In the latest issue of Contumacy, the Libertarian newsletter at UT, Bryan Brah poses the question: Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitic?
“Today, Zionism’s main goal is to compel or convince every nation in the world to recognize the legitimate existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Co-opting language by equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism creates an all-or-nothing proposition for opponents.”
Is it possible to be one without the other? Ahmadinejad is a clear anti-Zionist, but who knows, he could love watching Seinfeld. Mel Gibson might hate Jews, but might love Israel as a country.
Is it possible to be Jewish and anti-Zionist? Brah says “Many Orthodox Jews believe that Israel is a blasphemy and that only the Messiah can establish a Jewish State.”
Brah’s main point is that anti-Semitic countries can disguise their anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism. Hate against a people is viewed as wrong by the world, while hate and disdain for a country can be viewed as acceptable. The US hates North Korea, but that doesn’t mean we hate its residents.
It seems like a simple question. Are anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the same thing? Short answer: Yes with a “but…”, long answer: Yes with an “if…”
First of all they’re completely different. I, for one, am anti-zionist because i think the occupation of Israel is completely wrong. In my opinion, it was not the right of British government to give Israel to the Jews when there were millions of people living in the country already. And why were the Arabs basically forced out of their homes for the creation of a Jewish nation? Why could they have not lived in peace together like they had for thousands of years before? Before the occupation, jews and arabs considered themselves cousins, while now it appears there is a growing animosity between them.
I have many jewish friends and I can say freely i love them very much i just dont agree with their opinions about the occupation for the most part. Does this mean i’m anti-jew? NO. I wish there could be peace.
There’s one key point that many Israelis dont think about…would there be such violence if the Palestinian refugees were living at the same level as their jewish neighbors? If they had moderate houses, open universities, market places that didnt have a curfew?
Many Israelis would use the excuse that they would have this if there were no suicide bombers… were there suicide bombers right after the occupation started and many palestinian cities were massacred by Israeli soldiers forcing them out? The palestinians had no way of defending themselves, getting their land back, or even going to college.
There is no justification for killing innocent people in any way, but my point is that thousands of palestinians have been killed that never even make it to the news.
And the arabs never forget. they are still angry about what happened over 50 years ago.
Until Israel stops being so Isolationist, and the palestinians create a stable democratic government and army, peace will never be reached.
Nameless,
Anti-Zionism is not inherently Anti-Semitism on the physical-I-hate-you-level. It may be anti-semitic in the sense of I-deny-who-you-say-you-are (which is not the same thing morally but still anti).
Specifically, the term ‘Jew’ comes from ‘Judean’ (as in of Judea [now called the West Bank]) for example. When you write that Jews ought not have coopted the natives you are denying an inherent part of the Jewish people, i.e. their belief that they are native to the area. (And obviously this connection to the land there is not just the use of the name ‘Jew’ but the connection is found in the religious texts, prayers and life events of the Jews; it is ingrained in the culture and history).
In terms of the specific points you raise:
* There is some debate in international law about the authority of the British Mandate. However, the prior claim was not that of the Ottoman Empire and not the ancestors of todays Palestinians. The authority of the British Mandate came from treaty and from the League of Nations (which also affirmed the Balfour Declaration). Not that its claim was 100% but it is really quite close (and, moreover, if the claim was no good, then neither was its claim which led to Jordan or the French claim that led to Lebanon and Syria. To put it another way, the alternative is not Palestinian sovereignty but pan-Arab.)
* There were not ‘millions’ at the time. The high-end (i.e. Arab) estimate is 700,000 refugees. When you include that many Arabs remained in Israel, you still don’t get millions.
* And why were the Arabs basically forced out of their homes for the creation of a Jewish nation?
Perhaps it has what to do with them initiating hostilities against Israel, both from the Palestinians and from the surrounding Arab countries.
* could they have not lived in peace together like they had for thousands of years before?
I am confused as to who/what you are referring to. If we go back thousands of years, all Jews were what you are calling Arab. If you mean there was peace during the Islamic era, that was not a universal truth and Jews were usually second class citizens. Regardless, it was the Arabs of the surrounding countries that persecuted their native Jews out of the countries when Israel was established. Simply, they accepted the Jews as long as they controlled the Jews.
* “Before the occupation, jews and arabs considered themselves cousins, while now it appears there is a growing animosity between them.”
This is meaningless. Perhaps the animosity is that one cousin will not return to the other its birthright. But which cousin is which?
*”would there be such violence if the Palestinian refugees were living at the same level as their jewish neighbors? If they had moderate houses, open universities, market places that didnt have a curfew? ”
Implicit in your comments is that its the Israelis preventing this from happening. I don’t know anyone who thinks the Palestinians could have immediately come to the economic class of the Israelis (who tended to be better educated). Simply, there needs to be peace w/o parity.
Israel is not some god that can snap its hands and give the Palestinians all they dream.
* “were there suicide bombers right after the occupation started and many palestinian cities were massacred by Israeli soldiers forcing them out? The palestinians had no way of defending themselves, getting their land back, or even going to college.”
Can I ask you why you reach for hyperbole. Whats happening is bad enough. There has never been for example a massacred Palestinian city. There have been specific massacres committed by both sides; only one side celebrates the massacres it perpetuates though.
And your comment is absurd. If one allows that attacks are legitimate for Palestinian self-defense including their national aspirations that still would not explain targeting civilians. You try to sanction what is normally called murder and is not tolerated in warfare.
* “There is no justification for killing innocent people in any way, but my point is that thousands of palestinians have been killed that never even make it to the news.”
You certainly did justify it. And Palestinian deaths make the news every single day.
*”Until Israel stops being so Isolationist, and the palestinians create a stable democratic government and army, peace will never be reached. ”
Have you ever been to Israel? Isolationist? Until the Palestinians as a group accept both republican liberal democracy (using the terms in their traditional sense), reaccept the concept of the rule of secular law and are willing to accept a long-term permanent settlement with Israel peace will never be reached. As long as a significant portion of them aspire to the days when the rocks and trees tell them where there are Jews to kill there should not be peace. Until the governments of both sides have enough trust and reason to put down their weapons there will not be peace.
There was no need for you to say my comments are “absurd”. That might be your opinion but I don’t bad mouth your opinions.
Let me clarify myself on many points:
1. You’re right that my refugee remark was an exaggeration that I was unaware of. I looked this up. The estimated number was between 750,000 - 900,000 Arab refugees. My grandfather being one of them. He was forced out of his home in 1948 by the Israeli Army. He lost everything, his home, all his assets, everything.
2. You say the Arabs were forced out of their homes because of their hostilities towards the Israelis. WHY do you think they were hostile? BECAUSE THEY WERE BEING FORCED from their homes. Do you expect a country to simply throw its arms up and say, COME RIGHT IN. This is expected of ANY occupation, Jewish, Christian, Muslim etc. My grandfather lived next door to a Jewish family before the war in 1948, and for Ramadan each year, he would take them a lamb out of respect. I really don’t see how his hostilities would be directed towards his Jewish neighbor, if any, it would be to the Israeli Soldier knocking on his door saying his properties has been possessed by the Israeli government.
3. About the “birthright “- What right does that give you to take someone else’s land? Your religion says so, you say. Well guess what, it’s a holy land for ME too. It’s a holy land for the CHRISTIANS too. This is just an excuse in my opinion. Since when does religion dictates who has the right to live in a region? Israel used to be over 95% Christian and Muslim. Yet, Muslim and Christian refugees are not being allowed to return to their homes in the current “Jewish state.” Israeli peace negotiators refuse to even discuss the possibility of applying this UN guaranteed right.
If you insist on religious rights, what about INTERNATIONAL LAW RIGHTS?
The Oslo Accords proclaimed specific Palestinian territories that are currently being inhabited by Jewish Settlements. Now whose rights are being infringed upon?
“International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49).”
4. There are over 60 new Israeli-Jewish settlements since 2000 in the Palestinian territories. They inhabit up to 50% of the Palestinian land. The Israeli’s offered to “help” by allowing Palestinians to build new houses only with permits, most of which were REJECTED. This doesn’t seem suspicious at ALL? Since 2000, 4,170 Palestinian homes have been demolished for not having a “building permit” while no Israeli homes have been demolished.
You say that Israel is not a “God” who can snap its fingers and make it right. That may be true, but they sure are doing a whole lot of WRONG.
5. You say that Palestinian deaths are reported every day. In 2004, 8 Israeli children died, all of which were reported on AP news.
In that same year, 179 Palestinian children were killed by the IDF, 27 of which were reported on the AP. Is there not an apparent distortion here?
6. No examples of Palestinian massacres?
I would like to point out one in particular by Ariel Sharon:
“The Indict Sharon Now Campaign is an independent, international initiative to indict and prosecute former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon for war crimes and crimes against humanity spanning a half-century. These include, most notably, an attack Sharon led as an Israeli military officer on the West Bank village of Qibya in 1953, in which 69 civilians were murdered, and his role as the architect of Israel’s brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon.”
“Forty-five villagers’ houses had been destroyed, as well as the mosque, the school, and the water reservoir. Over 60 people were killed, two thirds of them women and children. The rest of the village population, around 2,700 people, had decided to evacuate after being ordered to do so by Sharon’s men[citation needed]. The Israeli government initially claimed that the killing had been carried out by Jewish civilians living near the border, but later admitted that it had been carried out by military forces.”
“The IDF claims that the plan was to ambush Arab Legion forces in the area, by destroying some houses as a decoy. The original orders issued by the Israeli General Staff were relatively limited in scale, instructing the forces to “carry out an attack … with the aim of temporary occupation and the demolition of houses, and to harm the inhabitants”. However, going down the command chain, before they reached the unit’s commanders, the orders changed to demand “maximum killing”[2].”
And, I’m done.
Nameless,
I will respond to your points by number. I do note that it is odd for you to try to call me out by raising at the fore a point buried deep in my email condemning acceptance of terrorism as legitimate (even while claiming one does not accept such legitimacy). I stand by the original wording.
1. I do not feel we disagree materially on point #1. I thank you for letting me know how you are connected to the events.
2. Arab hostility did not start from fear of expulsion but fear of domination. They did not want Jewish majority rule anywhere in the area. To state that the expuslions were the cause of the fighting is historically inaccurate. Most of the Palestinian expulsions/flight occurred at the end of the second part of the war.
BTW, Jews were also expelled (e.g. West Bank and East Jerusalem, later from the surrounding Arab countries). As I’m sure you know most Jews of Israel of Sephardim who left persucatory environments in Arab or Moslem countries.
3. A. I can see why you think I was making a religious argument but I was not.
I was making a point about identity. Nationalism at this point and a sense of peoplehood are well understood as a secular phenomena.
Why do Americans get to determine who lives in the US and not non-Americans? Why do Europeans in the EU? The Chinese in China?
Is there some objective sense of Americanism or Europeanism? No. Of course not. Americans are not more special then others. However, the people define themselves and they define their national identity.
Similarly Jewish identity,: The Jewish people have a historical link to the land and a deep cultural one as well. We are the descendants of the owners of the land who were forced to flee. ‘We’ have come back.
(I put ‘we’ in brackets since Israeli and Jewish identity are not identical concepts by any means.)
I cited to various religious isses as instances of Jewish connection. I have no expectation (or intention) that you would accept an argument based on a different religious faith.
B. I cite to you the rise of India and Pakistan in 1948.
C. If Palestine was 95% non-Jewish it was because the Jews were hounded out of the land. I fail to see its relevance.
D. The Oslo accords left the disposition of the settlements to a later time so what you wrote about that was wrong.
E. The Palestinians have very little rights under international law. Many of the rights they cite to in fact, by international law, do not in fact apply to their situation (on account of them coming into affect via treaties created after 1948 that Israel never signed).
As for what your cite, if you look up what Occupying Power, Protecting Power and occupied territory means in that agreement, you will see that it does not apply. (Nor does it describe the remedy for when that does occur.)
F. Anyway, the force of your argument would ultimately by the moral component and not a legal one. I certainly agree that Palestinains should receive fair market value compensation for land and property lost to them (and vice versa for Jews). I certainly disagree, as a moral claim, that Israel should accept land claims by a nationalism that is hostile to the existance of Israel. There is no virtue in suicide.
4.
A. Jews live in about 2% of the WB and have direct territorial control in about 8%, if memory serves. Similarly, Palestinians live in less than 50% of the land. I have no idea where your high numbers (”up to 50%”) come from.
B. You argued at first that Israel should impossibly bring Palestinians up to Israeli standards of living. Now you write Israel does things wrong. I agree but suspect we will often disagree on what its doing wrong.
C. Palestinian land? Whatsoever do you mean? I assume you mean land that somehow should be under the governance of a Palestinian authority and that we are not talking about the individual landowners on certain parcels.
I believe Israel should not recognize Palestinian claims to the land. As opposed to individual land owner claims, there is no moral reason to do so in the absence of a treaty setting forth borders.
You want those concepts to have a meaning then the Palestinians would need to enter into treaty with Israel. Whysoever should Israel forfeit its own valid territorial claims prior to negotiations?! But negotiation would involve a fundamental change in the mindset of the current Palestinian Authority, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist or any need to enforce prior treaties.
5. Palestianian deaths are described every day in newspapers, paritcularly when children die. At least in what I read. I have no idea what specific news services do.
6. I will credit you that you erred and did not purposefully distort what I wrote. You stated Israel massacred Palestinian cities. I said that was not true and a great exagerration. I said that both sides committed massacres. Should we talk about the Mt. Scopus massacre or the one at Gush Etzion in 1948? There are others too. Is there a point going down this route?
Taking what you wrote on its face, 60 innocents dead is a terrible thing. But that is a far cry from “many palestinian cities were massacred by Israeli soldiers forcing them out.”
You’re trying to discredit what I’m saying. I read daily news, same as YOU. All my information about history and current events was found on wikipedia. And honestly, I don’t expect you to agree with me, instead you choose to circle around every issue. If you want to believe that everything I’ve written is an exaggeration, so be it.
You can fail to “see the relavance” as much as you want. Just ignore it.
If I am to understand your new point you are upset that I call you out on each issue.
If by ‘discredit,’ you mean point out each issue I disagree with you on than you are certainly right. If you mean that I think my overall viewpoint is more right than yours, you would also be right.
I do not expect your agreement either. But neither do I expect you to claim that false ‘facts’ like massacres of Palestinian cities and that Jews live on (up to) 50% of the West Bank come from Wikipedia (nor do I understand how that would make it all right). Nor do I expect you to search my postings for one word that you can take out of context to suit your agenda.
I took your posts seriously. Evidently more seriously than you. If you are not going to try to mean what you say then there is no point in this and I will assume I should take your statements of ‘fact’ simply as meaning ‘I feel bad for my Palestinian relatives who live poorly’ and ‘I want to attribute blame to those they hate’.
I would urge anyone who reads this exchange to do likewise.
I would like to say one final thing:
Jews, Muslims, Christians have all faced enormous tragedy in the past and currently.
My point in posting this was to convey that as an Arab, I am not against a religion or a way of being. I am against a person who thinks they have more of right than another to live in some region. I am against human rights infringement.
I agree with Michael on this topic and I feel he conveyed it well. It was my mistake to post here in the first place.
Hopefully the Arab and Israeli world can work towards peaceful life for their children.
I stand by everything I have said and they were not false facts.
look at these websites for further proof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_settlements
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_Massacre
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/index.html
Thank you for your discussion. Ma’a Salamma.
I’m a supporter of Israel and I recognize a difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism. Yes, the latter often hides the former, but it’s not a good idea to assume that they’re the same thing.
Also, I think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mel Gibson are bad examples of the difference, because they are both anti-semites, and Ahmadinejad is also an open anti-Zionist.
It’s important to remember that Zionism is a mass movement; criticism of Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism.
As far as the debate over Israel, I want to commend both of you for not resorting to ad hominem attacks, despite being in nearly complete disagreement.
I’m so glad this post has generated this kind of dialogue. I feel badly for the Palestinians, essentially forced off their land, but we have to remember that the Jews were basically forced out of Europe with nowhere to go. I’m glad people have such strong feelings towards this issue, bexause they’re the ones that will influence its outcome. I’m too passive too see anything get done.
Thanks for the comments. Keep em coming!