#israel is a land back decolonizing movement

[former-leftist-jew]

"Check out this Pakistani academic, born and raised in Canada, whose parents didn't see anything wrong with moving to a country that was founded as a colony, usurping the rights of the indigenous population...*

They could say, 'Hey, we didn't choose to be born into a colonial country.' Sure! None of us picked the countries we were born in, but we do choose the countries we live in. She could have easily moved to any country she saw fit, thanks to the power of the passports of these Colonial countries...

But I'm sure they'll have some convenient excuse for continuing to live in these wonderful Western countries, such as, 'We'll leave once we decolonize these Colonial countries.'"

A really good look at Western leftists who decry the "white settler colonialism," while continuing to benefit from its legacy, and (by extension) hypocritically condemn Jews and demand Israelis do what they won't do in their own countries.

[jewish-sideblog]

"Both indigenous and colonizers" CAN PEOPLE STOP TALKING ABOUT SHIT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEASE

This wave of antisemitism and bullshit about "indigenous vs colonizer" makes me so scared as an indigenous person in the US of what will happen when Land Back movements do result in actual sovereignty restoration and then tribes do what people do and disagree over land and resources, like we were doing for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Will we be reduced down to colonizers too??

It feels like Westerners, especially USAmericans, have such a black and white idea of what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be a colonizer/settler (because those terms are always conflated) and it makes me so angry and frustrated to see people apply those standards and lines thinking not just to complex sovereignty movements in their own countries but also to incredibly complex conflicts and wars happening on the other side of the world.

The damage I've seen done to sovereignty movements here in the US alone, people going around claiming that we want all "settlers" to go back to Europe or that we're going to start massacring people, has been horrible and the fact that it's all just to justify antisemitism makes me sick.

Genuinely. They're blocked now, but that same person said something to the effect of "Would an Iranian praying in a Mosque built on the ashes of a former synagogue be decolonization?"

And that was the point at which I was like. Ok. It seems like most people genuinely don't actually know what the terms "colonization", "colonizer" and "coloniality" mean. Obviously, that wouldn't be decolonization, because the Jews never colonized Iran. Emigration and colonization aren't the same fucking thing!

I used to have so much faith in my generation. I thought we were critical thinkers, capable of flexibility and engagement with new ideas. But I'm realizing now that we're basically just rebranded boomers. Back in the day, anybody you disagreed with was labelled as a "Communist". It didn't actually fucking matter if they were communist sympathizers, Soviet sympathizers, or even if they were remotely allied with socialist ideals. You could just call them a "Communist" and be done with it, without even understanding what that term means.

It's the same shit today. Instead of a HUAC witch hunt targeting communists, it's a social witch hunt targeting "colonizers" and "Zionists". I am terrified that the moment indigenous rights movements in the Americas and Oceania start making practical strides in Land Back, regaining rightful control over the ways your own land is used, you'll all be labelled as "colonizers" or "imperialists" or whatever the bad buzz word of the month turns out to be.

People simply can't wrap their heads around the idea that indigenous decolonization doesn't have the end goal of ethnically cleansing non-native people from the Americas. And it's because they're so absorbed in colonial thinking. They can't even fucking imagine what sovereignty could look like beyond an authoritarian structure based on control and violence. It's the same with Israel and Palestine-- they think that Jewish sovereignty must look like complete Jewish control to the detriment of Arabs, and they think Palestinian sovereignty must look like total Arab control to the detriment of Jews. The idea that a shared state or a two-state solution is "racist" stems from that false dichotomy.

Establishing an ideological binary of violence that pits "indigenous" against "colonizer", "native" against "settler", and "us" against "them" with no room for cooperation or collaboration is the core of colonialism. Because the core of colonialism is the idea that only one group can have true power at a time. And that's just not the way the world has to work.

[dchan87]

A year ago today, Hamas butchered 1,200 Israelis, triggering a war in Gaza and another one across Western institutions, campuses, and social media. At American Dreaming, we’ve extensively covered the discourse post-10/7, from the depraved joy the “decolonize” left felt at news of Jews being slaughtered, to the obscene double standards imposed on Israel, to the explosion of full-blown leftist anti-Semitism. We’ve published articles about the young progressives who hate Biden and love bin Laden, the disturbing redefinition of “genocide”, and the absolutely unhinged Western pro-Palistinian activist movement. And after a year of discourse, one thing has been made crystal clear: the political left has an anti-Semitism problem. Everywhere I looked, over these past 12 months, far-left protestors not only tolerated but actively propagated centuries-old anti-Semitism, including celebrating the October 7th massacre and even praising Hitler. It was equal parts disgusting and confusing. How could a movement that, in theory, is supposed to oppose bigotry and racism have so openly embraced it? How did we end up with left-wingers attacking synagogues, creating lists of Zionists, canceling events with “Zionist” participants, defacing Anne Frank memorials, and protesting Israel outside of Auschwitz? How could only half of young adults, by far the most left-leaning age group, disagree with the statement “The Holocaust is a myth”? How did we get to a place where good progressives openly display swastikas, tell Jews to go back to Europe, express the desire to gas them, and perform Hitler salutes? The rhetoric was much the same as it had been for centuries: that Jews are violent, bloodthirsty, imposters — not even Semitic, but a bunch of Europeans playing pretend. Demonstrators held signs with a Star of David in a trash can next to the words “Keep the world clean.” Classic anti-Semitic tropes like the blood libel resurfaced. All of this happened within far-left movements, who now sound eerily like the far right. It’s no wonder that far rightists blend right in at pro-Palestine protests. But why? Integral to the left’s worldview, elaborate theory aside, is solidarity with the underprivileged, be it the poor, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, etc. Logically, the left should be sympathetic to the Jewish people, given their long history of persecution. At a glance, there should be no reason for the hard left to behave functionally the same as neo-Nazis. And yet they do. 

Sadly, anti-Semitism, as one of humanity's oldest hatreds, has never been confined to any one ideology. To understand the history of left-wing anti-Semitism, we must first look back to before the concept of the political “left” even existed.

An Extremely Brief History of Anti-Semitism

In 132 CE, during the apex of Roman imperial power, the Bar Kokhba revolt broke out in the troublesome Roman-controlled province of Judea. Emperor Hadrian solved it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. In an outright genocidal war, he utterly crushed Jewish resistance, slaughtering large numbers of Jewish civilians and devastating many towns and villages. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE tends to be more remembered by Jews themselves as the beginning of the diaspora, but the events of 135 were when the Jews truly lost their homeland. Although a small population remained, most fled throughout the Middle East or Europe. 

Hadrian’s actions were not anti-Semitic per se — Rome was just as brutal to any rebellious subject — but it set the Jews up as a people without a land, a people with nowhere to go whose religion and customs made them visibly other. With the rise of Christianity, the relative religious tolerance typical to polytheistic societies faded away, and the Jews faced constant oppression, at best living as second-class citizens. Of course, Christians have a long history of treating their fellow devotees with murderous contempt if they happen to be the wrong kind of Christian. The massacres of the First Crusade that included Christians as well as Muslims and Jews, the expulsion of Protestants from France, the bloody Anglo-Irish conflict, the Anglican church's persecution of Puritans, and so on. Now imagine what it would mean to openly belong to another faith, one deemed heretical by the Church, the supreme arbiter of morality.

Jews were widely barred from “honest” work — leaving niches in fields considered less savory, like money lending, clerking, pawnbroking, and lawyering. Making the most of the niche they had been forced into by these discriminatory laws — although far from all Jews did such work — led in turn to the stereotype of Jews as greedy, bloodsucking parasites who hated and exploited honest Christians, which, of course, led to even more persecution. Jewish populations were expelled from countries multiple times, or faced savage butchery. There were the brutal Rhineland Massacres of the First Crusade in 1096 CE that saw 800 Jews killed, and expulsion from England in 1290, from France in 1306, and from Spain in 1492. It was a vicious cycle of violent intolerance. 

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

In the late 1700s, the birth of European liberalism changed everything. The French Revolution and Napoleon both offered a greater level of religious tolerance toward Jews, making new inroads toward coexistence. After Napoleon’s downfall, despite a rightward reaction, Europe slowly began to liberalize, incorporate Enlightenment values, and move toward democracy. By and large, Jewish people naturally drifted leftward — the monarchist right wing of the 1800s was no friend to them. When socialism made strides decades later, Jews were an influential part of the movement, such as the Bund, a socialist Jewish party in Russia. 

At the same time, many Jews were understandably fed up with the still-rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, and started to dream of returning to their ancestral homeland, and so began the seeds of modern Israel. 

So far, Jews seemed like natural allies to the left, as an oppressed, marginalized underdog if ever there was one. But anti-Semitism is a powerful, deeply rooted force. Vladimir Lenin forcibly dissolved the Bund in 1921, and all those who did not join the Communist Party were forced to flee abroad or face persecution. It only got worse under Stalin, who systematically eradicated Jewish influence wherever he could find it. His Doctors Plot, in which Stalin invented false charges of treason and espionage toward nine doctors, seven of them Jewish, resembled nothing so much as a classic anti-Semitic purge. Indeed, between 1939 and 1941, the Soviet secret police deported tens of thousands of Jews to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Despite Marxism’s pretensions to antiracism, Soviet anti-Semitism, from Party leadership down to the common comrade, was pervasive, and often intertwined “anti-Zionism” with negative stereotypes about Jews.

It was not until after the Holocaust had been exposed to the world that anti-Semitism finally began to become unfashionable, as humanity took a cold, hard look at the logical conclusion to such hatred. But anti-Semitism did not disappear from either end of the political spectrum.

In the 1960s, James Baldwin explained the pronounced anti-Semitism among the black community in the US, which he tied to attitudes of anti-whiteness and an oppressor/oppressed mindset. In the 1970s, influenced by Soviet propaganda, which relentlessly demonized Zionism and Jews, the Australian Union of Students, dominated by young Trostkyites and Maoists, began following suit on Australian university campuses. When Jewish groups protested, they were physically assaulted.

The ferocious “anti-Zionism” of the Western “New Left” was widely seen as a cover for Jew hatred. In Germany, far-left groups in the 1960s and 70s celebrated the deaths of Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks, engaged in anti-Semitic violence, and schemed to bomb a synagogue. In the famous 1976 Entebbe Raid — in which pro-Palestine terrorists hijacked an Air France plane at gunpoint, then released the non-Jewish and non-Israeli passengers to hold the Israelis and Jews hostage — two of the hijackers were German leftists.

Today’s left ought to be unburdened by such bigotries, at least in theory. Unlike their forebears from previous eras, they did not grow up in a social environment where racism was normal and casual prejudice ubiquitous. The average modern far-leftist is highly educated, affluent, and conscious of systemic biases. They ought to know better. So why don’t they?

Like any complex phenomenon, it has no single explanation. Unlike the far right, which has anti-Semitism encoded into its ideological genetics, leftism is not inherently anti-Semitic. But in true horseshoe fashion, they nevertheless end up in the same place.

The Horseshoe of Anti-Semitism

First, the political far left shares an uncomfortable number of basic assumptions about reality with the far right. Both believe that:

A class of moneyed elites control the government, and democracy is a sham maintained by these vaguely defined, malicious elites.

Proper far-left or far-right beliefs (depending) would naturally take root in society if not for an aggressive campaign of materialist propaganda pushed by these shady elites to distract the masses from realizing their true destiny.

Their cause is one that is so vital and so obviously true that any approach to further it is legitimate, whether that means lying, propagandizing, or committing violence.

The liberal West is evil, degenerate, cruel, and exploitative, and must be crushed at all cost to realize this vision.

This antisocial, conspiratorial worldview is inherent to the far left, to a greater or lesser degree. Name a popular myth about how the West is evil, and a leftist will believe it — whether it’s that the US invaded Iraq to steal oil, or that all Western economies are built purely on the exploitation of developing countries, or that our media and government is controlled by sinister three-letter organizations. Such a mindset is incredibly vulnerable to conspiracy theory — and all conspiracy theories ultimately come back to anti-Semitism. 

If you believe the government is controlled by moneyed elites and that the evil force of Zionism has its claws deep in the US government, then the leftist is already 90 percent of the way to being in full agreement with the Nazi. This is how we get university lecturers saying, “Zionists are straight Babylon swine [...] Zionism is beyond a mental illness; it’s a genocidal disease.” It’s how we get progressive screenwriters complaining that “the entertainment industry is ran [sic] by Zionists.” It’s how you get left-wing musicians like Eric Clapton saying, “Israel's running the show, running the world.”

Israel-Palestine is a Uniquely Sore Issue

Second, Israel-Palestine is singularly inflammatory. It takes every problematic tendency the far left already has — shallow performativity, radicalism, narcissism, subordinating truth to ideology, and viciousness toward perceived opponents — and dials it up to eleven. Palestine offers the leftist a classic oppressor-oppressed binary, one that fits the Marxist image of the world perfectly: a cruel, settler-colonialist nation, brutally oppressing a native population, neatly including a white-vs-brown layer of oppression. It also offers a religious layer, where Israel is painted as both a theocracy and a fascistic ethnostate no different from Nazi Germany.

Of course, there are many facts that one must ignore to believe these things. One must ignore that Israel began with legal land purchases, and that among both Israelis and Palestinians you can find people passing for white as well as people who would not. One must ignore that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and that 48 percent of Israel is of Mizrahi (meaning Middle Eastern) origin. One must ignore that Israel is a democracy with Arabs in its parliament, and that the Palestinians harbor many deeply regressive, misogynist, and homophobic values out of touch with modern progressivism.

The Left is Just Too Successful, But Still Needs a Revolution

Third, modern leftism is no longer the struggling worker’s movement it began as. In the early 1900s, the left struggled with real, material problems, such as genuinely unfair wages and labor power imbalances in which employers held all the cards. Protesting for better pay, fewer hours, and more benefits and vacation were real, concrete improvements to fight for. But with these and other battles won — with an eight-hour workday and five-day workweek, with vacation and sick days taken for granted, with LGBT acceptance and racial equality both legally enshrined and culturally mainstream, the modern left had to pivot. Their crusades became less about tangible change in the face of injustice, and more about an opportunity to display righteousness by advancing an incredibly shallow worldview divided between the morally pure and the wicked, with no in-betweens. The ethos of no bad tactics, only bad targets thereby became bad tactics and bad targets.

Jews Just Aren’t Oppressed Enough

Finally, the far left is captured by a narrative in which the underprivileged are the center of attention. There is a foundational leftist belief that the world right now is not only terrible, but actively getting worse due to capitalist exploitation. In this understanding of the world, everything is defined by class struggle between the wealthy, parasitic capitalists, and their victims, the workers, whose labor is exploited for pennies, deliberately keeping the lower classes down. 

When taken to its logical end, we are left with a movement that resents success. So where do Jews fit into this? Well, from this grievance-focused, eternally victimized perspective, the Jewish people are just a bit too white, a bit too financially successful, and a bit too well-integrated to be seen as truly oppressed. Rather they are seen as oppressors. Just as Asians are now “helping white supremacy” because they’re more financially successful than other groups on average, Jews are just not persecuted enough. The far left resents success, and the Jews have shown extraordinary perseverance in their achievements. Indeed, the archetypal Jewish businessman, lawyer, or doctor fits perfectly into the petit-bourgeoisie stereotype the far left so intensely loathes.

What’s left is a movement deeply committed to performative role-playing while eschewing achievable goals, pragmatism, and principles. It’s a dreadful state of affairs. There ought to be room for a left-of-center movement to express a sane pro-Palestinian worldview, but it’s been hijacked by radicals who are as ignorant as they are venomous. Any healthy, open society requires a variety of perspectives represented, but they need to be rooted in reality — not collective guilt, group resentment, and unhinged conspiracism punctuated with Hitler salutes.

In the span of one year, the anti-Zionist far left has done serious and lasting damage to themselves. If they are to avoid becoming simply an inverted variant of neo-Nazism, utterly fringe and dismissed, they must reckon with and expel their radicals, not celebrate them. Is protesting Israel worth trafficking in old anti-Semitic tropes? Is it worth lowering yourself to the level of a fascist? Is it worth an entire political movement with over two hundred years of history? Because if things continue as they are, the left will be left behind, with all sane and decent people having shied away in disgust. Perhaps that’s one faint silver lining of this past year, that the radical left have lunged toward their far-right counterparts on the great trash heap of history. It’s where they belong.

[girlactionfigure]

mighty.matzoball

The TRUTH about Zionism Zionism is a movement for the revival and protection of the Jewish Nation in our ancestral land The longing for Zion goes back to our first exile, when we were ethnically cleansed from our homeland and forced to settle in other communities, in diaspora If you knew what decolonization was, you would recognize Zionism as it's success story If you know anything about jewish culture, holidays, festivals, identity, customs and law, you would recognize Zionism as intrinsic to Judaism. If you visited Israel, or talked to a Zionists, especially the 50% of world jewry who are in Israel, you would recognize that Zionism is compatible with coexistence. Zionism is NOT a dirty word.  Thank you @mayahoodblog for helping me recreate and tweak the slides by jewishperspective  Sources to explore the meaning of Zionism  📚Merriam webster 📚Oxford reference 📚Britannica 📚the Torah 📚Jewish virtual library

[mossadspypigeon]

I'm a lesbian zionist too hi !!

Curious to hear your opinion on the idea that Zionism can't exist or is allowed to be hated because it's been used by bad people.

hi!!

it depends on who those “bad people” are, because many zionist figures are demonized and credited with words and actions they did not say or do.

like i was digging into some shit i heard ben gurion “said,” in 1948 and the “quotes” were actually from a fake book put out by decolonize palestine that never existed. they took his diaries, claimed this new book was translated by the person whose book he wrote a foreword for (a book about the origins of the idf) and added extensive quotes he never wrote.

or say, massacres that never actually happened or the stories were changed.

and also when it comes to israel and israeli history, context IS important. like for example, certain words having different meanings in the 1800s vs today, or civilians actually being military targets.

i would say the actual “bad figures” are very much in the minority. are some people palatable to non jews or even many jews? no. but they shouldn’t have to be. like jabotinsky was not palatable, but was still an important figure whose works should be read and discussed in good faith.

we also need to consider showing jewish zionists and jews in general empathy. why would some people not be palatable? why would some hate arabs? is hatred okay? no. but if you saw the jerusalem riots or the farhud or dhimmitude or fought in wars or lived every day facing arabs who wanted you annihilated, said they wanted this, and took action to make sure it happened, including murdering innocent people…how would you feel about them? some people react peaceably to threats like that and others react with anger. especially when they saw their side giving up more and more of their land.

jews have been oppressed for over 3,500 years. of course we would have movements based on anger at our oppressors and a desire for liberation and freedom. that language for jews is also going to be different from other groups, but other groups are given more leeway than we are when tbh most of those groups have faced less than we have. is it a competition? no. but it’s the truth.

zionism represents jews fighting back, and that is the reason it’s hated, not because of the actions of any jewish zionist. people criticizing zionism usually do not know the actions committed by groups or the history of the movement. they read snippets of zionist works through a modern and biased lens or they read completely fabricated accounts and take them as fact.

i can talk more about who actually created some of these fabricated myths about zionism in another post.

[owlbelly]

saw some rancid infographic propaganda the other day that said "you're probably a Zionist & you just don't know it!" then proceeded to define Zionism as "the belief that Jews, like every other ethnic group, deserve their own nation"

i don't know what i expected. maybe some mealy-mouthed bullshit like "the Jewish right to self-determination" (what does that even mean? does it protect my Jewish right to determine that i'm not a fucking Zionist?) or one of the other "all we want is safety :'(" misdirections. but no. it's straight up ethnonationalism

ETHNOSTATES ARE NOT A HUMAN RIGHT. good fucking grief they're really out here like "ethnicities should control their own nation-states :) :) :) that's what Indigenous rights means, right? :) it's decolonization baby, everybody gets a fascist utopia!"

it's so unbelievably gross to me the way Zionists adapt the language to say the same fucking thing in whatever way they think will win people over - in the late 19th / early 20th century the Zionist project was excitedly & explicitly colonial, in the 21st century they've appropriated the frameworks of Indigeneity (a coherent, specific political concept that is way more complex than having ancestral ties to somewhere!!!) to repaint it as a "land back movement" because it isn't cool anymore to openly say you want to wipe out people who've been living somewhere for generations & seize the land. but the content of the statement is the same. it's the same!!! the whole question of whether or not Jews (which Jews? literally all of us? the entire massive multi-ethnic diaspora??) are "Indigenous" to Eretz Israel is not only absurd but completely irrelevant. we could all be fucking Indigenous & it STILL WOULDN'T GIVE US THE RIGHT TO OUR OWN VIOLENT ETHNOCRACY how is this even up for debate!!!

"but Jews will never be safe unless we control our own country" listen. listen. thousands of years of trauma - exiles, pogroms, genocides - are in my blood too, and somehow, given the choice to risk being killed by antisemites vs. become an actual fucking Nazi for "guaranteed safety" (how well is that working out???), i would still choose death. i would rather die! a thousand times! you fucking shandas!

[archtroop]

People here simping for Free Palestine ideology and chanting RiverSea do not realize what they are backing.

All of those so-called resistance movements doe Palestine always ALWAYS ever targeted civilians, and preferably children. They targeted soldiers too, but by far less of a factor in the grand scheme of "activity".

Going back to before the establishment of Israel, in 1929, the pogroms were all about depravity, rape, and massacre. That was a straightforward anti-jewish murderous glee. And that's not counting further back on and on. It was as regular as seasons.

After 1948, it colored itself with the colors of anti-zionism, but it was ever the same.

Be it the 50s attacks, or be it the hostage taking of entire school and the massacre in the 70s, be it the bombing of a nightclub in the 00s. Or any other terrorist act for the past 100+ years of documented history from Ottoman, to British Palestine and then the establishment of Israel.

There was never one single action done by any of those "grassroots" organizations that concentrated om the betterment of Palestinian lives. They spit at the lives. They want deaths. This whole engine runs on death, misery and depravity.

The only difference is that since the early 10s of the last century, the Jews started to stand up for themselves. And step by step, they established their own guards and armed themselves.

The only difference is, in 1948 the Jews earned their sovereignty, fought for it, and won.

Those who chose to stand by the Jews became Blood Brothers of the Jews.

Those who chose to hate the concept of Jews defending themselves, are seething to this day. For them, it is an insult that they can't just ramp up and burn it all down. That Israelis - the Jews and those who stayed and those who stood by them, are now armed. And will fight back.

Today, this is the age of misinformation. The biggest weapons are words. And taking the reality and bending it into a narrative that fits you, sprinkling ancient hate over it, and sitting on that white guilt, pushing the fabricated oppresed/oppressor binary, waved like the answer to the world's problems - these are weapons of the mind. This is point blank how propoganda looks and operates. "ME vs THEM" is 1.01 Fascist tactic. And the FreePalestiners fell for it with a snap of a finger.

It is not reality. How can the public believe so much in non binary and be so binary on any other subject? There are at least 18 shades of black that we know of.

Truth is, the establishment of Israel was the most successful and one of the earliest modern examples of active indigenous reclamation of ancestral land and sovereignty.

Zionism is decolonization.

Those who oppose the idea of Zionism, oppose to the idea of Jews protecting themselves. Asking why? Why would anyone have an opposing opinion to a group of people protecting themselves? There is only one answer: because it's harder to harm this group of people. If your goal is to harm Jews, then yes, Zionism is definitely an obstacle. Therefore, this whitewashing needs to be obliterated once and for all and laid out:

Antizionism = Antisemitism (JewHate).

As the FreePalestiners like to shout, "well what did you think decolonization would look like?" Well, it looks like this: it's the independence of Jewish people in their ancestral homeland. For those who cannot digest this fact to this day, they call it "Naqba".

[scamallach-1]

I am deeply ashamed of Chase Strangio. Deeply. He really said “Yeah so I’m still voting for Kamala even tho she doesn’t care about trans people, even tho she’s genocidal, and because I’m like soooo uncomfortable with the idea of leaving this genocidal system of which I’ve always worked within and yea you could say I’ve abandoned the road to liberation but whatevs thanks for reading all these slides about it, coulda kept it to myself but” — THE DAY AFTER AL AQSA HOSPITAL MASSACRE where “US/Israel” occupation forces burned people alive while attached to IVs!

Chase could be dedicating himself with his platform to decolonial land back movements for REAL, meaningful liberation, but nah. He clearly sold his ‘soul’ to our liberal Zionist government long ago and now we see him thinkin he can “change it from the inside”.

Deeply deeply deeply ashamed. We need to accept the cold hard fact that queers in the west took “queer liberation” and turned it right into another arm of western imperialism. We were unwilling to part ways with white supremacy, and now look. Shame.

NO QUEER LIBERATION BEFORE DECOLONIZATION!

[a-method-in-it]

Having spent a few months in Israel and been to the West Bank and followed news from the country for a decade since and having studied enough to know how little I know about it:

It is okay for you, random internet user, to not have hot takes on what is happening in the southern Levant right now. Especially if you do not know what the southern Levant refers to.

When in doubt, please remember the following:

There are no civilians who it is acceptable to murder

That's it, that's the take

So instead of ill-informed hot takes on tumblr dot com about an 80-year-old conflict in a former British colony whose history you barely understand, what should you be doing?

If you are in the U.S.: Support decolonization efforts right here in your own backyard in a country you have some hope of understanding. I recommend checking out the Land Back movement or looking up issues for a tribe or other indigenous group local to you. Or you can donate to the Native American Rights Fund or the Indian Law Resource Center, both of which fund things related to decolonization.

If you are in another settler colonial state: Find whatever the equivalent of that is in your country.

If you want to support Palestine: Donate to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, Al-Haq, or another trusted charity, and check out info from Amnesty International about human rights in Gaza, which are routinely violated by both the Israeli and Hamas governments.

If you want to support the peace process: Support organizations like ALLMEP and independent media like 972 Magazine.

[old-school-butch]

‘But you misunderstand my argument - I don't actually think Israel is a decolonization project - I was responding to claims that Hamas' action is some form of resistance to 'settler colonialism' which, since Judaism as a faith is indigenous to the region, is nonsense.’

Except it’s not nonsense at all. The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially. No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously, nor would they be. This would be like the Roma population going to north India and attempting to set up a state by displacing the locals. They are genetically and ancestrally tied to that land, so why not them, too? Shall we all go back to where our ancestors of a couple centuries, even millennia in many cases, originated from? Is that the logic we defer to to decide what is and what isn’t settler colonialism?

"The Zionist project was conceived to be a settling of the European Jewry in Palestine initially"

The struggle for Jewish self-government goes back a liiiiiittle further than that. Maybe you've not read the Bible but you can track a straight line between 'the LORD said unto Moses, go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, let my people go' to 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." which happened when the Bablyonian Empire rolled into town. Another four? five? empires later you finally have the Hasmoneansn and Maccabeans self-governments weakening under Roman rule and finally the fall of the second Temple era. Which led to approximately another 2000 years of attempting to return to Zion. But Jews remained living in the area the entire time, the goal of Zion is self-government, to create a nation safe for the Jewish people.

"No other groups who make claims to their people having lived in a place in the past to justify this kind of state building are taken seriously"

What do you think is happening in Myanmar? What do you think Nunavut self-government is about in Canada? The idea of a homeland is pretty old, but modern American politics has an overly simplified view of land claims - either you can prove you were the first humans there ever or you're a settler/colonist who doesn't deserve to be there.

Except when it's about Jews in Israel. When I point out that by this logic Jews have an old erclaim to the region than the later Arabian colonizers, then I'm told the history is either too old and doesn't count, or not real because there's no documentation going that far back in history, or the (actually far more realistic) argument there are a number of ethnic groups and religions that can track extremely long timelines in the same general region because the story of human history is older than our ability to write it down. So I agree with your last point, that while there are obvious impacts of colonialism and conquest, it gets really absurd to imagine that the only place anyone really belongs is wherever they're from 'originally'.

Anyway, Israel has only recently hardened its stance and officially became a 'Jewish state' - 20% of the population are Muslim and many Druze, Bedouin, Circassians and Christians live within its borders. I'm not happy about this recent change and I'm sure those minorities are not as well.

I'd characterize the Arab-Israeli conflict as mostly religious in nature, at its core, not ethnic or even territorial. Islamism is a trans-national movement with the goal of creating a caliphate as a super-state, something the surrounding Arab states find increasingly alarming as they search for stability, but they are content to let it grow in Palestine as long as Israel remains the focus of their grievances. If Israel ever falls, do you think there would be peace in the region? I don't. Look at the wall Egypt is building on their border with Gaza.

[secular-jew]

The massacre of October 7 brought us back to the fundamental questions dealing with who controls this piece of land. Veteran historian Prof. Yoav Gelber lists a series of profound differences between Zionism and European colonialism, and explains why the "two-state solution" is an illusion, stressing that Israeli society needs to return to the "we" ethos.

Prof. Yoav Gelber

By  Matan Hasidim, Makor Rishon; Published on  02-21-2024 18:20

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Al-Jazeera released a short video that spread like wildfire online about the "colonial roots of the Zionist movement." In fluent English, viewers were explained what 19th and 20th century European Jews were like, the British imperialism, and the present-day Israeli "apartheid state."

The video included interview segments with Israelis who participated in the War of Independence, reinforcing the narrative that the country's Arab residents were murdered or expelled from their homeland by a trained, equipped, and cruel Jewish-European army. The message was clear: Zionism's success was made possible by the firepower of European colonialism, and the state of Israel was born in an original sin. 

"This is not a new argument," historian Prof. Yoav Gelber says. "It already came up at the First Palestinian Congress, which convened in Jerusalem in January 1919. It should be prefaced that Islam in general does not see Jews as a people. Judaism is a religion only, and religious people do not need a nation-state and territory of their own, certainly not at the expense of others, especially not at the expense of Arab Muslims. All this was not yet on the agenda in 1919, but the participant asked 'If the Jews arriving in the country is not a 'people,' what are they? The answer given was that they were colonialists. To this day, this is the overarching narrative in the Arab world, certainly among the Palestinians."

Gelber, 80, is an emeritus professor and historian of pre-state Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict. He has dealt extensively with the relationship between colonialism and Zionism. Two of his books – "History, Memory and Propaganda: The Historical Discipline in the World and in Eretz Yisrael" (Am Oved, 2007), in which he also argues with some of the "new historians" and post-Zionists; And "Independence and Nakba" (Dvir, 2004), on the War of Independence from Israeli and Arab perspectives – extensively address this issue as well.

"Until the mid-twentieth century and the era of decolonization," he explains, "this argument did not carry much sway because 'colonialism' was not yet a dirty word. Apart from the resistance movements that began to emerge in India and – to a limited extent – in the Arab world (in Egypt and Iraq), half of the world was still under colonial rule. After the post-colonial era began – a trend that began after World War II – colonialism increasingly became synonymous with everything bad in the West, and Palestinian arguments began to get a receptive audience."

Q: Is there a resemblance between Zionism and colonial movements around the world?

"The common definition among today's opponents of Zionism is that this is a movement belonging to 'settlement colonialism,' as opposed to colonialism for economic purposes, where colonies were established to serve empires' economic needs. Zionism is indeed a movement of immigration and settlement, like other colonial movements in history, but that's where the resemblance between Zionism and colonialism begins and ends, Gelber says.

"The Zionist immigrants did not come here armed to their teeth like the American pilgrims or the conquistadors that came to South America. Unlike other colonial movements that suppressed the native population while seizing their land, until the establishment of the state, the Jews bought land with hard cash from the Arabs and settled on it. No other colonial movement has operated in this way."

Gelber says this point could also embarrass Palestinians today. "They argue that the lands were sold by landowners living outside Eretz Yisrael, in Beirut or Damascus. This argument is only partially true. No family from the Palestinian elite, including the Husseini family, is missing from the list of land sellers to Jews before the establishment of the state," Gelber says.

"Here lies one of the great early Palestinian failures in this conflict. Initially, no Arab tried to prevent the sale of land to Jews. Only later, as the national character of the conflict became more dominant, did things change – Arab efforts were made to prevent the sale of land to Jews through the use of violence and boycotts against sellers, and even a fund was set up to purchase land from people in financial straits who to sell land [so that they won't sell to Jews]."

Between Algeria and Degania

"Another significant difference between colonialism and Zionism," Gelber continues, "lies in the very Zionist choice to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael [Land of Israel]. Immigration usually occurred from crowded or poor countries towards areas like the early United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, and Australia – which were rich in resources but lacking in manpower or knowledge to exploit these resources. The immigration of the Jews was to a country with scarce resources that ejected people because it was unable to sustain them. Even as Jews carried out the waves of immigration known as the First and Second Aliyah there was a parallel trend of people leaving the land towards the classic immigration countries like the United States, Australia, or South America. This emigration included not only Jews but also Arabs, mainly Christians but also Muslims."

Another difference they point out is that the Zionist settlement was not intended to serve any "mother country" like in the colonies of European colonialism.

"Look, there was a fundamental difference between the Europeans who went to a Muslim country like Algeria and the Zionist settlers who arrived in Degania. Any European who arrived in Algeria under French auspices, or an Englishman who migrated to India, did not claim to be renewing an ancient national tradition that had been tied to the country he migrated to. Colonial movements in general were looking for a future, sometimes an economic future, or acted on behalf of Christian missionary-ideological goals. In contrast, the Jews were looking for their past. Every Jew everywhere in the world, throughout the exile, saw themselves in exile and remained faithful and prayed to Eretz Yisrael. This is the basis for the right of Jews to return to the country, and in that sense, we are not that foreign to the region."

The theory of stages

I present Gelber with a common argument on the Israeli Left that even if one is convinced that Zionism itself is not colonialist, the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria is indeed an expression of Israeli colonialism. "One of the hallmarks of postmodernist thinking is that everyone invents a thesis and defines definitions as they wish, and then builds an entire theory on that thesis," Gelber replies. "This argument is not related to how things actually happened in reality. In Palestinian eyes, the Jewish 'colonialism' in the country begbeganth 1917, if not earlier –  in 1881. As mentioned, post-colonial theories began to gain popularity in the West in the sixties. It's not that important whether it's before '67 or after '67, because the colonialist claim of the Palestinians towards us does not refer to the 'occupation' of the Six-Day War.

"This is indeed one of the most common mistakes in the narrative of the Israeli Left, that 'all the troubles began with the occupation.' Palestinian claims existed long before the 'occupation.' Settlements in Judea and Samaria are a continuation of the Jewish presence in the land. There was a war in '67, and it had consequences. Whether or not one should settle there is an internal Israeli debate. Why should a Jew have the right to live in Tel Aviv but not in Kiryat Arba? From the standpoint of historical rights, it is the same right. The debate is only about whether it should be realized."

Q: The two-state solution is now back in vogue in international discourse, including in light of statements by the Biden administration. In your view, does it have a chance?

"I've been writing for about thirty years, maybe more, that the Palestinians' goal has never been just to get a state. 'State' is perhaps an interim goal for them, certainly not a final one. When Mahmoud Abbas talks about a state, for him it's stage one. The ultimate goal is to return Eretz Yisrael to its Arab character, in which there may be a Jewish 'millet' (the term given in the Ottoman Empire to a non-Muslim community protected by law) as in Ottoman times.

"We are fooling ourselves if we think that what is called the 'two-state solution,' meaning the Arabs agreeing to accept 15% of what they see as 100 percent theirs, will end the conflict. Anyone who thinks so is simply living in La La Land. No chance in hell, it's not part of the mindset of the Arabs". 

Q: We recently made peace with Arab states like the United Arab Emirates. Can this not happen with the Palestinians?

"The Arab consciousness of patience plays a very central role. In their eyes, the Palestinians have gone through the Turks, the English, and the Jordanians, and they will also go through us. 'Now' is an Israeli concept, and as for the concept of 'peace' the question is what do you mean? There is the  'peace' that is an agreement between countries that recognize each other, and accept each other's sovereignty and borders. This can exist between us and the Arabs. It is a fact that it exists with Egypt, Jordan, the Emirates, and perhaps in the future with Saudi Arabia. And there is the peace of the end of days, of 'the wolf shall dwell with the lamb' – a peace that will probably never happen with the Arabs, because we are a foreign transplant for them. And with the Palestinians, peace of the first kind cannot happen either.

From the Chinese farm to the University of Haifa 

History is a family affair for the Gelbers. Nathan Michael Gelber, Yoav's grandfather, was a historian of Polish Jewry and early Zionism. "In my childhood, I spent quite a lot of time in grGrandpa'sibrary, a huge library that is now at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. His father, my great-grandfather Nachman, was also an amateur historian." Yoav Gelber's father, Emmanuel Gelber was a colonel in the IDF and commander of the IDF Ordnance Corps (today's Logistics Corps) in the 1950s. Later he joined the Foreign Ministry and served as ambassador to several countries. According to his son's testimony, "he too loved history, and as a native Austrian he helped me with the book I wrote about the 'yekim'[German-speaking Jews who arrived in the Fifth Aliyah]. So you can definitely say we are a line of historians," Prof. Gelber says. 

He remembers his first encounter with the field that would become his main occupation. "In second or third grade I read historian H.A.L's 'A History of Europe'. I was missing only the third volume out of the six, so I had to complete the 16th century later," he laughs.

In his youth, Gelber considered a military career. He began his service in the Paratroopers Brigade reconnaissance unit, and from there went to officer training. After several military roles, he went to study for his bachelor's degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and returned to the army as commander of the military academy for education when the Yom Kippur War broke out.

"On October 6, 1973, the day the war broke out, I went to the headquarters of the Chief Education Officer at the General Staff and told them 'hello, see you after the war'. I went to Tel Nof, there were 30-40 officers, and they created a unit from us. One of the company commanders was killed in the battle of the Chinese Farm."

As part of the offensive to cross the Suez Canal, the battle of the Chinese farm was known as one of the harsh and bloody battles of that war; 163 soldiers lost their lives there. "One of the things that contributed to the fact that I did not get traumatized from the battle at the Chinese farm or the war in general was the fact that I was in charge of people. The responsibility helped me get through it," says Gelber. Shortly after the end of the war, Gelber was appointed as a staffer of the Agranat Commission, which investigated the failures that led to the blunder. "I got a reputation there as someone who could get a handle on a large amount of documents, and my role was to organize and make accessible the large amount of material that had accumulated. Later I was assigned additional tasks, and at the end of the work I had the privilege of drafting the final report," he says.

According to Gelber, "the lapses of October 7 are much greater than the failure of '73. It's a whole different order of magnitude. On Yom Kippur 1973, the IDF failed to defend Israel's borders, and then corrected the failure, at least partially. On October 7, 2023, it failed to defend Israeli civilians, which is its primary purpose. Borders can be regained, those who were murdered that day cannot be brought back.

After his release from the IDF, Gelber wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of volunteering from the Yishuv (Jewish community in pre-state Israel) to the British armed forces in World War II. Later he expanded his work into four monumental volumes. Over the years Gelber has published a long series of books and studies covering various angles and areas in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. He taught for many years at Haifa University and is currently a professor at Reichman University in Herzliya. Gelber and his late wife Ruth, who passed away in 2021, have four children. One of them, Anat, was a world champion in debate. "I'm not so good at it. Someday they will say I was her father," he smiles.

Gelber has also become famous for his intense sparring with the "New Historians" – a group of scholars, historians, and sociologists who have revisited the history of the Yishuv in general and the study of the War of Independence in particular from a post-Zionist perspective that is critical perspective towards the accepted Israeli narrative. During the 1990s and the 2000s th, eir arguments received much resonance in Israel and especially abroad. Among the prominent figures in this school of thought are Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappe, and sociologist Tom Segev. Gelber has frequently lashed out, sometimes vociferously, against them. He also directed criticism against publications of other figures from the Left in academia.

In his aforementioned book "History, Memory and Propaganda", Gelber defines part of that they wrote as "the process of the displacement of history in the face of propaganda." In his view, this expresses an anti-Zionist ideology that continues the intra-Jewish opposition that accompanied Zionism from its inception, from three focal points:  the ultra-Orthodox, the socialists, and the liberal-assimilationist. What's new in the post-Zionist approach was that they turned what was essentially a Diaspora phenomenon into a blue-and-white, indigenously made phenomenon.

"My arguments are not with the 'New Historians' because there isn't such a school of thought to officially speak of," says Gelber. "As has already been shown, each one stands alone. I also differentiate between Benny Morris and the others. Benny is a serious scholar who has gone to archives, compared different versions, and sought to get closer to the truth. The historical truth did not really interest the rest, or they just simply trampled it."

Over the years, Morris has changed his views on the conflict and has himself become a prominent critic of Avi Shlaim and especially Ilan Pappe. I show Gelber an article in which Morris calls Gelber "a die-hard right-winger." Gelber is surprised. "I have never been a 'right-wing man'," he says. "I try to examine every issue on its own merits. There are issues where I am more left-wing than Meretz, and others where I am more right-wing than Likud. I'm not politically committed to anyone, and my worldview is Zionist."

Zero Sum Game

Over the years, a major personal dispute has erupted between Ilan Pappe and Gelber and other scholars at the University of Haifa. Pappe, who was at that time from the University of Haifa, argued that they were seeking to remove him from his position due to his critical political views. The university argued, as did Gelber, who was Pappe's colleague in the Department of History, that these were professional considerations. Pappe, who identified himself as a supporter of the Hadash party, emigrated to Britain and openly supported the boycott of Israeli academia from there, claiming that it had expelled him from its ranks due to his views while violating freedom of expression.

Gelber sees Pappe more as a propagandist than a researcher and accuses him of using his status as a historian to spread pro-Palestinian propaganda while distorting facts, and contexts and defaming colleagues. "When I still had a dialogue with Pappe," he recounts, "he once explained to me that the kindergarten teacher had deceived them. In other words, he discovered during his academic studies that the Zionist narrative he learned in school was false. So he went to look for the right story. That supposedly motivated him. But as I have revealed, some of them also had political or ideological agendas that they brought from their home, where one of the parents could have been a Bundist, or assimilationist in central and western Europe, or was a communist in Eastern Europe."

Q: And the kindergarten teacher didn't deceive us?

"To some extent. The Zionist narrative has weaknesses, I don't buy it wholesale, but at the same time I try, and I hope I am successful, to reconcile it with the fact that I see myself as a Zionist, with an effort to write the truth even when it is not pleasant for the Zionist narrative. I think the central issue is whether the approaches of the 'new historians' were derived from research. People went to archives before them too, that is not something new. The only major novelty they brought was shifting the focus from Israel's victory to the suffering of the Palestinians. The anti-Zionism that was present in some of their research is not new either. It is as old as Zionism itself. This debate was usually conducted between Zionists in Israel and communists other Jews who were in exile. The 'new historians' opened an internal Israeli blue-and-white debate on these issues, one that did not exist here before."

Q: Benny Morris recently stated that he was going to publish a book showing that Jews committed more massacres of Arabs in 1948 than they perpetrated against us. What do you think?

"There might be a basis for this," replies Gelber. "The Arabs didn't have many opportunities to do so, and we had more. Second, regarding one of Benny's studies, which exposed several atrocities that the IDF committed in the years after the War of Independence, Meir Pa'il (IDF commander, military historian, and left-wing activist) once wrote that if this is what Benny managed to glean from among tens of thousands of incidents, it is a badge of honor for the IDF that there were only ten such cases. I agree with that statement."

Q: How do you view the conduct of the IDF in comparison to other armies in history?

"In general, such comparisons are misplaced. They are abstract and ignore the contexts of time and place. Three years after the end of World War II, no one in the young State of Israel thought that of all the people who suffered in the twentieth century, only the Palestinians were not allowed to suffer. Among the fighters were Holocaust survivors, people who had seen a lot of atrocities in their lives. Last year I was in Vietnam and visited the My Lai museum, the village where the Americans committed a famous massacre. One can also think of the Red Army arriving in Germany and carrying out one of the largest rape campaigns in history in order to harm the 'German racial purity,' or contemporary organizations like the Taliban or Al-Qaida, and understand the broader context. I don't agree with all kinds of clichés that 'the IDF is the most moral army in the world,' but at the same time one must understand the proportions, and we are definitely in a good place in the league of moral armies."

Q: What about the 1948 expulsion incidents, engraved in Palestinian memory?

"The expulsion cases by the IDF were relatively few. It was mainly about panic or escape before the IDF arrived. There are also cases that need to be understood more specifically. Take for example the flight of Lod's Arabs. After they understood what small force of the IDF conquered the area, they revolted, and the response to that was definitely brutal, albeit understandable in its context, also because of the proximity to the center of Jewish settlement in Tel Aviv and surroundings."

Q: So as a Zionist historian of the War of Independence, do you sleep well at night?

"Yes. What helps me is that this conflict was and still is a zero-sum game – either us or them. That solves most of the moral questions for me."

I ask Gelber whether the events of October 7 could bring about a Zionist transformation in Israeli academia, certainly in light of the sense of betrayal that many experienced from their colleagues abroad.

 "One must be careful not to make generalizations that are misplaced, as when they speak of the 'disillusioned phenomenon' too broadly. So there are some on the Left who have sobered up and there are those who have not. I do not read enough of 'Haaretz' [Israeli left-wing newspaper] to be informed," he quips. "The question is how long this will last. In general, I am skeptical, because the focus of Israeli academia is first and foremost the outside world. And the problem is not that most academics are ideologues, but that this all boils down to social norms and status. Someone who wants to get a sabbatical abroad, to be invited to a prestigious conference or to publish in a foreign journal – and the academy encourages and sometimes even conditions promotion on this — or to receive a research grant for which he needs overseas recommendations – depends on what they say about him abroad. And unfortunately, the Palestinian narrative is accepted almost without question in today's world."

Q: Prof. Moshe Zimmermann recently stated in Haaretz that October 7 proved that Zionism failed because it was created in order to prevent pogroms like this.

"To some extent he is right ... His mistake is that we are not talking about perpetual and total failure, but temporary failure that needs fixing. Now it's up to us to fix it."

Another debate Gelber conducted was with sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, who brought forward the birth of Palestinian nationalism. Gelber calls Kimmerling "my good friend", a surprising term given that in his writing he is not shy about sparring with him. "We studied together in high school at Ohel Shem in Ramat Gan, and we were good friends," he says. "He and others argued that an event that took place in 1834, in which peasants in the Galilee decided to rebel against the Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha, was in fact one of the seminal events in the birth of the Palestinian nationalist movement. But in truth, the focus of the rebellion was actually Syria and only its outskirts reached the Galilee, not to mention that the cause of the rebellion was the taxes Ibrahim Pasha levied on them, which were higher than what the Sultan had imposed before. This was a local, very specific event, centered on Syria and not 'Palestine', which did not exist then at all.

"My view is that one should see the 1919 Palestinian Congress, the first Palestinian Congress, as the seminal founding event of an Arab-Palestinian identity. Until then, the Arabs of Palestine saw it as southern Syria. After the French expelled King Faisal from Damascus in the summer of 1920, a representative of the Arabs of the Land of Israel in his court, Musa Kazem al-Husseini, arrived in Jerusalem, gathered the notables of the city and declared: 'Southern Syria is dead. Long live Palestine!' This was the beginning of the process of formation of an Arab-Palestinian national identity. It progressed relatively quickly and was the first to rebel against the colonial rule of the British Mandate and failed. That was its great mistake. This was a clash with a much larger force – and Palestinian society was destroyed.

"In the 1948 war t, the Palestinians were completely dependent on the Arab states, which looked down on them. They disappeared from the scene and became hyphenated Palestinians: Egyptian-Palestinians in Gaza, Jordanian-Palestinians in Jordan, and so on. Of course t, there were also Palestinian refugees, but there were no plain Palestinians without some hyphen. Only after the change created by the Six-Day War, the Egyptian and Jordanian Palestinians ceased to be Egyptians and Jordanians, and since they did not become Israeli-Palestinians like the Israeli Arabs they returned to being just Palestinians, a people who over the years detached themselves from the surrounding Arab states, and stood alone."

Q: In the Israeli Right there are theses according to which the tribal loyalty of the Palestinians is stronger than their nationalism, and therefore the idea of Palestinian cantons can be seen as an option for resolving the conflict, without giving them a state.

"That's not realistic. We should have realized this for a long time – we are unable to, and in my opinion should not, decide when another people becomes a people. This is being talked about in Gaza now, and it's just a waste of time in my view."

Q: Ten years ago you published an article about the missed opportunity after the Six-Day War, to encourage the Arabs of Gaza to emigrate. You wrote that not enough money was invested in this at the time, and Levi Eshkol hesitated. Maybe now there is another opportunity for this?

"Absolutely not. First of all, we are talking about completely different orders of magnitude. Today there are five times, if not more, Arabs than there were then in Gaza. Secondly, even then the talk was not about removing all the Arabs from Gaza. After the conquering of the strip t, there were about 400,000 Arabs there, a quarter of them Gazans who were residents of the place from the 18th century at the earliest, and the rest were 1948 refugees. Moshe Dayan said after the war that he wanted to move them out of there, not because he wanted to expel them but because they had nothing to do there. Today no one will accept them. Even then, the Jordanians quickly understood what those buses traveling in convoys to the Allenby Bridge in June-July 1968 were. At first t, they made it difficult for these buses to cross and this ultimately deteriorated when there was a bloody clash on the border after the Jordanians refused to let them cross.

"For 75 years the Arab world has been telling us, 'You shouldn't have been here in the first place, but right now there's nothing we can do about it and you're here, but don't expect us to accept your foreign, Western code of life.' In the West, if a person loses his home in war and at the end of it the house remains in enemy hands, he builds a new life elsewhere. In the Middle East, a war ends when the refugees return home. That's one message. The other, much worse message: 'Guys, you created the problem of '48, and you solve it. We won't help you with that.' Neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians will be willing to accept even one refugee from Gaza now."

Q: Some say that this war must end with Israel taking land, precisely because it is more important to them than anything.

"I think exactly the opposite: if you take land from them now, it will only increase their motivation to take it back in the future."

Q: How can Israeli society emerge stronger from this war?

"First, I admit I was surprised by the acts of heroism we saw on October 7. I did not expect your generation to perform such acts, and I think they too were surprised by it. Of course, older people also had their share of heroism that day.

"Second, one must remember: Historical research, for example on Egypt, teaches us not to trivialize what Arab leaders openly state. You have to listen to them. For example, Anwar Sadat spoke in one way to the West, another to the Russians, a third to his army, a fourth to his party, and a fifth in his public speeches. Looking back, the things closest to reality were actually in his public speeches.

"But the most important message, which I wrote already twenty years ago, is the importance of returning to the collectivist ethos. Many of our root problems stem from the fact that we replaced the pioneering ethos, the 'we' before the 'I', with the victim ethos of the Holocaust. We deliberately use the victimhood card ad nauseam and compare ourselves to other victims in the world. I'm not saying we should repeat past mistakes, but if we're talking about continuing life in the Middle East, it is impossible to live in this region as if we were in America's Midwest. It can only be done with mutual tolerance. I have friends from the most extreme Left, so what? When there is tolerance and respect, it's possible.

"I am non-religious Zionist, but when I see the collectivism of the religious, I would like the secular to adopt these traits as well – along with openness and interest in the wider world, which we once did more, and in recent years, due to various processes, we are increasingly closed in on ourselves. We have lived here for a hundred years, with internal rifts that are neither new nor easy. We have progressed not badly, although many of us are quick to lose hope. When you look at the Palestinians, on the one hand, t, they still have the hope of not seeing us here someday. On the other hand, would anyone want to switch places with them? We live relatively well, and that's no small feat."

[subroutine-fic]

IMPORTANT NOTE: "Subroutine" and Archive of Our Own

Subroutine and all its related stories are no longer available on Archive of Our Own. I will not passively or actively support the website's Zionist leanings on top of denying the active genocide (by calling those declarations an "antisemitic trope") going on in occupied Palestine.

I'd say that was a tough choice, but honestly?

I'm glad to be away from that cesspool.

I urge anyone to withhold monetary or publication support from the OTW/AO3. Name and shame them, because they've already done a bang up job of suppressing their actions, and uncritical AO3 supporters are complicit in helping them do that.

Remember to:

Listen to and amplify the voices of Palestinians on the ground (wizard_bisan1, motaz_azaiza, ismail.jood) or in the diaspora (iamsbeih, anat_international, byplestia).

Read about the history and culture of Palestine.

Support LGBT+ Palestinian voices pushing against US and Zionist peddling of Pinkwashing, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab stereotypes (of pre/post-9/11 xenophobia that allowed them to invade the Middle East and destroy millions of lives)

Boycott, Divest, and Sanction all parties and actors (lit., actors) involved with the genocide of Palestine, it's people, land, history, and culture. Yes, that means local, non-profits, or non-corps offering sympathy or monetary support of the Zionist movement and all forms of military or government bodies here in the states or abroad.

Do your research: visit the Palestine Archive, Palestine Academy, Decolonize Palestine.

Support organizations like Jewish Voices For Peace and Students for Justice for Palestine.

Call your representatives and demand they vote no on the numerous anti-Arab/Palestine bills or resolutions Zionist organizations such as the ADL and AIPAC are trying to push through. Keep calling them, make yourself a nuisance to these people.

Look into projects like Open Secrets, Olive Grove, Vote Socialist 2024, and in general, become more involved in your community and general elections. Look into what unions like United Auto Workers (UAW) and [Iowa City] Starbucks Workers United (SWU) are doing with regards to Palestine.

Look into supporting Unions working toward a General Strike.

Support anti-Zionist Jewish voices (sexualityscholar). They're gonna be your best source on why you shouldn't support a white nationalist movement that's, in part, responsible for the spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism across the world.

Support Pro-Palestine content creators (realgodivagoddess, jupiterbaal, blacademics) trying to raise awareness about the genocide going on right now, but avoid grifters like Shaun King (aka, Talcum X/Yasser Arafraud).

Support news publications like Aljazeera or Jewish Currents who are covering the ongoing genocide and pushing back against disinformation and misinformation peddled by ADL and AIPAC.

Avoid Zionist websites like Facts for Peace and Jewbelong (dot org). - Honestly, start using adblockers to avoid being blasted by Zionist ads on YouTube, and etc.

Download the No Thanks app, and use bdnaash to avoid Pro-Zionist brands.

Be wary of/avoid Washington Post/Times, LA Times, BBC, Sky News, the Guardian, ABC News, WBAL CH11, JZ13, CNN, Fox News (srsly), or any other legacy news org. They are actively aiding in the misinformation and disinformation campaign against the Palestinians, and have fired news anchors or journalists questioning the Zionist agenda.

Watch Israelism, Tantura, and Palestinian cinema/films (GQME, PC).

Read the Goldstone Report, IMEU article on broken ceasefires, amnesty internationals report of illegal settlements in Palestine

Look into ongoing genocides or destabilization efforts in Haiti (bertrhude, flowerboyserge), Sudan (bsonblast), Lebanon (meriam awada), Syria (AJ), the Democratic Republic of Congo (sincerelysparrow), Yemen (AJ), etc., going across the Global South. Look at who the common actors are, who benefits from this chaos.

Archive and save all information about this current genocide and cultural history of Palestine. Because they will be trying to rewrite the story, and are doing it as we speak.

There are some just a few of the things you can do to support Palestine and support your own liberation from systems that have brought most of to the brink of poverty, zero job security, lack of proper healthcare, the destruction of our education system, erosion of free speech, and houselessness.

Happy New Year.

[paopuofhearts]

Mmmm I see a lot of interesting tags as people start following me for posting about being Native and Jewish when I discuss the intersectionality of these things.

So I'm just gonna. Like. Say my stance, because some of y'all are (potentially) really pushing some hardcore with some shit that goes directly against what I said in those posts.

Palestine is suffering through genocide and ethnic cleansing, as defined by the UN. Genocide is defined as "the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part... killing members of a group, causing serious harm to a group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part" (alongside measures that impact children and limit the future of said group). That is a non-negotiable fact.

Hamas is a terrorist group. Terrorism is defined based only upon whether or not civilians are targeted. In this, plenty of nations and revolutionary groups easily fall under the label of terrorism. Hamas is not special in this regard. They are not decolonizing, and to say so is a major slap in the face to decolonial efforts.

*I would also add that Israel, by definition, also employs terrorist tactics, and could therefore be considered a terrorist nation. They do target civilians, and that's literally all terrorism as a tactic is. Terrorism becomes a moot point when both sides do the same thing to each other.

*I would to do a whole aside into the binary belief that's been pushed recently that decolonization must be violent because colonization is violent: this is inherently harmful and reductionist, because it demands that an oppressed group must act in the same way as their oppressors for freedom. Fuck that.

Israel as a modern day nation is built on the methodology and structure of settler-colonialism. Settler-colonialism is not a Western, European, or White concept: it is only related to Western, European, and White identity because it has been perpetuated the most by these (overlapping) groups. It was also literally stated by people who pushed the Zionist Movement (Herzl) that Israel as a modern nation would be a settler-colonial state. This can be considered what China has done to Tibet, or what Japan did during WW2.

The reason I say it is a settler-colonial methodology and structure, as opposed to the other definition that it must be a foreign entity taking over an indigenous entity as noted in the examples above (and this is why people need to agree on how they use terminology, because these kinds of words may have different definitions that can completely change your meaning), is because Jewish people are not foreign, they are indigenous. Judaism is directly tied to the land in multiple layered ways; you cannot separate it, even in diaspora.

*As a side note, this also applies to Zionism itself: it is a concept and a movement in which definitions may have some similarities but are very different. Zionism as a concept can mean two things (potentially three, but let's stick with two) from my understanding: seeing Jewish people in diaspora as their own autonomous group, similar to how Natives have tribal sovereignty - or simply meaning Jewish people have the right to return to the land they were forced into diaspora from in some way, potentially much like the Native Land Back movement where this does not necessarily mean completely taking over the land itself, but having access to it. Zionism as a movement is what created Israel as a modern nation state through the methodology and structure of settler-colonialism. To me, Israel may have originated as a promise for this, but it is not how to go about this; Israel is Not Okay in how it's going about this, and is no longer representative of Zionism in that regard (if it ever was to begin with, because Settler Colonialism is wrong; there are other ways to achieve what Zionism as a concept aimed for, and a Settler Colonial Nation State is Not It). Learning to understand how the term is being used is incredibly important, because it is not a one definition term, same as settler-colonialism.

So here's a fun fact that involves all these points: oppressed minorities that experience colonization and genocide are not immune to committing colonization and genocide against others - this is literally something any group can do to another group if they have resources to do it. This happened during the Rwandan Genocide, this happened during the Cambodian Genocide, this happens even today with plenty of other nonWestern, nonEuropean, nonWhite groups towards other nonWestern, nonEuropean, nonWhite groups. This is not specially reserved for only people within power against people without power. In fact, it's one of the remaining vestiges of leveraging what's left of Western, European, White imperialism: pitting oppressed minorities against each other to extract resources and influence by perpetuating conflict.

Why else is the US so involved in this conflict? Why else are so many nations engaged with trying to benefit from a zero-sum game where one side can be a sole victor instead of trying to work out other options? (Especially when people living through this have done and are doing the work of building bridges to support each other?)

Anyway. Palestine deserves to be its own nation once more. Zionism as a concept is something I support because Jewish people were forced into diaspora and forced from the land they are connected to. Realistically, Israel isn't going anywhere, but allowing a nation to actively and openly commit genocide and ethnic cleansing is horrific and terrible, and should never be supported.

These are all things that can coexist, and if you cannot comprehend that or disagree, potentially due to lack of understanding (which I find disappointing, as that implies a refusal to use terms correctly simply because they do not jive with the argument you want to center) or emotional reactionism (which I find completely fair, as this is a traumatic issue and affinity grouping is sometimes necessary for mental health), I would suggest unfollowing me.

At any rate, as I've said before: support Palestine without shoveling antisemitic propaganda by decentering the actual issues or erasing actual support. That's all.

[cesareeborgia]

Arabs are not indigenous to “Palestine”. Israel is the traditional Jewish homeland; Zionism is the original Land Back/decolonization movement. Cope and seethe.

go open a book and educate yourself.

literally supporting a genocide. disgusting.

[quranwithsehar]

Chapter 1: The Stolen Homeland

Once upon a time, there was a land called Palestine, where the native Palestinians lived for generations. But then, a group called the Zionists had a big idea. They wanted a place for the Jewish people to call home. So, without asking the Palestinians, the British, who were in charge of Palestine at the time, decided to give a chunk of the land to the Zionists.

This all happened before 1948, and it was part of something called the Zionist movement. The Western countries, like the United States and Europe, supported and gave a lot of money to make this idea come true. They wanted to create a new country called Israel.

But, here's the catch - the land they wanted wasn't empty. It was full of Palestinians. So, in 1948, more than 800,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes. Some were killed, and others were made to go away. This terrible event is known as the Nakba, which means "catastrophe."

Now, fast forward to today. Israel is still taking more land from the Palestinians, and it's being done in a very harsh way called apartheid. Apartheid is a system that keeps one group of people in power and treats another group unfairly. In this case, Israel controls everything, and the Palestinians have limited rights and freedoms.

There are different groups of Palestinians, like those in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, "Israeli" territories, and those in exile. Each group has different levels of freedom. Sadly, there are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the world, and many of them are not allowed to go back home.

Now, let's look at the pieces of this apartheid puzzle. There are over 700 checkpoints that make it hard for Palestinians to move around. Israel keeps taking more land, building settlements, and even destroying homes. They use their military to control and scare people. Palestinians also face restrictions on using water and electricity.

The Palestinians have a simple wish - freedom through decolonization. They want their land back, all of it.

And so, the struggle for justice and freedom continues in the land of Palestine 🇵🇸

[crowlore]

i do strongly believe that many of the white liberal americans we've seen on this site willingly buying into anti-palestinian rhetoric for the sake of "nuance" do so because they aren't willing to reckon with the present reality that they are settler citizens of a colonialist nation. they see palestine fighting back and they shake in their boots at the thought of decolonization personally affecting their peaceful lives on stolen land. let me be clear: that's a coward's reaction. settler occupation is settler occupation regardless of where it's happening and who's doing the oppression. if you can acknowledge us colonization of turtle island as genocide then you can do the same for what israel is doing in palestine. people that condemn palestinians for not rolling over and being good victims are the exact same kind of people who post something performatively supportive on indigenous peoples day despite being scared of the land back movement