If you are anti-Zionist, what do you think Israel should do?

[Poudretteite]

Should Israel open its borders? Be given back to the Palestinian people? Where should the Jewish people go? What about the high risk of genocide?

Interested to hear as many people over the last few days have said they are anti-Zionist and that it's different to antisemitism.

You do realise that you're doing precisely what you complain about?

Posters, including myself, post very clear rebuttals and explanations which are then totally ignored while people repeat their points in lengthy copy and pastes. That is not dialogue. There is also a great deal of misinformation being shared, which is a significant problem when it's already been pulled apart earlier on this thread.

In fact here is quite an interesting series of tweets about academics deliberately submitting ludicrous studies, and being taken perfectly seriously:

https://twitter.com/DailySignal/status/1250451101612154882

There is also a huge anti-semitic and anti-Israel bias in academia. I had a professor refer to me as 'The Jew' during my PhD and tell me anti-semitism didn't exist. It was harrowing. I reported it, and no one did anything at all, other than say they couldn't 'police language'. This extends to publishing too. Results that show Israel in a positive light do not do well with many journals.

I'm really curious why you posted this? Do you think the Israel police force are terrorists?

@Asthebellcurves unfortunately that doesn't surprise me. Academia seems to be ground zero for a number of absolutely ludicrous and harmful ideas currently. I'm so sorry you had to experience that and that you received no support. I think we can both guess that they'd have been happy enough to police language had it related to a group deemed "worthy".

Sigh, I have posted more than that. The academic papers are not arguing are they citizens or not. It is stated as established fact a fact that is corroborated by my earlier quotes from and links to Wikipedia.

You do realise that you're doing precisely what you complain about?
**
Posters, including myself, post very clear rebuttals and explanations which are then totally ignored while people repeat their points in lengthy copy and pastes. That is not dialogue. There is also a great deal of misinformation being shared, which is a significant problem when it's already been pulled apart earlier on this thread

I’ve been on this thread since the beginning* and I can’t think *of any argument or POV that’s been “pulled apart”.
As for people ignoring your arguments and repeating their own, well, they probably think the same about you.
I think there has been some good dialogue on this thread (better than the last one I was on anyway)

If you have any copy and pastes or links to sources you’d like to share that support your rebuttals please do so. I do adjust my opinion if and when new evidence comes to light.

Everything I have posted has been published by reputable sources. I have cut and paste specifically so that I am not adding bias by paraphrasing.

Sigh, I have posted more than that. The academic papers are not arguing are they citizens or not. It is stated as established fact a fact that is corroborated by my earlier quotes from and links to Wikipedia.

You'll need to relink the wiki page that makes such an assertion.

Rabbi tax was also applied to other nations and was also called papas tax (for greek orthodox) for info and the same thing was applied to other religions. Obviously a bad thing but I'm trying to point out that there was no specific, targeted discrimination against Jews, as a poster tried to imply. And, when I said temple, I didn't mean "the temple". Sigh. If there was a Jewish Arabic fight somewhere in the empire they wouldn't support Arabs automatically. Please stop trying to make it into ottomans oppressing Jews, this certainly wasn't the case, even in 1600s. In fact the sultan invited Jews who were expelled from Spain into ottoman empire!

Look, ottomans did many bad things, but discriminating against Jews, gettoing them wasn't one of them. Ottomans in fact liked the Jews more than the Arabs, and this is evident by the large numbers of Jews in high ranked positions throughout the history of the empire. Jews were called the loyal folk whereas Arabs were nicknamed the backstabbers. Reality of relations is far more complicated and nuanced than a simplistic Muslim vs Jewish thing for ottomans, because ottomans weren't Arabs, ethically or culturally. I think Turks were one of the first nations to recognise and support Israel.

The rates were also higher for Jewish people. I just don't really understand why the argument of 'Well, the Ottomans were nicer colonisers than everyone else' is relevant here. Many anti-semites have benefitted from Jewish expertise, while still discriminating at large. Why continue to deny the bulk of the discrimination existed?

@RedCrossSupporter

Citizenship also matters in regards to apartheid as you cannot have an apartheid situation when it is two seperate nation states.

This is what I'm struggling to understand. Gaza has their own leadership and that leadership doesn't recognise Israel. How on earth can that be apartheid?

Sorry, a lot of this is very much not true. Things varied from country to country and from data to date but Jews were in subordinate status and many of the things you just said never happened, happened routinely. There were also many massacres and killing and violence was fairly routine.

Quite. Unless those people were fully educated on the history and surrounding conditions, it would be impossible to make a distinction.

Personal bias also plays a role. I have read the reports which consider that because Jews have a right of return and Muslims don't, this is considered apartheid as it's different rights under law. Which is ridiculous. It's entire existence is to be a state for Jewish people all over the world to come.

No. the pillars are only met if you completely misunderstand the facts of the situation or wilfully ignore them.

Many anti-semites have benefitted from Jewish expertise, while still discriminating at large.

Ottomans weren't anti semites and their descendants aren't either. They weren't discriminatory to Jews,. I'm really not sure why I ended up in this Internet rabbit hole, I had come in the first place to give sympathies and support, then got irritated to see an ignorant post spitting out some bs about different coloured clothing which is so not what ottomans would've stood for. Why would anyone distort history and sow hatred when the opposite was true and Turks were friends.. Of course ottomans (and the world) benefitted from Jewish expertise and thats part of the reason they liked them so much. From an ottoman point of view Jews in Constantinopole were well respected and were ottomans, regardless of whatever religion they believed in. Jews in levant/north africa lands being discriminated by Arabs would've been some far away issue, and they'd have done what they could by sending troops to keep peace, probably not that effectively, but they'd certainly not support oppressing Arabs.

My grandparents were in dhimmi status in 1941! And you are truly misrepresenting things. They lived in awful circumstances. And that is still largely the case for minorities in the Arab world. The kurds for example are constantly massacred, made sex slaves or fed contraceptives so they can't breed. Even in the most "modern" Muslim states like Dubai, personals such as Indians and Bangladeshis are treated like sub class human beings. This is the way things are unfortunately.

I think many want to pretend Jews always lived in peace in the Muslim world. What they mean really is: they lived in peace when they were happy to be subjugated, mistreated, denied equal right and killed at the drop of a hat and the minute they dared ask for equality everyone considered this monstruous.

Sorry it keeps refreshing before I can post links

”The UNRWA estimated that 720,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War,[27] with only 170,000 remaining in Israel following its establishment. Until the Citizenship Law was enacted in 1952, all of these individuals were stateless.”- So these Palestinian Arabs who never left Israel became citizens in 1952. They were then further displaced and ended up in Gaza or West Bank…but were not stripped of their citizenship.

In addition to this group
”Palestinians who returned to their homes in Israel after the war did not satisfy the conditions for citizenship under the 1952 law. This class of residents continued living in Israel but held no citizenship or residence status. A 1960 Supreme Court ruling partially addressed this by allowing a looser interpretation of the residential requirements; individuals who had permission to temporarily leave Israel during or shortly after the conflict qualified for citizenship, despite their gap in residence. The Knesset amended the Citizenship Law in 1980 to fully resolve statelessness for this group of residents; all Arab residents who had been living in Israel before 1948 were granted citizenship regardless of their eligibility under the 1952 residence requirements, along with their children.”

So all Palestinians who fled the country but returned, and their children were granted citizenship in 1980.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_citizenship_law

The approximately 60% of Gaza residents are refugees per UNRWA- Palestinian refugee excludes internally displaced Palestinians from Israel. This is limited to the refugees from the 1948-1950 expulsions and their descendants. The remaining 40% would therefore predominately be Arab Israeli citizens pushed out of their homes to the refugee camps in Gaza post the 1948-1952 clearances and so are still Israeli citizens or should be.

Which is why I said a little under half of Gaza residents are Israeli citizens.

If Israel has stripped them of citizenship while forcibly moving them out of Israel, that is exactly what S. Africa did under apartheid and is one more facet as to why experts and the UN consider the Palestinian Territories to be apartheid. It also makes them stateless which is a violation of international law.

@1415isgreat
"Valid point indeed. So sorry, where do you suggest the Palestinians go then?"

I suggest they stay in their land. Gaza and the West Bank. Or, of course, move somewhere else if any individuals would like to and have the opportunity to do so. I would like Israel to stop building more settlements and to get rid of the more recent ones.

I don't think they should be automatically given a right to live in Israel but I have no problem with them having their own state. In fact, I want them to have their own state. A state they can be proud of, where they can build proper infrastructure and hopefully one day lead peaceful lives without Hamas using them as human shields. I want them all to have their very own passports so they can go travelling if they so will! See the world. Be happy and prosperous.

I want peace, but not at the cost of losing Israel. No one needs to leave. We just need to stop killing eachother.

My big takeaway from all these conversations is two key problems I have identified:

ANTI ZIONISM
To have an opinion on something, you really need to understand it. And I have come away from these threads feeling most people don't. Starting with the obvious, a fair few people who were declaring themselves "anti zionist" turned out to be simply "anti the current Israeli governments actions". Which is not even close to the same thing.

To have a fully informed opinion on this, I think you'd need a nuanced understanding of the full history. I think you'd need a nuanced understanding of the different ways of life in the Middle East and how minorities live and continue to. I think you'd also need an understanding of antisemitism and how anti zionism has become a vehicle for that to be expressed.

These threads have all been full of people posting false information, or information which is so heavily biased that it would be fairly useless. Having studied history for 20 years, you will always get conflicting accounts and there's a degree of hypothesis involved where things will be heated debates - but you don't usually get people saying things which are just completely not true.

So my conclusion generally is that the majority of people don't fully understand enough of the information to even be anti zionist in the first place, and a larger number probably haven't through through or understood what it means. So maybe it's a shame people feel so confident in throwing the term around. It's a shame Jews have to deal with that.

ANTISEMITISM

Similarly, these threads have confirmed what I already knew. The vast majority of people don't understand antisemitism, haven't bothered to read or understand the definition and will engage in it either without knowing or without caring. They will even be confident enough to tell Jews they have it wrong. It's a kind of collective arrogance that's quite mind blowing.

All of this is fairly reflective of my experiences on Twitter or IRL - so I suppose it might be a good reflection of the state of the country. We have a lot of people with very strong opinions on things they haven't taken the time to really understand.

What that is referring to is the Arab Israelis who do hold Israeli citizenship and live within Isreal though. They are not treated as second class citizens nor do they live under apartheid conditions.

Further reading of the link details how it was in fact Jordan who made many Palestinians stateless in 1998 when they stripped them of citizenship.

So in summary in 1980 Israel in fact resolved the issue of statelessness of Arabs within it's borders and it was Jordan who eight years later made people stateless.

If only you were PM right now.

blaming, violence and oppression is not the way forward.

jews deserve their own homeland and Palestine needs to be safe and decolonised.

It’s not me deciding this, it’s the international consensus that the situation meets the definition of apartheid. The UN, Human Rights organisations, and international experts including ones who lived under apartheid in S Africa have said that it is. I can’t believe how you think you know better than all these experts. It’s truly shocking to me.

““There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”
and
“Lynk said a number of recent reports and opinions issued by respected Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations have come to the same conclusion on the practice of apartheid by Israel. He added that leading international personalities – including former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor and former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair – have also all called this apartheid.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

I wouldn't get too excited about ANC politicians' opinions - they back Hamas.

Yes, but again the Israeli-Arab citizens have been subjected to forced removals from Israel continuously over the decades, and these make up the rest of Gaza’s residents.