No. of Recommendations: 2
I am arguing that the Jewish people are indigenous to the area, and have the same rights to self-determination, independence, and to a country for their people as any other people in the world.
I am not arguing in support of genocide or ethnic cleansing. But I am arguing against the erasure of legitimate Jewish claims to the area, that sit side-by-side with Palestinian claims. This is a "one land, two native peoples" situation - not a settler colonist situation. The Jews have a legitimate claim to also be indigenous to the area, despite being displaced by the colonial powers of their day (first the Babylonians, then the Romans, and later the Muslim conquest of the area under the Rashidun Caliphate).
This is a patently absurd trans-historicist claim in support of EXACTLY the kind of settler colonialism that you are rejecting. This claim, rooted in some notion of a natural and universal law of ethnic and national identity, is not natural and universal at all, but rather has concrete historical origins in nineteenth century nationalist movements like Zionism. Indeed, in their own mythology, the Hebrew people hail from Egypt, not the lands of Canaan. When the Hebrews settled Canaan there were already indigenous people there--the Canaanites. Regardless, territorial claims to an ethnically and culturally defined nationhood did not exist in this ancient period and only emerged with the modern state in sixteenth century Europe and the modern NATION state a little later in the nineteenth century. The modern Zionist movement is part of that historical process of developing territorial claims around politically constructed ethnic and cultural identities. This idea of "ingenuousness" is itself a creation of modern nationalism as it assumes a natural correspondence between people, identity, and the land. This conception is premised on the already existing modern state and did not exist before the sixteenth century. The modern state is centered on a claim to political authority over a geographically bounded territory and governmental control over its inhabitants. Prior to the modern state their were kingdoms, empires, city-states, tribal bands, etc. Empires were born, expanded, crashed into each other, and collapsed.People moved of their own volition or were displaced as a result of these grand forces in their lives. The fluidity of the human race in space was "natural". Freezing this historical process in some nationalistic narrative around "naturalistic" claims to a land is a political act that has nothing to do with the past. It is exactly this kind of nationalist fever dream that led to the holocaust, and the fever has spread to the current Israeli state.
I'm afraid you're making the mistake of conflating Zionism - the belief that the Jewish people have the same rights to have a country for their people as any of the other peoples of the world - with the very specific policies of the current right-wing government of Israel towards the West Bank and Gaza. They are not identical.
I am conflating nothing. The current Israeli government is stocked with extreme ultra nationalists who advocate for and are actively pursuing the vision of a greater Israel. Bezalel Smotrich, to name just one of these ministers, is himself a settler/occupier in the West Bank and has called for the expulsion of Palestinians or their subjugation under Israeli rule. Apparently genocide isn't off the table. The conflation that is taking place is confusing anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
The shrug emoji is not a defensible position in the face of the genocidal policies of the Israeli state.
