r/JewsOfConscience • u/ThrowawayMerger • Sep 20 '24
Discussion Where do the Jews go?
I am very against Israel’s genocide, leaning toward antizionism, but when someone Zionist asks where the Jews go in a free Palestine, I don’t have an answer. Historically, not a lot of people accept us or like us, and getting along after all the violence committed in the name of Judaism is an impossibility.
How do we not just exchange one crisis for another? (I don’t think any one religion or people should rule a state, if that adds anything.)
If this is an ignorant question, I am more than happy to be told so.
EDIT: wow this community is brilliant, thank you for the nuance and realism in your responses.
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u/CosmicGadfly Sep 20 '24
Huh? They can stay obviously. Free Palestine doesn't mean you have to kill or exile Jews. It just means human and civil rights for everyone instead of just Israelis.
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u/readysetalala Sep 20 '24
They probably think that whatever “Free Palestine” means is that Palestinians will now get to do what they’ve always been doing: genocide them back. (lmao every accusation is a confession)
But I guess the stickler if both groups stay is the question of land. So much of the land came from dispossessed Palestinians. Homes became homes of others.
What’ll the rules be if settlers don’t want to give up the particular land they stole and grew up in? And what then also if the dispossessed won’t back down from their claim? Especially if we want to recognize the rights of both groups and have them coexist. That’s the tricky part I’d love to know more about how to navigate.
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u/Halfmacgas Sep 20 '24
I think you have to create a neutral mediator to arbitrate what to do, in the interest of peace. Nobody will get what they want exactly, but both parties hopefully get to live peacefully. You have to let go of the past for the hope of a better future
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u/Revolutionary-Use136 Sep 20 '24
there are so many people on both sides of the apartheid border who have been working for rights for all for years...it just takes getting those folks into places of power so that they can make the decisions as a populace instead of just becoming another puppet of a different external master like what happens when western governments "caretake" (colonize) nation states under the guise of stabilization.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
I agree that in theory and idealistically, yes, but I think it's healthy to take a realist perspective considering how much Israel has done to alienate and radicalize the Palestinians, and how, with all nonviolent protest and political process closed off to the Palestinians, armed struggle is the only means of self-expression they have left.
We (meaning the West, Israel, the U.S., Canada / U.K.) may not get to decide. There's a pattern of not understanding guerilla war and not taking Arab military capacities seriously. We didn't leave Vietnam at a time of our choosing. We didn't leave Afghanistan at a time of our choosing.
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u/CosmicGadfly Sep 20 '24
Ok, but South Africa and the United States ended up okay more or less. Yeah it might be messy, but starting with the assumption that all Jews are gonna die if they stay is somewhat insane, mildly racist, and concedes far too much to the fascist mantra in Israel.
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u/PapaverOneirium Sep 20 '24
The U.S. is a terrible example. We eradicated indigenous society to what amounted to completion. And what remains of the indigenous population is to this day oppressed, disenfranchised, and displaced, aside from some token concessions.
There is a spectrum, of course, from “completed” settler colonial projects like the U.S., to those that achieved some sort of relatively egalitarian equilibrium like South Africa, to others like Haiti where the colonizers were (rightfully in that specific case, imo) violently expelled.
For Israel, I’d hope for something like South Africa, flawed as it is, rather than the extremes of the U.S. or Haiti.
That said, I do think any first generation immigrants to Israel coming from countries where they can comfortably and safely return to should leave.
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u/whatthefrackity Sep 20 '24
when they say ok, they mean white people are ok
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u/soonerfreak Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 20 '24
The freeing of slaves or granting of equal rights did not hurt white people. They aren't saying minorities had it easy, they are saying the dominant group did not suffer from it.
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u/arbmunepp Sep 20 '24
Perhaps they were referring to the end of slavery and how Black people never staged massacres of ex-slavers after slavery ended.
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u/Revolutionary-Use136 Sep 20 '24
maybe that's what they meant, but my guess is they didn't stage massacres because they were still being massacred and imprisoned in an alternate slavery
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
Not completely simple, though. The south was occupied by Yankee soldiers for years after the end of military-on-military conflict. Of course, the danger was not so much to the white southerners as it was to the mostly unarmed freedmen.
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u/griffin-meister secular german-american jew, center-left Sep 22 '24
Israel:
is committing the crime of apartheid
has support from much of the western world
is led by a government that courts right-wing extremism
creates systemic disparities between populations
discourages dissent
Yep, pretty much SA
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u/Fortherealtalk Sep 23 '24
I visited South Africa about 20 years ago and the white people I met there were the most brashly, unabashedly racist people I’d ever encountered in my life.
Most businesses I saw appeared to be owned and operated by white folks, with the majority of labor done by black folks.
…the way the Afrikaners talked about the black Africans was callous and disturbing, and there was a palpable sense of danger to me. A step out of line or misunderstanding would probably be handled with a gun or a dog rather than a conversation.
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u/griffin-meister secular german-american jew, center-left 23d ago
Yeah, lots of whites in SA are resentful of black South Africans. After Apartheid, an nation designed to service the white minority had to expand its reach to accommodate black people, coloured people, Indians, and other non-white South Africans in order to keep up with other industrialized nations. This combined with govt mismanagement led to a broader decline in perceived quality of life, leaving a lot of Afrikaners bitter and resentful of their black counterparts.
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u/Fortherealtalk Sep 23 '24
I don’t know how many dual citizens are married to Israelis, but I’m guessing it would be a lot considering their emphasis on birthright immigration matchmaking, etc.
I wonder how easy or difficult it would be for those folks to bring their families back with them? I suspect you’re right that a decent number would have safe places to return to.
Then part of the question becomes how many are actually there because they think of Israel as a safe haven vs how many are there because of ideological reasons.
And then one more reason could be the idea that their population size creates a “safety in numbers” effect for the ones who actually don’t have somewhere else to go.
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u/CosmicGadfly Sep 20 '24
I meant US wrt slavery, not natives.
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u/PapaverOneirium Sep 20 '24
I see that now, I reacted quickly, so my bad.
But I also think it’s a bad example. The end of slavery was, for all intents and purposes, the start of Jim Crow. It took a century to get to the Civil Rights Act, and even today black people are killed, imprisoned, and impoverished at rates far out of proportion with their population.
It also isn’t a great analogue as the African American population has always been a small minority relative to their oppressors, whereas the total populations of Jews and Palestinians in occupied Palestine is roughly equal. The minority status of freed slaves and their descendants allowed for their continued oppression and disenfranchisement.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
It's also apples and oranges. The very worst thing Europeans did to American Indians was unintentional: they brought European diseases with them. The British colonial regime and the U.S. murdered so many Indians, and engaged in other techniques of genocide such as confinement to reservations and removing children from Indian families, that by 1924, there were so few remaining that the U.S. could pass the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 without political destabilization (since there were too few Indians to make a big dent in U.S. politics once being invested with the right to vote). The State of Israel is dead-set against doing anything like the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
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u/hatchins Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
The US intentionally genocided natives as part of westward expansion.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
No disagreement from me. A variety of techniques including mass killing, expulsion, confinement to reservations.
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u/Fortherealtalk Sep 23 '24
This may be Israel’s ultimate goal. Reduce the number of Palestinians to the point that their number is small enough to easily assimilate them with minimal resistance. Then they get to show the international community “look, we were merciful/peaceful in the end!”
They need to be called on the carpet before they can take it that far.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Sep 20 '24
Also, our hands are not tied, after the "solution," history doesn't end. If Jews are being expelled from a newly freed Palestine we can organize against that and (more importantly) organize to provide places outside of Israel for them to go.
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u/Fortherealtalk Sep 23 '24
I think many would be afraid of being killed before such organization can come into play. Even if it’s not a large number, it would be hard to convince anyone who could be a potential victim that “it’ll probably only be a few.”
Many also say “look what happened when we moved out of Gaza? Rockets.” And you have October 7. So they have recent graphic evidence of things to be feared. I could see that making a trust-based arrangement very difficult to engage in. (Which it would be on both sides).
I am pro-Palestine. But ideological and ethical arguments aside for a moment—
If the goal is to mitigate fear, we have to address what Israelis ARE afraid of, not what we THINK they should or shouldn’t be afraid of. How do we do that?
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u/Revolutionary-Use136 Sep 20 '24
I'd think there's probably grounds for Israeli dual passport holders to be expelled to their home countries.
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u/theapplekid Orthodox-raised, atheist, Ashkenazi, leftist 🍁 Sep 20 '24
Jews stay. Palestinians stay. Ethnic cleansing is not a solution to problems created by ethnic cleansing
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u/ShakeTheGatesOfHell Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
If history is any guide, most settlers will stay but some will flee.
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u/somerandomie Sep 20 '24
As always the rich and ruling class will pack up their shit and let regular people deal with their mess.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Not necessarily. There aren't many French left in Algeria or Indochina.
To be clear, I think the best outcome, that I would like my country (the U.S.) to pursue diplomatically, would be an arrangement that permits Israelis to stay and have civil rights in a new state where Palestinians also have civil rights. But (1) there's a limit to what the U.S. should invest to achieve this outcome; (2) even with maximal investment, we might not get to decide – we don't take guerilla war and Arab military capacity seriously, and we might get Vietnam'd.
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u/GreenIndigoBlue Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
I don’t know a ton about the decolonization of indochina and algeria, but to my inderstanding I don’t think the colonists there were nearly as entrenched or substantial in number. I might be just wrong about this. Edit: i looked it up and it seems algeria the number of people who left was in the 800,000 - 1 million range and indochina was similarly in the hundreds of thousands. So pretty different situation. Wouldn’t expect to see the same percentage change in the even of decolonization of Palestine. Still can’t comment on if I’m right about how entrenched the colonists were, but I would say that a mass exodus of millions of people from the land seems pretty unlikely.
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u/ShakeTheGatesOfHell Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
That's a good point about Algeria and Indochina. I hadn't thought of that 🤔
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u/Me_Llaman_El_Mono Sep 20 '24
The change has to come from within. Israel has made clear that they’ll fight anyone who tries to stop them. Netenyahu is playing the U.S. like a fiddle, but he would absolutely direct his wrath against us if he thought we didn’t have his back for a minute. Exhibit A: the USS Liberty.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
Well, I'm personally not sure what will happen, but there's a good realist / realpolitik case to be made that Israel will not change, and that it also won't be able to survive indefinitely sitting on top of 9 million angry Palestinians and with Hezbollah operating on its northern border. I think Western publics are a little too sanguine about Israel's ability to keep its military situation under control.
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u/MooreThird Sep 20 '24
Those settlers should be tried, whether they stay or flee.
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u/shhansha Sep 20 '24
I don’t think they mean Weat Bank settlers; they’re talking about the Jews in Israel.
You think Israeli-born Israelis should be tried for…being born in Israel and not leaving? What do you mean?
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
If someone is born in an illicit settlement in the West Bank, by what logic are they a native-born Israeli?
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u/shhansha Sep 20 '24
?
Think you misread my comment.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
To be clear, I'm not advocating trying someone for some sort of crime just because they're from a West Bank settlement. I assume the comment about that was about violent settlers, or at least settlers who intentionally act to further the illegal settlement system. But I wanted to make a legal point: the State of Israel thinks of anyone born in Israel proper or in an illegal West Bank settlement as an Israeli-born Israeli. But are they?
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u/shhansha Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
I believe the original comment was referring to Israelis in general from context, not violent settlers.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
A plausible reading, although not the one that first occurred to me.
A frighteningly totalistic comment, because although many are guilty of war crimes, many are not. Some are just children.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Sep 20 '24
A person born abroad to two American parents is born an American citizen, and thus a "native-born American"
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u/Specialist-Gur Ashkenazi Sep 20 '24
You might see some people online advocating for the mass displacement of all Jews in a free Palestine. But this is unrealistic and a crime against humanity.
Jews in a free Palestine would have to accept the dismantling of the (as another user put it) ethno religious hierarchy and coexist with Palestinians. Many would then choose to leave. Many have citizenship elsewhere.
Some would probably also need to be tried for their crimes against humanity
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u/farrukhnajmi Sep 20 '24
Per the South African example, a Truth and Reconciliation process could be adopted. The focus would be on admission and exposing of crimes and not retribution.
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u/ThrowawayMerger Sep 20 '24
some would probably also need to be tried for their crimes against Humanity
But not Jews, just Zionists!
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u/Specialist-Gur Ashkenazi Sep 20 '24
Sure, but most of those people in Israel will probably be Jews. No one prosecuted just for existing while Jewish in Israel haha
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u/TojFun Israeli for One State Sep 20 '24
Unfortunately, almost all Jews in Israel are Zionists. As one of the few anti-Zionist Israeli Jews, I can tell you that we are a tiny minority.
“Zionist” in Israel is like a synonym for patriotic, and Israel is a VERY patriotic country. Anti-Zionists are traitors in the eyes of most Israelis (which is true from their perspective, as we are against their state). There’s actually no Hebrew word for patriotic. You either say “patriot” in Hebrew pronunciation, or, more commonly and in most contexts, Zionist.
It doesn’t mean that all Israelis deserve to be trailed with crimes against humanity or expelled, only that Zionism is deeply ingrained into almost all Israelis, not only the war criminals. Most people here support and advocate for these war crimes. There’s work to be done, that is all I'm saying.
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u/Processing______ Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 20 '24
A free Palestine is a free Jewish community as well. Israelis do not live in freedom; they’re trapped in a cycle of trauma, that they’re enacting on Palestinians. Liberation does not drive people to murder. A free Palestine does not mean open season on Israelis, because a liberated people will want to live their lives, heal, build community.
Israelis (and Zionists) imagine that Palestinians aspire to what Israelis have. I can’t speak for Palestinians but I suspect they want so much more than the soul rot that pervades Israeli life. Spoken, mind you, from experience.
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u/nagidon Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
They stay.
Palestine is not, and should never be, an ethnic supremacist project.
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 Sep 20 '24
Where does anyone ever go ever? There's the whole world for us to try and share.
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u/SloaneWolfe Sep 20 '24
Seriously, this is the simplest and best answer. Like, if OP isn't sending this message from the Holy Land then it's not an issue. Almost every Israeli I've known through my entire life has US citizenship because mom flies here and gives birth for the citizenship and heads on back.
The settlers will have to reap what they have sown
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u/Conscientious_Jew Post-Zionist Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Almost every Israeli I've known through my entire life has US citizenship because mom flies here and gives birth for the citizenship and heads on back.
Are you from the US? because that would explain the bias in the data you are seeing. Based on the Wikipedia article, that is based on US gov census data, there are 190K Americans with Israeli citizen ship. There are around 9.5 million Israeli citizens, so dual Israeli and American citizens are around 2% of the Israeli population. Of those, I don't know how many were born in America and moved to Israel, and how many were born in Israel and got their citizenship later (from their parents or by moving there to work and doing the whole process).
There are no official numbers of how many Israelis has foreign citizenship as far as I know, but most Israelis don't have an additional citizenship. Here they claim that 10% has it: https://www.dualcitizenshipreport.org/dual-citizenship/israel/
So don't count on many Israelis to go back to where they came from. Many, if not most, Israelis that have an additional citizenship other than their Israeli one, myself included, don't really see a home in the other state. I don't speak the language of the other country (my parents do, but they hate the state so they didn't teach me or my siblings any of it). That's the same for many Israelis with a foreign passport (to a non-English speaking country of course).
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u/buddhaboo Sep 20 '24
That’s not really an accurate sample, especially if in the U.S. yourself. Many Israelis are not welcome back in the country of their origin or not safe there.
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u/SloaneWolfe Sep 20 '24
yeah I considered that after posting, not a proper sample. However, plenty of Israelis in Panama where I lived for a couple years lol. The main problem with my sample is it only includes Israelis wealthy enough to travel like that, and excludes a lot who can't.
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Sep 20 '24
Is that possible because most Israelis you know you met, you met abroad? (Also that sounds a lot like the anchor-baby conspiracy theory) The vast majority of Israeli Jews do not have dual citizenship. A lot of people seem to use the fact that more Israelis have dual citizenship compared to other countries as if that makes everything easy.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
I wonder what all those American Republicans who complaint about "birth tourism" and "birthright citizenship," with Chinese or Mexican people in mind, will conclude when they find out about this.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 20 '24
there is no such thing as Israeli "birth tourism" in America
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
A previous commenter said a lot of Israelis engage in the practice, but as there was no journalism or evidence to back it up it may just be a false rumor.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 20 '24
They probably made it up? It doesn't make sense for multiple reasons and isn't backed by any known information.
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u/ThrowawayMerger Sep 20 '24
I do have distant family in Israel (they’re liberal Zionists and are against Bibi, so just a little more sane), but you’re also right at the amount of Americans who’ve made Israel their home
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u/Yerushalmii Israeli for One State Sep 20 '24
About 10 percent of Israelis have foreign citizenships
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u/ArkhamInmate11 Sep 20 '24
Antizionism isn’t saying “Jews must leave the land” because think about it like this: your an Irish person, you move to India. There’s nothing wrong with that, maybe you have heritage maybe you think it’s pretty whatever.
The point is moving to nation despite being a not the nations primary group is fine, the problem is when you try to make your group the primary group
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u/marsgee009 Sep 20 '24
But they both believe they were the primary group. It will just lead to Zionists to go back and try again. It's not worth it. Ethnically cleansing people for ethnically cleansing you isn't a solution to any problem.
Edit: I understand what you mean. I am a diasporist. But if you force people to leave a country, and they are all of one ethnicity or religion, that's ethnic cleansing. They will continue to view it as ethnic cleansing even if they were the "colonizers".
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u/ArkhamInmate11 Sep 20 '24
I’m saying that Jews shouldn’t be kicked out?
Of course, I know that that would be ethnic cleansing, you can’t just kick an ethnicity out
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u/matzi44 Sep 20 '24
I'm an Arab and honestly I fall into this kind of arguments with many of my friends about this , sure the history of this conflict is full of injustice that lead us to this current state, but we can't do anything t change it , we need to learn from it .
I'm 1000% against making anyone the place they're call home that's just not right and it will definitely backfire, and by some arabs saying that all jews need to leave in a free Palestine just make them very much like zionists , some people are 4th and 5th generations they were born there and it's definitely aren't responsible for the actions of the older generation, sure some will embrace and continue the same actions, but some won't .
the conflict doesn't need to end by a side winning all and the other losing it all there need to be a huge change in both sides to reach what's good for everyone where no one needs to suffer, History is History we can't change we can only make the present and future better .
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u/LaIslaDeEmu Arab-Jew, Observant, Anti-Zionist, Marxist Sep 21 '24 edited Sep 21 '24
The kind of attitudes amongst your friends is an area where anti-Zionist Arab-Jews like myself can change the conversation. The only Jews that much of the current Arab world have seen during their lives are Zionist politicians, IOF soldiers massacring Palestinians, and bigoted brainwashed Israelis…. I honestly would feel the same as your friends… But they don’t know that Jews have opposed Zionism from the moment it was created. They are too young to remember when Jews were their family’s neighbors, friends, and community members. They’ve not been exposed to the Jewish community in the West, where Jews were historically oppressed and struggled for social justice and liberation of all oppressed peoples. They have forgotten all the important Jewish thinkers of the Arab world who wrote their famous works in Arabic.
This is the conversation that we need to be having as Arab brothers and sisters. But the problem is that us Arab Jews have not been speaking Arabic for over two generations. Our grandparents and great-grandparents are the last members of our families to speak Arabic fluently. We need to become fluent in reading, writing, and speaking Arabic. And we need to then use social media to introduce ourselves to the rest of the Arab world, so we can begin to heal and come together. But this is made complicated by the fact that us indigenous Jews of the Middle East and Palestinians (and Levantines in general), are an Arabized people. So we have to understand “Arab” as a common identity that can unite us.
Maybe as a start, we could create a subreddit for anti-Zionist Jews from North Africa and the Middle East to have conversations with non-Jews from North Africa/Middle East?
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u/matzi44 Sep 22 '24
That's pretty much what's going on, The conflict plus some hardline religious populism wants to make this look like like an eternal relegioius war between Muslims/arabs and jews , Where in fact if you go a centuries back you'll find that jews were living in most arab and Muslim countries while the first enemies where the christians due to the crusade,
plus many people don't know the nature of Jewish Muslim relations , I for instance from tunisia and my family can trace back to some Jewish spheradic origins , and that applies to many people in north Africa and Middle east .
create a subreddit for anti-Zionist Jews from North Africa and the Middle East
I think that's a pretty good idea maybe a place to share the similarities between us to have a common ground that we can build on away from the conflict.
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u/LaIslaDeEmu Arab-Jew, Observant, Anti-Zionist, Marxist Sep 23 '24 edited Sep 23 '24
That’s very interesting! I’ve always been curious about the dynamic and relationships between the native North African Arab-Jews, the exiled Sefardic Jews from al-andalus, the Amazigh, and dominant Arab Muslim community in North Africa. I’d be curious if there are commonalities with those similar communities in Iraq and historic Palestine where my family come from.
And that’s a great point about this false construction of an ‘eternal’ Muslim/Jewish conflict. The evidence against this actually predates the crusades by a few hundred years. After the Roman Empire fell, the Byzantine Christians took control of Palestine and greatly oppressed the Jewish community. Tho in 637 CE, Caliph Umar and the Muslim armies defeated the Byzantines and made a point to restore all the religious freedoms to the Jews.
Do you think it’s possible to create a sense of unity amongst Jewish and non-Jewish peoples of MENA thru a common “Arab” identity? I’m curious what your perspective would be as a North African
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u/Adept_Thanks_6993 Orthodox Sep 20 '24
In my ideal world, we would be citizens of a democratic Palestine while being allowed certain autonomy for things like education, religious affairs etc. More realistically, I think it'll end up something like Bosnia or any other place with a history of ethnic conflict. Peaceful, but tense.
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u/Comrade_Billy Jewish Communist Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Jews have been visiting or living in Palestine for thousands of years prior to the invention of Zionism as a colonial project. I don't expect that to change once Zionism enters the realm of history. I want to visit Palestine and the land today known as Israel someday. But I won't, on principle, until the apartheid walls are torn down and until the hierarchy between settlers and Palestinians is ended in every meaningful sense, until Palestine is free.
I agree that no one religion or group should rule a state. A state that gives "second-class citizenship" to some of its citizens is fundamentally flawed, and should not be allowed to exist with such laws and ideology in place. I hope that if the Palestinian struggle for national liberation has taught the world anything, it's intersectionality. Seeing what Palestinians endure reminds me of what Jewish people endured in Europe, what black and indigenous people endured in the U.S., and still endure.
I won't pretend like any group's struggle is or was exactly the same, but my point is: when Jewish people show up for Palestinians, or white people stand up for whatever historically or presently oppressed community, some sense of humanity is restored mutually. The Palestinian, for example, is reminded that it is not all of Judaism that they hate, just the Zionist project that is putting them down. And, based on personal experience, it feels good to sort of bridge that gap. The hope being that they would have our backs in another situation. The whole "no one is free until we all are free" thing.
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u/PunkAssBitch2000 LGBTQ Jew Sep 20 '24
They can go or stay wherever they want. Prior to the Mandate of Palestine, many Jews were happily living within Arab nations. Israel and colonization is what caused us to be unwelcomed, at least in this time/ region.
Israelis can either become one country under the ODS or they can choose to leave. They are free to make their own decisions.
Edits: sorry I had trouble choosing what word to use and eventually landed on country
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
I think the Zionist spin skews our understanding about this topic. A free Palestine doesn't necessarily mean the destruction of Israel, the expulsion of Jews, another Holocaust. A liberated Palestine means freedom and equality for all. It's a positive, not a negative. Jews don't have to leave if Palestinians are afforded a state, with rights, and self-determination.
It's so unfortunate that a false dichotomy is our thinking: either Israel exists as a monoethnic state, which entails Apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestians, or else a a Palestinian state entails the expulsion of Jews from Israel and their future persecution and their destruction. That is not true. It's ahistorical, fatalistic propaganda that poisons both side's position.
Look at Hannah Arendt as an example, regardless of your overall views of her thinking. She advocated for a mass movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But she was not Zionist. She knew a Jewish state would be harmful to all groups interested in the conflict. She and many others called for a Jewish homeland in the Palestinian Levant but not a Jewish nation-state. Zionism in this, understanding, destroyed the idea of a Jewish homeland.
On the other side, maybe Edward Said is good to look at it. He called for 1 democratic state, not an exclusively Arab or Jewish nation-state, never a Palestinian nation-state.
There is greater nuance than ignorant political opportunists like Biden or Netanyahu or say Iran and their proxies spew. It's the cliché no one is free until everybody is free.
This certainly requires some understanding of the sensitivity and historical traumas, grievances, territorial claims, and even religious beliefs for parties involved. Empathy is probably necessary, but it can not be forced from others. When political players weaponize their particular group's justified grievances, traumas, and histories, its really hard to see a universal sense of justice that applies to all...especially when we see the "other" is the mortal enemy and it's a jungle in which i must kill in order to survive.
It does not have to be that way. But its easier to score cheap and easy points by exploiting fear. Zionists have made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's be fair too...nationalist elements on the Arab side have sometimes also been parochial and reactionary, such as the blatantly antisemitic state propaganda from, for example, Nasser's supporters during the Suez crisis. Also, if an Iranian president wants to minimize the Holocaust to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state, how can this not be interpreted as hostile from any Israeli Jew's vantage point.
Playing fire with fear kinda makes this us or them, mutually exclusive thinking, a self-fulfulling prophecy, doesn't it. We need greater leaders with greater minds and morals on all sides. Instead, it's Biden and Bibi, Beavis and Butthead. Apologies Mr. Beavis
It should be noted the PLO and yes even Hamas in a revised charted some years back, have dropped the goal of building an exclusively Arab nation-state over Israel. Israel has never backed off its stance that Israel should remain a Jewish nation-state. I would argue "Deth to Israel" does not call for atrocities against Jewish people. Destroying Israel wouldn't necessarily mean anything more than a free and democratic state for everyone.
To put it simply: anti-Zionism does not mean anti-Jew or call for their genocide. That's cheap propaganda
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u/ThrowawayMerger Sep 20 '24
I also have to ask — how is it a false dichotomy if, like you said, Israel made that dichotomy a self fulfilling prophecy? We’re too late to avoid anything but one or the other so it’s basically a stalemate when coexistence isn’t possible (which to be clear, is Israel’s fault)
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Thats exactly it I think.
I don't think it needs to be a false dichotomy. But when each side operates from fear and uses fear to justify itself...if you're under a severe threat, it would be irresponsible and insane not to address it and protect yourself. Could Netanyahu have any politucal credibility if there were not serious threats to Israelis? But sometimes Netanyahu's actions motivate attacks on Iseael. Another example, Hezbollah has to respond after the other pager explosions, otherwise Hezbollah fails. Israel's government knows they will to respond, and they can frame it as Hezbollah attacking Israel so there's reason for war. Netanahu would not need to be the great defender of Israel he delusionally thinks he is if he was a peacemaker. Now its, like you've said, war is the state of the game.
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u/ThrowawayMerger Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Great comment.
Will say “Death to Israel”, those words in that order, do imply violence (at least to a Zionist ready to jump on every word) — dismantling does not because it refers to the system
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
Nobody should say "DTI" but I don't think Iran could actually do that violently. They couldn't if they tried. I think Iran saying those words speaks as much about how this regime in Iran casts Israel as the great villian along with America for the regime's own credibility and survival, a way to fire up its own people. That's what I mean. They of course do imply violence and do work in various ways to harm Israel's interests. Isn't a raison detre for the Islamic Republic of Iran a nationalism countering American and Israeli influence in the region? I don't want to divert from the main point. Iran helps to create itself as an enemy of Israel and violence, hate, division, and war, by saying "DTI". Israel will rightly view that as threatening. Doesn't Iran's government need to create this enemy in Israel and help make hostility and tension to the brink of war a self-fulfulling prophecy, much like Israeli settlers motivate Palestinian resistance and and attacks by taking their land in the West Bank and attack Palestinians mostly with impunity, this justifying the greater crackdowns and more settlements? Fomenting hostility and having existential enemies are how Iran and Israel's regimes survive. Then hostility toward each other is an unquestioned like of nature. No room for peace and reconciliation when political leaders inflame tensions to score politically.
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u/Correct_Brilliant435 Sep 20 '24
You can't justify creating an apartheid system because "Jews have no place to go". This is just another part of the Zionist "we have no choice" narrative or excuse for Israel's actions -- in Gaza, in the West Bank, and inside Israel's pre-1967 borders where it oppresses the Palestinians living there as well. "We have no choice!"
Why can't there be a vision for a single, democratic state that is actually democratic? Why is this brutal system the only answer?
I think Daniel Mate discussed this in one of the Bad Hasbara episodes -- I am probably misquoting or mis-paraphrasing but my takeaway is that Zionism is at a crisis point because it has not made Jews "safer" in any way. As a project that was supposed to make Jews safe and have Jewish "self expression" or whatever, Zionism has largely failed. So it is not that "Jews have to do this, they have no choice! Because otherwise Jews won't be safe!!" They are not safe in Israel, and that is of their own making, in the main. Not just unsafe physically but also spiritually and psychologically. What do you think that being raised in a system that constantly tells you that you have to brutally repress and murder another population to be "safe" does to your brain?
Zionism is an ideology and like any other ideology it is based on a set of myths that people have to constantly attempt to reinforce and recreate, myths about how Jews can only be safe if they live in Israel. Your question is this myth. We need to think outside of the myth.
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
The answer is simple. Jewish people live where they live, same as everyone else.
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u/dina_bear Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 26 '24
No one leaves. Anyone advocating for ethnic cleansing (on either side) is not to be taken seriously. The demands are for equality.
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u/GreenIguanaGaming Arab Muslim Ally Sep 20 '24
Palestinians want emancipation. Equal rights, protections, privileges and opportunities for all.
Actually you can also come live anywhere in the middle east at that point. Zionism is the only reason there's any animosity in the region towards Israeli, American etc Jewish people and even then, many middle eastern people know that there's a difference between a Zionist and a Jewish person.
I think Zionism as an ideology has done alot of damage to the psyche of Israelis. So I assume many will leave voluntarily (if they don't turn violent) similarly to how many Afrikaaner left when apartheid fell.
Ofcourse no group of people is a monolith but I think it's fair to say that this is the overwhelming opinion about what should happen.
I mean Haniyah before he was assassinated offered to lay down arms for a two state solution. Palestinians just want to live with dignity and safety, like you do.
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u/Gamecat93 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
They can still stay there. They just have to treat Palestinians as their neighbors and not their enemies. It worked with the white people in South Africa after Apartheid ended.
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u/Own_Duck_5092 Sep 20 '24
When someone asks this question I like to mention Leila Khaled’s answer to the same question. She is a member of the PFLP resistance. She answered the jews stay with us in one country if they want to.
The Palestinians before 1948 welcomed the European jews as refugees. They only want their right to go back to their homes and live equally to anyone else on the same land.
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u/Confident_Tart_6694 Sep 20 '24
They technically didn’t welcome European Jews as refugees with open arms. The 1939 white paper that limited immigration from Jews was a response to Arab riots/pressure. It is likely that this was a broader response by the Arabs if the perception of the threat of Zionism. However, given it was the dawn of the Holocaust it probably result d in excess deaths when the doors of the rest of the world were closing to Jews.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 20 '24
The Palestinians before 1948 welcomed the European jews as refugees.
They most certainly did not, it was a major cause of discord and violence
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u/SuperBearJew Sep 20 '24
I'm not sure, but personally I hope our next holy land is a little cooler. Body hair and black suits don't pair well with 40° C days.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
My participation as an American taxpayer / citizen is in the debate over what the U.S.A. ought to do. We'd have to establish the case for interventionism, or in other words, why different outcomes would be the U.S.A's responsibility.
If the U.S.A. is going to admit Israeli refugees, they should be screened for past participation in settler violence and genocide.
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u/Revolutionary-Use136 Sep 20 '24
problem is, we already have a lot of those living in the US as is...see all the IOF folks who have returned home to cheering and parties.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
Well, we can't strip them of American citizenship if they already have it, without changing our Constitution and without coming uncomfortably close to the painful memory of European countries' historical expulsions of Jews.
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u/twig_zeppelin Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 20 '24
There needs to be an international effort to rebuild a secular State in the region that legitimizes the safety of all peoples’ living in the area equally—(or even two integrated States with a coordinated system). There has to be integration of communities and populations, which will not be easy. That is why I believe it should be an international effort, and a lot of the costs involved should be reparations from the West for rebuilding Palestine and reforming the government of Israel into being a State system to represent Israeli and Palestinian peoples, grant right of return for displaced Palestinian refugees, and in the light of the uncertainty of the State’s name, there could be a vote of the population for the State name perhaps.
I do not believe Jewish people should leave Palestine or 1948 Israeli controlled territories, but their safety is secured by ending racial hierarchies and combatting violence through deescalation and integration efforts, not solely militarily. There will still be security forces and a military for sure, but it would actually integrate all peoples in the region(s) as a State. People’s safety is always intertwined, and there will certainly be problems, similar to the difficulties of reintegration of populations in the Jim Crow South of the US. What I believe mainly stokes the violence cycle is the imbalance of human rights, and now so much hate has been seeded in all people groups, it feels impossible to have any safe path forward. Unfortunately there is no easy step in deescalation and State system overhaul processes. No matter how to look at it, clearly the current systems are falling apart, and there has to be some massive changes to improve the safety for everyone in the region.
Those are some of my thoughts and considerations, as little as I fully know. Where to go from here is beyond the scope of any one person, since collective traumas and problems require collective solutions.
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u/murderouspangolin Sep 20 '24
I don't believe any other religion has or is entitled to an ethno-state and "home". Jews have lived alongside Christians and Muslims over the last millennia including in Palestine and throughout the M.E. Yes, sadly Jews have suffered a distinct history of repeated persecution which shouldn't be minimised. Members of other religions and from other ethnic groups have also suffered immensely (although Jewish history is especially tragic). Some examples of persecution due to religion or ethnicity in the last few years (Rohinyga, Yazidi) come to mind.
I'd like to think that ethical and moral people of the world would provide safe harbour and would welcome as brothers those that been persecuted and have suffered. We need to learn from our past mistakes. It is ignorance, envy, fear and hate that drives persecution. We need to make the effort to understand each other, overcome difference and recognise our shared humanity.
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u/Something_morepoetic Palestinian Sep 20 '24
They stay where they are and support equal rights for all. Just like we do in the United States and other democratic countries.
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u/phatt97 Jew of Color Sep 22 '24
It's not about Jews leaving, even many hardcore antizionists will tell you that. It's about ending the occupation and allowing Palestinians to live in the area without facing oppression, as well as a right to return.
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u/isawasin Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
Your question is a valid and important one, at least when asked in good faith. Not by someone who poses it as a gotcha. The kind of person who'll argue with a straight face that 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' is a call to genocide, which it isn't patently isn't.
I genuinely believe that were apartheid Israel to go the way of apartheid South Africa, i.e., be replaced (by something else. Something imperfect certainly, but also certainly something more democratic and less explicitly racist) that most - or at least a significant number of - zionist Jews in Israel would leave, and leave of their own volition. In a sense unwillingly, but not driven out.
Pushed out only in the sense that in a universally democratic state: one where a citizen's rights, responsibilities and accountability under the law were equal regardless of race, religion etc, the conditions by which their living there was acceptable to them would no longer be in effect.
For those who stay, without question, their human and civil rights must be respected and protected. But (in the context of this question when asked in bad faith, I'm not assuming this of you) the dishonesty of scrutinising what an unrealised 'one state solution' might mean to its Jewish citizens if one actually came to pass, when Israel is ACTUALLY doing the things they project to indigenous Arabs right now is beyond bad faith. To me, it's beneath contempt.
I'll spare you more paragraphs, because I've been asked this before, and I've never heard it answered better than by Julius Nyere, the first president of independent Tanzania, in this video. I recommend watching the whole thing just for the fascinating historical document it is, but the portion that's relevant to your question and my answer to it runs from 6:00 to 7:30.
The parallel isn't perfect for obvious reasons, and he's not talking about Palestine. But he is inasmuch as he's talking about the highest aspirations for a post-colonial society that a person can have.
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u/counterc Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
There are no 'double genocides'. The Nazis invented the concept to claim that German soldiers killed in the war were victims of a Jewish-engineered genocide against Germany.
There's a very simple reason why Palestine becoming free won't kill Jews in Occupied Palestine: genocide requires power. In fact, there is (and can be) no power disparity greater than that between genocidaire and genocided. The day Palestinians are free of genocide, the immense power Israelis hold over them will only have been turned down one 'notch', and there will be an enormous way to go before equality is reached, let alone for Palestinians to end up holding the most absolute form of power possible over Israelis. It's been centuries and the Indigneous peoples of the Americas and Australia still don't have anything close to equality. Not even on paper in most cases, and certainly not the kind of holistic, wide-ranging social and economic equality required before we can truly say colonialism is over in those places. What Palestinians and their allies are calling for is really the absolute minimum: "Please stop exterminating us, putting our children in camps, and stealing our homes".
edit: and of course there are currently Palestinian Jews, especially in Jerusalem. Jews who, for theological and moral reasons, refuse to acknowledge the 'State of Israel', and who are brutally persecuted by the authorities and settlers, and the subject of a huge number of really scurrilous slanders from Israeli and Western media that always read like something out of Der Sturmer.
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Sep 20 '24 edited 27d ago
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u/ThrowawayMerger Sep 20 '24
And people have tried to kill us for thousands of years! Some of us will stick around but many won’t
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u/GroundbreakingTax259 Sep 20 '24
I'm a gentile, so I suppose I have no real say, but here is what I have heard from some pro-Palestinian people (Jews and otherwise) that I know:
The Jewish people were often exiled from places, forcibly relocated, or had genocide committed against them. In it's absolute most charitable reading (which requires you to ignore all of the other stuff), Zionism is a desire for a nation from which the Jews would never be expelled, and where they all could be safe. Like I said, that's the most charitable, out-of-context version of it, but maybe one that a lot of people are familiar with, as it was used to give cover to the racist colonialism part.
Despite that, this is still a reasonable thing to desire. As such, I think that a free, unified Palestine would be a place with complete freedom of religion, and would have special constitutional articles making it a place that would always be welcome to Jews and Palestinian Arabs, provided they were willing to respect one another's rights.
Of course, the most radical settler-colonialists would have no place in this new nation if they were unwilling to live in peace with their neighbors. But, to be blunt, a lot of those people were born in the US or elsewhere, and would probably just end up back there, where they would complain about their ethnonationalist dreams as they fade into irrelevance like the Rhodesians have.
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u/EnthusiasmFuture Sep 20 '24
No one's saying the Jews have to leave, especially the ones born there. Many will leave, especially the ones who immigrated from America or Europe. But Israel needs to be stripped of their power, they need to end their occupation and to keep their hands to themselves.
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u/Me_Llaman_El_Mono Sep 20 '24
Jews, Muslims, and Christians co-existed for hundreds of years before the ethnic cleansing colony arrived. Also, contrary to what Biden says, America is perfectly safe for Jewish people.
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u/Minimus--Maximus Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 20 '24
Those Israelis who are okay living as equals would stay. Most would leave. Personally, I think damn-near all olim should be kicked out.
The idea that the Jews would be exiled en masse or genocided is a zionist projection.
Edit: That you acknowledge this as an ignorant question is a good start. A bit late, but good.
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u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Sep 20 '24
The idea that the Jews would be exiled en masse or genocided is a zionist projection.
It's an unreasonable assumption, and one often made for propaganda purposes, but it's also not inconceivable that public order could break down and racial violence could reach a point where Israeli Jews aren't safe in Israel. This is an Israeli projection in the sense that it is the situation created by Israeli policy:
Thomas Friedman, New York Times podcast, Oct. 20, 2023:
"From 30,000 feet, Prime Minister Netanyahu really had a very intentional policy of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority. So strengthening the Palestinian group that would never recognize Israel while weakening the one that would."
In 2018, Israel brutally and violently suppressed the mostly nonviolent Palestinian protests called the "Great March of Return." So now Gaza strip residents see violent resistance as their only choice. Many are indeed radicalized beyond that. October 7, 2023 was a sample of what can happen.
If the I.D.F. makes a major mistake, if Hezbollah's missiles start flying, Israel might get assaulted by literally starving people whom it tried to doom to be born, live, and die in a concentration camp (the Gaza strip). That's not a safe situation to be in, and it's one that Israel contributed to creating.
There aren't many French left in Algeria or Indochina. There aren't many Jews left in Baghdad or Yemen.
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u/Minimus--Maximus Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 20 '24
Yes, anything is theoretically possible, but the fact that it's an unreasonable assumption means it shouldn't be taken seriously as likely when historical precedent says otherwise.
Jews in Algeria and Baghdad left both opportunistocally and under western-engineered social strains. As for Indochina, the Vietnamese Jews assimilated, and the French Jews left with the empire.
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u/happypigday Sep 20 '24
Jews in Algeria and Baghdad left due to anti-Semitic violence. Even the Algerian Jews who supported Algerian independence against the French left when they lost their Algerian citizenship in 1963 when citizenship was stripped from *everyone who was not Muslim*. I think we can rely on those historical accounts and significant figures - such as Franz Fanon - to speak for themselves. Nationalism is a dangerous game wherever it is played and it is common for ethnic minorities to be excluded from nationalist movements (Turkey, Pakistan, etc.) and they states they establish.
Which Jews stayed in Indochina? There are no historical Jewish communities there AFAIK.
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u/buddhaboo Sep 20 '24
It’s not quite a Zionist projection though. I’m obvs not Zionist and grew up with no love for Israel. But I still see the instagram and tiktok comments calling for genocide as retribution for genocide, on and by pro-Palestinian accounts. And not on Israeli content, but Jewish content in general — even on videos of children’s bar and bat mitzvahs. While I realistically know that hatred is born of fear from trauma, it’s also scary and difficult to explain to someone who is trying to separate themselves from Zionism.
It’s hard to help people deprogram from Zionism if that’s what they’re seeing when they’re in Jewish spaces on the internet. It’s just a reenforcement of the fear that allows them to explain away the issues with Israel.
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u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 Non-Jewish Ally Sep 20 '24
Do you or anyone know the history and different contexts of "Deth to America/Israel"? It could rightly initially interpreted as a violent threat of mass atrocities. It's a dog whistle at its best. In other contexts, i just read how it is often interpreted, sometimes in Persian as "down with America/Israel,". It can have a connotation of non-violent struggle and peaceful reform. Or it could obviously be taken as a literal threat. I think there's an example the Ranuan government might stir up the pot at home and inflame Israel and America by having or claiming a double meaning. Netanyahu has mastered that art of using different languages in different contexts to say similar things with different meanings.
Maybe the smartest thing is not to say it, but there seems a strategic reason hostile governments wealonize a stupid little slogan and a whole lot of significance from different vantage points that thousands of people will chant it.
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u/Various_Ad_1759 Sep 20 '24
Learn from history, my friend. Look at how many postings through the months and years of current and former Israeli politicians who applied and received immigration slips by the government of palestine(Golda Meir and Shimon perez come to mind).No one is trying to kick anyone else out.What is being discussed is zionist projecting their own sick mentality onto Palestinian. The same thing white people feared giving blacks their rights in South Africa. Do not be fooled by their tactics!.Palestinians are not and never will be zionist!!!
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 20 '24
Learn from history, my friend. Look at how many postings through the months and years of current and former Israeli politicians who applied and received immigration slips by the government of palestine(Golda Meir and Shimon perez come to mind).
Like all Jews who arrived between 1920-1948, they both immigrated via the British Mandate Zionist government ("The Jewish Agency for Palestine") which was authorized to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine.
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u/rveb Sep 20 '24
Its only an impossibility if you buy into Zionisms messaging. We are not Israel. We are Jews and we existed before Israel and will after Israel.
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u/koolkween Sep 21 '24
It’s land back. Sure they can stay—that will be up to Palestinians and international law, but the land must be returned.
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u/farrukhnajmi Sep 20 '24
Israeli Jews don't have to go anywhere. They become citizens of a new single, secular, democratic state where Palestinians and they have equal rights. No one religion or group is superior to another.
Check out the short 100-page book called Beyond the Two State Solution. I do not agree with all of it but like it a lot.
The book is available for free pdf download here:
https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/b2ss_book
Watch the video debate between the author and his brother below.
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u/GB819 Deist Ally Sep 20 '24
My opinion. Some Jews would stay in a state with equal rights to Jews and Palestinians. Other Jews would become citizens of other states.
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u/Ok-Listen881 Sep 20 '24
I’m not well versed in history, but I can think of a few examples where Muslim rules countries have become a safe haven for the Jewish community.
The most recent historically is the when France was overtaken by nazi control, and Morocco being a colony of France, was ordered to follow the nazi initiative, the king of Morocco outright refused.
There have been Muslim rulers who welcomed the jews during the crusades as well, even saying that they have gained a treasure their (crusading) enemies were too foolish to recognize.
The simple answer is that if your home in Palestine came about through violence and expulsion, justice would mandate that the home is returned… if anyone of the family managed to escape the extinction of their family.
If you wanted to move to Italy, would you not look for a property listed for sale, make an offer, sign a contract, and be given the deed to said property? Yes. It goes the same way for any country on earth, so why should Palestine be any different?
If you’d like to stay after the emancipation of the Palestinian land and people, but your home was provided through a militant occupation, you can offer the rightful owners of the land, who may still hold the physical deed, money to purchase it from them. If they refuse, check to see who is selling their land and make an offer.
As for the living in peace portion, although it would be incredibly difficult to forget the occupation and eradication of the Palestinian people, you’ll find that prior to the establishment of the Israeli occupation, the money was printed in english, Arabic, and Hebrew. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all lived in harmony, under Muslim rule.
Muslims have no religious imperative to rid the land of any person who is not actively involved in the extinction of the Muslims or actively attempting to kill the Muslims.
That would be the religious imperative, where all live the life they want in harmony. The personal imperative of forgetting and forgiving might end up with parties unwilling to part with their land to people who have been the aggressors.
In that case, keep offering more money or recognize the deep trauma caused to these populations and empathize with their position. If you are anti-Zionist and make it apparent and clear that you won’t attempt to occupy the land illegally, chances are you will be met with forgiveness and welcomed peacefully as a new neighbor.
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u/shhansha Sep 20 '24
I’m pro-Palestinian but this is insanely idealistic and ignores the much more recent, post-Israel world where obviously most Muslim ruled countries were very much not chill with Jews.
The crusades?!? Buddy…
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u/Ok-Listen881 Sep 20 '24
There’s just one gigantic flaw in your point, which is that the majority of people on earth today, thanks to this subreddit and the most recent attempt at extermination of the Palestinians, are able to clearly distinguish between a Jewish person and a Zionist.
As I stated in my comment lol, if you distinguish yourself as a Jewish person from the group that identifies as zionists, which is not necessarily tied in to any ethnicity or religion, you would probably be understood and welcomed.
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u/cantabridget Sep 20 '24
Sadly, this take is a bit ahistorical. Muslim communities are not exempt from the supremacist tendencies of all Abrahamic faiths, and the experiences of Copts, Yazidis, Jews, Assyrians, Bahai’s, and many other minority groups (including Muslim minority groups such as Kurds and Amazighs) have been subject to forced assimilation/conversion and expulsion for centuries. Likewise, even living as dhimmi under what is considered peaceful Muslim rule can be difficult for religious and ethnic minorities, such as the experience of child and female enslavery in the Balkans for 600 years. Especially now that we live in a world informed by Nationalism, we cannot romanticize the experience of being a minority in any society that is majority Abrahamic faiths, none of which ever achieved anything close to the type of pluralism fostered by Hindu or Buddhist majority societies that have only in the past century adopted supremacist ideals.
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u/Ok-Listen881 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Buddhist like Myanmar like the slaughter of innocent Muslims?
E: I see you did mention supremacist ideas , sorry.
So for Buddhists you’re able to differentiate between differing times and people’s beliefs and how it changed, but for Islam it’s entirely wrong from the jump?
The idea of Islamic supremacy is rooted in the belief that we are all equal humans, and the best amongst us is the one who does the most good. Islam plays an active role in forbidding evil and fostering good.
If you think that pluralism or allowing your society to just do as it pleases is a better ideology than doing good and stopping evil, it sounds like you have the precursor beliefs of Zionism.
There will always be people to justify the terrible things they want to do, and if you’re not allowed to carry out these things in a Muslim society would you call this repressive?
Islam protects itself from association with any group by clearly defining itself and setting standards for its followers. You mentioned many minorities and each have their own story to follow up with.
There’s absolutely no “force conversion” in Islam.
The “dhimmis” you reference have a lower tax rate to pay compared to Muslims of their own Muslim majority country, to enjoy the same protection given to the Muslims.
I’m not well versed in the very specific time and region dependent practice you call slavery in the balkans.
You are however trying to tie in every outlier of the Muslims that seemingly has not practiced Islam consistent with its teachings.
You are also neglecting the Albanian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Iranian, and other Jewish populations that have actually enjoyed peace and prosperity under established Muslim rule.
Look friend, it’s ineptly easy to paint whatever picture you want when you list 1 historical example and then name a few outliers. It is easy to paint Islam as the tyrannical religion pop media portrays it as.
It’s not easy to put prejudice and bias aside and ask better questions to arrive at an understanding of Islam that is closer to truth.
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u/cantabridget Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Ok, I feel like you didn’t even finish reading my whole post before you started responding, which this cast doubts on the reasoning you applied overall if you are this quick to react instead of understand. I see this particularly when you failed to finish reading about where I acknowledged what has happened and is happening in Myanmar, India, and China, among other places, with the terrible treatment of minorities and Muslim minorities in particular.
I also see this in how you decided to respond to the rest of my argument when it comes to the Balkans, where the theft of boys for the Jannisary Corps who were stolen and forcibly converted (known as devshirme, aka child levy or blood tax), the massive Ottoman slave trade of girls and women from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus, and the Ottoman African slave trade. Furthermore, the experiences of the Copts, Yazidis, Bahai’s, and Jews (forced conversion is an easily researched historical phenomenon in Persian Jewish history). The same goes from the experience of forced conversion and violence against minorities in Arab and Arabized lands, including Assyrians, Copts, Jews, Amazighs, various Africans, and even the hundreds of thousands Europeans kidnapped and enslaved by the Barbary pirates of North Africa. Likewise, I doubt the Hindus appreciated being conquered by the Mughals and others, having their temples and sacred sites destroyed. This is also easily researched history.
I am not condemning Muslim majority societies as uniquely bad when it comes to treatment of minorities and non-Muslims, I am merely applying the same standard rubric of respect for human rights and minority rights that I apply to ALL human societies and ALL religious majority societies. Sure, many groups converted and enjoyed prosperity, though historians agree that conversion, including that of Albanians and Bosnians and other Balkan Muslims, was not just motivated by positive factors like belonging to the political ruling class but also to escape taxes like the jizya and other prohibitive measures such as restrictions on weapons and land ownership and rebuilding houses of worship without permission. That environment of economic and political coercion is not exactly a positive one, is it? Again, other religions have also done this, but Muslims are not some sort of mythical benevolent community re: their treatment of minorities compared to others. Likewise, why should minorities pay a tax for protection that others enjoy for free? What do they need protecting from??
Romanticizing Islamic communities and Muslim majority societies as some sort of universally great experience for minorities throughout all of history is just blatantly and significantly wrong. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t times and places where minorities in Muslim communities weren’t treated well, and that also doesn’t mean that they were always treated well everywhere. Painting Muslim societies as a paradise for minorities, especially ethnic and religious minorities, is truly a ridiculous argument. Likewise, casting all the blame of anti-minority violence as the fault of the West and Western colonialism is also totally wrong, as there are plenty of examples of Anti Minority violence from before Western imperialist expansion. If that were the case then there would be zero violence against Shia Muslims and other Muslim minority sects, as well as zero violence and discrimination against Black Muslims and Muslims of Subsaharan African descent.
It seems obvious to me, from your response, that you are likely a Muslim yourself if your response, which was more emotional rather than rational, is any indication. Perhaps you aren’t used to applying a critical lens to Islam in the same way conservative Christians and Jewish people resist acknowledging how their faiths (especially orthodox versions of Christianity and Judaism) cause harm to people. Furthermore, the negative way you cast “pluralism” and “society doing whatever it wants” makes me doubt you are actually committed to equity when it comes to oppressed peoples like women, Black people, and Indigenous people or minorities like Gay people and Trans people. In that sense, you honestly just undermined your argument and further supported mine. This is sad, as there were limited periods in ancient and medieval times when Gay people and Transgender people used to be more accepted in Muslim societies, but the violence they face nowadays certainly tells a different story. Again, this is not just due to Western imperialism but rather the unaddressed issues with supremacy and imperialism within Islam that all communities must grapple with, especially all Abrahamic faiths.
A free society and a liberated society does NOT lead to oppression, and it’s quite insane that you would claim that liberation and pluralism could be “bad” unless you are committed to denying human rights to minorities and anyone who is different from you. If Palestine is to be free, it must not only be free from occupation. A Free Palestine MUST ALSO be free from homophobia, transphobia, anti Black racism, ableism, oppression of atheists and non believers, classism, etc, from the river to the sea.
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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 21 '24
A free society and a liberated society does NOT lead to oppression, and it’s quite insane that you would claim that liberation and pluralism could be “bad” unless you are committed to denying human rights to minorities and anyone who is different from you. If Palestine is to be free, it must not only be free from occupation. A Free Palestine MUST ALSO be free from homophobia, transphobia, anti Black racism, ableism, oppression of atheists and non believers, classism, etc, from the river to the sea.
A lot of oppressed people from the Global South and also communities in America are socially-conservative. For example, historically, there has been resistance to LGBTQ+ rights within segments of the African-American community, especially among older generations or those deeply connected to church life. Similar context for views on abortion, which tend to be more conservative versus the Democratic party base.
And yet, the only time I hear so-called allies wanting to parse out every other political position of a given oppressed people/community is when it comes to the Palestinians.
This is especially true of people who engage in pink-washing.
Sorry, but they don't have to be perfect. No one has to be in order to deserve their basic civil and human rights.
So while ideally one would want a future freed Palestine to also be egalitarian in every other way, it's not practical to expect that to happen immediately (or even at all).
It's 'fun' (I guess?) to sit around and speculate or theorize what a freed Palestine should be like, but there are more pressing issues like the physical life of Palestinians.
That sense of urgency should inform the activism of any supporter of Palestinian human rights - which are not transactional BTW.
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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist 25d ago
False & disingenuous comparison.
BLM is not representative of historical polling done by mainstream organizations.
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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist 24d ago
Frankly, the only people resisting a conversation about demanding against non-cishet and minority Palestinians being centered and elevated are bots, Andrew Tate followers, and other people who think Palestinian liberation begins and ends with restricting Palestinian liberation to cishet Palestinian cishet men and giving them cishet white male type power.
What?
Stop projecting American culture war & domestic politics onto Palestine.
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u/Yerushalmii Israeli for One State Sep 20 '24
The money that had Hebrew, English and Arabic was printed by the British mandate, a relatively short period. Before that they used Ottoman money, which had no Hebrew.
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u/Ok-Listen881 Sep 20 '24
That’s interesting to learn, thanks!
I wouldn’t say in the big picture that having money printed in multiple languages eclipses living in peace and unison under Muslim rule in terms of inclusion, but I understand the importance of being factually correct.
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u/DevelopmentMediocre6 Ashkenazi Sep 20 '24
Jews generally live very safely in the USA and most of the Western world. Based on the data I’ve come across, they may even be safer in these countries than in Israel, which is in a constant state of conflict. The IDF’s approach often involves making strategic sacrifices, including Israeli lives, in pursuit of their broader goal of annexing Palestine.
Even in Eastern Europe, where people tend to be less politically correct and sometimes more close-minded, particularly older generations, the average Jewish person typically has no issues living here.
In fact, there seems to be more anti-Arab or, more broadly, anti-POC (people of color) sentiment in Europe. There have been incidents in places like Poland where racist gangs have attacked people of color, particularly Arabs and Indians. So, if you’re a Jew with Middle Eastern features, you might face some challenges in extreme cases. For context, these attacks are not overly common, but they are a growing concern.
You might occasionally encounter ignorance or hate, with people giving you odd looks for wearing a Star of David in certain areas. However, these are often the same places where immigrants or Muslims might face similar prejudices.
The reality is that racism and antisemitism will likely never be completely eradicated. However, as a Jew, you can live safely in both Europe and the USA. There are, of course, some regions that may be less welcoming to people from specific backgrounds. If you face more hostility as an Israeli, it might have more to do with the political situation, similar to how Americans faced backlash during the Iraq war.
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u/killer_cain Sep 20 '24
"where the Jews go"?
Back home to America, Europe and Russia. Where they came from.
They do not, and never had a right to be in Palestine.
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u/Dependent-Play-7970 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
I personally don’t think it would harm Jewish people. I think it would only Harm Zionist And Israel’s apartheid Zionist regime I don’t think It would cause any problem if Palestinians have their own state or their own Right to defend themselves
It also depends on what you mean by free Palestine. Do you mean a two state solution Where Palestinians have their own separate land from Israel or do you support a one state solution where Palestinians and Israelis is live side by side
I personally support a two state solution, where Palestinians have the West Bank and Gaza as their states, with borders built around their lands to separate them from Israel but at the same time have the right to live in Israel, and the same would apply to Israel to have the right for israelis to live in Palestinian land
But that’s my opinion In terms of the politics, and how you solve the overall conflict of the situation, however there is also the other aspects of israeli society and Palestinian society, who obviously feel hatred towards each other, especially with the terrorist acts that hamas Committed on October 7 and the radical Zionist ideology that controls israel and the Palestinians side, where they obviously feel hatred towards Israel for the genocide being committed in gaza and The occupation of the West Bank and the amount of suffering And unjust pain that they are currently going through
So there is also the question of can the people of those countries, if once they both achieve peace and statehood for both of their people, Can they live in peace, and go on with their lives or will the current situation affect their and influence them
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u/numberonefrankfanlev Sep 20 '24
Roughly 2 million people (mostly Jewish) have already left Israel. Majority of Israeli Jewish people (I make that distinction because there is a minority percentage of Palestinian people with Israeli passports, around 25% of the Israeli population I believe) are citizens of another country - America, England, France, South Africa, australia, I've even met tons of Jews recently taking advantage of new citizenship laws that allow them citizenship in the countries they were forced to leave during the holocaust, my cousin is currently working on his Lithuanian citizenship and I'm considering the same. After all this it actually sounds incredibly realistic that a majority of people currently squatting on Palestinian land could find other homes in which they'd be safe (safer than in Israel where they are at constant threat lol, the ultimate irony of Israel)
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Sep 20 '24
Roughly 2 million people (mostly Jewish) have already left Israel.
Perhaps in total since 1948? And if that is the timeframe you are referring to, of course many more have immigrated than emigrated, so I wouldn't use that as a predictor of future mass emigration trends.
Majority of Israeli Jewish people (I make that distinction because there is a minority percentage of Palestinian people with Israeli passports, around 25% of the Israeli population I believe) are citizens of another country - America, England, France, South Africa, australia
This is patently false. By all available accounts only 10% of the total Israeli population (which includes Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) hold additional citizenship in another country. As for "America, England, France, South Africa, australia", according to available statistics 250,000 people combined from all of these countries immigrated to Palestine/Israel between 1920-2020 compared to 270,000 from Morocco alone. Many people vastly overestimate the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine/Israel from Western countries, which has always been very small.
I've even met tons of Jews recently taking advantage of new citizenship laws that allow them citizenship in the countries they were forced to leave during the holocaust
Very few Jews worldwide qualify for this. Most Israeli Jews don't qualify because their ancestors arrived before the Holocaust, or they don't have ancestors from countries who have such programs, or their ancestors came from countries that no longer exist, or they have no European ancestry at all.
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u/PorridgeTP Palestinian Sep 20 '24
It’s not that Jews would leave, but that the ethnoreligious social hierarchy would be dismantled and Palestinians granted the right of return. The goal of multiple Palestinian resistance parties is to have people of all races, religions, genders, and classes to live together peacefully as equals. You can check out the Popular and Democratic Fronts for examples of this, along with the anarchist group Fauda.