I was raised reform Jewish and am half Jewish by family history. I have ancestors who were victims of the pogroms in the Russian pale of settlement – specifically, all four of my great-grandparents on my father’s side, along with their parents (my great-great-grandparents). When they were children their families fled and eventually resettled in the USA.
There is another place that they could have gone instead: Palestine. At that time it was still part of the Ottoman Empire, and some of the displaced Jews of that time did elect to go to Palestine. As it happens, my ancestors chose the US, but they could have gone to Palestine if they’d wanted to.
The fashionable posture on the left to take towards Israeli Jews recently has basically been a combination of glibness and vitriolic hatred, often reaching the point of wishing death upon them (examples: 1 2). I don’t know… I just can’t really feel good about stuff like that. The fact that my family ended up in the US and not Palestine is really just a quirk of fate. I don’t think that my ancestors were, like, morally better people for choosing the US over Ottoman-era Palestine. (And given the recent uptick in “Turtle Island” discourse, it seems like a fair number of leftists believe my ancestors shouldn’t have been allowed to resettle in the US either.)
I think that Zionism (with the possible exception of cultural Zionism) has generally been a noxious idea throughout its history. I don’t think the state of Israel should continue to exist as it is currently constituted, and I think the near-ubiquitous racism among Israelis is shameful. But I also don’t think that every Jewish person who moved to Palestine in the last 150 years was a bad person for doing that, and I’m not prepared to circle-jerk over the deaths of people that I have a fair amount in common with historically.
Am I missing something? Have I been hoodwinked by Zionist propaganda?
Were nazis bad for living in Germany during the 30s-40s? No
Nazis were bad for being nazis. And deserved to be either radically reeducated or shot.
That’s it.
Fuck Israelis for engaging in a genocidal settler project to exterminate Palestinians, and fuck my ancestors for engaging in a genocidal settler project to exterminate indigenous North Americans.
And fuck me for benefiting from it. /gen
Family members can be bad people, it’s not hard to criticize them. If your family had gone to Israel they absolutely would deserve the criticism.
You’re average Israeli is more or less irrelevant. Material interests fuel bourgeoisie governments, not public support. Hating individual Israeli citizens doesn’t accomplish anything one way or another in terms of resisting genocide.
Hey quick question, if the Israelis weren’t on indigenous land using billions of dollars to do a genocide would people still feel violence is appropriate? I abhor violence, but I could never see someone backed into a corner by violent, cackling racists with guns having seen their friends & family butchered and tell them to turn the other cheek. I could never see the Yemeni forces intervene in a scared teenager’s surefire demise, tell them “you are not alone,” and think they’re the villains. It’s a grizzly, heartbreaking situation, but a riot is the language of the unheard. It is on the Zionists, the settlers, to cease the violence, not the other way around. Every bit of violence against an illegal occupation is legal as far as international law is concerned. It’s the finding out part of fucking around and finding out.
yes it is read fucking settlers
