this post was submitted on 16 May 2024

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[ OPINION] ‘Israelis go back to Europe?’ Some on the left need to rethink their slogans | Jo-Ann Mort (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

Though not a prevalent catchphrase ...

Thanks, The Guardian, for explaining why it would be bad if anyone was saying the thing you're not accusing anyone in particular of saying.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Unequivocally, and as a Palestine liberation supporter: any call to broadly expel the Jews from the lands of historic Palestine is Anti-semitism.

At the same time, I haven't actually heard this slogan at any marches or encampments in my city.

Regardless, the key is to understand that a Jewish safe homeland in the lands of historic Palestine does not necessarily mean a Jewish ethnostate.

The utopian Zionist dream (not the Kahanist dystopia of "really existing" Zionism) is realizable in a free, democratic and equal binational state, with both Aliyah and the Right to Return for Palestinians, following a Truth and Reconciliation process and the payment of Reparations.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We in Montréal heard it, but there were also shooting at Jewish schools so maybe they're unrelated

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Hello fellow Montrealer. I did not know that vile slogan was chanted here, it is even more stupid in a settler society like Canada. I knew about the shooting of the empty schools, and it's frankly revolting.

Apart from actual antisemite scum, there are reasonable people that just don't understand (yet) the key role of Jewish safety for Palestinian liberation.

I want a vibrant, safe and flourishing Jewish community here in Montreal. I want Jewish people here to weigh doing aliyah vs staying in Montreal and choosing the second as a no-brainer obvious option. Literally the opposite of the kind of antisemitic zionism of the right wingers: I don't want Jews to be carted off away from me, I want them to stay right here, keep being my neighbours, free and safe. And together we can work on decolonizing Turtle Island, but that's a whole other story.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Of Israeli Jews alive today, 80% were born in Israel. A majority of Israel’s Jews are not descended from Europe but rather from Arab nations, including from the parcel of land known today as modern Israel. Known as Mizrachim in Hebrew, they hail from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria, as well as from the Asian caucus region of the former Soviet Union. Those Israelis who are Ashkenazi, the Israeli term for Jews of European descent, are increasingly the minority inside Israel.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I am from Morocco. I don't remember being friends with or even meeting a Jewish Moroccan. Maybe they're so rare after so many of them left to Israel. And people tell me that the Jewish Moroccans that stayed get treated with respect. I have never experienced this to confirm that.

And yes, antisemitism definitely exists over here. Most of us are dumb enough to believe that Israel is synonymous with Judaism as a whole, it is not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This week, Israel actually marks its 76th Independence Day.

Some call it the Nakba, like Jewish Voice for Peace among others.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

It really doesnt take a lot of intelligence to realize that the war started by Israeli independence and the Arab states' war declaration caused the Nakba. Israeli independence itself is not identical with the Nakba. Two intertwined things.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Israeli independence itself is not identical with the Nakba

Please tell me more about this. But -god forbid- do not take a look at the Jewish Voice for Peace link provided above.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

No the Naqba started 6 months before the establishment of the state of Israel.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

So there ought to be a Jewish state in the Middle East for all the Mizrahi Jews kicked out of liberated Palestine? 🤔

[+] [email protected] -6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What pro-Palestinians are asking for is a country 'from the river to the sea' where every inhabitant has the same rights.

While Israel is working towards a country 'from the river to the sea' where Palestinians don’t have the same rights as Israeli Jews.

So what's the author advocating for?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Except the people who actually live there want a country from the river to the sea, free of jews. You're western armchair quarterbacking

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, if you were to conduct a poll among Palestinians today, there would certainly be a number of people who would prefer that Israeli Jews simply disappear. This does not necessarily mean that they want to expel or murder all Jews in Palestine.

I actually find this wish somewhat understandable, considering the experiences they have had with Israel and Zionism over the last hundred years and are currently having. After all, it was Israel that has so far reduced the Palestinians within its territory to a population share of 20% by expelling them. And it has only not properly annexed the rest of the territory it claims because it can oppress the Palestinian majority there better as an occupying power than if they were citizens.

However, things will look very different once Israel is no longer the invincible bully with the big bodybuilder brother who can simply take what he wants without having to fear any consequences.

Of course, in order to enter into negotiations, Israel would have to apologize for 75 years of expulsion, land theft, disenfranchisement, occupation and oppression. That will certainly not be an easy step for Israel. And they will probably not take it voluntarily. That is precisely why they need loving pressure from their European friends in Europe and especially in America.

Not with violence, of course, but like in South Africa, through political isolation and boycott. I think that nowadays no country, especially not such a small country, can afford to be isolated from the rest of the world. And hopefully that will make the Israeli government more willing to compromise.

We remember that in South Africa there was a right-wing head of government, a convinced racist, under whose leadership apartheid collapsed and the oppression of the black population ended.

Germany and France were also once arch enemies. And today they are the heart of the EU.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Dude the government in gaza well, was, a terrorist organization. Why would Israel apologize for winning defensive wars and taking land in an ongoing attempt at elimination? What other country has an iron dome? Jews are in the holy land and the 10% of the Muslim population that actually wants that sandpile is willing to eat bullets to get it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If you want to know more about the Israeli/Palestinian history, you should read beyond Israeli myths and propaganda.

Here is an article on the Nakba. Israel should definitely say I'm sorry for that.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/JVP-Nakba-Fact-Sheet.pdf

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

What's your source for this?

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Make Germany Israel.

Why? It's their fault.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Lol this is the same kind of ignorance that created israel

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why? It's their fault.

As a sort of outsider afaik: many ( Germans) probably still feel the cultural guilt. Also, technically and morally the Germans have made reparations and ammendments ; still many have therefore a soft and blind spot for the Jewish cause. And for sure the Holocaust should never been forgotten.

But the diaspora started many centuries ago. Zionisim started as a (revolutionary) reaction to this dispersal, and as a wakeupcall for the ppl to unite at the end of 19th century iirc.

These (displacement & refuge) problems and in this case ages of racism (antisemitism) are ancient.

And just to be clear, they're not the only (lost/disturbed) tribe worldwide. Imo, many palestines must specially now be experiencing somewhat similar or parallel to what happened to many Jews during WW II, which makes it even crazier.

It's just ancient history repeating itself, only the name, the places and the dates have been changed..

I imagine, and this is a recent discussion, that the UN charter and all humanitarian organisations must change and modernize our legal framework and organisation. There are and are going to be way more refuges and horrors in the years to come.

it's jut so saddeing as fuck. Idk

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Zionism actually started much earlier, the idea to offload the Jews has its origins in the 17th century and originated from European anti-Semitic elites. They wanted to get rid of the Jews and have a geopolitical entity there. Zionism was also not a mainstream position of Jews in the 19th century.

This has little to do with ancient history, it’s a colonial project initiated by European anti-semites and some European Jews in the last couple hundred years, but especially since the 1870s.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Just a clarification. The term “Zionism” was first coined by the Viennese writer, Nathan Birnbaum in 1885.

[Source: United Nations - Historical timeline on the question of Palestine]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

My response was in the context of that one spefic remark, earlier. Apart from that, sure many nuances can be made, ofc.

But afaik, it was a Jewish person ( Herzl) who initiated it, and later asked support from European powers. wiki Zionism

"The Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

According to some other* Jewish people:

Jewish Voice for Peace - Our approach to Zionism

While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others. Our own history teaches us how dangerous this can be.

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.

(* I use the word "other" because jewish zionists are super active in the relevant wiki pages. See relevant video: Former Israel PM Naftali Bennett at a wikipedia editing instruction event)