Notices by Adam Beer (adambyte@dragonscave.space)

@mima Your discussion of the different Jewish ethnicities/lineages is quibbling over definitions while missing the actual point. When I call Israel a "Jewish ethnostate," I'm taking about the mindset of, "We need a state specifically for this group of people," which is the same as what motivates ethnostates. It doesn't matter whether or not Jewishness is technically an ethnicity.

Overall, you seem to be accusing me of painting with too broad a brush, saying that the word, "Zionism," has historically referred to a variety of perspectives, of which I'm only criticising one. But that's the only perspective I've ever seen it refer to, so I still think it's fair. Actually, wait: this is also just quibbling over definitions!

I don't know where you got the idea that I think Jewish people shouldn't be allowed to determine their own destiny. I thought I made it very clear that I was saying that their historical inability to determine their own destiny does not give them the right to impose that same dreadful condition upon others, most notably Palestinians. There are, of course, many Jewish people who also publicly take this position, but again, I've only ever seen them referred to—by both themselves and others—as, "Jewish anti-Zionists."

This is probably my most controversial opinion. It's been percolating in my mind for a year or three, and I've finally figured out how to express it clearly and concisely.

The fundamental problem with Israel, the ADL, etc. is that Zionism (or at least Jewish Zionism) is the result of learning the wrong lesson from the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the logical conclusion of an "Aryan" ethnostate. The definition of, "Aryan," was vague and it changed over time, but for the purposes of this post all we need to know is that it included, "not Jewish."

The Zionists are the people who looked at that and thought, "This is evidence that we need a Jewish ethnostate," when what they should've thought is, "This is evidence that ethnostates are bad."

Many are baffled by how Israel could "fall into" committing genocide when the entire reason it exists is supposedly to protect and empower a people who themselves had just suffered the quintessential genocide. But the tragic truth is that both genocides have the same cause: the mere fact that the perpetrator is an ethnostate.

This is why a "two-state solution" isn't a solution. Separating ethnicities into their own ethnostates isn't the solution because those different ethnicities living together in the same state isn't the problem. The problem is that that state is an ethnostate. And so, the only real solution to the Israel-Palestine situation is for the whole place to become one pluralistic democracy with equal rights for all.

#ADL #antiDefamationLeague #antisemitism #democracy #ethnonationalism #ethnostate #Gaza #Holocaust #Israel #Palestine #pluralism #Zionism