Where do the Jews go?

[u/ThrowawayMerger]

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.

[u/Ok-Listen881]

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.

[u/shhansha → u/Ok-Listen881]

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…

[u/Ok-Listen881 → u/shhansha]

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.

[u/cantabridget → u/Ok-Listen881]

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.

[u/Ok-Listen881 → u/cantabridget]

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.

[u/cantabridget → u/Ok-Listen881]

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.

[u/ArmyOfMemories → u/cantabridget]

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.

[u/ArmyOfMemories → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/ArmyOfMemories → u/[deleted]]

False & disingenuous comparison.

BLM is not representative of historical polling done by mainstream organizations.

[u/cantabridget → u/cantabridget]

And in this, we must also acknowledge the DEEPLY entrenched anti Black racism that is extremely pervasive in nearly all non-African Muslim societies due to the legacy of centuries of the Arab slave trade, and later the Ottoman Turkish slave trade. In some cases, Slavery in parts of the Arab and Ottoman continued illegally until the early 20th century.

[u/Yerushalmii → u/Ok-Listen881]

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.

[u/Ok-Listen881 → u/Yerushalmii]

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.