It has always been a problem in intellectual foreign policy discourse to separate opposition to Israel’s policies vis a vis its Arab neighbors from outright anti-Semitism. Art Downs, Yorkshire, Gretchen and I all “know” a lady who is intelligent, educated and supposedly sophisticated, who is an outright anti-Semite. This lady, a wealthy widow, has continually told us, in an e-mail group to which I used to belong (I left when this lady made an absolutely repugnant personal comment about my daughter) that the entire American financial system is controlled by Jews, and that everything which went wrong was the fault of the Jews. What really got to me was her contention that if Jews have been discriminated against down through the ages, by every other group, perhaps the Jews ought to be asking themselves if it was something that they were doing that was causing it. She’d never have made a similar statement about blacks.
Interestingly enough, that e-mail group had a lady in it who is Jewish, and with whom the anti-Semite agreed on almost every other topic.
This lady was a world traveler, claimed to be fluent in four languages (and I have seen her use both German and Spanish), had a husband who was a very high powered executive for a global company before he died, and would seem, by every measure, to be very unlikely to be an anti-Semite, but she most certainly is.
Perhaps it was her unwavering support for the Palestinians that pushed her in that direction; I really don’t know. But when she said that sensible American Jews ought to change their names to not sound Jewish — something that was rather common seventy years ago — I lost it.
I bring this up due to two articles on sites I read. The first was Donviti’s Why Liz Allen is an Anti-Semite and I’m tired of it… on the Delaware Liberal. When the accused responded, she was most adamant that she was not an anti-Semite, but very much anti-Zionist.
Here we go anyone who calls out the zionists (notice I did not say Jews), because there are jews who despise what the zionists are doing to Palestinans in their name.
I am not an anti semitic by any stretch of your liberal imagination. Calling someone an anti semitic for speaking agains what zionists do is exactly what Freeman is talking about it.
My grandsons are Jewish, not zionists, Many friends are Jewish, not zionists. Damn if you fools don’t know the difference or havent studied the topic, why dont you attend some of the Pacem en Terris meetings that are going on right now.
There is a book you should read: “They Dare to Speak Out”, by Paul Findley. Its about People and Institutions Confronting Israels Lobby!
This is what I mean by “liberals”, you obviously are not well read on the issue of zionism and the difference.
Hyperlink added by me.
The second article is Anti-Zionism, by Donald Douglas on American Power. Dr Douglas’ article is brief, and is rather more of a reference to an opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times:
Is anti-Zionism hate?
Yes. It is more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East.
By Judea PearlIn January, at a symposium at UCLA (choreographed by the Center for Near East Studies), four longtime Israel bashers were invited to analyze the human rights conditions in Gaza, and used the stage to attack the legitimacy of Zionism and its vision of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
They criminalized Israel’s existence, distorted its motives and maligned its character, its birth, even its conception. At one point, the excited audience reportedly chanted “Zionism is Nazism” and worse.
Jewish leaders condemned this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation to anti-Semitic hysteria, and pointed to the chilling effect it had on UCLA students and faculty on a campus known for its open and civil atmosphere. The organizers, some of them Jewish, took refuge in “academic freedom” and the argument that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
I fully support this mantra, not because it exonerates anti-Zionists from charges of anti-Semitism but because the distinction helps us focus attention on the discriminatory, immoral and more dangerous character of anti-Zionism.
Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation — a collective bonded by a common history — and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.
There is more at the link, and Dr Douglas references a couple of other articles which ought to be read.
We should try to agree on definitions here. Zionism is a Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel. Anti-Semitism is hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism, or discrimination against Jews.
Intellectually, we can see room for a difference: one could be anti-Zionist, meaning to oppose the existence or expansion of the modern state of Israel, without being anti-Semitic, hating the Jews. What Dr Pearl has done is to claim that, intellectualism aside, it is impractical to separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism:
First, anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel’s sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5½ million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon.
Secondly, modern society has developed antibodies against anti-Semitism but not against anti-Zionism. Today, anti-Semitic stereotypes evoke revulsion in most people of conscience, while anti-Zionist rhetoric has become a mark of academic sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles of U.S. academia and media elite. Anti-Zionism disguises itself in the cloak of political debate, exempt from sensitivities and rules of civility that govern inter-religious discourse, to attack the most cherished symbol of Jewish identity.
Finally, anti-Zionist rhetoric is a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp, which overwhelmingly stands for a two-state solution. It also gives credence to enemies of coexistence who claim that the eventual elimination of Israel is the hidden agenda of every Palestinian.
Dr Pearl’s statements are founded in the assumption that Jews are a nation, deserving of a national home:
Anti-Zionism earns its discriminatory character by denying the Jewish people what it grants to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), namely, the right to nationhood, self-determination and legitimate coexistence with other indigenous claimants.
Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.
Are Jews a nation? Some philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second. Indeed, the narrative of Exodus and the vision of the impending journey to the land of Canaan were etched in the minds of the Jewish people before they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. But, philosophy aside, the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation to the birthplace of their history has been the engine behind Jewish endurance and hopes throughout their turbulent journey that started with the Roman expulsion in AD 70.
In a way, commenter James Rodrick on American Power distills the problem for us:
Why don’t we all strive to make Israel the “melting pot” of the Middle East?
In that question, Mr Rodrick exhibits the kind of ethnocentrism that is such a problem in this debate: it is a question based on purely Western, and really solely American, perceptions concerning nationality. Because we are the great melting pot, some people cannot understand that most other nations are not such. Now, I cannot think of any “melting pot” country in the Old World; every nation there, with the possible exception of city-states like Lichtenstein, is based upon ethnic boundaries and military conquest.
It’s worked slightly better in the New World, but that is because a flood of European immigrants basically exterminated the indigenous populations; few Indians remain save those shunted into ethnic enclaves or remote regions. I’d guess that isn’t the kind of peaceful melting pot Mr Rodrick had in mind.
I think we have to remember the history of the Jews in Europe at this point. After their expulsion from Judea by the Romans in 70 AD, the Jews dispersed into Europe. Had the Europeans fully integrated them, this would never be an issue, but that isn’t what happened. They were restricted from many livelihoods, their right to property was restricted in places, and they were basically shut out of civic life, save for those areas in which it was convenient for the Christian majorities to allow them. When we think of European anti-Semitism, our minds naturally go toward the Holocaust, but that was really only the last, if most extreme, example of European anti-Semitism. The pogromi of the Tsars and the Dreyfus Affair are well-known, but few people seem to have heard of the anti-Semitic violence that began with the coronation of King Richard Cœur de Lion.
Zionism was a philosophy and an idea which began long before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power. Theodor Herzl formally initiated a Zionist movement at the World Zionist Conference in 1897. The British were very resistant, due to imperial concerns; the last thing they wanted was a Jewish homeland in the Levant.
And there might be no modern state of Israel today had the liberal Western democracies been more liberal in their immigration policies. If the Third Reich did not want the Jews, as Herman Wouk put it in his great novel War and Remembrance, it turned out that nobody else wanted them very much, either. American immigration policies were very strict, dating from the 1920s when Congress was concerned about not altering the racial composition of the United States. Had the United States and other supposedly liberal Western democracies opened their borders to the Jewish refugees, there might be no Israel today.
This was a hard and bitter lesson learned by the Jews: they could depend on nobody else for their own protection. And that could mean but one thing, a Jewish nation, a national homeland, someplace in which they did not have to depend upon the tolerance of others for their freedom and security. In the aftermath of World War II, with the images of Auschwitz still burned in their minds, the Christian statesmen of the world agreed.
And this restricts the definition of anti-Zionism today. I asked Miss Allen if, by being anti-Zionist, she meant that she’d like to see a peaceful solution in which an independent and secure Israel exists side-by-side with an independent and secure Palestine, with the borders being pretty much the pre-June 1967 lines, or if she was thinking more along the lines of the Jews leaving the Middle East and the Palestinians possessing all of the land there? She responded with support for the former, a two state solution based on the pre-June 1967 borders and Security Council Resolution 242.
In that regard, she is like the vast majority of Westerners, who believe that the only rational solution is a split-the-differences solution, with peace, independence and security for Israel, and peace, independence and security for the Palestinians, side-by-side. I’ve noted it many times before: you can read Foreign Affairs for every year since 1967, and you will find learned articles by important academics and noted statesmen, all trying to put forth the formula for Middle East peace that will work, and all of them based on some notion which closely adheres to the two-state solution. Our paradigm simply does not go beyond that.
Trouble is, the two peoples who are involved, the Israelis and the Palestinians, don’t all agree. Though the idea seems to be fading, there are still many Israelis who believe in a Greater Israel, with their country annexing all of the occupied territories. Perhaps if they had used force and expelled all of the Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1967 war, this might be possible; since they chose not to do this, such is a pipe dream. But the settlements policy continues apace, “creating facts” as it was once put. The Israelis, if they were actually to vote on it, would almost certainly accept a 242-based solution which would require the abandonment of the settlements, but it would not be unanimous by any means; many, many thousands would vote to fight on.
The Palestinians still adhere, officially, to the notion that Israel must be destroyed, in both the organizing charter of Fatah and the Hamas Charter. There are clearly some Palestinians who have given up on the idea of expelling the Jews, but the Hamas leadership that the Palestinians freely elected have not.
So, where do we go from here? I think it safe to say that the majority of American supporters of the Palestinians do not support the notions expressed in the Hamas Charter, that they want to see a safe and secure Israel; they simply don’t like the idea that Israel is occupying what they see as Palestinian territory, or that Israel uses military force to defend herself. And, quite frankly, the wide-spread sympathy for the underdog leads many to excuse the actions of the Palestinians.
The conundrum faced here is that the Palestinians, in the only example like this of which I can think, could win their struggle for an independent nation if they would just stop fighting, if their goal for an independent nation is limited to their half of the two-state solution that is so widely foreseen. They can win their war, if their goals are what we would see as moderate, by laying down their arms, not taking them up.
This, then, is where the anti-Zionists have a hard time. To support what most of them see as the reasonable and peaceful solution, they must support the notion of Zionism as far as the 1967 borders, but no further. And they must oppose the actions of the Palestinians to keep fighting, because such fighting is wholly counterproductive. If explained coolly and logically, I think they could see that.
But this is not a cool and logical intellectual exercise; it is one of emotion, of passion, of senses of outraged feelings and justice undone. And this is where anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism become seemingly inextricably intertwined, because the raw emotions of this are so strong that distinctions are not taken and lines which should not be crossed, are crossed.
Do a google on zionism vs. judaism. See what you get. Ask yourself why many of the Jewish faith, particularly opposed to the horror leveled against Gazans in December 2008, say I am Jewish, I am not zionist. Zionism is a philosophy not a faith. Zionism was created by a man who was not Jew but a communist. do the google thing, much more information on the issue there.
Dana,
That was a very nice post – very refreshing and a great starting point for discussion and debate.
As you imply, the parameters of the “two-state solution” have been extensively written about over the years and the endgame is well understood. The problem is that no one has found the right roadmap to get there.
I think that one reason why we haven’t reached the endgame yet is the almost complete lack of trust between the Israelis and the Palestinians, coupled with the absence of real American leadership on this issue – whether we are talking about Democratic or Republican administrations.
My feeling on this is that we may have passed the expiry date for a two-state solution, given that the facts on the ground have evolved in such a way as to render such a solution almost impossible.
And, the irony of ironies here, is that Israel’s own actions, particularly with regard to their settlement policy and all that entails, and the “support” that they have received from successive US governments may actually have made it impossible for Israel to survive as a democratically governed Jewish state…based simply on the demographics of the region and those nasty facts on the ground.
Great post, Dana!
The closest recent analog to the ‘two state’ approach was the separation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Contrives incidents and ‘protests’ created an atmosphere that could only be cured by the loss of territory and defensible borders. THe goal was the destruction of a free and prosperous nation.
Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.
Nope. Modern Zionism is concerned with the territorial expansion of Isreal, necessarily at the expense of other people.
Intellectually, we can see room for a difference: one could be anti-Zionist, meaning to oppose the existence or expansion of the modern state of Israel, without being anti-Semitic, hating the Jews.
Intellectually, your argument loses coherence when you elide the difference between existence and expansion. I assume that you support the existence of Canada, but do not support its expansion. By your definition above, you are anti-Canadian.
To be anti-Zionist is to oppose Israel expanding its borders through occupation, ethnic cleansing and annexing other people’s territory. Just as Iraq tried to do in Kuwait, back in 1990.
The conundrum faced here is that the Palestinians, in the only example like this of which I can think, could win their struggle for an independent nation if they would just stop fighting, if their goal for an independent nation is limited to their half of the two-state solution that is so widely foreseen. They can win their war, if their goals are what we would see as moderate, by laying down their arms, not taking them up.
Nope. They’d just get forced into bantustans; the “peace” Israel is offering is the same “peace” South Africa offered to the Blacks – sit down, shut up, and we’ll let you pretend to have a country.
Phoenician: Unfortunately, your comment completely evades the fact that the nascent Israel was attacked three major times in its history. It “expanded its borders” only as a result of defensive wars, not in conflicts to merely expand its territory. You, like the Liz Allen in question as well as too many others, conveniently ignore this FACT.
After the last major Arab attack (1973), Israel, with the assistance of Pres. Carter, gave back the Sinai Peninsula and other possessions to Egypt in return for a peace agreement. What does that say about the desire of Zionist “expansionism?” If the Zionists were so intent on expansion, why didn’t they just thumb their collective noses at Carter?
In addition, after the 1948 war shortly after Israel’s founding, why did Egypt and Jordan gobble up the territory alloted to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan? Even after the Arab states attacked the nascent Israel (and lost), they kept the lands to themselves. Do they believe in the so-called Two-State Solution?
But back to Liz Allen: I have caught her way too many times vascillating between “Zionist” and “Jew” to believe that she does not harbor any anti-Jewish beliefs. When you start using phrases like “Jewish bankers” and how “they” are “freaking robbing the US,” how is that any different from saying [insert race/ethnicity] is “ruining the country”? The answer is it isn’t.
It also cracks me up to see Down With Absolutes defend Liz, yet they just published a post ripping WGMD radio’s Bill Colley as a bigot for wondering why there were no black people at a political meeting.
Sorry, Phoe, but your definition of Zionism is too restrictive, unless you are trying to define modern Zionism as it would have been in 1947. Your assumption that we cannot take distinctions between the pre-1967 borders and territorial expansion is anti-intellectual.
Nor can your statement:
be accepted, because that isn’t what Israel did when she evacuated Gaza. The entire rationale for israel’s militancy falls apart once the Palestinians lay down their weapons.
Now, it’s always possible that a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu would want to push things that way, but such a policy would lead, very quickly, to the fall of that government; if the Israeli public became convinced that the Palestinians had put down their arms in exchange for the occupied territories, such would almost certainly be accepted wholeheartedly, if not unanimously, by the Israeli people.
Nice post but the original post on DE Lib quoted Liz making comments about some “Jew Banker” conspiracy. What exactly does that have to do with Zionism. If you don’t support the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, that’s one thing. If you question the Fed Chairman’s transparency because he’s an Orthodox Jew, that’s other thing, right?
It was clear to me, anyway, that Mr Pico was delineating between anti-semite and anti-zionist and using the “Jew Banker” story to show an anti-semite.
Sorry, Phoe, but your definition of Zionism is too restrictive, unless you are trying to define modern Zionism as it would have been in 1947. Your assumption that we cannot take distinctions between the pre-1967 borders and territorial expansion is anti-intellectual.
Security Council Resolutions 242, followed by 252, 267, 271, 298, 446, 452, 465, 469, 471, 476, 478, 497, 605, 607, 608, 636, 641, 672, 681, 694, 726 and 799 are a pretty good record of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing since 1967, Dana.
Nor can your statement: “Nope. They’d just get forced into bantustans” be accepted, because that isn’t what Israel did when she evacuated Gaza.
Read.
This is what prominent Israelis intend for the Palestinians. It is a prison camp writ large, not a country. It is a bantustan.
The entire rationale for israel’s militancy falls apart once the Palestinians lay down their weapons.
Tell me again what weapons Rachel Corrie was carrying, Dana.
Dana, you have a daughter, and you appear to love her. Tell me precisely what your thoughts would be if she was in labour, and not allowed to pass a police roadblock to a hospital. Try, just for once, to imagine the Palestinians as actual living breathing people rather than inconveniences.
nice post.
Not sure what it says about Liz, but good stuff regardless. Liz is certainly “educated” enough to know that her words and labels mean something. She isn’t just saying them to be funny or make a point no one is aware of. She is doing to be hateful and mean.
Phoe, if a Palestinian woman in labor was held up at a check point, it is because her Palestinian brethren have made life so unbearable and insecure that the Israelis had to set up checkpoints.
I’m certain that you remember that, well after the 1967 war but before the fiorst intifada, about half of employed Palestinians held jobs in Israel proper. The Palestinians did not have their own state, and there was little movement toward one, but they were better off because they weren’t really fighting.
The tragedy that is the Palestinian areas today is due entirely to the Palestinians fighting.
However, it is counterproductive at this point to argue about who is the party more at fault.
I see your comment as indicative of the problem. When one person points out something — in this case, my point that the Palestinians could win by putting down their weapons — we have the other raising the “what about this?” and “what about that?” argument. It seems to me that this whole issue is more about who can get in the last word, who is to get blamed for things, rather than actually seeking solutions.
If we are honest with ourselves, we’d admit that neither side is as pure as the wind-driven snow, with the other the embodiment of Satan on earth. The Israelis have pursued policies which severely limit the Palestinians’ freedom, and the Palestinians have pursued policies which have maimed and killed innocent Israelis. Trying to quantify who is more to blame is worse than an exercise in futility; it is actively harmful to seeking a solution.
So, we need to step back from the raw emotionalism involved in this, and look to what possible solutions could exist. I’d say that there are three:
The first possible solution could have worked, had the Israelis had the will to do it in 1967 or 1968. When they did not expel the Palestinians at that point, when they allowed the Palestinians to continue top live there, they foreclosed this option; it is simply off the table.
The second option is the one favored by Hamas, Hezbollah and al Fatah, but they lack the power to impose this solution, and there is no reasonable prospect that they will have such power in the foreseeable future. This option, too, is off the table.
This leaves only the third option, some sort of modus vivendi in which both peoples share the Levant. In this scenario, both sides win something, and both sides lose something. The Israelis win their peace and security, but lose any notions of a Greater Israel on the lands they conquered in 1967. The Palestinians win their independent state, but lose the land they believe they should own on which Israel proper sits. Yet if we waste our time debating whose loss is greater, and whose victory is less deserved, we lose sight of the goal of solving this problem.
I still say give the Palestinians the land set for them that the Jodanians aggressively stole and leave Israel to Israel… and if you bomb my town, I’ll be the first to volunteer to remove your country from the map.
Phoe, if a Palestinian woman in labor was held up at a check point, it is because her Palestinian brethren have made life so unbearable and insecure that the Israelis had to set up checkpoints.
“She made me rape her, officer.”
One teeny tiny minor point you seem to have overlooked in your leap to blame the victims – the checkpoint was in the West Bank. Not Israel.
I see your comment as indicative of the problem. When one person points out something — in this case, my point that the Palestinians could win by putting down their weapons —
Dana, as has been pointed out, that is your opinion, which is not supported by the actual facts. Given how wrong you usually are, this is not reassuring.
If we are honest with ourselves, we’d admit that neither side is as pure as the wind-driven snow, with the other the embodiment of Satan on earth. The Israelis have pursued policies which severely limit the Palestinians’ freedom, and the Palestinians have pursued policies which have maimed and killed innocent Israelis.
Clarification: the nation of Israel has… and some Palestinians have…
This leaves only the third option, some sort of modus vivendi in which both peoples share the Levant. In this scenario, both sides win something, and both sides lose something. The Israelis win their peace and security, but lose any notions of a Greater Israel on the lands they conquered in 1967. The Palestinians win their independent state, but lose the land they believe they should own on which Israel proper sits.
Once again, Dana, you fail to address the point that Israel is not offering the Palestinians a viable nation. It is being offered a bantustan. Did you even look at the map I linked to?
Dana, it worries me a bit that you never addressed the comments that Liz made that DonViti was addressing. Specifically, the “Jewish Banker” remark. It’s a racist remark. I don’t use that term lightly. Liz’s views on Israel do not make her racist. It’s her false stereotypes and lies about Jews that make her a racist. If you agree with her on Israel, fine, whatevs, but racism should be condemned, not condoned.
Jimmy Carter, in his terrible book Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid, offered a different map, what the Palestinians said the Israeli offer amounted to, but, then again, Mr Carter plagiarized the maps!
Even with those old negotiations, when Ariel Sharon evacuated the Gaza strip, well after the Barak/Arafat/Clinton talks, he didn’t evacuate 90% or 95%, but the entire Gaza. Time has moved beyond your 9½ year old article.
You wrote:
This is pure bovine feces. If Israel, a democracy, is acting as a single entity, then the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas in free elections, are also acting in concert when their elected leadership does something. Further, the Palestinians who are not the direct terrorists are still enabling the terrorists, by providing them with food, shelter and concealment.
It’s the same old, same old: rather than wanting a solution, you are more interested in fixing blame.
When I said that the Palestinians could win by not fighting, by putting down their weapons, our Kiwi commenter replied:
But it should be noted that the Palestinians have not won by continuing to fight, nor is there any realistic chance that they will be able to win by continuing to fight.
X Stryker wrote:
I did address those comments, in this comment on the Delaware Liberal original:
The theme of this article was not the same as that one, and that is why I didn’t carry the point here.
Very nice post, Dana. I think there is a lot of room to argue about the best solution for the Israel-Palestine problem without invoking negative stereotypes about anyone.
[...] For additional debate, please see this DL post and this Common Sense Political Thought post. Off-topic question: Why haven’t I added the group-blog Common Sense Political Thought [...]
[...] For additional debate, please see this DL post and this Common Sense Political Thought post. Off-topic question: Why haven’t I added the group-blog Common Sense Political Thought [...]
This is pure bovine feces. If Israel, a democracy, is acting as a single entity, then the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas in free elections, are also acting in concert when their elected leadership does something.
Quite correct.
However your complaint was that “the Palestinians have pursued policies which have maimed and killed innocent Israelis”. The elected leadership of the Palestinians were not the ones firing rockets into Israel, no more than the government of Ireland is responsible for the actions of the IRA. Your argument fails.
[...] Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – Common Sense Political Thought – Does anti-Zionism equal anti-Semitism? [...]
[...] Fourth place with 1 1/3 points – Common Sense Political Thought – Does anti-Zionism equal anti-Semitism? [...]
Having read many views put out by Zionist’s, it has become apparent that this secular and political organization in order to appear legitimate must continually associate themselves with the Biblical Jewish believer’s who remain obedient to G_d and Torah. It was the Zionist not the Jewish that told the United Nations God gave them the Promised Land.
Researching the egregious history of this secular Zionist group beginning with Herzl all the way to Olmert, the last similarity of these people and their actions will be in any way identical to the true Jewish, who by the way have warned about Zionism since 1897.
True Jewish obedient to G_d and Torah, those that had not left during the scattering of 70AD including many devout Jewish that over centuries returned to Palestine, these for 2000-years had lived in a Jewish Homeland within Palestine living in peace with their Arab/Muslim neighbor’s… until the arrival of the secular Zionist political group.
My suggestion to those not wanting to fall into the Zionist trap, is to clearly separate Zionism from Judaism in your sentences. When speaking of the Zionist-Gov and Zionist’s that formed and control the State of Israel and are presently displacing Palestinians from their homes and land, say “Zionism” are responsible for these act’s, not the obedient to G_d and Torah “Jewish.”
The statement some have made that Zionist’s are ardently trying to establish a ‘two state’ solution is completely false based upon an important and documented fact. If you take a look at their 1917-19 map produced by Zionist for the United Nations to describe their desired State of Israel, it is quickly apparent this land mass encompassed not only (all) of Palestine, but was bloated out beyond these borders into surrounding Arab States (this map is in my web-page link).
If you hear a Zionist state that God gave them the Promised Land (or Israel a part), remind them of the Torah and G_d saying, “the land is mine, and you are but aliens and my tenants.”
I have downloaded a data-table ‘deaths both civilian and military by terrorism’ from Israel (it is in my web page link), showing after Palestinians in 77% turnout voted for the Hamas government, the number of Israeli deaths actually dropped.
It might be added, this was in spite of Israel Occupying Forces during one of their many raids within Gaza arresting a number of Hamas government Officials. I was unable to find out if any of these Hamas Official’s were sent to the Zionist Facility-1391 Torture Center.
Zionist Map
There is a lot of popular mythology re the Middle East. Muslims and Jews lived in relative harmony when the territory in mention was part of the Ottoman Empire. When Sulieman the Magnificent was replaced by Selim the Sot, things went downhill. Many of the far-flung portions of the alleged empire paid only token allegiance to the Sublime Porte.
The slice-and-dice game played by British and French diplomats after WW I ignored ethnic differences and established rather fragile ‘spheres of influence’. Kingdoms were created with ancient names. Egypt had already been endowed with a brief dynasty that would end with Farouk (the family was of Albanian ancestry but they got an Egyptian as Zog I) and be followed by the radical Nationalist Nasser.
Then there was the promise made by Balfour.
The new nations of the Middle East may have had names from history but they were synthetic. The early Zionists were a muddle-headed lot who had drunk deeply from the socialist cup and some were orthodox fanatics. The experience of the Jews in Europe taught them that they needed a secure homeland and could not always trust the kindness of strangers. The militant spirit forged in the stand at the Warsaw Ghetto was more powerful than that inspired by the Alamo.
Jews had been locked into pacifism for centuries and had only recently learned to fight. The British Orde Wingate had a seminal role that most outside of the region have forgotten.
As a socialist state, Israel could have fallen into the Soviet orbit but they were gradually weaned away from collectivism into the the realm of economic freedom.
Those afflicted with the disease of anti-semitism now can play the anti-Zionist card and find their rants to fall within the acceptable pale of political correctness.
The Death Camps had their Sonderkommandos and there were a number of ‘pet Jews’ in Nazi Germany.
The lessons of the heroic struggle in the Warsaw Ghetto should never be forgotten and “Never Again” means a lot more than “Remember the Alamo”.
The domestic Left was all for Israel when it seemed to be a hotbed of socialism. Times have changed. There is a cultural and ideological split between observant and non-observant Jews. The radical fringe tends to be dominated by militant atheists who are more deophobic than disbelieving. Now it is ‘cool’ for some radical Jews to make nice with people who were allied with those who were killing their cousins by the million and criminalizing alleged ethnic origin or faith.
Israel has its religious fringe parties but it is far from being a theocracy on the order of Iran.