what with all these white jewish people in the imperial core who suddenly just NEED to go live in the middle east and commit war crimes and genocide along the way? Just... go buy a house in Arizona or something if you REALLY want to live in the desert? These people who are moving into Israel presumably had a place to live before moving across the planet. Why do they specifically need to move to Israel of all places? Who the fuck is waking up in the morning thinking "I need to murder brown children so I can live in that very specific bit of desert on the other side of the world"?
While I am not a Zionist, I was raised in a fairly Zionist environment, so I can share some insight here.
However, I also have to distinguish between 2 different things. There are those who believe in making Israel effectively an exclusive Jewish state, and those who simply want to move to Israel. A good analogy here would be the difference between a German-American who wants to go to Germany and recreate the Nazi party and a German-American who wants to go back to Germany and connect with their culture.
I'll address the second part first, that is, why do many Jewish people want to move to Israel?
The main reasons are religious/cultural and to escape antisemitism. Many Jewish people view moving to Israel as a way to reconnect with their heritage or as a religious obligation (to do things such as pray at the second temple.) Escaping antisemitism is another big reason. Historically, Jews were consistently persecuted in Europe and kept as a transient population. A big motivation for early Zionism was to get enough Jewish people to Israel so they could defend themselves against pogroms. My family came to the US to escape a pogrom for example. These factors continue to play a modern role.
Another reason many modern Jews want to move to Israel is that most Jewish communities in Europe were essentially destroyed, and in the US there are only a few very specific (and expensive) spots you can go. If you want to live in a place with a significant enough Jewish population to avoid being othered for it, it is one of the few options many Jews have.
Where things get really wild is where people get into the nationalism of it. There is a view among many that Jewish people have a right to ownership of Israel due to heritage and religions reasons, to the extent of essentially blood and soil nationalism. You are also presented from a young age with a very different telling of history than is fact, which acts to reinforce the idea that Israel was always peaceful and only had to act in aggression due to being attacked.
If you want my opinion, the real problem with Israel is not Jewish people moving to the area, but with the exclusion and mistreatment of Palestinian people.
Hmmm, thank you. This had been the most thorough explanation I've got of it in a way that isn't condescending because honestly I just don't know shit about this
that's decol tho...
your comment's a good point, but that's a bad analogy
Jewish people were forced into diaspora from Israel. It has been thousands of years, but it still is an ancestral homeland and bears the cultural significance as such. I think it's kinda weird to discuss Jewish people in Israel in the same terms as Europeans in the US.
then why are you using them as an analogy?
I was talking about Jewish people living in the US in that part, specifically in reference to OP's question of why a Jewish person living in the US might want to move to Israel.