• 4 Posts
  • 65 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Ireland is the self-determination of the Irish people, it doesn’t make it less democratic, but it still is a cultural product of Irish people. The same question regarding the United States is more complex, as it was a mix of immigrants from differents parts of Europe in the beginning, that rebelled against England, which I think can be seen as a self-determination for them, and in some ways an act of creation of a new peoplehood. But quite different from traditional peoplehood, because it’s a peoplehood founded by new immigrants which have less in common, probably making it more volatile and/or open to change?

    Therefore no to the first question, as these selfdeterminations are of other peoplehoods, and they aren’t cultural products of the jewish people.

    By homeland I refer to the land where the jewish people was born and is attached to, so yes I’m referring to Israel. Some zionists in the beginning were willing to forgo Israel and make a “temporary” state/autonomous region in some other place, in order to create a safe heaven for jews that were escapign persecutions (as this at the time was an impelling need), and that would politically fight for them at the geopolitical level. But forgoing Israel was never really accepted by the majority of the zionist movement, because it was the only place for which the jewish people would band togheter, and actually manage to self-determine.

    I think that the way that the state of Israel was born was also (and not only) due to the Arab and Palestinian unwillingness to accept the jewish population, which in the beginning didn’t even want a state. Actually the zionist current of Netanyauh comes from here and it’s called Revisionist Zionism, it was a minority of the zionist movement. It was founded by Jabotinsky (not an admirable individual by many metrics, but some statments are worringly moderate if compared to Netanyauh), they wanted the creation of the state to be a main focus of zionism and for the state to be on both banks of Jordan, later expansionism became less of a focus. The idea of a state later did became more central to zionism because of growing tensions with the Arab populations and the inability of jewish and palestinian leaderships to find a way to coexist.


  • Well, first I think it’s wise to point out that the answer by @Dreamer was already talking about “any wing zionists” therefore leftwing zionists would fall under that (I disagree on the consideration that was done afterwards, but I think we agree on the existence of these people). Zionism is a liberation movement of the Jewish people, I think it’s important to understand this, jews are a people before being the followers of a religion (I’m myself an agnostic jew). The view that judaism is only a religion is originally a Christian/Western perspective.
    Peoplehoods have a right to self determine, the problem arises when a peoplehood doesn’t have a specific land to selfdetermine in. Most Jews didn’t inhabit the land that they considered their homeland, (not everybody considered it their homeland in the same way), but the only place that would resonate with the jewish people enough to band togheter in order to achieve a self determination that could make us capable of avoiding persecutions, was Israel. Reality proved this to be right, when mass emigrations started to happen, to escape persecutions in Europe (before the Shoa), one of the main destinations for jews, in search of a better future, was Israel.

    I don’t think jewish liberation needs to come at the cost of the palestinian people, but that doesn’t make me want less to have a self determination for my people. I think there is space in that land for two peoples.