> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.
It's a bit more complicated than this. Israel militarily occupies Palestine. And they institute an apartheid system that is unfair to Palestinians, denying basic rights to Palestinians -- they can take your property, they can restrict your travel, they can strangle your economy. And they do.
You might say Israelis deserve to live life in peace, but shouldn't Palestinians as well? The state of Israel was carved out of Palestine, so can you blame the original inhabitants of the area that they feel something was taken (and still being takene) from them, and can you blame anyone from sympathizing with that perspective? You don't have to be anti-Zionist to at least empathize with the complexity of the situation & understand that the state of Israel has enacted some very problematic policies and conducted problematic actions. I don't think it's fair to just call it extremist by any means.
There are also levels to everything. Some folks are unhappy with the Israeli state as it exists today, but by saying they're anti-zionist & "Israel shouldn't exist" they typically aren't advocating for murder, they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.
Of course the arabs in this area deserve better. Pretending Israel is the oppressor is not empathizing. Nor is believing in fake history in which some Palestinian state (or even major population) has ever existed. They're victims of PA/PLO/Fatah/Hamas and other such organizations as much as Russians are victims of their govt. Repeating their leadership's propaganda doesn't help them. To empathize with them is to recognize there are sane people living there who don't buy into this hogwash and are simply victims of circumstance.
Israel _is_ harassed by some violent folks who have misguided ideologies that don't want peaceful coexistence but instead annihilation of the other. But so is Palestine. If you're going to wholesale call out the _loose confederacies_ of the PLO and related organizations for this kind of thinking, you should be willing to acknowledge the same thinking exists within the Israeli govt and army. They have done bad things, and it's not hard to see why if you understand how war works. War results in polarization and dehumanization of the other to the extent of "these other people should be dead." It happens to both of the polarized sides.
And let's be real, Israel is in control here. They have a modern military and are the occupiers. The way they've gone about this is the cause of much violence. Imagine the desperation of living in an apartheid state: feeling that you are not being represented or fairly treated by the systems governing you. Imagine being treated differently from your neighbor because you're not a citizen, and you can never be one because of your race and religion. It's totally fair to call them the oppressor in this situation because what the heck are these loose disorganized confederacies living in occupied territory going to do? They don't really have power to change the situation.
> they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.
This is roughly like advocating for ending the Russian-Ukrainian conflict by advocating for a one-state solution where the inhabitants can get democratic representation & equal rights.
Sure, but it feels different if you call the one state "New Ukraine" and the government is a democracy headed by iono, Zelensky.
Also, the one state solution is not advocating for Israeli annexation of all Palestinian territory -- it's advocating for the view that Israel has already de facto annexed Palestine, and that the current Israeli government is implementing a brutal apartheid that needs to end. Calling the whole state something new, giving everyone citizenship, and electing new leaders won't solve everything but it's a valid perspective to have.
> they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.
This is in fact a crazy take. It’s not quite advocating a shared state for Nazis and Jews level of crazy but it’s certainly getting there. Palestinian nationalism is based on being anti-Israel in much the same way anti-colonial or anti-metropolitan nationalism is. See Catalan, Scottish, Irish or Welsh nationalism.
Palestinian nationalism is much more like Irish nationalism than any of the rest of those in that people have killed for it in large numbers.
When people say something really stupid you have the choice of believing they’re lying or stupid. One staters are some of one and some of the other.
Well Protestant and Catholics learned to live together in Germany. Took 30 years but they got there. I do not see why not Palestinians and Jewish can’t do the same.
Were I a Jew or a Palestinian I would personally prefer not to live in a battleground for 30 years. Losing a third of the population also sounds bad. If your argument for one state is that it would be at worst as bad as the 30 Years War I’ll take it as an argument against one state.
"Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people to its ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionists view it as a colonialist, racist or exceptionalist ideology or movement."
You do not get to tell other people what their views are. In the first place, questioning what has in practice meant "buy some tanks and go oppress the natives" is not something spoken of positively for literally any other country doing it. But when it is Israel, pointing out that humans have (and should have) rights somehow means that you hate all Jews. Ridiculous. Rather it is the reverse: Understanding Jews and their historical circumstances should give you a renewed respect for human rights and how important they are.
> You do not get to tell other people what their views are.
They are judging people's views, not telling them what to think. It's fine to believe what you want about other people's views. You do not control other people's minds.
When "Zionism" only means that Jews have a right to live in those lands, that's fine because Jews are indeed one of the "indigenous" inhabitants of them.
When "Zionism" also means that Jews can create a "Jewish State" that discriminates against non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants (e.g. through a racist "law of return") - this is a big problem.
How many jews are allowed in palestine, vs how many arabs in israel? Who is more racist is clear to see by the actual actions taken. Jews can't live in arab areas, while ~20% of israel is arab. The racists are plain to see. Arab ethno-nationalism is somehow not part of the conversation, just 'anti zionism', while the arabs keep the jews out by violence.
I'm sure many want the land that their families lost long ago when Israel was established and plenty of Palestinians are enraged enough by the ongoing human rights abuses that they suffer that they'll curse the Israeli state. Some will even say some pretty radical shit about it, probably similar to what Ukrainians might say of the invading Russians, or even what some Irish said of the Brits back during their independence struggle.
However if you were to right now offer the people of Palestine a guaranteed peace with a two-state solution based on the Oslo accords they would overwhelmingly vote to accept it. I don't think you could say the same of anyone who describes themselves as a Zionist. Though I don't know how widespread that belief is among the Israeli population, it's entirely likely a similar majority in Israel would be satisfied with such a solution.
> Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel.
Zionism is about the right of Israel to exist as an explicitly Jewish nation state. Being anti-Zionist does not mean you believe Israel should cease to exist, unless you define Isreal only in terms of ethnicity and religion.
> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.
That's a fairly recent development in the grand scheme of things. Prior to the formation of Israel, Zionism was frequently contrasted with Bundism. The Bundist idea was that the "Jewish nation" is inherently a nation without borders and that Jews should organize internationally wherever they are. Bundists still exist but when Israel was created a lot of Jews adopted a more Zionist stance as the existence of Israel pretty much forced their hand in the debate.
There are still many good arguments against Zionism even now that Israel exists, especially from the point of view that just because Israel wants to be a "home country" for (certain) Jews, many Jews already have a home country elsewhere and identifying Israel as their home country only plays into the hands of antisemites arguing they're "foreigners" who don't belong in the country they were born into.
In fact, many white nationalists in the West use Zionism as a talking point to support their demand for white ethnostates: if Jews can have Israel for Jews, why can't "ethnic Germans" have Germany for "ethnic Germans", etc. The arguments of course get increasingly incoherent with places like the US where pinning down an "original white ethnic identity" requires a fair bit of mythologizing.
Arguably, Israel as a "Jewish state" is a late project of 19th century European nationalism, which largely fell out of fashion after WW2 with the increasing globalization of trade and industry and the softening of national borders through common trade areas and projects like the European Union. The perceived necessity for a "Jewish home country" was accelerated by the Holocaust (and the refusal of Allied countries to take on Jewish refugees until it was too late) but the "Jewish consensus" of universal support for Zionism is more manufactured than authentic and Israel has become as divisive as it has become unifying (e.g through the disregard towards Yiddish as a Jewish language, racism towards non-white Jews, prominent individuals like Netanyahu engaging in Hitler apologism, etc) even if you don't consider issues pertaining Palestinian Arabs.
Although primarily a historical movement pre-dating the formation of modern Israel, Bundist movements still exist in many countries today and tend to be especially popular with Jewish socialists (who tend to be critical of Israel which they often perceive as an imperialist and colonialist project).
Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel.
If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.