Adam Serwer writing in the Atlantic, argues that anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism even thought there is only one Jewish state and thus, if you aren't also against all other states, then you are either a hater of Jews or else are seeking to hold them to a higher standard for some essentially racist reason of your own. Religious Jews who believe the creation of Israel must await the Messiah are racist in the sense that they believe their own blood-line to be different in some theological way to those of the 'Goyim' or 'Nations'.
It may seem that saying one community, by reason of theological superiority, must give up something they, like other similarly successful communities have, is still racist because the effect, if not the intention, is to harm only certain members of that community. I may say 'homosexuals are so greatly loved by God that they must never marry each other'. My intention may be to show love and admiration for Gay people. But the effect is discriminatory and bigoted. It involves questioning the legitimacy of some marriages which are perfectly legal in certain countries. The truth is, I have an unconscious bias against homosexuals- this is true, even if I myself myself am a practicing homosexual- and what I am doing is deliberately harmful only of certain Gays not of any heterosexuals whatsoever.
Of course, I am not a bigot if what I say is merely self-serving or hypocritical. But it is bigoted behaviour nonetheless for which I am receiving some reward or which I enjoy indulging in for some reason of my own.
publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post, which editorialized that “to deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, a right afforded to all nations—is to discriminate against Jews.”
Actually, a nation has to do a great deal- e.g. achieve economic viability and political cohesiveness- before it can successfully have a state. Sadly, Palestinians have failed in this regard. But we can't say Iraqis or Syrians or the Lebanese have done very well in this respect. Jordan did manage to get a handle on its Palestinians. But Jordan is a monarchy like Morocco and Saudi and the Gulf and, it may be, Islam evolved to promote better monarchical- but not Republican or Revolutionary- Governance.
Currently, there is an actual Jewish State and to say it should not exist only harms Jewish people living in that Jewish State- unless, obviously, they keep killing those who say it while laughing loudly. The problem with bigotry is that you stop being a bigot after your head has been kicked in.
One may question whether a monarchy is really a nation. After all, some polities have distinguished between 'subjects' and 'nationals'. By contrast, Israel has been a viable Republic for many years now where it is clear that Jews who choose to settle there are indeed citizens and 'nationals' of that country. It does not matter if non-Jews have no rights or a few rights. Israel is like other countries where a particular group is privileged over other groups. One may list a number of countries which share particular traits with Israel and condemn them. One might even say 'in an ideal world, they ought not to exist- at least in their present form'. But if only Israel is singled out, there can be only reason for it- viz. that Israel is a Jewish state. What is licit for non-Jews is illicit for Jews. This is bigotry.
The claim that “there is no argument anymore” is curious. Even within the ADL, staffers have objected to the argument that anti-Zionism is necessarily anti-Semitism, as Jewish Currents reported last year.
Jews are welcome to hold themselves to a higher standard. Also, there's a little money to be made by rehashing the same virtue signalling article for the same bien pensant magazines.
Political Zionism, defined concisely, is the belief that the Jews should have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland.
No. The thing may have started out that way but it can't now be anything of that sort. Why? Israel is a reality. It has grown in power and wealth and influence. The relative position of the Diaspora has weakened with respect to the 'sabra'. Just as many Chinese scientists started returning to China because their careers would progress better there, the same thing may become true of Jewish savants and entrepreneurs. This is no very distant prospect. In some fields, it is already a reality. If you get brighter students in Israel why tolerate DIE political correctness in the Ivy League?
Political Zionism is now like Political Islamism or Political Hindutva or Political MAGA. It has to do with finding allies and evolving strategies of a complex type to do with technological supply chains and the global balance of power. It isn't stupid shite these lazy, facile, libtards pull out of their arse every now and then.
Anti-Zionism, in similarly brief terms, is the opposition to that belief.
What is the point in believing that Israel does not exist? Why not insist, instead, that the Earth is flat?
It should be no surprise that most Palestinians and those who sympathize with their plight are anti-Zionist.
They may want to wipe out not just Jewish but also Christian communities in the MENA. The trouble is, they may also object to those of other Islamic sects or those who speak Kurdish or Turkoman.
“The Arab has been on the receiving end not of benign Zionism—which has been restricted to Jews,”
Plenty of Mizrachi Jews didn't think Zionism was benign. They thought it was stupid, Lefty, puritanical shite which Ashkenazis had been brainwashed into believing thanks to their prolonged contact with Teutonic pedants with shit for brains.
Edward Said wrote in The Question of Palestine, “but of an essentially discriminatory and powerful culture, of which, in Palestine, Zionism has been the agent.”
Said was Christian. His people knew all about a 'discriminatory and powerful culture' which enjoyed massacring them every now and then. Zionism was benign compared to Islam.
There are certainly forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic, such as the belief that Jewish Israelis should all be expelled or killed or that they should be forced to live as second-class citizens under an Islamist government.
Fuck that! If Yazidis make good slaves why not Yahudis? The problem with Jews is that they are few in number. For all of the faithful to have enough slaves to live with dignity, we will have to turn to the kaffirs.
Storming the tarmac at an airport in Dagestan in the hopes of participating in a mob lynching of passengers arriving from Tel Aviv, or vandalizing synagogues in Madrid and New York in response to the Israeli government’s actions, or threatening Jewish students with rape and murder, are clear expressions of hatred toward Jews.
Some are. The Chinese American making the rape threats was simply a lunatic. However the attempt to storm a US base in Turkey may have been aimed at getting hold of the nukes stored there.
Nukes matter. Money matters. We are welcome to hate every type of furriner while harbouring deep reservations about Mummy and even the neighbour's cat.
Americans, both Jewish and not, can underestimate how common anti-Semitism remains in the rest of the world.
Lots of people go around chanting 'death to America'. So what?
But there is nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionists who believe that the existence of a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist,
so Pakistan and every other Islamic Republic or Kingdom is 'inherently racist' and 'apartheid'. But so is England- which still has a lot of English people- and France and so forth.
True, there is nothing to prevent an anti-Semite or an anti-Zionist to be as stupid as shit, but this does not mean that those who write for the Atlantic are obliged to show equal stupidity.
and that the only real solution to the conflict is, as the Palestinian American advocate Youssef Munayyer writes, “equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state,”
but he wants a State where Palestinian Muslims are the majority. They get to pass the laws and the Jews and the Christians and the Gays and the Atheists get to form an orderly queue to the gas chambers. Why did nobody think of this before? Anyway, why not just have a World Government where everybody has a vote? Since non-Muslims will be the majority, will they get to forbid certain practices- e.g. the killing of infidels and apostates?
with a constitution that would “recognize that the country would be home to both peoples and that, despite national narratives and voices on either side that claim otherwise, both peoples have historical ties to the land.”
But most would rather have unhistorical ties to real estate in Manhattan or San Francisco.
Perhaps you think this idea naive or unrealistic;
It is tactical. What is interesting is that it concedes that the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves. Either they remain wards of the UN or else they have to be looked after by the Israelis. But this depends on the Jews being the majority. Otherwise, just as the Palestinians split between Fatha and Hamas when they held elections, so too would Israel split up. In other words, you'd get the same outcome.
that is not an expression of prejudice toward Jews.
Tactical statements made by those who want to hurt us are expressions of dislike or prejudice. Thus, when I suggest that you will look much nicer if you chop off your head and shove it up your arse, you are entitled to conclude, not that I am naive, but that I fucking hate you.
For one thing, there were prominent Jewish advocates for this idea before the founding of Israel, such as Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber.
Both of whom were as stupid as shit. Still, had a Hashemite Monarch gained a Greater Syria, there could have been a Jewish and a Maronite and Druze Cantons. The trouble is the Jews would tended to have been a professional and mercantile class rather than agricultural settlers capable of defending their own land. But, the thing was not feasible. If a Hashemite could not succeed in Iraq, Greater Syria was a non-starter. Jordan was just small enough for the monarch to gain the loyalty of the non-Palestinian portion of the population though a true Jordanian identity didn't come into existence till Black September.
In 1921, the Jewish philosopher Ahad Ha’am wrote that Arab Palestinians “have a genuine right to the land due to generations of residence and work upon it. For them too this country is a national home and they have the right to develop their national potentialities to the utmost.”
Ha'am had lived in London. He understood that it would be the Brits, nobody else, who would decide the future. They were fair-minded and did want the Palestinians to rise up. The problem was that they came to see that no Palestinian entity would be economically viable and politically cohesive. The Jews might make a go of things but only if they could defend themselves.
There are also some prominent Jewish supporters of a single binational state today, such as the former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg.
Who decided all Israelis should get themselves a second passport- American or West European. That's perfectly sensible. Every time a 'pay for slay' nutter runs amok, there's a good chance he is killing an American or a French or other such citizen.
The Jewish American writers Tony Judt and Peter Beinart have also made the case for a one-state solution.
There is some notion that Israel should be seen as similar to White ruled South Africa. It gets rid of 'apartheid' and has a 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' and then a few Jews and Palestinians get rich while the country turns to shit. This would give all sorts of virtue signallers, securely established abroad, a degree of 'interessement' before the inevitable pogroms and return to ethnic cleansing.
I should say here that I do not have an answer to this question. Two states or one, my preference is for both Israelis and Palestinians to be able to live freely and in peace and equality, in whatever arrangement allows them to do so.
Why stop there? Why not have a preference that your cats marries your dog and raises a transgender chipmunks which will combine the office of Pope, Chief Rabbi, and Islamic Caliph after having served two terms as POTUS?
Nevertheless, it is a cruel absurdity to demand of Palestinians that they
remain in Palestine. Let them emigrate to where less shitty political leadership is available.
not only acquiesce to Israel’s existence,
just as the poor have to acquiesce in the existence of the rich
but also actively support the idea of an ethnically defined state that excludes them from equal citizenship,
which is exactly happens to people from far countries who work in the Gulf and other such rich countries. If the Jews are now more affluent, it is because of their 'Human Capital'. If the indigenous Kuwaiti is richer than his Pakistani driver, it is because there was oil under his ancestral land.
one that was made possible only by the flight and expulsion of 700,000 of their forebears in the Nakba of 1948.
But that flight only occurred because the Arabs tried to eliminate the Jews. Losing a war has consequences. The plain fact is that Israel rose economically not because of superior access to natural resources. They rose through superior 'Human Capital' and better governance. To benefit from rising Israeli affluence you have to adapt to a way of life similar to that which you have to adapt to if you emigrate to America. If you do stupid shit in America you remain poor and end up getting shot by a cop or getting shot in a drive-by shooting or doing drugs and dying a 'death of despair'.
It is not anti-Semitic to want equal rights in the land you share with others,
Yes it is, if you are saying only Jews should give up land.
and to oppose a political arrangement that has resulted in what Israeli human-rights groups justifiably describe as a form of apartheid.
Anything at all can be described as a form of apartheid. How come no fat elderly men feature in the type of Lesbian porn I watch? That's fucking apartheid, mate.
While Jewish Israelis retain their rights wherever they go within Israel’s borders,
Like Gaza City?
Palestinians are subject to draconian restrictions on their lives and freedoms depending on their location.
Only because they kept running amok and killing people.
“My mom was born and raised a mere 10-minute walk from my childhood home, but my father’s family is from Tulkarem, a small city in the West Bank. And so my dad, my siblings, and I have West Bank IDs while my mom, a Jerusalemite, has a Jerusalem ID,” the journalist Abdallah Fayyad wrote in The Boston Globe in 2021, describing life in his childhood neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. “That meant that while my mother had a right to live in Jerusalem, the rest of us were only guests in our own home, living there because we renewed travel permits that technically allowed us only entry into Jerusalem, not a permanent stay.”
Sadly, Fayyad's family is likely to face worsening problems. As educated people, they may be able to get visas to relocate elsewhere. This is not the time to be stingy with such Visas to people of this sort. Indeed, we can't be sure that the Holy City itself might not go up in a mushroom cloud. Pakistan may well have 'loose nukes'. A moment may come when troops in Muslim countries refuse to fire on vast crowds, led by Mullahs, demanding entry into the great armouries they have built up. The West may be hypocritical in its expressions of concern for the Palestinians. But the Muslim masses can't understand why this tiny abomination- the Jewish State- hasn't simply been erased from the map. More and more people in such countries feel they have nothing to lose. The problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood may be the biggest losers because Islam itself may be abandoned. Once a religious community is eradicated, other religions start looking vulnerable. Maybe there is nothing but the sword. Scripture is no defence against it.
Palestinians in the West Bank who have been displaced at gunpoint by Israeli settlers, Palestinians in Gaza who have watched their children die in Israeli missile strikes, Palestinians who have been evicted from their homes in Jerusalem as part of an effort to Judaize the city—are none of these people allowed to question whether a Jewish state is an optimal arrangement for them?
They have always been welcome to question anything at all. The problem is that Israeli's who have lost friends or family to Palestinian atrocities might well be questioning why they should not simply slaughter and eject their enemies? If you have nukes, you can get away with really evil shit.
Are none of their relatives, friends, and loved ones abroad allowed to do so?
They are strictly forbidden to do so by the sacred power of the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbour's cat.
Nor is the question of national self-determination as straightforward as the Post would have it. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, maintaining the Jewish character of the state of Israel has required an extraordinary amount of violence,
Maintaining Pakistan's Muslim character took and takes more violence. Israel was more cohesive and found a way to rise economically. Iran's Islamist character took and has taken even more violence and may be greatly imperilled by the end of this decade.
because Jews are not a clear majority in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank put together.
Which is why there can't be a 'one state' solution unless, obviously, Palestinians concentrate on bread and butter issues.
Even if they were, however, it is not as though Palestinian demands for equal rights would cease.
Demands that the rich share their wealth don't cease. They just get confined to silly people.
Opposing that violence,
by stabbing people?
or believing that it stems from the state having a specific ethnic character,
which is what it does in every fucking State.
is not a form of bigotry.
It is a stupid form of bigotry or a bigoted form of stupidity.
It is not “self-determination” if you are determining the fate of your neighbors because they lack the same rights as you.
Nothing is self-determination unless an economically viable, politically viable entity comes into existence by an act of collective choice. This is why my plan to secure Iyerland for us Iyers, by freeing Ireland from leprechauns, is referred to as insanity rather than self-determination.
In the United States, the ADL itself has highlighted those on the far right who believe “they are fighting against demographic and cultural changes that are destroying the ‘true America’—a white, Christian nation,” and who want Jews to “either leave the country or be converted.”
Why not also highlight African American people who claim to be the only true Jews? What about people who think that cats control people through brain-rays because cats are secretly Jewish?
Sadly, this is a racist chauvinism that echoes sentiments expressed by politicians in the current Israeli government.
Only in the sense that Noam Chomsky does so too. But everything else echoes my farts.
Few Americans who are not themselves white nationalists would think it prejudiced for those who are not white Christians to oppose such an arrangement in the U.S., least of all Jews.
Provided they also oppose the argument that non-Muslims be stoned to death by Gay dudes who are then killed by having a wall collapsed on them.
Obviously, there are factors in Israel that make a commitment to one state with equal rights for all more complicated than in the United States, where the concept is foundational even if the execution is not.
The foundational concept for the US was that niggers and Injuns should either be killed or enslaved.
For generations, Palestinians have borne the brunt of the violence of war,
outside Israel- sure.
occupation, and discrimination.
outside the US and Europe (if they were well educated and well off)- sure.
The near-destruction of European Jewry is less than a century old, and the flight (both voluntary and involuntary) of the Mizrahim, who make up the largest portion of Israel’s Jewish population, from other Middle Eastern and North African countries is younger than that.
It began around the same time. Husseini was hugely popular in Iraq and many Jews had to flee the 'Farhud'.
Fears and grudges build up over years of conflict and separation, making the personal and emotional connections necessary for such reconciliation difficult, although brave souls on both sides of the divide are trying.
It easy to be reconciled to nice peeps. Stabby stabby guys have to be shot.
The ideal version of the one-state solution also remains unpopular for now among both Israelis and Palestinians (except for Arab citizens of Israel). You may think it impossible. You may prefer a different outcome. You may think it is dangerous. But the vision itself is not an expression of anti-Jewish hatred and should not be treated as such.
Why not? We are welcome to take any vision as an expression of anything we like. What matters is whether out interpretation is helpful to us or not. We may reject the vision of an idiot on the grounds that it is idiotic, while rejecting that same vision expressed by a cunning enemy of ours on the grounds that it is deceitful and intended to do us harm.
Currently, talk of a 'one state solution' is coupled with the notion that Israel has practiced apartheid and thus should go down the South African route of having a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and so forth. However, what apartheid South Africa failed to do was create any geographical where Whites were the majority. Israel did do this in 1948. True, it gained land by conquest. But it has ongoing security concerns and is not obliged to grant citizenship to hostile inhabitants of land it must hold to ensure its survival. True, if the Palestinians had taken a non-violent path, Israel would appear to be defying a norm which America supposedly adopted some decades ago. But such is not the case.
The effect of equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is to silence the criticism of the Israeli government by Palestinians and their advocates.
Anybody can shout any sort of nonsense at the top of their voice. I criticize the Andromeda galaxy all the time for its naughtiness. It pays no attention to me. 'Palestinians and their advocates' are ignored for the same reason I am ignored.
Characterizing all such criticism as an inherent form of bigotry is used to justify the exclusion of such critics from mainstream society, to suspend them from their schools, or to fire them from their jobs.
But the even better justification is that they are stupid and a nuisance. We would hesitate to sack or exclude anybody who is useful or charming merely because they are bigoted. It is bores we object to.
But it is not anti-Semitic to want equal rights for all in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, in Gaza, in Ramallah.
Yes it is, unless you also want equal rights in Riyadh and Teheran.
That is, after all, what generations of Americans have sought in their own home.
No. It is what some have pretended to seek. Still, it is good to know that this guy and his pals are handing over the deeds to any real estate they own to representatives of the First Nations from whom the underlying land was stolen in the first place.
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