4 ms·

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

gwd 3y ago
Can you expand on that? One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing. If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of. But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.
- Asparagus7426 3y ago
  It's more of a vilifying caricature than an actual "interpretation of Zionism." Even the most right-wing branch of Zionism, revisionist Zionism, which indeed advocated for the entire biblical territory of Israel in the past, simultaneously believed in full and equal rights for its Arab/Palestinian citizens, as outlined by its founder, Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.
  - twixfel 3y ago
    The Palestinians were/are already there. The Israelis have as much right to that land as modern day Anglo-Saxons (i.e. English people) have to North-West Germany and Jutland, i.e., none. Having said that, just as I support the continued existence of any other country, many of which were built on conquest and colonisation (e.g. the United States of America), I support the continued existence of Israel, but it's a very difficult to argue that the expansion of Israel and the colonisation of the Southern Levant by Jewish settlers was justified or morally right, just as it's difficult to justify the Anglo-Saxon conquest of what became England or the settlement of the Americas, whilst not believing either that the US or England should cease to exist.
    - Asparagus7426 3y ago
      No one is denying that. What is often overlooked, however, is that Jews were always part of the historical landscape of Palestine. They were only a minority in Palestine because of European interventions (Romans, Byzantines, and Crusaders). Referring to Jewish settlement as "colonization" is ridiculous because, like the Palestinians, Jews are indigenous to this region. Even more so when considering the cultural aspect of indigeneity to a region. Judaism is a direct continuation of Canaanite and Israelite culture, which predates colonization. Whereas modern Palestinian culture is the result of the Arab/Islamic conquest of the Levant. The issue that some people characterize as colonization is, in reality, a matter of migration. In fact, one of the early demands of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s was to halt Jewish immigration, and they sought to enforce this demand through violence. And this violence snowballed to the current ethnic conflict between arabs and jews. If we compare this to the present day, imagine a bunch of trump supporters marching through the streets attacking/murdering Mexican immigrants. It's a no-brainer that these people would be considered racist criminals. But this is exactly what happened in Palestine in the 1930s. And the situation changed only for the worse. Yet, people (especially the left) still sides with those criminals instead of supporting a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians.
- edanm 3y ago
  Most people don't have that much knowledge on the matter, nor do they have a very well thought-out idea of what they're actually advocating. A simple "pro-Israeli" vs "pro-Palestinian" split is kind of ridiculos, as you say - there are many interpretations of what it even means to be pro-Israel, since Israel itself is in the middle of a political crisis in which its trying to figure out this question! Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc. And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate? (There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)
  - weatherlite 3y ago
    > There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem Give us a few, I'm interested.
    - edanm 3y ago
      I mean, Israel now is located on land that was partially owned by Palestinians. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes, partially by various Arab leaders of the region, but also by Israel itself. The Palestinians certainly have a legitimate grievance with what happened in 1948. In addition, a lot of the occupied territories are effectively lands in which Palestinians are to some extent "imprisoned", neither having their own country, nor being granted any kind of citizenship. These lands were won in a war, true, but the standard course of action is either to return them, or to annex them, neither of which Israel has chosen to do (for obvious demographic reasons). But the end result is a situation in which millions of Palestinians were driven out of their home in 1948, and are now refugees living in territories with no self-determinance. Israel isn't without a complicated history and a complicated existing situation. The same can be said of many countries, btw.

gwd 3y ago

Can you expand on that? One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing. If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of. But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.

Asparagus7426 3y ago
It's more of a vilifying caricature than an actual "interpretation of Zionism." Even the most right-wing branch of Zionism, revisionist Zionism, which indeed advocated for the entire biblical territory of Israel in the past, simultaneously believed in full and equal rights for its Arab/Palestinian citizens, as outlined by its founder, Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.
- twixfel 3y ago
  The Palestinians were/are already there. The Israelis have as much right to that land as modern day Anglo-Saxons (i.e. English people) have to North-West Germany and Jutland, i.e., none. Having said that, just as I support the continued existence of any other country, many of which were built on conquest and colonisation (e.g. the United States of America), I support the continued existence of Israel, but it's a very difficult to argue that the expansion of Israel and the colonisation of the Southern Levant by Jewish settlers was justified or morally right, just as it's difficult to justify the Anglo-Saxon conquest of what became England or the settlement of the Americas, whilst not believing either that the US or England should cease to exist.
  - Asparagus7426 3y ago
    No one is denying that. What is often overlooked, however, is that Jews were always part of the historical landscape of Palestine. They were only a minority in Palestine because of European interventions (Romans, Byzantines, and Crusaders). Referring to Jewish settlement as "colonization" is ridiculous because, like the Palestinians, Jews are indigenous to this region. Even more so when considering the cultural aspect of indigeneity to a region. Judaism is a direct continuation of Canaanite and Israelite culture, which predates colonization. Whereas modern Palestinian culture is the result of the Arab/Islamic conquest of the Levant. The issue that some people characterize as colonization is, in reality, a matter of migration. In fact, one of the early demands of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s was to halt Jewish immigration, and they sought to enforce this demand through violence. And this violence snowballed to the current ethnic conflict between arabs and jews. If we compare this to the present day, imagine a bunch of trump supporters marching through the streets attacking/murdering Mexican immigrants. It's a no-brainer that these people would be considered racist criminals. But this is exactly what happened in Palestine in the 1930s. And the situation changed only for the worse. Yet, people (especially the left) still sides with those criminals instead of supporting a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians.
edanm 3y ago
Most people don't have that much knowledge on the matter, nor do they have a very well thought-out idea of what they're actually advocating. A simple "pro-Israeli" vs "pro-Palestinian" split is kind of ridiculos, as you say - there are many interpretations of what it even means to be pro-Israel, since Israel itself is in the middle of a political crisis in which its trying to figure out this question! Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc. And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate? (There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)
- weatherlite 3y ago
  > There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem Give us a few, I'm interested.
  - edanm 3y ago
    I mean, Israel now is located on land that was partially owned by Palestinians. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes, partially by various Arab leaders of the region, but also by Israel itself. The Palestinians certainly have a legitimate grievance with what happened in 1948. In addition, a lot of the occupied territories are effectively lands in which Palestinians are to some extent "imprisoned", neither having their own country, nor being granted any kind of citizenship. These lands were won in a war, true, but the standard course of action is either to return them, or to annex them, neither of which Israel has chosen to do (for obvious demographic reasons). But the end result is a situation in which millions of Palestinians were driven out of their home in 1948, and are now refugees living in territories with no self-determinance. Israel isn't without a complicated history and a complicated existing situation. The same can be said of many countries, btw.