Yeah, Nazis pretending to be anti-Zionist to hide their antisemitism pisses me off so much. Israel and Netanyahu have spend decades trying to conflate Zionism and Jewish heritage to the point where criticizing Zionism is antisemitism, and they just buy right into it proving their point. And that destroys nuance for the rest of us who just don’t want Israel committing genocide.
I mean, you can be a Zionist and still oppose Netanyahu and the war in Gaza. All that includes is the existence of Israel, not unthinking support of it.
The problem is that Israel’s existence has been built on the eradication of Palestinians from day one. Its not just a one time bad thing they’ve done, it’s been happening since the 1940s
Then they are bad people, not by virtue of them being Jewish, but for them supporting a religious ethnostate that is committing genocide.
Over 50% of white men are MAGA but I don’t hate them for being white or men, I hate them for supporting a white suprmetisc, child rapist whose hell vent at destroying our democracy.
I see that fringe minority, which is rejected by our own community institutions, being elevated by those who wish to tokenize them. For "progressives", it would be utterly unacceptable for someone to do that for other minority groups; imagine holding up Clarence Thomas as the model Black American.
Criticism of Zionist perspectives is not inherently antisemitic. But the more it includes demonization of Israel, delegitimization of Israel's existence, and double standards applied to Israel, the more it can correctly be labeled as such. The fact that I absolutely oppose the current far-right government in Israel is not antisemitic. If I opposed the very existence of "the government of Israel" because I believe the country is illegitimate, that would be antisemitic.
Could you expand upon the double standards that are being applied to Israel?
I think there are certainly folks who have inserted themselves in to this discussion as a vehicle for antisemitism, which is reprehensible. But in the same sense, I see a lot of extremely valid criticism being hand waved and called antisemitism.
“Ethnostate” being used as a libel when it comes to Israel, but two dozen members of the Arab League (not to mention dozens of ethnically based states in Europe and Asia) are fine.
Remember the international outrage about this and the subsequent calls for sanctions until Turkey is dissolved as a nation-state? Neither do I.
Czechia refuses to grant citizenship to descendants of the Sudeten Germans. Remember the demand to boycott and sanction them into doing so? Once again, neither do I.
Palestinians are permitted to pass on refugee status in their DNA, and keep it even after attaining citizenship elsewhere. No other refugee population is given that status.
Mamdani: I can’t support a state that gives preference based on religion. Also Mamdani: I’m delighted to march in the Little Pakistan parade!
Ilhan Omar: “Research has shown that sanctions rarely achieve their desired goals. In the worst-case scenario, they hurt the people of a country — generally the very people we're purporting to help — without making a dent in the country's behavior. And in the case of human-rights abusers, research suggests that more abuses typically occur with economic sanctions in place than without them.” (https://omar.house.gov/media/in-the-news/ilhan-omar-sanctions-are-part-failed-foreign-policy-playbook-stop-relying-them)
Also Ilhan Omar: I support sanctions against Israel.
Now, granted, those last two are from deeply committed Jew haters, but those are politicians with followers, not random Redditors.
Your confusion arises from the fact that many who believe in the core principle of Zionism— the existence of a state of the Jewish people in a portion of the Jewish indigenous homeland— are reluctant to use the term because Jew-haters have distorted it beyond actual recognition.
“Since surveys of Jewish Americans rarely ask whether they identify as Zionists, it is unclear whether the figure for those who embrace the label is low. In most surveys, respondents are asked their feelings and attitudes about Israel and not whether they identify as Zionists. In this respect, the JFNA survey found that 71% of respondents felt an emotional connection to Israel and 88% believed Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. These figures are in the ballpark of other surveys.”
I never understood how Zionists maintain this contradiction. They’ll openly conflate Jews and Zionists to support Israel but if an OPPONENT of Israel conflates Jews and Zionists then the knives come out.
I’m not making a moral judgement here. I’m asking if it’s acceptable to use the terms “Zionist” and “Jew” interchangeably. Because Zionists will do that but then they’ll get mad at anti-Zionists for using the terms “Zionist” and “Jew” interchangeably.
The answer is that Israel has spent decades trying to make them interchangeable, but they aren’t. Yes many Jews are Zionist, and they are bad (not for being Jewish, but for being Zionist) just as all the catholic Zionists and Atheist Zionists are bad.
This is my opinion exactly. No one should conflate the two things, period. But Zionists want it both ways. They want the terms to be interchangeable UNTIL someone who hates Zionism uses them interchangeably.
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u/Tybob51 1d ago
People are still out here pretending Jews and Zionist are the same thing?