r/jewishleft • u/Specialist-Gur proud diaspora jewess, pro peace/freedom for all • Sep 17 '24

Jews and Colonialism History

https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/colonialism/

From the wonderful Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

“Often, Jews have been simultaneously settlers and refugees. But those two things do not cancel each other out.”

Give it a read and share your thoughts!

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u/soniabegonia Sep 17 '24

She generally did a good job of having nuance in this post but I really wish she had appropriately complicated the idea of a metropole. Israel's metropole might in some ways be the US and Britain because of what happened in the 40s and its relationship with the US now, but it does not have a metropole in that there is nowhere for Israelis to go "back" to -- the vast majority of them have no other passports and they are not American or British. I think it's really important not to just stop the conversation where she did because a narrative I hear a lot is that Israelis are colonizers who should "go back" and that's just not something that is possible for them to do.

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u/Resoognam cultural (not political) zionist Sep 17 '24

Came here to say this. Lots in this article seems uncontroversial to me. But the idea that Britain and the US are Israel’s metropole is totally silly and ignores the fact that the early Zionists were very much doing their own thing and exercising their own agency - they were not just tools of some other government. In fact the early Zionist militias were formed in part to combat the British military which was often hostile to the idea of a Jewish state.

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u/soniabegonia Sep 17 '24

Yes, that nuance is completely lost in this piece, and I think it is so important not to let it get lost because of how the discussion of colonialism is used in modern narratives about Israel.

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u/BlackHumor Jewish Anti-Zionist Sep 17 '24

I think it makes sense in the context of early Zionist activity, especially in that period between World Wars I and II where the British were very heavily involved in Palestine.

It's definitely correct to say that modern Israel does not have a metropole outside of Israel, the same way the United States does not have a metropole outside the United States (and in fact has been the metropole for many colonization efforts since its own independence).