I agree with this. And in fact so did the early Zionists. But between the facts that Israel did have a Jewish population, that it was sparsely populated, and that the Ottomans were lukewarm rather than completely hostile made it a practical choice, too.
Yeah–that’s why I separated the “ancestral homeland” argument out from the others. It’s definitely one I’ve encountered, both in this thread and from Jewish friends. Unlike other arguments in favor of Israel, it’s not persuasive to me.
You don’t have to look at “might have”. You can look at actual history.
To add to what I see @Thing.Fish said:
In that case, almost none of the population of the West Bank and Gaza is entitled to claim any portion of the current state of Israel as their homeland.
I don’t think that telling them that will solve the problem.
It won’t. There’s a difference between a moral imperative and a political compromise.
Here’s an accessible link to the recent Atlantic piece by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.
Although, as has been noted, that article makes many good points, it doesn’t represent a consensus about the (in)applicability of the concept of “settler colonialism” to Israel, even among Zionist scholars. Sebag Montefiore says:
While it certainly needs to be agreed that “elimination” of people by violence is immoral and heinous, not everybody thinks that it’s necessary to repudiate the “settler colonialism” concept in order to do that. For example, as Arnon Degani wrote in Ha’aretz in 2016,
Claims that Israel is a “colonial project” or some sort of artificial construct of the post-WWII British Empire are nothing more than attempts to de-legitimize the Jewish state by radical Islamic fundamentalist and their antisemitic leftist supporters in order to justify further atrocities.
Are you making an exception for all the Zionist founding fathers who explicitly called themselves colonialists? How do you square the cognitive dissonance between that and your categorical statement?
I don’t know, how do you square the cognitive dissonance between your stance and those Zionists who did not see their project as colonialist?
Clearly, I disagree with those early Zionists who viewed this as a colonialist enterprise and agree with those who do not.
Also, just because you compare some aspects of your nation’s founding to the experiences of colonialist nations does not mean that the two countries are identical in every way.
Finally, not all colonies are created equal, and when we speak of Colonialism we generally mean something specific. The colonialist framework that applies to the Great Powers exploiting lands in Africa, Americas, and Asia is not necessarily applicable to many other things specifically called ‘colonies’, such as the Phonecian or Greek colonies of the ancient world (which incidentally were very different from one another as well). I think it would be a myopic oversimplification to apply Colonialist frameworks to understanding the relationship between the Carthaginians and the Amazigh of North Africa or the Celtiberians of Spain, or the Greeks of Syracuse and the native Sicilians.
I just think it’s interesting to see a Zionist arguing against Herzl of all people. That’s kind of like an American patriot saying that George Washington got his idea of government all wrong. I hadn’t known that such discourse existed until now. It wasn’t until this thread and similar recent discussions that I even learned that some Zionist founding fathers considered themselves colonialists. We’re seeing some intense re-examinations of history.
I’m sorry but life is not this simple. Israel IS to some extent a colonial project. On the other hand, the concept of colonialism absolutely is used by a wide range of asshats to justify murder. On the other hand, many Israelis - most, I think - were born in Israel, know no other land, and cannot be called “Colonizers” in any way that makes a damn bit of sense. But then on the other hand, Israelis are actively stealing homes and land from Muslims in the West Bank right now. I can write fifty more sentences adding complexity to all this.
Israel was a colonial project, but it also wasn’t. But it is. But it’s not.
Point of order - I don’t beat my wife.
By this argument, South African Whites can’t be called colonizers either.
I absolutely reject any argument that leads to that conclusion.
Is this based on ancestry or something else? Do mixed children of White South Africans count as colonizers?
It’s based on continued benefit from the colonial system.
Since they were on the wrong end of Apartheid and specifically excluded from power, no, they do not.
Ask me how I (with my White mother and non-White father) know?
South African Whites as an ethnic group created themselves by going to South Africa as colonists.
Jews as an ethnic group were created by the imperialist actions of ancient middle eastern empires who destroyed the kingdoms of Israel and Judea and deported their peoples, and by the Persians who put them back. In this way, Jews are similar to African Americans, which is another ethnic group created through the blending of cultures by an imperialist power.
Subgroups like Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, etc formed through the actions of yet more imperialist powers like the Romans, the Franks, the Caliphates, etc - again, most of this through things that were done to the Jewish people rather than through their own choices.
I think that’s a meaningful distinction.
Okay. I’m not trying for a “gotcha”, that just seems like an awfully broad descriptor. It doesn’t seem to distinguish those who’ve benefited without necessarily materially supporting and assisting the supremacist enterprises from those who materially support and/or instituted these discriminatory systems.
Perhaps because I fall into the first but not the latter grouping, that distinction seems important to me.
South African Whites aren’t a monolithic ethnic group.
For one thing, there’s a large group of Jews here.
Do you think the distinction matters to non-White South Africans?
Well, you would know much better than I, certainly. But doesn’t it matter sometimes? I presume some Whites were allies in the fight against Apartheid. That’s an important distinction, surely.