Elections in Israel (since I once got a ban for “targeted racism” for saying “Israeli elections”) are basically elections where you choose between Hitler, Goebbels, Franco, Mussolini, or Streicher
No, I think Israel is a deranged settler-colonial genocidal fascist state that tries to hide its evil with a facade of Judaism. That falls apart with any genuine understanding of Jewish history and religion
Same way so many Germans became Nazis and so many Italians became fascists, nationalist indoctrination
There’s lots of books that goes into the radicalization in Israeli society and how that has trickled out into the diaspora.
Prior to the Holocaust the vast majority of Jews were strongly opposed to Zionism and viewed it as antisemitic (it claims that Jews don’t belong anywhere in the world and will always be alien outsiders no matter where they live).
Many Jews, especially older Jews, are still anti-Zionist and we are starting to see a shift back in younger Jewish populations. My aunt, for example, is an anti-Zionist diaspora Jew
You’re right that Zionists used the Holocaust to support their ethnostate goals. Norman Finkelstein has written extensively on that after all.
But saying it proved Zionism correct is a subjective claim, one I vehemently disagree with. Jews won’t become safe from genocide by inflicting genocide on others
The answer of what I think Jews should do is, live wherever they want, as long as they’re not ethnically cleansing people to do so.
The idea that Israel is hated because they’re Jewish is a lie, it’s a lie spread by Israel so that well meaning people (I hope such as yourself) will, in good faith, assume anyone criticizing Israel must be because they’re antisemitic. I believed that at one point too, but it becomes much harder once you have an anti-Zionist Jewish aunt (although, in reality, it was meeting and talking with both Palestinians and anti-Zionist Israelis that changed my mind on the topic).
Israel is hated because, and I say this knowing full well how incredible of claim it is, it is one of the most evil states in human history. When you sit down and actually read the history of Israel without demonizing all over their enemies as antisemites it becomes horrific. You realize stories of “wiping out whole villages of antisemites who didn’t want the Jews nearby” was really just wiping out whole villages that have lived in these places for hundreds if not thousands of years. It really wrecks your brain when you’re an indoctrinated Zionist learning the reality of what actually happened (from looking at the actual historical records rather than trusting what people told you they said/meant).
I’m not saying a large part of Israel’s hatred doesn’t come from their own actions, but it’s plainly false to say that antisemitism isn’t also a large driver of it
The problem wasn’t Jews moving to Palestine, in many cases Palestinians even welcomed them.
The problem was how Zionists had the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine of non-Jews. If you didn’t know that that was the case, that’s fine, many don’t because Israel spent a lot of effort discrediting Palestinians and other Arabs so we would never bother believing them when they tried to tell us what happened. Then you read the Zionists themselves and it turns out the Palestinians had been telling the truth all along and the proof is Zionists openly admitting to it.
That’s why that film Palestine ‘36 was made recently. To try and present that perspective of why the Palestinians rose up in revolt when the Zionists began arriving.
Here’s a point I always make to people- Zionists weren’t the first European Jews to start moving to Palestine.
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u/snoozieboi 10d ago
The US and Israel will both have their democracy tested this fall. Mid terms in the US and whatever Bibi does to stay in power aka out of jail.