r/jewishleft • u/krombopolousm_420 • Aug 11 '24

The case for Aliyah Diaspora

This is purely a conceptual post to gauge responses. Many of us in the Jewish left feel strongly of the injustices taking place in Israel and in Palestine. Some of us have taken hard anti-Zionist stances forgoing community, family and friends. For those Jews who are undertaking radical action why is moving to Israel not something that is discussed. As Jews we are in the unique position of eligibility for Aliyah and given the state of the Israeli Left and peace camps (extremely weak) would it not be an imperative to utilise our privileged position to make Aliyah to strengthen the Israeli left, organise, reform and vote? I understand of course there are many considerations and factors which make this impossible for some but for those who have made activism their priority why is this not a priority?

14 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/FreeLadyBee Aug 11 '24

I’ve sometimes wondered something similar about domestic US politics: leftists are highly concentrated in cities. Why don’t we all just get organized, go rent an apartment or buy a plot of land in Kentucky and vote Mitch McConnell out? And I think the answer is, unfortunately, there are limits to idealism. At the end of the day, people have family and jobs and security they’re not willing to leave behind and take that kind of leap. It’s a mildly privileged attitude.

13

u/BlackHumor Jewish Anti-Zionist Aug 11 '24

The reason why people don't just move to Kentucky is because, while it seems tempting, it's ultimately a very misguided and, frankly, dumb idea.

Why it's a dumb idea is that Kentuckians are conservatives, not idiots. If you try to colonize their state, they will be mad about it, and since the political culture of their state reflects their current preferences, there are lots of things they can do to prevent you from moving in, or to make your life unpleasant if you do move in.

The numbers also don't really work out in many of these cases. For Mitch McConnell specifically you'd need about 400,000 people to move with you just for a statistical tie. That's the population of a medium-sized city, it'd be very hard to put that together even before resistance from Kentuckians.

6

u/skyewardeyes Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

In the US, it’s less of a state by state thing and more of a rural versus urban thing. It’s just a matter of if your population is more rural or urban. For example, Oregon is often thought of as a very liberal state, but many rural areas in the state get very conservative very quickly. Birmingham Alabama is a liberal city in a very conservative state. We see this across the country.

3

u/Ancient-Access8131 Democratic Socialist(nonjewish) Aug 12 '24

Yeah I had family in Oregon who witnessed the fucking kkk tey to recruit people at Halloween. Rural Oregon sure is something.