#palestinians are pushing revisionist history

[the-ind1gen0us-jude4n]

Palestinians and Revisionist History.

The Palestinian cause is pushing so much revisionist history now. I have heard everything now, saying "Israel was ONLY founded in 1948" and people saying "Jews are european and they have no claim to Israel". It is painful.

I got a comment saying the maps I got from HISTORY WEBSITES were "fictional drawings".

The Palestinian cause is a complete rejection of historical facts and it pushes a false narrative of history which is meant to wipe out any Jewish connection to the land.

This post should be a LOT longer than it is. So I will make another one eventually.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

I am posting and responding to this ask anonymously as I don't want anyone harassing its sender. This has already been communicated with the person who sent the ask.

I just want to thank you for being a light in the darkness of anti-semitism, especially on this website. I have found I am on this site a lot less ever since it was made clear that other leftists here are more anti-semitic than we ever knew possible, using very specific wording of our own trauma against us (i.e. saying stuff like "colonialism", "genocide/ethnic cleansing", and calling JEWISH PEOPLE Nazis). It feels like, at best, they know Hamas ≠ All or even most Palestinians, but think that they think all JEWS = Bibi; and at worst, agree with Hamas and think of him as some sort of "freedom fighter". So, thank you from one leftist Jew to another, just trying to keep afloat here. ❤️

You are very welcome; it's certainly been overwhelming, and I'm glad this can be a safe space for you.

I do want to push back on some of this ask, though. Specifically in regard to terms such as "colonialism," "apartheid," "genocide," and "ethnic cleansing."

The use of these terms is not inherently anti-Semitic. For a lot of people, these terms are the best ones they have access to describe what they are seeing. I do think such terms as “colonialism” and “apartheid” are overly simple in regard to the last ~3000 years of Jewish history, and that they cast the situation into an alien historical context which dilutes and uncomplicates the all the historical realities at stake, but I truly do not think that all who use these terms do so to cause Jewish people pain.

Further complicating the picture is that terms like "colonialism" aren’t completely wrong. Modern Zionism arose in the context of mid-nineteenth century European large-scale movements towards nationalism (ie, the creation of nation-states) and away from the multi-national empire. Jews—a subject of anti-Semitism and fifth columnist suspicions within those emergent European nations—reacted to all this by joining the nationalism game.

What’s ironic, is that those European Jews who founded contemporary Zionism were reacting to the exclusion and racial hatred with which Gentile Europeans treated them, and then once they had some settlements in Palestine, they deployed similar variants of racial hatred at both the Palestinian Arab population, and Middle Eastern Jewry.

The existence of a distinct people and ethnic group in Palestine before the aliyot were not something the first generation of Zionists were concerned with. Because they were part of the same shitty, white supremacist, pro-imperialistic intellectual European tradition to which they were responding as victimized parties. As time went on and Zionist thought spread across Ashkenazic communities, we can see some variants. Some forms of far-left Zionism in twentieth century Poland, for example, actively built the presence and rights of Palestinian Arabs into their ideology, some of them actively stating that Zionism could not be a success if it necessitated transforming Palestinian Arabs into a group of secondhand citizens and a cheap source of labor in their own home.

Those leftist strands of Zionism tended to be Socialist/Communist in nature, and centered around the idea of life in Eretz Yisrael as one of a series of self-sufficient communes. Thus when the 1930s hit and things start to go bad, the Zionists we see fleeing to Palestine tended to be of the more centrist and far right variants. The left wing, socialist movements, already operating as a collective, had a membership uncomfortable with fleeing to safety while the rest remained behind.

And that same socialist/communal attitude, is why those variants of Zionist thought never made it into the Israeli political mainstream; most of their members and proponents were murdered in the Holocaust in part because they refused to leave their comrades behind. The General Zionists and Zionist Revisionists who rode out the years of the Holocaust in Palestine therefore already had access to the avenues of power which would become important in 1948, when the British Empire shrugged off its responsibilities towards the regions it colonized and destabilized.

Now, as for ethnic cleansing. I can’t sugar-coat this: that’s what the Naqba was. It was ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their homes to make way for the Jewish State. The manipulative shit (but still somehow extremely prestigious) youth group I was in taught us that Arabs call it Naqba because they hate Jews and therefore existence of Jews in the Southern Levant was a tragedy, as was the fact that Hitler didn't finish the job.

That’s garbage: it’s called the Naqba because it was ethnic cleansing. And that's not the fault of the Holocaust survivors who made their way to Mandatory Palestine/Israel in the late 1940s--they lacked political power, and were often looked down upon by those who did; the Holocaust as part of Israeli National Mythology wasn't an immediate Thing.

If you spent your formative years around older Jewish folks of A Certain Generation, whose trauma has pretty much placed a permanent block on their ability to see some of what went down in 1948 for what it was, I can’t blame you for having that gut/cognitive dissonance reaction to the use of “ethnic cleansing” in the context of Israel and Palestine. I know those older folks. I loved them. They’re mostly gone now, and I miss them terribly. But their trauma-induced view of everything lives on in the ability of some younger Jews to properly name and understand what it is that happened in 1948.

It was ethnic cleansing.

Further, not only were Palestinian Arabs ethnically cleansed, but the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Jews who were forced by their governments to flee their homes of thousands of years and seek refuge in Israel throughout the second half of the twentieth century…the Western and Central European Jews in control of Israel and its institutions treated them like shit too. Hadassah actively stole the babies of Yemeni Jews, told the parents that their children were dead, and rehomed them to Ashkenazic couples. There were death certificates. Members of the Ethiopian Jewish community were forcibly sterilized, and their ongoing treatment by the State is racist and generally atrocious. And this analysis of the relationship between the Israel State, MENA Jewish populations, and different Ashkenazic groups in Israel is horribly short and overly simple.

As for genocide. I honestly don’t know. I do know many people, who are very much not Anti-Semites, who are calling what’s happening in Gaza right now genocide; many of these people are also Jewish. I know many others who refer to the experiences of Palestinians between 1948 and now as a slow genocide. Many of these people are also actively not anti-Semites, and many of them are Jewish.

So these terms, as uncomfortable as they may feel for people within the very specific Jewish generational background I believe we share, are not deployed as anti-Semitic weapons. Nazi comparisons? Yes. Swastikas superimposed over the Star of David? Yes. Very specific hook-nosed Jewish caricatures in relation to Israelis? Yes. Blood libel shit? Yes. These are all anti-Semitic, and are deployed to hurt and retraumatize Jewish people. But the rest are not nearly that simple.

And I didn’t learn this from like, Bad Evil Post-Modern Academics at Columbia University Who Hate Jews; I learned this from doing graduate-level work in the field of Modern Jewish History, and working in Jewish archives; this did not come from outside the building.

Now, as for Hamas as freedom fighters…that’s ignorant at best. Hamas’ charter clearly calls for the global destruction of the Jewish people [ETA: they edited this part out in 2017 for PR purposes], and their actions as rulers are horrifically, violently, homophobic, and seem to be more abut provoking Israel than they are about governing and protecting their people. But as you said, Hamas isn’t all Palestinians, and it’s also not all Palestinians who consider themselves freedom fighters. (A second reader of mine had the following commentary on this paragraph: "Might need a bit more complication around Hamas? I know that's not your area of expertise but it's worth mentioning that they were basically set up to undermine the PLO and what would become the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. You're right that they aren't representative of all Palestinian thought and resistance, and that they are on some fuck shit.")

So while I’m so glad that blog is a comfort to you, I encourage you to also take a step into some of your discomfort, and ask yourself where it comes from.

No one reading this post has my consent to use it to silence other Jewish people who are in different stages of their journey towards understanding how generational trauma has impacted their ability to grasp all of this. Further, if you choose to attack me for gently calling my people in, you're a piece of shit and I will be mean to you.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Dropout Discord historical revisionism and denialism

A few days ago someone in the discord lamented over the fact that Hank Green endorsed a certain podcast.

Fig. 1. User dislikes that Hank Green will be getting a show on Dropout because they apparently endorse a podcast that "spreads lies against Palestinians". The podcast in particular is the Ezra Klein show, which I will admit I don't listen to. However, the two attached photos are quotes from a guest on the podcast and the "lies" that the show spreads.

Fig. 2. Klein's guest, Yossi Klein Halevi, states that Palestinian leaders, to his knowledge, have not accepted Jewish indigeneity nor has there been acceptance of a Jewish majority state.

Fig. 2. Halevi claims that the average Palestinian does not see Israel as a legitimate country and that the Holocaust is a lie, which is pushed by its media and leaders. Let's look at these claims. The first purports that no Palestinian leader has accepted Jewish indigeneity to the region. Doing a Google dive finds that no leader has accepted this, but nor have they outright denied it from what I can tell (if they have I will edit this with examples). Other leaders have said that the Jews Zionists are outright invaders in the area (looking at you Faisal), and the terrorist groups have said this type of rhetoric as well. Acceptance of a Jewish majority state has always been an issue in the MENA region. Other blogs have gone over this more in depth than I will here, but it has to do with a combination of historical antisemitism and reducing Jews to second class citizens. Jews are now "uppity" because they have their own country and rights that they didn't have in many of the other places they used to live (Westerners if you don't understand this and you're mad about this statement, you really need to look into the history of Jews as dhimmis and laws made against us). These next two claims I can see where people get upset and decry them as a lie. This gets a bit into semantics and how people think though. Halevi states that the average Palestinian thinks Israel is an illegitimate country based upon Zionist myth and the Holocaust lie/exaggeration. Many of the individuals in this particular server, and in other spaces, will likely go "But I know a Palestinian and they acknowledge the Holocaust was real! This is a lie." However, Halevi is not talking about the individual, they're talking about averages and generalizations and how the populace is influenced by their leaders and media. It is correct to state that Arafat never denied the Holocaust happened. However, members of the PLO during his tenure often did on their own. The current chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas, is a known Holocaust denialist/revisionist who wrote their PhD dissertation the Holocaust as a lie. He has repeatedly blamed the Jews for the Holocaust and played down the number of deaths. Abbas pushes the Zionist/Hitler conspiracy based upon the Haavara Agreement, makes false claims that less than 1 million Jews died, that the Allies made up the 6 million number, and that the gas chambers did not exist. There's a lot more nuance to things like the Haavara Agreement than I, an ecologist, can parse, so I leave that to my betters. However, just know that a small agreement like that does not support the claim that Zionists orchestrated the mass killing of Jews to steal land from Palestinians. That is outrageously antisemitic and relies upon a number of conspiracies. If we look at other leaders we will see denialism and revisionism as well. Hamas and its leadership has long denied that the Holocaust happened and they were upset when the UNRWA tried to include it in textbooks in Gaza back in 2009. Remember, Hamas is in charge of Gaza and their leaders are therefore Palestinian leaders for the area. Their denialism goes all the way back to the 00s where they issued the following statement in response to a conference on the Holocaust held in Stockhold at the time:

"This conference bears a clear Zionist goal, aimed at forging history by hiding the truth about the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis. . . . The invention of these grand illusions of an alleged crime that never occurred, ignoring the millions of dead European victims of Nazism during the war, clearly reveals the racist Zionist face, which believes in the superiority of the Jewish race over the rest of the nations." -This quote is originally from their old website palestine.info.org This sentiment and denialism is not new. I have posted an excerpt of this particular article in the past.

Fig. 4. Excerpt of Martha Gellhorn's article from 1961 The Arabs of Palestine - a camp leader states revisionism and conspiracy. Martha Gellhorn's 1961 article titled The Arabs of Palestine documents Holocaust denialism and revisionism throughout it. The excerpt posted above is from her time interviewing one of the camp leaders while being escorted by a Secret Service agent. It takes the Haavara Agreement into conspiracy territory and alleges that Jews (not event Zionists, just outright Jews) worked with Hitler to kill their own people. Hell, it actually doesn't go full Haavara conspiracy because the leader does not state this was done to force the Jews to emigrate to Palestine and "steal their land" as the article moves on after this section. I highly recommend reading Gellhorn's article as it highlights many of the sentiments that we see to this day, and it was written in 1961. Holocaust denialism and revisionism have been ever present. Some things have changed, such as other nations normalizing their relations with Israel and recognizing them, but others have not. And in the end, this is another example of young activists who think they're informed on a subject they recently became passionate about showing that they are in fact not as informed as they think.

[alanshemper]

In 1862's 'Rome and Jerusalem,' perhaps the earliest Zionist text, Moses Hess asked France to "help the Jews to found colonies which may extend from Suez to Jerusalem and from the banks of the Jordan to the coast of the Mediterranean." 2/

In late August 1898, the Second Zionist Congress established the Jewish Colonial Trust, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization and the first official Zionist bank. In 1902, the Anglo-Palestine Company Ltd. was founded as a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust. 3/

In 1902, Theodor Herzl, father of political Zionism, begged Cecil Rhodes to support the Zionist project and facilitate Jewish settlement of Palestine. Zionism was in Britain's imperial interest, Herzl suggested, "Because it is something colonial." 4/

Revisionist Zionist leader Vladmir Jabotinsky, who founded and led the Irgun militia, wrote explicitly in his 1923 Zionist manifesto, "The Iron Wall," that "Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or it falls by the question of armed force." 5/

Jabotinsky also wrote, "Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population," and that it was "necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs." 6/

One of the leading Zionist organizations supporting the Yishuv (Jewish settlers) in Mandatory Palestine was the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, established in 1924. (It was originally founded in 1891 as the Jewish Colonization Association.) 7/

The Jewish Agency, formed in 1929 by the 16th Zionist Congress, was (and is still) tasked with increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine. Its fundraising arm originally operated under the auspices of World Zionist Organization's aptly-named "Colonization Department." 8/

On October 5, 1937, David Ben-Gurion - later Israel's first prime minister - sent a letter to his son Amos in which he wrote that "Palestine...contains vast colonization potential which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified (because of their lack of need) to exploit." 9/

In mid-1947, the Jewish Agency presented its position to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. It declared "industrial development in Palestine" was "part of...the migration of industry from the old industrial countries to colonial or semi-colonial territories." 10/

During the presentation, Chaim Weizmann-later Israel's 1st president-stated, "As compared with the result of the colonizing activities of other peoples, our impact on the Arabs has not produced very much worse results than what has been produced by others in other countries." 11/

Moshe Shertok-Israel's 2nd prime minister-boasted of Zionism to the UNSCOP, saying "it will not be easy to find an instance in the history of colonization where a large scale settlement scheme has been conducted with so much respect for the interests of existing population." 12/

Clearly, Zionism's colonial nature was explicit from the outset and was leveraged as a selling point to gain European support. When colonialism began to lose legitimacy, the term was retired.

So don't ever claim that "we Zionists never called ourselves colonialists."

13/END

In 1891 leading Zionist thinker Asher Ginsburg (Ahad Ha'am) wrote that "when the life of our people in Palestine will develop to such an extent as to push out, to a small or large extent, the indigenous population of the country, then not easily will they give up their place." 2/

In 1898, Theodor Herzl recognized that, in order to establish a "Jewish state" in Palestine, the inconvenient indigenous population would have to be removed. “We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian Arab] population (i.e. Arab) across the border," he wrote. 3/

Israel Zangwill, British leader of the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO), wrote in 1904 of "a difficulty from which the Zionist dare not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it." It was that "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants." 4/

So what was his solution? "We must be prepared...to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did."

Similarly, Chaim Weizmann referred to Palestinians as "the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path." 5/

his 1926 address to Nat'l Conference of the United Palestine Appeal in Boston, Weizmann said Palestinians "are in the country, and have been there for ages. We are the newcomers and have to become part and parcel of the country. We are planting a new people in the country. 6/

In 1929, early Labor Zionist intellectual Berl Katznelson declared, "Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest," admitting that "it is by no chance that I use military terms when speaking of settlement." 7/

In 1930, Menachem Usshishkin, a powerful early pioneer of Zionism and leading member of the Jewish National Fund, stated, "If there are other inhabitants there [in Palestine], they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land." 8/

in 1936, Ussishkin commented, "Now the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land...because this country belongs to us not to them." 9/

In 1936, another leading Zionist, Arthur Ruppin, who led colonization efforts through the Jewish National Fund, declared, "On every site where we purchase land and where we settle people, the present cultivators will inevitably be dispossessed." 10/

In June 1937, David Ben-Gurion wrote to Jewish Agency head Moshe Shertok, "Were I an Arab...I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule." 11/

Ben-Gurion told the 20th Zionist Congress in August 1937, "New Jewish settlement will not be possible unless there is a transfer of the Arab peasantry," adding, "Jewish power in the country...will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale." 12/

At the November 21, 1937 meeting of Jewish Agency's Transfer Committee, Yosef Weitz, Land Department chief at the Jewish National Fund, boasted that "transfer" not only "diminish[es] the Arab population," but also "release[s] it for Jewish inhabitants." 13/

In 1938, Ben-Gurion reaffirmed these sentiments: "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down." 14/

At the same time, Ussishkin insisted, "We cannot start the Jewish state with...half the population being Arab...Such a state cannot survive even half an hour." Regarding the forcible ethnic cleansing of over sixty thousand Palestinian families, he added: "It is most moral." 15/

Ruppin agreed: "I do not believe in the transfer of individuals. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." He also wrote, "Land is the most necessary thing for establishing roots in Palestine...We are bound in each case...to remove the peasants who cultivate the land." 16/

Moshe Shertok, Jewish Agency chief and later Israel's second prime minister, said, "We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it." 17/

On March 20, 1941, the Jewish Agency's Yosef Weitz wrote, "The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer." 18/

In 1941, Weitzmann told Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to England, that "if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place. That, of course, would be a first installment; what might happen afterwards [would be] a matter for history." 19/

In a 1941 memorandum entitled "Outlines of the Zionist Policy", Ben-Gurion recognized that "the majority of the Arabs could hardly be expected to leave voluntarily," noting, "Complete transfer without compulsion – and ruthless compulsion, at that – is hardly imaginable." 20/

Founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress Nahum Goldmann recalled Ben-Gurion saying in 1956, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." 21/

In 1969, Moshe Dayan declared, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages...There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." 22/

Again, Zionism is a colonial ideology that explicitly relies on the forceful removal of the native population from its homeland. To live in peace with those you have displaced, dispossessed & disenfranchised, you must guarantee equal rights for all. 23/END

[cazort]

I only today learned that the modern Israeli government actively banned Yiddish in theaters and periodicals. This went beyond the treatment of minority languages in the US and most other Western countries, where immigrant languages would often die out after a few generations. It was an active legal ban that was paired with an overall approach to de-legitimize Yiddish to the point of virtually eradicating it in modern Israeli society. It was often paired with brutal vigilante violence, which you can read about in this article:

Viewed in this light, things like the contemporary brutal treatment of Hasidim in Jerusalem who still speak Yiddish, Israeli police tackling old men to the ground merely for peacefully protesting, makes a lot more sense.

The Israeli propaganda machine has pushed a lot of revisionist history, promoting Israel as a safe space for Jews who had nowhere to go after the holocaust.

If this was the case, though, why so brutally eradicate these Jews' native tongue?

Yiddish was the native language of my Jewish ancestors. Israel's anti-Yiddish campaign, combining authoritarian government with brutal vigilante violence, is a new unconscionable fact that has come to light recently that continues to make the current modern state of Israel look even worse, totally conflicting with the image that is painted of it by groups like AIPAC and other pro-Israeli think tanks. And there's an obvious parallel between how Yiddish was treated as a language, and how the Palestinian people and their culture are being treated nowadays.

Israel is starting to look increasingly like a nightmarish authoritarian state to me. It's bizarre to me how long it's been able to maintain its pristine image among American Jews. It is time we all wake up to this state. It is, and has never been, committed to the protection of Jews or preservation of Jewish culture. It is a far-right authoritarian state interested in advancing its own particularly narrow ethno-nationalist agenda. It will only protect you so long as you submit to their narrow parameters. This is how you have even groups like the ADL saying people "aren't even Jewish" if they don't support Israel.

Come on, people, see the pattern, it is staring you in the face at this point.

[hellsbellschime]

I also think the US’s alliance with Israel is beyond political parties, most dem and republican candidates would provide aid because the alliance is too beneficial for us whether people like it or not. I also find it funny that people are getting on tiktok saying they’re no longer going to vote for him because of this, yet not a single person realizes how much the Ukraine would be fucked if they either didn’t vote or didn’t vote Dem. Oh you don’t like genocide for Palestinians but fuck those Ukrainians who are still fighting for their land and at war. It’s the hypocrisy.

One guy said Biden would go down as one of the worst presidents and I asked how is he “one of the worst”. Every time I ask people who declare that they never counter with any one of his policies that are so supposedly shit. And let’s be real, this rage is temporary and dare I say inauthentic, come next year there will be a big push to vote for Biden because Trump is terrifying.

Exactly, I get that it's a hugely cultural thing, but the positive propaganda for Israel has been INSANE in the US for decades, and there are a lot of very weird niche things that make people buy into the US/Israel alliance (for instance the nearly 100 million Evangelicals in the country are obsessed with Israel and Jewish people and therefore "supports" them in the hopes that they will all die and start the apocalypse, there's a lot of revisionist history that frames the US as the "heroes" of WWII so support of Israel is an easier sell, etc.). I mean FFS, the House vote to provide Israel with FOURTEEN BILLION DOLLARS IN AID should give you a good idea of what the political perspective on Israel has been for a long time. As far as politicians go, Biden is actually far more favorable towards Palestine than the vast majority of American politicians. And yes, ultimately that propaganda has always existed for a reason, because Israel is an incredibly valuable ally. The fact that Biden is putting any pressure on them to cool their jets at all given how yeehaw Americans are when it comes to demolishing terrorists is pretty abnormal.

And exactly, frankly, even if Biden were doing a shit job (which he's really not, yes he is too old for the gig but quite possibly the only upside of that is that he is politically experienced enough to actually get shit done when the Republican party has made obstructionism their first priority), the other options are fucking CRAZY. Like, it's probably going to be Donald Trump, a literal serial criminal who tried to overthrow the American government, and if it's not then it's Ron DeSantis or some other lunatic who will undoubtedly try to criminalize abortion and medical treatment for trans people and shit. Criticism towards US support of Israel is valid, but I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that WE are in the midst of a political crisis ourselves that has been going on for like 20+ years at this point and has only gotten worse. So if any remotely left-leaning people don't pull their shit together and stop losing the forest for the trees then a lot more than just Palestine is going to suffer for it.

[socialistsephardi]

The Political History of Zionism

With everything currently going on, I’ve decided to make this post detailing the different streams of Zionism, in order to deconstruct rhetoric surrounding Zionism. I do this to aid arguments against Hasbara, which often claims that Zionism is unified and simple.

To begin, Political Zionism is generally considered to start with the writings of Theodor Herzl, in the 19th century political climate of Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to this, numerous pre-zionist movements were competing among the Jews of europe following an event called the Haskalah, or “Jewish Enlightment”. The French Revolution caused France to become the first european nation to recognize Jews as citizens with rights, which would be followed by Britain and Germany. This allowed for the formation of a new secular Jewish middle class enthrawled by enlightment principles - mainly, rationalism, romanticism, and nationalism. However, this also generated a shift from religious persecution towards ‘racial’ antisemitism. As the Jews of various countries were subjected to either intense expectations of assimilation, or reoccuring waves of pogroms, it became clear that most of europe regarded these emancipated Jews as foreign nationals of alien religion and culturally compatible. The proto-Zionists begin building a consensus pushing for immigration to Ottoman Palestine, some seeking to provide an alternative to the pogroms, some believing themselves witness to the signs of an imment messiah, etc. Moshe Hess, an associate of Karl Marx, calls for Jews to create a socialist state in Palestine (more on Hess later). Waves of European Jews arrive, and organizations aiming to support Jewish farmers and artisans in Palestine and Syria are founded. The local authorities begin to differentiate between the immigrant Jews and the Jews from the local communities. Herzl enters the Jewish public consciousness with his writings calling specifically for the creation of a Jewish majority state. appealing to the British and French empires to aid them. He rejects Hess’s socialist proposal and instead proposes a reconstruction of Jewry altogether, rejecting the diaspora entirely, arguing that only separation could ensure Jewish survival. Herzl proposes establishing this state in Argentina, but concludes that Palestine would likely have more ideological appeal. I feel it crucial to note here that in his early writings, Herzl is hostile to religious Jews, claims that the Jews of the Ghettos and Shtetls hold back the intellectual, and calls the Sephardi Jews living under France in Algeria mixed blood barbarians. These attitudes would carry over into the political zietgiest of early Zionism.

From here, Zionism begins to grow, the call for simple immigration to the land is supplanted by a demand for a Jewish majority state, and competing schools of thought emerge. The World Zionist Organization is created, and the Zionists pivot attempt including the consent of the Ottomans in the project. Herzl here also begins to explicitly call for the colonization of Palestine, in line with his admiration for the french and british empires. The first major split within the Zionist movement comes with the formation of Labor Zionism based on Hess’s writings. Wheras Herzl’s camp depended on gaining support from the empires and from prominent Jewish figures, Labor Zionism argued that only the Jewish working class could create such a nation, and sought to emphasize a progressive Jewish identity. This is also where a re-alignment for the religious backing begins. Originally, orthodox Jews are in an uneasy alliance with the entirely secular Jews in the movement, mostly because despite his early writings, Herzl emphasized a need to manufacture support from orthodox rabbis and communities. With Herzl eventual death, the orthodox separate from the mainstream movement, citing the believe that only the Messiah can reassert Jewish control over the land. Reform Jews at this time also reject Zionism, as it is perceived as a threat to Jewish citizenship in Europe and America. The Reform rejected the notion that Jews were bound by a shared nationality, a position which held true until the holocaust.

Over the next few decades, various zionist groups in palestine compete for power. Many begin attacking the Muslim and Christian Palestinian communities, often forcibly separating the local Jewry in the process. Jewish terrorist groups launch attacks on British centers following WW1. Labor Zionists rejected traditional Jewish practice, arguing that these represented a diaspora mentality. They also set up the early Kibbitzim. Jabotinsky develops a trend known as Revisionist Zionism, with the aim of territorial maximalism. Revisionist Zionism becomes ingrained as the right wing faction, and eventually becoming the ideological foundation of the current Likud party. Jabotinsky admired and borrowed core concepts from Mussolini and fascism, in particular the centrality of the state, social conservative unity, and racial supremacy. Mussolini knew of this and told the founder of the World Jewish Congress “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky". The revisionists during this time approved of the idea of building a Mediterranean alliance and opposing British influence. In 1939, Stern forms Lehi, and they oppose Britain in WW2, instead arguing that Jews must align with the Axis, eventually going so far as to claim that if they were to take control of the mandate, they would negotiate with Hitler to see the Jews in the camps transfered in as new citizens, and in exchange join the German sphere.

Following WW2, the Nakba occurs, and the Haganah (including groups like Lehi) is reorganized into the IDF. The liberal/general Zionists are now faced with oppozing interal forces such as the labor Zionists and the revisionists. They now turn to emphasis liberalism in the new state, mostly the democratic electoral system and the free market, but largely become a backdrop to the rest of the political movements, which turn themselves into party affiliation, since the basic liberal structure had already been established. The labor Zionists become the dominant trend in Israeli politics until the 70′s. Following the Six Day Way in 67, Israel seizes control of the rest of the land from the mandate. This sets off a new movement. Previously, Religious Zionism was a minor stream mostly simply meaning religious Jews who supported Zionism. From here on, however, it becomes dominated by a right wing religious trend and becomes NeoZionism. NeoZionists combined religious and nationalist elements, specifically advocated settlements beyond the green line, and often advocate the removal of Arab people, citing Arab Israelis as a potential 5th column. Neozionists believe that the secularism of other zionist branches is a significant weak point, and usually incorporate far right orthodox talking points. Groups such as the Hebron settlers are highly influenced by Neozionism. Neozionists are also usually behind the call to establish an entirely orthodox state in the west bank if Israel were to pull out. On the opposite end, there are the post-Zionists, who believe Zionism has fulfilled its goal. Post-Zionists are not really coordiated in the same way others on this list are, but generally they are critical of the direction israel has moved, they typically seek to try to make Jews safer in the diaspora, generally support Arab Israelis and some post-zionists believe in transforming the state into an entirely liberal-democratic one. Right wing Israelis also use “post zionist“ to refer to the Israeli left after the Oslo Accords in the mid 90′s.

Finally, I’d like to take note of Kahanism. Kahanism is an extremist ideology based on the work of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and materialized as the Kach party in Israel, a party which was boycotted by every other faction the single time they were elected to the Knesset, and is now banned and labeled a terrorist organization. Kahanists believe that every single Jew should live in Israel, and that only Jews should live in Israel. They advocate for Israel to enforce traditional Jewish law at the national scale, and together with Neozionists have engaged in actions to provoke fear in diaspora communities. Kahanists believe that all Arab people are the mortal enemy of all Jews and that Israel should seize land from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Kahane himself proposed laws, including banning intermarriage, banning cultural meetings between Jewish and Muslim students, and re-segregating areas that had already undergone desegregation.

So that is a compressed history of the trends within Zionism. I write this not to garner sympathy for Zionism, but in hopes that this helps pick apart hasbarist simplification. At best, Zionism produced a labor movement with a terribly racist history which stole yemenite Jewish children and encouraged discrimination and segregation against sephardi and mizrachi Jews within Israel from a secular ashkenazi ‘core‘. At worst, fundamentalists and militant zealots who are overwhelmingly hostile to anyone else, groups who align with historic and current fascist and nazi movements, and a massive, overwhelming history of abuse and human rights violations against Palestinians, other Arabs, Jews of color, diaspora movements, etc. If you needed any reason beyond the sheer weight of the Palestinian cause to oppose Zionism, here you go. I hope this sways the mind of any lingering ZIonists reading this, and I hope this is used to more effectively call out Zionism for what it is - a racist, imperialist, and fascist ideology hellbent on redefining Judaism for its aims against any act of solidarity between groups, completely fueled by western interests in carving up and controlling West Asia / the middle east/ Al-Mashriq.

[stephendavid]

'Not a fact-check they were eager to undertake, I suspect, but Tlaib’s imagined history of kindly Palestinians inviting Jews into the Holy Land only to be shoved aside and ousted from their land was too egregious to let stand....

'[Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini] not only ramped up violence in the Middle East, he directly participated in the oppression of Jews during World War II. As a guest of Hitler, he helped recruit thousands of Muslims to join a division of the Waffen-SS, who then played an active role in the destruction of Yugoslavian Jewry. In his Berlin radio speeches during the war, Husseini preached: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them [Quran 2:191]—this pleases God, history and religion.” Such words would find a safe space in any Hamas lecture. 'Husseini personally, with the backing of Himmler, Eichmann, and other Nazis, intervened to stop the issuing of at least 400,000 visas to Jews trying to emigrate to British Palestine. Most of those Jews ended up in concentration camps rather than the “safe harbor” of Haifa. 'In 1943, after hearing that some German allies were negotiating with the International Red Cross and others to transport thousands of Jewish children to Palestine to avoid death, he lobbied to prevent the rescue, pushing to have them sent to Poland to perish. Husseini was accused of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. This hardly seems like a person offering a safe haven for Jews. 'Husseini was so eager to rid the region of Jews, he proposed an Arab revolt in the name of fighting them to Hitler when the two met in 1941. Hitler declined, believing that it wouldn’t succeed under conditions at the time. That is, Husseini was more eager for armed action against Jews in the Middle East than the Fuhrer was.'

[the-ind1gen0us-jude4n]

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/10/spain-ireland-and-other-eu-states-could-recognise-palestine-on-may-21-borrell-says

Not surprised that the countries with some of the most unapologetically antisemitic history are preparing to recognise a “palestinian” state in the heart of the Jewish homeland.

What else do you want me to say? These countries are wrong and they’re run by idiots. That’s all I need to say.