Some really twisted reasoning here, in an effort to argue that anti-Zionism = "antisemitism":
Quote:
But antisemitism is a shape-shifting virus, which has persisted over centuries and across cultures and political systems because it is able to attach itself to the reigning (or at least fashionable) convictions of the day. It also casts a spell on leading members of the thinking class, from Martin Luther to Karl Marx to T.S. Eliot to Alice Walker. People attracted to grand theories of everything, as intellectuals often are, tend to gravitate toward singular causes, sweeping solutions, unsuspected “facts” and decisive explanations.
A century ago, the grand theories were about the evils of capitalism or the hierarchies of race — and Jews wound up on the wrong end of both theories. Today, the grand theory concerns so-called settler colonialism. Not surprisingly, Jews got the short end of this stick, too.
Settler colonialism is not a "grand theory of everything." It is a specific category of behaviors.
Quote:
Zionism, which since the days of the Maccabees has been the most enduring anticolonial struggle in history, is now the epitome of what college activists seem to think is colonialism, the only solution to which is its eradication.
The situation of Israel/Palestine today is very different from the situation of Judaea in the days of the Maccabees. The Maccabean revolt was indeed an anti-colonial struggle. The behavior of the state of Israel today is very different.
Things in Israel/Palestine today could have been very different from today's state of Israel if, for example, Jews had gradually immigrated to Palestine over a period of centuries, one small group at a time, gradually becoming a majority,
without evicting people who were already there. Had
that happened, then the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 might have been an act of anti-colonialism rather than an act of colonialism.
For more about this issue, see the separate thread
Israel/Palestine and settler-colonialism.
I agree that there is a real
danger of anti-Zionism turning into bigotry against Jews. And I agree that it's important to counteract the latter -- but NOT by obfuscating the situation in Israel/Palestine.
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05 Oct 2024, 8:10 am
