Can you be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic?

So you are against Mahmoud Abbas and his party for not condemning the massacre, mass-kidnapping, maiming, raping and mass-displacement of Israelis? I wish more people were brave enough to admit that, it would greatly increase the chances of peace if more people were willing to see both sides.

On the same vein, I haven't seen anyone on here who wants Palestine to be occupied and supports illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. People seem to assume that everyone who speaks in the support of Israel continuing to exist (Zionism) are genocidal racists.

Actually I have seen some posters try to argue that Israel may as well keep the land it’s settled on or that Israel was meant to get the West Bank/Gaza anyway, and the Arabs were meant to go to what is now Jordon, or that Palestine never existed so forget about it.

That said I have also seen a lot of pro Israelis criticising the settlers and literally none vouching for Netanyahu.

You might want to look at what happened to the Sudeten Germans, who lost almost everything they owned. Likewise the Jews expelled from the Arab countries.

I’m anti any government, group, movement, or geopolitical ideology that believes butchering one person, let alone 25,000 (and counting), even at the cost of losing hostages, is acceptable.
It is wholly unjustifiable and unacceptable and if you’re down with this and hollering ‘they started it’, then you need to ask yourself why a wholesale slaughter of the innocent rests easy on your conscience.

I completely agree etmoi and tbh I'm pretty annoyed at myself for having taken the bait and jumped in on this thread.

On the thread about the South African court case on this board, someone asked why more of what they called the "pro Israel posters" weren't there giving their opinion. Well guess what folks, when you twist people's words, accuse them of supporting genocide and generally jump on everything they say, you will find that they don't really feel like engaging with you.

Yes, it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic.

There are 700k settlers in the West Bank that call themselves Zionists and believe that they have the right to take what they call Judea and Samaria because 2000 years ago some of their ancestors may have lived there. They use force to drive out the 2m Palestinians who do live there. These settlements are funded and supported by the Israeli government and if they kill Palestinians, no action is taken. The aim is to change the demographics of the West Bank so that it becomes Jewish.

These West Bank settlers are allowed to vote in the Israeli elections but only if they are Jewish. If they are not Jewish, the West Bank inhabitants have no such right. Similarly, if they are Jewish they can move and live in Israel proper, but Palestinians from the West Bank have no such right.

If Palestinians from the West Bank object to any of this, or seek to defend themselves against being expelled by force from their villages by armed settlers then they are derided as savages, which the Israeli state then uses to justify taking more land.

This is exactly how America was settled - moving in, taking land and then deriding the native Americans as savages if they resisted at all. And then using that as an excuse to take more land and push ever further West.

I totally abhor prejudice against anyone for their religion or ethnicity but I abhor the actions of the West Bank Zionists.

It really is very wearing to try and debate with people who twist your words and insist you have said things that you demonstrably haven't

Yup, that and being 'Jewsplained' about what does and doesn't constitute antisemitism. There's been so many threads like this since October that I'm really questioning the OP's motives for starting this one.

Completely agree with all of this. Real shame your DH, and people like him, are not in charge, of both sides.

I'm not religious and tbh have quite a dim view of religion (all of them). I do wonder how much religion, (above money, which is usually, scratch the surface, the bottom line of any conflict) is actually the thing poisoning the future (and past) in the region. I'm from a part Jewish family and, at the risk of a massive clichéd, one of my best friends is Palestinian (west bank) both in the UK. We are both bacon eating atheists though and I wonder if our friendship would be possible if we weren't. We're both horrified by the acts of both Hamas are Israel as well.

No one on here is saying it is OK. You're just putting words in people's mouths. I'm against the war in Gaza and have been right from the start. I've been against many Israeli policies for most of my adult life and I think what's been happening currently in Gaza is a war crime. But I don't think it's genocide or intentional ethnic cleansing for instance. And it is in NO WAY comparable to the Holocaust - so clearly your history lecturers didn't do a very good job. So I refer you again to the Holocaust Educational Trust's resources.

This is not an "established" definition - it's a "working" definition that the IHRC would like to put forward. There is currently no universally binding definition of antisemitism.

Nor have I said anywhere that criticism is antisemitism. In fact if you read one of my earlier posts on this very thread I said the exact opposite.

It really is very wearing to try and debate with people who twist your words and insist you have said things that you demonstrably haven't.

I don't know if you are deliberately twisting my words or just having difficulty reading them. At no point have I said that it is OK to kill large numbers of people.

It's too easy to deflect any criticism as antisemitism. It's not. People are dying. It's wrong.

I'm a history graduate. So one state killing 25,000 from another state is ok?
It's not antisemitic to say that one state shouldn't kill 25,000 from another.

Does anyone know of any other word from any minority that people are ok with having been misappropriated? Or is it just Zionism that people are ok with misappropriating while lecturing the minority whose word it is on what it actually means?

How safe do the 2 million in Gaza feel?
And it makes us all unsafe. When humans hurt other humans no one is safe.

I think there are all sorts of historical events that you could draw comparisons with in relation to the current conflict - the bombing of Dresden, for example. Or the second Iraq war. Neither are perfect comparisons because the context and the way those things played out were of course completely different.

I do think it's antisemitic to compare Israelis to Nazis and indeed this is part of the established definition of antisemitism: https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism

But as a history graduate what bugs me more than that is that it's simply inaccurate.

@etmoiandme it really is a version of it. They can't leave Gaza. Only 50% have jobs. Gaza is one huge camp. 1 million under 18 without much prospect of a job.
What is likely to happen? Nothing good. This is not ok. It's really not.
I can't talk about this anymore it's too horrible.

I think it is entirely legitimate to draw comparisons between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis.

No, it really isn't OK FFS!

@Echobelly I agree with a lot of your points but - you might feel safe, and I feel safe, but there's a lot of Jews in the UK that increasingly don't and I think with very good reason.

@0palfrootee - I disagree. I think it is entirely legitimate to draw comparisons between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis. If you're not Jewish it needs to be handled with care - for example I don't think one should associate Jewish/Israeli symbols with swastikas on protest placards as that's needlessly alienating and with no further context is likely to offend.

But in conversation where there's back and forth it is a sadly legitimate comparison and one that shames Israel. Its actions in Gaza betrays the memory of my grandfather's family who died in the Holocaust.

1269 people were killed on Oct 7th
Since then 25,000 were killed in Gaza. 65,000 wounded.

I'm Jewish and view is Zionism is a bit of a moot point really, seeing as there is a Jewish state. I guess I'm for it being maintained (albeit within 1948 borders) not because I feel there has to be a Jewish state - I think today there are plenty of places, such as the UK, that are safe for Jews - but because it is there and there'd be no way to disestablish it safely and also it would be a bit of an act of vandalism because of itself, Israel is a vibrant, cultured, creative country that has a lot to offer the world.

I also think Israel's treatment of Palestinians is unconscionable, what they are doing in Gaza now is ethnic cleansing and sheer revenge against all Gazans. There should be a safe, secure Palestinian State, and anywhere seized after 1948 should be given back to it - I quite like my DH's idea of a federated Israel-Palestine government with responsibilities to one another and combined rule of Jerusalem. Will never happen though.

I think antizionism can be about anticolonialism rather than antisemitism, but it certainly can be antisemitism as well. It would be a different matter if Jewish people had established Israel in 1948 with an invasion, you'd have a grounds for saying, well the Jews should get out they had no right to take it by force. But the difficulty is that is was granted by a third party colonial power, Britain, after an absolutely unprecedented situation whereby countless Jews were unable, or understandably, unwilling, to return home after their gentile neighbours had waved them and their families away to their deaths in Nazi camps. So it's not really the Jewish population's 'fault' that it's there and you can't just go 'Right, pack up, sorry, shouldn't have given it to you in the first place, go live somewhere else'.

You guys think it's all ok.

Have you got an example of someone saying this?