Hero Israel

The mood for Tisha B'Av

my partner (Jewish) and I (supportive goy atheist) have made a new friend (Arab Muslim), and we obviously have some different beliefs and opinions but also a lot of shared values, so the friendship has been strong thus far.

there are some instances where we have to bite our tongues, in regard to the I/P conflict mainly, though we are starting to push back in small ways such as, yes Hamas is an armed terrorist group, most Jews/Israelis don't support the government's actions, etc. this all came to a head last night when we made the *very* controversial statement: Jews are indigenous to the Levant.

I'm shocked at how she was unwilling to accept that, she became stubborn, defaulted to her mother's opinion, and started asserting that all Jewish prophets/architecture/holy sites are actually Islamic, and not Jewish, since they were sent/built/assigned by G-d. this, naturally, extends her opinion to that of modern day Jews being totally genetically unrelated to the ancient Israelites. blatant erasure and rewriting of Jewish history, centring Islam even though the Quran is demonstrably younger than the Tanakh. my partner understandably lashed out as their cultural ancestry was being disrespected. we tried to explain that there's a difference between respecting others' beliefs, vs one's beliefs directly erasing an entire group's existence from history, but she kept falling back on "history is written by the victors, we have no real way of knowing anything given that we didn't live back then".

In essence, according to that doctrine, all of the Biblical peoples, sites, and narratives were actually Arab Muslims, but then the Jewish leaders/scribes/people/rabbis/etc got their hands on the texts and maliciously edited them for... reasons. And since this malicious editing meant that the word of god was being hoarded by the Jews, that then required Allah to send additional prophets (Jesus and then, when he "failed", Mohammad) to "correct" things back to where they "should" have been.

It's also the basis for a number of other really nasty bits of Islamic antisemitism--for example, apparently the Jewish tribes in Arabia were not there because of the Diaspora, but that they had moved there in anticipation of another divine prophet to fight against, and when they met Mohammad, they recognized him as their anticipated and intended enemy. (And I'm not exaggerating--that's literally what's taught by Islamists; it's given pretty much verbatim in this video at the ten minute mark). In terms of implications, just think of what that little narrative means--that all Jews, or at least Jewish leadership, knows the "truth" (that Islam is the actual origin and belief system) rejects it out of sheer contrariness, and work conspiratorially to keep it buried.

When that's what is taught to the average, well-meaning Muslim, like your associate, about Jewish history, identity, and culture...

(All good faith questions are welcome, Anon - thanks for this one!)

TLDR: Because words change meanings over time and Herzl wasn't psychic.

In the 1890s, "colony" just meant a planned settlement or concentrated community. This included Jewish agricultural colonies in the Pale, temperance colonies in Colorado, and utopian communes everywhere.

It was basically the Victorian word for "intentional community," with absolutely no imperial baggage required.

The specific meaning activists now deploy (colony as racial domination, metropole extraction, indigenous suppression) is a 20th century framework that didn't exist when Herzl was writing in 1896.

So a reader of the 21st century finds the word "colony" in an old text and assumes it carries a technical definition that was coined decades later.

It's a little like finding the word "trauma" in a Civil War field report and concluding the surgeon was diagnosing PTSD.

Meanwhile, 'settler colonialism' as applied to Israel isn't a neutral analytical tool that happens to fit badly. It's a framework specifically constructed to exclude the features that distinguish Jewish return from actual settler colonialism...and it still fails on its own stated terms.

Jewish immigrants to the Levant were never agents of any empire. They were overwhelmingly refugees from empires who were fleeing Russian pogroms, Eastern European persecution, and later Nazi Germany. No metropole sent them. No metropole would take them back if the project failed.

That's not a minor quibble about definitions, either - it's the primary distinction between settler colonialism and every other form of large population movement in history.

There's also the matter of indigeneity. The Jews returning to the Levant weren't arriving in a place with which they had no connection.

Jewish presence in the region is documented continuously from ancient history, including in Egyptian records dating to roughly 1210 BCE.

The religious, linguistic, and ancestral connection to the land is what distinguishes this case from the British in Kenya or the French in Algeria, who had no such ties - and it is some of the best-documented, most indisputable history humans have ever gathered. (This is why they're so constantly engaged in historical revisionism.)

So when proponents of the settler colonialism framework of accusation encounter these objections, what do they do?

They move the goalposts.

The absence of a metropole gets explained away as an "exception."

The indigenous origin of the Jewish people to the Levant gets ahistorically dismissed or ignored, despite the fact that the Jewish people are the only group whose national identity, language, and religion originated in and remained oriented toward that specific land throughout their entire existence.

The framework gets rewritten and the history is revised until Israel fits the allegation.

So, one word in Der Judenstaat doesn't settle* any of this.

From The Atlantic: The False Narrative of Settler Colonialism (paywall bypassed)

Much more in this post.

It's completely correct that the semiotics of "colony", "colonization", etc., have evolved over time, and that back in the late 19th Century when Herzl was writing the connotation was more neutral than it became in the 20th Century. (I also need to stress that that one "it is something colonial" quote-mine you see shared everywhere is from a letter that was never even sent, because Herzl realized it was a bad idea.)

But more to the point: the old guard Zionists were fully aware of accusations they were European colonizers - and they actively refuted those claims.

— Jews and Muslims in the Arab World: Haunted by Pasts Real and Imagined (Jacob Lassner, Ilan S. Troen, 2007)

— Hebrew Repatriation to Eretz Yisrael (Samuel Kruglikoff, 1930)

— Eliahu Eliachar, Testimony to UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) Regarding Jews in Arab Countries (1947)

— Ber Borochov, Poalei Tziyon Peace Manifesto (1917)

— David Ben-Gurion, Statement to the Elected Assembly of Palestine Jewry (1947)

Zionists wrote copious volumes about the indigeneity of Judeans to Eretz Yisrael, and denying accusations that they were merely pawns of an imperialist agenda (initially it was claimed they were Russian agents, and then later British colonists) or seeking to conquer or to exploit the land or its people. Contrary to the popular claim that Zionists thought (or promoted the concept) the land was uninhabited, a very substantial amount was written about the Palestinians (particularly from the perspective of class analysis), and how the return and liberation of Judeans must go hand-in-hand with class solidarity and the liberation of Arab workers. In other words: the exact opposite of colonialism. What we today would call decolonization - and specifically decolonization via proletarian revolution.

Jews: “That’s as antisemitic as it gets.”

Progressive: “Hey, criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitic, and how dare you paint the DSA with a broad brush!”

The real battle is fighting everyone’s apathy to the pogrom. Which is hard to do when everyone, including a not insignificant portion of Jews, keep saying how important a personal theocratic ethnostate existing is to them.

Anyway, when progressives take antisemitic libels ancient and modern and merely substitute “Zionist” for “Jew”, that’s still antisemitic, since Israel is the only country in the world that is majority-Jewish, with the only cities in the world that are majority-Jewish. Of course it’s associated with Jews.

Israel is also home to half the world’s Jewish population, so there is good reason that the safety of Israelis and the preservation of Jewish self-determination there (AKA Zionism) is a priority for 90% of Jews worldwide. You should ask yourself why you think it’s reasonable to strip from a globally persecuted minority the sovereignty that is the sole representation of their right to self-defense. You should also ask yourself why you think it’s reasonable for a pogrom to be perpetrated against Jews in diaspora for caring about their family in the Eastern Hemisphere. You’ll find the answer is internalized antisemitism.

Anyway I hope your people find better orators if you’re going to keeping going down this path. Because guilt only works on people who care and less and less people do everyday, and the current rhetorical strategies don’t inspire much guilt but instead just kind of radicalize people the opposite way.

This is Nuclear Strategy 101 and all nuclear-armed states have the same thing. It is only noticed for Israel because it harshes the buzz of traditional beloved Jew-killling fantasies. When your sense of social normalcy relies on Jews being gone, it sure feels like an affront that they might dare to take you down with them. I hope this seriously bothers you. I hope you lose sleep over it, because you just can't stop death-wishing Jews and now have to imagine some potential consequence of it.

Biden and the U.N. symbolically establishing some punishment or limitation for Israel before Trump’s inauguration, just like Obama and John Kerry did at the U.N. last time. Perhaps a call for establishing a Palestinian state by a date certain, or even recognizing one in advance.

Trump reversing this.

Trump’s close embrace of Israel / Netanyahu continuing to be used to shoehorn American Jews out of their natural home in Democratic / progressive coalitions, and justifying hatred, exclusion, and violence against us. Perhaps a mass casualty attack.

A much more aggressive stance against Iran, perhaps reaching the level of striking their nuclear sites.

“Plaintiff may have already survived an assassination attempt by Jewish agents. Through a series of unlikely events, seemingly contrived by apparently conspiring Jews, Plaintiff was enticed by an attractive, busty Jewess and wet his mouth with a drink of partially unknown provenance. Hours later, Plaintiff experienced overwhelming fatigue and ‘twilight consciousness’ for hours – an event never experienced by Plaintiff prior or since. Plaintiff suspects he was poisoned by Jews,” he wrote. None of this convinced McAuliffe or the other judges.

Sorry team, I know i let everyone down. My busty self didn't use enough poison /j