What I have seen is a confusion (perhaps intentional) between anti-semitism, and protesting Israel’s behavior since the Hamas attack in October.
Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response.
With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.
If we compare # of people in each country. 10/07 for Israel was like 15 9/11s (this is a quote from a President Biden speech).
So not only is it worth asking - how many Americans didnt want to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But how many would be against some sort of war like that, if tomorrow morning they woke up to a 9/11 sized attack in 15 of the biggest US cities, happening at the same time
Not only did the US go far from home to destroy Afghanistan, but the whole world joined them to do it together
Of course, a lot of criticism of Israel is rooted in antisemitism. But saying all criticism of Israel is antisemitic deflects legitimate criticism, and makes it harder to identify legitimate antisemitism.
It's sad, and in the long run completely self-defeating, but nobody seems to realize that. The more Israel and their lobby overreacts to honest, legitimate and peaceful critique of their actions, the more extreme that the responses will inevitably be....especially in times like these where Palestinians have legitimate reasons to be angry with Israel, and when Israel's citizenry has the right to be angry with their government.
Nobody is right, and everyone is wrong. Everyone has blood on their hands. Pretending otherwise is dumb. Likud and Hamas are responsible, not the innocent Israelis nor the innocent Palestinians.
Fuck Hamas, fuck Likud.
Good question. 75 years of history those other two conflicts lack
Who is saying this? All I've heard are people on one side insisting that people are saying this, sounds like a straw man
A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.
They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence.
According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever.
Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please.
As an American it's embarrassing.
[1] https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1720501916088590704
There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.
> Iraq never attacked anyone
I am not sure Kuwait would agree.
1. https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres894/BILLS-118hres894i...
Okay - then what should be Israel's response? For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have. Hamas is Gaza's government. Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure. Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas. And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel#Suppressio...
We, as a world, are seeing civilian life and casualties during a war in near real-time. This is something that many of us have never experienced before.
The goal, in my opinion, is division. Without it, they have nothing.
Peace above all!
I'd note the Ukranians worked very hard to draw attention to their war as well, and they were quite successful at that.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/0...
I'll be as polite as I can about this, and take it one step at a time.
> Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The world has been clear about this. Stop killing civilians and treat Palestinians as humans with rights.
> what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
That's not remotely true. Human rights groups and genocide experts around the world are screaming at world leaders to take action. Schools and refugee camps and humanitarian corridors and civil infrastructure and entire residential blocks are being vaporized without warning.
> Hamas is Gaza's government
The last election was in 2006, so this talking point is real stale.
> Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure.
The only proof that has been offered of that has been incredibly shoddily made, as if daring people to believe it.
> Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas.
That doesn't excuse war crimes, and it's highly fucked up to think that it does somehow.
> And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
The only evidence of organized rape that I've seen presented turned out to be a 10 year old photo of Kurdish women [0]. Torture? No evidence. By atrocities, do you mean the debunked beheaded babies? Or the debunked babies in oven claim? The debunked pregnant women cut open claim?
What Hamas did was atrocious, killing civilians and kidnapping people. So why embellish so devilishly? Only to excuse genocide, and grab land.
> Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
Again with the claims of "livestreamed torture and rape", which no one has actually seen.
You know who can be documented to have tortured and raped people in the last couple decades? Israel and the US. On many, many occasions. But in your view, at least they're smart enough not to livestream it - they only took photos.
0 - https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1724688009293873502
US foreign policy isn't nice or morally sound, but one thing it was not doing in the run-up to 9/11 and its subsequent invasion of Afghanistan was directly fucking up Afghani lives and killing Afghani children. Same can't be said for Israel in its relationship to the Palestinians.
The same response I have concluded should have been the US' response to 9/11: turn the other cheek, and invest heavily in reconciling with "enemy" forces while rebuilding "enemy" infrastructure and institutions, while dealing with individual bad actors on a case-by-case basis as a matter of legal (rather than martial) procedure.
And I'm not joking.
I feel bad for Israelis who have let their government doom them to a generation of government mismanagement and expensive, arduous military adventure. My single-payer health insurance and my friends' free college education went into a couple Patriot missiles, and I do wonder what they're going to have to give up.
However, criticizing our government as weak would require believing it cares about Palestinian lives in the first place, which is a highly questionable assumption at this point.
So what should Israel do specifically in Gaza?
Now, remember - you are running Israel. And, most people on the right agree with you that there should just be one land, one humanity.
But, the folks in the camps - they don't want to surrender and accept citizenship to your "one land, one humanity" country.
- Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population
- Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question
- Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time.
- USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners
- It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images
Which isn't a one sided phenomenon. The reverse is true as well, where often the most vocal voices rationalizing Israel's actions and behavior around civilian casualties often have anti-Muslim perspectives crop up as back and forth conversation goes on.
One of the litmus tests I've noticed is the capacity to acknowledge and condemn the civilian suffering of both sides. The commenters who recognize and condemn both the Oct 7th terrorist attack and the targeting or indiscriminate killing of civilians in the response to it tend to be rational and level headed driven by humanitarian concerns.
Those who only recognize the suffering of one side and dismiss, dehumanize, or rationalize the suffering of the other side - or worst of all propagandize the denial of it's occurrence or scope - tend to quickly fall into revealing rather abhorrent views with a mere scratching of the surface.
Not everyone who criticizes Israel is antisemitic nor everyone who criticizes Hamas is anti-Muslim, but many who are antisemitic or anti-Muslim seem keen to defend their respective side of the conflict quite emphatically and unilaterally.
Answering more to the spirit of the question: I believe that the situation between Israel and Palestinians is broken and can't be fixed until something unexpected happens. Neither side has an acceptable way forward.
As a rule of thumb, people who talk about right and wrong don't want peace. Those concepts are far more useful for justifying wars than ending them. Peace is achieved by compromises that make both parties lose interest in the war. There was a genuine desire for peace in the 90s, but it failed, because nobody could find an acceptable compromise. The leaders of both parties realized that the sacrifices required to make the compromise acceptable to the other side were worse than status quo.
nobody will immediately make friends after a massacre and mass rape. Especially after decades of tensions and double especially when the muslim world once descended on Israel at once.
2) Quiet reminder that there are 1B followers of Islam and there has always been a wish (especially from Iran) to end the existence of Israel: the Palestinian people are unfortunately a pawn in that game. - Winning over the palestinians wont actually win you over anything. Instead you will have terrorist attacks by “palestinians” until the tensions are stoked again.
We both know that solution only works if the other side wants peace. Most gazans want death to Israel and death to all Jews globally (see the recent polls). The schools teach it is good to kill a Jew in America, Europe, or Israel.
Establishment of a Palestinian State with a stake in peace and stability would win you something.
> Instead you will have terrorist attacks by “palestinians” until the tensions are stoked again.
One of the things this would win you is someone with interest and capacity to respond to this where the occupation/colonialism/ethnic-/religious-conflict narrative would not be applicable.
This is not the same as being critical of that state, being anti-Israel isn't antisemitic (except when it is, obviously), but nor is it anti-Zionism. Saying Netanyahu should be dragged before the Hague, that the international community should demand an immediate ceasefire or force a two-state solution, that Israel must uphold the right of return: none of these are anti-Zionism, nor antisemitic.
If your position is not that Israel must be destroyed, good, don't call yourself anti-Zionist though. If it is, then yes, that's antisemitic, or the word is meaningless.
Similarly, find another slogan besides "From the river to the sea", because that is, in fact, a call to ethnically cleanse all Jews from Israel. It has meant that since the establishment of Israel, and you don't get to wander in and say it means something different at this point. If you don't mean that, don't say it. Find literally any other way to express yourself.
Which is, I suspect, the point - to weaken those viewpoints.
And to address others in this thread around US actions around the world, I am critical of the U.S. war on Afghanistan and the second Iraq war as well as the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
One can be critical of a government without despising it.
But, I empathise fully with Israel and also with the Palestinian people.
On Israels side you have what amounts to a large motivated but not universal contingent of people who will literally slaughter themselves to make you look bad on the world stage, pulling out long protracted altercations where the intent is clearly to provoke the most disgusting outcome and whom have a history of invading, slaughtering and rioting. Sometimes bringing in half the Muslim world to do it.
I would be fucking terrified.
But for the Palestinians, you have an interloper, stealing the best of your ancestral lands, relegating you to tiny torrid stretches of impoverished city because they claim that they “don't trust you” based on nothing but your accident of birth. living every day knowing that this tiny population of privileged people who dont look like you at all and are so heavily financed that they live significantly better lives on your land. Meanwhile hearing constantly that they continuously kill your countrymen. For all you know: for the crime of existing.
I’d be pissed too, and I wouldn't let up either.
Both sides feel like the victim, its easy for us to sit here half a world away and conjure up idealised scenarios. But Israel is scared of the entire middle east and having an irate and catastrophically motivated population bent on its eradication and tries to handle it the best it can.
Palestine is scared of being obliterated and is outright hateful towards what it considers oppressors.
Trust is hard earned and fragile, and there are external actors involved that would like this tension to go on indefinitely.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
The conflict is not limited to Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to build its illegal settlements, to subject the Palestinian population to a humiliating and brutal military occupation, and to kill Palestinians regularly (several hundred in the West Bank this year).
Until Israel leaves the occupied territories and allows the Palestinians to live as normal people, there will be Palestinian resistance. A few years ago, the people of Gaza tried nonviolent resistance, protesting at the border fence. Israel responded with live ammunition, killing hundreds of protestors.
The Palestinians have tried every way to obtain their freedom: protest, negotiation, armed resistance. Nothing works. Israel is, by far, the stronger party, and it does what it wants to the Palestinians with no consequences.
> [The belief that] the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way
This is very different from "Israel must be destroyed".
Similarly, your interpretation of "From the river to the sea" is extreme. It's only really been a scrutinized slogan since Hamas started using it in 2017. Its previous ~60 years of use were consistently about creating a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state for all the people inside its borders.
There has never been an official Palestinian position calling for the removal of Jews.
Here’s the passage from Matthew 5:38-39 KJV:
“38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
What Jesus is advocating is nonviolent resistance, not walking away. MLK Jr. understood this passage well.
There are plenty of people in Israel who are opposed to Netanyahu and were protesting against him before the war started, but don't doubt that destroying Hamas is justified.
Lets also not pretend that 141sq miles is tiny. It's small sure, but there are many other countries that have and do make do with it.
Beyond that, "ancestral homeland" is stupid. Jordan is their ancestral homeland and the Jordinians keep them in camps as second class citizens. The impoverished city thing is self inflicted too. They receive bilions in aid.
The real issue is that the Palestinians cause has been hijacked by Iran and other governments that hate israel in order to engage a proxy war. Other than that, other muslim countries want nothing to do with the Palestinians
And not that perhaps my point is to highlight the opposite effect, by which the continued rhetoric of anti-Zionism as distinct from anti-Semetism weakens the voices of those experiencing a documented rise in genuine anti-Semitism by dismissing it as mislabeling?
Polarization around the human tendency for tribalism and side picking has led to increases in both anti-Muslim and antisemitism - people have been stabbed, had homes invaded, attacked, etc because of both those identities as rhetoric has become increasingly inflamed.
As I said - the times that I tend to see good faith discussion on this topic typically correlate with the voices that recognize the humanity of the civilians on both sides of the conflict, with the voices unilaterally humanizing one side while dismissing the suffering of the other side far more often tending to extend significantly greater underlying biases.
Denying the rise of antisemitism and trying to label it all as simply Zionism upset it isn't in favor has its own impact of conversation weakening I'd encourage you to consider.
To me, it seems pretty easy to both recognize that there's been a marked increase in antisemitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric tied to this topic without impacting my ability to both recognize and condemn actions of people in power in this conflict when targeting civilians or not taking internationally recognized measures to prevent civilian harm.
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are orthogonal ideas. Conflation of them is pure propaganda.
[1] "Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism
The blockade is for fear of Hamas gaining even more weapons, a fear that seems incredibly justified given what Hamas did. The bombing campaigns were mostly responses to Hamas firing rocket attacks at Israel.
> The conflict is not limited to Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to build its illegal settlements, to subject the Palestinian population to a humiliating and brutal military occupation, and to kill Palestinians regularly (several hundred in the West Bank this year).
Yes, I completely agree that Israel's actions in the West Bank, the settlement program and the resultant military rule are terrible and should be condemned.
> The Palestinians have tried every way to obtain their freedom: protest, negotiation, armed resistance. Nothing works. Israel is, by far, the stronger party, and it does what it wants to the Palestinians with no consequences.
I'm sorry, but this is a misread of history. The Palestinians have been offered a state multiple times, and have walked away from the negotiations every time. Israel has successfully negotiated a peace with historic enemies like Egypt, given back huge amounts of land in the process, these peace agreements have lasted for 40 years now.
Only with the Palestinians this negotiation has not worked, despite Israel having offered between 95% and 99% of the land Palestinians claimed they wanted.
Though to be clear, Hamas's official position, near as I can tell, remains that Israel itself must be completely destroyed and all the land given "back" to Palestinians.
The backdrop of most Israeli's having "given up" on the idea of a peace agreement was the failure of multiple attempts at reaching a deal, attempts that the Palestinians walked away from, and that resulted in terror attacks killing Israeli citizens.
That all said, Israel has more-or-less checked out of the peace process for the last 15 years, if not actively undermined it by weakening any serious leader that could've helped achieve peace. And given that Israel is the stronger party, I think it's not morally justified to "give up", Israel must keep striving for peace, and trying to make conditions on the ground that will allow for an eventual peace agreement.
Many? Here’s a full list of independent states that are not larger in land area than that:
Vatican City, Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, Malta, and Grenada
Israel is stronger than Palestine, sure, but that's not the most relevant comparison to think about. Think about all the neighboring countries that do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Think about their financial and military support for Hamas. Think about all the extremists that come from Syria and Iran to help Hamas.
Notes: I'm offering these statements in a self-contained way that I hope is fair. / I'm not claiming any one side is blameless. / I reject any moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas. / I reject belief systems that say adherents should kill non-believers. / I don't support Netanyahu; he's not fit for the job. / I want to reduce the suffering of all people, including the people of tomorrow. / The past is gone; we can only work for a better future. / I hold out hope for a moderate 'middle' of everyday Israelis and Palestinians wanting peace. / Moderate views can only traction if the extremist elements on all sides are reduced. / By reduced I mean with minimum coercion. / But I'm not a pacifist; violence is sometimes necessary albeit never to be celebrated.
The phrase was also used by the Israeli ruling Likud party as part of their 1977 election manifesto which stated "Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
So it hasn't always meant that, really.
Really? Israel routinely turns off Gaza's electricity (to the entire country) for days. It has also turned off all fresh water for similar durations.
I think we have different definitions of "bare minimum". That comes across looking a lot more "punitive".
In this conflict it told Gazan civilians to move to Southern Gaza because of the extensive bombing in Northern Gaza. Then it began increasing bombing in Southern Gaza.
There is a lot of Gazan support for Hamas. But Hamas also makes up a very small minority of Gazans (I believe 40,000 in a country of 2.3 million). Hamas is also the people who are armed (thanks to both Israeli blockades, oh, and when Israel found it politically expedient to encourage Hamas' militancy because a more moderate Palestinian Authority would make the far right Israeli government look worse by being more willing to compromise).
But that said, I agree with your general point: The relationship between the US and Afghanistan is and was very different to the relationship between Israel and Palestine.
Indirectly, perhaps, but yeah, not directly and not with basically the purpose of fucking them up.
Good thing I'm not one of them. The point is that the way to resist effectively is to not let yourself be drawn into a quagmire or an opportunity to show the world your ass (which is what Israel and the US have done). Responding with the intent to do good works (which you will admittedly fall short of, because you're human, landing you somewhere at least justifiable) is better than responding with the intent to wipe out the opposition, indiscriminately and by any means necessary, and accidentally committing a form of genocide. (Note: we (Americans) did that too. The fire next time, and I hate it.)
Or do something else, I don't care; at this point one has to try anything but this slow-motion ethnic cleansing and "two states" bantustans.
Certainly, Israel has seen to it that it will be much more difficult. Which would be my point.
>Quiet reminder that there are 1B followers of Islam and there has always been a wish (especially from Iran) to end the existence of Israel: the Palestinian people are unfortunately a pawn in that game.
As a black American, I understand the Israeli hypersensitivity to even the whiff of anti-Semitic violence as the harbinger of a possible repeat of history that should never be repeated. I also understand that lashing out at every perceived slight as the harbinger of a possible repeat of history that should never be repeated is a great way to make allies unsympathetic, as they get caught in the crossfire. The real enemy is the war you want.
I would like Israel to reach a state where it doesn't constantly fear for its existence. The road there passes through, "Not doing another Nakba."
1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to:
2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.
This argument carries no weight.
Countries smaller than Gaza, and their populations:
1. Vatican City (0.19mi^2): 764 (4,038/sq. mi.)
2. Monaco (0.78mi^2): 39,050 (48,624/sq. mi.)
3. Nauru (8.1mi^2): 10,834 (1,243.2)
4. Tuvalu (10mi^2): 11,900 (1,232.5)
5. San Marino (24mi^2): 33,660 (1,346)
6. Liechtenstein (62mi^2): 39,584 (613.8)
7. Marshall Islands (70mi^2): 42,418 (603)
8. Saint Kitts and Nevis (101mi^2): 47,606 (424.8)
9. Maldives (120mi^2): 590,297 (5,130.4)
10. Malta (122mi^2): 519,562 (4,270.9)
11. Grenada (133mi^2): 124,610 (825.1)
Gaza: 2,375,000 @ 16,853/sq. mi.
Most of those countries with three exceptions have less than one per cent of the population of Gaza (even the biggest exception is at less than 24%). With the exception of Monaco, the population density of these countries is approximately seven per cent of Gaza.
The only countries in the world that are more dense than Gaza are Macau, Monaco and Singapore and no-one with a straight face could credibly claim that they are remotely comparable.
The commentary of "they should be able to make do just fine" is insulting to the extreme.
There's nothing about contrivance. The initial claim was that Gazans should be happy in a country of 141 sq miles, with 2.4 million people, making it one of the densest populations on earth...
... while the Israel government routinely turns off electricity to the entire country for days at a time, and at times the fresh water. The miracle there is that there aren't epidemics just ravaging the population.
I guarantee that Palestinian resistance won't stop if Israel maintains its occupation.
The problem from Israel's perspective regarding a ceasefire is that Hamas isn't just an ideology that can be charmed out of existence with good behavior. It's also an autocratic/theocratic government. These government structures don't go away even if the conditions that lead to their initial support are addressed, because they have a regime survival incentive to maintain power. For example, Iran. Some of the reasons (colonial interference) that caused the Iranian revolution are no longer there, but the governance structure is nevertheless perpetual because that's how autocracies work.
Maybe Hamas can moderate in the future, but this moderation historically has happened after the nationalist (and in this case, irredentist) aims are fulfilled, such as in Vietnam or with the IRA. I don't know if that can happen with the continued existence of Israel and lack of right of return, which, let's face it, it's a pipe dream, Jews will never accept being an ethnic minority after the last few thousand years of endless pogroms including from MENA countries, literal survival will always trump everything else. Right or wrong, that's the reality, and we only have reality to work with.
I lean towards the idea that Israel shouldn't invade but instead build a DMZ around Gaza to contain Hamas. While simultaneously sowing the seeds for peace in the next generation by withdrawing from the West Bank, and implementing a Marshall-like plan with oversight from the UN to lift the standard of living. Then hoping hoping the West Bank doesn't fall to Hamas in the power vacuum (and if it does, another DMZ around the West Bank might be a practically unfortunate necessity pending Hamas' moderation...).
Thoughts? I want to hear from the "ceasefire" people the practical steps required and what it may actually look like along with an assessment of where it can go wrong, and what should happen in the cases where it goes wrong.
From Wikipedia: > The Palestinian legislative election took place on 25 January 2006 and was judged to be free and fair by international observers.[18][19] It resulted in a Hamas victory, surprising Israel and the United States, which had expected their favoured partner, Fatah, to retain power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)#2006_Pal...
I think being anti-Zionist means being against both prongs, meaning that there should no longer be a Jewish state. Given the practical implications of that, it seems hard to justify without antisemitism.
Wikipedia has a whole section [1] on "View that [anti-Zionism and antisemitism] are not interlinked", but those supporting that view seem to be using an overly-broad definition of anti-Zionism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism#View_that_the_two...
There are Arabs who are full citizens of Israel, who have elected representatives in the Israeli parliament. There are also Arab judges in the Israeli supreme court. Oh, and the population of the muslim Arab citizens of Israel is much greater now than when Israel was formed. So, no ethnic cleansing there.
The Arab population in the Palestinian areas has also multiplied. So, no ethnic cleansing there either.
Israel is good at many things but it seems to be really bad at ethnic cleansing.
No Israeli government has yet offered the Palestinians a sovereign state. The offers that have been made have been for some sort of entity with limited autonomy, but under effective Israeli control. The Palestinians have not simply "walked away" from negotiations. They have repeatedly tried to negotiate something better. After the Camp David negotiations broke down, the Palestinians returned to negotiate at Taba. Those talks ended because of the upcoming Israeli elections (which were won by the hard Right, which absolutely opposes any Palestinian state).
If you go back and read about the history of the Oslo process, the Israelis systematically reneged on their promises throughout the 1990s. The PLO made major concessions which were not reciprocated, and it ultimately got nothing.
Israel didn't just make peace with Egypt out of the goodness of its heart. Egypt gave Israel an enormous scare in the 1973 war. That experience made the Israelis realize that it was possible for them to lose a war against Egypt in the future. The Israelis have no such fear of the Palestinians now. If the Palestinians had an army like Egypt, things would be very different.
Israel is also able to make peace with Egypt, Jordan and the other Arab states because Israel doesn't covet their land. But the desire to have all of historic Palestine is fundamental to Zionism, and Israel never intends to leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
If we did take that to be the definition of anti-Zionism, then it seems one could be both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist, if they supported the existence of a Jewish state but didn't approve of the particular way Israel was established.
That’s not true. Rebbe Teitelbaum was an anti-Zionist, he opposed the creation of the modern state of Israel as sinful, and he opposed Haredi Jews cooperating with the state (such as by being elected to the Knesset or accepting government benefits.) But he did not support the physical destruction of Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael. And that remains to this day the mainstream anti-Zionist position of Satmar, Edah HaChareidis in Israel, and the Central Rabbinical Congress in North America - the belief that the existence of the state of Israel is a sin, and that it is a sin for Jews to cooperate with it, but at the same time strongly condemning extremist anti-Zionist groups such as Neturei Karta who ally with non-Jews who seek to physically harm Jews who live there, and rejecting any cooperation with the Palestinian cause-Rebbe Teitelbaum viewed his anti-Zionism as an internal Jewish issue, and in any violent conflict between Jews and non-Jews he would pray for the Jewish side, even though those Jews happened to be his Zionist opponents.
As well as mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism, there are other varieties of anti-Zionism which don’t entail support for the physical destruction of Israel. Zionism is Jewish nationalism. Some people have a principled ideological opposition to all forms of nationalism - they are anti-nationalists - and a consistent anti-nationalist must also be an anti-Zionist. That principled opposition to all nationalist ideologies does not entail any particular position on practical questions, and is completely compatible with pacifism, and hoping that the majority of the population of Israel/Palestine eventually comes to peacefully reject nationalism.
Nationalism comes in many varieties - civic, linguistic, ethnic, religious, ethnoreligious, etc - and Zionism is a nationalism of the ethnoreligious kind. As well as anti-nationalists who consistently oppose all nationalisms, there are also those who support some types but oppose others - for example, many civic nationalists have a principled opposition to non-civic nationalisms. A consistent civic nationalist who took such a position would have to be an anti-Zionist, but would have no in-principle objection to Israeli civic nationalism.
It is undeniable that many people who identify as “anti-Zionist” do end up espousing antisemitic views, and sometimes even use “anti-Zionist” as a more socially acceptable synonym for antisemite - at the same time, there are several ways someone can be anti-Zionist without necessarily being antisemitic, and many people who are. The equation “all anti-Zionism is antisemitism” which the US Congress is promoting here is a very ignorant oversimplification
I'm not sure why you think that, that's exactly what the peace process of the 1990s and early 2000s was about. E.g. the Camp David Summit.
> If you go back and read about the history of the Oslo process, the Israelis systematically reneged on their promises throughout the 1990s. The PLO made major concessions which were not reciprocated, and it ultimately got nothing.
That's not at all true. The Palestinian Authority was formed and given control in the West Bank, independently of this Israel left Gaza and gave Palestinians control there. The peace process broke down in part due to the terror attacks that were happening in Israel, many carried out by Hamas in order to stop the peace process.
> But the desire to have all of historic Palestine is fundamental to Zionism, and Israel never intends to leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Some people in Israel certainly think this. Not a majority of Israelis. And the peace processes did offer land to the Palestinians including the WB.
I'm not saying Israel has done everything right, it's certainly done a lot of things wrong, and the for the last fifteen years has done things against the peace process. But it is still a true fact, attested to by people involved in the peace processes, that Israel did make offers, the Palestinians did reject them and walk away. And that has happened multiple times, including the founding of the state of Israel. (People like to relitigate this one, and there's certainly a compelling reason that Palestinians disliked the UN's partition plan - but it's still a fact that the Palestinians and Arabs generally rejected the peaceful offer, chose war instead, lost the war, and therefore lost more territories than they could've had had they accepted the partition plan to begin with.)
Anti-Zionism was the mainstream Orthodox Jewish position prior to the Holocaust; and contemporary mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism essentially continues that historical position largely unchanged. According to that viewpoint, it is a sin to establish a Jewish-ruled state in Eretz Yisrael prior to the coming of the Messiah. So, classical Jewish anti-Zionism supports the existence of a Jewish state (in the future messianic age) but doesn’t approve of the particular way Israel was established (by mostly secular Zionists in 1948 instead of by a divinely appointed Messiah at some point in the future). Still, it clearly is an anti-Zionist position not a Zionist one.
The majority of contemporary Haredim are neither anti-Zionist (the mainstream being Satmar, Edah HaCharedeis, Central Rabbinical Congress, and then there are extremists such as Neturei Karta) nor explicitly Zionist (as in the Hardal), rather non-Zionist. Haredi non-Zionists agree with the anti-Zionists that the 1948 creation of the State of Israel was a sin, but now it exists, they say (contrary to the anti-Zionists) that it is okay to cooperate with it by voting in its elections, running candidates in the Knesset, accepting its handouts, etc. Sometimes the boundary between non-Zionism and soft Zionism is rather murky - my impression is that is particularly true of contemporary Chabad, whose non-Zionism has grown closer to Zionism over time
I think there is an important (but often ignored) distinction here between theory and practice - whatever one thinks of the rights or wrongs of Zionism as an ideology in the abstract, doesn’t necessarily decide one’s practical attitude towards the State of Israel - e.g. a person (whether Jewish or non-Jewish, whether in Israel/Palestine or on the opposite side of the planet) can theoretically oppose Zionism as an erroneous ideology, yet simultaneously decide to support the State of Israel on pragmatic grounds-and there is no necessary logical inconsistency in that
Actually, one of the fundamental flaws of the Oslo process was that Israel did not have to commit, at the outset, to recognizing a Palestinian state. The PLO recognized the state of Israel, and in return, Israel agreed to negotiate with the PLO. What the final status of the Palestinians would be was very much up in the air.
Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords, said that there would be a Palestinian "entity," by which he meant something with partial sovereignty, under significant Israeli control.
Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu came to power. Netanyahu was totally opposed to the peace process, and both he and his party have always fundamentally opposed any Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu refused to carry out the promised military withdrawals, and generally stalled and sabotaged the peace process at every turn. He simply didn't believe in the process.
Ehud Barak won the elections in 1999, and tried to revive the Oslo process. However, he was unwilling to make an offer that met the Palestinians' bottom line: a sovereign Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. The "state" that the Palestinians were offered in 2000 at Camp David would not have controlled its own borders, airspace or water. The Israeli military would have maintained bases in the Palestinian state, overseen the Palestinian borders, and had the right to conduct military incursions into the Palestinian state. The Palestinian state would have been demilitarized (except for the IDF, of course), and the Israelis would have had veto power over its foreign policy.
Beyond that, Barak was demanding major territorial concessions (the Palestinians would have had to give up the most important parts of East Jerusalem, and Palestinian territory would have been cut up by corridors annexed to Israel), and refused any meaningful right of return for Palestinian refugees. That's the offer the Palestinians rejected at Camp David.
The Palestinians continued negotiating with Israel in 2001 at Taba, but those negotiations ended because Barak was facing another election.
The hard Right won again in the Israeli elections in 2001, and that was really the end of any peace process.
> The Palestinian Authority was formed and given control in the West Bank, independently of this Israel left Gaza
The PA was given partial control in a minority of the West Bank. To put it crudely, the Israelis offloaded the duty to take out the garbage and do the laundry to the PA, but maintained ultimate control. The PA has no army, and its police forces act to a large extent as auxiliaries of the Israelis, tasked with keeping the Palestinians quiet.
> that's the reality
I'm not convinced that you're actually looking for a peaceful solution. The best you can imagine is a permanent DMZ so that Israel maintains an ethnic majority? Do Palestinians get to decide what they want to do at all, or is that just for Israel?
A ceasefire is not really optional. If Israel continues with this genocide, as they seem committed to doing, then America's support will grow untenable. All Israel's atrocities - undeniable, caught on video and seen by the world atrocities - are only possible with the support of the US war machine.
The US just vetoed the UN's call for a ceasefire, despite 61% of Americans wanting a ceasefire. Do you see that?? That's 61% of Israel's staunchest ally, telling them they're going way too far. People are waking up, and they're wondering why the fuck we're complicit in war crimes in full view of the world (again).
How long do you think America can sustain this support of mass murder? It's morally indefensible, and a permanent stain on our history.
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University. He criticises Zionism, and promotes binationalism as an alternative–the idea of a single state shared equally by two nations (Arab and Jewish)–also known variously as the "one state solution" or "Israeltine" or "Isratin". [0] Obviously if he had his way, there would no longer be a Jewish state–if by that one means an exclusively Jewish state. But, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that a Jewish Israeli academic is antisemitic – his views may well be impractical and overly idealistic, but where is the evidence he's an antisemite? And I think this is just one example of the several different forms of contemporary non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism.
[0] https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/kommunikation/de...
But they don't live in the occupied territories, duh. They are also second-class citizens de-facto, with a constant need to go through the courts to do everything they are technically entitled to but denied in practice. They are a fifth of the population but don't express anything near a fifth of the ruling classes - to pick the example you chose, 1 out of 15 supreme court judges is Arab.
It's very much like the condition of black people in the "separated but equal" era in the US, when theoretical legal equality was simply denied in the field.
> the population of the muslim Arab citizens of Israel is much greater now than when Israel was formed.
And this is the source of much public anguish in Israeli public discourse.
> The Arab population in the Palestinian areas has also multiplied.
But their land keeps shrinking. The land claimed by settlements is cleansed indeed.
> it seems to be really bad at ethnic cleansing.
Attempted murder is still a crime.
What does "making peace" with Israel look like? Why don't you consider the West Bank to be at peace with Israel?
Was modern Israel established by making peace with its occupants?
But.. there wasn't a Palestinian state to recognize. Agreeing to negotiate with the PLO was what made the PLO the internationally-recognized party representing the Palestinians, which didn't exist before.
> Netanyahu refused to carry out the promised military withdrawals, and generally stalled and sabotaged the peace process at every turn. He simply didn't believe in the process.
Yes, I'm hardly a fan of Netanyahu (I think Hamas is responsible for the murders on October 7th, but if any one person is most responsible for there not being peace, it's Netanyahu).
As for the rest of your post - yes, Palestinians were offered terms that they didn't like. That's part of negotiations - you don't like an offer, you come back with demands you will accept. And more importantly, it's part of compromise.
Some Israelis also believe Israel should own the entire land. Israel agreed to compromise on that. In 1947, Israel agreed to the UN partition plan, which was also a compromise.
Look, the Palestinians are in a shitty situation that's only getting worse, and there's a lot of legitimate grievances (on both sides), there really are. But at multiple times in this history, Israel agreed to what it views as compromises in order to get peace, and Palestinians have not agreed to similar compromises. This is, as far as I can tell, an accurate read of history, as told both by Israelis, but also by e.g. participants of the process.
Israel has done a lot of crappy things that minimize the chance at peace, especially over the last 15 years, but the Israeli left really did have the majority buy in in the country and the country really did try to make peace, the Palestinians could've had their own sovereign state by now, but they rejected it. I don't think in hindsight you can possibly consider this justified, given where it's lead.
Israel was established by consent of the legal owner of Palestine that day, British Empire, and was attacked by what you would call Palestinians today (Arabs living in former British Palestine) on the first day of existence - and never had a day of peace since then.
I in all honesty don't know what peace could look like today. It should embrace recognition of State of Israel in its borders (that's the easy part, but was never delivered from the Arab side) and realistic guarantees that it will not be attacked again (that one is hard).
What state attacked what state?
Gaza is not a state, Hamas is not a state government, it's a terrorist organization.
But also, what of the West bank, which has been at peace with Israel for decades. Why don't the Arabs living there have rights? Why are they without state? Because of the actions of terrorists in gaza? Should you share a punishment because you share an ethnicity?
The DMZ is to keep Hamas on one side of the border following any ceasefire, because Hamas aren't going to moderate overnight, and Hamas aren't going away because of their autocratic structure. What's the alternative? This is why I asked you to sketch out your plan. If there is a realistic alternative to what I'm suggesting, I want to hear it. To convince the median Israeli (excluding the religious zealots) that a ceasefire is a good idea, you need to address their #1 (by far) issue, which is security concerns. Without attempting to do this, we are just yelling at clouds.
Wannabe Palestinian state in 1948. Alliance of Arabic states in 1967. That's irrelevant detail IMO.
> Hamas is not a state government, it's a terrorist organization.
Tell that WHO that sees Hamas Ministry of Health as reliable source of information. Or current leadership of the West Bank that sees Hamas as legitimate partners moving on.
> Why are they without state?
Because they themselves don't see themselves separate from Gaza population. Never in the history did the leadership of West Bank go to Israel and say "we recognize you as a state, and want to make peace with you. Oh, and don't worry about Gaza, they don't have anything in common with us apart from ethnicity". Without recognition it's not a peace, it's a forced ceasefire.
There actually was - the PLO declared a state in 1988. More than that, Israel did not commit to future recognition of a Palestinian state, or declare that the Palestinians had a right to a state. Those are things the Palestinians pushed for in the lead-up to Oslo, but the Israelis refused to do them. On the Israeli side, the dominant view was that the Palestinians could maybe get some sort of autonomy within Israel, but not a state. Up until this day, no Israeli government has ever recognized the right of the Palestinians to a state.
> That's part of negotiations - you don't like an offer, you come back with demands you will accept.
That's exactly what the Palestinians have done, over and over again. Arafat walked away because Barak gave an ultimatum: either accept this offer, or nothing. Arafat didn't accept that offer, so that was it.
The Palestinians and Israelis met again several months later to restart negotiations in Taba, Egypt, and those continued until the Israelis walked away (because of the upcoming elections).
> the Palestinians could've had their own sovereign state by now, but they rejected it.
Again, I don't know what you're referring to, because no Israeli government yet has ever offered the Palestinians a sovereign state. If you think a demilitarized entity with highly non-contiguous territory (broken up by Israeli settlements and military corridors), with Israeli military bases, Israeli control over all border crossings, Israeli control over airspace, and Israeli veto power over foreign policy is sovereign, then we disagree about the meaning of that word.
> But at multiple times in this history, Israel agreed to what it views as compromises in order to get peace, and Palestinians have not agreed to similar compromises.
Giving half of Palestine to the Zionists was not a "compromise." It was an unbelievable imposition by outside powers on the local population of Palestine. Remember that in 1947, the overwhelming majority of the native population of Palestine was Arab. Almost the entire Jewish population was made up of recent European arrivals (i.e., within the last decade). The demand that the native population accept that a foreign people get half the territory was objectively insane, and no people anywhere would ever have accepted it. The Zionists accepted it because they believed that it was a springboard towards obtaining all of Palestine - Ben Gurion was very clear about that.
Leading up to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians gave up most of their central demands, forswore armed resistance to the occupation, and limited their aspirations to a Palestinian state on just over 20% of their historic land, leaving the other 80% to Israel. The Palestinians recognized the state of Israel, without reciprocal recognition from Israel, and simply asked the Israelis to let the Palestinians have their little bit of Palestine in peace. It took years for the Palestinians to even persuade the Israelis to agree to negotiate on those terms. Until 1993, the Israelis refused to meet with the PLO. It was only the outbreak of widespread civil disobedience, protests and riots in the occupied territories that finally led Israel to begin negotiations with the PLO.
> I don't think in hindsight you can possibly consider this justified, given where it's lead.
My view is that the PLO made a fatal error in agreeing to the Oslo Accords. They gave up almost everything Israel wanted, with only vague hints that the Palestinians would get something at the end. The Palestinian Authority has no real power, and actually lessens the burden of the occupation for the Israelis, since the Israelis no longer have to provide basic services to the occupied population. The Israelis did not promise to accept the 1967 borders. They did not promise that they would recognize a sovereign Palestinian state. They only really promised to negotiate a "final status," which was left vague.
As I said a few comments above here, Israel is, by far, the stronger party. It holds almost all the cards: it has overwhelming military superiority over the Palestinians, is able to operate almost unhindered in most Palestinian land, is far richer, and is backed by the world's foremost superpower. Israel is able to maintain its occupation of Palestinian land with almost no consequences. It can continue to expand its settlements in the occupied territories and to build new settlements, without having to fear anything more than the occasional wagging finger from some American or EU diplomat. The Israelis really believe they can have it all. The only problem, from the Israeli perspective, is that the Palestinians still exist on the land, but the Israelis will eventually move to "solve" that problem. We may be seeing their solution now in Gaza, as Israel destroys almost every single building and pushes the remaining, 100% homeless Palestinian population towards the Egyptian border.
Say one supported the establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948, but took issue with the expulsion of Palestinians from some areas. How would you characterize their view? In my mind it's still a Zionist view, not anti-Zionist (or both?) as the definition above would suggest.
What I’m saying is that position could be either Zionist, anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist, depending on the particular reasons why one thinks it was “flawed or unjust in some way”
What you're doing here is just giving a justification for unlimited military repression of the Palestinian people by Israel. It reminds me of the phrase, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." The Palestinians will take their beatings until they completely prostrate themselves before their oppressors and accept what they're being offered: nothing.
Admittedly, some of this could credibly be attributed to some aspect of Japanese culture and its approach to defeat. On the other hand, we made a point not to bomb Kyoto because of its status as an important historical and cultural treasure. Meanwhile, in Palestine: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218384968/mosque-gaza-omari-...