My understanding of the definition of Zionism was the movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine from the late 19th century through to 1948. With that Jewish state already established, and its future more secure than it has been historically, what does Zionism mean today? I hear the term used most often by academics like Noam Chomsky, who supports a single, secular state solution to solve the mid-east conflict.

I'm thinking that today, Zionism means the support of the continued existance of Israel as a Jewish state. A Zionist, by this definition, would include everyone from your most radical right-wingers, who believe the West Bank is part of Israel and have no respect for the Palestinian nation to Alan Dershowitz to ... well.... me, and others who desire the immediate end to the occupation of Israel, BUT support a two-state solution for the sake of ending the century-long conflict.

It seems that, when people like Noam Chomsky or you guys start talking about Zionism, you start painting me with the same brush that you do with Alan Dershowitz, and with American Neoconservatives. But I don't support torture under any circumstance, I don't support the continued occupation of Israel, I didn't support the bombing of Lebanon in 2007 and I don't support the continuous harrassment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government.

So:

1) Am I a "Zionist"
2) Is a Zionist inherently unprogressive
3) If I am a Zionist, do I deserve to be painted with the same brush as the Neocons?

I have no doubt that Zionism has left and right wings, but at the centre of Zionist ideology are the facts on the ground which is marked by inhumanity toward another people on the basis that they were born the wrong religion on the wrong land.

It probably won't be easy.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: West Coast Greeny ]

There are, however, two problems with Zionism:

1. Whatever it may once have been, it has now irrevocably (seems to me) turned into the ideological underpinning and justification for a brutal colonial, aggressive, and nakedly racist enterprise called Israel which deprives a nation of its democratic rights, violates international law at will, maintains a nuclear arsenal, commits aggression and assassination and torture and keeps a region in a state of perpetual warfare or near-warfare. That's what it is today.

2. What it was from day one was the theory that Jews cannot live among the nations - they must constitute themselves as their own "nation" with their own territory and state. This trend is poisonous to Jewish traditions of enlightenment and solidarity; it is the mirror image of the anti-Semites who have sought to segregate and ghettoize Jews; and it poses grave danger to the future of the Jewish people, just as it poses for the last 1/2 century a grave daily danger to other peoples.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
I have no doubt that Zionism has left and right wings, but at the centre of Zionist ideology are the facts on the ground which is marked by inhumanity toward another people on the basis that they were born the wrong religion on the wrong land.

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Wrong, FM. There were Zionists who went to Israel as immigrants to live in peace with their Arab neighbours (just as Jews had done in Palestine for many centuries) and with no aim of setting up a "Jewish state". They went as collective farmers aiming to build themselves a little utopian colony. They even had principled opposition to using wage labour. They scorned private property.

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Stockholm you may not call people racist and bigots.

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I'm not calling any particular person a racist or a bigot. I'm simply making the hypothetical observation that if you call anyone who believes in "Zionism" a bigot or a racist - then you would yourself be saying something bigoted and racist.

I don't consider anyone who believes in having a Palestinian state a "bigot" or a racist" either. To say that would be a bigoted comment as well.

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Wrong, FM.

....

Whatever it may once have been, it has now irrevocably (seems to me) turned into the ideological underpinning and justification for a brutal colonial, aggressive, and nakedly racist enterprise called Israel which deprives a nation of its democratic rights, violates international law at will, maintains a nuclear arsenal, commits aggression and assassination and torture and keeps a region in a state of perpetual warfare or near-warfare. That's what it is today.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

You seem to be disagreeing and agreeing with me at the same time.

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I'm not calling any particular person a racist or a bigot.

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Look in the mirror.

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Stockholm there are people on this board who give masters level lessons on just this type of annoying hair splitting. Leave it to the experts. (from whom I have no doubt we'll be hearing)

There are Zionists today who are unadulterated racists. Some even involved in Israeli politics. Those I condemn.

Most modern Zionists today support a two state solution. Like me many want to see an end to the occupation and a fair and negotiated settlement acceptable to both peoples who have a fair claim on the land.

Today's Zionists are not the Zionists of the early 20th century. There has been an evolution of sorts based on years of war, unfairness, and yes degradation committed aagainst Palestinians.

It has led to betrayal, mistrust and a split in the philosophy of Zionism which ought to be an expression of Jewish nationalism. Not everyone accepts such a notion especially the manner in which it has been expressed by some. Yet I firmly believe that Zionism can fit (albeit uncomfortably) with the legitmate aspirations of the Palestinian people. What is needed is an understanding that this will come about only when the legitimate aspirations of all peoples in the area are respected.

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, you might conclude that the only way to feel safe was to have your own country?

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Plus, every other country in the world slammed its door shut to any Jewish refugees and turned a blind eye while the Holocaust occurred.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
But yourself in the position of European Jews in 1945. [...]

Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, you might conclude that the only way to feel safe was to have your own country?

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The way you talk is really appalling. You obviously, obviously, have no shadow of a connection with any Holocaust survivors, to say a thing like that. What crap. My parents, and so many of their compatriots, all of whose families were murdered, came here and to the U.S. and other countries. They came legally (a few) and illegally (lots more), to build a new life. The U.S. and Canada were great centres of Jewish civilization. Everyone had relatives in the "goldene Medinah". They came, despite the filthy racist barriers and the right-wing politicians who turned a blind eye to Nazi war criminals and collaborators entering here, while being vigilant only against Jews and communists and inferior types of various kinds...

Very few said, "let's go to Palestine". The Zionists did - from left to right - but they were a minority in the she'erah (the "Remnant") of the Jewish population.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Didn't rosevelt want to open the door to millions of Jewish refugees?

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The other thing is that a lot of European Jews were socialists and they didn't want to live in capitalist societies like Canada and the US. They thought (perhaps naively) that by going to Palestine, they could build a socialist utopia with everyone living on kibbutzes with no personal property etc...

One of my best friends is the son of those far-left Zionists from Vienna - they were a bit like Bundists, but thought a State for Jews was necessary - in terms of self-determination.

(Mum is still alive, and lives in a leftist kibbutz in Israel, after living in Brazil and elsewhere after having the premonition to leave Vienna between 1933 (Hitler in Germany) and 1938 (Anschluss).

Sure, I understand the feelings of Holocaust survivors - I knew many (most have died natural deaths) and my sweetie is the son of a couple of them - though his parents, persecuted though they were, did NOT live in a death camp). But that horror is not an excuse for oppressing another people - although of course at the time, the simple urge to live was more than understandable. Even in the immediate postwar period, great German-Jewish intellectuals Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt refused the most extreme and militaristic forms of Zionism in a famous 1948 declaration.

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but don't you think it is not hard to understand why so many Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust would think that creating Israel was the only way to feel secure?

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Yes, but the foundation of a Jewish homeland hasn't garunteed them that security. Even if Ben Gourion had taken an empty peace of land in Germany or Uganda and turned into A jewish homeland, people who supported his brand of Zionism would still have made certain that the residents of the new country would've been afraid of black people or German gentiles.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Nothing is a guarantee of security, but at least I have the peace of mind of knowing that if another Hitler came to power in Canada and started inciting pogroms and urging genocide - I could move to Israel at a moment's notice.

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Any Jew who thinks that Israel is a safe haven for Jews at this point in its history is absolutely crackerjack insane.

You would live in a state that worships militarism, sucks up to religious fundamentalists and is hated by millions of people all over the middle east?

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

Is mainstream liberal zionism as represented by people like David Grossman inherently unprogressive? Yes, it is.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by johnpauljones:
The ship referred to above was the ss st louis. The boat was turned away from all ports of call and returned the jews on board to germany and their slaughter at the hands of the nazis

Abella's book none is too many is a great book and talks of the institutional racism both in the federal liberal party of the 1940's and 1950's and the canadian civil service at external affairs

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Correct. That proves the need to fight against racism and xenophobia all over the world.

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Any Jew who thinks that Israel is a safe haven for Jews at this point in its history is absolutely crackerjack insane.

You would live in a state that worships militarism, sucks up to religious fundamentalists and is hated by millions of people all over the middle east?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
In the long run, I agree, but in the meantime, all those Jews aboard the St. Louis died and if Israel (or even just Palestine with open doors to Jewish immigration) had existed in 1938, they would have lived.

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(I'm asking. That's the way it looks to me as a gentile with few Zionists in my circle of acquaintances.)

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:
Taking a riff off of unionist's first comment, would it be fair to say that Zionism - or, or at least mainstream Zionism - has been constrained by a perceived need to act as apologist for virtually any policy of the state of Israel, no matter how ill considered, counterproductive or just plain hare-brained? Thus, the majority of Zionists feel obliged to defend the counter-productive policies like (over the years) massive settlement of occupied territories or the security fence?

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Taking a riff off of unionist's first comment, would it be fair to say that Zionism - or, or at least mainstream Zionism - has been constrained by a perceived need to act as apologist for virtually any policy of the state of Israel, no matter how ill considered, counterproductive or just plain hare-brained? Thus, the majority of Zionists feel obliged to defend the counter-productive policies like (over the years) massive settlement of occupied territories or the security fence?

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
I hear the term used most often by academics like Noam Chomsky, who supports a single, secular state solution to solve the mid-east conflict.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
That may be true to some extent among "Zionists" living outside of Israel. But i can assure you that within Israel NO ONE feels any need to be an apologist for anything the Israeli government does.

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I'll find myself in rare agreement with Stockholm here, Malcolm. When I answered your question, I was focussing on Zionists outside Israel - the kind I grew up with; the kind that believe Israel is the home of the Jews but who don't go home. They, even the most "left" of them, find themselves constrained to defend ethnocentrism and aggression, even if on occasion they dare to speak out weakly against the Occupation.

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A friend of mine just got back from a month in Israel. He says that in the past year, terrorist attacks have been almost non-existent, the economy is booming, there are construction cranes everywhere, a subway is planned for Tel Aviv, the alternative cultural scene and the gay scene have never been more vibrant, tourism is up, the stock market is soaring and the whole feeling is very multicultural with more and more Chinese and Indian restaurants etc...The thing people are most upset about are the corruption charges against Olmert.

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Originally posted by B.L. Zeebub LLD:
For the record, this is incorrect. Unless Chomsky has done an about-face that I don't know about, he is in support of a two-state solution.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
That may be true to some extent among "Zionists" living outside of Israel. But i can assure you that within Israel NO ONE feels any need to be an apologist for anything the Israeli government does.

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I agree, mainstream Zionism has moved to the right in North America, aligning itself with the neoconservatives. The Hillels on university campuses for example tend to be dominated by extreme rightwing activists these days and of course you can count on so-called "Jewish leaders" to defend the most reactionary Israeli policies.

[ 17 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

While not all Zionists are racists we need to frankly admit its racist origins. Remember that Herzl was open to a Jewish state in Africa, he wasn't originally 100% dead-set on Palestine. And just as South African whites supported trade unions and the Communist Party along with apartheid, many early Zionists believed in socialist equality - for Jews only.

Since when is the "Jewish left" dead. there are tons of leftwing people all over the world who are Jewish (ie: the Lewises, Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick, Noam Chomsky and many, many, many, many others).

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Stockholm ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Are you also a racist if you are a Quebec nationalist who believes that an independent Quebec must preserve the pure-laine Quebecois language and culture?

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Not at all.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
What about First nations reserves that give rights to residents who are members of that First nation and not to anyone else? Are those First nations all racists as well?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Since when is the "Jewish left" dead. there are tons of leftwing people all over the world who are Jewish (ie: the Lewises, Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick, Noam Chomsky and many, many, many, many others).

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One can't really expect the so-called "Jewish Left" to be as big as it was in the 1930s and 1940s when they worked in the garment industry on Spadina, etc.

Actually I think you unintentionally bolstered Max's point - Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick and Noam Chomsky aren't exactly "Zionists"...

In fact I think there is a growing trend of progressive Jews rejecting Zionism. The so-called "Jewish leadership" has moved to the Right and thus mainstream Zionism is more rightwing than it used to be.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

Anyway there's no doubt mainstream Zionism has moved right - and that's why I think a lot of Jews are increasingly rejecting Zionism altogether.

Of course it's important to keep in mind for many years most Jews weren't Zionist - and interest in the diaspora was pretty minimal until 1967.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
Anyway there's no doubt mainstream Zionism has moved right - and that's why I think a lot of Jews are increasingly rejecting Zionism altogether.

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To be fair LP Canadian Society has moved to the right. I find that the the Jewish Community has generally moved to the right. Even those of us who identify ourselves as from the left are more right-wing than a generation ago.

Is their a liberal zionism? yes. But if one does not accept zionism then they will never accept those who believe in a liberal zionism.

Myself I am and always have been in favour of a true 2 state solution. Does this make me a liberal zionist? I think it does.

But I would say that the so-called Jewish leadership is much more rightwing than the Jewish population generally. The Zionist groups tend to support more hawkish policies.

Did this disconnect always exist? Maybe so - the CJC threw out the UJPO in the early 1950s, after all.

What I do see however is that younger Jews - those under 40 let's say, born after the 1967 war, who grew up in the shadow of a hawkish Israel - are less "Zionist" than their parents. Of course the Hillels on the university campuses tend to attract extreme rightwing zealots which probably does a good deal in turning Jews away from Zionism.

ETA: Judy Rebick noted recently that a lot of Jewish peace groups have made anti-Zionism a basis of unity. While anti-Zionist, she argued this was problematic as it turns off the large number of progressive Jews who may be perfectly willing to protest against hawkish Israeli policies but are uncomfortable with anti-Zionism.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
What I do see however is that younger Jews - those under 40 let's say, born after the 1967 war, who grew up in the shadow of a hawkish Israel - are less "Zionist" than their parents.

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I don't think we can generalize like this. I think it depends on the kids did they go to day school, cheder, camp. What youth groups etc.

I think that their are those members of the younger generation who see themselves both as progressive -- whether they be involved with orgs such as v'havta, stand canada, hands on toronto. or maybe they work with Reena, Chai Tikvah or JFandCS -- but also they are zionist.

The difference is that many of the "younger" zionists are firmly in favour of a 2 state solution rather than 1.

I still think that those who are against a Jewish state are in the minority. They are a small percentage of the community.

You're right there's a problem in using US polling for Canada - as like Canadians generally, the Jewish community here is more progressive than their southern counterparts.

But still we haven't really determined what "Zionism" is. If it's just Israel's "right to exist" then most Canadians are. If it's a belief that Israel must be a "Jewish state" then it's somewhat smaller. If it's believing that Jews ultimately belong in Israel, it's a very small minority indeed.

So let me rephrase what I have observed: younger Jews are less reflexively pro-Israel, even if they consider themselves Zionist, than their parents.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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To be fair LP Canadian Society has moved to the right.

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Lies his fathers told him

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AMBIVALENCE

By Jonathan Garfinkel

Viking Canada, 352 pages, $34

A whole generation of Jews under 50 are discovering that they've been lied to about the State of Israel. They were told that Israel had been created in a land largely empty of Arabs, but are discovering there were hundreds of thousands of Arabs living there when the big aliyot (Jewish immigration) began in the early 20th century. They were told that Palestinians voluntarily left their homes in 1948 in order to create space for the Arab armies to wipe out the Jewish state, and are discovering that some of that exodus was caused by Jewish terrorism against Arab villagers and by forced evacuations ordered by David Ben Gurion and carried out by young soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces. They were told that Israel is the one democracy in the Middle East, but are discovering that democracy has different standards for Jews and Arabs within the pre-1967 borders, and no democracy at all for millions of Arabs in the occupied West Bank.

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[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
What about First nations reserves that give rights to residents who are members of that First nation and not to anyone else? Are those First nations all racists as well?

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They would be IF

1) They had a defense force that was randomly beating non-FN people just for having lived on FN lands firsts(which would mean the FN weren't actually the FN so it's impossible)

2) They had deprived non-FN people of a livlihood by destroying crops the non-FN people had been harvesting for centuries(as the fascist settlers did with the Palestinian olive trees).

3) They had driven non-FN people off of FN lands by the hundreds of thousands through unprovoked massacres(see "Deir Yassin" for reference).

4) They had spent decades insisting there was no such thing as a non-FN person(as the Israelis did with their knowlingly dishonest "There's no such thing as a Palestinian" canard).

1)Zionism, or at least the wish for Jews to have some sort of a state where they could live in safety, is not inherently racist. The development of "actually existing Zionism" or what might have been called realzionismus had Erich Honecker been asked to name it, however, has had deeply racist consequences.

2)Realzionismus, among other things, has done a lot to morally degrade those who worked to build it and those who defend it from without. People who had known nothing but repression and injustice allowed themselves to be persuaded that they had to support a state which was repressive and unjust. A great tradition of fighting for a better world and standing up to mistreatment of people was badly compromised, and (it can now well and truly be asked) for what? Holding a piece of land for the sake of holding a piece of land?

3)Realzionismus ended up being a huge misdirection of anger. The rage that should rightly have been directed at the English-speaking countries for not taking in Jewish refugees and other antifascist refugees in the 1930's and 1940's has ended up being turned against a non-European people who were not responsible for Hitler's crimes.
And those English-speaking countries, who between them could easily have taken in all the refugees(and who could have given military training to the able-bodied among them to go back and fight Hitler) were, in the end, let off the hook, because they were arming this new country in its pointless land war with the Palestinians.

The world failed to protect the Jewish people and the others who were targetted for annihilation by Hitler. Zionism, had it been developed on the humane and socialist lines envisioned by most of its founders, might have created something good out of the chaos.

But there were too many who accepted the corrupted notion of Zionism leading to "a state like any other" to make this possible. Those who accepted this, those who dominate still the Labor, Likud and Kadima parties, destroyed all dreams, ideals and hopes within Israeli politics, leaving realzionismus in its place.

And this realzionismus, with its worship of the IDF, its hatred of any notion of peace, its insane alliance with "Last Days" evangelical Christians, is what we now speak of when we speak of Zionism.
It is realzionismus, not Zionism, that the Hillels and the CJC and AIPAC demand unquestioning support for from the Jewish community.

Israel exists, and is going to go on existing for many years. Part of the reason for this is that, as all of us know, if it didn't, those same "pro-Israel" politicians in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would once again bar their doors to the exiles that would come from the state going out of existence. And none of us would be able to prevent this.

The need is for a revolution within Israel, a rejection of the "security is more important than anything else" meme and the "security means stopping a Palestinian state at all costs" meme as well. The IDF also needs to stop being seen as the most important institution in Israeli society, one that can never be question.

And the notion of Israel as an egalitarian state needs to be restored, this time including egalitarianism between Jews and Arabs, as should have been the case from the beginnings.

Zionism is a nationalist movement that ended up having the same failings as every other nationalist movement in history. In the end, this should have been expected.

Finally, WCG, no, you don't deserve to be painted with the same brush as the neocons. But you do have a particular obligation to speak out and be active against the abuses of human rights and the unjust dispossession of their lands that has been visited upon Palestinians.

And Stockholm, no it isn't about who does and who doesn't have the rights to a nationalist movement. It's about how the political entity(whether a state or a "nation" in the FN sense, behaves once it has gained political legitimacy).

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Israel exists, and is going to go on existing for many years. Part of the reason for this is that, as all of us know, if it didn't, those same "pro-Israel" politicians in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would once again bar their doors to the exiles that would come from the state going out of existence. And none of us would be able to prevent this.

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I sincerely doubt that Ken. If some dickwad of an arab potentate dicided to destroy Israel, many (though certainly not all) of the Israeli refugees would find safe harbor in the countries you mentioned. This isn't the 1940's, if the ethnic clensing of "the holy land" does occur these people won't have just staggered shoeless and starving out of Auchwitz.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

(Probably Harper thinks the same way, but wouldn't ever just come out and say it).

And Stockholm, part of the problem with the 1947 deal was that Ben-Gurion was telling his supporters "don't worry, we'll get more later". If B-G had said "this is what we get and that's as far as we go", it would have been different.

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
You don't understand US politics then, CMOT. Half the reason conservative American politicians are pro-Israel is that it means they can keep that many more Jews away.

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Tony Judt is a scholar who was until recently best known for his writings on European history. But then, in a 2,900-word essay in the October 23 edition of The New York Review of Books, Judt dropped the intellectual equivalent of a nuclear bomb on Zionism, calling for the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state.

Judt argued in his essay that Israel is quickly on the way to becoming a "belligerently intolerant, faith-driven ethno state." The ethnic basis of Israeli laws, Judt said, was counter to the modern, democratic ideals to which Israel holds itself. In place of a Jewish state, he argued, should emerge a binational state with equal rights for all Jews and Arabs currently living in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

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Judt told the Forward that while he understood the controversial nature of his call for a binational state, he was taken aback by the refusal of most of his critics, especially the American ones, to even consider the idea. European and Israeli readers and discussion partners did not voice the same vehement objections to his proposal, Judt said. Indeed, the only approving response published in The New York Review came from writer Amos Elon, an Israeli expatriate now living in Europe.

"Americans, unlike most other Jews in the world, think of Israel not as a country, but as a guarantee," Judt said. "It made me feel a growing responsibility to provide another way of looking at these issues."

Judt seemed remarkably unperturbed by the deeply critical response to his essay from American Jews, a reflection that appears to stem in part from his rather dim opinion of the Jewish community. "It is such an insecure community," Judt said, "so desperate to find some basis for its own identity."

The scholar said that he does not identify with Israel or the American Jewish community, and acknowledged that this partially explains his lack of attachment to the Zionist state.

Still, Judt said, he considers himself a "proud Jew." He said that he has every intention of providing his two young sons with a strong education in Jewish history and tradition, while also instilling a respect and understanding for the other religions in the Western world.

Judt has mostly shied away from any Jewish communal involvement, except for his stint as a judge for the Koret Jewish Book Awards. With other Jewish dinner engagements probably off the table for the foreseeable future, Judt said he plans to continue in that capacity.

"I don't see why my position on Israel should disqualify me as a good Jew in the Jewish community or Jewish literary circles."

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http://tinyurl.com/2ntfma

[ 19 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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And of course there's the whole evangelical Christian thing, plus Israel's usefulness for US foreign policy objectives.

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But you know there have been a couple of interesting books out recently that make a very strong case that Israel is actually not useful at all to US foreign policy objectives. Israeli lobbyists have done a good job of convincing a lot of American politicians that Israel is important to the US - but in reality the reverse is true. The level of American support for Israel has actually been extremely damaging to American foreign policy. Israel is one dinky little country and now that the Cold War is over - its not even important to the US as a place to use in a potential World War 3. But by being so pro-Israel the US has earned the hostility of 1 billion Arabs and on top of that Israel has manipulated the US into all kinds of catastrophically bad foreign and defence policy fiascos. For example, by all accounts the Mossad, knew full well that there were no WMD in Iraq, but they sure didn't want the US to know that because they wanted the US to attack Iraq. But as we know the US war in Iraq has proven to be a complete fiasco.

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You don't understand US politics then, CMOT. Half the reason conservative American politicians are pro-Israel is that it means they can keep that many more Jews away.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I think its a perfectly apt comparison. The moment that you accept the idea of a nation being created based on a common ethnicity (as most are) then you accept that Israeli Jews have a right to a nation if they choose to have one - just like the Quebecois have a right to a nation if they choose to have one and so do the Mohawk and so the Swedes and so do the Kurds and the Chechens etc... It would be nice if the world were just one pluralistic nation - but such is not the case.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Just think if the Arabs had simply accepted the UN partition plan of 1947, Israel today would be just 2/3 of the pre-1967 Israel and there would be a Palestine made up of all the "occupied territories" of the West Bank and Gaza, plus large parts of the upper Galilee and more - but the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They just refuse to make any compromise or ever consider peace and instead war after war occurs and in each case they end up with LESS than what they had before.

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Zionism has ironically come to resemble - both ideologically and in tactics - the exclusive European ethnonationalism that gave birth to it.

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Ah yes, Stockholm, it's nice to believe that having a state for Jews is a good idea

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It is in part. Zionism, at least the Zionism that 99.9 percent of Zionists believe in, is the belief that an ethnically pure state must exist in order to save Jews from discrimination.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
At some point Americans are going to wake up to the fact that having too close an alliance with Israel has been an unmitigated disaster for US foreign policy objectives

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
It is in part. Zionism, at least the Zionism that 99.9 percent of Zionists believe in, is the belief that an ethnically pure state must exist in order to save Jews from discrimination.

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...Plus among WASP country-club types who think "there goes the neighbourhood" when someone named Goldstein buys a house on their block.

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My goodness! Have we really been teleported back to 1953? The evangelical anti semites do exist, but are you certain that the liberal elites of new england still have an anti Jewish bias?

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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"The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States and meets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill, where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced. The Washington Puppet Show should be replaced."

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Israel Controls the U.S.?

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Sure, it's right there in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Haven't you ever heard of ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government??? What planet do you live on?

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Sure, it's right there in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Haven't you ever heard of ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government??? What planet do you live on?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Israel has manipulated the US into all kinds of catastrophically bad foreign and defence policy fiascos. For example, by all accounts the Mossad, knew full well that there were no WMD in Iraq, but they sure didn't want the US to know that because they wanted the US to attack Iraq.

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
How is what Nader any said any more offensive than this?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Hmmm..."exclusive European ethnonationalism" - let me guess you mean like Nazism? Anyone else making that claim would be called a racist troll.

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Nice try, Stockholm re: your entirely predictable attempt to change the subject. But as usual you miss the point entirely and are in dire need of a history lesson.

European ethnonationalisms of the 19th and 20th Centuries were by-and-large exclusivist, xenophobic, and often - though not always - antisemitic. Theodor Herzl didn't write in a vacuum, but in an intellectual and academic climate foggy with romantic idealisms about the purity of nations, the non-commensurability of national claims, the incompatability of national zeitgeist, and thus the need for single ethnic states. He would have told you as much. German fascism was only one particularly virulent instance of the phenomenon, and a rather late one at that if pogroms in Russia, the violence in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire that kicked off WWI, and the ravaging of North American indigenous people by new "Americans" are any evidence.

And to the inference that comparing Zionist ethnonationalism to other violent ethnonational programs is "antisemitic" I would only counter that if Zionists wish Israelis to be accepted as equals among nations, they must accept that they will be judged equally when their nationalism results in colonialism, segregation and worse.

Just like when you claim that an entire group of people are pigheaded, violent and want war rather than peace.

Sauce for the goose, and all that.

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

I think that Zionism is a nationalist movement like all other nationalist movements, and this has been the problem.

Obviously, Stockholm, there aren't going to be mass expulsions of Jews from the land now known as Israel. I can't see even Hamas being that thick-headed.

There could be a series of some kind of discriminatory measures passed against the Jewish population, and there needs to be great vigilance against this.

Zionists, if the Zionist movement is to survive, need to change their rhetoric. They need to admit that Palestine never was "a land without people".
They need to admit that Deir Yassin and the coordinated campaign to force innocent Palestinians to leave their homes was completely unacceptable.

And they need to admit that a state that priveleges any one religion(and this applies to those states labelling themselves as "Islamic" as well, so we need to address that too) will end up being an intrinsically repressive state, especially when members of the majority community sense their majority eroding.

Zionists need, it seems to me, to accept that Israel will not go on being a state defined as it is currently defined. They need to work instead from the premise that a secular democratic state, no matter the religious majority, would be just as valid an objective.

This would not be a defeat, it would simply be a resumption of the original Zionist project, which was a democratic state in which Jews would be safe, not a Jewish-only state.

For their part, Palestinians need to admit that, while Zionism ended up taking on important characteristics of imperialism, it was not intended as an imperialist project from the start and that many of those who came to the Zionist state came not because they had an obsession with driving Palestinians off of their land, but rather because, thanks to the continued antisemitic arrogance of the English-speaking democratic countries, those people had nowhere else to go.

And those English-speaking nations need to issue a blanket apology for this continued exclusion, and to acknowledge that blocking most of those refugees from immigrating to their countries while forcing them to live instead in a desert warzone was a shameful failure of moral responsibility.

And, in the end, the project needs to change(in both communities and among the supporters of both communities around the world)from backing narrow and essentially right-wing nationalist movements to a global movement against greed and all forms of bigotry, a movement that accepts that people should have the right to live in the countries of their choice, and that no one should ever be excluded because they're "The Other".

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 20 November 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

"We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back."

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And, in the end, the project needs to change(in both communities and among the supporters of both communities around the world)from backing narrow and essentially right-wing nationalist movements...

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
It should also be noted that for the longest time "Palestinian" was the term used to describe Jewish residents of Palestine and the people we call Palestinians today were known as generic "Arabs".

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[ 21 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

I think that when ll is said and done, everyone knows what has to happen in the Middle East and it is a two state solution. The Palestinians don't want to be a minority in a country that would have a Jewish Israeli majority. The Israelis don't want to eventually be minority in a single Jewish/Palestinian state...all you have to do is look north to Lebanon to see what inevitably happens in a scenario like that. In Lebanon they haven't even had a census since 1943 because everyone is so scared to know the truth about which community is bigger.

It's just a matter of time before Palestine will be a country made up of Gaza and the 95% of the West Bank that is on the "other side" of the "wall", wish some possible tradeoffs of territory. People of Palestinian descent will be free to move to Palestine. Jews will be free to move to Israel and that wll be the end of it.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
But yourself in the position of European Jews in 1945. How would you feel if 90% of your compatriots had been systematically murdered ...
Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, you might conclude that the only way to feel safe was to have your own country?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
What about First nations reserves that give rights to residents who are members of that First nation and not to anyone else? Are those First nations all racists as well?

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Just pointing out an interesting fact.

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[ 21 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by ohara:
Are you accusing Stockholm of promoting genocide? People have been banned from Babble for less.

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Are you suggesting that Rembrandt was a child molestor?

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What do you call it when the Arabs expelled Jews living in settlements near Hebron and from the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem and also expelled hundreds of thousands of Jews from places like Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut, Yemen etc...and expropriated all their property?

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Those Jews were resettled in Israel, the U.S. France etc. and while in the Israeli case they weren't resettled very well(then as now the Ashkenazi elite of Israel treated many of them like shit) a lot of Middle Eastern Jews live quite well in their respective countries and have rights. The Palestinians don't have rights, they live in political limbo, they are murdered and stolen from. They starve while settlers live in villas with big ass swimming pools and advocate their expulsion from the land they have occupied for centuries.
[ 21 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 21 November 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]