Believing that the Jews, uniquely among all the people of the world, should remain stateless is anti-Semitic. And I’d say that if you’re against, say, Kurdish statehood, you probably hate Kurds, too; it’s just that the only people against Kurdish statehood don’t mind out and proud identifying as Kurd-haters.
This is a very strange leap in logic.
I am not conflating Israel or saying it is representative of all Jews.
I am saying that if you are against Jewish self determination, it’s probably because you hate Jews.
If you told me that Turkey shouldn’t be a country that is allowed to exist, I’d say you almost certainly hate Turkish people; that doesn’t mean that I think that the nation of Turkey represents Turkish-Americans.
That’s definitely the goal of anti-Zionists, but it’s not a fight that I am prepared to give up on.
Certainly, that’s why I think it is important to be clear about what the term anti-Zionist is, too. Someone who is a harsh critic of Israeli policy is not an anti-Zionist. Someone who seeks the dissolution of the only Jewish state is.
I’m against Kurdish statehood. The places that have significant Kurdish population are (like everywhere) extremely multicultural. Just looking at borders there’s no particular reason that the borders should be drawn as they currently are as opposed to having a state where the Kurds live, but minority groups in this state aren’t inherently different from the Kurds as minority groups in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
I think the participation of both Kurds and Arabs in the SDF in Syria is a positive, and it’s unfortunate that they haven’t always treated non-arab non-kurd ethnicities in their areas of control the best (although they are still several marks ahead of almost any other armed group there). I haven’t kept up with the latest but I hope Syria (in name and in action) stops being the “Syrian Arab Republic” and doesn’t disband the SDF or any other non-arab militias.
Even if you want to say the Kurds have been victims of especially horrible atrocities from the states they live in and therefore should get their own state, I don’t actually think it would really solve their problems. They would be a landlocked, not particularly economically viable country and if their neighbors didn’t outright invade them they could always cut them off from any trade and let them starve.
I think nationalism almost always has an element of magical thinking that it’s even possible, let alone advisable, for one clearly defined nationality to take on the world and win. Unfortunately the world doesn’t work like that.
No, but he’s definitely anti-Palestinian. Fee free not to support him; I certainly don’t.
I’m a Zionist, and I’m fine with Israel not being a monolithic ethnostate. I’m also willing to accept a two-state solution, so long as my country’s security can be guaranteed (because I’m not an idiot).
There’s more than one definition of Zionist, just as there’s more than one definition of patriot.
Fair enough. To me, until recently, Zionism always meant “there should be a safe place for Jews”, and in that sense, I’m definitely a Zionist. But I’m very much opposed to the Zionism of the present Israeli government (and Trump administration, for that matter).
Pro-Palestinian is easy for me to claim… but based on the above (and the last few years) I no longer would necessarily answer “yes” to whether I’m a Zionist. It really depends on who’s asking and what they mean by Zionist. Today it (appears to me) extends all the way from “safe place for Jews” to “ethnic cleansing and/or genocide for Palestinians”.
To be sure I’m following: did Uri Ariel say “From the river to the sea” at some point, in support of Israel? Or did he say words that have that effect, if not that specific idiom?
Most of the people labeled by the US government as “anti Zionist” or just “anti semitic” are actually pro Palestinian. I have friends who helped the campus protests of Israeli attacks on Gaza. They aren’t antisemitic. They don’t even feel strongly about the existence of Israel. They were just really horrified by what this country that their college was supporting was doing.
It appears to imply that Zionism is a spectrum that includes support for Jewish national self-determination and a safe homeland for Jews, to support for policies that can amount to the dispossession, ethnic cleansing, or even destruction of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, avoiding acknowledgement of Pro-Palestinian positions that include Pro-Hamas river-to-sea nationalism, and whether Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state.
Your statement currently treats “Zionist” as maximally heterogeneous while implicitly treating “pro-Palestinian” as relatively straightforward and benign. If you’re trying to make a logically symmetrical argument, you should acknowledge that both labels have unusually broad and contested meanings.
The position equivalent to “Pro-Palestinian” seems to me to be “Pro-Jewish.” A slightly different adjective, “Pro-Palestine”, introduces more problems.
I’m not pro-Palestine, because that’s a nation, not a people, and acts done in the name of that nation have frequently been horrific. I won’t wave a flag of Palestine, or any other country. But Palestinians? They’re people, like Jews, and that’s different.
Sure, I’m sure “pro-Palestinian” can have broad and contested meanings. But I haven’t come across any significant portion that makes me feel uncomfortable the way the Israeli government and Trump administration’s “Zionism” does. Which doesn’t mean they don’t exist – I just don’t see them from any significant groups. For example – I don’t see any common description of Hamas as merely a “Pro-Palestinian” organization.
Exactly so that there are multiple meanings of both phrases.
Thing is that it is like other words and phrases: at some point the descriptivist position wins out. By policies and actions the concept of “Zionism” is (and no interest debating with those who claim it always was) less “a place that can be safe for Jews” and more “a place only for Jews.”
When the by actions it increasingly is the latter I completely understand people saying they are “anti” it.
I remain a Zionist as I use the phrase and prescriptively define it. And I have a hard time arguing against a descriptivist perspective.
While also acknowledging that some significant number in the anti-Zionist and even in the pro-Palestinian groups are antisemites, and more who are exactly as Babale describes: selectively against a state of a particular people character specifically applied to a Jewish one and no problem with anything else.
I don’t understand, correct me if I’m wrong but Zionism is the notion that Jews deserve a Nation-State of their own, right? so anybody who’s again Ethnic Nation-States would by definition by anti-Zionist without the need of a shred of antisemitism.