Is it possible for someone to not be actively anti-something, or the lack if being so will qualify them as pro-something?
I mean OP called Sanders anti-Zionist. He’s certainly not that. Bernie has also outright stated that he supports Israel. I will admit that I may be slightly overstating the case to say that he’s incontrovertibly a Zionist, but he at least may be from his public statements.
Israel is a lot like the Nazis. If you are not against the Nazis you are in favor of the Nazis. Bernie defending israel at the start of their Genocide for multiple months is surely not a great look. Even now Bernie has not called it a Genocide.
While Mr. Sanders was one of the first members of Congress to call for a humanitarian pause in the war amid a catastrophic civilian death toll in Gaza caused by Israel’s military offensive, he has rejected calls for a permanent cease-fire. Mr. Sanders, an independent, caucuses with Democrats.
He also reiterated his call for conditions on military aid to Israel and emphasized that Hamas was not a trustworthy negotiating partner in considering a permanent cease-fire.
“Biggest political disappointment of our generation,” Briahna Joy Gray, the national press secretary for Mr. Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, wrote about him on X.
Bernie is certainly not a prime target for someone that opposes israel but he is a Zionist.
So being a Zionist is just supporting Israel’s existence now? That’s a really really low bar, and what is your solution to these “Zionists”, the destruction of Israel?
Sure seems that way from their account history. Dude is coming just short of claiming Israel is a US colony and shouldn’t exist.
That has always been the meaning of the word Zionist:
Following the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.
The key phrase is “as a Jewish state” which is what it is. It’s declaration of independence states as much.
The term Jewish state has been in common usage in the media since the establishment of Israel, and the term has also been used interchangeably with Israel. George W. Bush used the term in his speeches and in an exchange of letters with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2004.[5] Barack Obama has also used the phrase, for instance in a speech in September 2010 to the United Nations General Assembly.[6] The Israeli government under prime minister Ehud Olmert made the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by the State of Palestine a pre-condition in the peace negotiations,[7] as did the government of his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu. (Wikipedia)
On 19 July 2018, with a vote of 62 to 55 (2 abstained), the Knesset adopted a new Basic Law that defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. (Wikipedia)
The concept of a national homeland for the Jewish people is enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel’s public and national institutions. The concept was adopted in the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 as the objective of the establishment of modern Israel. The principle was given legal effect in the Law of Return, which was passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, and stated: “Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.”[17] (Wikipedia)
A central issue in the Israel-Palestine debate is the Right of Return:
the principle that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees (c. 30,000 to 50,000 people still alive as of 2012)[3][4] and their descendants (c. 5 million people as of 2012),[3] have a right to return and a right to the property they themselves or their forebears left behind or were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories (both formerly part of the British Mandate of Palestine) during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (a result of the 1948 Palestine war) and the 1967 Six-Day War.
…
Opponents of the right of return hold that it is an unrealistic demand with no basis in international law and that if Israel were to absorb approximately five million Palestinians with an already existing large Arab population, it would lead to the demise of the Jewish state.[8]
So yes, opponents of Zionism call for the abolition of Israel as a Jewish state and the formation of a egalitarian state for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, or creed or at the least the creation of an independent Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel. But anti-Zionists do not support the Israel of today which is explicitly a Jewish ethno-state.
I mean OP called Sanders anti-Zionist. He’s certainly not that. Bernie has also outright stated that he supports Israel. I will admit that I may be slightly overstating the case to say that he’s incontrovertibly a Zionist, but he at least may be from his public statements.
