Not a bot, just too lazy to customize

But it is also racist to say something like "coloniser teams need African players to win!" Which is a sentiment I have seen regarding France and Belgium in particular. Yes, both teams have many Black players on them, yes this is due to colonisation and the often forced movement of people, plus the historical links between coloniser and colonised countries mean that citizens of the latter are more inclined to move to the former than a different country. If you were gonna move from say, Algeria to a European country, it's a smart move to go to France, where they speak the same language as you do.

That doesn't mean Black players on European teams aren't European! Many of them are the children of immigrants, and have lived their whole lives in the country they're representing. Kylian Mbappé is French. He has spoken about it before, saying (this is a direct quote about representing France internationally)

"It’s because I was born in France, I’m French. I did everything in France, I had French culture, with origins that are Cameroonian and Algerian. But I grew up with French culture. It comes from the heart.”

When you say something like colonising countries need African players to win matches, you are firstly perpetuating the idea that Black people cannot be European. This is ridiculously false.

Secondly, you are perpetuating the idea that Black bodies are somehow built for labour and athleticism in a way that white bodies aren't. This is a racist idea that comes from slavery, when Black people were enslaved and dehumanised, with white enslavers saying that they were uniquely suited to hard labour, bc Black people are stronger than white people and don't feel pain etc etc. The idea of European teams somehow "importing" African players for their teams is racist!

The Black players on European teams are European. They are immensely talented players, that have put in just as much, if not more work, than their White teammates. Many Black players already face horrific racism from fans, especially when teams lose, and we do not need to be racist in a "liberal" way!

“Then why is that not on your website?” an SECB member asked.

“Because a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately,” she said. According to a 2025 report from Pew Research Center, 41 percent of US Muslims believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. The only religious group included in the survey with a lower acceptance rate were Evangelical Christians, only 36 percent of them are cool with homosexuality.”

Renowned Greek photographer Vangelis Kyris presents a striking series of portraits featuring over 80 models adorned in traditional garments from Jewish communities worldwide. These photographs, printed on cotton and intricately embroidered with gold and metallic threads, breathe new life into historical attire, connecting past traditions with contemporary artistic expression.

The exhibition is available at MUZA - Eretz Israel Museum. Photos via @/eretzisraelmuseum

I don't know why the authors of PoliLingua act as if Trump's verbal misogyny and racism wasn't very much part of his "original intent".

I’m not going to stop feeling strongly about it in the same way I still feel strongly seeing centuries of my people’s history buried under Catholic churches. I understand the dome is there now, and I don’t think it should be destroyed because I understand the significance it holds now.

But I’m not going to stop being angry about it. Especially since my people are not even allowed to go there. I can’t imagine the rage we Mexicans would justifiably have if Spaniards suddenly decided we aren’t allowed to visit our own ancient cities and temples becuase the land is “their’s now” since they built their churches there. The patience and understanding of the Jewish people is so fucking undermined. We have time and time again been expected to and have bent over backwards for others becuase we fundamentally believe in uplifting everyone, even at the cost of ourselves. Even in our own fucking country. Even in the country everyone accuses of being “Jewish supremacist” do we still face blatant discrimination, and allow ourselves to face it for the sake of our muslim neighbors and muslim Israeli citizens.

July 23, 2023 via RootsMetals

WHY DEFINITIONS MATTER

Scholars who have dedicated their entire lives to studying how propaganda works have noticed one thing: propagandists keep terms loose or undefined; in other words, vagueness is a telltale sign of propaganda. When concepts are vague or loosely defined, they are essentially rendered meaningless. 

A challenge we come up against time and time again when we engage in debates about Zionism is that more often than not, both sides are not talking about the same thing. One side opposes “Zionism,” which, in their heads, means one thing, while the other side supports “Zionism,” which, in their head, means another thing. We get nowhere this way. We need to first come to an agreement about what exactly we are talking about; otherwise we are just missing each other in our discussion. This is why I very rarely engage with people by using the words “Zionist” or “Zionism” without clearly defining them first. 

So let’s define some words. 

WHAT IS SELF-DETERMINATION?

Self-determination is the concept that peoples who share a national identity — not to be confused with nationality — have a legal right to choose their own governance, rather than being forced into living under the thumb of an empire. Self-determination is a basic tenet of international law, applicable to all peoples. 

Zionism is the Jewish movement for self-determination in the Land of Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People. 

PRE-MODERN ZIONISM

The term “Zionism” comes from an event that happened in 539 BCE, dubbed the “Return to Zion.” In 587 BCE, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Judah, where the word “Jew” comes from (as in: a resident of the Kingdom of Judah), and exiled 25 percent of its population. The veracity of this event is attested by both Israelite and Babylonian sources, as well as recent archeological findings. 

In 539 BCE, the exiled Jews were allowed to return to the Land of Israel, a return known as the “Return to Zion” (“Zion” is another term for the Land of Israel and/or Jerusalem). In this manner, Zionism can be described as the ancient longing of the Jewish People to return to our ancestral homeland. This longing is a constant theme for the past 2500 years of Jewish history. For more, see my post ZIONISM BEFORE ZIONISM. 

MODERN POLITICAL ZIONISM

In 1897, Jewish delegates from across the world met for the First Zionist Congress. There, they defined Zionism in simple terms: 

“Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz ­Israel [the Land of Israel] secured under public law.”

That’s it. Beyond that, people who identify as Zionist don’t necessarily agree on anything. Personally, I tend to think the best people to define a word are those who identify with it. For example, when I define Nazi ideology, I define it by literally quoting what the Nazis said about Nazism. In this manner, I think it’s appropriate to define Zionism by quoting what the Zionists say about Zionism.

HISTORIC CONTEXT 

Political Zionism was one of the hundreds of nationalist movements that arose in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, influenced largely by events such as the French Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence. 

Before I proceed, let’s define nationalism really quick: nationalism — not to be confused with movements such as white nationalism — is the idea that people who share a national identity are entitled to an independent state. Some examples of non-Zionist nationalism in the Middle East include Kurdish nationalism, Assyrian nationalism, Amazighism, and yes, even Palestinian nationalism.

A “nation,” in this context, is a group of people with a shared language, history, culture, territory, and/or society who see themselves as having a collective political destiny. The term “nation” is a lot more political in nature than the term “ethnic group.” The idea that Jews comprised one nation was nothing new; for 3000 years, we have called ourselves the “Nation of Israel.” Our ethnogenesis — the development and formation of an ethnic group — happened congruently with the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel in 1047 BCE. Even the term “Jew” means “someone from [the Kingdom of] Judah.” 

Nationalism in its early iterations was formed specifically in opposition to empire. In other words, for centuries, empires had long exercised their rule over conquered populations of different national identities. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of these subjugated national groups demanded their independence.

At the same time, following millennia of persecution in Europe, Jews were finally emancipated in the nineteenth century. As many moved out of their shtetls and tried to integrate into the rest of society, they, still, faced violent antisemitism. For many Jews, these conditions led to the conclusion that, as a nation of our own, we, too, had a right to independence in our ancestral homeland. 

"BUT ZIONISM CAME AT THE EXPENSE OF PALESTINIANS"

This is, at best, a completely decontextualized perspective. Let’s take some things into account: 

(1) the first political Zionists hardly envisioned an independent Jewish nation state, or a partitioned Land of Israel. This was at the tail end of the Ottoman occupation of the Land of Israel, and they couldn’t possibly have imagined that World War I would result in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Instead, they envisioned the “Jewish national home,” as they described it, within the framework of a multinational democracy or a multinational Ottoman state.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1937 that the concept for a partitioned Jewish nation state alongside an Arab state was proposed in the first place. The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, reluctantly accepted this idea as a compromise in light of Arab refusal to live alongside autonomous Jews.

This refusal is a matter of public record. In 1937, the British asked Haj Amin Al Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arab Higher Committee, should there be a “one state solution,” if Palestinian Arabs would be willing to absorb the 400,000 Jews already living in Palestine. 

He said: “No. Some of them would have to be removed by a process kindly or painful, as the case may be.”

(2) the Zionists did not come to Palestine bearing arms. In fact, the first Jewish paramilitary, the Haganah, was formed in 1920, in response to Arab riots that left scores of Jews dead. 

(3) the displacement of Palestinians, which came to be known as the Nakba, happened as a result of a war that the Zionist forces, by all account, did not start, a war in which the Palestinian Arab leadership explicitly and publicly threatened to carry out the Nazi Final Solution. 

On November 30, 1947, the morning after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state, the Arab Higher Committee published a leaflet in Arabic vowing to complete the job that the Nazis had started. The circular stated: “The Arabs have taken into their own hands the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will soon be driven out.” 

Has there been no war, there would’ve been no displacement. Had there been no war, Palestinian Arabs too would be celebrating 75 years of independence. 

HOW "ZIONIST" BECAME A DEROGATORY TERM

In its earliest iterations, non-Jewish anti-Zionists, raging from Wilhelm Marr to Adolf Hitler, made zero effort to divorce their anti-Zionism from their antisemitism. Wilhelm Marr, for example, called Zionism “a foul Jewish swindle.” In 1941, Hitler himself told Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, “Germany supports] an uncompromising struggle against the Jews…[this] would include, of course, opposition to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which is nothing more than a hub for the destructive influence of Jewish interests.”

Enter: the Soviet Union. From its inception, the Soviet Union was hostile to Zionism, much like it was hostile to all forms of minority nationalisms that threatened Soviet homogeneity across the region of the former Russian Empire. This hostility, however, ramped up significantly in the aftermath of World War II. But they, like Marr and Hitler before them, made little effort to disguise the fact that their hostility to Zionism was, for all intents and purposes, just hostility to Jews by a different name.

In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda (such as newspapers) made blatantly antisemitic claims, including: “The character of the Jewish religion serves the political aims of the Zionists,” “Zionism is inextricable from Judaism, rooted in the idea of the exclusiveness of the Jewish People,” comparisons of Judaism to the Italian mafia, and claims that Israel was merely a means to an end of Jewish imperialism and world domination.

To strengthen their sphere of influence over Arab and African nations, the Soviets launched a covert operation against Israel, named Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, meaning “Zionist Governments.” According to KGB chairman Yuri Andropov (1967-1982), “We had only to keep repeating our themes—that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, imperial-Zionist countries’ bankrolled by rich Jews.’”

What had once been seen largely as a righteous cause on behalf of the Jews after 2000 years of relentless persecution, now became associated with fascism, imperialism, and western influence. 

RESOLUTION 3379

The Soviets slander of the word “Zionism” was codified in United Nations Resolution 3379, passed on November 10, 1975. 

In 1969, the United Nations passed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Both the United States and Brazil wanted to add a clause including antisemitism. The Soviet Union, which had been heavily oppressing its Jewish population since the 1950s, worried that such a clause would be used to rebuke them for persecuting Soviet Jews. As such, they included a counter proposal, which was a clause that equated Zionism to Nazism. That way, they could say they were persecuting Zionists, not Jews. While neither clause passed (yes, that’s correct: the UN refused to condemn antisemitism), this laid the groundwork for the Soviets and the Arab League to push the “Zionism is racism” resolution in 1975.

In 1975, the United Nations, headed by the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states, and the 20+ countries in the Arab League, passed Resolution 3379, stating that Zionism is a form of racism. The resolution passed 75 to 35, with 32 abstentions.

The resolution never defined Zionism, nor did it explain, how and why, exactly, Zionism is a form of racism (shouldn’t a resolution on something start by defining what that something is?). In fact, the delegate for Liberia stated that, while reading the resolution, he “anxiously waited” to see (1) a definition for Zionism, and (2) an explanation as to how Zionism is racism. Since he found no such thing, he voted against the resolution.

Out of thousands of independence and nationalist movements in the world (including Palestinian nationalism!), only the Jewish movement has ever had a UN resolution condemning it. Though the resolution was repealed in 1991, the damage had been done. 

"BUT I'VE HEARD…"

You’ve heard plenty of things about Zionism, I’m sure. Most likely these things have been negative or at least inaccurate. So consider the following: 

(1) despite centuries old antisemitic conspiracies that Jews run the media, the fact of the matter is that Jews constitute 0.2 percent of the world population, with a population standing at about 15 million. By contrast, there are 456.2 million Arabs. The Arab world has dedicated a good portion of the past seven decades to disseminating anti-Zionist and oftentimes outright antisemitic propaganda. This is not a judgment on all Arabs, of course, but it is an important discussion to be had about a systemic issue in the Arab world. All of this information — as primary sources — is openly available. You can find some of these sources in the caption. The fact of the matter is that Jewish voices are outnumbered, as they have been for the past 2000 years. 

(2) you’ve, surely, also heard a lot of things about Jews that are inaccurate. There are more people talking about Jews than there are Jews in the world. In fact, there are exponentially more antisemites — and anti-Zionists — in the world than there are Jews in the world. We should be, by all means, statistically irrelevant. But Jesus was Jewish, and for 2000 years, until 1965, the Catholic Church blamed us for his crucifixion, so everyone thinks about us way more than they should. 

(3) the majority of the news coming out of the Middle East comes from Al Jazeera, which is quite literally run by the Qatari royal family. Qatar is the main financier of the Palestinian cause. In other words, there’s a bias from the get-go. 

(4) as mentioned, it was the Soviet Union that popularized the term “anti-Zionist” as a dogwhistle for “Jew.” It was also the Soviet Union that, though an empire itself, meddled with anti-imperialist movements to win influence during the Cold War. This was calculated and forever erroneously associated Zionism with imperialism in the public eye, especially among the left. For more on this, I recommend my post SOVIET IMPERIALISM, ZIONISM, & THE JEWS. 

DEBUNKING SOME TALKING POINTS 

(1) though hard to conceive of now, up until the 1950s, “population transfer” was considered an ethical and legal solution to ethnic conflict, so much so that both the League of Nations and the United Nations oversaw a number of population transfers until the practice was outlawed in 1949. 

For example: in 1923, the League of Nations oversaw a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 1.2 million ethnic Greeks residing in what is now Turkey were resettled to Greece, whereas some 400,000 ethnic Turks residing in Greece were resettled to Turkey. Post-World War II, the United Nations oversaw the resettlement of 12 million Germans formerly residing in Central and Eastern Europe. This population transfer was considered a fair and legal consequence for the Germans losing World War II. The largest population transfer in history took place in 1947, with the Partition of India. Up to 20 million people were displaced, with Hindus fleeing to India and Muslims fleeing to Pakistan. 

As always, it’s disingenuous to look at history out of context. 

(2) anti-Zionists frequently cite an out of context quote from Theodor Herzl about the “removal of the poor” as proof that the Zionist movement intended to displace Palestinians from the start. Except they conveniently leave out what comes next: “It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion.”

(3) before the Arab antisemitic pogroms of the 1920s and 1930s, the future first prime minister of Israel and longtime head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, David Ben Gurion, made statements such as “ we do not intend to marginalize the Arabs, or to displace them from their lands and take their place” (1915) and “had Zionism desired to evict the inhabitants of Palestine it would have been a dangerous utopia and a harmful, reactionary mirage” (1918). 

(4) it was the British that first proposed population transfer during the 1937 Peel Commission, using the 1923 Greco-Turkish population transfer as a framework to solve the inter-ethnic violence brewing in Mandatory Palestine. 

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Patreon. 

May 9, 2023 via RootsMetals

THE BEGINNING: RETURN TO ZION

In 587/586 BCE, the Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem. In 597 BCE, 587/586 BCE, and 582/581 BCE, the Jews of Jerusalem were mass deported (i.e. ethnic cleansing) out of the Land of Israel and into Babylon. This deportation — estimated to have consisted of about 25 percent of the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Judah — and the destruction of Jerusalem are thoroughly corroborated by archeological record.

In 539 BCE, the Jews exiled to Babylon were permitted to return to the Land of Israel. Though many stayed, others went back home. This event is known as the “Return to Zion” and is actually where the term “Zionism” comes from. Remember, this happened in 539 BCE — 2436 years before the First Zionist Congress. 

Tehillim (Psalms) 137 is a poem written during the period of exile in Babylon. It describes the pain and sadness of exile and the desire to return to and exercise sovereignty in the Land of Israel:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. / We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. / For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. / How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land. / If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget [her cunning]. / If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. / Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. / O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. / Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

MACCABEAN REVOLT

The Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BCE) was a Jewish revolt against the foreign rule of the Greek Seleucid Empire, which Jews to this day commemorate every year during the festival of Hanukkah. In 198 BCE, the Seleucid Empire conquered Judea from the (Macedonian Greek) Ptolemaic Kingdom. In 168 BCE, King Antiochus IV Epiphanes launched an oppressive campaign against his Jewish subjects, outlawing Jewish practice and implementing Pagan worship in the holy Jewish Temple. This triggered a rebellion, led by Judah Maccabeus (Judah the Maccabee) and his family. Initially the revolt started as guerilla warfare targeting Greek government and military officials, but eventually the Maccabees were able organize an army. The revolt was successful, and in 164 BCE, Judah the Maccabee entered Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple to the Israelite God. Nevertheless, the civil war persisted for decades. In 141 BCE, Simon Thassi, Judah’s brother, established the Hasmonean dynasty. By 110 BCE, the Hasmonean dynasty ruled over a semi-autonomous Jewish kingdom, known as the Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea. This was the last time — save for a brief period in the early seventh century — that Jews had any sovereignty over our ancestral land until 1948. The Hasmonean Kingdom, however, was short-lived, ceasing to exist in 63 BCE, when Judea fell into the hands of the Roman Republic, after decades of infighting among the Hasmoneans and civil unrest. In 37 BCE, Herod the Great defeated the last Hasmonean king and Judea fell under the complete control of the Roman Empire. 

FIRST JEWISH REVOLT

Between 66-73 CE, the Jews in Judea revolted against Roman rule for the first time. The revolt ended in disaster, with Jewish towns decimated, tens of thousands massacred, and the Second Temple destroyed. 

For years, tensions between the Romans and Jews had been simmering in Judea. Following anti-taxation protests, the Roman governor plundered the Jewish Temple, raided Jerusalem, and arrested prominent Jewish leaders. This escalated the violence, with Jewish rebels initially making significant advances. In 70 CE, the Romans circled Jerusalem but were unable to breach its walls, so they set up camp around the city and began building trenches around the circumference of the walls. Anyone caught in the trenches attempting to flee the city was crucified; at one point, the Romans were crucifying 500 Jews a day. For seven months, the Romans sieged Jerusalem, until the summer of 70 CE, when they were finally able to breach the city walls. Records of the time indicate that all of the besieged Jews — men, women, even children — fought to the death, preferring to die for the cause of sovereignty over survival if survival meant that the Romans would exile them from their homeland. Ultimately, the Romans ransacked and burnt the entire city. The Second Temple was destroyed once again on July 29 or 30 of 70 CE, which also fell on the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av. The Romans pillaged the temple, taking with them its spoils to Rome. The looted Jewish treasures remained in Rome until the year 455, when vandals raided the city. After that, their whereabouts become murky. It’s likely that they were long melted down or used to construct any number of churches. There has long been a baseless conspiracy theory that the items, including the menorah, are hidden away in a Vatican basement.

The First Jewish-Roman War ended with the Roman siege of Masada in 73-74 CE. In total, nearly 100,000 Jewish rebels were killed. According to first century Jewish historian Josephus, over one million Jewish civilians were killed; historians today think the number is closer to 300,000, as Judea couldn’t support a population large enough to produce such death tolls. 

BAR KOKHBA REVOLT

The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE) was the third of the Jewish-Roman Wars when Jewish rebels revolted against the rule of the Roman Empire. The revolt broke out due to tensions left over from the First Jewish-Roman War, economic changes in Judea, the suppression of Jewish revolts elsewhere in the Roman Empire, and the Roman construction of a new city over the ruins of Jerusalem, as well as the construction of a temple dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter over the remains of the holy Jewish Temple. 

The revolt was led by Simon Bar Kokhba, who sought to expel the Roman occupiers, rebuild the Temple, and even revive Hebrew, the Indigenous language of the Jewish People, as an everyday spoken tongue. Unfortunately, the revolt was unsuccessful. In a retaliatory act of genocide, the Roman emperor Hadrian massacred some 600,000 Jews and razed over 1000 towns and villages. Some ~400,000 more Jews died due to famine and disease. The Hadrianic Genocide was the biggest calamity to befall the Jewish People until the Holocaust nearly 2000 years later.

Following the Jewish defeat, Hadrian dissolved the Roman province of Judea and established another province, Syria-Palestina in its stead. Most historians agree that he did so to erase the Jewish ties to the land. The Romans established a colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem. Jews were banned from the city, only permitted to enter on the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, to commemorate the destruction of the Temples.

REVOLT AGAINST GALLUS

Following the Bar Kokhba Revolt and Hadrian’s successive ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Jewish People, the Jewish population of the Land of Israel had been all but decimated. Nevertheless, in 351-352, the fledgling Jewish community once again revolted against the occupation of the Roman Empire.

Under Emperor Constantine II, the Jews of Palestine were seriously persecuted. For example, synagogues were ransacked by mobs, not unlike pogroms. Resentment grew among the Jewish population: first, the Romans had taken away their political independence, and now, their entire culture and religion was suppressed.

In 350, the Romans pursued a military campaign against the Sasanians to the East. In the midst of this unrest, the Jews in Palestine revolted. The revolt was led by Isaac of Diocaesarea and began with an attack on the Roman garrison. 

Eventually the Jewish rebels gained control of Tiberias and Diospolis (Lod), but the Romans quickly crushed the revolt and razed the cities to the ground. Several thousand Jewish rebels were killed, though the exact number is unknown. 

REVOLT AGAINST HERACLIUS

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, reigned the region today known as Israel-Palestine during almost the entirety of the period between 324-636. During this time, it was Christian policy to convert Jews to Christianity, with nearly half of the Indigenous Jewish and Samaritan populations ultimately adopting the Christian religion. During this period, Jews still formed the majority of the population in Palestine. Jews faced severe restrictions during Byzantine rule. It was illegal to become Jewish, and Jews who harassed Christians in any way faced capital punishment. The Byzantines humiliated Jews in any way that they could, severely crushing freedoms, which resulted in the loss of social and cultural life. 

The Roman Empire — and later, the Byzantine Empire — fought periodic wars against the Persians from 53 BCE to 628 CE, right before the Muslim conquest of Persia. Between 602-628, war broke out once again between the Persians and Byzantines. The Persian king, Khosrau II, hoped to reach as far west as possible, to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea. To do so, he knew that he needed to pass through Palestine. Perhaps to reward the Jews for their loyalty, he agreed to assign the conquest of Palestine to Jewish troops. The Jews in Palestine enthusiastically welcomed the Persian Jewish troops and allied with them. The Persian Jewish troops were led by Nehemiah Ben Hushiel. Within Palestine, the Jewish rebellion was led by Benjamin of Tiberias, a wealthy Jew who invested his money into the rebellion. In 614, following a short siege, Jerusalem fell into Persian hands. After the Persians conquered Jerusalem, as well as the rest of Palestine, they moved on to the rest of their conquests; only the Jews — Persian and local — remained, with Jerusalem now in their hands for the first time since the Bar Kokhba Revolt. 

Despite the Jews’ loyalty to the Persians, King Khosrau II quickly switched allegiances by 617, replacing the Jewish governor of Jerusalem with a Christian, who prohibited more Jews from settling in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, in 628, the Byzantines recaptured Jerusalem from the Persians, once again crushing the Jewish population with their oppressive rule.

IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Thanks to the discovery of the Cairo Geniza in 1896, historians can now trace numerous attempts from Jews to resettle in the Land of Israel during the early Arab colonization period in the seventh and sixth centuries. For example, there are records of Babylonian Jews migrating to Palestine during this time. Due to the harsh policies of Arabization and economic marginalization, however, Jews also left Palestine, and many of these attempts were unsuccessful. 

A very significant attempt to resettle autonomously in the Land of Israel took place in the ninth and tenth centuries, when a large number of Karaite Jews established a major community in Jerusalem. 

As mentioned, few of these attempts were successful in any capacity because of the harsh conditions imposed on Jews at the time. Letters between the Jews of Jerusalem and the Jews of Cairo during the period of the Arab Empires indicate that the taxes imposed upon the Jewish population of Palestine were especially crippling. When Jews in Jerusalem failed to pay their taxes, they were subject to various punishments, including imprisonment, torture, and even death. Additionally, centuries of colonization had devastated the land, which was now barren and riddled with disease. 

We know very little about some of these “Zionist” attempts. For example, in 1210, “three hundred rabbis” migrated to the Land of Israel, but what happened to them is uncertain. Following the expulsions of Jews from England, Spain, Portugal, France, and Austria, many Jews resettled in Palestine.

One of the most notable “Zionist” leaders from this period was Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, a Crypto-Jew born in Portugal in 1510 who accumulated a fortune and ardently supported Jewish migration and community-building in Palestine, establishing successful, self-sufficient communities. During her lifetime, Palestine was under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire. Nasi fostered a close relationship with the Ottoman court, determined to establish a “safe homeland” for Jews in Palestine — exactly as the modern political Zionists envisioned a few centuries later. 

Other significant migrations were made by Jews fleeing Ukraine in the seventeenth century. 

18TH & 19TH CENTURIES

The First (Zionist) Aliyah is dated to 1881-1903, but large numbers of Jews tried to (re) establish the Jewish community in the Land of Israel long before that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Like the political Zionists a little bit later, they faced fierce opposition from the local Arab population and struggled under difficult conditions.

In 1700, Rabbi Yehuda Hehasid moved his group of followers to Jerusalem. Jewish residents of Jerusalem enthusiastically built homes and a synagogue in anticipation for their arrival. In 1720, local Arabs broke into the synagogue, destroyed it, and expelled all Ashkenazi Jews from the city. Ashkenazi Jews did not return to Jerusalem until 1812, after being banished for almost 100 years by the Arab residents. 

Between 1740 and 1750, thousands of Jews immigrated to Palestine. In 1740, the Ottoman authorities invited Rabbi Haim Abulafia to restore the ancient city of Tiberias, one of the four sacred cities in Judaism, which had been abandoned for 70 years thanks to the harsh economic and environmental conditions resulting from centuries of colonialism. Rabbi Abulafia breathed new life into the city, which many Jews considered a sign that the Messiah was soon to come.

Hasidic groups began re-settling in masses in the Land of Israel in 1742, building new synagogues and other infrastructure, primarily in the four sacred cities: Hebron, Tiberias, Safed, and Jerusalem.

Like the modern political Zionists that came later, the followers of Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna purchased the first lands for agricultural development in 1810. In 1811, 80 Jewish families coming from Hungary attempted to migrate to work in agriculture, but they were attacked on their way and had to return back home. 

In the 1830s, more Jewish agricultural communities were established and many Jews from the Diaspora were encouraged to migrate. In 1839, Moses Montefiore tried to come to an agreement with the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to establish Jewish agricultural communities in the Land of Israel. However, an antisemitic incident in Damascus ruined the agreement, so Montefiore started to disguise his Zionist projects as philanthropy. 

In 1860, a number of prominent rabbis founded the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land. I’m the 1860s and 1870s, dozens of prominent rabbis expressed their support for Zionism, especially in light of the persecution of Jews in Europe. Finally, in 1873, Rabbi Akiva Schlesinger wrote a plan for the development of an independent Jewish state in the Land of Israel based on democratic — not religious — principles. 

It’s important to note that these events of the nineteenth century differed very little from the activities of the modern political Zionists just a few decades later; the main difference was that these earlier activities were predominantly spiritually-motivated, whereas the Zionists that came later were largely secular and predominantly socialist. 

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Patreon. 

Neo-Nazis use it. Terrorist organizations use it. For the same reason White Supremacist violence usually takes the form of “Lone Wolf” attacks.

Anniversary of APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

On July 20, 1969, 109 hours and 42 minutes after launch, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin entered the lunar lander ‘Eagle’, made a final check, and the Eagle undocked from the lunar orbiter ‘Columbia’, where the third member of the crew Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon. Partially manually piloted by Armstrong, the Eagle landed 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north moon latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east moon longitude. Armstrong stepped out, and Aldrin followed 20 minutes later: human beings stepped on the moon for the first time. The two men spent 21 hours and 26 minutes on its surface. One of the astounding aspects of the mission was the seeming simplicity of the technology used to get man to the moon. According to Oliver Gassmann, professor of Technology Management, the mobile phone in your pocket has one million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s computer. Same about the procesor: the latest phones typically have more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” –Neil Armstrong

There was a single, little known event last year that has completely changed my mind on single payer:

Federal employee health plans stopped covering gender affirming care.

Few people know about this. It didn't make the news. But in response to trump's executive orders in 2025, all healthcare plans offered to federal employees stopped providing certain healthcare coverage to trans folks at the start of 2026.

The federal government is the largest employer in the country. This affected millions of people overnight.

There is very little legal basis to challenge this. The Supreme Court ruled years ago in Hobby Lobby that employers can choose what coverage to offer their employees. So at the stroke of the pen, the president took away access to certain care for millions of people. And there's really nothing anyone can do about it.

Yes, only a fraction needed that care. But this is the foot in the door. First trans healthcare, then it'll be contraception, then vaccines, then routine care. First federal employees, then medicare and medicaid.

This isn't even getting started on how hospitals and doctors aren't covering any gender affirming care for minors anymore based on threats from the trump admin alone.

And I reiterate: employees can choose what to cover, and there's really nothing you can do about it, except pay out of pocket, buy your own insurance, or go to a different employer.

If the federal government becomes the sole source of healthcare coverage under a single payer system, the federal government can also take it away, and there will be nothing you can do.

Under a single payer system, an insane president or HHS secretary can take away whatever care you depend on at the stroke of a pen. I don't care how strong the enacting laws are. They can just stop paying.

So I can't support single payer anymore. This was the longest and most enduring progressive position I've held, and I can't abide it anymore. Like. This position hurts me to abandon. It was quite possibly my first and strongest political opinion from when I was young and my mother, a single mother and a nurse, taught me about the iniquities of the healthcare system before Obama was even elected and passed the Affordable Care Act. As an economics major, under a rational system, it should make sense and be the most efficient and cost effective. I built my goddamn political identity around single payer when I was in high school before Bernie was even elected to the Senate.