Comment by nailer
1 day ago
No. Jews have the right to live in their own homeland and anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist.
I suspect most people that spend their time online ranting out 'zionists' (meaning 98% of Jews) haven't bothered to read any Herzl.
Trying to frame the violent expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland as just "Jews trying to live in their own homeland".. isn't working in 2026 and nobody needs to read the thoughts of a man who saw Cecil Rhodes as a kindred spirit.
Forgetting the part where Arabs tried to violently expel the Jews from Palestine? And the part where Jews were expelled from several Arab countries?
Anyone would resist occupation and ethnic cleansing.
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Jews were not only expelled from Arab counties, catholic too.
Jews left Arab stats on their own accord because of rise of Zionism.
Arab were the only folks who accepted Jews in the first place as they sought refuge from Nazi Europe
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The focus on a particular location is a religious one (in the scriptures there was a Jewish homeland before Israel or Egypt, and Israel is singled out because God told them to go), but it's also a selective one that ignores all the times God arranged for Israel not to be there; and crucially does not stop and wait for His opinion about the present. It is the most dangerous kind of religious opinion: one invented by us.
Herzl makes no religious argument, he is fairly close to an atheist. That’s why I mentioned people should read the book or a summary before commenting on the matter.
I don't think the "homeland" idea could have come from anywhere but religion. For one thing, there's a three (?) thousand year precedence.
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Damn those racist Haredi Jews, right?
Don't get too excited about their views - they very much believe that the land belongs to Jews, they just think they should wait for the Messiah to give us the signal before going there.
It's funny how people associate their views with humanism: they are simply extremely religious and on this specific question, the current result of their extreme beliefs happen to align with yours.
I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael K Kater. [0]
The push for a Zionist state started and accelerated in the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. Most of the Jews that moved from Europe to Palestine, which was part of modern day Israel, were by the Zionists. Reason is because the only jobs at the time were farming so people would have to give up their current triad.
Number of these individuals actually supported fascism. Even after WWII the mind set was not that fascism was bad but poorly implemented. That mind set was shared by a number of Germans and Jews that moved to Palestine before Israel became a state.
It was not until the late 1960s that younger culture started to shift that mind set to fascism is bad.
If you think I am wrong about the summation of the book ... read it.
[0] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-naz...
As mentioned, I recommend going directly to the source. The clearest indication of what Zionism is the father of modern Zionism and Israel: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25282/25282-h/25282-h.htm
It's a hundred pages. If someone hasn't read it, or even a summary, they have little knowledge of Zionism. WW2 was far after the modern return of Jews to Israel.
I grew up in a very left leaning, pro terrorism household. I was absolutely wrong about what Zionism was - not a 'God promised me this because I'm special" as I was told but rather "racism means we need a homeland let's all go back to Israel".
You sound like you’re trying to collapse the term into a single definition based on one guy, which just doesn’t match the variety of people and motivations using it today. Christian white nationalists in the US are not calling themselves Zionist because “we need a homeland, let’s all go back to Israel”.
You might as well say that Republicans are the party that fought the Confederates and freed the slaves. It is not true today.
How does having a religious base state prevent bigotry and discrimination? Both are mutually exclusive.
In the world, Jews discriminate against Jews, Christians discriminate against Christians, Muslims discriminate Muslims, ... A religious state can only have one variant of religion that is deemed the right variation even though multiple variations exist.
The closest thing to a non bigot and discriminating state is one that is not built on religion but accepts other people and allows them to exercise their variation of religion.
Earth is the home land of humans not a politically divided territory.
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> Jewish homeland is Poland, Russia, Germany
Jews have been in the Levant longer than they’ve been in Germany. (And in both for less time than they’ve been in America.)
The problem is with the notion of a homeland. Whose ancestors had what claim to something shouldn’t have bearing on how people are treated today.
Ashkenazis are Europeans.
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Do you have an example? I've studied quite a bit of Hertzel and what I mainly remember repeated to us is "We shall never discriminate between one man and another; We shall never ask 'what is your religion?' nor 'what is your race?'. For us it is enough that he is a human being." and "My will to the People of Israel: create your country in such a way, that the non-Jew will feel good to be your neighbour".
Sure:
In a diary entry from June 12, 1895, Herzl detailed his plan: "We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly".
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The Arab homeland is in Arabia, not Palestine. Palestine is a Roman creation after the destruction of Judea. It was named after a group of European invaders who conquered a small part of Israel 3000+ years ago.
Arabs aren't native to Palestine. Jews are. They were present in Palestine before the name Palestine was ever used.
Palestinians are native to Palestine. Judea and Arabia do not exist.
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Exactly. It's usually the Zionist sources themselves that are unabashedly genocidal and supportive of ethnic cleansing.
More recent example is Bari Weiss, who wrote in 2021:
"The results of this mess, as always, are especially bad for the Palestinians who live under Hamas rule. Casualty reports are hard to verify because Hamas controls the media (even the international press) inside the Gaza Strip, but it appears that more than 50 Palestinians have been killed. Some of these people are entirely innocent non-combatants, including children. This is an unspeakable tragedy. It is also one of the unavoidable burdens of political power, of Zionism's dream turned into the reality of self-determination."
So according to Bari Weiss, the mass slaughter of children is one of Zionism's political responsibilities of power.