Israel to World: "Suck It."

Do you not consider B’Tselem part of the zionnist left?

do you? I put a lot of trust in their reporting, but I don't think they describe themselves as zionist (https://www.btselem.org/about_btselem) and I don't think any self-avowed zionists would describe them as zionist either...(https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-denounces-btselem-chiefs-un-speech-as-full-of-lies/)

By Zionist Left I guess I meant Labor, and their institutional remnants in Israeli govt and media.

OK. I’m sorry, but all these profiles of Bennett as prime minister and handing-out of medals to the architects of Bibi’s downfall feels a tad premature. I don’t want to depress anyone, but this is the most difficult coalition to build in Israel’s history and it’s far from done.>

— Anshel Pfeffer אנשיל פפר (@AnshelPfeffer) May 30, 2021

do you? I put a lot of trust in their reporting, but I don't think they describe themselves as zionist (https://www.btselem.org/about_btselem) and I don't think any self-avowed zionists would describe them as zionist either...(https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-denounces-btselem-chiefs-un-speech-as-full-of-lies/)

By Zionist Left I guess I meant Labor, and their institutional remnants in Israeli govt and media.

― Wayne Grotski (symsymsym), Sunday, May 30, 2021 7:18 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I do yeah, don't really care how Netanyahu and his hard right factions describes them to be honest. Nor do I think their description is really against the notion of jewish self-determination in their homeland.

from the article I linked:

The leader of the opposition Yesh Atid party, MK Yair Lapid, tweeted that “B’Tselem’s speech at the UNSC was a predictable mix of lies, distortions and propaganda. They represent no-one but themselves.”

But this is essentially a semantic argument about the meaning of the term "zionist". I think your usage is idiosyncratic. But if there's anyone else in the world who classifies Btselem as a zionist organization, please let me know.

B'Tselem CEO:

Superb q&a with @NathanThrall in @jacobin: "we have to call the system of domination by its name today. ...the process is the same: backed by the state, the dominating group (Jews) takes over the land and replaces the dominated population (Palestinians)." https://t.co/ZXMTM4eIzr

— Hagai El-Ad (@HagaiElAd) May 27, 2021

The notion that jewish self determination in the homeland is a idiosyncratic understanding of zionism is a strange statement. I don't think I've ever read or heard El-Had say that he is against that.

I just think it's important to have the capacity to imagine a zionism that is against the apartheid and genocide of Palestinians.

B'Tselem is very careful on their website to describe themselves as anti-occupation, which is in no way the same thing as being anti-Zionist. I would not say they're a Zionist organization but they're obviously an organization to which Zionists can comfortably belong.

Naftali Bennett is a fascist murderer who's boasted about killing Arabs and who rushed to defend white supremacists after the Tree of Life massacre. He is a bigoted monster who, like Netanyahu, will be heralded as messiah by the vast majority of American Jewish leadership.

— Eli Valley (@elivalley) May 30, 2021

Idk I'm gonna need Megan McCain to weigh in before I can decide

Netanyahu "heralded as messiah" by the vast majority of American Jewish leadership, don't make me laugh

More accurately, Bibi is extremely popular with the CPAC wing of US evangelical Christians.

i'm very ignorant and very curious about how recent events are being discussed within the various American Jewish communities - would anyone here have any firsthand accounts they'd care to share? or can anyone recommend articles that ring true to you? i've found a couple of interesting articles by Jews who've recently come to see Israel differently, but they're mostly accounts of the authors' individual journeys. i guess like: is this something that's the subject of a growing and difficult generation gap being played out around tens of thousands of dinner tables nationwide, or still more like a very small minority of people with an essentially taboo viewpoint only explored on Twitter?

Pretty much the former.

I don't know a single Jewish person under 40 who is a Zionist, and I have many Jewish friends.

I know Jewish people under 40 who are zionists. I’m relayed to them.

Related.

I know lots of Jewish people under 40 who are Zionists but few who support Likud. The political center of gravity is Rabin and his murder is seen as a triumph for the right and a catastrophe for Zionism.

my experience as a jew under 40: "zionism" of a sort has been drilled into my head since i started hebrew school in second grade. i belonged to a very liberal reform synagogue, and even in that curriculum we were taught, well, this: "israel is the jewish homeland and is the main safeguard to preventing another holocaust, yet there are those who wish to destroy israel (and therefore the jewish people) to this day." it's hard to shake that, and i think even many secular, non-practicing jews share that view of israel, whether they've absorbed it through high holiday services, or birthright, or their own family trips to israel.

i do think that this particular crisis is causing some in my community to think a bit more critically about the role of israel in judaism, and about the state's treatment of the palestinian people. however, once the reports of rising anti-semitic incidents started coming through the media, that took over the conversation, with people who hadn't otherwise commented on the i-p conflict posting about how anti-semitism is never acceptable, etc, and lots and lots of blue squares to express solidarity.

the thing that bothers me: obviously anti-semitism is always despicable, but it's clear that some people are conflating anti-israeli government statements with anti-semitism and i get the feeling that even some who do understand the distinction are still using the threat of anti-semitism as a wall between themselves and unpleasant thoughts about what israel is doing in gaza and the west bank.

forgive the ramble.

*some people in the third paragraph, meaning "some jewish friends, acquaintances, and social media follows"

good post

I know lots of Jewish people under 40 who are Zionists but few who support Likud. The political center of gravity is Rabin and his murder is seen as a triumph for the right and a catastrophe for Zionism.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, June 1, 2021 2:20 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, that's my experience as well. I would also say that for people over 40, it certainly leans more towards peace/Rabin/disliking Likud, the generational gap is shrinking.

unfortunately in Israel the political center of gravity has moved far in the other direction

yup agree with eephus and VHS. I'm pretty connected to more deeply/traditionally Jewish contexts and institutions, and have various friends on social media who see Israel condemned for their actions and still go back to the tried-and-true (in Zionist circles), "what do you want them to do?! Hamas is firing rockets at them!" But even the people saying that stuff are basically all ant-Netanyahu and promote a more "center-left" Zionist agenda.

I have a good number of friends in Israel too and we are basically politically simpatico, which makes it hard to square how the country has tilted so far to the right.

~anti-Netanyahu

In my limited experience, in France they are much more conservative and pro-likud, but that's just what I saw and heard around me in my visits there. In general, my jewish circles are very ashkenazi and north american, and I have always wondered if sephardim/mizrahim in Israel are more conservative, maybe someone here could answer.

Yeah good point I am in the Ashkenaz bubble as well

thanks for all these answers, everyone.

The Jewish community in the UK now overwhelmingly votes Tory, in fact it's politically the most right wing 'community' in the UK. It's been like that for a while but it really began to swing right when Ed Miliband (who was Jewish) signalled a change in Labour's policy towards Israel and just went through the roof with Corbyn.

history of the mizrahi vote:

It was from the political outsiders, the right wing of Israeli politics — Likud and its precursor Herut — that expressions of respect for the Mizrahi contribution to building the country came.

By 1977, the Mizrahi population was large enough to help bring Likud to power for the first time.

During the 1981 elections, then prime minister Menachem Begin exploited the resentment that the Mizrahim in the development towns felt toward the nearby kibbutzim with their vast reserves of land by invoking the “millionaire (Ashkenazi) kibbutzniks with their swimming pools.”

Today, many of the kibbutzim are broke and the development towns have swimming pools.

But old symbols remain potent long after reality has changed.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-the-left-keeps-failing-in-the-pro-likud-periphery-home-to-25-of-israelis/

Thanks!

imo it's insidious that Israel has no absentee voting for citizens living abroad, so any Israelis who leave in disgust no longer have any electoral power

israel's left left israel

The Jewish community in the UK now overwhelmingly votes Tory, in fact it's politically the most right wing 'community' in the UK. It's been like that for a while but it really began to swing right when Ed Miliband (who was Jewish) signalled a change in Labour's policy towards Israel and just went through the roof with Corbyn.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Tuesday, 1 June 2021 19:31 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have some notion that it started earlier, like thatcher earlier?

According to this article, Miliband was the first time in UK electoral history that the majority of British Jews voted Conservative.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-there-a-jewish-vote-in-the-british-elections-402054

Maureen Lipman was very vocal against Ed at the time and quit the party, she quit Equity last week as well. Some people will never be happy with anything other than unmitigated approval for everything the state of Israel does.

Some people will manufacture any excuse for ending up as Tories.

see also : Ian Austin and Lord Walney. Strong voices against antisemitism in the UK who both got peerages and didn't have fuck all to say when the UK PM invited an actual neo-nazi to 10 Downing st.

maybe "inviting" is a bit strong, but he laid out the red carpet and helped legitimise a genuine fascist leader.

not a lot of actual data in that article

There isn't but I'm sure there's stats somewhere.

In the poll that Jpost article cited, 51% of respondents said they voted for Cameron in 2010.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/huge-majority-of-british-jews-will-vote-tory-jc-poll-reveals-1.66001

might be hard to find truly reliable numbers of course

apparently thatcher consistently won the jewish vote in her constituency too

No great achievement for a Tory in that consituency.

there are genuine antisemitic tropes that seemingly go without criticism from right-wing UK Jewish publications, that originate from the right-wing of the UK Labour party as well as from the tories. Like when Nandy said antisemitism is "a form of racism that punches upwards instead of downwards"

o_O

that was mild, there was lots of 'anticapitalism is antisemitism because jews are all bankers' discourse from the right that was apparently totally fine and normal (one labour mp said almost exactly that as i recall)

the hidden irony in this is that the dominant Christian cultures of Europe long considered banking to be usury, but the aristocracy badly wanted to borrow money, so they purposely reserved the sinful business of banking for jews.

just a few more hours until Lapid's mandate runs out...

Israel to Netanyahu: "Suck It."