Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel's politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and
Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to "Nazi and Fascist parties" and described it as a "terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization".
The Zionists have explained their view as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man."
and
Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.
It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.
Agreed. I find the people in my life who blindly support Israel know nothing of the history of Zionism prior to 1948 and think Palestine was given to Israel just because of the holocaust, almost universally omitting that there were already people there and the responsibility of all western governments (I’m considering Russia “west” here) in the oppression of Jews in the years leading up to, and after, the holocaust.
The Behind the Bastards episode on Bibi Netanyahu talked about how he really got his start in the US as a lobbyist for the state of Israel and the media blitz Israel utilized to get both American parties to unconditionally support Israel. Most Americans are just propagandized af.
You should have continued citing your sources to have complete picture and correct historical context, not picking and choosing since it creates distorted picture:
Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance".[22][23] After Stern's death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union[17] and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.
To add even more context, Lehi was an offshoot of Irgun which was an extremist offshoot of Haganah. They had less than 300 members compared to Haganah's 20,000.
Their ideology probably isn't an accurate representation of all the politicians you mentioned except Yitzhak Shamir who was a leader of Lehi and became a prime minister of Israel 40 years later which is a bit weird.
Abolishing private ownership of the means of production is definitionally left, so I don’t know who would consider it an “amalgam of both right and left” 😂
Unlike in the UK where Jews were considered second-class citizens, or in Nazi Germany where they were being ethnically cleaned & genocided, the Soviet Union had Jews among the Communist party ranks, including the politburo. There were Jewish Bolsheviks in the Communist revolution, so they’d been there from the start.
Abolishing private ownership of the means of production is definitionally left, so I don’t know who would consider it an “amalgam of both right and left” 😂
Maybe because Ultranationalism is very much a far right aspect of fascism?
You could do so yourself but I understand not wanting to as this would quickly turn your inbox into a trash fire for a long time depending of which politics community you post it to and who is federated with who.
I’m 54. When people ask my opinion of this war, I change the subject. I’m not proud of that, but I’ve seen this war more than once.
I have strong opinions about many things, but I’ve seen what this particular war does and I’ve learnt there’s no winning it. I donate to Gaza, but nothing I can say will change the horror the latest flare up of this war will bring. Im sorry.
True, the concept of Transfer in Zionist thought and the displacement of Palestinians since the 1920s culminated into a full fledged ethnic cleansing campaign in 1948
"The Haganah, the largest Yishuv paramilitary, was a Labor Zionist organization; on occasion, it partook in military action (such as during The Saison) against certain radical right-wing Jewish political opponents and militant groups, sometimes in cooperation with the British Mandate administration." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism#History
Yes but in different ways depending on the country. The U.S has a pretty clear analogue, the Native American genocide.
The main difference between Israel/Palestine and the U.S/Native Americans is the former is happening currently, the U.S has already successfully completed the genocide on their natives, while Israel is in the middle of its extermination.
Germany also clearly has the Jewish Holocaust, but they weren't successful in WW2, so that genocide didn't get white-washed and instead was shamed to paint a clear good guy/bad guy narrative, despite the Nazis open praise of the U.S for our successful extermination of the natives, U.S business interests aligning with Nazis before and during the war, and the U.S trying to stay neutral between the Allies and Axis powers until Japan forced the U.S into action.
Of those that came in contact with Europeans yes, I think so, but I'm not sure how, for example, the Lakota people came to be on the land they were before they came in contact with Europeans.
Jewish culture and history, especially Zionism is as diverse as every other culture and people is. Picking the worst doesn't show the whole picture about Zionism. There is a whole Socialist and even Anarchist tradition of and within Zionism.
EDIT: I didn't mean to offend anybody and everybody has a right to criticize Israel. My whole point is that Israel's history and especially Zionism is obviously not one-sided, but is also rich in liberal and progressive ideas, that are worth to studied.
If you are interested in Socialist Zionism I recommend the following article as a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism
That’s true. Weren’t those Zionist factions suppressed by the imperialist settler-colonial Zionist factions? What have they been able to accomplish since just before the Nakba?
Already in the 1920s the Labor movement disregarded its socialist roots and concentrated on building the nation by constructive action. According to Tzahor its leaders did not "abandon fundamental ideological principles".[15] However, according to Ze'ev Sternhell in his book The Founding Myths of Israel, the labor leaders had already abandoned socialist principles by 1920 and only used them as "mobilizing myths".