So @[email protected] had a nice comment here in a previous thread explaining the dynamic of Jewish people’s attitude toward Israel.
I think everyone here understands that it is in Israel’s benefit to (1) conflate antisemitism and antizionism to both silence dissent and (2) foster the perception that antisemitism is increasing, and even (3) encourage actual antisemitism/ally with antisemites so that Jews living in countries around the world feel under threat. Israel can then position itself as the final lifeboat for Jewish people to survive capitalism as it degrades into fascism that will almost certainly target them. Of course fleeing to Israel means becoming a settler-fascist yourself, but this is quite a tough choice to put in front of somebody and there are quite a few mental escape hatches one can use about working to change the system from within once you’re there or whatever.
So the problem we face is this: Under the assumption that the support (enthusiastic or mere tolerance) of Jewish people in the US for Israel is important to maintaining US support for Israel, or at least for maintaining the veneer of legitimacy for this support, how can we convince people to give up their lifeboat? I think this is quite a large ask. Many of us here believe the imperial core is inevitably degrading into fascism under the repetitive two-step of overt slides to the right & neoliberalism slightly arresting this process but making people widely despise electoral politics. This fascism will target Jewish people, and the fascists are perfectly happy to have somewhere to ship Jewish people off to instead of killing them as they build their white ethnostate. Many other minorities will also be targeted but do not have the luxury of a similar lifeboat. How can we square this circle?
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IMO you’re thinking about this the wrong way. Some time I’m going to write a very long post about my experiences being raised in an orthodox zionist family, and my rejection of this. But for now:
It isn’t a life boat, it’s a middle class economic ladder for middle class goals that are now much harder to achieve inside the imperial core. I know a lot of people who have gone off to isntreal. Many of them went to either work directly in the military industrial complex, or on the religiotech bubble on top of the MIC. We didn’t face real antisemitism in the place we grew up, just anti-zionism that was spun as antisemitism. There were entire jewish focused schools in the area that had educated multiple genrations of jewish students. There were streets named after the lubavitcher rebbe and his movement. I walked by 4 other shuls every saturday to get to my shul.
For most of the people who go to iSSrael, it’s pure economic opportunity. Cushier job and better pay than they would get from the MIC here. They have to create this collective phantasm to justify their hatred, so they can go off and murder children to steal land.
For me, I stopped believing in this shit and managed to grow a soul. I couldn’t tell you how to force that on others, but I can say that switching from private to public schooling and being exposed to more people really broadened my horizons enough to shatter the zionist programming. You can’t do that for someone who doesn’t want to know better.
I truly hate isntreal, free palestine.
This is a great comment, thank you. I suppose my acceptance of the framing of israel as a lifeboat is actually adopting the framing that Israel wants people to believe. That framing can be rejected.
If your lifeboat is committing genocide, it’s no lifeboat and will never be. Jews will be safe and free once everyone is safe and free, that’s why they should join the struggle to end capitalism and not run to some imaginary utopia for Jews exclusively.
I think it’s important here to keep in mind that the US is a settler country itself. It did what Israel is doing right now, at greater scale and over a longer time span, until it spanned “from sea to shining sea”. We exist within that context, and many people who were born here or immigrated here find it acceptable to live here. If the settler process is not stopped Israel might also reach that state.
Hell, it isn’t unthinkable that Israel will have a revolutionary war for independence from the US. One big factor contributing to the American revolution against the Brits was the Royal Proclamation of 1763 halting any settlement West of the Appalachians. It is easy to imagine the US negotiating some Israeli border settlement with regional Arab powers that zionists find intolerable and so come into direct conflict with the US itself. They might even win, given their geographical location near so many points of leverage for global power - the same reason the US supports Israel so heavily in the first place.
The American settler genocide is still ongoing. Just because some residents find it acceptable enough doesn’t mean history is over. US/Canadian foreign and domestic policy will always be flawed so long as their essentially settler-colonial character remains. See, e.g., the black shirts called to all the college campuses in the US right now. Most of these college students and professors, before the past week, probably found the system “acceptable” but now they see what happens when they even suggest sympathizing with colonial victims.
It’s not a lifeboat. It’s a concentration camp. Saying it’s a lifeboat is pure hasbara. Zionism is antisemitism. Convincing Jewish people to voluntarily go to this special concentration camp where they can either be a kapo and/or a further victim is essentially the UK/US proposed final solution. You square the circle by refusing to treat the claim that Jews need Israel to be safe as anything other than an antisemitic threat.
Good comment in addition to @[email protected]’s. You’re right I have adopted the hasbara framing.
It’s very easy to do. We are fed it everywhere we go.
It’s not a lifeboat. It’s a concentration camp.
My gut reaction was to say, if I were Jewish, gathering all Jews and putting them into one place sounds risky, and suggesting we pile up and concentrate together harder is a bit sus, also considering that in most countries, things really are at an all-time-not-bad since WWII (AFAIK). My threat vector was “what if rando country nukes you” but also maybe a neighboring country gets cranky and invades and the US abandons you.
But you are suggesting such is more than a risk, it might actually be by design?
Yes, it’s definitely by design. Without going giving a wall-of-text history of political Zionism, the movement that really got traction and both led to the creation of “Jewish Zionism” and the state of Israel was a British evangelical protestant movement that not only wanted to make the UK free of Jews (again) but also bring about the preconditions for the Christian prophesy for the return of their messiah. The Balfour, who gave the “Balfour Declaration” his name, was a rabid antisemite that wanted Jews out of the UK. The only Jewish member of the cabinet at the time was the only member of the cabinet who opposed the Balfour Declaration. The Christian theological underpinning of political Zionism has, as its end goal, the biblical apocolypse where, first all Jews are headed into the holy land and the a few are converted to Christianity while the rest are killed (and go to hell). This movement proceeded the Nazi holocaust and was the UK’s answer to “the Jewish Question.” Early Jewish Zionists were not necessarily set upon Palestine as the future Jewish state, but they couldn’t get any real traction with Christians in power in the west until they structured the request to align with this apocalyptic end-game.
It’s not a lifeboat though, Jews are in more danger within Israel than they are outside of it. The country has been a constant war zone for much of its history. Al-aqsa flood has destroyed Israel’s near universal international legitimacy which will never go back to the way it was pre-deluge.
If you were saying Obama era Israel (or bush), maybe this question would be more difficult but as it stands the mirage of the Jewish state has fallen. It’s just a colonial outpost used by western imperialists who can use Jews as cannon fodder instead of their “own people” (yes with all the implications that implies)
They exterminate diaspora Jewry by sending the Jews to Israel. If the evil Muslim horde exterminates all the Jews in Israel, it’s a win for antisemitism and you just eliminated Jews without having to build inconvenient death camps or mass graves.
Jews are in more danger within Israel than they are outside of it
That is certainly true as it is, but we specifically have to address the fear that it will be inverted in the future. Also I think socialists of all people can empathize with the desire to build the capacity for defense within their own community instead of relying on others to protect them - you see this in a lot of IDF propaganda. Things like yes Israel is under constant attack from all its neighbors but at least we have the IDF to give us a fighting chance.
This can all be undermined by pointing out how dependent Israel is on the US to provide it with weapons and diplomatic cover. I don’t know whether there are plans in Israel for the IDF to become fully self-sufficient in its manufacturing needs but can easily imagine so.
the fear that it will be inverted in the future
An impossibility. If America has imploded or is no longer supporting Israel, then Israel will shortly cease to exist. But it’s not like you’re going to convince a Zionist of that, as it requires logic you only obtain when you became an anti-imperialist.
For one the lifeboat is tiny, there is literally not enough space to hold everyone, it has to keep expanding beyond palestine and it is completely dependent on the empire not only to expand, but to keep control over what is colonized. We can already see it struggling and its still tiny.
The empire will not fund this lifeboat if it no longer serves a purpose, that is it is costlier to maintain than the profit generates. And you dont need to be a maxist to see how the cost will just keep exploding, look at the bill irans recent attack incurred.
At this point the boat and its inhabitants will sink. Its a false hope that will result in a disaster one way or the other.
I would point to the Zionists’ historic attitudes to Jewish refugees.
The narrative is that Israel was created in response to the Holocaust, but the Zionist project was already in full swing by then and their actual response at the time was “we don’t want them”.
Educate. Agitate. Organize.
In this case, Organize means community building. De-atomizing your neighborhoods.
I recommend checking out Mark Lakeman’s work.
LMFAO both/all of my neighbors fly cartoonishly huge TRUMP flags and no one talks to each other, america is doomed
The lifeboat is made out of the bones of children
