Again, I am not entirely opposed to what you are saying. But the cause that helped create Israel in 1948 was Zionism. You apparently sympathize with that cause, which created the current state of Israel.
Therefore, to proclaim oneself "anti-Zionist" is not helpful. That's really my main point. I think calling oneself anti-Zionist does have anti-Semitic and anti-Israel connotations. Why can someone not just be pro-equality, pro Palestinian, or some other more neutral term?
And before you say that the terms don't matter - I say yes they do - language and the history of words is important. Saying you are "anti civil-rights" or "anti American" would be similarly counter-productive.
I am open to ideas to help the Arab and Palestinian community achieve equal treatment within Israel. But I don't appreciate the term "anti-Zionist" and I don't think usage of it will help if you are trying to gain the help of the US, Israel, or the Jewish community - which are all important parties in order for any Palestinian gains to be achieved.
Also, some of the wording by the author of this diary - that Israel is an "occupier", is similarly unhelpful. The people who live in Israel today are inhabitants of a world created by their grandparents. This is no more helpful than calling present-day Germans "Nazis".
The question is, as in Iraq, not how we got into the situation, but "what now?" Name-calling and historical revisionism on each side is not the way forward.
A few points. Reading between the lines of your comments to this diary, I suspect I give Israel more credit for its own existence than you do. Israel exists not as reparations for the holocaust or as a gift from the UN. It came to be the old-fashioned way - by capture. It continues to exist within its current borders because it has continually proven the ability to control the land and defend it from invaders. That is what makes a nation.
Secondly, I understand your point about language. But I thought the linked articles (mostly the second one) did a good job of demonstrating that in our current way of discussing Israel there are certain viewpoints that can't be expressed because the "acceptable" language itself prevents it. Without repeating what I've written elsewhere in these comments, what is the acceptable way to express my belief that a majority jewish state isn't necessary for the continued existence of the jewish people?
I've purposefully avoided discussing the Palestinians in these comments. My belief about the safety of the jewish people in the absence of an officially jewish state isn't based on anything to do with the Palestinians. I would argue quite strenously that to the extent Israel is to be maintained as a majority jewish state, a thriving palestinian state is a necessary condition of that.
I haven't touched the arguments of where Israeli rights and Palestinian rights conflict and need to be resolved. I have addressed one of the basic premises of Israel - jews are not safe in the world without an officially jewish state. To put my position into "pro-palestinian" or "pro-equality" is to deny my position a place in the conversation at all. I understand that putting it under "anti-zionist" isn't the smoothest path to take (trust me, I've had this discussion with jewish friends) and I generally try to avoid labels all together. But everyone wants labels. How would you label me in a more neutral fashion? When it comes to the IP conflict, I generally label myself as pro-civilians who just want to live their lives and raise their families. From a human rights perspective, it's easy for me to consider the jews and the palestinians on an equal footing. From a personal standpoint, I'm far more culturally attached to the jews. Where's the label for me?
>>Without repeating what I've written elsewhere in these comments, what is the acceptable way to express my belief that a majority jewish state isn't necessary for the continued existence of the jewish people?
I think you can say you are a supporter of "secular democratic states", and fight for that not just in the context of Israel but in the US and in Arab countries that practice sharia or disenfranchise their citizens, or do not have representative democracies. To call yourself "anti-Zionist" makes it seem like you are looking only at one possible set of injustices when really you are opposed to something that is happening across the world. Why should Israel be forced to amend itself unilaterally?
Why should Jews feel safe in other countries when you are not talking about how these other countries need to reform as well?
>>Where's the label for me?
Well, if you are talking to a bunch of friends or experts on the subject and you are comfortable with using the term "anti-Zionist" in that context, by all means - go for it.
But on a board like MyDD, or DKos, or other liberal blogs, or in the context of the Democratic party, I think that label is likely to be confusing at best, and harmful at worst.
Also, from the second article, I think both the PLO and Israel should not let talks be impeded by whether Israel needs to be recognized as a "Jewish state" - they should just recognize Israel's right to exist. If I were negotiating on the Israeli side I would drop that demand. If I were negotiating on the Palestinian side, I would agree to that precondition in order to move on to more substantive negotiations - the best Palestinian bet is to seek incremental change.
To call yourself "anti-Zionist" makes it seem like you are looking only at one possible set of injustices when really you are opposed to something that is happening across the world. Why should Israel be forced to amend itself unilaterally?
Well, I am anti-sharia and pro-secular democracies in general. But that's not the conversation. I don't think it's fair to say that it looks like I'm ignoring injustices. That's like the wingnuts who claim feminists don't care about women in Afghanistan because they don't raise it in every conversation about feminism.
Your choice of language "amend itself unilaterally" is genuinely odd, like it's being asked to abandon a weapon that remains in the hands of its enemies. Countries progress unilaterally all the time. It's the only way progress happens.
If I were negotiating on the Israeli side I would drop that demand.
I agree. And I thought the point of the second article was that Israel will not do so. The PLO agreed to recognize Israel's right to exist, and it wasn't good enough.
I think we share a great deal in common here and I appreciate you expanding on your points.
Reading between the lines of your comments to this diary, I suspect I give Israel more credit for its own existence than you do. Israel exists not as reparations for the holocaust or as a gift from the UN. It came to be the old-fashioned way - by capture.
It continues to exist within its current borders because it has continually proven the ability to control the land and defend it from invaders. That is what makes a nation.
Without repeating what I've written elsewhere in these comments, what is the acceptable way to express my belief that a majority jewish state isn't necessary for the continued existence of the jewish people?
I have addressed one of the basic premises of Israel - jews are not safe in the world without an officially jewish state.
Only that country cannot be taken from another people who had been living there for more than a thousand years. This is of course the root of the Israei-Palestinian conflict, it is the root of the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, and the root of all subsequent strife in the region.
And it is not over: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues today, as it has for 41 years, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
I also hear this alleged fact from time to time: that Jews in Palestine owned most of the land anyway. It was their already. The truth is that in 1948, Jews had managed to purchase only 7% of original Palestine. The remainder was held by Muslim Palestinians, and tiny portions by Druze and Christians and others.
Only that country cannot be taken from another people who had been living there for more than a thousand years.
You mean like the Jews who were living there before they were driven out by the Romans who were then driven out by the Arabs who then proceeded to live there for a thousand years?
Why is the Palestinian claim to the land legitimate, when it was stolen from the Jews, but the Jewish claim is illegitimate, when it was stolen from the Arabs?
Do you not see the double standard?
I keep harping on this because I want you to see the foolishness of the argument about who "rightfully" owns the land. Dozens of different peoples, including both the Palestinians and the Jews, have a legitimate claim to the land that Israel comprises. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Britain--these countries have all controlled the land at some point.
As long as you're arguing the double-standard that Israel does not have a legitimate claim to the land but the Palestinians do, you're not going to be taken seriously by anyone except those who already agree with you.
Not at all. History I am afraid does not flow backwards. The Palestinian have lived in the land for over a thousand year. At the same time, there were always at least a few thousand Jewish inhabitants, mainly living in Jerusalem. As side of spurious "place holding" theories, Jews were never prohibited from living in Palestine, but chose to live in a variety of other places. It was only with Zionist ambitions that the idea of a pure Jewish state came into being. That meant the necessity of dispossession of lands, villages and towns, belonging to the indigenous Palestinians, who had lived there for over a thousand years, something long hypothesized as necessary by the early Zionists. It eventually happened: two thirds of the Palestinian population were ethnically cleansed by force and fear in 1948, many dying along the way.
If you can really find some ethical-moral basis for such a plan or action, please provide it.
Well, let me give you an ethical-moral basis for resolving the issue that arose as Jewish population in Palestine grew. It was Martin Buber's proposal for a binational state, a single state that would encompass the political and social needs of both peoples having rights to the land. Buber offered his proposal to Ben Gurion, but it was brushed aside.
The Zionists had different plans and didn't need a philosopher and humanist telling them what was right or what to do. Forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, "the Arabs," was already in the cards.
All people have a right to a home. I don't believe there is a fundamental human right to a state devoted to preservation of a majority of your particular ethnicity. That's the problem with "homeland" in an ethnic sense. I believe that moving towards multi-ethnic tolerant societies is good for humanity. Preserving ethnic dominance is understandable and not necessarily bad, I just don't think it's worth taking extreme steps to achieve.
All people have a right to a home. I don't believe there is a fundamental human right to a state devoted to preservation of a majority of your particular ethnicity.
While I tend to agree with that in principle, it's relatively easy for us to say that when we're sitting in countries that already have a natural ethnic majority. The vast majority of people in France are French, the vast majority of people in Italy are Italian, etc. So "we" (speaking for most of the world at large, here) reap the benefits of an ethnic-majority society, if any, without having to make preservation of that ethnic majority part of our policy.
Some of that thin veneer of tolerance is starting to strip away from other countries as they find their own ethnic makeup inexorably changing. France is dealing with a glut of Muslim immigrants, the United States will likely be majority-Hispanic within a few decades, etc., and you're starting to see people get anxious about it and propose that we institute our own ethnic-majority-preserving policies.
I'm not seeking to particularly defend Israel in that, because I agree that we should be working toward a colorblind and more homogeneous world, not a more heterogeneous one, just saying that Israel by far isn't unique in desiring an ethnic-majority homeland, and should not be uniquely criticized for it.
In fact, what makes Israel unique is that they're one of the very few nations whose people survived expulsion from their homeland and long-term diaspora with their culture intact while another people moved into their former home. Ireland, for example, remained majority-Irish during its people's long diaspora, so after the people started returning there was no need for any policy specifically designed to restore and preserve the previously-existing ethnic majority.
Ethnocentricism (broadly defined to encompass ethnicity, race, or religion) can be a pernicious ethic, and was most certainly the source of American Eugenics, segregation, German and Italian Fascism, and Apartheid, and all of the other movements that attempted to put the rights of one people before another. Perhaps the last example we are familiar with was Serbian nationalism, and we know how that turned out.
It is seen in many other places today including Israel.
