I wouldn’t normally bother to comment another #NaziZionism post by @8124, but I’ve seen the claim that he’s trying to make often enough to feel that it should be treated like a staple of Israelo-fascist propaganda that needs to be properly dismantled.

The claim is that, if semitism and Zionism are the same thing, then #antisemitism and anti-Zionism must be the same thing.

Note this extremely dangerous simplification:

when Zionism is defined as the right of #Israel to exist then anti-Zionism is opposed to this existence

It basically states that anti-Zionism is the movement that preaches the destruction of Israel, and the only way not to be thrown into this bucket is to support the creation of a homogeneous Jewish State from the land to the sea.

And notice how much it dilutes all the nuances.

1. Israel was created on the basis that Jews could only be safe if they had their own country. I live in the middle of the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and about a quarter of its (large) population has Jewish roots. Jews have been safe here for a very, very long time. If Jewish can be safe in other places, then the whole principle that underpins the Law of Return (and its not-so-implicit message of ethnic replacement and colonization) is false, or at the very least questionable.

2. Even if they were actually entitled for some reason to their own land, unlike many other displaced groups, they could have picked any place in the world where conflicts would have been more unlikely. But no, they wanted EXACTLY that particular piece of land, and ALL of it.

3. I consider the British Mandate of Palestine and anything that the British and French did in that corner of the world between the two world wars (and even before in Africa) an awful tragedy where white people with no legal entitlement, nor real knowledge of the complexity on the ground, drew arbitrary lines on the map of a collapsed empire. Just like they did with the creation of the nations of Iraq and Syria. But hey, nobody calls me an anti-Arab when I say that only a drunkster anachronistic leftover of the 19th century with curled mustaches could create two countries with those borders without taking into account the complex ethnic groups and the long-running tensions in those territories.

4. The historic claim over that specific piece of land, when you take away the religious justification, is also extremely weak. It’s as strong as my claim over the British islands as a descendant of Julius Caesar. Other people displaced in more recent times (Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks in the Ottoman empire etc.) haven’t been entitled to the privilege of return to their ancestral lands.

5. I also reject the claim that “even during Ottoman rule there was a sizeable Jewish population“. Because census data from the early 20th century shows that Jewish were ~4-5% of the population until the end of WWI. That’s comparable to the size of the Moroccan population in the Randstad (and probably slightly less than that too). Christians at the time actually represented more than twice the share of Jewish resident population in Palestine. If tomorrow leading voices in the Moroccan community were to say that the Netherlands is their promised land, and the only place where they can be safe by anti-Maghreb propaganda, and that they have the right to colonize it, kick residents out of their houses, turn it into an ethno-religious State, and move the whole resident population to a tiny strip of land between Zandvoort and Scheveningen, all while enacting a law that says that anyone with Moroccan blood can just come over and get a Dutch passport and a house, everybody would be rightfully outraged, and nobody would dare to call us “anti-Moroccan” for that. Why then we have to make exceptions to the rules, again and again, ONLY FOR THE JEWS?

6. However, I acknowledge that, nearly a century after the start of that shameful program of 20th century imperialist colonization, way too many Jews have moved there, and their children and grandchildren have been born there, to move them out. A new forced diaspora would be catastrophic, whether it involves Jews or Arabs. So the only solution is to solve Israel’s trilemma, and call Israel accountable for providing their preferred solution NOW without any further ado, and without bombing everyone around them and without spreading fascist-colonialist propaganda while they figure out a solution. Israel can be a democracy with ties to the West only if 1. acknowledges a two-State solution that respects the territories granted to each by the UN resolutions, or 2. acknowledges a multi-ethnic solution where Arabs and Christians have their fair proportional representation in all institutions without being harassed, persecuted nor subject to prejudice - which means giving up on the whole idea of a homogeneous ethno-religious State. Every other solution will make Israel a pariah illiberal rogue State like North Korea that deserves international condemnation and no diplomatic nor commercial ties with anyone.

These are simple truths that anyone can reach by looking at things from the right perspective, using the same historic frameworks used for similar events, and by following the natural conclusions of international law.

Those who try to frame these conclusions as antisemitic, hostile to Jews in general, or worse Nazi, have no right of being listened, no right of speaking up, and should be universally condemned by civilized society as a whole.

Oh, and let’s not forget the shameful lie that that motherfucker wrote at the end of his post:

Even if people truly discriminated against Zionists only and never Jews, that’s still over 90% of world Jews

He’s basically assuming that, since 90% of those who were born Jew also embrace Judaism as a religion, then 90% of the Jews are also Zionist - i.e. they are in favour of colonizing THE WHOLE promised land, from the river to the sea.

This is a shameful lie that accounts to apology of colonization and genocide.

It’s a shameful lie that implies that 90% of all Jews worldwide support the genocidal government of folks like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, when the truth is that those Nazis wouldn’t even reach a relative majority if new elections were held today.

It implies that supporting the right of Israel to exist means to automatically support the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the genocide in Gaza.

Tens of thousands have been marching just over the past couple of days to loudly call for an end of all the military campaigns and plans for occupation. This isn’t something that looks supported by the 90%.

And, even in the extremely unlikely scenario where 90% of the Jews supported the genocidal plans of their government, it wouldn’t legitimize them: democratic support for crimes against humanity doesn’t mean that governments can act with impunity.

This kind of comments only shows to which extent the moral integrity of genuine human failures like @8124 and other propaganda lackeys of Israel’s fascist regime is irredeemably compromised.

https://mastodon.social/@8124/115006715176544264