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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Antizionism is not antisemitism" I was out last night with a Jewish friend who quit her job at a university in 2023 - 24 due to the fear protests on her campus stirred up for her.

In talking to her last night, it suddenly clicked to me that some Jewish people view any protest against Israeli action as a call to eliminate Israel (antizionism). Some then connect antizionism to antisemitism because they are convinced the existence of Israeli is fundamentally tied to their own existence.  Hence, to them, criticism of Israel (antizionism) is equivalent to killing/eliminating Jews.

It's a math problem where they simplify the equation from:

criticism of Israel = antizionism = antisemitism = death to Jews

to:

criticism of Israel = death to Jews

I wonder if the problem is the emphasis that Jewish practice and culture place on Israel as a geographic location. The Torah emphasizes the importance of Israel for Jewish existence and Rabbis in their sermons constantly refer to Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple, etc. And Passover is a holiday dedicated to memorializing the creation of Isreal as a fixed place, not just a concept or set of ideas/rules to live by.

Are other religions are as geographically tied to physical regions of the world? For example, while Catholics hold the Pope and Vatican holy, I don't think Priests in South American don't constantly tell their congregation tales about the glories of Italy? Or, while Hindus hold Varanasi and the Ganges holy (and many visit or want their ashes released there after death), I think the emphasis is on encouraging visiting but not resettling.

[/quote]

I can’t believe this person calls you a friend. This is some absurd minimizing/gaslighting BS. I’ll preface this by saying I don’t agree at all with what Trump is doing wrt universities, but please put yourself in the shoes of a Jewish person on, say, the Columbia campus:

-Day after day after day for MONTHS you walk to class and hear protestors chant things like “globalize the intifada,” "Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now!" “we are Hamas,” and “Jews go back to Europe/Poland"
-One of your Jewish professors has her office vandalized with swastikas: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/11/29/us/swastika-vandalism-columbia-university. 
-Another professor, who is somehow STILL EMPLOYED by Columbia openly calls October 7 a "resistance offensive" and "awesome.”
-a Jewish student who places a mezuza (Jewish religious symbol) on her dorm's doorway is targeted for months, leading her to leave the dorm
-Another Jewish student is spat at for wearing a Jewish head covering
-Three DEANS of the university, again still employed, attend a panel ON ANTISEMITISM and exchange antisemitic text messages there, such as “Amazing what $$$$ can do'' in reference to an op-ed on antisemitism by a campus rabbi.
-Yet another professor says Israeli students should not be allowed on campus because they are dangerous.

It does not take three steps to get from any of the above to antisemitism. All of the above is blatantly antisemitic. 
No Jew/Zionist I know (and I know many) thinks any and all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. That is an idea constantly trotted out to silence Jews and minimize their legitimate concerns, like you are currently doing.

“They are convinced the existence of Israeli is fundamentally tied to their own existence.” Ma’am, seven million Jews, half the world’s Jewish population, DOES IN FACT live in Israel. The destruction of the state would result in a lot of those Jews ending up refugees or dead. That’s not like, a conspiracy theory your “friend” cooked up in her head. JFC.
[/quote]
This is all horrible and backwards, it’s barbaric. But it doesn’t answer the question as to why Jewish persons are fixated, obsessed with all things Israel simply because God told them so. Ultimately this is the reason for much of this controversy, the fact that God supposedly said this land belongs to people who identify as being Jewish. This fictional book was written thousands of years ago. This shouldn’t be taken literally as no religious book shouldn’t be taken literally as no religious book should. I am not antizionist but rather anti religion period. This will never end because people continue to hold onto outdated rules and principles. Surely there’s another less controversial land mass Jewish persons could occupy? God doesn’t really care where you live.[/quote]

You are making a bunch of assumptions about Jews and Israelis that are flatly incorrect.

Jews are not “obsessed with all things Israel simply because God told them so.” 43% of Jewish Israelis are completely secular. Early Zionist sentiment was predominantly secular, with many early Zionists identifying as socialist and atheist.

The Zionist movement didn’t arise because a bunch of Jews got together out of the blue and said “we own this land because God said so.” It came about because the rest of the world SLAUGHTERED HALF OF ALL JEWS IN A MASSIVE GENOCIDE. I don’t get how this is so completely lost on people. The people that founded the state of Israel had JUST experienced WWII. They had nowhere else to go - the US restricted immigration, they couldn’t go back to Europe for reasons that should be obvious. So they looked at Israel and said “hey, we have cultural/religious ties to this place, there’s no existing country here, the British who are in charge want us to have it, there’s already a Jewish community here…..this looks like our best bet.”

They actually DID consider other places, including Uganda, Madagascar, Japan, the USSR, but were rebuffed for various reasons: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state. Mind you, I’m sure wherever they had decided to settle, people would now be screaming about them being evil white coloniser genocidaires. [/quote]
But why did the early zionists decide to return? Why not immigrate to the US or Canada where life is generally more accepting? Why the constant pull toward Israel? Why Israel specifically? And again not to minimize the Holocaust but Jewish people weren’t the only people slaughtered. Romanis and other groups, as you are aware, lost huge percentages of their population and they still have no homeland. Do they not count? Why were they not given land somewhere to ensure their safety?[/quote]

Can you not read? The US and Canada were restricting immigration severely. The US famously sent a ship full of German Jewish refugees BACK to Germany to be slaughtered in Auschwitz.

Stop bringing up the Romani and using their tragedy as a rhetorical weapon. Nobody “gave” the Jews Israel. They settled there, built it up, established cities, agriculture, infrastructure, government, education, etc. (largely in portions of the land that were uninhabited or sparsely inhabited), obtained international recognition through established channels, and fought several wars to hold on to what they had built. If the Romani had done the same, yes, they’d have a country now and I’d support that.[/quote]
But the Balfour Declaration and the UN after WWII essentially established a separate Jewish state correct? There were people, including Jewish people, living on this land since its inception however the people who immigrated here after the Holocaust were European correct? So again, like the Jewish Europeans, Romani Europeans also had no homeland to return to, and still don’t. [/quote]

Much of it was uninhabited until the Jews came along.[/quote]

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