I'm not an expert, but definitely there were Jewish thinkers who opposed the idea of rebuilding Israel (Mt Zion and all) and argued that living as a diaspora is a better way. A quick web search / AI inquiry gives a variety of examples.
Yes, they are called Neturei Karta, and there are maybe 100 of them out there.
But it doesn't matter who is espousing the idea: just because a Jew says something doesn't make it _not_ antisemitic. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that it is not bigoted to selectively deny the Jewish people a right to a state from which to defend themselves.
Depends on what you mean by anti-Zionism. It's not a natural congregation point -- even those that don't think Israel should exist don't generally call themselves anti-Zionist. As a label from the outside, it's thus very flexible. A lot of mere criticisms of Israeli actions gets labeled anti-Zionist.
Zionism to me means that the Jews are entitled to self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of that promise.
Anti-Zionism is the negation of that idea; namely that Jews are not entitled to self-determination and therefore should live at the whims of the countries where they are a minority for their security.
Merely objecting to an Israeli policy or even a Jewish value is not intrinsically antisemitic. But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I think I agree nearly 100% with this. The tricky part is always selective-enforcement:
> But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I do believe that (a) in aggregate, Israel has far more vitriol directed towards it for any given action vs comparable actions by other nations. However I also believe (b) that there aren't actually any materially more significant penalties attached to them than other nations.
I also believe that (c) most of (a) is due to Israel having a higher salience. People get informed more about Israel's bad actions than comparable ones in other nations. When informed of comparable things, people are generally upset about those in similar amounts. Further (d) Other nations should get a lot more complaints about their bad behavior. Finally, (e) comparisons to other nations in these discussions is useless, because it's whataboutism. The bad behavior of Israel is indeed often bad, but saying someone else does it too isn't a good response unless you actually think the standard is wrong. That has to happen in another discussion.
I'm not an expert, but definitely there were Jewish thinkers who opposed the idea of rebuilding Israel (Mt Zion and all) and argued that living as a diaspora is a better way. A quick web search / AI inquiry gives a variety of examples.
Yes, they are called Neturei Karta, and there are maybe 100 of them out there.
But it doesn't matter who is espousing the idea: just because a Jew says something doesn't make it _not_ antisemitic. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that it is not bigoted to selectively deny the Jewish people a right to a state from which to defend themselves.
Depends on what you mean by anti-Zionism. It's not a natural congregation point -- even those that don't think Israel should exist don't generally call themselves anti-Zionist. As a label from the outside, it's thus very flexible. A lot of mere criticisms of Israeli actions gets labeled anti-Zionist.
Zionism to me means that the Jews are entitled to self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of that promise.
Anti-Zionism is the negation of that idea; namely that Jews are not entitled to self-determination and therefore should live at the whims of the countries where they are a minority for their security.
Merely objecting to an Israeli policy or even a Jewish value is not intrinsically antisemitic. But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I think I agree nearly 100% with this. The tricky part is always selective-enforcement:
> But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I do believe that (a) in aggregate, Israel has far more vitriol directed towards it for any given action vs comparable actions by other nations. However I also believe (b) that there aren't actually any materially more significant penalties attached to them than other nations.
I also believe that (c) most of (a) is due to Israel having a higher salience. People get informed more about Israel's bad actions than comparable ones in other nations. When informed of comparable things, people are generally upset about those in similar amounts. Further (d) Other nations should get a lot more complaints about their bad behavior. Finally, (e) comparisons to other nations in these discussions is useless, because it's whataboutism. The bad behavior of Israel is indeed often bad, but saying someone else does it too isn't a good response unless you actually think the standard is wrong. That has to happen in another discussion.