I’ve seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.
First, because I have to say it:
Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.
But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state. Israel could have been created in Germany or Siberia or frankly Florida for that matter (in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to “the one state solution”). In many ways, the US with its civil rights act serves the same purpose, and in fact, most Jews live in the US.
Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust. Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
So I wanted to point out some anti-semetic tropes I’ve seen on this website and call them out so you can recognize them.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
This can be done through omission. If you aren’t clear whether you’re talking about jews or a specific institution (for example, the I"D"F or the settlements or Likud), many people will read your statement as being about Jews. Be careful with the word “they”
erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness
The zionist entity is not a Jewish colonial project, but an Anglo colonial project. It was created by the British and now is funded by the US Americans. Jews are an oppressed minority whose oppression is leveraged against other oppressed peoples. Similarly to how the US uses Kurds to Balkanize Iraq or The Hmong to wage counterinsurgency in Laos, it’s uses Jews to destabilize the Levant.
Outside of the US, jews are largely understood as a racial group and oppressed on that basis. Especially in the Arab world where the Islamic hyper nationalism has gained ground in response to colonialism and been funded further by colonialists to their own ends (google “the safari club” or “Israel funds Hamas”)
Blood Libel
This one is the assertion that Jews are uniquely bloodthirsty / murder non Jewish children. The classic example of this myth that people are familiar with is Runplestiltskin.
It is true that the IDF under the direction of Likud and the US state is murdering many Gazans, the majority of whom are children. but! be careful to specify. When people talk about “jews” or “israelis” generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope. Again, be careful with the word “they” and specify which entities you’re talking about.
calling for ethnic cleansing
Okay, wtf ya’ll. It’s not jews as an ethnicity that are oppressing Palestinians, it is US imperial power. Jews have always lived in Palestine and the occupation only began in the 40s as part of a British initiative.
Jews will always be part of a palestinian state, and frankly need protections as ethnic and religious minorities. We do not seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, but their integration into it as citizens.
Jews are safe in the US not because its a colonial state but because of civil rights protections and generational wealth. If we can create civil rights protections in Palestine and a social safety net (ideally communism but I’ll settle for social democracy), then jews will be safe in Palestine.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
America controls Israel and not vice versa. APEC is not a cabal brainwashing otherwise Nobel Christian politicians. US politicians support Israel because they’re colonial politicians and Israel is our colony. APEC exists because lobbying is how power is exercised in the US, but if we had patronage instead, APEC’ functions would be carried our by a governor or an ambassador or whatever.
conclusion
Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you’re criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you’ve been doing that. Don’t equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.
I’m going to quibble with your claim that Israel is a safe haven for Jews. This attack should have ended this claim forever. There is no way Jewish people are safer in Israel than they would be in the us, Canada, the uk, France, Germany, etc.
Secondly, why do Jews need a homeland to be safe? No other group that has been attacked through history ever has been supported in creating an ethnostate in order to protect them. Where is the demand for Roma to have a state to protect that from racism in Europe? Where are the calls to give the descendants of enslaved Africans to be given a state they can control in order to be protected?
Antisemitism is a real problem, and as leftists we must always call it out just as we do for any other form of oppression. I will continue to my best at this as well, and pretty much agree with the specific arguments you make in the rest of your post
Especially when it came to the Beta Israelites and some of the other non-white jews you’d think Israel’s purpose as a Anglo colonial state would’ve been made obvious. Israel finally allowed them in without reservation (compared their right to return to the right to return of Russian Jews or American Jews), but then Israeli doctors and nurses kept giving them birth control with no informed consent - like no indication that was happening.
Also the Samaritans are treated like shit, and they were there first! The Jews come back from exile and the Samaritans are sitting around being Israelite just fine and are happy to point out some small inaccuracies in their Torah.
And they’re still there. There aren’t a lot of them but they never left.
People love talking about the Samaritans like they are a fictional mythic race created for the “good samaritan” story. Like they are freaking elves
Is Israelves anything?
Don’t know about Israelves, but I know about Isn’traelves tho
There’s a Norwegian hardcore band called Israelvis, does that count?
the israelis also corralled them all into a small town in the west bank
Isn’t that what Liberia is?
Liberia has the exact same problem as Israel. There were already people living there. To be done correctly I think descendants of enslaved Africans would deserve a homeland carved out of the US, Brazil, etc. with the caveat that indigenous peoples of those regions would also have full rights in these hypothetical countries
Edit: this would be similar to the idea that Israel should have been carved out of Germany/Austria but more complicated due the existence of righteous and just indigenous struggles in the americas and Caribbean
This is Haiti, this is Jamaica now that the Taino people were the victims of total genocide. This was the idea of the Black Belt Thesis which advocated for the southern US agricultural heartland to be transformed into a Black nation-state while the rights of Black people were also fought for in the rest of the US.
This is the partial goal of the Kurdish people. While we wait for total revolution and capitalism, the nation-state is one of the best forms available for oppressed nations to actualize their self-determination. As we see in the case of Israel, this can end up as a fascist and genocidal project which is why @Nagarjuna@hexbear.net advocates for the Florida-Annexation bit.
I still say we resuurect Lotharingia and give it to the Jews. Germany and Italy have it coming and erasing the Dutch is a net win.
It ended horrible for Liberia. The Americo-Liberian attacked and segregated the natives, they ran the country as a one-party state until 1980’s. When the USA decided to fund a coup, they helped a radical right-wing native military goverment be established that caused more and more ethnical problems.
Just because the Americo-Liberian were starting to have diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, ended their one-party system, eased the segregation on the natives and they had started to support Palestine.
Haiti probably fits the bill better.
I think you’re right that Israel is factually not safe. Although, the attacks were mostly against forward settlements and not like, Tel Aviv (although the bombing obviously changes that). I think I should have differentiated more strongly between the motivations of apolitical and left wing Jews who moved to Israel after the holocaust and the reality of Israel not actually being safe. Thank you for your quibble.
I want to clarify one thing though. in my post, I’m critical of the idea that an ethnostate is the best way to secure Jewish liberation. My proposed solution was one secular state with civil rights protections for religious minorities.
Most leftist jews after the Holocaust remained in, returned, or emigrated to the soviet union.
Being a willing genocidal settler-colonizer is neither apolitical or left wing
It honestly gets worse and worse the more modern your “return” is. Cause then you are creating the market for new settlements and doing so in the face of well known atrocities. Its essentially house-hunting and getting whoever lives there killed so you can move in. No sympathy for settlers
That’s very true, but I would also argue that the existence of Israel as a Jewish ethnostate created by displacing Muslim Palestinians makes Jews unsafe everywhere; it serves as an open wound that will understandably (although wrongly when targeted against non-Zionist Jews) create strife and violence between Jews and Muslims worldwide
I also should have been clear that I don’t think you’re arguing for anything but a secular state with full rights for all people who live in it. Apologies for not being clear.
Also, I want to thank you for your post, antisemitism is such an insidious form of hatred and the way colonialism has utilized it is disgusting and incredibly harmful. We as leftists have to always be outspoken and vocal in our opposition to it. I also hate that Jewish leftists get caught in the crossfire of anti-Zionism. This is one area where I think things actually are complicated and nuanced, but I expect more of leftists, even though I’m sure I sometimes fail at recognizing and explaining them myself