• 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Let’s set aside the multiple issues with “I think one of my distant ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, or maybe just other members of my religious group, therefore I have a right to live here today” and assume that yes, that sort of historical/ancestral claim gives comtemporary Jewish people a right to live in Palestine. Even in the most generous light imaginable, it would not give them a right to build an ethnostate by committing genocide on the current inhabitants. Israel is so far past anything that could be reasonably granted from ancient Jews living in Palestine that there is no possible defense along those lines.

    Or are we strictly talking about western powers giving the Jewish people a ‘homeland’ after the second world war and the holocaust?

    Yes, that’s what people mean when they refer to Israel as a colony of Europe/the U.S.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      The giant gaping hole in calling Israel a “western colony” is that it has no homeland. It’s not a British colony, or a French colony, or a colony of any other country. If Israel as a country stops existing, the vast majority of its citizens don’t have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it’s not a colony and it’s not colonialism, it’s an independent country.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        You know that many Israelis did come from anglosphere or now-EU states, right? It’s not like it’s just a new social formation of people who already lived in the region.

      • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        Sure I was born in Britain with British citizenship, but I identify as Middle Eastern so I should be granted somebody else’s land where they are currently living.

        These people should be blasted into fucking space if they need a homeland so badly. Zionism cannot even exist without the antisemitic belief in a fifth column. Are Jews an alien element in Western society, or do they belong to the societies in which they were born?

        I will tell you this: Middle Eastern people do not eat schnitzel.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        When the British expelled criminals to Australia they couldn’t return home. Was Australia not a colony? A ton of European immigrants to the American colonies intended their journeys to be one-way trips, and were functionally barred from returning by cost. Does that mean there were no colonies in the Americas?

        Besides, throughout history you almost never see settlers leaving en masse when colonial administrations end. Sure, some recent arrivees may turn around, and some administrators who moved there mostly to work in the colonial government may leave, but you really never see the main body of settlers leave. You didn’t even have this in South Africa. They simply have to live under a government where they can’t shoot the locals with impunity.

        • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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          10 months ago

          That doesn’t really address the point though… Israel is independent, and was so from the start. It’s not bound to any other western country’s rule, which is the first requirement for being a colony.

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            the vast majority of its citizens don’t have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it’s not a colony

            It directly refutes this.

            If you’re leaning on Israel being formally independent, they’re about as independent from the West (particularly the U.S.) as a college freshman getting their tuition paid by Mom and Dad. No one here is talking about Israel being independent on paper, we’re talking about how it interacts with other countries in reality.

                • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  10 months ago

                  My point is that Israel is not a colony and has a right to exist.

                  I am not excusing what is being done to Palestinians. I strive for peace, and Israel is showing no signs of it anymore, though it absolutely did just a few decades ago. But no one is saying all of Russia doesn’t have a right to exist because it attacked Ukraine. No one is saying USA or Canada don’t have a right to exist because of how they historically treated and are still treating native Americans. And no one should be saying that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.

                  Coexistence is the only solution. It seems impossible today, but it’s the only possible solution that could possibly work. Anything else is even more detached from reality.

                  • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    10 months ago

                    “No country is fully independent” says nothing about whether Israel is properly classified as a colony. It’s a platitude.

                    a right to exist

                    Another platitude. What do you mean by this? Israel’s current actions are indefensible. Many of its past actions are indefensible. Its policy of neither recognizing a Palestinian state nor granting equal citizenship to Palestinians is indefensible. It must either fundamentally change or be replaced by a government worth supporting, like South Africa before it.

                    It certainly does not have a right to continue existing in its current form, no more than Nazi Germany did.