updated as of yesterday (July 21): based on a statistical model developed by a prestigious medical journal called The Lancet, Israel has killed roughly 434,800 people in Gaza since the country’s military started to attack the territory on 8 October 2023. That’s 20.7% of Gaza’s entire pre-conflict population dead. Over half are women and children.
There are orders of magnitude more Christians than Jews, but even given that, your experience has not been my own. I’ve come across thousands of Jews (American, Israeli, Dutch, etc) who support and defend Israel. 99% of American synagogues are explicitly Zionist and provide material support to Israel and the IDF. The genocide is being armed primarily by Christians, but it’s being carried out literally exclusively by Jews and with the approval of the majority of Jews.
If any other demographic had this much embedded Nazism, we would’ve been speaking about their role in empire the way we openly talk about Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, etc. Scots were once oppressed by the British Empire before they fully integrated and became valuable foot soldiers.
Every real Anti-Zionist Jew has my support, but if Judaism is going to survive, some very difficult conversations need to be had.
I guess that makes sense. My experience is pretty limited. It is important to refrain from antisemitism in combating the Nazi elements, but that certainly shouldn’t stop us from discussing those things.
Definitely. There is nothing inherent to Judaism that orients people toward this behavior, hence the sharp generational divide. It is all about class. But if we’re going to be honest when we say that Israel doesn’t represent Jews, Jews need to start confronting their relatives the way everyone (correctly) insisted white people do about Trumpism.
I’m not an expert in religious history, but I really think Judaism could be heading for a schism over this.
Zionism was considered a fringe movement prior to the Holocaust, the prevailing attitude was towards the Labor Bund, socialism, or liberalism. But because there was a sizable population, following, and political, economic support for establishing an “Ulster” in the Levant, Zionism was permitted and sustained by Western capital and empire.
The war, the genocide, eradicated much of the Jewish socialists and traumatized the survivors into believing the antisemitic beliefs that Jews, despite being native to their European states for centuries, were always strangers - and the strangers should go back to their ancestral homeland: Palestine.
Zionism, as a living coping mechanism for centuries of abuse during Diaspora, indulged in these twisted fantasies in order to free the Jewish people from their oppressors and threat of annihilation. Zionism professes itself as the agent of Jewish self-determination, but while the Israeli government drives the car, Europe and the US pave and path the road, supply the gasoline, and act as their mechanics.
There is so much institutional and ideological saturation of Zionism within Jewish institutions that make it very challenging to be liberated from; however the brazen and constant barrage of Israeli politicians, media figures, IDF troops, and the Palestinians crying out for help through their own broadcast of the starvation and genocide is deepening a rejection of Zionism.
The one thing I would push back on/add is that “Labour Zionism” and the Kibbutzim were fundamental to the Nakba and the current Israeli Holocaust. Just like all the European chauvinists who dissolved the Second International, calling oneself a Socialist does not prevent anyone from pursuing parasitic class interests.
Bund was at least proto-zionist since the beginning, they wanted to monopolise Jewish workers and regularily wrecked attempts to build join front with non-Jewish socialist orgs.
Again, not an expert on this history outside of how it intersects with Palestine, but (perhaps paradoxically) I’m sympathetic to this on the surface. Socialists who aren’t… you know, the Soviet Union don’t have the best track record on chauvinism. Given that, I find it hard to blame a deeply persecuted ethnic minority for not trusting their fellow Socialists.
It was XIX century, and naturally i meant the parties that made no difference for Jews and offered inclusion, not the bernsteinite socialchauvinists, those couldn’t be by default wrecked by Bund.
That makes sense. Universalism is a threat to separatism.