Comment by Matl
2 days ago
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
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You don't know your history. Zionism started in the late 19th century as a nationalist and colonialist movement; by 1917 it had already secured the support of the (soon to be) British administration of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state there; mass immigration was already underway and flooded with hundreds of thousands of colonists a territory that had had almost no Jewish presence for a thousand years or more. Ethnic cleansing of the native population was already in the plans, as shown by the private diaries of the father of Zionism Theodore Herzl.
When in 1948 the UN formulated its partition plan (i.e. the proposal to expropriate the Palestinians of half of their land to give it to the Jewish immigrants), the land that the proposal assigned to the Jewish state had a 45% Palestinian population, which the newborn state immediately proceeded to ethnically cleanse. Besides, Israel never formally accepted the borders of the partition plan and immediately set to conquer new territory (plan Dalet).
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The country of Israel is based on western colonialism, taking advantage of the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust.
It was meant as a western foothold in the middle east, which is clearly the case now. In a despicable manner, Germany now is aiding and abetting the atrocities committed by the colony of Israel, as if two wrongs make a right.
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> It's not based on the Bible, it's based on where we know for a fact people actually lived under the Roman empire. If not just speculation based on a 4000 year-old mythical text, it's literal documented history.
It's the invocation of a 'promised land', which even Israeli government officials use as a justification for their actions, that is based on (a reading of) the Bible, despite Israel being nominally a secular country.
I don't think many dispute there was a significant population of Jews within the Roman Empire, many of which lived in the rough geographical area of present day Israel.
I am not sure how any sort of present day 'inherent right' stems from that.
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It's amazing how Trump and Bibi manage to embody the absolute worst stereotypes of their respective cultures. There's something almost Jungian about it.
It's all Zionists. Israel has been like this since it's very inception. Every Zionist president in the US has abetted them.
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