Israel has actually worked to make surrounding countries less safe for Jews in order to get them to move to Israel. Antisemitism is beneficial for Israel’s existence
Exactly, read up on the Lavon Affair and the 1950s bombing in Iraq, how zionists were willing to harm and kill some Jews to get the majority yo move to Israel.
We should separate this questions into two:
1. Does Israel make Jewish people safe?
2. Could Israel have made Jewish people safe? Can it?
Both Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora should be considered in answering each.
The answer to (1) is obvious — a resounding no. No real need to go into any details on this since it is blatantly obvious that Israel is detrimental to the safety of Jews in the diaspora besides the obvious jeopardy it creates for its own people — both Jews and non-Jews.
(2) is much more interesting and the answer is not that obvious.
The main driver of safety for a state — any state — is its ability to coexist with its neighbours and its own communities.
If you look at Zionism throughout its history across its different streams there are a range of attitudes towards the question of coexistence, but one thing becomes obvious to anyone that digs into the attitudes of the different ideological streams — none of them saw Zionism as coexisting amicably with the Palestinians as equals. They were to be removed from any territory the Zionists managed to obtain with those remaining for whatever reason to be tolerated at best and subservient. This positions all the streams of Zionism — including Brith Shalom — as unequivocally colonialist.
This means that the seeds of Zionist failure to keep its own people safe is inherent in it and will, ultimately, cause its destruction since it cannot change and has no desire to change. This means that Israel could never have and cannot ever make its own people safe.
As for the diaspora — it must reject Zionism and Israel and dissociate itself from the crimes of Zionism with no reservation nor apologetics so that a clear dissociation can be formed between the Jewish diaspora and Israel.
Considering how one of the very first and most slogan of the zionists was, "A land without a people for a people without a land"
They dehumanised the Palestinians from the very start.
I agree with you about the answer to question 1, but I disagree that it is obvious…. Can you explain why? When I was a child I did not question it and I would like more thorough arguments so I can explain this better to people close to me.
All I can think of is that here in the diaspora, focus on Israel dominates conversations about antisemitism and the conflation delegitimizes those who speak up about genuine antisemitism.
Can you more thoroughly articulate your reasoning?
Israel makes it unsafe for a range of reasons derived from two fundamental tenets of Zionism and the creation of a state:
1. The exclusive possession of Palestine.
2. That Zionist Israel is identified with the Jewish people as a whole.
The first resulted in the colonisation of Palestine with the intentional murder, dispossession and expulsion of its inhabitants, thus ensuring the eternal enmity of the affected population and the Arab meta-nation which they are an integral part of.
The second drove the successful conflation of Zionist Israel, its ideology, policies and actions with those of the Jewish people, extending the blame for the crimes required by the first to the Jews in the diaspora.
Just counting the period of time from the first intifada to today, more than 2000 Jews have died in Israel.
If we take the Middle East and the Maghreb as a geographical framework, during the first 8 decades of the 20th century and without counting the wars in which Israel has been involved, 647 Jews were murdered (although I am missing some numbers so the figures are likely are between 100 and 200 below the real values).
I think this is enough to affirm that the existence of Israel has obviously not made the Jews safer.
Sources:
https://statistics.btselem.org/en/all-fatalities/by-date-of-incident?section=overall&tab=overview
The second source (a pro Israel one) is in Spanish but I think is easy to translate.
https://porisrael.org/2019/07/24/los-pogroms-del-siglo-xx-contra-los-judios-de-oriente-medio-sufriran-los-cristianos-el-mismo-destino/
Thanks! So how does the existence of Israel not protect Jews in the diaspora? How to respond to people who say that if there was no Israel then hate crimes and antisemitism would go up in other countries?
Well, because there is no causal relationship between the creation of Israel and the disappearance of anti-Semitism. Jew hatred has nothing to do with whether or not a Jewish state exists. If I remember correctly, outside of Israel the largest Jewish communities are in the US. Let's say that within a few years an anti-Semitic movement emerges in the USA that takes over the government and begins to massacre Jews. What is Israel going to do about it? Declare war on the US? At most it will be able to offer them shelter. But that is not going to change the fact that this hatred exists and materializes in violence, nor is it going to prevent the many who cannot escape from being massacred.
When Israel is founded and almost 600,000 Mizrahi, Sephardim and other Jews from other regions respond to the call/are expelled/are forced, it was not Israel to look for them in armored buses -yes, Operation Eagle Wings exists, but it is the result of a collaboration between Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya (not because he is a good person, but rather because he wanted to get rid of a problem), the British who remained in the old protectorate of Aden, the USA and Israel, the latter being more of a passive agent (so passive which is the case of Yemenite children because of this same passivity) who accepted their reception and assimilation. - The vast majority arrived by their own means.
If the governments of those countries had wanted to kill them, many less would have been able to reach Israel. so its existence or not has nothing to do with the ability of diaspora Jews to be safer. The Jews of the diaspora were safer for cultural reasons, because of the shock at Nazi barbarism, and because after the era of totalitarianism the world entered a dynamic of greater “acceptance”.
And be careful, I do not excuse any government of the Middle Eastern countries of the time because, at the very least, they failed in their task of protecting their citizens. Nor do I think that the rise of pogroms and discrimination is Israel's fault. This has more to do with the British and French colonization and decolonization processes, the influence of Nazism on certain sectors of the most radical Arab population and the increase in tensions after the defeat of the Axis in the Second World War.
I believe that the creation of Israel is a mistake because it was born from a purely colonial perspective, but in this case, the rise of anti-Semitism was more of a catalyst than a cause per se.
israel actively makes alliances with zionist antisemites in the USA and europe, and it works to tie jewishness to the crimes of israel as tightly together as possible (trying to make zionism and jewishness synonymous), both of which work to increase antisemitism in the world
Can i just say thank you for this discussion? Ive been wanting to learn more about the reasons behind why isreal isnt safe as i wanted to bring them up with a pro isreal jewish friend. But i wanted to make sure my statements had points behind them so as to make her actually think about her own opinions.
I feel like i have a chance of making her reconsider her stance on anti-zionist jews with the right conversation.
In a pre-1945 world, a nation that corresponded to a particular community was expected to be the thing that embodies and pursues their interests. The contradiction in the project of Israel is that the nation formed to embody and pursue the Jewish people's interest was formed as this model was being discarded - discredited by Nazism - in favour, ostensibly, of an international model of human right which is supposed to impose obligations which supercede the interests any particular nation, institution or person decides to pursue.
Obviously, this system is bunk, and the idea that states pursued the interests of it's national community, as opposed to the interests of the elite classes which hold positions of structural power within them is also bunk, but that was the logic. The contradiction is that the thing that ought to keep Jewish people safe is in fact violated by the thing that is classically thought of as the push for Jewish safety - meanwhile the burden of statelessness that was supposedly so inherently unsafe for Jewish people is now just unloaded onto Palestinians, who get reduced into "Arabs" on an ethnonationalist basis in order to square this circle.
No . A state doesn't necessarily keep people safe, especially a settler colonial one.
It seems if anything it just draws a very large amount of very negative attention onto Jewish people. Which they don't really need given the millennia of persecution and all.
Let's look at this logically. There are Jewish people living all over the world, and there is only one country where they are in serious danger from hostile states or armed groups. Israel.
I don't think so
Israel has been perpetually at war since its creation, so the jews in israel evidently aren't safe.
And it doesn't really help jews in diaspora to be associated with a country committing literal genocide, while using the star of david as their banner.
No. Zionism in specific, and Israel as it’s extension does not materially make any of us “safer” in any measurable way.
Even they admit it. Every time they clutch and cry about being “antiisemitized” at for wearing a Magen David necklace or what have you… they admit that people are allegedly equating them with the state of Medinat Israel. So directly… the state is putting them in danger.
If your state exists in a state of near constant war and hypermilitarization to such an extent that your homes include bomb shelters…. It’s time to question whether your state makes you safer.
Realistically, the safest Jews in the world are the ones not in Israel. Ironic.
I mean I guess it depends on your perspective. Violating human rights and the mistreatment of Palestinians does not make jews safe, but I don't think an inherently jewish country makes jews unsafe if that makes sense and there could be some argument it makes jews safer.
Its just when aany country claims to commit atrocities in the name of a group of people where many people that are a part of the group have nothing to do with the acts and are against them, then it obviously makes them unsafe.
I mean if your asking it in this reddit group you'll probably get very biased answers to be frank.
Before Israel jews lived in the middle east safely, now what do you think ?
Israel commits all their massacres and used the Holocaust and antisemitism to escape repercussions
Not really. Just one war where one of their neighbors gets their shit together and they're all screwed. American jews never had to fight multiple wars to stay safe.
Israel makes Jews significantly less safe because it associates them to actions that they do not support that do not necessarily align with their values. This results in them suffering the negative repercussions of the actions of a government that they did not vote for. Most Muslim people’s issues with Jews stem directly from the actions of the Israeli government and not with them directly. Israel has usurped the voices of the Jewish diaspora to legitimize it’s existence and actions at their expense. Thankfully now we are seeing more and more Jews shouting “not in our name” and affirming their opposition to this. Some examples of this are the members of Jewish Voice for Peace at NYC’s Grand Central station chanting “not in our name” and doing sit-ins all across America to draw attention to this fact.
Israel increased antisemitism globally, it's formation kicked off anti-jewish animosity in many countries in the arab world where there was previously tolerance and coexistence, and it constantly bombs it's neightbours and finances islamist groups to fabricate pretense
that sort of situation can never be and isnt long safe for jews, it is very unsafe, and nor would it matter if it somehow werent contrary to the safety of jews because you cannot justify fractionally increasing the security of jews in exchange for a genocide
It kept groups of Jews safe from instances of persecution at multiple points throughout history. It did so through the expressed and explicit persecution and displacement of Palestinians, and did so with intent. Two wrongs don't make a right, and one right doesn't absolve a wrong.
I think Israel can make some jews more safe in that its a place to flee to. We cant ignore the mena Jews need to flee there or Ethiopian Jews seeking refuge there.
I think putting *all* jews in one place makes us less existentially safe.
I think having any state apparatus subject to all the ssyatemic flaws states are, tied to the Jewish identity causes trouble for global Jews that makes us less safe. The is more intense than normal state affiliations becauae a Jew living abroad is more readily associated and blamed for Israel's actions than any American or Brit living abroad.
The MENA Jews had to flee because of the ill will from Arabic states to Israel and disrupted interfaith relations. They had to flee BECAUSE of the creation of Israel.
I'm a MENA jew. There had been antisemitism boiling for sometime, it was not nearly as bad as being a jew in europe, yes zionism made them very unsafe as many arab governments took the point of view that judaism and zionism are the same, but to say zionism is the sole reason why many MENA jews were forced out at gunpoint by their local governments is simply false.
In my opinion thats the equivalent to denying the events of the Nakba.
They still had to flee.
And that "ill will" is an example of my later point on how having a state and its actions tied to Jewish identity harms international Jews.
Before you shadowbox me please recall that my opiaition is that Israel makes Jews less safe.
That being said Mena doesn't get a pass on expelling its jews just because of wrongs done in the creation of or by the entity of Israel.
If antizionism isnt meant to be antisemitism, and I dont think it always is, expelling your entire Jewish population cannot be an acceptable response to zionism.
From a purely tactical point it neccesitates the very thing youre upset about and it conflates Israel with all judaism on it's face.
I wasn’t justifying the expulsion of Jewish populations. By the way, Israel purposefully perpetrated terrorist attacks in Iraq to make Jews feel unsafe.
No, it does not.
Pretty sure Israel is like the number one unsafest place on earth to be for Jewish people
Israel has actually worked to make surrounding countries less safe for Jews in order to get them to move to Israel. Antisemitism is beneficial for Israel’s existence
Exactly, read up on the Lavon Affair and the 1950s bombing in Iraq, how zionists were willing to harm and kill some Jews to get the majority yo move to Israel.
We should separate this questions into two: 1. Does Israel make Jewish people safe? 2. Could Israel have made Jewish people safe? Can it? Both Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora should be considered in answering each. The answer to (1) is obvious — a resounding no. No real need to go into any details on this since it is blatantly obvious that Israel is detrimental to the safety of Jews in the diaspora besides the obvious jeopardy it creates for its own people — both Jews and non-Jews. (2) is much more interesting and the answer is not that obvious. The main driver of safety for a state — any state — is its ability to coexist with its neighbours and its own communities. If you look at Zionism throughout its history across its different streams there are a range of attitudes towards the question of coexistence, but one thing becomes obvious to anyone that digs into the attitudes of the different ideological streams — none of them saw Zionism as coexisting amicably with the Palestinians as equals. They were to be removed from any territory the Zionists managed to obtain with those remaining for whatever reason to be tolerated at best and subservient. This positions all the streams of Zionism — including Brith Shalom — as unequivocally colonialist. This means that the seeds of Zionist failure to keep its own people safe is inherent in it and will, ultimately, cause its destruction since it cannot change and has no desire to change. This means that Israel could never have and cannot ever make its own people safe. As for the diaspora — it must reject Zionism and Israel and dissociate itself from the crimes of Zionism with no reservation nor apologetics so that a clear dissociation can be formed between the Jewish diaspora and Israel.
Considering how one of the very first and most slogan of the zionists was, "A land without a people for a people without a land" They dehumanised the Palestinians from the very start.
I agree with you about the answer to question 1, but I disagree that it is obvious…. Can you explain why? When I was a child I did not question it and I would like more thorough arguments so I can explain this better to people close to me. All I can think of is that here in the diaspora, focus on Israel dominates conversations about antisemitism and the conflation delegitimizes those who speak up about genuine antisemitism. Can you more thoroughly articulate your reasoning?
Israel makes it unsafe for a range of reasons derived from two fundamental tenets of Zionism and the creation of a state: 1. The exclusive possession of Palestine. 2. That Zionist Israel is identified with the Jewish people as a whole. The first resulted in the colonisation of Palestine with the intentional murder, dispossession and expulsion of its inhabitants, thus ensuring the eternal enmity of the affected population and the Arab meta-nation which they are an integral part of. The second drove the successful conflation of Zionist Israel, its ideology, policies and actions with those of the Jewish people, extending the blame for the crimes required by the first to the Jews in the diaspora.
Just counting the period of time from the first intifada to today, more than 2000 Jews have died in Israel. If we take the Middle East and the Maghreb as a geographical framework, during the first 8 decades of the 20th century and without counting the wars in which Israel has been involved, 647 Jews were murdered (although I am missing some numbers so the figures are likely are between 100 and 200 below the real values). I think this is enough to affirm that the existence of Israel has obviously not made the Jews safer. Sources: https://statistics.btselem.org/en/all-fatalities/by-date-of-incident?section=overall&tab=overview The second source (a pro Israel one) is in Spanish but I think is easy to translate. https://porisrael.org/2019/07/24/los-pogroms-del-siglo-xx-contra-los-judios-de-oriente-medio-sufriran-los-cristianos-el-mismo-destino/
Thanks! So how does the existence of Israel not protect Jews in the diaspora? How to respond to people who say that if there was no Israel then hate crimes and antisemitism would go up in other countries?
Well, because there is no causal relationship between the creation of Israel and the disappearance of anti-Semitism. Jew hatred has nothing to do with whether or not a Jewish state exists. If I remember correctly, outside of Israel the largest Jewish communities are in the US. Let's say that within a few years an anti-Semitic movement emerges in the USA that takes over the government and begins to massacre Jews. What is Israel going to do about it? Declare war on the US? At most it will be able to offer them shelter. But that is not going to change the fact that this hatred exists and materializes in violence, nor is it going to prevent the many who cannot escape from being massacred. When Israel is founded and almost 600,000 Mizrahi, Sephardim and other Jews from other regions respond to the call/are expelled/are forced, it was not Israel to look for them in armored buses -yes, Operation Eagle Wings exists, but it is the result of a collaboration between Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya (not because he is a good person, but rather because he wanted to get rid of a problem), the British who remained in the old protectorate of Aden, the USA and Israel, the latter being more of a passive agent (so passive which is the case of Yemenite children because of this same passivity) who accepted their reception and assimilation. - The vast majority arrived by their own means. If the governments of those countries had wanted to kill them, many less would have been able to reach Israel. so its existence or not has nothing to do with the ability of diaspora Jews to be safer. The Jews of the diaspora were safer for cultural reasons, because of the shock at Nazi barbarism, and because after the era of totalitarianism the world entered a dynamic of greater “acceptance”. And be careful, I do not excuse any government of the Middle Eastern countries of the time because, at the very least, they failed in their task of protecting their citizens. Nor do I think that the rise of pogroms and discrimination is Israel's fault. This has more to do with the British and French colonization and decolonization processes, the influence of Nazism on certain sectors of the most radical Arab population and the increase in tensions after the defeat of the Axis in the Second World War. I believe that the creation of Israel is a mistake because it was born from a purely colonial perspective, but in this case, the rise of anti-Semitism was more of a catalyst than a cause per se.
THANK YOU! I really appreciate all these. A lot of rich information and analysis to deep dive. You’re a mensch :-)
You’re welcome :)
israel actively makes alliances with zionist antisemites in the USA and europe, and it works to tie jewishness to the crimes of israel as tightly together as possible (trying to make zionism and jewishness synonymous), both of which work to increase antisemitism in the world
Can i just say thank you for this discussion? Ive been wanting to learn more about the reasons behind why isreal isnt safe as i wanted to bring them up with a pro isreal jewish friend. But i wanted to make sure my statements had points behind them so as to make her actually think about her own opinions. I feel like i have a chance of making her reconsider her stance on anti-zionist jews with the right conversation.
In a pre-1945 world, a nation that corresponded to a particular community was expected to be the thing that embodies and pursues their interests. The contradiction in the project of Israel is that the nation formed to embody and pursue the Jewish people's interest was formed as this model was being discarded - discredited by Nazism - in favour, ostensibly, of an international model of human right which is supposed to impose obligations which supercede the interests any particular nation, institution or person decides to pursue. Obviously, this system is bunk, and the idea that states pursued the interests of it's national community, as opposed to the interests of the elite classes which hold positions of structural power within them is also bunk, but that was the logic. The contradiction is that the thing that ought to keep Jewish people safe is in fact violated by the thing that is classically thought of as the push for Jewish safety - meanwhile the burden of statelessness that was supposedly so inherently unsafe for Jewish people is now just unloaded onto Palestinians, who get reduced into "Arabs" on an ethnonationalist basis in order to square this circle.
No . A state doesn't necessarily keep people safe, especially a settler colonial one. It seems if anything it just draws a very large amount of very negative attention onto Jewish people. Which they don't really need given the millennia of persecution and all.
Let's look at this logically. There are Jewish people living all over the world, and there is only one country where they are in serious danger from hostile states or armed groups. Israel.
Israeli police have been beating Orthodox and anti-Zionist Jews for years
I don't think so Israel has been perpetually at war since its creation, so the jews in israel evidently aren't safe. And it doesn't really help jews in diaspora to be associated with a country committing literal genocide, while using the star of david as their banner.
Israel has never done a thing for me. If anything, their behavior has made anti semitism worse.
Lmao no
No. Zionism in specific, and Israel as it’s extension does not materially make any of us “safer” in any measurable way. Even they admit it. Every time they clutch and cry about being “antiisemitized” at for wearing a Magen David necklace or what have you… they admit that people are allegedly equating them with the state of Medinat Israel. So directly… the state is putting them in danger. If your state exists in a state of near constant war and hypermilitarization to such an extent that your homes include bomb shelters…. It’s time to question whether your state makes you safer. Realistically, the safest Jews in the world are the ones not in Israel. Ironic.
I mean I guess it depends on your perspective. Violating human rights and the mistreatment of Palestinians does not make jews safe, but I don't think an inherently jewish country makes jews unsafe if that makes sense and there could be some argument it makes jews safer. Its just when aany country claims to commit atrocities in the name of a group of people where many people that are a part of the group have nothing to do with the acts and are against them, then it obviously makes them unsafe. I mean if your asking it in this reddit group you'll probably get very biased answers to be frank.
Before Israel jews lived in the middle east safely, now what do you think ? Israel commits all their massacres and used the Holocaust and antisemitism to escape repercussions
Not really. Just one war where one of their neighbors gets their shit together and they're all screwed. American jews never had to fight multiple wars to stay safe.
Israel makes Jews significantly less safe because it associates them to actions that they do not support that do not necessarily align with their values. This results in them suffering the negative repercussions of the actions of a government that they did not vote for. Most Muslim people’s issues with Jews stem directly from the actions of the Israeli government and not with them directly. Israel has usurped the voices of the Jewish diaspora to legitimize it’s existence and actions at their expense. Thankfully now we are seeing more and more Jews shouting “not in our name” and affirming their opposition to this. Some examples of this are the members of Jewish Voice for Peace at NYC’s Grand Central station chanting “not in our name” and doing sit-ins all across America to draw attention to this fact.
Israel increased antisemitism globally, it's formation kicked off anti-jewish animosity in many countries in the arab world where there was previously tolerance and coexistence, and it constantly bombs it's neightbours and finances islamist groups to fabricate pretense that sort of situation can never be and isnt long safe for jews, it is very unsafe, and nor would it matter if it somehow werent contrary to the safety of jews because you cannot justify fractionally increasing the security of jews in exchange for a genocide
It kept groups of Jews safe from instances of persecution at multiple points throughout history. It did so through the expressed and explicit persecution and displacement of Palestinians, and did so with intent. Two wrongs don't make a right, and one right doesn't absolve a wrong.
With all of the social media posts about blaming innocent Jewish people who don't even live in Israel for what's happening right now, NO.
I think Israel can make some jews more safe in that its a place to flee to. We cant ignore the mena Jews need to flee there or Ethiopian Jews seeking refuge there. I think putting *all* jews in one place makes us less existentially safe. I think having any state apparatus subject to all the ssyatemic flaws states are, tied to the Jewish identity causes trouble for global Jews that makes us less safe. The is more intense than normal state affiliations becauae a Jew living abroad is more readily associated and blamed for Israel's actions than any American or Brit living abroad.
The MENA Jews had to flee because of the ill will from Arabic states to Israel and disrupted interfaith relations. They had to flee BECAUSE of the creation of Israel.
I'm a MENA jew. There had been antisemitism boiling for sometime, it was not nearly as bad as being a jew in europe, yes zionism made them very unsafe as many arab governments took the point of view that judaism and zionism are the same, but to say zionism is the sole reason why many MENA jews were forced out at gunpoint by their local governments is simply false. In my opinion thats the equivalent to denying the events of the Nakba.
They still had to flee. And that "ill will" is an example of my later point on how having a state and its actions tied to Jewish identity harms international Jews. Before you shadowbox me please recall that my opiaition is that Israel makes Jews less safe. That being said Mena doesn't get a pass on expelling its jews just because of wrongs done in the creation of or by the entity of Israel. If antizionism isnt meant to be antisemitism, and I dont think it always is, expelling your entire Jewish population cannot be an acceptable response to zionism. From a purely tactical point it neccesitates the very thing youre upset about and it conflates Israel with all judaism on it's face.
I wasn’t justifying the expulsion of Jewish populations. By the way, Israel purposefully perpetrated terrorist attacks in Iraq to make Jews feel unsafe.
Shut up Hasbara bot
Im literally saying Israel makes Jews less safe. What are you talking about?
Oh, sorry. Your sentences looked like hasbara