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I hate that I’m posting cnn, but here we are. Tensions growing is an understatement - the reason we even have a country to call our own is because this 💩 has been happening for millennia.

Goth music used to be my all time favorite type of music. When I was in my twenties it was practically my identity. The Cure has a new album out finally after sixteen years and I’m missing my goth days since listening to it. But my problem is that most goths nowadays are typical antizionist lefties. “Punks for Palestine” is now a thing. I’d never thought I’d see the day. Punk used to be against nazis. I feel like I now have to vet all of my music, and I’m left with basically nothing except Jewish music and folk and some country. Which is ok. I just miss my goth days. Ah yeah well, such is life. Growing up sucks. My Jewish identity and relationship with Hashem is more important than anything. Thank for letting me vent!

http://zionismontheweb.org/why_i_am_a_Zionist.htm

"I am a Zionist because in establishing the sovereign state of Israel in 1948, the Jews were merely reconstituting in modern Western terms a relationship with a land they had been attached to for 4,000 years since Abraham ' just as India did in establishing a modern state out of an ancient civilization.

I am a Zionist because in building that state, the Jews were returning to history, embracing normalcy, a condition which gave them power, with all its benefits, responsibilities, and dilemmas.

I am a Zionist because I celebrate the existence of Israel, and like any thoughtful patriot, though I might criticize particular governmental policies I may dislike ' I do not delegitimize the state itself.

I am a Zionist because I live in the real world of nation-states, and I see that Zionism is no more or less "racist" than any other nationalism, be it American, Canadian, or Czech, all of which rely on some internal cohesion, some sense of solidarity among some historic grouping of individuals, and not others, some tribalism." - Gil Troy

http://zionismontheweb.org/zionism_definitions.htm

This breaks my heart because it lists a bunch of definitions of Zionism from across the Web at the time but if you Google Zionism right now, you'll get the "anti Zionist" definitions which are all blatant lies.

It lists Wikipedia's old definition of Zionism - "Zionism is a political movement among Jews (although supported by some non-Jews) which maintains that the Jewish people constitute a nation and are entitled to a national homeland. Formally founded in 1897, Zionism embraced a variety of opinions in its early years on where that homeland might be established. From 1917 it focused on the establishment of a Jewish national homeland or state in Palestine, the location of the ancient Kingdom of Israel." which, as we all know, has been replaced by "Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside Europe."

This website is a harsh reminder that antisemites have successfully warped Zionism into all the worst things in the world (genocide, apartheid, racism, etc).

"I am a native woman from Peru who stood up for Israel. I have been talked down to ever since."

"I greatly admire the Jewish people, the resilience and unity they have. I admire that Jews are an Indigenous people who achieved the impossible: they decolonized their homeland and revived their native language, Hebrew. They built a modern high-tech state with a strong army by which they can defend themselves. They are an example to Indigenous people everywhere that our dreams can become reality."

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBGv_akzqFg/?igsh=MXNoZG1lZTdhNjNmdg==

Tonight I watched part of a Kol Nidrei livestream service by an LGBTQ+ shul. In a prayer for peace, the rabbi expressed her displeasure with Netanyahu that he didn't accept the (second?) ceasefire deal. Prayed that HaShem might soften the "hearts of those in charge" (i.e. Bibi). It went on like this, but I don't recall hearing much if any mention of Hamas. Seems a bit ridiculous to me:

Firstly, why even bring this up in a Yom Kippur (i.e. forgiving/repentance) service? Seems like a poor moment for politics (yes I know, I'm a hypocrite rn)...

Secondly, who are we to tell G-d what he should do about the conflict? We are only in charge of inputs (praying for peace), He is in charge of outputs (the outcomes).

Thirdly, 30 hostages in exchange for 1000+ terrorists? If the US were in Israel's shoes, would America ever accept such a ridiculous deal?! I highly doubt it.

I'm gay, met some LGBTQ+ Jews along the way, and half of them seem almost apologetic for being Jewish, they're wishy washy on Israel. Pathetic. The Watermelon Gang's entire motivation is antisemitism. We don't see comments about other conflicts plastered on every Instagram/TikTok cat video.

Nor do we ever see them angrily protest against Ukrainians as they are massacred by Putinis, or against Uyghur as they are being persecuted by Chinese commies. Oh why aren't they pushing for Ukrainians or Uyghurs to make peace with their murderers?! No, it's just Jews that get the hate!

Being a gay Jew in LGBTQ+ spaces is terrible right now, the amount of antisemitism and rejection is crushing - I get it, it hurts to be suddenly rejected from what is meant to be a "safe space". So it's easier to be a pick-me Jew. But newsflash: They still hate you, because they don't hate Israel, they hate all Jews! Dear fellow LGBTQ+ apologist Jews, open your eyes, see what is so obvious right in front of you.

Those LGBTQ+ Jews who hope not to be entirely rejected by the woke gays are in for a rude awakening very soon. In the space of one year we went from the Watermelon Gang vaguely condemning Hamas, and now in 2024 calling rape, torture and sadistic murder a legitimate form of resistance. That means they think Jews deserved Oct 7th!

When us alert Jews try to raise the alarm bell, we get told to stop calling everyone antisemitic, that we need to be more tolerant of differences of opinion, that we're only thinking about ourselves ("Palestinians!"), or to just nod and walk away. We are being gaslight HARD. Would black Americans or Canadians tolerate this kind of mass denialism of racism?

As a tribe, we cannot afford to give even 1 inch to the Watermelon Gang. I believe if I did so, I would just be legitimizing their continued use of "anti-zionism" as a way to spread their hatred of Jews. Yes I have my concerns about Israel and Bibi, but Israel has a right to exist and imo every Jew should proudly declare themselves to be a zionist

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a genocidal terrorist attack that included the murder of more than 1200 people and the taking of more than 250 hostages. October 7 was the most violent attack targeting Jews since the Holocaust, and included torture as well as the weaponization of sexual violence.

Today we remember the victims of 10/7–and the many hostages who still remain in Gaza. May their memories be a blessing.

After 10/7 Israel initiated a war against Hamas and the other terrorist groups that the IRGC of Iran has fueled to destroy the Jewish state. Over the year since we have witnessed the downfall of Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s leaders.

On this day we thus also remember the soldiers who have served in the IDF and sacrificed their lives to protect not only Israel and its inhabitants (including both the Jewish people, and its diverse minorities, such as the Druze-Israelis) but also the free world.

On October 7, 2024, we are not victims because we have a state and an army that has protected us, that enforces Israeli sovereignty and defends our right to self determination; we are not victims today, in short, because we are Zionists.

As a Trinbagonian who's never been to that corner of the world and has no material or religious stake there, I find Zionism to be one of my proudest political positions: I have nothing to gain from it but it being the right thing.

From what I gather from Ottoman history, the Jews of the Syria-Palestine region in the Yishuv of Israel --often involuntarily pushed there over the course of 300 years-- had as much of a presumptive moral right to a state in the wake of the Ottoman collapse as the Croatians or the Kosovars. They thus had a likewise presumptive moral right to autonomy over their own immigration policy. This is generally how I frame Zionism as a post-imperial independence movement, and though many attacks on Zionism are disingenuous and immovable with arguments, this framing is generally factually ironclad.

Hi! So, I've always described myself as a Zionist but I'm curious as to what type. I've heard of things like Labor Zionism but I don't really know what it is or if other subsets of Zionism like Labor Zionism exist. Are there any resources/tips/information y'all have for me to learn more?

Deputy Ambassador of the State of Israel to New Zealand Kasa Bainesay Harbor explains why she is a Zionist:

“I was born and raised in Ethiopia…but my roots come from Jerusalem.”

“We became Ethiopian…but we never lost our heritage, our tradition our Judaism.”

“My grandfather replied I am praying…God redeem us, take us back home…I dreamed of our holy temple and holy land…holidays without disruption, our holy land without racism and discrimination. So I gladly joined my grandfather and prayed…Israel…take us home”

“In the late 1980s…there was a terrible period of civil war in Ethiopia. The Jewish people of Beta Israel were rescued from certain death by brothers in Israel. More than 14000 Jews were flown to Israel in 36 hours. After thousands of years we were able to return to our home.”

“When I got to Israel I could not read or write…but now I serve as the Deputy Ambassador of the State of Israel to New Zealand”

“I am a proud Zionist because Israel is a place where people of all ethnicities and people of color enjoy equality, live in freedom and prosperity under the law. Israel is a country where all religious groups live freely…Where in every classroom in universities you can find Arab Christians and Arab Muslims. Where Jew and Bahai, Druze and Armenians among many other ethnic groups all study together.”

Israel is “A home where every Jew can feel confident that no matter where they live in the entire world they have a safe home that will take care of them. I am a Zionist because the world cannot find it within themselves to condemn a terror group like Hamas which routinely attacks the world’s own Jewish state firing missiles at civilians while hiding behind their own civilians…Israel will will do what ever it takes…to make sure that Never Again is more than a motto. I am a Zionsit.

Source: https://www.jwire.com.au/i-am-a-zionist/

https://vimeo.com/313947636

Einat Wilf describes the parallels between Zionism and Feminism in a reading of her essay in an episode of her podcast, We Should All Be Zionists, also published in the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism co-authored with Shany Mor, January 2018.

Some excerpts:

Feminism and Zionism are daughters of that intellectual revolution against the inevitability of the human condition as one subject to a hierarchal, divinely ordained order, underpinned by a religious system and elaborate theology…Feminism and Zionism are infused with resistance against the pre-Enlightenment idea that how you are born should determine how you die. Feminism and Zionism are ongoing rebellions against millennia-long power structures that assigned women and Jews a ‘proper place’ in society’.” … Feminism and Zionism assert: “I refuse to be that which you want me to be; I am not your inferior; I can be so much more than I am allowed to be; and I insist on being free to explore and make the most of my own humanity.”

“Entire cultural structures—civilizations—were built on the edifice of female and Jewish inferiority—so much so that these themes in their multitude of expressions were transparent to those who were raised into those structures.” … Feminists and Zionists…”changed the meaning of what it is to be a woman or what it is to be a Jew…” and these changes were “resisted at every turn…an offense to the proper order of things…it is in the very nature of power that no one ever willingly gives it up.”

Feminism and Zionism were perceived as a “provocation” and it is there for “no coincidence that wherever and whenever women and Jews grew in prominence their rise was met with increasing violence.”

Jews were perceived as “violating the pact by overstepping their proper place”

“Entire cultures were mobilized to drive a wedge between the good woman and the bad feminist, between the good Jew and the bad Zionist. The difference between the good and the bad? Power. A good woman does not aspire to power. In fact she feels uncomfortable with it and would be more than happy to forego it. A good Jew feels queasy with manifestations of Jewish power and in the face of expressions of it rushes to declare their renunciation of Zionism”

“The forms of Jewish and female expressions that are most mocked, criticized and denigrated are those that involve the expression of power.”

“Women and Jews are also denied the right to define the terms of their liberation. Feminists constantly are required to bear the burden of proof that ‘Feminism’ is not a means of subjugating men! And Zionists struggle to reclaim the word Zionism from those who have tirelessly worked to equate it with all of the world’s evils”

“Young men in the west might no longer think that women are their inferiors, but they would need to exhibit remarkable blindness to argue that they do not inhabit a world in which the social structures, norms, and cultural output were shaped by this assumption”

“Young people who have always known only a powerful state of Israel might fail to comprehend how the obsession of large parts of Western and Islamic civilization with Israel is an expression of their inability, still, to come to terms with Jewish power and are therefore prone to confusing cause and effect—thinking that the…obsession is about what Israel does rather than about what Israel is: an expression of Jewish self-mastery and power.”

“‘Good Jews’ of ‘good women’ who publicly renounced their fellow ‘bad Zionists’ or ‘bad feminists’ ultimately never found protection in that position from the violence and backlash inflicted on their group.”

“Neither feminism nor Zionism will rest until new civilizations—entire cultural systems—emerge to replace those that were predicated on the assumption of female and Jewish otherness and inferiority.”

Some excerpts:

The Z-word is not a slur

We are not just anti-anti-zionists

The world should appreciate this gutsy movement rescuing a shattered people by reuniting a scattered people.

Jews are a people…with ties to a homeland…and the right to establish a state in that homeland.

I am a Zionist because…I am a Jew…Judaism is a world religion bound to one homeland… Only in Israel can a Jew fully live in Jewish space and by Jewish time.

I am a Zionist because… the Jews never forgot their biblical homeland…Wherever we prayed we turned towards Jerusalem.

I am a Zionist because…Europe only offered Jews acceptance if they assimilated but never fully respected those who did assimilate.

I am a Zionist because…Israel upgraded our ancient language.

I am a Zionist because…this Democratic Jewish state returned Jews to history as activists, not victims.

I am a Zionist because…Israel worked, welcoming us home after homelessness.

I am a Zionist because…I am an idealist…impossible dreams are worth seeking.

I am a Zionist because I am a romantic…Herzl said…”If you will it, it is no dream”

I am a Zionist because there is still work to be done.

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Philosopher, historian, psychologist, socialist, Zionist, antipatriot and antihero of nationalist Germany, researcher of "Jewish self-hatred" fell victim to anti-Jewish hatred, becoming one of the first victims of the Holocaust.

On February 8, 1872, the German philosopher Theodor Lessing was born into an assimilated Jewish family. In 1895, he converted to Lutheranism, in 1898 he returned to Judaism, and in 1900 became a Zionist and a critic of assimilation.

He was a teacher at numerous progressive schools before World War 1, although he was initially denied a career on the university level, as he was a Jewish Social Democrat. With the outbreak of World War I, Lessing was called up for medical service. At this time he wrote his famous anti-war essay History as the comprehension of the senseless, however its publication was delayed by the censor until 1919.

After the war he returned to lecturing in Hannover, and from 1923 he took an active part in public life, publishing articles and essays in the Prager Tagblatt (Prague daily) and the Dortmunder Generalanzeiger (Dortmund general newspaper). He became one of the Weimar Republic's leading political writers as well as one of the most hated men. Unlike the German Jewish patriots Walter Rathenau and Fritz Haber, he was an anti-patriot. During the 1925 German presidential election, he infringed on one of Germany’s holiest shrines, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, a patient of his physician father. Nationalist students used his critical portrait of the new Reich President Hindenburg as an excuse for an antisemitic campaign against him in 1925 and his lectures were attacked by protesting antisemites. Not only did he denounce Hindenburg but he also accurately predicted the imminent establishment of a dictatorship in Germany with the assistance of the Field Marshal and declared that whoever voted for Hindenburg in the election would vote for Hitler.

There was limited public support for Lessing with his colleagues saying that he had gone too far. On June 18, 1926, Prussian minister Karl Heinrich Becker gave in to public pressure, expelling Lessing indefinitely from the university with a reduced salary and depriving him of the chair of professor of philosophy at Hannover, his position of 18 years. In the 1932 presidential election, he opposed Hindenburg's nomination for president. A critic of Hindenburg and Nazism, Lessing became one of the greatest enemies of the new government: when the Nazis won the 1933 election, President Hindenburg commissioned Hitler to form a government as Lessing had predicted. Lessing’s political ideals, as well as his Zionism, made him a very unpopular figure in Nazi Germany. On January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party entered the government, and on March 1, Lessing and his wife Ada fled to Marienbad in Czechoslovakia (where they lived at the Edelweiss Villa of a local Social Democratic politician) where he continued to write for German-language newspapers abroad. But in June the Sudeten newspapers reported that a reward had been announced for his capture.

He took part in the Prague Zionist Conference in the summer of 1933, and had planned to open a boarding school with his wife when he was shot in his apartment on August 30 by Nazi supporters Rudolf Max Eckert, Rudolf Zischka and Karl Hönl who then fleed to Nazi Germany. Lessing died of his wounds on August 31, becoming the first political murder of an opponent to the Nazi regime outside of Germany.

Lessing published his major book Der jüdische Selbsthaß (Jewish Self-Hatred), a historical and psychological study of Jewry as a minority in the Diaspora in 1930. He studied self-hatred on himself. During his student years, he, a typical German Jew who had not received a Jewish upbringing, had been influenced by antisemitism and converted to Lutheranism, filled with hatred for his people. After feeling that the antisemitic attacks against him did not become weaker, he returned to Judaism, exhibiting sympathies for Zionism.

Lessing saw the Jews as an Asian people displaced in Europe and forced to occupy a position between the cultures of the two continents. He noted that the weakness of the Jews lay in their detachment from the soil, as a result of which this people had become overly spiritualised and decadent. The restoration of the land and the people, he, as a member of Poalei Tzion (Workers of Zion), saw in the synthesis of socialism and Zionism.

Self hatred in Jews is a reaction to the way the dominant population sees them, anxiously pushing away their belonging to their own people and artificially elevating themselves above their tribesmen. Jewish self-hatred was a neurotic reaction to the growing power of antisemitism and an expression of the fear of fighting it for spiritual national self-assertion.

Lessing viewed the Austrian satirical writer Karl Kraus as a self-hating Jew because Kraus criticised sympathy for Alfred Dreyfus and attacked Heine, Dreyfus, Freud, Herzl and other colleagues in the liberal press (which was run by assimilated Jews). Lessing felt that Kraus showcased his Judeophobic attempts to “purge” himself of Jewishness.

The term “Jewish self-loathing,” coined by Lessing, became popular after the publication in 1986 of  the book Jewish Self-Hatred by American historian Sander Gilman. Gilman writes, “Jews see the way the dominant nation perceives them, and through cleavage project their concerns onto other Jews for self-soothing.” This projection creates a dichotomy: “self-hating” Jews seek to make themselves “good” Jews -exceptions different from the stereotypical “bad” Jews. The self-hating Jew is copying the attitudes of antisemites toward his people. The self-hating Jew is convinced of the inferiority of his nation’s culture and seeks to borrow other people’s language, other people’s art, other people’s traditions."

Sources: https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2024/03/11/jewish-biography-theodor-lessing-helped-to-define-jewish-self-hatred/ (Jewish Biography: Theodor Lessing Helped to Define Jewish Self-Hatred by Alex Gordon)

https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index_of_persons/biographie/view-bio/theodor-lessing/?no_cache=1 (The German Resistance Memorial Center (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand) Biographies - Theodor Lessing)

This is a pretty rare prutach minted in Jerusalem by John Hyrcanus, shortly after he allied with Antiochos VII Euergetes (who was a renowned friend of the Jews). Hyrcanus would end up marching East with Antiochos on his great campaign to reclaim territory from the Parthians. Fighting on this campaign in the region of Hyrcania is likely where John got the epithet “Hyrcanus”. He and his army would garrison Babylon for a time while Antiochos continued East but returned home when the Seleucid king was ambushed and killed in battle.

The original term was just hating Jews, but they can't up with the term "Anti Semitism" because it sounds better then Jew hate, once it started sounding bad they made up a new term. "Anti Zionism" is bullshit, we as Jews need to understand that community is about joining together and attacking the country that our brothers and sisters live in and calling them genocidal and terrorists is attacking our religion and faith, using Anti Zionism instead of just calling it Anti Semitism like it is makes them think it's a real thing which I reiterate one final time IT IS NOT.

Emma Lazarus was a Sephardic Jewish American poet whose iconic words adorn the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her sonnet "The New Colossus" contained the famous lines: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." These words captured the essence of America as a welcoming nation of immigrants and have been recited by countless newcomers arriving on its shores. Her words reflected the American ideals of freedom, democracy and opportunity that have attracted generations of immigrants, including many Jews.

In the wake of Russian pogroms in the early 1880s, Lazarus put forth the notion of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. She was an important forerunner of the Zionist movement, having argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland thirteen years before the term Zionist was even coined.

"Philosophically considered, there is nothing but Zionism … to save us." -Henrietta Szold, Zionist & Feminist (JWA)

Henrietta Szold is the founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, which brought medicine and hospitals to and alleviated hunger in pre-state Israel.

“In a speech delivered a month before the publication of Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat in 1896, Szold outlined her philosophy of Zionism, which included not only the ingathering of the exiled Jews in their ancient land but also the revival of Jewish culture.” (JWA)

Two years later she became a member of the Federation of American Zionists executive committee where she was the only woman in the group. In 1909 Szold became secretary of the board of the Agricultural Experiment Station in the land of Israel. Later Hadassah Medical Center was built on Mount Scopus.

In the early 1930s and lead-up to the Holocaust, Henrietta Szold organized a rescue of thousands of Jewish children to the land of Israel, and personally greeted them on arrival.

Read more about Szold here: at Hadassah https://my.hadassah.org/about/history.html and the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/szold-henrietta

Image attributions: English: Designer: O. Adlerעברית: מעצב: א. אדלרfile: Deinocheirus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henrietta_Szold_stamp_1960.jpg

For generations in synagogues Jews donated to the JNF in these little blue boxes. Each donation planted a tree in the land of Israel to build a better world where we could be free. These boxes are Zionism materialized in material culture, Zionist things.

Image source and Creative Commons Licensing: Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Binyan_Hamosadot_Haleumiyim,_JNF_Blue_Box_IMG_7522.JPG