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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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The problem with this sort of language is that there are a few different things that people call "anti-Zionism". One is saying Israel does not have a holy right to the entirety of the land of Israel. Another is saying Israel has no right to exist at all. A third is any criticism of Israel or the Israeli leadership.
Only the second is antisemitism, as it implies that Jewish people and their nation should not exist.
Trouble is, it all gets lumped together. Any criticism of the Israeli leadership is fodder for the anti-semites who would wipe out the Jewish people given the opportunity. Any defense of the nation of Israel or the Jewish people is taken as tacit endorsement of the atrocities they are commiting.
This is an unsustainable level of intransigence that leaves no path forward resolving in peace.
No.
Saying the state of Israel has no right to exist is not antisemitic either.
You're continuing the deliberate mistake of conflating Israel (a political entity) with Judaism (a religion). Not every Israeli is Jewish, nor is every Jew Israeli. Likewise Israel is not Jewish peoples nation, Jewish people live all over the world and call many nations their home.
Also why do you believe people should have an ethno-state of their own?
Completely disagree. It's a nation like any other. It has as much right to exist as the USA or Constantinople.
I'm not entirely on board with the idea of nations having rights at all. The people living in them do, but I don't see how an abstract entity should have rights that the people it represents don't have on their own.
To give a concrete example: the people of Iraq have a right to exist. But it's a country composed of ethnic groups that don't especially like each other, so having them all live in a single country isn't necessarily great. I don't think Iraq has a right to be a country, especially if it's interfering with the right to self-determination of the people living there. Maybe as a practical matter it's better for the country to exist, but rights aren't supposed to be contingent on practical concerns.
Well... they did make corporations "people" - so there is that kind of lunacy around.
Constantinople was a city, not a nation.
But other than that, I agree that Israel has as much right to exist as any other nation. Saying Israel should not exist is implicitly antisemitic because you can't get rid of the nation of Israel without wiping out the Jewish people living there.
Bullshit. Jewish people have a right to exist - Israel doesn't.
Whoops. Didn't know much about Constantinople except the song. Yugoslavia on the other hand was a country but no more. There was violence involved but not out and out genocide.
That's OK, I had to look it up myself because there were a lot of city states during the Roman empire, and I wasn't sure if Constantinople was one of them.
Also, there was the Bosnian genocide.
Funny you picked Yugoslavia where there was definitely an out and out genocide.
Not only was there genocide/ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the US (through NATO) was directly involved in trying to end it.
You don't have to kill all the Israeli's to get rid of Israel. Nations are made by people accepting that they exist. Before Israel was Israel it was just a bunch of politically savvy zionists who started telling people to move there. With a lot of wealthy Jewish investors they just started buying land and refusing to let Palestinians work on it. Over time and with enough established countries recognising Israel as its own thing, that's what it became.
If tomorrow the entire world just decided that Israel didn't exist then it would cease to, they may object but they'd be invaders occupying land that doesn't belong to them. It might sound silly but this is how Israel was created.
In theory, sure, but Israelis believe that they have been chosen by God to defend their holy land. They believe they are under attack (which isn't unfounded, given Hamas' horrific attacks October 7th) and they believe that if they are not in power, that the Arab world will begin another Holocaust (also not unfounded, considering the rhetoric used by Islamic leaders in the region).
And Israel has nuclear weapons.
Before Israel was Israel, it was under British control, and the British army defended the Zionists displacing Palestinians. There were several violent revolts, and many people were killed. They didn't just buy property until they owned Tel Aviv. Land was taken by force.
Westerners see Israel as an ally, surrounded by jihadists and terrorists and despots fighting tooth and nail to merely continue to exist. And all of that is true, but it creates the false impression that Israelis are somehow more reasonable than the jihadists. That the Jewish people will listen to a rational argument and act responsibly and with reverence to human life. That, if American support goes away, the Israeli leadership will see the writing on the wall and seek a peaceful solution rather than face oblivion.
There is no peaceful end to Israel. You won't have to kill all the Jewish people living there, but you will have to kill many of them.
I see what you're saying, and perhaps you're right. I am more hopeful, though. Plenty of Israelis support Palestine and in the early days the Palestinians welcomed the Jews. It's not fair to simply dismiss vast groups of people as irrational or terrorists. At one point in time these people got along, and even though a lot has happened since then I don't think it's impossible to get back there.
I think Western support does play a large role, it's the reason why the Israeli military is what it is and probably why Israel feels free to indiscriminately attack Palestine. If our support was more conditional and not so one sided it would encourage cooperation and more peaceful resolutions.
No. No theocracy or ethno state has a right to exist. Brutal apartheid is baked into these concepts. For some reason most of the world can get on board when it comes to oppressive governments like Iran or even China spreading Han culture. If the myth of "a people without a land to a land without a people" were true there might be a case, but there is no such land, and certainly not in Palestine.
This is wildly incorrect. The only inherent implication of saying the state of Israel has no right to exist is that the state of Israel has no right to exist. That is, a state foundationally for and only for a certain ethno-religion, forcibly and violently founded in a land already full of people who aren't a part of that ethno-religion. Such a state is oppressive by its nature, given that the majority of people within its borders of control (and especially people within those borders and displaced from within those borders) are disenfranchised and do not have equal rights under the law or under the enforcement of law.