To add some perspective to this, many Jews at the time did not feel particularly welcome in North America, either. You referred to it as “white supremacist North America” but it was also to a large extend anti-semitic North America. One of the interesting bits of historical insight from the well-researched book In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, about the experiences of American ambassador to Nazi Germany William Dodd in 1933-34, was the sociopolitical attitude in the US at the time. There was a great deal of anti-semitism in America, and the US was relatively conciliatory towards Hitler.
There seemed little awareness of what was brewing in Nazi Germany, though in 1933 the first concentration camps were already being established. Indeed, as late as June, 1939, three months before the start of World War 2, when the pogrom in Nazi Germany was well under way, the infamous incident of the MS St Louis occurred wherein a ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees, many of them children, escaping Nazi Germany was turned away by immigration authorities, first by Cuba, then by the United States, then finally, sad to say, by my own country Canada. In the end, a third of them perished in the Holocaust.
“Colonialism is always unacceptable” seems to me to be an accepted axiom for most of the left. If the Jews’ creation of Israel was colonialism, then that waters down that axiom into nothing useful… and it means that “evil colonialists!” isn’t nearly the criticism, by itself, that much of the left uses it as (and obviously not just against Israel but the real historical colonial powers).
Maybe this is just semantics… but there should be a term separating the truly monstrous exploitation and nigh-genocide executed by (mostly) Western and Northern European countries of the Americas, Africa, much of Asia, and elsewhere, from desperate “settle or die” scenarios like the first Israelis faced. I thought that term was colonialism.
Given that Jews in Spain were given the options of converting to Christianity or expulsion from Spain, yes, I would guess that there were identity issues there:
Over half of Spain’s Jews had converted to Catholicism as a result of the Massacre of 1391.[2]Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415.[3] Those who remained decided to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled.
And Jews were expelled from England by Edward I, and not formally allowed to return until the Commonwealth under Cromwell:
The edict was not an isolated incident, but the culmination of over 200 years of increasing antisemitism in England.
And pogroms in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere:
A pogrom[a] is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews.[1] The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement). Similar attacks against Jews which also occurred at other times and places became known retrospectively as pogroms.[2]Sometimes
It is absurd to say European Jews were not European. It is absurd to say American Jews are not American. It is absurd to say Israeli Jews are not Israeli. It doesn’t matter if other Europeans had been trying to kill European Jews for centuries, those Jews still live in Europe just like the other Europeans trying to kill them.
European Jews moved to Israel because they wanted to get the hell out of Europe. No surprise because other Europeans had tried and succeeded at killing millions of them. They wanted to create a Jewish homeland in Israel because they had no where else to go where they could feel safe. That does not change the fact that the creation of an independent nation accepted by the world was tied to British Colonialism through the acceptance of the British as owners of the land involved and they had the right to give it to the Jewish people as a homeland.
That is hardly the entire story but it is pointless to deny it which is what the OP does in trying to justify the title of the thread. It is easy to explain that it was not a colonial project. It was not planned and executed by Britain to create a colony for their benefit. European Jews and Jews from around the world moved there because they felt entitled to a homeland because of their treatment in other countries over centuries, and that they had a religious right to that land. The western world through political consensus based on numerous factors and a heavy dose of guilt for their involvement in the horrible treatment and killing of millions of Jews in WWII acknowledged Israel’s status as an independent country. The OP explains most of it but the effects of colonialism are not so limited as to give them no mention what so ever.
Depends on the time and place. Many proud [German/Spanish/Roman/Whatever] Jews were dragged from their homes and murdered once the inquisitions/pogroms/cleansings started. It doesn’t matter what you believe once the wheel of history turns back towards Jew-killing. And it always turns back that way.
So some Jews probably considered themselves European, and in certain golden ages might have lived their whole lives that way. Some Jews considered themselves European and violently were disabused of that notion. Many more Jews understood (and understand) that our nationalistic identities only exist so long as our nations allow us to exist.
I have to wonder what TriPolar thinks would have happened differently had the British chosen not to recognize Israel. The Israelis would have been so demoralized by the lack of British approval they would have lost the war?
The Jews occupied a territory, subjugating others present who had at least as legitimate of a claim to the land as the Jews. And they were strong enough to keep - and expand - the territory. Good for them. Peoples have been doing that throughout history.
You don’t like the term colonialism - by either the Jews or the western powers. Fine. Pick another word. Still doesn’t make their claim particularly noble or just.
Whose claim? If you mean the Jews’ creation of Israel, I don’t know if “noble” or “just” can apply (on either side) to a circumstance in which the choice is “settle here or risk annihilation”.
I don’t think that for most of Jewish history there was even a concept of “European” being a thing. When people wanted to talk about European civilizations collectively, they usually used the term “Christendom”, which obviously left us out. It wasn’t until quite recent times that a non-religious concept of “European civilization” evolved.
Another line suggesting that you have a very poor grasp of the relevant history. In the pre-State period, Zionism was an exclusively secular movement and certainly didn’t base any of its claims on religion. The early Zionists felt that once the Jews were secure in their homeland, they would no longer need to cling to primitive superstition and religious Judaism would vanish from Israel. It’s taking longer than they thought…
In fact many religious Jews felt that recreating a Jewish state without waiting for God’s signal (IE the Messiah) was misguided at best and an adoption of a false Messiah at worst. Or otherwise, that Nationalism is a distraction from pure devotion to God.
And they’re still around; check out the Neturei Karta, whose driving principle seems to be “Let’s make sure everyone hates us!” I love how even the other pro-Palestinian demonstrators are giving these guys a very wide berth.
More Jews live outside Israel than inside of Israel, as has been the case since the Diaspora. The trope of “they had nowhere to go” does not work.
There are lots of marginalized communities in the world. Most of them don’t get land carved out of where other people have been living for generations and centuries on the authority of a holy book.
Even Chabad originally opposed Israel because they feared it would make the Jewish people turn to Israeli nationalism as a unifying force rather than adherence to Rabbinical Judaism. And that’s still the motivating philosophy behind the hard religious right parties, who refuse to serve in the army while ensuring the state continues to pay them to sit around and “study”.
Where could/should they have gone? Jim Crow/KKK America? How/why could they have had any confidence that America, which tolerated and even encouraged lynchings and white supremacist violence, would have been a safe place for them?
This seems awfully dismissive of centuries of brutal pogroms, culminating in the murder of 6 million. That’s a bit more than “marginalized” (not to mention this ahistorical notion that the formation of Israel was based on “the authority of a holy book”).
Antisemitism was a core tenet of Nazism before it even took power, but the concentration camps set up when the Nazis came to power (Konzentrationslager) were for dealing with political opponents of the regime, not to solve “the Jewish Question”; about 90% of the initial populations of them being communists and social democrats. The extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) were very different from concentration camps, as the name explicitly states, and weren’t set up until starting in late 1941.
The treatment of Jews changed dramatically once we had a country to represent us. Diaspora Jews get to enjoy lower levels of discrimination because Israel calls out antisemetism around the world loudly and often.
And when Jews are getting ethnically cleansed, like the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, Israel is there to welcome them in. No more ping-ponging around the Atlantic in a leaky boat before being sent back to the gas chambers.
And that’s precisely why Uyghurs and Assyrians and Kurds and Native Mesopotamians and Karens and Sami and Native Americans and Palestinians and African-Americans have, for centuries, been mistreated, and they will continue to be mistreated until they are wiped out or until a nation-state that actually prioritizes their well-being comes to power.
Personally, I would support giving these peoples nations as well, to ensure that some group with international clout is there to protect their rights.
Weren’t there a bunch of half-baked, probably non-viable proposals to set up a Jewish homeland in different places around the world? E.G., Central Asia?
