Reply to Antizionism is not antisemitism/the current conflict

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t need to read 28 pages of back and forth.  Because the following are true:

1) You do not have to be Jewish to be a Zionist
2) Not all Jews are Zionists
3) Zionism is a political theory not a religion
4) Israel has many non-Zionist Jews within Israel and their own government (are these Jews antisemetic?) 
5) Equating Zionism with Judaism (and anti Zionism with antisemitism) erases the diversity of Jewish opinion, silences legitimate political criticism and weaponizes Jewish identity, shutting down debate and ironically promoting antisemitism by making it harder to distinguish between prejudice and protest.

[/quote]

Yup, every point is absolutely true. Problem is Zionists don't like points 3, 4, and 5.[/quote]

They don't like 3? I've never heard anyone claim Zionism is a religion. It's clearly a political theory — informed by and for the benefit of a religion, but it's obviously not a religion. Also, Israel does not have many non-Zionist Jews in its government.

I agree with point 5 generally. But I also think anti-Zionists flatten Jewish opinion, as well, at times.

For instance, I am, in theory, a Zionist; I believe the state of Israel should continue to exist in some form as a Jewish state. I also believe the war in Gaza is now, at best, a hideous collection of war crimes for no purpose; that decades of occupation are destroying the country from within; and that there's no way for Israelis or Palestinians to ever have peace unless there's a contiguous Palestinian state on most, if not all, of the pre-1967 territory Israel now controls, and possibly more to avoid cutting Gaza off from the West Bank. And I believe many of the settlers in the West Bank are insane religious zealot criminals who should be moved out of their homes by force as soon as possible.

Obviously, to some critics of Israel, my belief that the state should keep existing as a Jewish state, even if it's on a smaller footprint that mostly encompasses areas where only Jews live, puts my whole view far out of bounds. But I also don't really endorse 90 percent of "what Zionists believe" or "what Zionists like." And I know from talking to people at my synagogue that my view is not really as rare as you might think from reading this board or social media.  [/quote]

They don’t like 3 because antisemitism is an attack, across the board, against Jews. When Zionism is viewed as a political belief it is significantly more susceptible to criticism, specifically the question of “at what cost?”  Shutting down criticism is much easier if one can simply yell antisemite in defense.[/quote]

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