this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think that there's still a lot of conflation happening here.

I am anti-Zionist, insomuch as current-day Zionist adherents almost universally support Israel as having religious justification, which, given that Israel conducts colonialism, apartheid, and murder, means that they are tying their own religious beliefs to the aforementioned settlement, apartheid, and murder.

Nothing in Jewish scripture says that this state at this time will be the end-times land for the Jewish people. I would have no issue with Zionists who just believe that they have to actively work towards a Jewish state rather than expecting it to simply come into being, but tying that belief to a specific state as a movement opens it up to criticism based on that relationship.

If I meet a Zionist who says, "yeah, this is not a religiously-ordained state by any means we can tell. The actual land for Jews spoken of in scripture could happen 10,000 years from now. We don't know.", I'd have no problem with that viewpoint.

I'm anti-Israel (i.e. the specific, currently-extant state) for being a settler-colonial project that actively enshrines apartheid in its laws, and dehumanizes and subjugates and murders people. I'm also anti-Evangelical Christianity, in part because it also as a movement/ group of beliefs, supports Israel.

But any solution at this point will have to involve safety for everyone not just one side or the other.

The problem I have with this is that it frames the situation as though it's 2 sides struggling against each other, when in reality it's one side being oppressed by the other.

In order for them to be in a state of peace and mutual safety, Israel has to give up control that it currently has. It has to remove the violent programs it currently operates (like settlements and "trimming the grass"). It has to LOSE something (control, ground, capacity for violence) in order to reach a neutral state. And by neutral state, I don't mean "equal power with the Palestinians", I mean a state of not actively making Palestinians unsafe.

But most people making your argument are not open to admitting this; it is almost always based on the assumption that making the current state static would equate to mutual safety, which is false.