I think a lot of that has to do with fear of criticizing israel because for decades, the only ones who did so were neonazis; if someone ranted a few years back about Israel or “the jews”, you could be 99% sure about their political orientation. It takes time to overcome that, especially if you don’t reexamine your take on political issues on the regular, what few people do. Hell, it took time for me to overcome that and i really try to inspect issues from all sides before deciding my stance of things.
Having said that, there aren’t any excuses anymore. even if you thought in the beginning that it was all lies and antisemitism, the overwhelming mountain of evidence of the IDFs behaviour cant be refuted anymore unless you have an agenda.
Neo nazis were absolutely not the only people critisizing Isreal in the past. Isreal just called everyone that regardless, and it seems like it worked. The earliest opposition to Zionism by necessity were Jews because that community is where those original discussions happened.
yeah, i can only offer my perspective, which is austrian - and it seems that those discussions were kept away from my surroundings; in our politics right-wing politicians surrounding the FPÖ were the only ones who criticized jews in a public way, and they did it because they are literally populist antisemites, rising from what the denazification didn’t eradicate. I myself became aware of the apartheid only a few years back, and like i said, i wasn’t so sure if it wasn’t facebook-style propaganda.
The earliest opposition to Zionism by necessity were Jews because that community is where those original discussions happened.
And Jews still are the biggest critics of Zionism! There is nothing inevitable about Zionism becoming the expression of Jewish self-identity. Zionism became the dominant model for Jewish self-conception because the other models, such as Bundist Doikayt, were exterminated in the Holocaust. In that sense, Jews rediscovering extra-Zionist Jewishnesses is a reaffirmation of the breadth of the Jewish experience that was stolen by the Nazis!
I think a lot of that has to do with fear of criticizing israel because for decades, the only ones who did so were neonazis; if someone ranted a few years back about Israel or “the jews”, you could be 99% sure about their political orientation. It takes time to overcome that, especially if you don’t reexamine your take on political issues on the regular, what few people do. Hell, it took time for me to overcome that and i really try to inspect issues from all sides before deciding my stance of things.
Having said that, there aren’t any excuses anymore. even if you thought in the beginning that it was all lies and antisemitism, the overwhelming mountain of evidence of the IDFs behaviour cant be refuted anymore unless you have an agenda.
Neo nazis were absolutely not the only people critisizing Isreal in the past. Isreal just called everyone that regardless, and it seems like it worked. The earliest opposition to Zionism by necessity were Jews because that community is where those original discussions happened.
yeah, i can only offer my perspective, which is austrian - and it seems that those discussions were kept away from my surroundings; in our politics right-wing politicians surrounding the FPÖ were the only ones who criticized jews in a public way, and they did it because they are literally populist antisemites, rising from what the denazification didn’t eradicate. I myself became aware of the apartheid only a few years back, and like i said, i wasn’t so sure if it wasn’t facebook-style propaganda.
And Jews still are the biggest critics of Zionism! There is nothing inevitable about Zionism becoming the expression of Jewish self-identity. Zionism became the dominant model for Jewish self-conception because the other models, such as Bundist Doikayt, were exterminated in the Holocaust. In that sense, Jews rediscovering extra-Zionist Jewishnesses is a reaffirmation of the breadth of the Jewish experience that was stolen by the Nazis!
Yeah, but they were the ones who made people believe that “Zionism” was a conspiracy theory of 'Jews wanting to exterminate the Goyim" (!).