Reply to Antisemitism vs anticatholicism

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Antisemitism is not just about religious belief.[/quote]

Bingo. Jews are despised for being Jewish, not because they are religious.[/quote]
No. We despise Zionism.[/quote]

Zionism is code for Jews.[/quote]

No, it's not. Zionism is the [i]minority[/i] of American Jews who still support Israel.

Zionism is also Christians who have nothing but violence in their hearts, for the sake of their messianic mythological prophecy. 
[/quote]
Zionism is still the majority view of most American Jews. I think you're misunderstanding what Zionism is. One can (and many do) support the existence of the State of Israel and the right of its citizens to live in peace without supporting Bibi's administration or the specifics of the way his government is handling the war in Gaza (or settlements in the West Bank). Much like how I can be a patriotic American without supporting Trump or the Republican majority's policies. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand.[/quote]

This is the modern liberal whitewashed version of Zionism that is really not grounded in reality.

Anybody who calls themselves a Zionist falls into one of two camps:

Evil: because they know exactly what Zionism has meant for Palestinians: displacement, massacres, occupation, apartheid. They see it, they accept it, and they justify it.

Ignorant: because they’ve bought the sanitized PR version of Zionism as “just Jewish self-determination,” without ever looking at the Nakba, the ongoing ethnic cleansing, or what “a Jewish ethnostate” on stolen land actually requires.

There’s no clean, innocent version of Zionism. Its history and its present are the same: violence and removal or elimination of Palestinians to a degree that allows Israel to  exist.[/quote]

This. Zionism is not merely the belief in a Jewish homeland. Nothing comes without consequences. It isn't as if Israel was some empty piece of land - people lived there. Palestinians LIVE there. Kicking them out for the sake of your "homeland" is inherently violent.

Finding and buying an empty, deserted piece of land for a homeland? Ok, sure. But Israel wasn't created without severe costs to others. If you support zionism, you inherently support violence. 
[/quote]

Great, so what do you want to do about it going forward? This is not an argument in the 1890s or 1920s or 1940s about whether to start allowing Jews to migrate there. (Many of whom did, in fact, buy empty parcels of land, though I don't say that to deny that many others also murdered inhabitants or otherwise forced them out violently.) I don't see the point in litigating "should Israel have been founded" when it's already existed for almost 80 years.

But Zionism IS, in fact, merely the belief in a Jewish homeland, or at least, it can be. It certainly doesn't have to be the maximalist version espoused by the Israeli government and many of its allies. [b]Why are you trying to tell me I have to choose between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, on one hand, and people who think there shouldn't be a state of Israel at all, on the other?[/b][/quote]

Because this person is not having a discussion with you in good faith. They want Israel to cease to exists and are coming up with excuses. [/quote]

While I'm sure there are some people that hold that position in the US, they seem to be few and far between.

While their path and method was a bit different (and much more sudden),[b] the modern Jewish population in Israel are basically the descendants of colonizers who brought great harm to the existing population[/b]. And while no colonizers have done a good, or even adequate, job with this, I do think the colonizers that came out on top have an obligation to those they stepped on to clean up the mess they made. And Israel has consistently done the opposite of that.[/quote]

This bold part isn’t true. Most Jewish Israelis today are descended from Middle Eastern Jews who arrived after the state was established and their families were expelled from their native countries. [/quote]

Are you under the impression colonizers only include the very first group of people off the proverbial boat? Come on.[/quote]

Where are you living and when did your family arrive?[/quote]

I actually dig into this a lot recently hoping to find a path to citizenship in a European country...

It varies, but I was surprised to see how early many of them came. Many came from England in the 1600s, settling initially in either Virginia or Massachusetts. I would certainly call them colonizers.

A fair number came from modern day Germany and the Czech Republic in the second half of the 19th century, settling in then-sparsely-populated areas in the midwest. I'd also consider them colonizers.

Then there's a handful that came from Norway in the early 20th century.

[b]So yes, I would certainly say I'm part of the society that has an obligation to the descendants of the native populations and slaves that certainly got the bad end of the deal and continue to face institutional challenges today.[/b][/quote]

Great, what specifically are you doing about it? What sacrifices have you made?[/quote]

For one, I haven't gone out and killed 60,000 Native Americans and Black Americans. Nor have I displaced 2 million others. [b]I also haven't built any homes for myself in areas that don't belong to me.[/b]

Of course, we both know that problems of this magnitude require institutional and political effort, even if you don't care to acknowledge that. And acknowledging it is a whole lot easier than actually doing anything about it. you haven't said a lot here, but the limited number of things you have said (e.g., your position on the withdrawal from occupied territories) would suggest you're likely moderate, maybe even a little progressive, compared to Israelis. And if you're not even willing to acknowledge such things, it doesn't speak well for the chances that the Israelis will ever do what is needed for peace.[/quote]

Isn't the idea that none of this country really belongs to you? [/quote]

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