[gwd]

Can you expand on that?

One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing.

If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of.

But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.

[edanm]

Most people don't have that much knowledge on the matter, nor do they have a very well thought-out idea of what they're actually advocating. A simple "pro-Israeli" vs "pro-Palestinian" split is kind of ridiculos, as you say - there are many interpretations of what it even means to be pro-Israel, since Israel itself is in the middle of a political crisis in which its trying to figure out this question!

Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc.

And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?

(There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)

[twixfel]

>And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?

I think the point is that those countries you say are "nation states" are in fact turning away from being nation states, or already have. Most of Europe learned from the 19th and 20th centuries that nationalism (despite being very romantic in many ways) ends in disaster. I am from the UK and it cannot be said to be a nation state, if it ever was. My country is full of people with immigrant backgrounds from all over the world with full citizenship rights who are a million miles from being "ethnically English" or "ethnically Scottish". As it should be.

So yeah in my opinion, an "English nation state" is undesirable. I don't want it. I'm glad we're not one.

[edanm]

I understand and somewhat share that sentiment. But I think you're wrong in a few ways.

Firstly, I think it's only some segments of the population that are turning away from being nation states, and I think that idea is far less common than us liberals think. Many countries are facing "crises" because of immigration. I mean, the UK itself did Brexit partially because of fears of being too beholden to other countries, which isn't exactly the same thing as going back to a nation state, but I think comes from a similar place.

Secondly, as a Jew, I am extremely aware of the history of my people. While I really wish that I didn't live in a world which might one day decide to kill me just for being Jewish, I unfortunately don't live in that world now. I unfortunately have to want there to be at least one country in the whole world which will for sure always take in and defend Jews, because the world has proved the need for that many times throughout history, obviously with the Holocaust being the worst example.

How do I square my progressive sensibilities with my thinking that there needs to be a Jewish country? I don't know. Most people don't have that problem - not many Swedes have to contend with the idea that the country will no longer be Swedish, and that no other country will want to take them in. That's just not a relevant concern for Swedish people.

It is an acutely relevant concern for me.

[twixfel]

I suppose it is perfectly rational for you to want a Jewish state, and you have one now and I do not wish to argue that it should end and clearly it has its benefits for people who are Jewish. I only take issue with the way in which it was founded, which like so many countries on the planet, was extremely problematic. Indeed in that sense there is nothing special about Israel at all, it's just another country founded by force and colonisation, like my own was, albeit in the first millennium.

Put it this way—you wouldn't found a state the way Israel was founded today. You wouldn't found a Roma state in Northern India. Israel is here and it's here to stay and that's it, and there's lots to admire about what Israel is and has become since 1948. Having said that, let's not do it again elsewhere in the world with some other ethnic group lacking a nation state, of which there are so many.

[edanm]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this.

For one thing, I think in practice, it's not true that states are no longer founded this way - well, I guess the question is what "this way" means to you, but if you mean "founded in order to be a country for a particular ethnic group", then I think you're wrong - some ethnic minorities really are splitting off from countries in order to form countries for themselves.

In addition, I think there are certainly some people who think ethnic minorities are entitled to founding a country.

As for Israel's founding, there were certainly some problematic aspects, but let's also remember that in some ways it was a much better way to found a country than many others have done. It was land that belonged to the UN, and the UN proposed to make a country there for Jews, as well as for Palestinians. The Jews living in Israel (for the most part, in land that they legally purchased and developed) accepted this proposal. The reason this wasn't accepted was that the Palestinians rejected it, and Israel was attacked by Arab countries. The land that is now Israel is where it is because of a war of defense waged by Israel.

A lot of bad things happened in that time, for sure, but this was actually far better than the way most countries were founded, in many ways. Not perfect, and it did have the effect of a lot of people being displaced, because they rejected a proposal that would give them that land, for various reasons. But better than a country just deciding to conquer another country and just murdering/cleansing all the locals without any thought to it, as is the founding story of most countries.

[weatherlite]

> There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem

Give us a few, I'm interested.

[edanm]

I mean, Israel now is located on land that was partially owned by Palestinians. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes, partially by various Arab leaders of the region, but also by Israel itself. The Palestinians certainly have a legitimate grievance with what happened in 1948.

In addition, a lot of the occupied territories are effectively lands in which Palestinians are to some extent "imprisoned", neither having their own country, nor being granted any kind of citizenship. These lands were won in a war, true, but the standard course of action is either to return them, or to annex them, neither of which Israel has chosen to do (for obvious demographic reasons). But the end result is a situation in which millions of Palestinians were driven out of their home in 1948, and are now refugees living in territories with no self-determinance.

Israel isn't without a complicated history and a complicated existing situation. The same can be said of many countries, btw.

[Asparagus7426]

It's more of a vilifying caricature than an actual "interpretation of Zionism." Even the most right-wing branch of Zionism, revisionist Zionism, which indeed advocated for the entire biblical territory of Israel in the past, simultaneously believed in full and equal rights for its Arab/Palestinian citizens, as outlined by its founder, Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.

[twixfel]

The Palestinians were/are already there. The Israelis have as much right to that land as modern day Anglo-Saxons (i.e. English people) have to North-West Germany and Jutland, i.e., none. Having said that, just as I support the continued existence of any other country, many of which were built on conquest and colonisation (e.g. the United States of America), I support the continued existence of Israel, but it's a very difficult to argue that the expansion of Israel and the colonisation of the Southern Levant by Jewish settlers was justified or morally right, just as it's difficult to justify the Anglo-Saxon conquest of what became England or the settlement of the Americas, whilst not believing either that the US or England should cease to exist.

[Asparagus7426]

No one is denying that. What is often overlooked, however, is that Jews were always part of the historical landscape of Palestine. They were only a minority in Palestine because of European interventions (Romans, Byzantines, and Crusaders). Referring to Jewish settlement as "colonization" is ridiculous because, like the Palestinians, Jews are indigenous to this region. Even more so when considering the cultural aspect of indigeneity to a region. Judaism is a direct continuation of Canaanite and Israelite culture, which predates colonization. Whereas modern Palestinian culture is the result of the Arab/Islamic conquest of the Levant.

The issue that some people characterize as colonization is, in reality, a matter of migration. In fact, one of the early demands of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s was to halt Jewish immigration, and they sought to enforce this demand through violence. And this violence snowballed to the current ethnic conflict between arabs and jews. If we compare this to the present day, imagine a bunch of trump supporters marching through the streets attacking/murdering Mexican immigrants. It's a no-brainer that these people would be considered racist criminals. But this is exactly what happened in Palestine in the 1930s. And the situation changed only for the worse. Yet, people (especially the left) still sides with those criminals instead of supporting a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians.