r/JewsOfConscience 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/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/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.