Like carve out a place between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in the former Pale of Settlement. Establish a bunch of Yiddish language schools there. Have it become a center of Jewish culture. Sure, there are already Ukrainians, Russians and Belorussians there but there were already people in the far east too.
Supporting the creation of Israel was one of Stalin’s cringe moves
I don’t buy the premise there needs to be a Jewish ethnostate for their protection. Integrate Jewish populations and crush anti-semitism and have them be represented within the state like all other minorities.
:this:
The solution to western anti semitism is not to kick people out of their own country and give it to the Jews. The solution is to kill all the Nazis in the west. If the allies had taken denazification seriously after WW2 Israel as a concept would have been completely unnecessary
Death to America
Ironically America is the best evidence that it is not necessary. There has historically been nowhere safer for Jewish communities than the US.
I would def. have given Jewish people weapons in the 1930s and 1940s.
I think that the underlying assumptions of Zionism are the same as the underlying assumptions of Nazism with a slightly different bent: Nazism sees Judaism as an immutable characteristic that corrupts a human being, while Zionism sees anti-semitism the same way. Both of them believe that Jewish people and anti-semites are ontologically incapable of coexisting.
Zionism is just greedy settlerism mixed with that word I forgot which means "conquering back lost land"
It's apparently not enough that Jewish people get land for their own ethnostate (I agree with this for the record), but for some reason it HAS to be explicitly the land in Israel and nowhere else
Even if you accept this premise and view the Arab Muslims as oppressors who shouldn't be there, neither should the Ashkenazi Jews. In fact even the Muslims would be closer to the original inhabitants, with the ladder of priority going something like Mizrahi Jews > Palestinians > Ashkenazi Jews
Revanchism?
Yeah definitely, and honestly I wouldn't even go as far as trying to do an analysis of who "really" should own the land (not that you're trying to do that, I know it's just to make a point). I think as leftists we should really be focused more on who is currently being oppressed rather than trying to figure out who is technically allowed to claim the land.
Like, I don't support land back because native peoples technically own the land via treaties, I support land back because there are currently native peoples who are being oppressed and fighting to have those treaties recognized. Same can be said for Palestine.
That's being incredibly generous to Zionism.
While of course there's more to it that that including a colonial mindset and straight racism, I think it's fair to say it was a large part of the desire for a Jewish state. At the very least it was a driving factor for Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism.
Comparing antisemitism to natural disasters such as floods and saying that the only way to combat it is through fighting (presumably to create a "homeland"):
Saying that the "Jewish Question" will exist due to innate characteristics of Jewish people:
And just for good measure, Jews as a sort of Ubermensch who would enlighten the entire world:
So while I would say it's being reductive to say that the belief in antisemitism as an immutable characteristic was the driving force behind Zionism, I don't think it's necessarily being generous.
Finkelstein talks about this a lot, the zionist idea of the uniqueness of the Jew and that genocide against them is an innate characteristic of the gentile
What do you mean by that?
Treat them the same you would treat any other minority group, ie allow them to be equal members of the same society. Casting them out into an ethnostate ain’t it, and if that logic was followed for all minorities we would have to fracture and balkanize the world into ethnic microstates
Okay, Jewish Integration does have some negative ring to it in Germany, cause of the antisemitic tradition of this country. Often integration in that sense meant stuff which is more like assimilation or giving away everything that would make you look or act different. Just like the Kurds can attest to you not being allowed to speak your own language, to dress in the way you like etc. discrimination.
I am with you with full legal protection for Jewish people, but honestly don't think that is enough. There has to be - as you imply with other minority groups - more than equal treatment, the law has to be anti racist as it has to be against anti-semitism.
Is the law enough? I don't think so. In the case of a cultural tradition of antisemitism, pogroms over hundreds of years with little or no repercussion, the Shoa and a continuity to practices from the Shoa, thus continuity in factual law and continuity of persons in power, there has to be more than law. There has to be a practice or praxis and that has to be an antifascist and one against anti-semitism. Similar how it ought to be with other groups (ie Ovaherero and Nama).
However I don't think that drawing a line from pure theory ("if that logic was followed for all minorities") is the way forward in politics in general. Besides the council communalists in Rojava do actually have something which isn't micro states, but which highlights the main culture of very small regions and yet enshrines protections in law and communal social practices for others.
Furthermore I do believe that hate against other groups works easily only if there is a limited number that can be othered easily.
Of course since I don't follow your line of thought and have that rift, doesn't mean I do support:
Do what Napoleon did and stop legally disenfranchising them. Jews in Europe often still had dubious legal protections if any, even just ensuring they have citizenship and protection would be integration on a radical scale
Any liberal state will take away their rights as soon as there are capitalist crisis and shift the blame towards "the other" and that means if election leads to right wing leaders of state sooner or later rights might be taken away (as we could see quite often even after 1945 in Europe).
Since liberal parliamentary states don't seem to be able to stop antisemitism and the reaction.
I'm answering what they meant. Napoleon is the example of integrating Jews. No one here is arguing thats best or that can work in liberal societies without all the drawbacks