It’s crucial, I think. To fully understand the situation, we’re going to have to understand all aspects of it. As anti-Semitism is disappointingly rife, we should not forget it. And it is imperative, I think we agree, to highlight the relationship between Zionism and antisemitism (including Zionism putting Jews in direct physical danger).

It comes through constantly. Yesterday, I saw a Finkelstein interview. The interviewer, Kay Burley, I think, said something about Israel being a safe haven for Jews and doesn’t Finkelstein feel bad for challenging that.

Putting aside the point that Finkelstein is based, the implication is that wherever the interviewer is from (Britain?) is not safe, unwilling to become safe, or begrudgingly safe and the sooner all the Jews leave, the better. I don’t want to say this is intentional. But it’s implied every time the claim is made.

I don’t want Jews to feel like they have to go to Israel to be safe; they should feel safe as my next-door neighbour. Highlighting stories about Jews caught in the cross fire in some way and being vocal about it could help create that atmosphere. Justice dies when good people remain silent, and all that. There may also be an argument that if we can make the west significantly less antisemitic, we might also encourage Israelis to leave Palestine. At the least it will make the choice easier.

[Edit: I just realised another implication of this—antisemites will have an incentive to ramp up antisemitism to make Israeli Jews feel as though they are safer fighting in Palestine than leaving. We should be on guard for this. It’s another reason why being vocal about harm to Jews does not automatically mean ignoring Palestinians; it’s part of the same struggle and could help Palestinians.]

Zionism gives antisemites an excuse: ‘if you want to be safe, go to Israel (and disposses the Palestinians to secure it)’. The logic is premised on antisemitism and colonialism. The very people who make life unsafe and difficult for Jews and other oppressed people’s essentially say, ‘If you want freedom and security you can’t have it here, you have to do the same thing that we did/do somewhere else’.

And as we know, some Jews will accept that logic, hence Zionism. But what will actually liberate Jews and other oppressed people’s, including Palestinians, is abolishing class society. (If only someone had predicted this circa 1843–4.)

Then there’s the problem of equating Zionism with Judaism. This is actively harmful to Jews. It’s used as an excuse to oppress non-/anti-Zionist Jews. But as antisemites aren’t overly interested in fine distinctions, they don’t really care if any Jew suffers for it. If an antisemite targets a Jew for being anti-Zionist, they’ll lose no sleep to later discover they were pro-Zionism.

The ‘support’ only extends to the settler colonial project; any benefit to Jewish people is incidental. It’s a double win for racists who want Jews out of ‘their country’ and who are always looking for ways to oppress Arabs.

This is partly why I dislike the ‘Israel lobby’ rhetoric. Not only is it inherently antisemitic as it’s based on a hive mind trope, but it also masks the motivations of racist imperialists. They don’t need to be lobbied to support settler colonialism.

Just as I see e.g. Europe as an outpost of a single Anglo-European empire based in the US, I see Israel as an outpost, too. Not as a last stand hidden behind a circle of wagons that has to beg for aid. That model subverts history in so many ways.

The ‘Israel lobby’ rhetoric seems to be a front that diverts anger away e.g. from the US, British, etc, states – the international bourgeoisie – onto Israel, which has been framed as representing all Jews. Albeit, it’s Zionists who make that equation and anti-Zionists who tend to say ‘Israel lobby’. The effect is that anti-Zionists can fall into a trap created by structural antisemitism, normalising it for ‘apolitical’ ‘bystanders’.

Another aspect is that while Israelis are settlers in Palestine, many would be refugees elsewhere (and likely mistreated in much of the rest of the ‘international community’). This will become worse if there’s a Jewish refugee crisis. The more the Zionist logic is pushed, the worse this will be.

I’m optimistic that a free Palestine would find a way to live in peace with Jews (and Christians and atheists) in a sovereign Palestine without expelling everyone. (No idea what that would look like in detail). It does seem to be a stated aim of Hamas, which seems clear that their enemy is Zionism, not Judaism. But that won’t help Jews in the rest of the world, refugee from Israel or otherwise. I don’t want any settlers settling Palestine or for Jews to be persecuted in the rest of the world (or for their Judaism in Palestine).

When Palestine is free, we will still have to find a way to tackle and end antisemitism. This war is going to make it worse and harder to fight. So keeping Judaism in mind throughout this war may help us to be prepared for what comes after. It doesn’t diminish Palestinian suffering unless it’s framed as a hierarchy. And ultimately, when Palestine wins, Palestinians will still have to fight, alongside Jews, against the same forces that lead to the oppression of both.

I feel comfortable saying it here although I haven’t said it to anyone I know: The Israeli/Hebrew propaganda right now tries SO HARD to compare Hamas with Nazis, capitalizing on “Murdered JewsTM”, that I really did not fall off the chair when seeing the “gas the Jews” video from Sydney.

If you can distinguish Zionists from Jews, that’d be cool, but I’ll give you the Jew Pass for not doing so, because that connection is our fault exclusively.

Antisemitism is such a beautiful excuse for what’s happening right now. They’re not wrong, it exists and we truly are a persecuted people, but we’re also war criminals. Israeli history textbooks are written in a way that emphasizes the former while completely (completely) sleeps on the latter. The narrative is clean and makes so much sense: persecuted Jews coming from the holocaust just wanted to return to their homes but they were persecuted there too 🥺 (which is wrong, early settlers weren’t part of the holocaust, they came way beforehand. and the post-holocaust Jews only started migrating two years after the Nakba)

I’m so disappointed by my leftist friends here who seem so shocked of the Hamas attacks but cannot take right now the reality that these same pictures are circling from Gaza for years. They seem to think that not murdering babies with bare hands but rather with nukes makes us somehow morally superior. Why can’t they understand the power imbalance? And why can’t they remember that almost every other occupied people resisted in such gruesome, inhumane ways? Would my friends with Algerian ancestry talk that way about their grandparents, knowing some of their people also beheaded children and committed rape during the war? Is it really they’re “human animals”, or… maybe you just lose some of your humanity after that many years of occupation?

You know what, you don’t even have to go as far as Algeria, the Nakba itself included raping of Palestinians, but it isn’t widely known here :/

Feel free to ask anything btw, but please try to show some empathy, I’m well aware that I’m on the colonizing side and there’s no need to remind me of that, and no I don’t think leaving is the best I can do right now. Thanks I’m just a bit agitated rn