Opinion of Zionism

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And when it comes to my version of zionism.  I just mean what I said.  I don't believe in a priori nation-states or Gods,  I just believe in the right of Israel to be treated as a legitimate nation and with the same respect as any other.

What's your opinion of the Occupied Territories settlements and US's massive loads of aid that is essentially unconditional?

[bedstuy]

And when it comes to my version of zionism.  I just mean what I said.  I don't believe in a priori nation-states or Gods,  I just believe in the right of Israel to be treated as a legitimate nation and with the same respect as any other.

What's your opinion of the Occupied Territories settlements and US's massive loads of aid that is essentially unconditional?

I think Israel was wrong to build civilian settlements in the West Bank originally.  But, at this point, they can't just unilaterally uproot hundreds of thousands of people without major concessions from the Palestinians.  Israel certainly can't end the military occupation in the near future, just look what happened in Gaza when Israel pulled out.  Theoretically, I would support swapping land to incorporate some settlements into Israel while allowing the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. 

I think US aid to Israel is aid to the military of our greatest ally in the Middle East and a country whose self-defense is a just cause.  A lot of our military aid is also used to purchase from US defense firms and the government itself so we also benefit.  Maybe we should cut military aid to every country we currently support, but I don't see Israel as particularly problematic.

[politicallefty]

I think that if Zionism is allowed to take full hold, it is the greatest chance to induce the spark that triggers WWIII. I firmly believe that Netanyahu is the greatest threat to world peace right now. Israel really needs to elect a more reasonable PM.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I think that if Zionism is allowed to take full hold, it is the greatest chance to induce the spark that triggers WWIII. I firmly believe that Netanyahu is the greatest threat to world peace right now. Israel really needs to elect a more reasonable PM.

Didn't Zionism take full hold in 1948?  Any PM Israel elects is going to be Zionist. Even Meretz is a Zionist party.

[Horus]

I think that if Zionism is allowed to take full hold, it is the greatest chance to induce the spark that triggers WWIII. I firmly believe that Netanyahu is the greatest threat to world peace right now. Israel really needs to elect a more reasonable PM.

Didn't Zionism take full hold in 1948?  Any PM Israel elects is going to be Zionist. Even Meretz is a Zionist party.

I think what he means is Zionism in its current form. Zionism in 1948 meant something completely different.

[politicallefty]

I think what he means is Zionism in its current form. Zionism in 1948 meant something completely different.

Yes, particularly the Likud/Netanyahu strain. I honestly do not believe Netanyahu wants peace and that he's just itching for war. I expect any Israeli PM to protect and defend Israel, just as any leader must protect and defend their country. I suppose my problem is really with the Neo-Zionism of Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu. There are reasonable people that can lead Israel. All I know is that Netanyahu is not one of them.

[Yogi]

I support Israel. Just like I would support some of our other allies if they ever needed our support (like the UK for example).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I think what he means is Zionism in its current form. Zionism in 1948 meant something completely different.

Yes, particularly the Likud/Netanyahu strain. I honestly do not believe Netanyahu wants peace and that he's just itching for war. I expect any Israeli PM to protect and defend Israel, just as any leader must protect and defend their country. I suppose my problem is really with the Neo-Zionism of Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu. There are reasonable people that can lead Israel. All I know is that Netanyahu is not one of them.

Zionism in 1948 consisted of a bunch of murderous terrorists who carried out things like the King David Hotel bombing and ethnically cleansed Arab villages so really no it's not any better than Netanyahu.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

I'll give you the point about Sikhs, but you are incorrect everywhere else. There are no national loyalties to Judaism. You seem to be implying that one cannot be a Jew without having loyalty to Israel, that is hogwash. If Jews were a people like the Danish, they would all have similar physical features. Ethiopian Jews and Russian Jews look nothing alike, just as Brazilian and South Korean Christians look nothing alike. Secondly, I'm not demanding anyone give up their homeland, there is no way to remove Israel at this point. Zionism has been corrupted by some who believe it gives Israelis a right to settle wherever they'd like, that's what must stop. Thirdly, no one is trying to "punish the Jews". Many Zionists make the mistake of thinking opposition to Israel is anti-Semitism, when that could not be further from the case.

You misunderstand me.  I mean there are different types of Jewish identity.  Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi ethnically, Hasidic, Orthodox and Reform, religiously, Israeli, nationally and a general common culture and history going back to Israel. 

I also question your race-based nationalist premise.  Why is a nation more legitimate if it's all blond people with fair skin or all black Africans versus a group of different races?  That's ridiculous.  If a group of people wants to be a nation and feels kinship, who are you to deny them the exalted status of people with similar shaped noses and skin tone?  Nationalism and identity are social constructs after all. 

In light of that fact and the unrelenting oppression of Jews, it's reasonable to have a Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people.  So, I voted FI and consider myself a Zionist. 

I'm quite sympathetic towards peoples suffering unrelenting oppression, and Jews are not an exception. However, what happens when some people relentlessly oppressed in other places settle in what long time ago was their homeland and turn into the oppressors of other people whom consider in justice that such place is their homeland because their ancestors were living there for centuries? ... 

What kind of Zionism are you judging here? Liberal? Labor? Revisionist? Religious? Post-Zionism?

Israel was not "once" the homeland of the Jewish people.  It has been continuously for thousands of years.  It is also the homeland of other groups of people.  That's a matter of record. 

And when it comes to my version of zionism.  I just mean what I said.  I don't believe in a priori nation-states or Gods,  I just believe in the right of Israel to be treated as a legitimate nation and with the same respect as any other.

Why have you forgotten Messianic Jews in religious terms?

As for my opinion I hold Zionism as a positive development. If not for the Jewish people as a whole (and one in particular) I wouldn't be me in many ways. My faith is an offshoot of Judaism.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Nationalism is not a priori supportable.  We don't necessarily need to have one nation for Poles, one nation for Jews, one nation for Irish, etc.  That type of 19th century notion seems pretty silly in retrospect.   But, we only put Jewish nationalism through that sort of scrutiny.  Nobody asks whether Danes deserve a state or whether the US should give back its territory to Native Americans.

In light of that fact and the unrelenting oppression of Jews, it's reasonable to have a Jewish state in the homeland of the Jewish people.  So, I voted FI and consider myself a Zionist.  

But we Jews are a religion, the Danish are a nation. There are more Sikhs in this world than Jews yet I see no one calling for a Sikh homeland. Also, there is no unrelenting oppression of Jews. Jews in this country and most others tend to have higher income, education etc. than the average person in that country. Anti-Semitism OUTSIDE of Islam is confined to what few followers LaRouche has left, and neo-Nazis.

The bolded statement is objectively false (sometimes matters of opinion in theory become matters of fact in practice ).  Also, the Sikhs in Punjab (the part of it in India) have been trying to get, if not their own nation, at least far greater level of autonomy than the rest of India, for quite some time.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Reported for violating what';s his name's new censorship policy.

[angus]

FI only in the sense of advocating for a support for a Jewish nation-state.

Actually, it was on that basis that I voted horrible.  It is precisely the creation of a state in which one group is elite and the other(s) are treated as second-class citizens that gives Zionism a bad name.  In the other respects (a collection point for diaspored refugees, for example) it is noble, but all that is shadowed by the fact that the Jewish nation-state aspect is so emphasized.  There are decent Zionists out there, and I've met a few, but the movement as a whole has created far more problems for the world than it has solved.

[SPC]

Neutral to positive to the extent that those practicing it rely on their own means to do so. Negative to the extent that tax dollars go toward subsidizing their risky experiment in buying a house with unruly neighbors.

[angus]

The Jewish Virtual Library defines zionism as the "movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland" and goes on to say that disagreements in zionist philosophy has led to "rifts in the Zionist movement" over the years.  Different factions have evolved, but they all have in common a stubborn attachment to Jewish rights to the land of Palestine.  Wikipedia has a more detailed article.  Britiannica.com has a scholarly description of the philosophy of Zionism.  All three of these sources point to Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl as the individual who made Zionism a political movement.  His point of view is easily understood, as he came from a time and place when Jews were marginalized.  Here's an excerpt:

"A profound change began in Herzl’s life soon after a sketch he had published in the leading Viennese newspaper led to his appointment as the paper’s Paris correspondent. He arrived in Paris with his wife in the fall of 1891 and was shocked to find in the homeland of the French Revolution the same anti-Semitism with which he had become so familiar in Austria. Hitherto he had regarded anti-Semitism as a social problem that the Jews could overcome only by abandoning their distinctive ways and assimilating to the people among whom they lived. At the same time, his work as a newspaperman heightened his interest in, and knowledge of, social and political affairs and led him to the conviction that the answer to anti-Semitism was not assimilation but organized counterefforts by the Jews. The Dreyfus affair in France also helped crystallize this belief. French military documents had been given to German agents, and a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus had been falsely charged with the crime. The ensuing political controversy produced an outburst of anti-Semitism among the French public. Herzl said in later years that it was the Dreyfus affair that had made a Zionist out of him. So long as anti-Semitism existed, assimilation would be impossible, and the only solution for the majority of Jews would be organized emigration to a state of their own."

I regard Herzl himself as a freedom fighter, and we have discussed him before in a number of threads, but I don't recall him ever having his own thread on this forum.  It isn't entirely clear to me that Herzl would be a defender of some of the practices of the modern state of Israel, but we cannot know for sure one way or the other.  We do know that he wrote that Zionism was meant not only to provide Jews with a homeland but also to improve the living standards and rights of the resident Arab.  Either the heirs to Herzl's dream have radically subverted the legacy, or Herzl was deceptive by design.  I prefer to think that he wanted to create the sort of cosmopolitan atmosphere found in the Vienna of his youth, but without all the anti-Jewish sentiment.

[Cassius]

A freedom ideology. Particularly since the Israeli's have really made something out of Palestine, or, in (I believe) Gurion's words, made 'the desert bloom'.

[politicallefty]

Zionism in 1948 consisted of a bunch of murderous terrorists who carried out things like the King David Hotel bombing and ethnically cleansed Arab villages so really no it's not any better than Netanyahu.

I understand what you're saying and I don't disagree with you. However, I do disagree when it comes to Netanyahu. I think he's one of the most dangerous individuals to hold power in the Middle East since the modern founding of Israel. I absolutely believe he is the personification of right-wing Zionism. I don't think the neocons in this country could lay a finger on him. An outbreak of war in 1948 could have been contained. I don't believe that is the case today.

[Phony Moderate]

As is the case with a lot of nationalisms, it depends on the context.

[© tweed]

the pre-war Zionism had a lot of cool things about it.  plenty of strands of leftism interwoven with it, anarchism, socialism, Communism.

[Mr. Illini]

Definitely has some valid points, but overall is problematic and has a deadly track record (like most nationalism).