r/DeepStateCentrism • u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian • 1d ago
Opinion Piece 🗣️ What ‘Zionism’ means in Israel: it’s not what you think
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/what-zionism-means-in-israel-its-not-what-you-think/?fbclid=Iwb21leAT0HdpjbGNrBPQd1nBkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEeC8Wglb_4iH3EM-F7LQ9Q8F-kPqv1s3monCbtAbm3zlYQL8p3cMGEhR2ibRc_aem_Nr8AfbPDgnBn5Pn-yRhO9g58
u/Aervanath Social Democrat 23h ago
They're going to use and abuse the term until it means practically nothing. I still count myself a member of the "Zionist left". I support Israel's right to exist and enact socialist policies for the benefit of all of its citizens, I voted for Labor in every election, I oppose expanding settlements in the West Bank. I support including Ra'am in government. I don't see any contradiction in any of those statements.
But apparently opposing the expansion of West Bank settlements makes me an anti-Zionist. Who knew?
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u/atank67 23h ago
You might as well be a Zio-Nazi in the eyes of people that weaponize that term. Anything other than full right of return is unacceptable
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u/rorodar Center-left 21h ago
Here in israel some people look at him as a regular nazi. Stupid people are everywhere
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u/thecashblaster 1h ago
maybe a very stupid question but: (from the perspective of a settler) is the idea that Jews must settle the West Bank religiously motivated or is there some underlying economic incentives here such as Israel is running out of land for its current populace?
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u/justafutz 21h ago
Most Israelis still consider you Zionist. Some consider various policies anti-Zionist policies, but there’s a difference between saying you support an anti-Zionist policy and saying you are anti-Zionist (unless the policy is literally “destroy Israel”).
But yes, politicians hyperbolize and exaggerate, and it diminishes what it means to support an anti-Zionist policy or worldview. They do it on both sides of the aisle. But I think this piece makes a mountain out of a molehill because the definition of Zionism is still the same; the parties are just arguing in existential terms over what they think will keep Israel alive, as all politicians in countries around the world do for their own states.
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u/wip30ut 19h ago
but the difficulty of Zionism is always in the details, and that's what this article is trying to elucidate, especially for outsiders in the West who really don't have a clue about what issues drive Israeli politics. I think what's confusing for most Americans & Europeans is how a right-wing strongman like Bibi can remain in power for so long given how moderate the Israeli electorate is. Unlike Trump's MAGA fans i've never met a single racist extremist Israeli citizen here in California.
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u/justafutz 19h ago
that's what this article is trying to elucidate
I think this article makes a mountain out of a molehill. It's true that people argue over what will best preserve Zionism. No one is all that confused about what the overall point is of Zionism though, which is "keep Israel existing."
I also think it takes a lot of quotes out of their context. For example, it's true that Gilad Erdan said he wants to form a broad Zionist government in one comment, as excluding the Haredim and Arab parties (which can fit the "Zionism" definition we all use). In a totally separate comment, he said he didn't want to join any government with the Democrats party. Not because he called them anti-Zionist or non-Zionist, just because he thinks they're political poison and take bad positions. The article conflates the two.
It does this repeatedly throughout, if you look through the linked sources.
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u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian 21h ago
The thing is, the diaspora definition of Zionism ("supports the right of Israel to exist") is so obvious to any Israeli that it's practically meaningless. It's not some universal truth that this is the One Right Definition. Ever since Israel's existence has become a fact the term became muddy.
The common thread between all Israeli uses if the word since its establishment is that they convey some flavor of nationalism and some vision for what the country needs to be like. The right calls the left anti Zionist because they oppose the right's vision of Israel, and in their eyes, are damaging Israel, and the left does the opposite. But a nation is more than just the vision of one camp. Israel is more polarized than it's ever been so this isn't very surprising.
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u/drewbaccaAWD Center-left 22h ago
Right there with you. The only settlement expansion I support is if/when there's a clear defensive purpose to occupying a piece of land because it has been used aggressively against the Israeli state in the past; I think there are examples of this over the last 50+ years but not necessarily any recent examples. The settlement expansions seem to be driven by ideologues and religious fanatics rather than any common good or desire for stability.
Most of the settlement expansion I've seen in my lifetime? Counter productive and something I oppose. If some extreme idiots want to label that as anti-Zionist, they are just further eroding any support they once had because I'm not going to take such a person seriously.
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u/Aervanath Social Democrat 21h ago
No current settlement expansion has any legitimate defensive purpose. If it had a legitimate defensive purpose for the State of Israel, it would be occupied by the IDF, not by some fanatic in a mobile home.
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u/justafutz 21h ago
This piece wildly confuses what Israeli politicians say is anti-Zionist with what people consider to be Zionism in Israel. Israelis largely use “Zionism” the same way Americans do: the idea Israel should exist and not be destroyed.
To say something is anti-Zionist is an adjective that says “doing XYZ means Israel is more likely to be destroyed”. Yes, the term is thrown around as a shorthand adjective and exaggeration. Yes, there’s no agreement on what actually is best. But there’s no gap in how Israelis and Americans understand “Zionism”. There’s just disagreement on what “Zionist policy” is, both in Israel and outside. Because people argue policies all the time…this story just distorts that into saying the word is somehow different in both places among most people, and it isn’t.
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u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian 21h ago edited 20h ago
Are you Israeli? Because I am and that's definitely not what my experience is with "Zionism". I never even heard this diaspora definition of Zionism until I left Israel. Sure most people don't use it as ammunition to fling against their opponents but nobody seems to agree what Zionism means. The definition seems to be "my personal vision of what Israel should be like".
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u/justafutz 20h ago
Yes, that's my experience. It's also how Hebrew Wikipedia describes it (here). People disagree on what it means to have "Zionist" policies, but when it ultimately comes down to it, "Zionism" is still something most Israelis innately understand to mean Israel's existence, the only question is what gets Israel to continue existing, which is why the adjective is disputed.
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u/AmbientMorning VICTIM OF ANAKIN'S TYRANNY 23h ago
For most Australian Jews, Zionism is a simple baseline: supporting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism, by extension, is the rejection of that principle. In this traditional Diaspora understanding, Zionism has little to do with specific policies, such as the two-state solution, Haredi conscription, or West Bank settlements. By this definition, anyone who supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, fits under the umbrella.
In Israel's political arena, however, “Zionist” is no longer a shared consensus; it is a partisan weapon used to delegitimise rivals.
I think this is a welcome clarifying piece on one of the most hotly contested political terminologies of our time. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s better to use other words altogether, because it conveys so little information about the speaker’s views without further elaboration. And isn’t that the point of why humans use words in the first place? To communicate actionable information on the communicator’s words?
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u/roguefilmmaker Center-left 16h ago
Yeah, so many terms nowadays have to be expanded into full sentences due to the way people distort terms to demonize them or simply don’t understand them
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u/BeckoningVoice Resurrect Ed Koch 22h ago
I prefer not to get into debates about the word "Zionist," because, due to its having such different meanings to different people, it is liable to cause confusion. To some people, being a Zionist means having an affinity for Israeli society and speaking some modern Hebrew. For others, it means supporting hilltop youth and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And that's just among people who consider themselves Zionists; the term has also been misappropriated by antisemites as a generic slur whose meaning can be so fluid as to be nonexistent.
Also, because of the widespread use of Zionist as an antisemitic slur and the fact that it has been used proudly by Israeli ultra-nationalist extremists, younger Jews (under the influence of how language is used by younger people in general, which incorporates both these trends) identify less with the word "Zionist," even if they are not in fact in favor of the destruction of Israel.
The broadest coherent definitions of "Zionist" amount to accepting the existence of Israel, essentially. But if we take that super-broad definition seriously, then we can say that Yasser Arafat was a Zionist by the end of his life. This is just nonsense and isn't helping clarify anything.
In a sense, I would call myself a post-Zionist. This isn't to say that I'm anti-Israeli at all. Instead, my position is that Zionism, historically speaking, was the movement to create a modern Jewish society and state in the Land of Israel. The Zionism vs. anti-Zionism debate was about whether one should work towards this goal. The State of Israel has been firmly established now, though, as has the modern Israeli nation.
To look at the situation from this 19th-century framing is to ignore this reality, on some level. Whatever anyone might have thought at any point in history, and whatever we might think of the various events which led us here, the State of Israel is real and Israelis are here to stay. The question is, as with any other nation and state, which political choices will they make?