I've seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.
First, because I have to say it:
Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.
But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state. Israel could have been created in Germany or Siberia or frankly Florida for that matter (in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to "the one state solution"). In many ways, the US with its civil rights act serves the same purpose, and in fact, most Jews live in the US.
Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust. Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
So I wanted to point out some anti-semetic tropes I've seen on this website and call them out so you can recognize them.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
This can be done through omission. If you aren't clear whether you're talking about jews or a specific institution (for example, the I"D"F or the settlements or Likud), many people will read your statement as being about Jews. Be careful with the word "they"
erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness
The zionist entity is not a Jewish colonial project, but an Anglo colonial project. It was created by the British and now is funded by the US Americans. Jews are an oppressed minority whose oppression is leveraged against other oppressed peoples. Similarly to how the US uses Kurds to Balkanize Iraq or The Hmong to wage counterinsurgency in Laos, it's uses Jews to destabilize the Levant.
Outside of the US, jews are largely understood as a racial group and oppressed on that basis. Especially in the Arab world where the Islamic hyper nationalism has gained ground in response to colonialism and been funded further by colonialists to their own ends (google "the safari club" or "Israel funds Hamas")
Blood Libel
This one is the assertion that Jews are uniquely bloodthirsty / murder non Jewish children. The classic example of this myth that people are familiar with is Runplestiltskin.
It is true that the IDF under the direction of Likud and the US state is murdering many Gazans, the majority of whom are children. but! be careful to specify. When people talk about "jews" or "israelis" generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope. Again, be careful with the word "they" and specify which entities you're talking about.
calling for ethnic cleansing
Okay, wtf ya'll. It's not jews as an ethnicity that are oppressing Palestinians, it is US imperial power. Jews have always lived in Palestine and the occupation only began in the 40s as part of a British initiative.
Jews will always be part of a palestinian state, and frankly need protections as ethnic and religious minorities. We do not seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, but their integration into it as citizens.
Jews are safe in the US not because its a colonial state but because of civil rights protections and generational wealth. If we can create civil rights protections in Palestine and a social safety net (ideally communism but I'll settle for social democracy), then jews will be safe in Palestine.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
America controls Israel and not vice versa. APEC is not a cabal brainwashing otherwise Nobel Christian politicians. US politicians support Israel because they're colonial politicians and Israel is our colony. APEC exists because lobbying is how power is exercised in the US, but if we had patronage instead, APEC' functions would be carried our by a governor or an ambassador or whatever.
conclusion
Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you're criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you've been doing that. Don't equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.
Kicking out settlers isn't ethnic cleansing. Did Haitians ethnically cleanse Haiti of French people? Was kicking German settlers out of Poland (that part that was already Poland before the war) ethnic cleansing?
I honestly don't know why people keep talking about Haiti as an example of indigenous revolt against settlers. It was absolutely a revolt against oppressors, but not of the settler-colonial war variety.
Yeah slave revolts are a distinct thing. Reminds me of how Bacon's Rebellion has a backdrop of genocide against Native Americans, which actually served as the initial reason enslaved africans, freemen, white poor, and white indentured servants started working together.
Come on now, it was a settler colony and at that point a relatively small space had been enduring brutal genocide of its native population for 3 centuries. Trafficked Africans were put in the same class as the natives, alongside whatever few indigenous people that were left. The revolution there was absolutely decolonial, to call it 'not of the settler-colonial war variety' is doing some incredible mental gymnastics.
The other reply here comparing Haiti to Bacon's Rebellion because that one started with colonial violence is far more of an ahistorical stretch than comparing Haiti to Palestine.
Yes it was a settler colony, and yes it essentially entirely genocided it's entire indigenous population and simultaneously engaged in brutal chattel slavery. But the liberation struggle of those enslaved Africans and freemen was a distinct struggle from indigenous liberation struggle. Being oppressed is not equivalent to indigeneity. If you want to call it a war for liberation that resulted from settler-colonialism, that's acceptable to me, but it was not an indigenous revolt against settlers like Palestine currently.
Sure, in the vague sense. In this specific example, I challenge you to explain the material difference in 1791 between the original inhabitants of the island and the Africans trafficked there.
Well chiefly, the original inhabitants had all been killed, the genocide of the Taino people being one of the most comprehensive and brutal in colonial history. Trafficked Africans were also oppressed, but the social dynamics around them allowed for the emergence of a small middle caste of freed Blacks who were able to own property and even plantations and typically literate. Toussaint Louverture and some other leaders of the Haitian revolution were from this caste.
That class did not and would not have been allowed to emerge among the native Taino.
It's fucking sad that even people on this site are doing the whole "but if the colonized people liberate themselves, what's gonna happen to the poor smol bean colonizers???" deal.
The colonizers are a nuclear weapon state; if your take peaceful and equal coexistence of the colonizers and indigenous people off the table, the solutions you're left with are 'more powerful colonizer state dissolves away through the power of magical thinking' or 'complete indigenous genocide', neither of which terribly appeal me.
"Peaceful and equal coexistence of the colonizers and indigenous people" is the fucking magical thinking, jfc. That's the fucking impossible, blackpilled, nihilism take.
I'm more a fan of the colonizers state dissolves through the power of extreme violence personally. Might as well fucking give up on communism now if we're gonna let the nuclear blackmail hold us back.
Oh please you bargain-bin Dessalines, the two most analogous conflicts (South Africa, Rhodesia) ended in negotiated settlements where there still exists a white minority living peacefully alongside the indigenous majority.
I honestly don't understand why your main concern is making sure no one says mean things about settlers when they are the ones doing the genociding right now. Settlers facing expulsion or being mass murdered is simply not the current reality of things, what you are doing is just tone policing people who are rightly upset about the current reality. Really rubs me the wrong way in the same way that white people complaining about "reverse racism" does.
I don't give a hoot if people say mean things about settlers. I say and think mean things abour Israeli settlers. And people should be upset about the current reality, no disagreement there either.
It's not tone-policing to point out that historically these sorts of liberation conflicts have had negotiated solutions and that peaceful and equal coexistence is not impossible.
Why is it so important to say this right now, not once, but several times, as Israel drops bombs on Palestinian hospitals?
peaceful and equal coexistence is not impossible.
True, but right now it's a pipe dream. It's tone deaf to talk about peaceful coexistence as indigenous people are murdered en masse, and as their reaction against their ongoing genocide is portrayed as equal to the genocide itself on capitalist media.
Why is it so important to say this right now, not once, but several times, as Israel drops bombs on Palestinian hospitals?
Because as I've linked elsewhere in this thread, other posters have indicated that the only solution to this problem is total removal of the Israeli population (which of course includes indigenous Jews). That's not correct, and also morally objectionable, and has caused at least several users (such as the OP) some distress.
I'm not mad at them for saying that, as obviously people can say rhings they don't really mean when emotionally distressed (which they have every right to be right now), but I can push back on it, in the same way I push back on Israeli war crime apologia on Reddit.
it's tone deaf to talk about peaceful coexistence as indigenous people are murdered en masse
It's not tone deaf to point out that this need not happen. The whole reason Likud has supported and propped up Hamas is because they want to make peaceful coexistence seem impossible to justify their continued ethnic cleansing project. There's no reason to think it's impossible and saying otherwise is right-wing Zionist talking point to boot.
I see people calling for the expulsion of settlers, but I haven't seen anyone call for the expulsion of Jewish people from Israel in general. Jews, Muslims and Christians have coexisted in the region for hundreds of years, what changed this was the secular settler colonial project of Zionism. I think you're also underestimating how racist the Israeli state is to Jewish people who are not European.
There's no reason to think it's impossible and saying it otherwise is right-wing Zionist talking point to boot.
It's not literally impossible, in the idealist sense, but materially the Zionist project is ongoing with full force and has no signs of stopping. They're not going to wake up one and decide they will get along with the Palestinians. The Zionists won't stop until they are either forcefully removed from power or the Palestinians are all dead or displaced, like the Zionists want them be. And no, Hamas received funding from Zionists as a divide and conquer tactic to weaken the leftist, secular PLO, who were not any less violent in their struggle for liberation.
Until the Zionist government of Israel falls (and it will not happen peacefully, it never does), peaceful coexistence will remain impossible, and violent reaction from the oppressed with remain justified. And Hand-wringing over talks of the expulsion of settlers, as those same settlers hold all the power, and as they commit mass murder, IS tone policing.
i still get pissed at people saying czechoslovakia genocided germans along the sudetes. they voted in nazis, were annexed into nazi germany, and proceeded to terrorize anyone that wasnt german. fun fact: if you didnt vote for the nazis or had family that werent german you got to stay and werent sent to germany! my family had some germans in it and they were terrorized for being multi-ethnic (whatever that means, we all looked the fucking same, the only crime is that we knew how to speak czech and polish as well as german). the germans in our family got to stay.
Similar story with Italians in the Balkans. It is treated as ethnic cleansing that Yugoslavia made settlers move back to Italy after they showed up, massacred people, took their homes, and then tried to stay when they lost the war. Very similar to another event hmmmm? Some of it was very harsh and complicated, and Italian presence there is of course far more legitimate than Israel's existence, but regardless the framing is usually an unambiguous "wholesome Italians in the 1940s pushed out by evil Slav hordes"
I think this is an interesting question of the overlap of meaning and rhetoric.
Here’s Wikipedia on ethnic cleansing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing . The definition does not take into account the “settler” status. Indeed, it specifically lists your German example as ethnic cleansing.
Indeed, it specifically lists your German example as ethnic cleansing.
No, it lists the expulsion of Germans from land that was already German pre WW2. That’s why I specified land that was part of Poland before the war.
The expulsion of 14 million ethnic Germans from the Former eastern territories of Germany after World War II. This policy was decided at the Potsdam Conference by the victorious powers
Ah, apologies for the misread, and moreover for incorrectly ascribing a statement to you.
That said, it’s not really relevant to the main point - namely the definitions there do not appear to have a settler exception. Whether those are fair or accurate definitions is of course another question entirely…
To your credit it does however include the Sudeten Germans Kristina was talking about, who 98% voted to join the Nazis hence Czechoslovakia demanding them being expelled
Haha well under that definition, my post would not be genocide because I neither intended it to be such, nor, by your statement did it cause “serious” mental harm. Moreover, based on the UN article it looks like the “in part” requirement has been interpreted to mean a “substantial part.”
But fair enough, the point is well taken. I’m not a language prescriptivist, so just because the UN used the meaning in a certain way does not make it the meaning of that word. That said, it seems to me that the common usage (based on the wiki article that cites a few different usages) probably does not have a settler exception.
Jews have been indigenous to the region, as a minority, since essentially biblical times, so unless you're thinking of instituting some weird phrenological 'right kind of jewish' to stay, you're going to have to either adopt a one state solution that allows for integration of Jewish people into a secular Palestinian state, or do ethnic cleansing.
It’s pretty simple actually. If you or your ancestors moved to Israel on or after 1948 (maybe earlier since the Zionist colonial project really started earlier in the 20th century), get the fuck out.
No “weird phrenological right kind of Jewish”, no ethnic cleansing, just kicking the verified settlers and their descendants out.
It’s pretty simple actually. If you or your ancestors moved to Israel on or after 1948 (maybe earlier since the Zionist colonial project really started earlier in the 20th century), get the fuck out.
That doesn't work, not cleanly, because lineages get mixed. How much of the lineage has to be indigenous to qualify? This is exactly the sort of blood quanta phrenology shit I was referring to.
I don't think anyone has to leave in order to achieve peaceful coexistence except the rabid, anti-Palestian Zionists. Homes and property can be returned an the right of return established without kicking millions of people out.
This whole conversation is pointless because at the end of the day, settlers are cowards who understand they have no real ties to the land, so when push comes to shove, they'll fuck off to their actual place of origins. It happened to the French settlers in Algeria and it's already happening to Zionist settlers who are lining up to take the first flight out of Israel the minute the rockets start flying.
Obviously we don't get any say in the matter, but I always get flashbacks of Sykes-Picot when people in here are like "there's actually a nice clean easy solution to this geopolitical quagmire"
Yeah I should probably contextualize what I mean lol. What I'm saying applies even more to the people speculating about what they think should specifically happen to Zionists in a one-state solution.
[Me talking to them] Like, broseph, you don't get to decide that and you're not helping.
I think it is fair to say people 99% of the time mainly mean people who claimed citizenship, not people expelled. Also not to nit-pick but "anti-Palestinian Zionists" is redundant. Zionism is inextricably anti-Palestinian
I mean yeah, but that's simple to the point of being a tautology; anyone that refuses peaceful coexistence will need to be removed from the equation to allow peaceful coexistence. The devil is in the details of implementation of how to implement that, but allowing for a continued (and perhaps even substantial) Jewish presence in the Levant avoids the problem of ethnic cleansing.