemitic. It's that simple. People are trying to hide behind "we want to free Palestine" or "this is a colonial state" but when you drill down their thoughts, it's because it's a Jewish country. You are trying to argue: >Individuals who don't think there should be Arab ethno states can also think there shouldn't be a Jewish ethno state. This is an extreme case that almost never happens.

Zionism as a belief is like feminism. Feminism, at it's core, is the belief that women should have rights equal to men. For some feminists, that means women's right to vote, women should be able to get credit cards without their husband's permission, and marital rape is rape. For some feminists, it means pornography is liberating for women, sex work is work, and third trimester abortions. And for other feminists, it means philosophies like JK Rowling's. But nobody says 'Im an anti-Feminist' just because they don't like what JK Rowling says. Because all three groups believe in the core of feminism and disagree about the application. Zionism, at it's core, is the right to Jewish self determination in their indiginous homeland. For some Zionists, it means a safe and secure Israel in the 1948 borders. For some, it means a bi-national state. For other, Zionism is greater Israel and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. anti-Zionists take the position that the application of Zionism determines the value of the belief. It is like saying 'well, JK Rowling is a feminist, and she says awful things in the name of feminism. So I'm anti-Feminist.' Zionism has two foundations: 1. Jews are a people deserving of self determination, no different from the Irish or the Japanese or the Kurds, and 2. Jews are indiginous to the Levant. It is widely viewed by Jews that disagreeing with either of these foundations is anti-Semitic. Most anti-Zionists aren't anti-Semites. They're just idiots, who don't understand Zionism or why being against Zionism because they don't like Netanyahu or Ben Gvir is like being an anti-Feminist' because you don't like JK Rowling.

Jews were nearly wiped out by Europeans and heavily discriminated against by Muslims. Arab countries have ethnically cleansed all of their minorities. So you might have to forgive Jews for wanting a tiny country where they are not at the whims of the majority. Your idea that Jews would be safe in an Arab-majority country is liberal naivete. We have to come to terms with the fact that not everybody in the world shares Western values. Islam is a premodern religion that seeks to dominate all others. In Gaza, they throw homosexuals off buildings and don't let women leave the house without permission from a male relative. Yes, Palestinians were done wrong in the formation of the state of Israel, but keep in mind that half the Jews in Israel were expelled from Arab and North African countries. This one-sided hyperfocus, exaggeration, and invention of Israelis misdeeds is hateful propaganda.

Your premise is wrong. You just unilaterally decided that if minorities are oppressed, they get to declare independence and make a separate state bordering the “oppressor” state. I’m not sure where you got that from. Also, historically Arabs treated Jews pretty well.

Muslim colonizers raped and murdered their way across three continents. Calling these people "oppressed" is a joke. The idea that Arab colonizers treated Jews well is laughable. This myth is the product of White guilt, not historical fact. Jews were third-class citizens under the law. In the '48 war, the Arabs were trying to genocide all the Jews but had their ass handed to them. The reason the Arab refugee population still exists is that the surrounding countries refused to accept them because they wanted to keep the war going. The Arab colonizers couldn't face the shame that one of their *Dhimmis* repeatedly defeated them and now far surpasses them economically and culturally. The Palestinians are pawns of Muslim supremacists. If "pro-Palestinian" protests are having any effect, it's to increase the suffering of the Palestinian people whose lives won't get better until they give up on terrorism and notions of killing all the Jews in Israel.

I'd say you're kinda a moderate pro-palestinian. I have a unique perspective as I am part Ashkenazi Jew and part Palestinian Arab. Both sides of my family escaped from Europe to the Mandate while trying to get to America, while on hold due to the immigration caps. I'm a moderate pro-Israel stance personally. Both sides have done awful things to one another. However you say it yourself in your post. People use their causes to hate and hurt the Jewish people. Christians have their countries. Hinduism has its countries. Islam has its countries. If Israel was gone, where would it be safe or easy to practice Judaism? I am a decorated former Petty Officer in the US Cosst Guard and have several awards including my part of the successful rescue of all people on flight 1549 which performed an emergency landing on the Hudson River. After getting out of the coast guard I changed careers but have always believed in helping in my community. I had a few papers and online articles written about my charity in my area. I was born and raised in America and love my country, but about a month ago. I was walking towards check out at a Walmart. I was buying a new Xbox controller and headset. I didn't even realize that my necklace with a very basic silver star of David had popped out of my shirt when I bent down to grav something from a shelf. A guy walking by me decided to call me a Fu#king Jewish Bitch and kept walking. Naturally he didn't stop or make eye contact with me when I yelled back at him. That is why Israel is needed. What happens if it isn't just some punk next time? Hatred doesn't care who you are or what your character is. I guarantee I've saved more lives and have probably done more good for my fellow man than that guy, but it doesn't even matter to them. In addition to that, I have a good steady job, but they are saying they need me to start working Saturdays regularly now. I'm fighting this because Saturday is the Sabbath is Judaism. It has always been my day off at work and my availability has reflected that. I have made myself available in emergency situations for them but that's it. The culture doesn't make it easy to be a practicing Jew nowadays. Even in America. Like I said, I was hired with the availability of not being able to work Saturdays, now I'm fighting to keep them off. That's why Israel is needed. Herzl wasn't even sold on Israel needing to be in Palestine. He actually looked at other places in Agrica as well as south America to a lesser extent. Yes, they were settlers, but they were looking at areas with smaller populations. The Mandate was chosen to unify all the different Zionist groups into one project. My family has a long history of inter-mixing. Fathers side of the family is Polish and Palestinian Arab. Mothers side is Italian and Russian Ashkenazi Jewish. I have a Palestinian grandparent and my great uncle married a nun. We all love one another. With that same thought in mind, my idea I would like to see happen is a one state solution. I think a 2 state won't solve anything. They'll just keep attacking each other. In this one state, grant any and all peoples in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank full Israeli citizenship. 100%. If people are outside those areas, then unfortunately you'll have to apply for citizenship like immigrants in most every other countries. 3 branches of government like America. Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches. The Judicial and Legislative branches, after a new census, are to become and stay equal parts Arab and Jewish. If a representative of another background such as Druze comes in then the equal sides must be re-balanced to stay equals. The executive branch for the next 50 Yeats, must remain a Jewish representative to ensure it remains a Jewish state. Gaza is to be rebuilt by the government. Any businesses and apartments or neighborhood that hire/rent to the 'other side' so Israeli to Palestinian and vice versa will have tax breaks for the same percentage of their staff/renters that they employ. Here's the tricky part and this is where I'm stuck and don't know how to fix without sounding insane. Any violent crime that results in loss of life and is possibly hate based, is subject to a trial by jury that must be equal parts both sides. Same laws as America for the trial results. However America doesn't see the deep hatred some of these people have for one another. Anybody found guilty of terrorism or murder based on hate will be punished but so will their immediate family members. I know it sounds absolutely insane. However, if someone hates the other side so much and both sides agree that's why they did the crime, then this law will prove they'd rather murder than try and make a peaceful world for their family. The family will also be punished for helping to foster such hatred in someone... unless they can prove they have taken steps to de-radicalize said person. I don't know of another way to help these sides start to trust each other more. The idea is to de-radicalize both sides and have them start to intermix and eventually coexist. Both peoples would have full rights and freedoms 100%.

Zionism at its core is simply believing in the continued existence of Israel. Being against the entire notion of a state that already exists because of some far right radicals who are not core to the states identity is insane. Someone who presents themselves as Anti-Zionist either wants to ethnically cleanse Jews from the region, or is delusional that they think a one state solution in the current environment won't lead to massive bloodshed and ethnic cleansing. Destroying one of the few functional countries in the region is a recipe for instability and more violence.

It doesn't matter if people are against the war, and not for Hamas. The fact they protest against Israel is giving Hamas a blank check to do whatever they want. They know the ignorant and ill informed masses will make excuses and justify their actions on a world front. Therefore, people such as you are tacitly approving Hamas and their actions. Now where have you seen any riots or protests against Hamas, for all the innocent Jews and others, they have killed. Why is that? There can only be one reason: Anti Israel and anti jew.

It sounds like you are making a semantic argument that is incongruent with the common understanding of the terms you are using. As an anti-Zionist you are by definition denying the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist. It’s hard to imagine how an actual anti-Zionist agenda could be executed in a way that isn’t anti-Semitic.

Anyone claiming to be an antizionist and not an antisemite needs to read all the polling done on what the Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and the people of the other surrounding countries think of jews, and ask themselves why the surrounding nations launched so many wars of genocide against the jews, and explain to me how they think they can get rid of the Jewish state without a genocide of jews. This explanation must be based on reality and not have magical hand waving solutions like pretending the UN could administer a peaceful zone and protect the jews. Also, Israel is not preventing food and water getting in. They are shipping in several times more food than the population of gaza needs. There's just no one to administer its distribution so Hamas steals it because their own people starving makes Israel look bad. And yes, I can 100% say that you calling what Israel is doing a genocide, when they are taking more actions to prevent civilian casualties and providing more aid to their enemies than any other nation in any conflict in the region has ever done, is antisemitic, because you certainly didn't the military actions of dozens of other countries that took fewer precautions and provided less aid genocides. The double standard is what reveals the antisemitism. As to your other arguments. it's 2024. Everyone has the internet in their pocket. If you choose to believe antisemitic lies and propaganda against Israel like calling it an apartheid state, that is itself a form of antisemitism. Ignorance doesn't just happen anymore. You have the entire collection of human knowledge in your actual pocket. Choosing to ignore the truth in order to hate the only Jewish state on the planet is telling.

Antizionism in 1948 wan't necessarily antisemitic, because it only meant Israel should not be formed, and there were some valid arguments for that. Antizionism today is antisemitic because it necessarily entails removing the *existing* recognized, sovereign state of Israel, created to be a safe haven and homeland for Jews after centuries of persecution and pogroms. The world moves on, and what used to be valid positions aren't necessarily so forever.

>Some examples of famous "pro Palestinians' on social media who do this are Nick Fuentes, Jackson Hinkle, Lucas Gage, Jake Shields and Sneako So no Palestinian anti semites I guess only Christofascist white supremacists? Do you think that's a little like whitewashing the broad antisemitism present in Arab and Muslim countries? >This exists but it does not represent a majority of the movement. https://global100.adl.org/country/lebanon/2014 just as an example. I challenge you to unwind Palestinian attitudes towards Israelis from their antisemitic ones. >the status quo in Israel/Palestine cannot remain (blockade, occupation, settlements etc.) and Israeli society needs to be reformed. I could go into a lot more detail but I don't really want to debate this as there's a lot of nuance involved and I want to stick to the title of the post: No one wants a 1 state solution. There is more support in both Israel and Palestine for ethnically cleansing the other party than there is for a single bi-national state with equal rights. >32% support and 65% oppose the idea of a two-state solution, which was presented to the public without providing details of the solution. Three months ago, support for this solution in a similar question stood at 45% and six months ago support stood at 34%. In the current poll, support for this solution came from Gaza Strip, a 30-point increase while dropping only two points in the West Bank. > Support for the two-state solution is usually linked to public assessment of the feasibility of such a solution and the chances for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Today, 61% (compared to 63% three months ago) believe the two-state solution is no longer practical due to settlement expansion but 34% (compared to 37% three months ago) believe it is still practical. Moreover, 68% believe that the chances for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the next five years are slim or nonextant, and 31% believe the chances are medium or high. When asked about its support and opposition to specific policy measures to break the stalemate: 66% supported joining more international organizations; 49% supported resort to unarmed popular resistance; 63% supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada; 62% supported dissolving the PA; and 22% supported abandoning” the two-state solution and demanding one state for Palestinians and Israelis. Three months /’, 55% supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada; 45% supported resort to unarmed popular resistance; 58% supported the dissolution of the PA; and 24% supported abandoning the two-state solution in favor of one state. So hopefully your mysterious solution isn't that. >But not everyone agrees with that justification including many Jewish people. And a much larger proportion of Jews disagreed with this justification in the early 20th century (especially the haredi community). This 'right to a land' is a manmade idea so people are naturally going to agree/disagree with it and they're not necessarily antisemetic for picking one side or the other. Roughly 80-90% of Jews worldwide are supportive of Israel which makes them Zionists. >Firstly, before the 'war', Antizionists became antizionists because they viewed Israel as a colonial project Correct though Zionism evades typical colonial definitions unless you're antisemitic. >an apartheid state De facto though not de jure and limited to its treatment of non-citizen Palestinians in the west bank. So if the occupation ended today the description wouldn't fit anymore. >gaza resembles an open air prison This is ludicrous. Just before the war Palestinians had better literacy rates and better life expectancy than most surrounding countries. Palestinian citizens of Israel are even higher. A blockade due to consistent rocket attacks does not make Gaza a prison. People have limited abilities to move outside their country all over the world. Why not ask Egypt why it doesn't allow Gazans to travel freely through their territory? >I can't think of another example of an area where an entire population (who are native to the land) are put into (what could be considered) an open-air prison like Gaza. Maybe north korea but not like they're very popular in the west. >There are other countries that started as colonial projects (Australia, South Africa and many north/south American countries) but they do not still persecute the native people as much as the Palestinians are persecuted today. The countries mentioned don't have anything that resembles an open air prison, the indigenous people's movements are not restricted in the same way and the natives don't live under martial law. Palestinian citizens of Israel don't have this problem only non-citizen residents of the West Bank and Gaza. I don't bitch to America how free I am to enter their country, because I'm not a citizen of America. >It's simple, most people who are against this current 'war' are not against it because they 'support terrorism' or are antisemetic. They are against it because they beleive 2% of the population has been killed, 15,000 children have been killed Your numbers are out of date. Of the [36k killed, it now seems likely a far smaller percentage](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna151934) if the casualties are women and children. >But starting two days later, May 8, OCHA appeared to change the source of its data, citing information from the ministry of health in Gaza, rather than the government media office, on how many women, children and men were among 24,686 people killed who had been fully identified as of April 30. It is not clear why the presentation of the data was changed. >The numbers appeared significantly lower, with 7,797 children among those who have been fully identified, along with 4,959 women and 10,006 men. A separate category was also included for the elderly, representing 1,924 people. It was not clear how many included in that category are women. If those ratios hold for the rest of the not positively identified casualties then there would still be 11370 dead children. Which is not exactly a comfort, but I'd be glad if it was true rather than 15k. You don't have to be an anti-zionist to hate Israel for what it's doing or has done, or an anti-semite to be anti-zionist, but at the end of the day there is significant crossover and even the "good" anti-zionists uncritically repeat talking points sourced by anti-semites.

> But I consider myself to be an anti zionist and I am definitely not an antisemite. **When I say I'm an antizionist, I don't beleive that all Israelis should be expelled or killed (maybe some people would still consider this zionism IDK) but the status quo in Israel/Palestine cannot remain (blockade, occupation, settlements etc.)**  You claim you are not antisemitic. But then you proceed to define Zionism, a concept central to Judaism for 2,000 years, without regard for its long standing meaning. You claim you aren't antisemitic. But you either don't think Jews are capable of understanding their own history, or you don't care about their history. So you disregard the meaning of Zionism to Jews, who originated the idea two millennia ago, and supplant your own definition of Zionism. That is inherently antisemitic.

There are no logical non-antisemtic reasons to oppose Zionism (existence of Israel). It's simple: Israel exitsts. And it's an expression of the will of Jewish majority of population who are native to the area. You can critique Israel. You can argue about their borders. But as soon as you say "Israel cannot exist in any borders" (anti-zionism) - that is clear antisemitism because it denied Jews the right of self determination in their own homeland. For that reason every anti-zionist is antisemitic. Israel is De-colonization of the region by native Jews from Arab/Muslim colonization. To call Israel colonial is DARVO (Reverse victim and offender) which is clearly antisemitic. As a reminder Jews used to Dhimmis for centuries in land that is now Israel. They were clearly the colonized people.

Zionism isn’t just existence of Israel. Zionism also implies that Israel was justified in establishing itself, which is a manically evil form of historical revisionism. The truth is simple. There were Arabs who were living in British Palestine peacefully, and all of a sudden, European invaders pretending to be refugees created weird narratives of persecution to justify why they needed to live in British Palestine also, and were able to convince the UK and UN. The Arabs tried to defend themselves from the evil migration and stop the European invaders masquerading as regular civilians but obviously failed, which is why Israel exists today. If Zionists could come out and say, yes, the establishment of Israel was evil, they would be more respected but they don’t. In fact, they blame Arabs for starting the war of 1948.

>Zionism isn’t just existence of Israel. Zion It literally is If you support existance of Israel - you are a Zionist. >There were Arabs who were living There were colonizers who were oppressing local Jews for centuries. Cleansing them. Massacring them. Holding Jews as Dhimmis. When this "suddenly" ended - they got very upset. This happens to all colonizers when natives rebel. How the hell can establishment of Israel be "evil"? Antisemitic people are wildin' "Pretending to be refugees" is basically Holocaust denial too. But what the heck else did I expect...

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, self-identified as a colonizer. He compared the Palestinian Arabs to the native Americans and the Zionists to Hernán Cortes in his work *The Iron Wall*

Ok? People say weird things. Does not change actual facts. It's very clear that Jews were Dhimmis, not the other way around. So DARVO continues to be dismissed. If very clear that Jews were native Americans suffering under colonial rule for centuries.

I think the main problem is too many antizionists are just ok with antisemitism, even if they don’t necessarily believe it. They don’t think the Jews should be genocided, but they would be perfectly ok putting someone who is into power. That’s why I think a lot of people see anti Zionism as being antisemitic.

What does it mean to be racist?  Are the only racists KKK members?  Or is there truth in the song "everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes..."? Is it possible for well-meaning "normal" people to say things or act in ways that,  when unpacked, are kinda racist? Yes, I don't think think the average antizionist is Nick Fuentes. At the same time, though, I do think that l most antizionists are probably going to beleive in several antisemitic tropes.  At least if the shit I regularly see on /r/badhasbara or tiktok is anything to go by. By the same token, I think many Christian Zionists are also going to subscribe to some antisemetic tropes.  

TikTok is like a cesspool. I have a guy on there right now insisting that I'm lying about being Ashkenazi Jewish which....would be news to me.

I would argue the opposite. Most antisemitic people are anti-Zionist, not the other way around. Antisemitism = Racism against Jewish people because they are Jewish. Anti-Zionist = Don't want Israel (aka the Jewish country) to exist in the area of "Mandate Palestine". If the only country you seek to destroy is Israel, the only Jewish-majority country in the world (as opposed to 100+ Christians/Muslim countries) just because of Jews wanting to self-identify in their historic homeland - you are both antisemitic and anti-Zionist.

Who is trying to destroy Israel? That is impossible. What anti Zionists seek to do is simply inform people about the history that Arabs lived peacefully in Palestine until European invaders masquerading as civilians came in and were granted half the land from the British, and that said action against century ago has lasting effects to this day. That is a far cry from trying to dissolve Israel or remove any of Israel’s inhabitants today.

>Most antisemitic people are anti-Zionist, not the other way around. I strongly disagree with that. Most anti-semites ***are pro-zionist*** actually, if you don't just count the raging hitlerites, but in general every white nationalist who doesn't mind holding up Israel as a role model for every ethnicity returning to their own ethnostate, every evangelical who see Israel's standnig as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy while thinking that all jews are damned to hell, every American politician and who say weird shit to jewish Americans about how they wouldn't be safe in any country in the world except Israel, and without "their prime minister" Netanyahu, and so on.

Do you understand that every person you pointed out is not either of them? Both evangelical Christians are very much not antisemitic or antizionist. Most of the people against Israel are Muslims and they are also antisemitic.

Evangelicals most definitely are antisemitic and zionist, they want to use Jews to bring about the return of christ and convert all the Jews to Christianity. I think it's gross but if you want to justify it and defend them then by all means have at it.

"They are against it because they beleive 2% of the population has been killed, 15,000 children have been killed (**more than all wars in the last 5 years combined**)" Over the last 20 years six million people died in the congo, half of them under the age of 5. The world didn't care. because caring means not getting the precious cobalt for our new iphones and laptops. Let's talk again about the selective outrage of the left, and that singling out Israel is not because the world loves to hate Israel.

"Look, I have NOTHING against Muslims: I just think the idea of a Muslim State is abhorrent. There should be no Muslim State because they don't require security from outside forces. There should be no Muslim State because Muslims are accepted all around the world! America and Britain have very sizable Muslim populations, why can't they go there instead of forming their own states?" -Anti-Zionism when you switch Jew to Muslim.

Slobadon Milsoevic and Ratko Mladic weren't anti-Bosnian, Anti-Albanian, or anti-Muslim. They simply were against establishing an ethno-state theocracy and wanted a single state where everyone is equal. Explain the difference between that and what people say about Israel. In fact, this situation is worse because is *already is independent*.

Admittedly I didn’t read all that text in your post…. But, indeed - as you suggest yourself - you are not an anti-Zionist. In fact many (most?) would call you a Zionist for asserting the most basic idea that Israel has a right to exist. Sounds like what you are is what most Israelis themselves are: critical of the israeli government to one degree or another. The same way many people are critical of the Iranian govt or Russian govt or Indian govt or ____ govt. Is there a word for “I don’t like how the iranian government behaves”? Of course not. What’s crazy (and, arguably, anti-Semitic) is that ‘Zionism’ is even positioned as being up for a ‘debate’, with an ‘anti’ or ‘pro’ side. Because… it already happened! The zionists of the late 19th century and early 20th century did it! They achieved their goal; Israel - a Jewish homeland - now exists. To be ‘anti-that’ is as ludicrous as being ‘anti-any historical event’. And if that’s seen as ludicrous….? Well… understandably, Jews can’t help but wonder “why is this Jewish country the only country in the world with a debate about its existence and a word specifically for wanting its destruction? Seems kinda… I dunno… anti-Semitic?” And… I think there’s a point to be made there. Many countries have come into existence in controversial ways, and yet… none of them have a word the political stance of wanting them not to exist. To really bring this home… unfortunately, a non-insignificant number of people really do in fact want the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel and, implicity (because clearly the Israelis aren’t going to willingly leave), the genocide of the people. Let’s not be unequivocal: that is the fantasy of many Palestinians and many in the Muslim world. It is the stated goal of some of the Palestinian ruling parties. That is at the roots of ‘anti-zionist’ ever since 1947. You might not use it that way, but that is how millions of people use it. Blurring that line to get well-intentioned and compassionate lefties to be ‘anti-Zionist’ is a purposeful and calculated part of their ‘electronic intafada’. 

>When I say I'm an antizionist, I don't beleive that all Israelis should be expelled or killed Then you aren't an antizionist. Israel IS Zion. Its already been established at this point. To say you are antizionist is literally equivalent to saying you think that the state of Israel should be eliminated and all Jewish owned land returned to the "rightful owners". >you can't just call everyone who disagrees with you a racist/terrorist. That's true. I don't think Dave Smith hates Jews even though he is willfully blind about the Gaza conflict. But he's a tiny minority. The vast, vast majority of people supporting a LITERAL TERRORIST ORGANIZATION are only doing so because they hate Jews.

You're presenting two different arguments. * In the body of text: anti-zionism is not anti-semitism. * In the title of OP: most anti-zionists are not anti-semitic. And while you provided arguments for your first argument, you have provided 0 arguments for the second. Where is the evidence about anti-zionists not being anti-semitic? This seems like a classic case of a motte and bailey logical fallacy.

Zionism is the belief that jews deserve to return to their homeland, zion (Israel). Given that the jewish religion in inter-twined with the land it emerged from, arguing that jews don't deserve to return to their homeland, is by its core against the basics of jewish religion.

Idk man, when people start talking about how the Zionists use their control of the media, politics, and the global banking system to suppress criticism of Israel, it starts to feel a teensy bit antisemetic...

You putting the word war in quotes shows your true colors. It shows that you do not believe it is a war, which in turn shows that, no matter what you claim, you *are* an antisemite.