why do you reblog from outspoken zionists like definitelywicked?

wetwareproblem:

Okay, anon, I don’t know who you are or how long you’ve been here, but obviously you’ve missed a lot chez wetwareproblem if you thought this was a good idea.

So first of all, a disclaimer: I am white. I am neither ethnically Jewish nor Palestinian. As such, my primary stance on Israel and Palestine is that, for the most part, it is not my conflict. It is a conflicting-access problem between two indigenous peoples, neither of which I’m a member of. I think that both Jews (ethnic and gerim) and Palestinians have a right to self-determination and safety in their ancestral homeland, especially in light of the very real danger both groups are in in diaspora. I believe that people who are not Jewish or Palestinian have no fucking right to a voice in this argument, or to declare one side right and the other wrong, period.

Now, let’s look at what you’re actually saying here: You claim that @definitelywicked is an “outspoken Zionist.” But… “Zionist” is a word that, in political use, has wandered far from its roots and in fact turned into an epithet for “Jew I don’t like.” All Zionism actually means is that you believe that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination and to live in the lands to which they are indigenous. It says literally nothing about the policies and practices of the Israeli government or the treatment of the Palestinian people. And, in fact, when I look at definitelywicked’s blog, I see exactly that – someone who is critical of the Israeli government and wants better treatment for Palestinian people, but is unwilling to bargain away Jewish rights in the process.

What’s more, I see that she is an Iraqi Jew currently living, as most Iraqi Jews do, in Israel. There is a reason for this, and there is a reason that most MENA Jewish people live in Israel and strongly support its existence: Because without it, they or their families would probably be dead.

When you criticize somebody for simply supporting the existence of a self-governed Jewish polity in the Jewish homeland, without which they would not exist, what I hear is “The only good Jew is a dead Jew.” Because that’s literally what you’re asking here.

When you use a whopping two appearances of someone in the above position, one of which was in a ha-ha-only-serious joke post about the violence and danger Diaspora Jews are facing right now, to try to delegitimize random Jewish bloggers, especially in the wake of a high-profile example of leftist antisemitism, your motives become extremely transparent.

TL;DR: I/P is a complex situation with no clear good guys and bad guys, bleating “Palestine good, Israel bad” does nobody any favours, and you can save a lot of time if you just say “I hate Jews and want them dead.”

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