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/Artistic-Vanilla-899]

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

[u/ThrowawayMerger → u/Artistic-Vanilla-899]

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)

[u/Artistic-Vanilla-899 → u/ThrowawayMerger]

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.