tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post8335448359173475861..comments2024-03-28T04:26:49.354+00:00Comments on Tony Greenstein's Blog: Palestine solidarity and Jewish opposition to ZionismTony Greensteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300640929161205370noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-2011597996679942942013-03-07T22:55:44.544+00:002013-03-07T22:55:44.544+00:00Well said Tony and those concerns raised by "...Well said Tony and those concerns raised by "anonymous" were the same concerns raised by supporters of apartheid in South Africa. hotazhellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07734838946163408200noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-21409005142600423502013-03-07T19:56:49.531+00:002013-03-07T19:56:49.531+00:00Israel is illegitimate. It is an apartheid state ...Israel is illegitimate. It is an apartheid state and now they are organising separate bus services for Palestinians and Jews on the West Bank!<br /><br />I believe in the right of return.<br /><br />I also believe that Jews should be given the same rights that White South Africans were, i.e. they lose the right to superior privileges and ruling through force.<br /><br />Jews in Israel, whether they like it or not, being settlers, are Jewish Palestinians. Israel a democracy?<br /><br />Presumably rule over 4 million people in the Occupied Territories, who have never had a vote in their occupation is democratic? And maybe Hitler's election was democratic?<br /><br />Having a vote does not a democracy make. It is about having the right to the people to control society, according equality to all citizens, not having perpetual discrimination of the Israeli Arab minority whereby their villages are subject to demolition in the cause of 'judification'.<br /><br />As for going back to where they came from, I'm sure many of the settlers on the West Bank will do just that. Just as 1 million+ Israeli Jews already have returned back because they can't stand the artificial, militarist kind of society Israel is. I understand that over half Israel's professors are now no longer living in Israel.<br /><br />Just as half of Ashkenazis have a foreign passport, including 100,000 German passports. Should they have to leave? Absolutely no, it is an individual choice. Some racists however find an equal society hard to adapt to though.Tony Greensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14300640929161205370noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-51570211011504727922013-03-07T19:51:26.406+00:002013-03-07T19:51:26.406+00:00It would be interesting to know what you think sho...It would be interesting to know what you think should happen to all the Jews, living in Israel, if Israel were to be delegitimised and the land given back to the Palastinians.<br />Do you think they should be allowed to stay under Palastinians rule? Do you really believe that is possible or desirable for a people who have lived under a democracy. Do you honestly believe they would be allowed to live.<br />Or perhaps they should all go back where they came from. All those who came to Israel as young men and women and are now elderly. All those who were born there and know no other home?<br />Just what is your solution?<br /><br />Do you<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-67577072690826074952013-03-05T16:34:39.691+00:002013-03-05T16:34:39.691+00:00"Why discuss Jewish identity? The morning’s d...<i>"Why discuss Jewish identity? The morning’s discussion centred on various efforts to create a Jewish identity and culture outside the Zionist project</i><br /><br />Gee, over two thousand years <i>without</i> Zionism, aqnd only about a hyndred with Zionism. We ought to be able to find <i>something</i>!Mooserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12294208692136002450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-58247901655766606842013-03-05T16:25:55.129+00:002013-03-05T16:25:55.129+00:00"As for Ben Gurion, sure, he knew.../... He r..."<i>As for Ben Gurion, sure, he knew.../... He really wanted "never again".</i><br /><br />Wow, you knew Ben Gurion? Gosh, I can't wait for your memiors. Ought to put it all in perspective. How's about an advance copy for a <i>landsmann</i> (We sold the Tolley years ago.)?<br />Please hurry, lest I go wrong and "choose death"<br /><br />Mooserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12294208692136002450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-2191609638731282882013-03-04T19:03:51.387+00:002013-03-04T19:03:51.387+00:00Why discuss Jewish identity? The morning’s discus...Why discuss Jewish identity? The morning’s discussion centred on various efforts to create a Jewish identity and culture outside the Zionist project. I often did not understand the reasons or motives for such efforts. <br /><br />Of great relevance are insights from Aki Orr, whose contribution was commemorated by Moshe at the conference. His books are now conveniently available online, e.g. at<br /> and<br /> <br /><br />In The unJewish State (1983), Aki analyses Israel’s early efforts to create a secular Jewish identity, as a common basis for a Jewish Israeli culture and legal framework: the ensuing contradictions instead led the new state to authorise Orthodox Rabbis to define ‘who is a Jew’, due special entitlements dispossessing Palestinians. <br /><br />In his later book on Israeli Myths (1994), he analyses Western Jews’ widespread existential attachment to Israel -- as a substitute for a lost Jewish religious identity. <br />Those efforts and tensions are important for us to understand if we are to help entice Jews away from Zionist attachments. <br /><br />Speaking personally, I am interested to explore Jewish identity and culture for a sole reason – to strengthen and enrich the Palestine solidarity movement. There are many possibilities. For example, we can show that the Zionist project historically has undermined Jewish culture, colluded with antisemites against Jews and even generated more antisemitism (as argued in the new J-BIG briefing on Zionism). <br /><br />More creatively, we draw on Jewish cultural traditions when developing the boycott of Israeli hasbara cultural activities, e.g. by accompanying the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra; likewise when satirising Zionists (Debbie’s Mad Mel). Likewise when joining in Palestinian music and dances. For me, all this activity extends the internationalist Bund tradition of my grandparents’ generation. Lesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-78874949535074036952013-03-04T13:04:30.236+00:002013-03-04T13:04:30.236+00:00Brian
Zionism was a reaction to anti-Semitism. I...Brian<br /><br />Zionism was a reaction to anti-Semitism. It was in fact politically a creation of Christian anti-Semites if u want to know.<br /><br />The point I'm making and which you seem to be unable to grasp is that the Zionist movement was not concerned with saving Jews but building a state and was quite willing to block emigration opportunities for Jews under threat in Nazi occupied Europe. That and the undermining of the Boycott of the Nazis and the deals to rescue Zionist activists and discard the mass of Jewry.<br /><br />How you can say that Zionism seizes life is beyond me. It wrote off 6 million. Probably 1 million fewer Jews would have survived if your life giving movement hadn't existed.<br /><br />Stop making excuses for Quisling movements. Zionism is not interested in opposing anti-Semitism or saving Jews but building a Jewish racial state. All else is immaterial.<br /><br />I see you are having one of your Zionist turns.Tony Greensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14300640929161205370noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640441812647446166.post-49651556625709712072013-03-04T12:06:32.691+00:002013-03-04T12:06:32.691+00:00Tony, as you may recall, I bought a copy of Bunda&...Tony, as you may recall, I bought a copy of Bunda'im from Eran Torbiner and like you found it a deeply moving and very sad document, beautifully and sensitively understated.<br /><br />But of what use to their murdered comrades, and indeed to themselves, was their socialism? It failed them, just as assimilation had failed.<br /><br />But this issue you often refer to, namely that both Zionism and antisemitism say that Jews cannot live in the societies in which they're born, that they're different and should go and live amongst their own kind, and that therefore Zionism is just another version of antisemitism.<br /><br />Stated baldly there's a superficial similarity, at least as far as consequences go. But the motivation, intention and tone are totally contrary to each other.<br /><br />In the case of the antisemite, the declaration is made out of hostility, with the aim to destroy, to eliminate: real antisemitism.<br /><br />In the case of the Zionist, the underlying construct is something like, "We tried to join in, we really did, but they wouldn't let us", and so the declaration is made out of love, not hate.<br /><br />As for Ben Gurion, sure, he knew 50 or 100 Jewish children could be saved by getting them to Britain, and don't you think he'd have welcomed that? He may have been mistaken in believing it necessary to think on a much larger and longer-lasting scale, but he was not motivated by callousness. He really wanted "never again".<br /><br />The vital (in its literal sense) difference between the antisemite and the Zionist is that the former wants, ultimately, to eliminate Jews, the latter wants to save them.<br /><br />The antisemite projects an agenda of death, the Zionist seizes life.<br /><br />The Zionists might have been wrong, but what else, immediately post WW2 and in the aftermath of the indifference of the entire world, could they have done?<br /><br />Yes, it's been said that Israel is in the wrong place, or that it happened too late in history, it's an anachronism, even that the whole project was fatally misconceived.<br /><br />But that's history. Get used to it.<br /><br />Brian Robinson<br />Milton Keynes, UKBrian Robinsonnoreply@blogger.com