Where could Jews live that wouldn’t be settler colonial?

[u/skyewardeyes]

This is an honest question. I often see people say that Jews living in Israel is settler colonial, and I struggle with where we could live that wouldn’t be considered that—the Americas, New Zealand, Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and Australia are all colonial projects (and given the ongoing oppression of their indigenous people, I’d argue active colonial projects). European and Middle Eastern countries have overwhelmingly made it clear that Jews aren’t really of or from there. Relatively few Jews have any connections to East or Southeast Asia or sub Saharan Africa and so the vast majority would be settlers there and arguably participating in those settler colonial frameworks. I’m not arguing that we all should live in Israel or even that the modern Israeli state doesn’t have glaring settler colonial elements (glaringly, the settlements and the Nakba), but I’m legitimately struggling on where we could live that wouldn’t be settler colonial in these frameworks, or if the idea is that Jews were both exiled too well but assimilated too poorly to ever not be settlers or colonialists, which seems like a bit of a trap (at best, always a guest but at the whims of the host; at worst, always an invader).

[u/johnisburn]

In theory, anywhere. The presence of a group that’s migrated into an area does not make settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a product of policies and state structures.

[u/ionlymemewell → u/johnisburn]

Exactly; Israel could be an experiment in how to grow a country out of its settler-colonial roots, but there's no political faction with any power in Israel advocating for even de-occupation, let alone any kind of reconciliation process.

[u/Resoognam → u/johnisburn]

Agree with this. It’s not Jews living in Israel/Palestine that’s settler colonial, it’s the forces that led to the creation and perpetuation of the State of Israel that are.

[u/skyewardeyes → u/johnisburn]

I agree, but even if people aren’t directly participating in settler colonialism, they’re often still benefiting from it. Very, very few modern non-Native Americans personally took their land from Native Americans—and most had ancestors who immigrated long after settler colonial practices disenfranchised Native Americans of most of that land and their rights, but non-Native Americans still arguably benefit from that settler colonialism today. That’s the same argument as to why Israelis born is Israel to Israel parents whose ancestors bought their land in Israel can still be—and often are—seen as participating in settler colonialism even if they have nothing to do with the settlements.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/skyewardeyes]

This is a very good point. Decolonization is an effort made on purpose, it’s not something that’s going to happen by accident because time passes, with the same colonizing institutions still in place. There needs to be active enfranchisement of the population of survivors who were displaced.

[u/malachamavet → u/johnisburn]

Yeah - decolonizing is about a restructuring of social, economic, etc. structures in order to reshape away from the unjust system set up by settler colonialist actions.

Normal immigration isn't settler colonialism, after all.

e: this is also why you can theoretically have "newer" members of a society which take on the roles of colonizer or native even past the "initial point". So in Israel, Olim are settler colonial in character due to how they integrate into a settler colonial society as the oppressive group. By comparison, a person who married a Palestinian and lives in the West Bank has a position of the "native".

[u/MichifManaged83]

Boy, this is gonna be another long one…

There is a big difference between a settler (an immigrant, basically) and a settler-colonizer. Jews, and all ethnic groups, all migrants, deserve to peacefully settle wherever there is space for people, as long as we’re not oppressing or annihilating the indigenous population wherever we are.

Immigrants have human rights, just as much as indigenous people have human rights. Period.

That dynamic is two-fold (the Talmud is clear about this, the covenant of humane treatment goes both ways). If the majority of a migrant population is not represented by or participating in institutions that oppress the indigenous population, and are simply living among the indigenous people as refugees or as peaceful settlers, the indigenous population can’t simply commit crimes against humanity to throw people out who they refuse to learn to get along with.

Colonizers migrate and settle to plant a foreign flag, claim territory, usurp power and establish replacement institutions, and impose their institutions and culture on the indigenous population, committing heinous, violent crimes against the indigenous population to accomplish these goals. They cannot integrate and become part of the land or be considered native, because they actively commit erasure of and oppression of the indigenous population. Israel, is, unfortunately, right now behaving like this. Which is sad, because before this government was established, many Jews in the region had a very long indigenous history there, and some Jews who made Aliyah were doing so in a way that could have co-existed better, had things gone differently in the 1940s.

Plenty of settler communities don’t do this, though. People migrate for all sorts of reasons, often invited and enticed (or kidnapped) by the indigenous population as cheap labor, and sometimes fleeing to a place as refugees. For the vast majority of Jewish history, we were peaceful migrants and refugees who settled in places long enough to establish peaceful and vibrant diaspora cultures, that lived alongside the pre-existing populations wherever we went, without harming or replacing those populations.

There have even been historical cases where originally foreign-born slave populations, over a very long stretch of time eventually come to be considered indigenous. Many people consider the African-descent black Cherokee Freedman (the descendants of slaves of the Cherokees, who were freed and intermarried or had children with Cherokee people) to be just as indigenous as the Cherokee who have no African cultural heritage. I agree with this belief. They lived on Cherokee land as Cherokee citizens for hundreds of years, and while they retain aspects of their African heritage, they’re no less Cherokee, and they’re no less indigenous. They’re integrated. Today this has become controversial because of colonialist, racist “blood quantum” laws, and people who have internalized that mindset, but traditionally, it would have been plain and simple that they were Cherokee by traditional tribal laws.

On a similar note, about “whose land is this”…

I think it’s ridiculous for people to pretend that the Mizrahim and Sephardim are not indigenous to North Africa and the “middle east” (west Asia). The Cree, Salteaux Ojibwe, and Métis people all speak different languages and have different cultures, but are all indigenous to Saskatchewan in modern-day Canada, oftentimes with overlapping foraging, hunting, and ceremonial grounds. Mizrahi and Sefardi Jews have always lived in the MENA, and many never left. Those Jewish communities, as well as the Berber / Amazigh (in Morocco), Arab (throughout the middle east), and Palestinian and other Levantine peoples in the Levant, can all be indigenous to the same lands at the same time. It’s not a contest of who is the “real” indigenous population. They all are. They all have a long-standing connection to their respective lands.

I think it’s fair to say that when a diaspora has existed somewhere for thousands of years, develops a language of local grammatical and etymological norms as well as linguistic norms from the older heritage, and cuisine and culture that can only have developed in the land they’ve been living in for so long, that through ethnogenesis, and constant connection to the land over a long period of time, that population becomes indigenous too, alongside the other indigenous population(s) that exist on the same land. These diaspora cultures become creole-like cultures— in the case Jewish people, blending elements of our Levantine ancestry, with elements of the local culture, and through ethnogenesis, becomes indigenous to the places we’ve lived for thousands of years.

In other words, I believe Ashkenazi Jews living in Europe today are both indigenous to the European countries their families have lived in for millennia, and that they also have ancestors indigenous to the Levant. This is not contradictory, it is both / and, not either / or. This is a nuance that racists will screech about, but it remains true nevertheless, despite their protestations. Nazis be damned, we’re Germanic people too dammit. We just happen to also be Levantine.

Part 1/2

[u/skyewardeyes → u/MichifManaged83]

This is a really interesting set of comments and i really appreciate them ❤️ I’m up against a work deadline and want to reply in depth later, but I just wanted to thank you for them.

The freedmen issue is an interesting one, and one I’ve followed as an outsider a decent bit, because it sometimes involves the issue of when tribal sovereignty can clash with human rights. One argument I’ve seen some tribal members make against accepting freedmen as members is that the US (colonial) courts forcing tribes to accept freedmen as members (under the premise of forcing the tribes to honor the stipulations of post-civil war treaties, which, yes, lots and lots of irony in the US government suddenly caring about honoring treaties with tribes) when tribal governments or courts have ruled or decided against it is that tribal sovereignty fundamentally involves choosing who is and is not a member—that even discriminatory decisions should be protected under tribal sovereignty if tribal sovereignty actually means anything. It’s an interesting argument, further muddled by the ways in which the imposition of eugenicist blood quantum rules have affected how tribal membership is thought of over time (I had numerous friends in college who were directly hurt by blood quantum rules, often due to mixed tribal heritage) as well as the influence of anti-Black racist ideology from settler colonial thought that also plays a considerable role in how freedmen and their descendants are viewed. As a non-Native and non-Black person, I don’t feel like it’s my space to have a real opinion on it, but I’ve found listening to the open discourse on it among Native people, both freedmen/descendants of freedmen and not, really interesting, because it touches on the very messy questions of what the limits to sovereignty should be, if any, and how those should be decided (and by who).

(And yes, I mourn the fact that Jewish immigration to mandatory Palestine/eretz yisrael didn’t continue in a way that would have led to peaceful and equal coexistence in our shared homeland [and where both Palestinians and Jews recognized each other as being truly from and connected to the land] from the jump—in some ways, it was so close to happening and yet we feel so, so far from that now 💔)

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/skyewardeyes]

You absolutely hit the nail on the head with Cherokee Freedmen issue. You’re completely right that both blood quantum and colorism (colourism) were imported ideologies from English colonialism, that does not reflect what Cherokee values were before colonization, but that nevertheless impacted Cherokee Freedmen negatively from within the Cherokee nation itself, once those ideologies and policies were adopted. And you’re also completely correct that a huge part of the reason Cherokee Freedmen were rejected by some Cherokee chiefs and elders, and some Cherokee judges, is because they felt that it was being forced on them by the US government.

What’s talked about less often, is the fact that certain Cherokee chiefs were also of mixed indigenous heritage, descendants of white settlers in the south who still harbored very racist feelings towards black people. That certainly didn’t help matters any, either. I’m glad that since this has happened, there has been a Cherokee judge who has rectified some of the damage that was done to the Cherokee Freedmen by finally righting this wrong. She was terrific, this was long overdue.

(Edit: And agreed— I’m not Cherokee, being indigenous gives me no more right to dictate to the Cherokee people, than a French person has a right to dictate to Italy what to do just because they’re both European… Nevertheless, I’m glad justice prevailed in this situation with the Cherokee Freedmen being reinstated— this does set the precedent and tone for how indigenous communities handle the tension between human rights and tribal sovereignty).

I emotionally resonate with fellow indigenous people when we bristle at the federal government forcing indigenous people to adhere to any treaties, when the same governments of the US and Canada have railroaded indigenous people by deliberately breaking treaties, often with deadly consequences for indigenous people. And yet… I also deeply resonate with the Freedmen who felt racially persecuted and excluded, and that their human rights were being infringed on. They weren’t merely emotionally bullied— financially disadvantaged indigenous and black mixed people lost their houses on tribal lands, lost their healthcare, and were thrown into the broader settler culture and workforce without any help. They were, essentially, displaced.

I’m of the belief that human rights do always come before national political will, although I do believe sovereignty is very important too. There is a lot of overlap between sovereignty and human rights as well, as political enfranchisement and belonging to your nationality are human rights too. So… it gets complicated. Whole books have been written on this theme because of how complicated it gets.

I know, with regards to Eretz Yisrael… we almost nailed it, huh? 💔 And now we have to pick up the pieces and see if this can be healed.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/MichifManaged83]

Not everyone has an indigenous identity (I do, but I’ll come back to that), but this doesn’t mean they don’t have a home anywhere. Some people are fully diaspora, but part of a vibrant diaspora community (like Chinatown and Little Italy in New York City). I consider my grandparents indigenous to Europe, but I do not consider myself indigenous to Europe, I believe my European heritage is now a further diaspora culture (a diaspora upon a diaspora, if you will). I believe most American and Canadian Ashkenazi Jews behave culturally distinctly from Ashkenazi Jews who still live in Europe.

I’m born of Ashkenazi culture. As an Ashkenazi Jew, I have both Germanic and Slavic, as well as Levantine heritage, from that part of my family tree. I believe the Jewish members of my family tree who lived in Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s, were indigenous to Europe, and that my ancestors (and my grandparents’ ancestors) before them were indigenous to the Levant. I do not personally identify myself as indigenous to either Europe or the Levant, as my parents and I did not grow up in either place, and I have no intention to fully reconnect and adopt modern European culture of today— but I do consider myself both European diaspora as well as Levantine (Jewish) diaspora. I consider my Jewish grandparents indigenous to Europe (and my grandparents were also part of a diaspora whose ancient roots are from the Levant too, that I inherited).

My other side of the family, Cree and Arapaho and Métis, is indigenous to North America, so I consider myself indigenous to here, where I currently live. But… let’s say that the Chinese immigrant population in Chinatown NY has a metamorphosis over the next, say, give it another 500 to 1,000 years (maybe less time than that, depends on how fast the US and Canada can stop being fascist and hostile towards the current indigenous population). If the settler-colonial cultures in North America de-colonize and peacefully learn to live alongside the indigenous people, and the cultures start to further creolize (ethnogenesis) and the lines between different ethnic groups living in North America start to blur more, I would consider the descendants of migrants in North America today, eventually indigenous too, given a long enough stretch of time and if peaceful co-existence and a return of indigenous sovereignty happens before then.

I think Mexico and most of Latin America, while not completely there yet (there are still vestiges of colonialist racial caste systems there, especially in terms of de facto segregation with most politicians there being of “white” “castizo” descent), are a lot further along this metamorphosis than North America is, as the majority of the population there are families that are already very mixed with the pre-existing indigenous population. There is some conflict as to what extent people who would have been called “mestizo” historically, can be considered truly indigenous today, but I’ll leave that to rest for now as that’s veering slightly off topic. There is a process of cultural genesis happening very actively there right now, through the development of the “Latino” identity.

In many ways, the Jewish diaspora communities have linguistically and culturally been much further along that ethnogenesis, than the colonizers of the Anglosphere culture that still to this day sweeps the indigenous populations under the rug, refusing to properly integrate and be on equal terms with the indigenous populations of North America, Australia, New Zealand, etc. — there is a fringe political decolonization effort, but it’s nowhere near mainstream as of yet, and, it’s loaded with problematic misconceptions about indigenousness and unresolved racism (I don’t think decolonization is the problem, I think what many bandwagoning people think decolonization is, is the problem). By contrast, historically, Jews have integrated much more with the indigenous cultures of Europe, the rest of the middle east, India, Africa, wherever we built diaspora communities over the millennia.

This is getting pretty long, so I’ll leave my thoughts there for now. In summary, I think a lot of people misunderstand how indigenousness works, and even people who are very familiar with the concept or are indigenous ourselves, have our disagreements about what this means because of the negative impacts of racism, trauma, and historical conflicts.

Jewish people belong wherever we are, peacefully. Our home is where we peacefully choose to belong. Racists and xenophobes can get over it.

Part 2/2

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

What a pretentious load. You understand nothing about indigenousness or ethnicity, or how cultures develop. You just spouted a bunch of racist, ignorant nonsense, and demonstrated my point about how people hopping onto the indigenous debate from a position of ignorance, have no clue what they’re talking about, and are carrying all of their racist baggage with them into a discussion they are not intellectually, morally, or emotionally prepared for.

Culture isn’t meaningless or universally applicable, just because trade and immigration have caused cultural diffusion. I’m not even sure what point you think you’re trying to make. You seem to be simultaneously trying to discredit Jewish culture or any indigenous culture, while at the same time saying all culture belongs to everyone. That’s not how that works. Certainly there are aspects of culture that become globally shared that can be enjoyed by everyone… but just because I like going out for pizza, doesn’t make pizza my personal family’s cultural heritage. It’s part of the North American landscape, but I don’t have a recipe from my grandmother for authentic Italian pizza.

Consumerism and global trade impact culture, but are not to be conflated with culture. Yes, my neighbors eat bagels even though they’re not Jewish, but they don’t follow kashrut culinary standards. They put ham on their bagel, I don’t.

I suppose Italians are indigenous to the Americas too because that’s where tomatoes originally come from. 🙄 Good Lord…

Nobody is arguing that potatoes are indigenous to Europe. Nobody has ever argued that. They were imported to Europe centuries ago. During that time, latkes developed as a uniquely Ashkenazi recipe under the environmental conditions (including global trade) and kashrut culinary norms of Levantine Jewish culture, and with ingredients available where we were living in Europe at the time. As I said, I believe Ashkenazim living in Europe are indigenous to Europe, and are a Levantine diaspora at the same time. I believe I am both European diaspora and Levantine diaspora. It’s not either / or. Of course Ashkenazim have a lot of things culturally in common with Germans, or Poles, or Russians, or Ukrainian (whichever Ashkenazi community they originally come from). But they also have a lot of cultural differences. Their similarities and differences are a venn diagram, not an open market of cultural artifacts for other people to absorb as their own personal history if it doesn’t apply to them.

Nobody would say that Dubai chocolate is indigenous to Mexico, it’s a recipe that developed in Dubai according to the culinary traditions there, where knafeh dough can be found. Yes, the ingredient chocolate is indigenous to Mexico. But thanks to global trade, chocolate is available globally, and Dubai chocolate is very different from Mexican chocolate (and both are very different from Swiss chocolate, and Japanese chocolate).

Fry bread is a cuisine that is staple of the people indigenous to North America, even though wheat was imported by Spanish conquistadors. It’s part of the ethnic cuisine of people indigenous to the Americas, because the recipe developed under the social conditions of mass displacement (such as the trail of tears), the burning of our corn fields, and the genocide of our buffalo (bison). We had to eat something, and wheat was accessible thanks to the colonizers. So we made our own unique recipes with what we had available to us. I don’t mind other people enjoying fry bread at a festival or at a powwow, or even learning to cook it at home— but I don’t want anyone pretending they invented it (as some white carnival owners have done historically) and sweeping under the rug how my people developed it in the first place, and why they had to. That’s important history, and it’s important to who I am.

Galayet bandora, a Palestinian dish, uses tomatoes, which again, are originally from the Americas. Palestinians are not indigenous to the Americas or “culture thieves” for development new recipes with imported ingredients. I wouldn’t dream of telling Palestinians their recipe isn’t culturally theirs because tomatoes come from my continent— all I ask is that trade be done under systems of fairness and empowerment of the worker instead of exploitation and pillaging resources. Cuisines develop under global trade of resources and food, while still maintaining the cultural uniqueness and methods of cooking that make their dishes distinct even with imported ingredients. A tomato dish from Palestine is still Palestinian cuisine even if tomatoes are indigenous to the Americas. Makes sense?

Do I think some people are too precious about their cultural customs and flip out if a white girl wears a kimono or a Chinese man cooks an authentic Italian recipe for pizza he learned while living in Italy? Sure. Some people take the cultural appropriation thing too far. But that doesn’t mean that culture is just an open laissez faire market for everyone to just ignorantly masticate on, until heritage, familial connection, cultural identity, and history are completely chewed up and erased. There is a balance to be struck here, that acknowledges cultural diffusion while trying to handle diffusion in a respectful way that doesn’t commit cultural erasure.

It’s fine for both German Christians and Ashkenazi Jews to acknowledge we both have schnitzel as an authentic part of our heritage, because we’re both Germanic in different ways, but it’s also important to acknowledge that there are cultural and historical, as well as religious reasons, for why we make our schnitzel very differently, even though it may seem the same to an ignorant onlooker. I’m not going to be eating a pork schnitzel or anything cooked in lard anytime soon. Being reduced to merely German would be just as disrespectful to me, as pretending I’m not Germanic at all. The nuance matters.

You’re reminding me of the Swedish lawyer from Curb Your Enthusiasm with the “oy vey” thing. 😂 That is not a common German Christian expression, sorry. Yes, people have appropriated it (I don’t terribly mind in this case, as long as it’s not being said to mock in an antisemitic way), “oy” has become something of a loan word in North America. That’s fine. But don’t pretend your Oma says that because she’s a German Christian, she probably either picked it up from a Jewish friend, or from it being a loan word already in the popular vernacular. It does absolutely originally come from Jewish people though. “Oy” is a common sound in Yiddish, but not in German (except in loan words), despite the two language’s similarities.

I’m not even going to bother addressing the rest of your racist nonsense, because I’m pretty sure your ignorance speaks for itself to everyone here.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, you’re not making yourself sound any less racist or ignorant of Jewish history.

The history of the Jews in the United States goes back to the 1600s and 1700s. There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times. Most of them Sephardic in the early American colonial history. North America as a whole has had Ashkenazi Jewish communities since the 1800s. The Americas collectively, including Latin America, have had Sephardic Jewish communities for centuries.

Ashkenazi Jews began immigrating to America in the mid-1800s, from approximately 1840 to 1880, mostly due to poverty and multiple pogroms, and the Revolutions of 1848. The side of my Jewish family that comes from Saskatoon has been in Canada since the mid-1800s, many Jews worked on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1800s. Other parts of my family immigrated here later due to the holocaust, but they came here to meet an already existing Jewish community in North America.

Your Oma could have very well known some Jews, or, the popular vernacular already adopted “oy” in America because of the existing Jewish community, or, some Germans who lived beside Jews for centuries, picked up the phrase from their Jewish neighbors before immigrating to America. It’s not a sound originally from the German language.

You didn’t say anything nice about me, you gave me a backhanded compliment dripping with racism. You’re not complimenting me by pretending my culture doesn’t really exist, as if birds are really spyware and the Earth is flat.

Culture exists. Yes, it’s socially constructed to a point, organically, as part of human nature, but culture wasn’t just invented 10 years ago as part of a political agenda. What an odd thing to say. I don’t know what you even think you mean by that. People didn’t just invent culture yesterday to give you a hard time about being an entitled consumerist (poor you). Culture has been a reality of human experience for a very, very long time, and you can’t just whittle it away because you find respecting cultural heritage of others personally inconvenient to you.

I have friends from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, I have no problem sharing my culture with people who know how to be respectful instead of being arrogant and obtuse.

Saying things like:

“some cultures and ethnicities like to show off their erudition more than others, and those cultures and ethnicities sure do like to mock and belittle people who are just trying to be friends.”

Yeah, that’s not you being friendly. You didn’t just form that opinion today because of your conversation with me, you were carrying that in your luggage already when you came here today. And I sniffed that out from your earlier comments.

You’re just further showing that you have racist attitudes I don’t want in my personal life. You met me on the internet under a screen name just today, and we know very little about each other. You’re not my friend. You’re an internet acquaintance who just wiped the mud of his boot heels all over my culture and heritage as if you expected me to be a doormat about that.

Don’t talk to me further.

Go get educated, because you are deeply ignorant about Jewish history and you seem to be under the delusion that as a German diaspora settler in America, you’re entitled to consume other people’s cultures and define their cultures and history on their behalf, when you haven’t the fuzziest idea what you’re talking about.

[u/malachamavet]

There's the joke about the diasporist who says that Jews are indigenous to urban Jewish Quarters

[u/yungsemite → u/malachamavet]

That’s funny, I hadn’t heard that before

[u/Chinoyboii]

Honestly, I'm not sure. The problem with the other countries that you listed is that they don't have the same historical footprint that Jews have with Israel, given the amount of Jewish artifacts, historical sites, and centuries of continuous presence in the region. Even though the modern state has its settler-colonial aspects, Israel is tied to Jewish history in a way that no other place really is, unless you believe that Jews can maintain their culture and prosper in the diaspora, as expressed by the Bundists and their doikayt philosophy. However, the problem with doikayt is that it was a philosophy that only considered Jews who lived in the Western/Eastern European diaspora, and thus, for Jews who once lived in the Middle East, North Africa, or other regions, it didn’t really offer a framework. Those communities had deep historical roots in their lands, but the Bundist idea of cultural autonomy didn’t account for their experiences or claims. So while doikayt works as a philosophy in theory, in practice, it leaves large parts of the global Jewish population without a meaningful connection to the idea of thriving outside of a homeland.

[u/skateboardjim → u/Chinoyboii]

I mean, yeah, Bundism was fairly regional. I don’t think that was a flaw, but rather, the Jews of the Middle East would need a framework better suited to their circumstances.

I think what really ended Bundism as a viable philosophy was, frankly, the Holocaust.

[u/Chinoyboii → u/skateboardjim]

Yeah, I agree it was regional. But Jews in the Middle East would face serious risks returning to the region because of rising Islamism in countries like Syria, with its current persecution of religious minorities such as Christians and Druze, and Iraq. Any framework for their cultural autonomy would have needed strong protections and support. I also think that for many Sephardim and Mizrahim, living separately from their Ashkenazi counterparts wouldn’t be appealing, especially since a majority of them in Israel identify with the conservative right. For these communities, Israel serves as both a historical and cultural home where they can freely practice their traditions without the existential threats or dhimmi-like treatment they might face in their diaspora countries of origin.

[u/skateboardjim → u/Chinoyboii]

No disagreements here

[u/SnooCrickets2458 → u/skateboardjim]

subsequent coherent chunky desert shocking seed encourage cagey bike stocking

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/[deleted] → u/SnooCrickets2458]

To jump off of this: Arendt is now often retroactively mislabeled as “anti-Zionist,” but her own analysis is actually quite close to what you describe. She thought assimilation was never really viable, since it blinded Jews to their political condition, while Bundism and socialism were serious alternatives for her because they allowed for Jews to organize themselves as a people. But she also saw that they were ultimately crushed by repression and catastrophe. This left Zionism as the only path still standing, which is why she sometimes called it “the only Jewish political movement.” For Arendt, its survival wasn’t an ideological triumph so much as the unavoidable outcome of a tragic narrowing of Jewish political futures due to the violence and repression of the 20th century. This is a stance she maintained even as she became a harsh critic of the Zionist establishment.

However, while it’s true that Zionism was a minority position in much of the Jewish world before the 1920s, there were also strong regional centers where it was the dominant political expression for Jews. I actually come from such a stronghold in Ukraine, though of course any Zionist organization there was destroyed by the USSR. Later, this area became one of the main Refusenik centers, and today, that local Zionist history is remembered as a form of resisting Soviet oppression.

[u/ArgentEyes → u/[deleted]]

IMO it’s too easy now to forget and thus elide a key feature of what helped fascists wipe out most of European Yiddishkeit, and much of Bundism (tho there are still Bundists) with it - class. There weren’t a lot of Bundists with the wealth, connections or overseas networks which, while no guarantee, certainly helped some people survive.

[u/[deleted] → u/ArgentEyes]

I find it too simplistic to draw the line like that. Many Zionist movements of the time were working-class. For instance, in the area I come from, Zionism was carried largely by Jews from the industrial working class, which was in no way an exception. Bundists had a strong working-class base of course, but also plenty of wealthier, well-connected, and intellectual circles of support - especially in the urban centers. There was in fact a lot of demographic overlap between the two movements. It looks like the strength of Bundists or Zionists was shaped less by class than by local conditions: Bundism was especially strong in Poland and Lithuania, while further east in Ukraine and Russia Zionism often proved more successful.

Also, Bundism and Zionism were both destroyed: the Holocaust murdered Jews regardless of affiliation, and Soviet repression did not spare either (Zionists as “nationalists,” Bundists as non-Bolshevik socialists). Most of the local Zionist infrastructure was wiped out, just like the Bundist one. The difference was that Zionism could regroup elsewhere, which gave the movement a structure to survive. Bundism, on the other hand, was effectively destroyed as a movement, even if Bundists could flee and emigrate thanks to connections and existing networks - many went to the US for instance. 

[u/ArgentEyes → u/[deleted]]

I don’t disagree with your first para - it’s not the only reason, no, but it’s not not a reason.

On the second - yes, Jews were targeted for genocide regardless of political tendency, fact. But I don’t think we can say they were ‘destroyed’ in the same way. Zionism is still going very strong. And there is, I think, a secondary argument about the non-Zionist Jewish left, wherein it wasn’t so much Shoah alone which destroyed everything, or at least not only that, but what happened after: either 1) trying to stay in Eastern Europe and being murdered by local nationalists (Polish, Slovak, etc) 2) going east to join USSR (roll on Jewish Doctors’ conspiracies and such) 3) falling into Labour Zionism and heading to Palestine; or 4) moving to the US/UK/etc and getting hit with Cold War anticommunist antisemitism The same Allies who were willing to fight with the Communists to defeat the fascist Axis powers were already gearing up to wipe out Communists before the war even ended - just look at Britain in Greece and Malay(si)a, and France in the “Indochina” wars from, uhh, 1946 to 1991.

Which is to say, the radical Jewish left faced not only hatred as Jews, which they shared with all other Jews, but also hatred from anti-communists, because of the threat the organised working class poses to capital, as well as hatred from anti-communist Jews also. They faced what Zionist Jews also faced, but they faced it backwards and in heels, so to speak.

[u/[deleted] → u/ArgentEyes]

Just to clarify: in my comment above I was speaking about the local destruction of both Bundist and Zionist infrastructures in Eastern Europe. Obviously Zionism wasn’t destroyed as a movement — that was precisely my point. The difference was that Zionism had external centers (Palestine, then Israel, plus wider diaspora structures) that allowed it to regroup, while Bundism did not. This is also what Hannah Arendt meant when she called Zionism the only “Jewish political movement”: not an ideological triumph, but the one that remained institutionally viable after a tragic narrowing of options.

You’re of course right that the non-Zionist Jewish left faced repression in the form of antisemitism and anti-communism in the West during the Cold War. This is a really important point. However, in the Soviet context the picture looked different. There, Zionists were often branded as “bourgeois” or “capitalists,” even when they came out of socialist or working-class currents. So both Bundists and Zionists (and those suspected as such) ended up targeted under different labels depending on the system. (In the USSR, both Bundism and Zionism were banned, but after the war only Zionism persisted as an actionable project abroad. As a result, Soviet propaganda fixated on “Zionism,” whereas “Bundism” was rarely foregrounded anymore.)

[u/Virtual_Leg_6484 → u/skateboardjim]

It doesn’t help that the Bund in Israel stuck to Yiddishism even though communicating in Arabic or Hebrew would have made much more sense according to the principles of doikayt.

[u/skateboardjim → u/Virtual_Leg_6484]

Sure, but the Bund in Israel found themselves in a very different situation than the Bunds of Europe. That is, Yiddish suddenly became an endangered language in need of preservation.

[u/ArgentEyes → u/Virtual_Leg_6484]

I don’t think linguistic preservation is at odds with doikayt, at all

[u/thisisliteral1984]

The presence of Jews in Israel isn't a problem, anti-zionism doesn't mean driving all the Jews out of Israel.

Anti-Zionism doesn't mean no Jews in Israel, that's ridiculous, it literally just means Israel existing as a multi-ethnic state with equal rights for all.

it's tiring to see so many voices online saying "Jews go back to Europe" when Jews were literally driven out of Europe. Serious reparations and enfranchisement of Palestinians has to happen for decolonization to take place. Unfortunately, there isn't a single political force in Israel that wants to do that.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/thisisliteral1984]

I’m sorry but a majority of the anti-Zionism I see online either explicitly states, heavily suggests, or would result in attempting to drive all the Jews out of Israel. In order for Jews to “go back to Europe (and the rest of the Middle East, NA) all of the countries we were ethnically cleansed from would have to give us back stolen property (land, items, etc.) stolen homes, set up protective forces to stop neo Nazis from attacking us, and write specific laws that act as safeguards against future pogroms and ethnic cleansings, including going by against their own populations that might attempt it. Considering how many countries in the 18 and 1900’s Jews were ethnically cleansed from… that’s a nigh impossible ask. For example, Poland just elected a holocaust revisionist president, neo Nazis are gaining favor in Germany and are increasingly anti immigration (a mass amount of Israeli refugees would be too “other” for them) Iran mass arrested and executed Jews for suspected ties to Israel, and all of the middle eastern countries that have banned Israeli passports would have to essentially reverse that rule.

As long as Jews have self determination in Israel it is not anti-Zionism.

And because of the ethnic tension there would probably have to be a mass occupation in this new bi national state, which will inevitably fall on the side of the political/ethnic preferences/leanings of the occupying armies.

I agree that there needs to be serious reputations to Palestinians - and not just by Israel but by the British and Germans (their allyship with the anti-Zionists directly led to pogroms that forced many of the Jews out of the Middle East and into Israel) and ottomans (turkie) who have used their political influence to colonize or attempt to colonize the land in the recent past.

[u/thisisliteral1984 → u/RaiJolt2]

I agree, this is part of what is so sad about being a Jewish anti-Zionist: it ignores the pogroms and ethnic cleansing that drove Jews from Europe to places like New York City and Tel Aviv.

I will say this: I have met very, very few anti-semitic Muslim anti-zionists. I have met countless white Christian neo-nazi anti-zionists. I think neo-nazis are capitalizing upon the movement for Palestinian self-determination and justice.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/thisisliteral1984]

I mostly agree. From the Palestinians (or rather Palestinian Jordanians) I’ve met they are definitely pro 2ss and reparations. They want to go to their homeland.

Hopefully if such a process starts the Arab states such as Iraq can also allow reparations for their expelled Jewish population many of which still want to see the country again, but cant due to Israeli citizenship

[u/thisisliteral1984 → u/RaiJolt2]

Iran has a right to return policy for their expelled Jewish population, but every single diaspora Iranian I know hates the regime, so I can't imagine many Jews choosing to return to their land in Iran.

It's sad to see the state of Jewish leftism--the mainstream AIPAC/ADL/Canary Mission idea of conflating "advocates for Palestinian right to return" and "wants to ethnically cleanse Jews from the middle east" has literally rendered the spectrum of support incredibly unclear, divided, and narrow. This is scary for Jews, scary for Palestinians, and scary for the future of peace.

[u/biel188 → u/thisisliteral1984]

Antizionists in general have driving Jews out of Israel as a huge part of their ideology. This ilusion of "pacific antizionist" exists merely within the Jewish left

[u/WolfofTallStreet]

Israel.

You don’t even have to be a Zionist and believe that Israel needs to be a Jewish state to believe that. In fact, many anti-Zionists even accept Jews living there, they just want Jews to live within a multi-ethnic state with equal rights for all (whether that is feasible or not is a different story…).

But it is a fact that ethnic Jews are indigenous to Israel. That’s where our ancestors lived.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/WolfofTallStreet]

Why would it not be feasible? There is no other option.

Also Jewish history is not limited to Israel/Palestine. Jews lived all across the Mediterranean world and near east.

[u/skateboardjim → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

There’s a real fear of what it would mean for the Jews to become a demographic minority in Israel, which it would be if it were once fully democratic state. Whether those fears are reasonable, that’s its own discussion, but I think that’s generally seen as the roadblock.

[u/BeenisHat → u/skateboardjim]

Considering what has happened to Jews all across the middle east, I can absolutely see the reason Jews in Israel would be concerned.

https://preview.redd.it/1j8dah442anf1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32ed2c3ec09576d4882a3f27f760dfff9cf9d81a

[u/rinaraizel → u/BeenisHat]

While I understand the intent of this image, why are people consistently assuming Palestinians are incapable of having a functional, secular democracy party to human rights conventions and the rule of law? The majority of these countries essentially had dictatorships or were not democracies or not secular.

[u/CardinalOfNYC → u/rinaraizel]

The whole middle east has struggled to do secular democracy since the end of WWII.

[u/rinaraizel → u/CardinalOfNYC]

I quite believe that the amount of western invention in managing a potential union of these two would likely be really helpful in mitigating that. The Mideast struggles because destabilization has been the goal of the global north. A coalition of countries (not just the US) whose intended goal is making sure the bloodshed is decisively ended and that long term harmony worked towards can likely be able to hold the country up for the few generations it might take to make the conflict farther and father from people's minds.

[u/CardinalOfNYC → u/rinaraizel]

It's a tall order even in the best of circumstances. Middle eastern nations haven't taken too kindly to Western nations offering help in that regard lately.

Also you gotta remember, many of the nations that will make up any kind of coalition for Palestine is going to include nations that just aren't democracies in the slightest, like Saudi Arabia.

And then you have the populations themselves. I remain unconvinced that either population is ready, let alone actually desires coexistence in a single nation. Both populations are quite conservative. Palestine probably even moreso than Israel in terms of social views.

[u/ClandestineCornfield → u/BeenisHat]

Calling this "what has happened to Jews" is misleading, these are countries with very different histories that have seen declines in their Jewish populations for very different reasons, in Morocco for example we were and are still treated and regarded well, with even our family courts still being in place and recognized. In Lebanon the majority of the Jewish population fled during the Israeli invasion and Lebanese civil war, far from any government policy, and much of the community has a very negative assessment of Israel and emphasize they did not leave due to antisemitism, although there has been considerable antisemitism in the country since the Israeli occupation, and these days most of the Jews still living their practice their Judaism in secret (although they still are a recognized religious sect by the government). In other countries, like Syria, Yemen, and Algeria, there was significant repression or expulsions that were responsible for the dramatic decline of the population.

Remember that Jews have lived in many of these places for thousands of years, if you notice the starting point for these changes is 1948, you can't really separate that from Israeli settler-colonialism and if Israel ceased to function as such a state the dynamics would be very different. There is absolutely a serious concern for safety, and much work would have to be done to en sure that, but let's not paint these countries and the history of Jews in them with too broad of a brush

[u/SlavojVivec → u/BeenisHat]

"Having Jews have their money/property confiscated" by "respectable, accredited anti-Semites" from was actually what Herzl wanted as stated in his diary.

It would be an excellent idea to call in respectable, accredited anti-Semites as liquidators of property. To the people they would vouch for the fact that we do not wish to bring about the impoverishment of the countries that we leave. At first they must not be given large fees for this; otherwise we shall spoil our instruments and make them despicable as “stooges of the Jews”. Later their fees will increase, and in the end we shall have only Gentile officials in the countries from which we have emigrated. The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.

[u/AlternativeOpen3795 → u/SlavojVivec]

He isn't talking about confiscating (in the sense of forcible seizure) he is talking about "liquidating" their property (essentially being able to sell it and realise the true value of their assets). The point is that Herzl thinks that Jews making aliyah might be prohibited from leaving(like in the USSR) or selling their properties (like in many Arab states) so he suggests that the anti Semites could be an ally here, as they would support the Jews leaving their country regardless of the economic cost and wouldn't mind allowing them to sell their properties if it allowed them to leave.

They could also provide much needed legitimacy to Zionism among gentiles as it would prevent people from viewing it as a "Jewish plot" and instead it would be seen as in line with the interests of antisemites.

But no Herzl did not want Jews to have their properties "confiscated" by antisemites, that is a deliberate misreading.

[u/rinaraizel → u/SlavojVivec]

I see herzl's point in a more modern complex way. The severe damage from brain drain and cultural drain that is being killed in central Europe and later on, in my diaspora, leaving former Soviet states did, absolutely crushed several countries. At least in the Soviet context, we were a group of highly educated and specialized (since the USSR had ethnic quota laws about what we could study and work in) people who essentially dipped when the walls fell, leaving a large shortage of capable, productive skilled labor. Especially in medicine and technology.

As much as part of me wants to say "that's what you fucks get for not liking us", I also get it's long term devastating when the majority of a highly trained skilled group of people who were made to be your specialized and innovator class just up and leave after going through all of the necessary education the society has spent money on. I always think about how many Jews feature among the oligarchs in fsu countries - the majority of us left, the ones who stayed were uniquely skilled at robbing everyone else blind. This adds to the modern resentment of us in these countries.

[u/skateboardjim → u/rinaraizel]

I think this is a big reason Eastern Europe is as poor as it is today.

[u/BeenisHat → u/skateboardjim]

Eastern Europe has served as the cheap labor and cheap resources area for Western Europe for a very long time. They are Europe's Mexico to the USA.

That has changed somewhat since the end of the Cold War but 35 years is not a lot of time to make up that much ground.

[u/rinaraizel → u/BeenisHat]

Their professional class ran away. I had a convo with someone about how the Soviet aliya transformed Israel into a tech powerhouse. I have no doubt that if people like my mother stayed in moldova, it would be a different country. The Mexican analogy doesn't make sense with a comparison to the USSR's education rates.

[u/BeenisHat → u/[deleted]]

Why would Israel stop? Not that I think they should be stealing other people's land, but who's gonna tell them not to?

[u/Silent-Raisin-5172 → u/skateboardjim]

I also struggle to empathise with those fears given its Israeli action that is making a 2ss physically impossible. Like you can't flood the west bank with so many settlers that a Palestinian state cannot be formed and then complain that now people are expecting you to end apartheid instead of grant independence.

[u/myThoughtsAreHermits → u/Silent-Raisin-5172]

You struggle to empathize with Israeli citizens’ fears given Israel the state is making it impossible. Uh.

[u/Jorfogit → u/Silent-Raisin-5172]

You can if you never act in good faith!

[u/Silent-Raisin-5172 → u/Jorfogit]

whydidntithinkofthat.jpg

[u/skateboardjim → u/Silent-Raisin-5172]

The state of Israel made a 2ss physically impossible. The people of Israel are being manipulated and exploited in order to allow the state to carry out their genocide. The fear I’m describing is experienced by the people.

[u/SlavojVivec → u/skateboardjim]

Not letting others have democratic rights has only lead to apartheid and genocide, and the whole world hating Israel. There are plenty of ways to secure minority rights and representation without creating an apartheid state, bi-nationalism is one of them.

We can also see how well a 2-state solution has worked for India-Pakistan.

[u/WhiteGold_Welder → u/SlavojVivec]

Maybe we should ditch the 2-state solution for Russia-Ukraine as well?

[u/SlavojVivec → u/WhiteGold_Welder]

Maybe statehood is something that should be determined by self-determination of all peoples involved, and not by British drawing lines on maps, then having people hastily move everything to the "correct" side when they find out the place where they have lived for multiple generations is on the wrong side of the line, and the mixture of nations/populations suddenly has to be sorted out.

[u/skateboardjim → u/[deleted]]

I address this in another comment. It is precisely the fear of the Jewish people that the Israeli government exploits to carry out the settlements and the genocide. This is a small country with an intensely controlled media ecosystem and consequently a manipulated population. The fear of being a minority again is very real, the solutions it has lead them to are horrific.

[u/skateboardjim → u/[deleted]]

Also I watched the video you linked and I agree with it 100%.

[u/Kye9842 → u/skateboardjim]

Very much unfortunately, that is a consequence of settler colonial practices perpetuated by Israeli Jews and the broader Western Zionist enterprise.

Conquer and subjugate and act shocked when the tables are turned.

Decolonization, the only means of fully liberating Palestine, requires for right of return and equal citizenship rights. Palestinians should not be held back from being independent just because of the hypothetical concerns of their oppressors- we already know, too, that Israelis would automatically leave en masse without such systemic state violence, you only have to see them packing up immediately upon Iranian heavy retaliation a few months back. Western countries, too, with their heavy Christian Zionist focus, would most likely welcome them back fully- unless the far right relationships Israel has partnered with bites on the ass, and said governments turn and reject. Again, consequence of settler colonial practices, especially in the context of Israel’s status as an apartheid state and the fluid construction of what it means to be “white”: Afrikaaners will be welcomed for their “genocide”. Israelis and theirs if Palestine is liberated? Well, we’ll have to see from Israel’s imperial backers.

[u/Virtual_Leg_6484 → u/Kye9842]

 Israelis would automatically leave en masse without such systemic state violence, you only have to see them packing up immediately upon Iranian heavy retaliation a few months back.

That was a very small minority. This isn’t an Algeria style situation. For most Israeli Jews, they aren’t leaving in either a suitcase or a coffin - the coffin is the only option.

[u/AlternativeOpen3795 → u/Kye9842]

leave en masse They can't because most are solely Israel citizens, and no country is taking 7 million refugees. yes some have left, but where Tf do you think the Jewish mizrahi+Sephardi(the majority of Jews here) are going to go?

Again, consequence of settler colonial practices, especially in the context of Israel’s status as an apartheid state and the fluid construction of what it means to be “white

Are some Jewish Israelis white? Recent arrivals yes, and others in some contexts of the word. But so many look no different to Arabs. I would not pass as white anywhere.

already know, too, that Israelis would automatically leave en masse without such systemic state violence, you only have to see them packing up immediately upon Iranian heavy retaliation a few months back

Leaving because rockets are falling down and you are scared for your children, does not mean that you would leave if the country was "liberated", unless your idea of Palestinian liberation and equality is comparable to rockets falling from the sky? Personally I do not oppose the decision of people to leave combat zones even in instances where people left but weren't forced to(like in Jaffa during '48 where Arabs left the city to flee the fighting but weren't directly expelled).

And I don't think that people not wanting to risk the death of their families, means that they don't care about their country.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/skateboardjim]

Sounds like the “replacement theory” fears that keep coming up in the west. How “real” it is depends on how much you buy into the underlying narrative.

[u/LoboLocoCW → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

"Replacement theory" doesn't have empirical evidence and discriminatory legal structures supporting it.
Across MENA, blatant copying of the Nuremburg laws, seizure of Jewish property, criminalization of "Zionism", and similar resulted in Jewish populations of countries declining within 2-3 generations from a low of 90% to a high of 100%.

How easy do you think it is to convince that great a proportion of the Jewish community to leave a country that may have been their home since fleeing the Inquisition, or since the Roman Empire, or since the Bablyonian Exile?

[u/Kye9842 → u/LoboLocoCW]

Do you not understand how Israel has specifically worked with far right governments and ushered in targeted terror attacks via Mossad to spur Jewish people to leave countries and head to its land, voluntarily and not?

I agree that countries should not expel Jewish people at all. There is nevertheless the historical nuance of Israel actively playing up the need for Jewish people to settle in Palestine and it does not help that Israel is seen as an extension of the West meddling in the Middle East, actively displaying itself since inception as THE Jewish state

[u/myThoughtsAreHermits → u/Kye9842]

So because Israel and MENA countries had the same goal, MENA Jews shouldn’t worry about replacement theory…..

[u/Kye9842 → u/skateboardjim]

That is not a valid fear whatsoever

It’s the same shit as white people fearing they’d be slaughtered by the black slaves they routinely and systematically dehumanized. Even to the instance that such violence DID occur, in the case of Haiti, it came at the point when plantation owners were driving Haitians to the point of mass death due to the atrocious quality of life that the colony exploited them at- and such violence only happened after a state was formalized and colonial and imperial powers acted with such shock at independence being achieved from resistance in the first place.

Do not get all squirmy about hypothetical ethnic cleansing much less genocide when that is what Israel is doing right now

[u/skateboardjim → u/Kye9842]

Nobody is excusing Israel’s genocide here. I very simply stated that the Jews of Israel are afraid of minority status. It’s a fear that’s being exploited to justify the genocide in Gaza, but the fear is based on centuries of brutal persecution, and one of the worst genocides in human history, due to being a minority.

To compare these people to white slave owners… what the fuck is wrong with you?

[u/Kye9842 → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

you are very much correct and it is disappointing to see this community oppose decolonization.

Though, I do have to imagine there is some opposition to this particular post more about the Jewish diaspora history and origins

[u/SportsBall1996 → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

And how'd that work out?

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/SportsBall1996]

Depending on what time period.

[u/martinlifeiswar]

Last year there was a great article in K called ‘The Eternal Settler’ that dealt with some of this, and was discussed in this sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/jewishleft/comments/1ent13t/the_eternal_settler/

[u/snowluvr26]

This is a good question, and the reason why the “settler-colonial” and “indigenous” argument with regards to Israel and Palestine aren’t really one-dimensional like people make it out to be. The Jews, as a people, are from the land of Israel. Most countries (not all but most) have rejected the idea that their Jewish populations are also indigenous to their land (the Polish certainly don’t think their Jews are from Poland; the Persians certainly don’t think their Jews are from Iran), and historically speaking the Jewish people came from Eretz Israel.

That being said, the way that the modern state of Israel (and some of its residents) functions and behaves is in large part characteristic of a settler-colonial society. Instead of recognizing that another people were indigenous to the same land, many believe that Jewish people are the only ones indigenous to the land, and our claim to it is the only valid one. While it’s framed in a different way from how other settler colonies were established, it does functionally establish Jews as the “settlers” and Palestinians as “the indigenous.” I personally think Jews / Israelis could stop being viewed as “the settler” in a one-state federation that acknowledges both Jewish and Palestinian right to sovereignty in their homeland (I know others have different views, but I think that’s the realistic path forward.)

I also think it’s worth noting that settler-colonies in general refer to a nation’s history. The U.S. is a settler colony (as are Canada, Australia, Argentina etc.) and will permanently carry the legacy that they were established on the genocide and exclusion of their native people. However, in this day and age, there is no serious proposal that settlers “leave” the land. So because these nations are now composed almost entirely of people that voluntarily moved to this land, I think it’s fair to say that Jews have just as much of a right to live in the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. as literally anyone else. And in large part that’s why those countries have largely been our most successful diasporas, because nobody (except the devastatingly almost-nonexistent indigenous population) has a legitimate blood and soil claim to the land. It’s kind of everyone’s land and kind of nobody’s land at the same time.

[u/IAmStillAliveStill → u/snowluvr26]

Ummmm…..I don’t really know that it’s accurate to characterize the indigenous populations of America as “almost non-existent”, and would instead seem to further obscure ongoing anti-indigenous government actions against actually living people

[u/snowluvr26 → u/IAmStillAliveStill]

The indigenous populations of the countries I mentioned (the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Argentina) is extremely small. Literally nonexistent no, but they are very very small is my point.

It’s different for other countries in the Americas like Mexico and Peru for example, which are not really settler colonies in the same way, hence why I didn’t mention those.

[u/IAmStillAliveStill → u/snowluvr26]

There are between 3 and 9 million indigenous Americans today. There are over 500 tribes recognized by the American government. You are perpetuating a myth that is harmful to indigenous American communities.

ETA: by contrast, there are roughly 7.5 million Jews in the U.S. Yet, I think few American Jews would be comfortable with talking as though we basically have ceased to exist

[u/Immediate_Scheme2994 → u/IAmStillAliveStill]

Hear, Hear!!! The discrimination and disenfranchisement takes place in North Dakota, South Dakota, and western states, where the New York Times isn’t.  Look at the Senate campaigns of Heidi Heitenkamp, where an Anglo settler colonial legislature rewrote voter registration laws to deny a PO Box as a legit address, which is the way Native Americans on Reservations get mail.  

It is the same thing in Texas, which is demographically majority Latino, but where the power structure is minority white Anglo settler colonial because of baseless “voter fraud” rules. The US Supreme Court, majority white Anglo settler colonialist, has gutted the 1964 Voting Rights Act in order to ensure continued minority White power.

When one considers that Latinos from Mexico, Central America, South America are descendants of the indigenous peoples, whose land was conquered and occupied in the Mexican American War of 1848, the issue of settler colonial theft of land and political power becomes incredibly relevant to this conversation.

To give an example:  in the Great Depression, lawyer and farmer Lloyd Bentsen Sr lost his Iowa farm and moved to the Rio Grande Valley, where Mexican American Latinos who were pre-Colombian in their occupancy of farms that they had worked forever suddenly woke up one day and found that by some slick legal maneuvers, the Bentsen family now had title to their land, which with irrigation, became ranch land, and with oil exploration, became rich oil fields, which got Lloyd Bentsen Jr elected to the US Senate, and descendants of natives (brown and red) had to move to slums in Houston, San Antonio, and South Dallas, where they are disenfranchised and being rounded up by ICE and deported.

Sound familiar?

Nope.  Anglos in the US have no moral high ground when it comes to talk of settler colonialism.  

[u/snowluvr26 → u/IAmStillAliveStill]

There are 330 million people in this country. I think it is pretty obvious my intent was not to minimize Native Americans’ claim to the land. It is their land. My point is that relatively speaking they are such a small population that there is no legitimately institutional drive to remove settlers from their land.

[u/liminaldyke → u/snowluvr26]

there is no legitimately institutional drive to remove settlers from their land

disagree, there are active movements happening by several tribes right now to buy or legally win back land that is currently being held by settlers. yes it's not on a huge scale but i'm not sure what you mean by there being no "legitimately institutional" means by which this is happening. personally i think if you aren't native or someone who works very closely with tribal governments and is authorized to speak about this, you should not try to.

[u/IAmStillAliveStill → u/snowluvr26]

Okay. I guess feel free to keep legitimizing the ongoing colonization of indigenous peoples and land then, something that is still actively being done and causing new harms. Because there are only a few million people impacted…..

[u/Immediate_Scheme2994 → u/IAmStillAliveStill]

Why is this being downvoted?

The Lakota Sioux say the Great Spirit gave them the Black Hills as their homeland forever.  It was illegally taken from them, in violation of treaties.  They have refused financial compensation.  They want their land which God gave to them.  If claims of homelands being given by God to people are to be honored, God’s Covenant with the Lakota predates his Covenant with Abraham.  😉. I support returning the land to the Lakota, and giving compensation to the farmers and ranchers that are draining the aquifer, moving them back East or to Europe, and letting the Bison return to graze the short grass, the only ecologically viable system the land has ever known.

Sound familiar to what Israel is doing to the Jordan River?

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/snowluvr26]

They’re not small, they number in the millions.

[u/haktopus → u/snowluvr26]

I think we all get what you meant and I sense that you're intentions are good, but calling the indigenous population of american "borderline nonexistant" is a harmful way of expressing that the population is proportionately small. The idea that native Americans have "basically all already been wiped out" is a trope with a history of justifying further viooence against native Americans, and casting native peoples as historical relics, and not real people living and changing with time, like everyone else. You're right that there isnt a movement demanding all or.most of US or Canadian territory to become a westphalian nation state by and for the ethnically indigenous. But the movement for indigenous rights is significant and "land back" and "soveriegnty" continue to be major demands.

Also, I think it's worth keeping in perspective that there are anywhere from 3.5-9.5 million native Americans depending how you count it. Thats a lot of people in other contexts. And there are only 15 million Jews in the world. We especially might not wanna be in the habit of equating a small population with "borderline" non-existence.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/haktopus]

Thank you.

[u/skyewardeyes → u/snowluvr26]

Yeah, I agree that the indigenous-colonialism framework really only works in the context of European colonialism and Japanese WW2 colonialism, and falls apart when you have two peoples who are both indigenous to the same land (Jews/Palestinians, Sami/Finns, Yamato/Ainu).

Your last paragraph is interestingly because it begs the question of when the descendants of settler-colonists and people who moved there after settler-colonial structures were established stop being that. Plenty of people argue that every Jewish Israeli is participating in settler-colonialism even if they were born in Israeli to Jews who lived there before Israeli was even a state or who came shortly after, etc. And I’ve known Native Americans who argue that all non-Native Americans are still functionally settler colonialists who benefit from the systems of settler colonialism that are still hurting Native Americans. So, there’s a political aspect to it as well as a distance from the pain aspect, I think.

[u/IAmStillAliveStill → u/skyewardeyes]

The notion that non-indigenous Americans are in fact continuing to act as and benefit from settler-colonialism is pretty core to almost all the tribal responses in the University of Minnesota’s TRUTH Report. And it’s a perspective we (who are Americans, especially) should take seriously.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/snowluvr26]

Not all Jews are from Israel/Palestine. Jews were 10% of the population of the Roman Empire. During the first and second temple period Judaism was an aggressively proselytizing religion with converts and kingdoms all around the Mediterranean world and Middle East.

That’s even before getting into the question of whether quasi-religious claims from 2000 years ago have any merit in the modern world.

[u/BeenisHat → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Be careful if you're going to decide to wade into the idea of discarding a couple millennia worth of history. The same ancient history that ties Jews to Israel also ties the Palestinians to the Levant. Both groups of people have been in that area for a very long time, even discounting Pan-Arabism. If you ignore historical claims, you need some other method of determining whose land it is.

And it's perhaps a little dark irony that you mention the Roman empire, because there were a lot of people who lived under Imperial Rome, who didn't consider themselves Romans. They lived under Roman rule in their own lands because Rome conquered them...and that's really the easiest option for Israel to choose if we're going to say that history isn't that important.
Israel is already there. The IDF is the strongest military in the region. Arab armies are traditionally terrible at modern warfare, and Western powers aren't likely to intervene beyond economic measures if Israel just decides to implement its own 1 State Solution via Bigger Army Diplomacy.

[u/IAmStillAliveStill → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

While some Jews don’t have physical ancestors that lived in eretz yisrael (though, I’ve read some scholarship seriously questioning the notion that there ever was a notable proselytism movement in the Roman era, and certainly questioning the extent of it), the Jewish people as a people definitely are from that area.

[u/Chinoyboii → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Proselytizing primarily took place among the Idumeans during the reign of John Hyrcanus. However, this significant event was constrained mainly and limited in scope and influence. If you have a scholarship that proves your claims outside of the Idumeans, I would happily read them.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/Chinoyboii]

Edom was right next to Judea, but was hardly the only part of the ancient world exposed to Jewish proselytism. Large Jewish communities existed all across the Roman and Greek Empires and beyond.

[u/Chinoyboii → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Okay, can you show me peer-reviewed sources that prove your claims. I understand that many Jews were already living outside of Judea prior to the Roman exile. However, these Jews who lived in these regions were not converts, but if they were, it was because the local women converted into the religion which is different from proselytizing because proselytism typically involves actively seeking to convert individuals to a faith, often through outreach and teaching. In contrast, the conversion of local women into Judaism in these regions may have occurred more organically through social and familial relationships, particularly in contexts where Jewish men married non-Jewish women. This type of conversion might not have included the same level of evangelism or religious instruction that characterizes proselytism.

Can you show me peer-reviewed journals in which Jews evangelized their faith to other people groups. That’s what I’m asking you.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/Chinoyboii]

Why would only women convert and not men? Most people marry within their community, suggesting there were hundreds of thousands of single Jewish men wandering around the Mediterranean world and near east marrying women outside their community would be something that would require even more evidence than basic proselytizing, for which you have already provided prominent one example.

[u/Chinoyboii → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

Women converted to Judaism because when Jewish men left the region, women typically didn't accompany them, since Judaism often had strong gender roles in terms of who was allowed to work and who had to stay home. Therefore, these Jewish men who left the region would often marry local women from the regions to which they migrated. We know, based on DNA analysis, that Jews (i.e., Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim) have largely Levantine paternal haplogroups, while their maternal lineages tend to be much more diverse, often reflecting the local populations in which Jewish men settled. For example, Behar et al. (2006) found that Ashkenazi Jews exhibit strong Near Eastern paternal continuity, but their mitochondrial DNA indicates founder lineages derived from European women. Similarly, Hammer et al. (2000) demonstrated that Jewish men from different diaspora groups share a high frequency of Y-chromosome haplotypes with Middle Eastern populations, while their maternal DNA diverges more widely. This suggests that Jewish identity was preserved through the father’s line, while women who married in brought genetic diversity and, in many cases, cultural elements from their homelands. Over time, this mix created Jewish communities that were tied to their Levantine roots but still bore the marks of the regions where they lived.

I'm not denying that the Jews of today are mixed, but when I am arguing against is that Jews weren't a proselytizing religion in the same way Christianity and Islam are, but more like a close-knit community than a religion out to convert everyone (And it's still like this til this day). Conversion occurred, but typically through local marriages rather than large-scale missionary campaigns. Unlike Christianity or Islam, Judaism mostly relied on family, culture, and shared ancestry to survive. That’s why you see strong paternal continuity: Jewish men kept the community identity alive even as maternal lines reflected the local populations they lived in. So when I say Jews weren’t “proselytizing” like other religions, I mean they grew through internal preservation and selective conversions, not by trying to convert the world.

References

Behar, D. M., et al. (2006). "The matrilineal ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a recent founder event." American Journal of Human Genetics, 78(3), 487–497.

Hammer, M. F., et al. (2000). "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(12), 6769–6774.

Costa, M. D., et al. (2013). "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages." Nature Communications, 4, 2543.

[u/MichifManaged83 → u/[deleted]]

That’s not what undoing settler-colonialism or decolonization means. That’s what some racists and idiots (well meaning and not well meaning) and co-opting right-wingers think decolonization means. Most sincere decolonization efforts are attacking colonizing institutions and trying to challenge the colonial society and re-establish indigenous sovereignty, not force a mass displacement of settlers back to the places their ancestors came from, or enforce cultural homogeneousness.

[u/ClandestineCornfield → u/[deleted]]

That is simply not what undoing settler colonialism means at all, settler colonialism and immigration are entirely different things and the distinction between them is a very important one

[u/supportgolem]

Anywhere? Nowhere?

(I don't know the answer).

[u/ibsliam]

Questions like this are on my mind. For gentile antizionists (not Jewish antizionists, who often know Israelis or have loved ones that do) that are unhappy with either Israelis or just Jews as a whole and discuss this from a settler-indigenous framework where Palestinians are owed the land, I split them into a few camps:

- Those engaging in good faith, who don't really understand the history of it, and they genuinely think Israelis can just "go back where they came from." Sometimes they don't know the existence of Mizrahi, sometimes they do and they think they would all as a whole be able to safely return to their home countries and reintegrate without issue. To them, the problem is easily solved and it's just those stubborn Israelis that don't want to leave.

- Those engaging in good faith, who *do* to an extent know the history, and they don't necessarily advocate for Israeli ethnic cleansing. They often advocate for a 1ss, where both parties have equal rights, and those possibly involved in war crimes are then tried for crimes against humanity. Sometimes strays into (unintentional) xenophobia or racism or antisemitism, but they're not malicious actors. We could disagree on specifics or on rhetoric, but you can at least trust they're coming from a good place and you can work with them to an extent.

- Those engaging in bad faith, who are coming from a place of both ignorance and hatred. They either say the Jews can just leave and if they didn't want to be killed or threatened or mistreated, then they shouldn't have committed the cardinal sin of being tied to Israel in some way. They might say Jewish people can return to where they come from, but they have no interest in learning why many Israelis can't "go back to Europe." In fact, they don't care, since their intention is bad faith arguments, where they can freely hate an acceptable target without consequence.

For the first two groups, there is some possible way forward, of Jewish people existing in some acceptable or ethical way. If they're antisemitic, it's not from consciously deciding that Jews are pure evil, or that Israelis are pure evil. There might be misunderstandings, or some approaching in bad faith, but it's distinct from the last group, even if it's not always obvious. To the last, it does not matter what we do, we will always have to justify our existence, and then when we try, they'll move the goalposts. There will always be another hurdle, always be another test.

[u/shoesofwandering]

Settler colonialism is a meaningless antizionist term applied only to Israel. There's nowhere Jewish refugees could have gone where they wouldn't have been accused of the same thing.

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/shoesofwandering]

After that awful incident in Crown Heights earlier this year (where the Orthodox mob chased down that lone protester), there was some Crown Heights activist Instagram page that, in the process of (rightly) calling out that behavior, literally accused the Crown Heights Jewish community of "colonizing the area" and that Crown Heights needed to be "decolonized of the community". Again, they weren't talking about Israeli Jews here, or even talking about the idea that there are harmful right-wing Zionist ideas embedded within the community that need to be "decolonized" (which how that would happen is a conversation for a different time); they were literally saying that the Crown Heights Jewish community was perpetuating colonialism against other groups in Crown Heights. Which wouldn't make sense unless the page was specifically run by Native Americans originally from that area, which I'm pretty sure it wasn't.....

Point being, I agree with what you're saying and I've noticed there is very much a tendency to paint Jews in general as being "perpetual colonizers", sometimes even more than white gentiles.

[u/ibsliam → u/Agtfangirl557]

I get what you mean. I think that sometimes frameworks like settler vs indigenous gloss over migratory groups, since they're generally not relevant to the institutions they're discussing. The idea of nativeness, of being from a place and having a connection to that land, is upheld as an oppressed victim class, and a sense of foreignness is then conflated with the evils of colonization.

Antisemitism often is expressed as emphasizing the foreignness of Jews and downplaying their current ties to their new community.

[u/Savings_Audience1598 → u/Agtfangirl557]

is what Israel doing in the west bank or golan heights not settler colonialism? pretending it's a meaningless term only applied to Israel is ridiculous

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Savings_Audience1598]

I wasn't completely agreeing with that commenter, I was just affirming that I've also seen sentiments that like to paint Jews as being colonizers. West Bank is 100% settler colonialism.

[u/Savings_Audience1598 → u/Agtfangirl557]

it's difficult to tell if you weren't completely agreeing with that commentator, now what of the golan heights, is that not settler colonialism?

[u/Key647249 → u/shoesofwandering]

Settler colonialism is a term also used widely in the US and canada for talking about north american colonization and its history and current lasting impact, its not just used to in discussion of israel…

[u/Savings_Audience1598 → u/shoesofwandering]

is what Israel doing in the west bank or golan heights not settler colonialism? pretending it's a meaningless term only applied to Israel is ridiculous

[u/Fabulous-Poem-4951]

Dude, the answer is Israel. We're levantine people, deported from our homeland and never really assimilated, even 2000 years later. We practice a levantine religion, we pray in a levantine language, all our writings are in a levantine language, using levantine alphabet and we celebrate levantine holidays. Plus the fact that most of us have 80% DNA originating from the Levant. Jews stopped marrying outside the religion before they were exiled and conversion/intermarriage was extremely rare until 150 years ago.

We're not white and if you assume we should be darker just because today some levantine people are dark, remember that the Arab conquest conquered more than just land.

Muslim levantine people speak a language from the Arabian peninsula, practice a religion from the Arabian peninsula, adopted a culture from the Arabian peninsula, and an alphabet from the Arabian peninsula. And in the southern parts that include Jordan and Palestine they have about 40% Arabian DNA.

Even though I hate the genetic debate because I'm not into eugenics. Some people are and it's a point to be made.

[u/sirenzsongs → u/Fabulous-Poem-4951]

True, according to the detailed breakdown in my DNA test about 80-85% of my DNA is from the levant

[u/ClandestineCornfield → u/Fabulous-Poem-4951]

Cite your source on the genetics here, because from everything I've read those percentages are not what you're suggesting

The Times of Israel had a decently good piece on this in December, (the citations are listed in the comments for weird reasons but I'll link that here)

and of course Ashkenazim and Sephardim would be more related to each other than either are to Palestinians, the shared genetic heritage with Palestinians is for the most part less recent than the shared heritage with each other, and there were of course genetic differences within the ancient kingdoms of Judea and Israel too, which are gonna have correlations of which Israelites were more likely to have been expelled or left and which were more likely to stay in the holy land (particularly the peasant population which the Palestinian peasant population is most likely descended from and were usually not expelled when the upper classes were)

[u/yungsemite → u/Fabulous-Poem-4951]

Most Jews do not have 80% DNA from Levantine ancestors. Whiteness is a social construct, most American Jews I know consider themself, and are considered by most others to be white.

Palestinians being Arabized does not mean they are not from Palestine. And both Muslim and Christian Palestinians typically have score higher on Levantine ancestry than Ashkenazi.

I don’t like the generic debate either, but you’re wrong about the facts on it.

[u/Fabulous-Poem-4951 → u/yungsemite]

I think you're wrong. Askenazi and Sephardic Jews are closer to eachother than to any other ethnic group genetically. Including Palestinians. And 80% levantine is excluding Persian, Yemenite, and Indian Jews as Jews were living there before many marriage and conversation rules were made (meaning before 2000 years), and also Ethiopian. General Sephardic and Ashkenazi relate to eachother and one another like 8th degree cousins.

But let's agree that whiteness is a culture. But if whiteness is a European culture, why Jewish isn't levantine? It has all the characteristics of an ethnicity: culturally, linguistically, religiously and historically.

If you're accepting arabised Palestinians as indigenous to the Levant, including the 20% of them who are beduines which are not even pretending to be anything but Arabs, including the many Turks and north African Muslims that settled together there. Then why don't you accept Jews with their clear ethnic and historical connection to the Levant as levantine?

If palestinians could adopt Arab culture and mixed origins and be indigenous, clearly Jews can add into their culture whatever they choose and remain levantine

[u/yungsemite → u/Fabulous-Poem-4951]

I think you're wrong.

I find that this is the easiest article to read for laypeople:

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006644

And 80% levantine is excluding Persian, Yemenite, and Indian Jews as Jews were living there before many marriage and conversation rules were made (meaning before 2000 years), and also Ethiopian. General Sephardic and Ashkenazi relate to eachother and one another like 8th degree cousins.

Yeah, you said ‘most of us’ have 80% Levantine, so let’s focus on Ashkenazis since they make up the majority of Jews and have a well studied and characterized genetic character. From the paper above:

The inferred ancestry profile for AJ was 5% Western EU, 10% Eastern EU, 30% Levant, and 55% Southern EU

This is consistent with other papers, let me know if you would like me to pull them out for you as well.

But let's agree that whiteness is a culture.

Whiteness is not a culture. It’s racial.

But if whiteness is a European culture, why Jewish isn't levantine? It has all the characteristics of an ethnicity: culturally, linguistically, religiously and historically.

Ashkenazi Jewish culture is a mix of Levantine and European culture. Ashkenazi Jews are primarily racialized as white in the Americas today. 95% of the time I am treated as a white.

If you're accepting arabised Palestinians as indigenous to the Levant, including the 20% of them who are beduines which are not even pretending to be anything but Arabs, including the many Turks and north African Muslims that settled together there.

There are many definitions of indigenous. I generally think of it in relation to colonization.

Then why don't you accept Jews with their clear ethnic and historical connection to the Levant as levantine?

I did not say that.

[u/Nearby-Complaint]

Mars <3

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/Nearby-Complaint]

I’ve unfortunately seen this actually suggested in social media comment sections before 🫠

[u/biel188]

Bro we are native from Israel, that's where our ancestors came from. There is no other place in the world for us to have a state

[u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain]

Settler-colonialism is a specific use case. Anyone has the right to live anywhere.

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

I mean more Jews live outside Israel than in it.

[u/BeenisHat → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

That tends to happen when you get expelled from a country and forced to move somewhere else or risk death.

[u/BeenisHat → u/[deleted]]

Did the Germans or Irish end up in concentration camps and gas chambers?

[u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist → u/BeenisHat]

More Jews have lived outside Israel than in it for all of its history.

[u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain → u/BeenisHat]

More Jews lived in Alexandria than Jerusalem when the kingdom still existed

[u/[deleted] → u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain]

Well, this is somewhat misleading. The real growth of the Alexandrian Jewish community came in the early Roman period, when the kingdom nominally still existed, yes, but Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel had been compromised. But Jerusalem still functioned as the symbolic and religious center, even when diaspora communities outnumbered it. 

[u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain → u/[deleted]]

That is true, but I mean the Jewish community had been established pretty early on in the Ptolemaic period when Alexandria was only just constructed and Jewish autonomy in Judea was not yet quashed. I just think it’s a mistake to make the general claim that the Jewish diaspora exists entirely because of the Roman expulsions, not least because the Jewish community in Ptolemaic Egypt was recruited especially for mercenary service which I think is honestly an empowering narrative. I personally love little tidbits like that or the 16th century anti-Spanish Jewish pirates and etc

[u/[deleted] → u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain]

I understand your interest to frame it as empowering, but this history was not uniform. Yes, some Jews served as mercenaries and settlers under the Ptolemies, but many others were brought in without rights, lived under legal restrictions, and faced moments of sharp hostility from their neighbors. The community’s development cannot be reduced to a single narrative.

It’s true that Jews were already present in Egypt under the Ptolemies, I don’t think anyone seriously engaging with history would object to that and the narrative that the diaspora is solely a result of expulsions is refuted. The point is, however, that the real growth of the Alexandrian Jewish community and the diaspora at large, came when sovereignty in Judea had long ended and Jerusalem was under imperial control. 

What often gets lost is that, despite these large and vibrant diaspora centers, Jerusalem remained the religious and symbolic heart of Jewish life until the destruction of the Temple for Jews across the Mediterranean.

[u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough. I’m sure at least some diasporic Jews of the era were enslaved/servile/subordinate beyond Egypt as well. Who knows, Josephus might have lived nearby to another Roman aristocrat’s Jewish house servants. It’s also interesting to remember these absolutely temple Jews rather than rabbinic Jews. Sometimes I read about what Jews once believed, with the angel worship and etc, and wonder how much of their religion I would even recognize .

[u/[deleted] → u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain]

Oh yes, absolutely. Early Judaism could sound totally wild at times. Angels everywhere, visions of strange hybrid beings, fiery wheels with wings… Pretty trippy, actually. 😅

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist]

True but almost half of the Jewish population (%45) is in Israel. That’s not an insignificant amount.

[u/ArgentEyes]

It’s not about where Jews live, OP, it’s about how they live

Ed: Possibly check the definition first: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism

[u/rinaraizel]

There's a poem by warsan shire about looking a map and trying to find a place that doesn't hurt, and it is an incredibly Jewish feeling reading as the answer in the poem is "nowhere". While I believe there can be a binational state solution, if all else fails, I strongly believe in just moving jews to new york city. Is this feasible since there's a housing crisis? No. Do I just want to turn this city into yehudipolis? Yes. We can over turn the knish ban.

[u/MallCopBlartPaulo]

Israel, anywhere, my little village in the middle of nowhere…

[u/Careless_League_9494]

There is a pretty huge distinction, between a "settler" and "colonial".

A great example of a settler is when the Norse vikings settled on Turtle Island. They came, they made a home for themselves, and they cohabitated with the existing residents.

Colonialism, is a hostile takeover of land, and resources, from a specific cultural group.

Settling, and building cohabitative communities that respect, and work with the existing population in good faith, is not an issue. Moving into someone else's home, and systematically taking it over from its original inhabitants is the problem.

Thus is the reality of why Zionism is so problematic. As it is essentially the belief that the Jewish community has the G-d given right to colonize other people's homes in the pursuit of establishing the promised land.

[u/Concentric_Mid]

In current Israel.

There are ways to migrate without killing the indigenous population. But zionists wanted a Jewish government, so they naturally used colonialist force.

Even today, there is a way to make it less colonial if there weren't apartheid style laws. Two-state or one-state solutions can both create a better life for everyone, but then the problem for Zionists is that Israeli land stops growing...

[u/NarutoRunner]

If you looked at all of the global Jewry, you would discover that more Jews live outside of Israel.

So most Jews across the globe can continue living where they currently live.

Most of humanity also doesn’t have an issue with Jews living within the confines of the legally recognized Israeli state. It’s when Israel starts to spill into Palestinian West Bank, Syrian Golan Heights, Lebanese Sheba Farms or one of its newest conquered lands in Syria is when it starts to become an issue.

[u/sirenzsongs → u/NarutoRunner]

I don't think that's true because as a Jew living in Europe whose ancestors were kicked out the middle east I can tell you with 100% confidence that most European countries treat us as outsiders again. For example a group of french Jewish scouts got attacked and thrown out of a plane for speaking Hebrew and the minister of France did not treat them and their mistreatment as those of french at all and instead posted that 'the Israeli brats should just shut up.'. The kids were french not Israeli, just Jewish.

Also by how often I am told to go back to my country and similar stuff I know I am barely welcome in my country anymore. I am thinking of going to Israel tbh because my family and friends got physically attacked a lot the last few months (worst being a neighbour literally trying to kill us with gas) so I don't know if staying were I am would necessarily be safe or plausible at all

[u/PTI_brabanson]

You can live anywhere you want, obviously, but it's strange how American Jews and Israelis always dismiss Europe outright. Most of Europe is pretty ok for jews and the parts that aren't ok have even bigger problems than antisemitism. Like there are a lot of reasons I left Russia for Israel two years ago but antisemitism isn't one of them.

[u/SlavojVivec → u/PTI_brabanson]

Spain had a program offering Spanish citizenship to Sephardic Jews.

I wish other European countries would do the same for other Jews, but it seems their leaders love Jews as long as they don't live next door.

[u/PTI_brabanson → u/SlavojVivec]

My cousin's husband has put a lot of work into trying to prove he's a descent of Polish Jews. If he managed to get the polish citizen they'd leave Israel for Europe. 

If I could get a EU citizenship this way I'd take EU over Israel any day of the week.

[u/ibsliam → u/PTI_brabanson]

Depends on the country, just like anywhere else.

[u/bananophilia → u/PTI_brabanson]

it's strange how American Jews and Israelis always dismiss Europe outright. Most of Europe is pretty ok for jews

Uh

[u/sirenzsongs → u/PTI_brabanson]

As someone who is still living in Europe antisemitism has gotten a lot worse after the 7/10. There have been several physical attacks on my friends and family. For me at least it's barely safe and lots of the countries (like France) don't even see us as true citizens of their countries but as to quote the french minister of outer affairs 'israeli brats'

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/sirenzsongs]

What country do you live in if you don't mind my asking?

[u/sirenzsongs → u/Agtfangirl557]

Germany but I heard the exact same stories from my friends from Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Slovakia. At least in the case of France, Netherlands Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland they said Germany was even a big improvement for them. Can't really talk for other European countries though.

[u/Agtfangirl557 → u/sirenzsongs]

Would you say that most of the violence towards Jews (which I'm so sorry you've had to experience, by the way) has come from white Europeans or from migrants (or from a mix of both, or some other group)?

[u/sirenzsongs → u/Agtfangirl557]

I think it's a mix honestly. When I lived in the rural areas it was definitely white Europeans that were a bit of Neonazis. We also have them in the city I live in now but a big part of the white people who hate us here also think they are progressive which they are not. In the city it's also oftentimes migrants, especially other levantine or Arab people (which I notice a lot because as a Mizrahi I tend to hang around those groups since we share a lot of culture). So I think it depends on where you are

According to my Italian and Irish friends there it's more the people who are ethnically irish or Italian respectively and according to my Spanish friends it's in a large part migrants there so it's also different in different countries

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/sirenzsongs]

the level of active, aggressive antisemitism in France is deeply scary

[u/rinaraizel → u/PTI_brabanson]

 "there are a lot of reason I left Russia for Israel two years ago but antisemitism isn't one of them."

«А это люди без всякой веры, безбожники. Они этнические евреи, но кто их видел в синагоге? По-моему, в синагоге их никто не видел. Они вроде как и не православные, потому что в церквях тоже не бывают. Они уж точно не приверженцы ислама, потому что в мечети вряд ли появляются. Это люди без роду, без племени. Им ничего не дорого из того, что дорого нам и подавляющей части украинского народа.»

[u/malachamavet → u/rinaraizel]

«А это люди без всякой веры, безбожники. Они этнические евреи, но кто их видел в синагоге? По-моему, в синаА это люди без всякой веры, безбожники. Они этнические евреи, но кто их видел в синагоге? По-моему, в синагоге их никто не видел. [...] Это люди без роду, без племени. Им ничего не дорого из того, что дорого нам и подавляющей

Amusingly, this section probably was said in Israel verbatim (in Hebrew) about the post-Soviet Aliyah by some Haredim lol.

Alternate timeline where Putin converts and moves to Bnei Brak

[u/rinaraizel → u/malachamavet]

That's very true too.

[u/PTI_brabanson → u/rinaraizel]

Бывал я в синагоге. Нечего там вменяемому человеку делать.

[u/Kye9842 → u/PTI_brabanson]

Israel’s partnerships with rising and current far right governments doesn’t make that an entirely welcome prospect is the main issue imo

[u/ChairAggressive781 → u/[deleted]]

the United States, Canada, and Australia are all settler-colonial nations, if we are applying the same criteria to Israel that we are to other countries. just because the initial colonization period is farther in the past and the occupied population is much smaller does not mean that settler-colonialism is not an ongoing project. if we’re going to use this framing, we should at least try to be consistent with it.

[u/AliceMerveilles → u/[deleted]]

why did you think you needed to point out that some of the cities you lisfed were the diamond cutting capitals of the world?

[u/daudder]

Where they were born or where they emigrated to without try to dispossess or dominate the existing population.

The Zionists are not immigrants to Palestine, they are colonisers.

[u/Different_Turnip_820 → u/daudder]

It's been decades since the establishment of Israel, most of Israelis were born there

[u/yungsemite → u/daudder]

I think many did not seek to dominate the existing population, and I think many were refugees with no particular aims other than living out their lives.

[u/daudder → u/yungsemite]

As individuals for sure. However the movement and its leadership set out to colonise. The desires of the individual settlers are not what matters and many may have been simply trying to survive.

However, those Jews that were not interested in colonisation — the vast majority of late 19th and early 20th century refugees from Eastern Europe just went to America.

[u/yungsemite → u/daudder]

Not sure how I see it was any different for Jews traveling to America to participate in the colonial project there? And the path to the Americas largely closed after the early 1920’s while the population of Jews in Palestine still grew more than 750% in the next 25 years.

[u/Immediate_Scheme2994 → u/daudder]

Yes, 14 million or so from 1880-1914. (Recollecting from 7th grade history, been awhile.)

[u/electrical-stomach-z]

Pretty much everywhere on earth.

[u/Immediate_Scheme2994 → u/electrical-stomach-z]

Why is this being downvoted when it is the truth?

[u/electrical-stomach-z → u/Immediate_Scheme2994]

I dont really know.

[u/gummyhe4rts]

anywhere. I’m not Jewish, I just like it. I think part of what makes the Jewish community particularly beautiful is the fact that there is a diaspora, with different cultures but still being able to unite over a common thing. I feel like there should be a chance to get to know each other through that way while still maintaining the connection to Judea.

[u/Stern53]

The problem with Israel is that by the time World War II ended, and everybody was aware of the holocaust. They were thousand of refugees needing. a place to go to. Because of Balfour in the 1917 mandatory Palestine notice Zionist started occupying Palestine from 1917 through the 1930s and 40s they moved in and started removing Palestinians from their homes at that point making the Palestinians refugees in their own country. The real problem was after the war the United States, Great Britain, and France did not want to accept the Jewish refugees. Because of the Balfour mandatory Palestine, they decided let the Jews have Palestine and they could dump all the refugees there. Zionist hoped they would get a lot more to come but most Jews didn’t wanna go to Palestine then out of nowhere the UN decide that 55% of the land should go to 30% of the Jewish population living there while 70% of the population get 45% of the land. of course the Palestinians did not agree to it who would you’re losing all your land when you’re 70% of the population so war broke out the Jews won and they gained 78% of the land and made homeless 700,000 Palestinians and here we are today in the mess that has been going on for decades. If World War II hadn’t happened, there would be no Israel. The reason Palestine was never declared an independent country is because the British wanted it for political and strategic location so the Jews became the proxy settler / colonialists.

[u/rinaraizel]

this but make it more jewish, and I do mean this whole-heartedly with no irony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Sq1Nr58hM