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.
oh no are you criticizing something a Jewish person did?! You are a anti-Semitic Nazi!! of course S/
Philly isn’t sending their best.
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You are right, of course. There are things we can’t condone. But you realize that by saying it you sound exactly like the “all lives matter” response to BLM: technically correct, but oblivious to the context in which the original statement arises. When we say Palestinian lives matter, we aren’t saying Israeli lives don’t. We’re saying that you have forgotten that Palestinian lives even matter at all.
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.
I guess, yea.
Lehi supported both Hitler and Stalin.You’re right, that does make the picture more complete!
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.
Thanks for the additional context.
Well, about Ariel Sharon (from Wikipedia)
An official enquiry found that he bore “personal responsibility” for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees, for which he became known as the “Butcher of Beirut” among Arabs. He was subsequently removed as defense minister.
And Begin
was described by the British government as the “leader of the notorious terrorist organisation”.
And there was a famous open letter published (the one signed by Einstein, among others) that
described Begin’s Herut party as “terrorist, right-wing chauvinist organization in Palestine,”[34] “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties” and accused his group (along with the smaller, militant, Stern Gang) of preaching “racial superiority” and having “inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community”.
And those guys held the highest government office of Israel! It might be weird but it’s not uncommon, especially if you look into other government posts too. Like I said, the more you look into it the worse it gets.
Edit: another example
In 1915, Pinhas Felix Rosenblüth, who rose to be Israel’s first Justice Minister, wrote in a field report on Ostjuden published in Der Jüdische Student that the great lesson for young Jewish Zionists fighting on the eastern front, on experiencing delusions at what they observe of Jewish life there, was that Palestine was one large “institute for the fumigation of (all) Jewish vermin” (Große Entlausungsanstalt für alles jüdische Ungeziefer).
ideology of National Bolshevism
That’s just nazis calling themselves “socialists”, the same way nazis call themselves “national socialists” while actively killing socialists.
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?
Sure, but I don’t see the relevance.
National Bolshevism,whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks and colloquially as Nazbols, is a syncretic political movement committed to combining ultranationalism and communism.
Nazbols are cryptofascists; they’re anticommunist LARPing as communists. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/National_Bolshevism
They’re playing the same word salad game that the National Socialists did before them.
First time I’ve seen the word ‘cryptofascist’ outside of Red Dwarf.
It’s pretty common in certain circles. Less common in the past few years.
They stopped hiding.
Apologies, I meant smegging cryptofascists.
I guess that’s the far-right aspect to “balance out” the far-left aspect… A perfect amalgamation!
Think you didn’t read it thoroughly enough. That text is talking about national “bolsheviks”, so just nazis.
Yeah it was about the USSR and about Nazbols, but I only noticed the USSR part on first reading.
Anyway Nazbol shitstains always seem to pop up at the fringes to prey on baby leftists. Caleb Maupin’s little cryptofash cult infested BreadTube for a while, seemingly collapsed in a sex scandal, but still somehow seems to skulk about: https://cpiusa.org/
My favorite Israeli history tidbit is how their terror cells assassinated one of the guys trying to negotiate a peaceful way out of the violence creating the state of Israel caused because they were (wrongly, it turns out) afraid that the official government would try to take a peaceful solution to the conflict which might have jeopardized the creation of the ethnostate.
Bernadotte had previously gained international renown for negotiating the release of thousands of Nazi concentration camp prisoners including hundreds of interred Jewish people.
If I recall correctly, the Hagana, Irgun and Lehi brigade eventually became the modern day IDF (literally). Those Nazi worshippers today are an important cultural aspect of Israel, in the form of helping to brainwash Israeli youth, and they’re also remembered as heroes by Israel (and ‘remembered’ as in the very same terrorists back then who are still alive today are remembered. This wasn’t so long ago that it’s beyond living memory). Israelis also usually go out and protest any time a member of the IDF is on trial for murdering a Palestinian.
I’ve basically always thought it would be a funny solution to everyone’s gripe with Hamas to just give them new branding as well and voila, problem solved.
This is kind of how I became a socialist.
Did a mission trip to Nicaragua when I was young, got home and wondered why the country was so fucked up.
“Oh, it’s literally entirely America’s fault, intentional, and their exact strategy for foreign relations which is just imperialism.”
Isn’t zionism the result of some dumb dudes imagination
arguably, that’s every country, philosophy, nationality, religion, paradigm, law and ethnicity.
Fucking hell I didn’t know it was that bad!
Would OP please consider posting this to politics?
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 didn’t want to steal credit for someone else’s post. Or notoriety. Potato potahto.
Go ahead, please post it anywhere. It’s important that people know history.
I can only post it to kbin. I’ve never been approved for Lemmy world or .ml
ETA: annnd I got the error message. Please remind me later
Some things are very wrong with lemmy when good content like this needs to get posted in memes …
I got an error message but it posted anyway.
On lemmy.ml, everywhere is politics! Didn’t you know?
Literally everything we know of is already inherently political, on account of being perceivable by humans.
Not sure what definition of political you’re using.
Management/governance of things having to do with humans, which is everything that we know of.
But there are plenty of things that don’t involve governance. Like I’m not gonna look at a video of someone playing with a puppy and go “Hm yep there is a human so this is political.”
Late reply but the fact that people keep pets at all is also a very political subject.
I think context matters a lot. Green Day’s “Dominated Love Slave” isn’t very political, and to be honest it would be kind of dumb to try and make it out to be. Similarly, for “Pulling Teeth” by them as well - they’re just stories about them. “American Idiot” on the other hand is political, and it would be quite dumb to argue that it isn’t.
As such, all things can be. Now, if the argument is that everything can be made to be analogous to a political statement, like how “I’m all busted up, broken bones and nasty cuts, accidents will happen but this time I can’t get up” for domestic abuse and our current state of the government then by all means yes though our human perception we can make that jump, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it was the point even if I would agree. Exactly the way I likely would for someone’s argument about “American Idiot” not being political, like argue all you want but objectively it’s false.
Anyway not really sure what my point here is. I guess not everything is political, but it can be if it is reconstructed through multiple lenses. Kind of like memes!
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.
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The Atlanticist Jewish settlers are racist a. f. and treat the indigenous Semitic Jews like shit, while LARPing as indigenous themselves. They treat the indigenous Semitic Christians like shit, too. And they claim that the indigenous Semitic Muslims are foreigners. But largely the indigenous Christians & Muslims came from indigenous Jews converting to Christianity & Islam generations ago.
Ashkenazi Jewish women descended mostly from Italian converts, new study asserts
The new research underscores an emerging consensus that wandering Jewish men, from the Near East, established a mosaic of small Jewish communities—first in Italy and then scattered throughout Europe, often taking on local gentile wives and raising their children as Jews.
Israel’s DNA wars: Forbidden tests
Tracing your ancestral DNA is a popular activity throughout the world, companies offering home testing kits promise to uncover your geographic origins for a small fee. A Jewish TikToker took the test and found he had heritage in different parts of Europe, but in his results there was no trace of Levantine origins. A cool new thing to tell his friends about, however, he points out that if he was from Israel this test would be illegal. We delve into why Israel restricts tracing your ancestors DNA.
Edit to add: From what little I understand, even within the Jewish immigrants there’s a caste system between the Ashkenazi, Shepardi, Mizrahi, etc. And IIRC the Soviet Ashkenazi immigrants tend not to get into high political or economic positions compared to other Ashkenazi. Israel Admits Targeting Ethiopian Jews for Compulsory Contraception
Well, I’m sure not all of them are. And you’ll be happy to learn that the ethnic populations are getting more and more mixed every year
Yes, of course not literally every one of them.
You need to expand on this claim. Yishuv, from my understanding, is the generation of Jews in Palestine before the formation of Israel. I’m not sure what point you’re making.
The whole story of Zionism pushing the idea of a country “of their own” and destined as a Jewish homeland predates the riots and conflicts that arose from increased Jewish settlement (and literal smuggling) in the area, because of Zionism, and nations like Britain playing up the idea of a promised Jewish homeland with the Balfour declaration for political purposes, and then dropping it when WW1 was over.
The yishuv living in relative peace prior to increased migration from people who believe fundamentally that this was their land is the story of human migration patterns causing strife that has happened throughout history in literally all corners of the world and is a very poor justification for why one group deserves their “ideal” homeland over another.
Well, if we start from the ‘living in relative peace’ part during during the latter century of the Ottoman empire, one can get quite a clear picture on how we arrived here today. It takes around 3 minutes.
During the Ottoman empire, jews were a small and dispersed minority living under laws that were, in large, inspired on islamic sharia. Although there were regions and periods of time where this was less enforced, it still meant that they would always be second class citizens, or worse. For example: they weren’t allowed to build or repair synagogues, could not carry guns or ride horses, had to pay a special tax, etc…
So they were living in relative peace as long as they put up with the systemic discrimination (and the occasional local sectarian massacre but hey, it was the 19th century after all).
So we jump forward to the 1850-1870’s and reforms are ongoing to modernize the empire and this came with a lot of the systemic discrimination being removed, moving towards a more secular state with the different religious communities given self-government wrt religious laws. Finally light at the end of the tunnel for the Ottoman jews, right? Well, sucked to be them as in 1876 Turkish nationalists seized power, abolished parliament and installed a new sultan which was a pan-Islamist and sought to re-consolidate the people of his empire under islam. (Btw, the Turkish nationalists would later go on to purge their land by doing multiple genocides, some still ongoing).
So this is where zionism picks up, with Ottoman jews seeing the future darken and the idea growing that they should unite in one place. This led to a lot of jewish immigrants moving into (modern day) Palestine starting around 1880 towards this goal, with the zionist idea picking up around the world, gaining more and more steam and here we are, 2024 and jews and muslims are still fighting over it.
Zionism was not started by Ottoman Jews, which were a very, very small minority in Palestine. The grandfather of Zionism was an Austro-Hungarian, Theodor Herzl. Before that there was a proto Zionist movement the Hovevei Zion which was created in response to pograms in the Russian empire. The Zionist movement was entirely created as a response to the treatment of European Jews by European powers.
Living under sharia law and being treated as a second-class citizen (which all non-Muslims were) certainly was not ideal for Palestinian Jews, but hundreds of thousands of European Jews did not start streaming into Palestine because of that.
Sure it was.
If there was no foothold of Ottoman jews in Palestine, they would not have chosen to congregate there.
If the Ottoman jews had not already started congregating in this area, (future) zionists in the rest of the world would never have thought about it.
The fact the territories of the crumbling Ottoman empire were more likely to gain future Independence were another important driver, of course. Something European, Russian and American jews could never achieve within their respective countries
No, that’s not right. Palestine was chosen based on a book of ancient mythology. Jews were a majority in Palestine a couple thousand years ago, though.
Imagine if the great great grandchildren of Chinese immigrants to America in the 1800s, no matter how mixed race they are now, suddenly immigrated to China, expelled or killed the native Chinese, and claimed that all of China belongs to them because their ancestors were there at an arbitrary point in time. It would be weird, right?
They chose it both for religious and for practical reasons. They also considered Argentine, for example.
The muslims also claimed the land should, historically, belong to muslims, so there’s that.
Which region would you have suggested the jews of the Ottoman empire to congregate?
They also considered Argentine, for example.
Is that so? What pretext would they have had for stealing land in Argentina?
Haganah actually fought against Irgun and Lehi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saison“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#HistoryAnd the Irgun split from Haganah, because they were presumably too defensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah#1931_Irgun_spliti thought the palestinian troubles started around 1920?
which sources did you use for your research?
Why 1920?
Everything stated is linked in the description.
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 Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
Fuck Israel.
Isn’t this true of most countries?
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_ZionismJewish culture and history
Zionism
No one here has a problem with Jewish culture and history, Zionism though we do. Socialist and anarchist settler colonialists are still settler colonialists. Those socialist and anarchists you’re talking about, do they fight alongside Palestinian resistance against the Israeli state? In South Africa for example, there were white people who were sympathetic to the plight of black South Africans and aided the ANC especially in sabotage operations; I haven’t heard of socialist and anarchist Israelis who do the same. There was a guy whose name escapes me who I believe was Jewish, who also fought alongside Che if I recall correctly, who initially supported Zionism, but when he went to Israel and saw what Israel was, he fought alongside the Palestinian resistance (having some trouble finding him; he was posted about here on hexbear). Israelis who support Palestinian resistance absolutely have our support here.
how can you have anarchy if you believe in the state of israel
The Kibbutz movement is heavily influenced by Anarchism for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Israel.
the heirarchy understander has logged on
kinda antisemitic there to declare that all jews sjpport z*onism
What do you mean? I didn’t declare anything.
That’s so true!
And the Nazis had people like Strasser! You see, Nazis weren’t so bad, guys! Picking the worst like Hitler and Goebbels is so unfair! Nazism is as diverse as any other culture.
Hitler loved dogs after all.
Ya know until material conditions came knocking and he tested his cyanide supply ona dog to make sure he wouldn’t have a painful death.
Ah, the good old comparison of Israel and Nazis. Please be antisemitic somewhere else.
Ethnonationalism is ethnonationalism, even when a Jewish person does it. Most ethnonationalists are not Jewish, and a lot of Zionists aren’t either.
I hope you’re not implying that Jewish people are all ethnonationalists…
Can you show some examples of socialist and anarchist Zionism?
Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created as a project of communist Zionists, who didn’t approve of resettlement to Palestine.
Oh so all of those good parts of history you were talking about are when they directly opposed Isreal and zionism isn’t that interesting.
Yeah, because Zionism is not particularly about the land of today’s Israel and Palestine, but about a Jewish state in some form.
Thank you, I didn’t know that.
You’ll just have to trust them
No you don’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionism
What kind of socialism is able to simultaneously be socialist while excluding exploited and oppressed peoples? What kind of anarchy persists as anarchy upon the backs of those whose homes have been stolen from them?
Socialist Zionism is not at all about excluding, exploiting or oppressing.
Funnily enough it was also Albert Einstein, who supported Labor Zionism.
The Communist, socialist, and labor strands of Israeli politics have all failed and were overrun by the Israeli fascists. Learning the past history of their existence doesn’t change the concrete reality that the present history of Israel is being written by genocidal fascists whom share ideological similitudes with Nazi Germany.
I wasn’t talking about Israel’s politics, but about the very diverse history of Zionism. Also comparing Israel with Nazi Germany isn’t pretty problematic.
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?
Socialist Zionists were probably oppressed just like Socialist Anti-Zionists.
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”.
From the page Dataprolet linked.
There’s a deep history of American workers movements that doesn’t mean the entire country doesn’t deserve to be nuked from orbit.
