Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel's politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and
Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to "Nazi and Fascist parties" and described it as a "terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization".
The Zionists have explained their view as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man."
and
Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.
It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.
My favorite Israeli history tidbit is how their terror cells assassinated one of the guys trying to negotiate a peaceful way out of the violence creating the state of Israel caused because they were (wrongly, it turns out) afraid that the official government would try to take a peaceful solution to the conflict which might have jeopardized the creation of the ethnostate.
Bernadotte had previously gained international renown for negotiating the release of thousands of Nazi concentration camp prisoners including hundreds of interred Jewish people.
If I recall correctly, the Hagana, Irgun and Lehi brigade eventually became the modern day IDF (literally). Those Nazi worshippers today are an important cultural aspect of Israel, in the form of helping to brainwash Israeli youth, and they're also remembered as heroes by Israel (and 'remembered' as in the very same terrorists back then who are still alive today are remembered. This wasn't so long ago that it's beyond living memory). Israelis also usually go out and protest any time a member of the IDF is on trial for murdering a Palestinian.
I've basically always thought it would be a funny solution to everyone's gripe with Hamas to just give them new branding as well and voila, problem solved.
This is kind of how I became a socialist.
Did a mission trip to Nicaragua when I was young, got home and wondered why the country was so fucked up.
"Oh, it's literally entirely America's fault, intentional, and their exact strategy for foreign relations which is just imperialism."
Jewish culture and history, especially Zionism is as diverse as every other culture and people is. Picking the worst doesn't show the whole picture about Zionism. There is a whole Socialist and even Anarchist tradition of and within Zionism.
EDIT: I didn't mean to offend anybody and everybody has a right to criticize Israel. My whole point is that Israel's history and especially Zionism is obviously not one-sided, but is also rich in liberal and progressive ideas, that are worth to studied.
If you are interested in Socialist Zionism I recommend the following article as a starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_ZionismJewish culture and history
Zionism
No one here has a problem with Jewish culture and history, Zionism though we do. Socialist and anarchist settler colonialists are still settler colonialists. Those socialist and anarchists you're talking about, do they fight alongside Palestinian resistance against the Israeli state? In South Africa for example, there were white people who were sympathetic to the plight of black South Africans and aided the ANC especially in sabotage operations; I haven't heard of socialist and anarchist Israelis who do the same. There was a guy whose name escapes me who I believe was Jewish, who also fought alongside Che if I recall correctly, who initially supported Zionism, but when he went to Israel and saw what Israel was, he fought alongside the Palestinian resistance (having some trouble finding him; he was posted about here on hexbear). Israelis who support Palestinian resistance absolutely have our support here.
The Kibbutz movement is heavily influenced by Anarchism for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Israel.
That's so true!
And the Nazis had people like Strasser! You see, Nazis weren't so bad, guys! Picking the worst like Hitler and Goebbels is so unfair! Nazism is as diverse as any other culture.
Hitler loved dogs after all.
Ya know until material conditions came knocking and he tested his cyanide supply ona dog to make sure he wouldn't have a painful death.
Ah, the good old comparison of Israel and Nazis. Please be antisemitic somewhere else.
???
Jews have been likening Zionism’s neocolony to the Third Reich as early as 1948. I collected quotes from Orthodox Jews, Shoah survivors, and even a few ‘moderate’ Zionists making their own comparisons after my Sephardic friend encouraged me to write an article formally comparing the two entities.
A case in point is Golda Meir (Meyerson), who was in fact one of the more hawkish leaders of the Yishuv. On May 6, 1948, following a visit to Arab Haifa only a few days after its conquest and the flight and expulsion of the city’s Arab population, Meir reported to the Jewish Agency Executive that “there were houses where the coffee and pita bread were left on the table, and I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e., in Europe during World War II].”42
Within Mapam—a left‐[leaning] Zionist party that was part of the state’s first government headed by David Ben Gurion—the expulsion of Palestinians was the subject of intense debate. For example, Eliezer Pra’i (later Peri), editor of the Mapam daily al‐Hamishmar, wrote: “Among the best of our comrades the thought has crept in that perhaps it is possible politically to achieve our ingathering in the Land of Israel by Hitlerite‐Nazi means.”43
Following the atrocities committed during Operation Hiram by the [neocolonial] army (IDF) who conquered the central‐upper Galilee pocket, the [neocolonial régime] established a three‐person investigation committee. At a cabinet meeting on November 17, 1948, convinced that the army and defense establishment were being evasive, Mapam representative Aharon Cisling stated: “I couldn’t sleep all night. […] This is something that determines the character of the nation. […] Jews too have committed Nazi acts.”44
(Emphasis added.)
That is only small sample of the comparisons that I collected—not a single one of which came from a gentile.
Of course, there are limits to the analogy, and one could argue that such analogies are never necessary, but whatever the case I find it troubling to dismiss them as ‘antisemitic’ seeing as how many well adjusted, well educated Jewish adults have made and continue to make their own comparisons between the Reich and the Zionist occupation (which most certainly isn’t a ‘democracy’).
Ethnonationalism is ethnonationalism, even when a Jewish person does it. Most ethnonationalists are not Jewish, and a lot of Zionists aren't either.
I hope you're not implying that Jewish people are all ethnonationalists...
What kind of socialism is able to simultaneously be socialist while excluding exploited and oppressed peoples? What kind of anarchy persists as anarchy upon the backs of those whose homes have been stolen from them?
Socialist Zionism is not at all about excluding, exploiting or oppressing.
Funnily enough it was also Albert Einstein, who supported Labor Zionism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism
kinda antisemitic there to declare that all jews sjpport z*onism
The Communist, socialist, and labor strands of Israeli politics have all failed and were overrun by the Israeli fascists. Learning the past history of their existence doesn't change the concrete reality that the present history of Israel is being written by genocidal fascists whom share ideological similitudes with Nazi Germany.
I wasn't talking about Israel's politics, but about the very diverse history of Zionism. Also comparing Israel with Nazi Germany isn't pretty problematic.
That’s true. Weren’t those Zionist factions suppressed by the imperialist settler-colonial Zionist factions? What have they been able to accomplish since just before the Nakba?
Already in the 1920s the Labor movement disregarded its socialist roots and concentrated on building the nation by constructive action. According to Tzahor its leaders did not "abandon fundamental ideological principles".[15] However, according to Ze'ev Sternhell in his book The Founding Myths of Israel, the labor leaders had already abandoned socialist principles by 1920 and only used them as "mobilizing myths".
From the page Dataprolet linked.
Socialist Zionists were probably oppressed just like Socialist Anti-Zionists.
Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created as a project of communist Zionists, who didn't approve of resettlement to Palestine.
Oh so all of those good parts of history you were talking about are when they directly opposed Isreal and zionism isn't that interesting.
Yeah, because Zionism is not particularly about the land of today's Israel and Palestine, but about a Jewish state in some form.
There's a deep history of American workers movements that doesn't mean the entire country doesn't deserve to be nuked from orbit.
Haganah actually fought against Irgun and Lehi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saison"The Haganah, the largest Yishuv paramilitary, was a Labor Zionist organization; on occasion, it partook in military action (such as during The Saison) against certain radical right-wing Jewish political opponents and militant groups, sometimes in cooperation with the British Mandate administration."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism#HistoryAnd the Irgun split from Haganah, because they were presumably too defensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah#1931_Irgun_split
