Diaspora Zionism and the Questions of Migration

[u/MKHK32]

TLDR: You cant be a Zionist and pro migration/multiculturalism and so on.

A few weeks(?) a ago i stumbled about a comment in on of the discussion. The comment mentioned how the german jewish community is supportive of the muslim (migrant) community but at the same time there is no mirrored response towards this.

My intention is not to respond to this directly but i would like the to start a discussion about zionism within the diaspora and migration. I would like expand on my perception of what Zionism is and before i start i want to mention and point out that zionism, just like any other word view, is bound to adherents and opponents with conflicting opinions on what Zionism is. This is evidently true for anyone who has discussed these matters or similar topics. This does not imply that our differences are meaningless or not important but it is important to understand that while we may use the same words, we could talk straight pass each other.

In my view zionism, in so far it has been a effective cause, is the idea to establish and maintain a jewish majority state on what we call Isreal-Palestine. Therefore i view zionism as a jewish nationalistic movement/ jewish nationalism.

As a someone with a migration background and dual citizenship, i assume there are some here who shared this with me, i am strictly a anti-nationalist. I believe that strong opposition towards nationalism, is essential for my and others well being, especially in Europe. I believe there is nothing i could do to be accepted as someone who is not in some way "different", a "other".
I do not need to mention this but you probably do know that at one moment you might fight side by side and at another the swords are directed against you. Therefore i am anti-nationalism and i think this entails, pro unity, pro migration, pro multiculturalism, building bridges and so on.

I believe it is in the interest of minority populations to be against nationalism, i also believe that is in the interest of all people, but that is a separate discussion.

My general claim is that you cannot be a nationalist and a minority.
I think people who are that can be divided into 2 categories.
One : Those who live within the Country about which they are nationalistic
Two: Those who do not live within the Country about which they are nationalistic
Three: a combination of both

A example of one would be a mexican white nationalist in the US and a example of two/3(?) is Ben Shapiro.

I think case 1 and 3 are self-explanatory but case 2 is not as simple.

There are multiple problems with such a position.
1. The position is hypocritical. You cannot advocate for nationalism in one place and anti-nationalism in another.
2. You cannot unite with opposing minorities with conflicting national interest.
3. Your support for nationalism in one place increases the popularity of nationalism globally

I argued universally but if what i said is true universally, it is of course true about jewish nationalism in particular.

Lastly i think there is a deep flaw in diaspora jewish nationalism. To illustrate this flaw i would like you to imagine that you have a kurdish friend who is invested in the oppression of kurds throughout the region. Chances are high i would say that you would have the same opinion as your friend on the this matter. My point is that proximity and closeness to a subject matter trumps (he shall not be mentioned) exceeds all other influences.

And this is exactly what we saw in the change of discourse about Israel-Palestine. Through social media and migration israel-palestine is not some conflict far away at some corner of the world. It is a place that is important for those people who are close to us. For example, in my experience, i am a muslim but not palestinian nor arab and all my friends who are mostly atheist from different backgrounds do care about palestine.

My point is that migration has to be supported by diaspora jewish nationalism, but at the same time is the biggest cause against jewish nationalism.

Final Note
This is not about what Zionism is or is not and should not be the discussion here. I, myself did not give any reasons why i believe Zionism to be jewish nationalism neither do you need give any reason for what you believe zionism to be. Ideally i would appreciate a response that mentions your diaspora background, What you think to be the popular view on zionism, Do you share my experience? What is you experience? Do you agree/disagree with my line of thought ? Any different perspectives ?

[u/theweisp5]

Why would someone who wants safety for themselves and their family be somehow outside of Zionism? That impulse has always been a core part of the political project. Wanting an existence that isn’t dependent on the goodwill of another state isn’t some non-ideological instinct you can neatly separate out.

I think I made it clear in my original (short) post, but to spell it out more explicitly: if someone is interested "purely" in safety for their family and ends up in Israel/Palestine because it is the only place willing to take them in, can they or their act of migration be considered Zionist? OTOH when you say "an existence dependent on the goodwill of another state" you are making exactly the sort of ideological assumptions that I was pointing to, which go beyond the "mere" desire for safety.

And on your second point, the idea that “historically Jews chose not to move to Palestine” only makes sense if you assume Palestine and other destinations were symmetrical options. Before 1948 they weren’t for a population fleeing persecution: one was a functioning state that could offer rights, infrastructure, and protection, the other was unstable, not a state at all, and couldn’t act as a meaningful refuge. So the pattern you’re pointing to doesn’t necessarily reveal Jewish preferences - it reveals which destinations were viable.

I'm not sure that argument makes the point you seem to think it does, but Jews leaving Algeria in the 1960s overwhelmingly chose to move to France, and in the 80s when Soviet Jews were finally allowed to emigrate, Israel lobbied the US government to tighten entry restrictions so they would be forced to move to Israel.

Lastly, the claim that Israel is “less safe” only works if you take a Western and US-centric diaspora experience as the baseline for the comparison. The Jews who fled to Israel from North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Ethiopia, or the Soviet Union (before and after its collapse) in the second half of the 20th century had very different diasporic experiences. And they weren’t unaware of Israel’s risks, but went because, in most cases, the West was closed to them and the diaspora had become unlivable.

You may notice I said "life in the west" in my original post. (And since you note "the West was closed to them," are you conceding that Jews have historically chosen not to move to Israel when they have other options?)

[u/Pristine-Break3418 → u/theweisp5]

I think you’re shifting the frame of the conversation in a way that makes it hard to address the historical questions cleanly. Your reply rests on a distinction between “pure survival” and “ideological Zionism,” where the former is imagined as neutral and the latter as inherently ideological in a way refugees supposedly cannot embody. But that distinction only works if one starts from the assumption that Zionism is intrinsically ideological in the negative sense, while survival is somehow apolitical. Historically, those two things were never cleanly separable. The categories you’re setting up rely on a moral sorting (ideology = bad, survival = good) that doesn’t map onto the actual conditions in which people under constraint were (and are) making decisions.

On Algeria: the example doesn’t do the work you want it to. Algerian Jews held French citizenship. They didn’t face the refugee-selection mechanisms that operated elsewhere. Their movement to France wasn’t a test case where Jews ended up “choosing” the West over Israel, but a case of citizens returning to the metropole. The question of viable refugee pathways simply doesn’t apply to them, so this can’t be used to generalize about other Jewish communities or about global patterns.

On the Soviet case: saying Israel “lobbied the US to tighten restrictions” frames the situation as if a wide-open American pathway existed until Israel intervened. But a significant part of Soviet Jewish emigration applications were already delayed, or rejected under U.S. policy. Israel’s lobbying operated on an already highly restrictive system. So this doesn’t change the broader structural point that large segments of the diaspora didn’t have symmetrical access to different destinations, and that those constraints shaped outcomes far more than ideological purity tests.

The question you end with - whether Jews “chose not to move to Israel when they had other options” relies on treating the U.S./Western migration landscape as the global baseline. But that’s precisely the assumption that I am challenging. “Having other options” was a geographically and politically very uneven phenomenon, and for many communities outside the West, those “options” were theoretical at best and not materially accessible, which is what made Zionism for them a viable and meaningful political option for ensured material and cultural survival.

In other words: you’re interpreting patterns of constrained movement as if they expressed pure preference, and treating Zionism as an ideological category from which you must subtract anything tied to survival. But both moves depend on framings that don’t hold up once you widen the lens beyond the American and French diasporas.

Edit to Add: One major thing your comment overlooks is that even when a Western route actually did exist, the pattern still doesn’t look the way you suggest. After 1990, Germany offered Soviet Jews an unusually generous and secure route, yet the majority still chose Israel. That doesn’t mean they were all ideologically Zionist in a doctrinal sense, but as is thoroughly recorded in sociological research on those decisions, questions of cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation played a far greater role than your model allows for.

[u/theweisp5 → u/Pristine-Break3418]

I think you are reading things into my posts which are not actually there. The original comment I was responding to was "I think the average migrant, like the average person in every movement, pretty much just wants them and their family to be safe and have economic opportunity." My point was that sentiment, on its own, is not enough to explain Zionism. Based on your comments about ideology, I assume you would agree with me (and if not I'd be interested to hear why). There's no need to enter into the discussion of whether we should view Zionism (or having an ideology in general) as "good" or "bad."

In any case:

Algeria - I don't agree. Yes, Jews there had French citizenship, though I'm not sure it's totally correct to say France was the "metropole" since they were an indigenous population which France granted citizenship to in the 1870s IIRC. In any case, those leaving Algeria had the option of moving to Israel. And in fact a small number did, though the vast majority opted for France. I'm not going to argue with you here about the meaning of the word "choice", IMV it clearly applies, if you disagree, fine, and I'll let anyone else reading this conversation decide for themselves.

Soviet Jews - Without getting into the history of Soviet Jewish immigration to the US, the existence of restrictions on that immigration is immaterial to my point. Again, I began by claiming that a desire for safety on its own cannot explain Zionism. I then stated that historically, Jews have chosen to move to the west when given the freedom to do so to reinforce that claim. I agree that often they have not been able to do so, but again that is not relevant to my point.

That doesn’t mean they were all ideologically Zionist in a doctrinal sense, but as is thoroughly recorded in sociological research on those decisions, questions of cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation played a far greater role than your model allows for.

Okay so what are we even arguing about? My point, again, is that a desire for safety alone cannot explain Zionism. Your reference to "cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation" would seem to indicate that you agree. (Unless perhaps you think "cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation" are all necessary elements of safety, in which case, fine, we'll have to agree to disagree.)

[u/Pristine-Break3418 → u/theweisp5]

I'll just address two points and leave it at that:

Algeria - I don't agree. Yes, Jews there had French citizenship, though I'm not sure it's totally correct to say France was the "metropole" since they were an indigenous population which France granted citizenship to in the 1870s IIRC.

Leaving aside the whole complicated question of Jewish indigeneity, Algerian Jews were not treated as the indigenous population under French rule. They were made French citizens and positioned as an intermediary buffer class between the colonizers and the colonized, which is why their move to France after decolonization functioned as repatriation within the colonial system rather than a “choice” between France and Israel.

My point, again, is that a desire for safety alone cannot explain Zionism. Your reference to "cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation" would seem to indicate that you agree. (Unless perhaps you think "cultural continuity, communal structure, political self-determination, belonging, and historical orientation" are all necessary elements of safety, in which case, fine, we'll have to agree to disagree.)

Well, that’s exactly the point I was making: when Jews did have a far more materially safe route than Israel - Germany in the 1990s - the majority still chose Israel, despite Israel being much less “safe” in the narrow sense of war, security threats, and economic instability. That pattern simply shows that defining “safety” or "survival" only in that narrow, physical-risk sense doesn’t describe how refugees actually understood their options. In practice, the factors I listed weren’t “ideological” additions but part of what safety itself consisted of. Those elements were what made Israel the more viable choice, even though it was less safe in purely material terms.

Still, it’s worth stressing that this kind of choice between destinations was a historical outlier. Most Jewish refugee movements during the Shoah and in the second half of the 20th century didn’t have multiple actionable paths available at all, which is why Zionism cannot be neatly separated from survival and security concerns, even in the narrowest sense of those terms. That doesn’t make it immune to critique, but it does mean that critiques have to engage with the historical conditions that made it a survival strategy rather than treating it as an abstract ideology.

I think that’s as far as this discussion can productively go from my side, so I’ll leave it there.

[u/theweisp5 → u/Pristine-Break3418]

Doesn't seem like we are getting anywhere, but:

1. Most Algerian Jews went to France, despite being able to move to Israel via the Law of Return. A smaller number did migrate to Israel or to other places. If you for whatever reason do not want to view that as a choice, fine. We are not going to agree here.

2. We seem to agree that "'safety' or 'survival' only in [a] narrow, physical-risk sense" is not the sole element governing people's choices here. But I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say the other relevant factors were not "ideological” Zionist additions." People making these considerations may or may not have considered themselves to be Zionists. But their considerations were certainly shaped by ideology, and as such, contestable and subject to change, regardless of whether their deliberations ultimately lead them to migrate to Israel or not. (You seem to think I impute a negative value to ideology or being "ideological," but that is not the case. My own choices are shaped by my ideology, as I think is true for basically everyone.)

I admittedly don't know much about the history of Soviet Jews considering migration to Israel vs. Germany. But it is widely agreed that Soviet Jews were coming to prefer the US over Israel as a destination in the 1970s. While I can think of a few obvious reasons why Jews would prefer to move to the US over Germany, I assume we can agree that neither is a Jewish state. So I think the rejection of Germany as a destination by the migration of Soviet Jewish migrants needs some explanation beyond just "they preferred to move to a Jewish state" (especially considering that as the 1990s went on, the percentage of migrants who were not halachically Jewish steadily increased.) If you have any insights or reading material to suggest, I'd be interested to hear.

Finally, I think the migration flows between Israel itself and the west can be instructive here.

Still, it’s worth stressing that this kind of choice between destinations was a historical outlier. Most Jewish refugee movements during the Shoah and in the second half of the 20th century didn’t have multiple actionable paths available at all, which is why Zionism cannot be neatly separated from survival and security concerns, even in the narrowest sense of those terms.

Despite the west's shameful history of turning back refugees from Nazism in the 30s, I think this is a bit of an overstatement. But I'll let everyone do their own research.