Jewish Voice for Peace is guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people. We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.
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Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design. Zionism has meant profound trauma for generations, systematically separating Palestinians from their homes, land, and each other. Zionism, in practice, has resulted in massacres of Palestinian people, ancient villages and olive groves destroyed, families who live just a mile away from each other separated by checkpoints and walls, and children holding onto the keys of the homes from which their grandparents were forcibly exiled.
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Keep saying this. Every time you do Israel loses more public support.
The shield has been used up and is no longer valid. The general public no longer accepts you zealots calling every criticism of Israel antisemitism.
So fuck you and fuck Israel. Yes Israel has a right to exist, but they do not have a right to illegally steal land. Palestine has a right to exist also.
No they didn't. Even the christian crusaders, who where happy to commit pogroms against jews in Europe as a sort of "motivational entertainment" had to note the peaceful coexistence of jews, christians and muslims under islamic rule.
The Palestinians of today are the descendants of the biblical abrahamic tribes. White european, often secular, jews, who now control Israel are killing the people whose lineage is closer to David and Abraham, than theirs could ever be.
The main reason the jews under the Ottoman empire started the Yishuv and congregated in Palestine hoping to get their own country was that they were seriously discriminated against under islamic rule. They had to pay more taxes, were restricted in what clothing they could wear, were not allowed to build or maintain houses of worship, ride horses, carry weapons, ... and were generally valued as less than muslims wrt legal rulings. This wasn't enforced everywhere throughout the entire history of the empire, but I don't think anyone would be happy in that situation.
Currently, less than half the Israelis are descendent from 'white European' immigrants
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[38] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized")
1865, when the equality of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire was proclaimed, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, a high-ranking official observed, "whereas in former times, in the Ottoman State, the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: 'The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam.'"
That seems to me, as a result of the general nationalism that emerged and specifically the long lasting antisemitic tradition of the Christians to take influence with the decline of the Ottoman empire.
Meanwhile there are extensive links between zionism and anti-semitism, where secular zionists often worked together with anti-semitists to push for the zionist project as a mean to remove jews from western countries.
Cherrypicking aside, the worsening situation coinciding with the crumbling of the Ottoman empire further supports my point. Larger nationalists groups were going to carve up the territories for themselfves and the jews were so dispersed that they would remain small minorities everywhere. But facing nationalists and religious extremists while losing the 'umbrella' of the Ottomans (which was already discriminatory at best).
You cite the reforms under the tanzimat period but very conveniently forget what followed: a return to a monarchist caliphate with a sultan that abandoned the millet system for the ideal of a united people under islam.
It is not my intend to cherrypick. The notion of "islamic rule" by itself could create the idea that islam is monocausal in this, because western history education generally lacks in covering the Ottoman empire, or anything that isn't eurocentric. In school i learned almost nothing about the Ottoman empire, the Mauretanian empire, Persia, China or other important empires in global history aside from the notion of "In those years they lead conquest into Europe and in those years they were kicked out again. And in these other years Europeans were there and colonized."
Meanwhile the ruling class in Israel is predominantly of european descent. So the fair idea of the Mizrahi and Sephardi to have a state with a strong enough jewish population to enjoy and protect equal rights for them was still taken over and led to their discrimination by the later european settlers, who enjoyed stronger support from the european countries and US.
I cannot judge if they were tricked into migrating, but they were and are subject to discrimination in todays Israel.
I think this is important to note in the discussion, where from westeren countries the current state of Israel is often painted as the only and therefore righteous way, to grant jewish people sovereignity. When seeing the origin of the current state of Israel in the context of european and american antisemitism, nationalism and post-colonialism it becomes more clear, that the underlying motives were not to genuinly prevent further anti-semitism and it did not arise from a genuine care for the jewish people.
So the ethnic discrimination inside Israel, already starting from the beginning, is an indicator for colonial motivations in establishing a state run predominantly by Europeans in the heart of the Middle East and in control of one of the holiest sites of all abrahamic religions. In terms of geopolitics Israel has been very useful to the West, to destabilize and divide the Middle East, and in the competition of reordering the world after WW2 it must have been an important project, to prevent the emergence of an Arab power bloc that could have been more powerful than the EU is today.
When looking at the way that still anti-zionism or even just general criticism of Israel is shunned as being anti-semitic in Germany, it is important to see it as the deflection that it is. The goal of this is to prevent a discussion about the actions of Israel and the current way it conducts itself. This is not to say, that there is no anti-semitism amongst anti-zionists, or also that some are merely using anti-zionism as a vehicle for anti-semitism. There is certainly both. But in Germany for the past month many jews were shunned for criticising Israel. When looking at the historical context, this conduct of German government and mainstream society becomes even more absurd.
The primary question flowing from the earlier posts is brushed aside in half a sentence and flooded with all the sins of Israel, Europe, and the world :-)
It's actually a very essential question to answer, whether they 'deserved' their own country out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire instead of facing the discrimination as a minority in the hardening sectarian climate of the region. Was the UN 'right' in their decision to grant them a piece? Were the Arab states 'right' that there shouldn't be a piece with a jewish majority?
I'd gladly discuss the other points you touch but I'm afraid they're just added to the soup to distract from having to think about the above.
Bro you come with David and Abraham when in reality it's about the right for Israel to exist. And that right is granted. There is no legitimate discussion about it everyone thinking Israel shouldn't exists is antisemitic and a idiot.
This place of land has been inhabited for almost the entire human history and pre-history. It had many rulers. Now its Israel and thats it.
You claimed that the land was stolen from the jewish people who were there first, which is the main historical argument, as to why israel has a right to exist, despite the basis for that being the mass displacement and killing of the Palestinians during the Nakba and the subsequent occupation.
But the land was never "stolen" from the jewish people. Most of the Palestinians simply becamse christians and muslims over time. The whole "the state has a right to exist", which is very different from "the people have a right to exist", is a western construct, to justify pushing the jews, who survived the holocaust to Israel and to channel the western countries "redemption" from commiting, being complicit in, or being inactive about the holocaust.
In international law there is no concept of a states "right to exist". People have a right to exist and they have the right to sovereignity, for which a state is a way to express it. But it is not bound to this state of Israel in this constitution and with this government and with this genocide against the Palestinians.
This right to sovereignity is equally maintained in a two state solution, or a one state solution, where Israelis and Palestinians have equal political participation and equal rights as citizens. That was even one of the main ideas of the early zionists. But the later radicalization of zionism after Israel was founded, led them to believe, they could take it all. And that is why they reduced Gaza to rubbles. That is why they tried to displace the people into Egypt. That is why they talk about deporting or murdering all the Palestinians in the Israeli government. And that is why they need to be criticized and they need to be stopped.
This is also what progressive jews demand. And these progressive jews are equally affected by being excluded from public discourse in Germany, being excluded from cultural events and being denied formerly sheduled awards, and being taken into police custody for demonstrating and denied their right to demonstrations. So in alledgedly fighting against antisemitism, Germany commits antisemitism on a huge scale.
You're welcome. It should be added that there is a right of a state to defend itself from military agression. So of course Israel does have the right to defend itself from Hamas or other attacks on its people. This is relevant in the scope of conflicting rights, as Hamas has no right to attack civillians.
So this is not what the "state x has a right to exist" argument is about. It is used and needed to justify the continued denial of the rights of the Palestinians.
It remains an argument of might makes right. Imagine the US would say that the native Americans wanting their land back would be an attack on the US right to existence.
Arguing what was left of Palestine before the Six Days War has the right to exist without occupation, homes and crops seized and burnt, being bombed relentlessly, being kidnapped, held and tortured is in no way arguing Israel has no right to exist.
Stop justifying genocide. This is a repetitively grossly disproportionate retaliation, gaslighting to hide genocide. Period. Hasbara/IDF are fascist apologists, full stop. “Never again” applies to all or none.
No need to move the goal post; am not a fan of Bibi either. Hamas certainly played into his hands. I don't think he really cared about tripping hippies.
I was addressing what you said.
There is a tiresome campaign to try to not even mention October 7 even pretending Hamas didn't do all the killing, as if the IDF also killed many of their own citizens on the day. Now that is gaslighting.
It is, its idiotic and they stole the land as well.
I know you and your ilk don't care about that, but no they didn't. The Palestinians of today are the same Palestinians of 2000 years ago. Palestine wasn't only Jews.
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that? Our history is a little longer than 2000 years... About 12000 years to be specific. (if we take the first city as the start of human civilization)
Also Judaism is a lot older than Islam, wich is even younger than Christianity, wich itself is based on Judaism.
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that?
No they... didn't? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Zionists tend to refer to some nonexistent Arab genocide of all inhabitants of Palestine so they can conveniently claim that the people currently living there "stole" it; is that what you mean?
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that? Our history is a little longer than 2000 years... About 12000 years to be specific. (if we take the first city as the start of human civilization)
Also Judaism is a lot older than Islam, wich is even younger than Christianity, wich itself is based on Judaism.
You realize both the Palestinian and Jewish people are descendants from the people that lived on the land back then, right? We literally have evidence of that.
Like, just because your RELIGION is Islam or Christianity, that doesn't mean you can't be GENETICALLY Jewish. In fact there's this whole thing WITHIN Judaism regarding ethnic Jews vs non-ethnic Jews...
You seem to be arguing about the Jews rights as a race, but conflating it to religion. Because if it was about "race", then Palestinians are entitled to the same land as Israel claims.