I also stand with Israel, but I personally very firmly believe no more bombs should be dropped in Gaza. I truly try to respect everyone's opinions if they're coming from a place of good faith, even opinions I disagree with, so I'm not judging you for saying this. I don't know where you're coming from.
From my perspective, the toll of human suffering in Gaza has grown too high. The damage only radicalizes the Palestinians more. And they're an independent, valid group of people who deserve their own state free of Hamas terrorism. So is Israel. I want the war to end so we can work on peace building. I'm not saying this like it will be easy, but as long as bombs are dropped and rockets are shot, the desire to destroy the other side will not go away. And both sides aren't going anywhere. I don't believe the war can end as long as Netanyahu is in power, though. He only serves his own interests.
There are actually very many pro-Palestinians in real life who are surprised they have so much in common with a Zionist like me. I've always considered myself pro-Palestine, long, long before Oct 7th and I still do. I simply believe Israel must continue to exist. I could go into another long rant about that, but I'm rambled on enough.
Lodz, Poland. photograph by Shterna Goldbloom for their series, "i am the other / איך בין די סטרא אחרא". they describe their inspiration for this series thus:
For the first sixteen years of my life, I was taught to stay away from everything unholy, all the deepest, darkest profanities of the world, the "other side." Sitra Achra is the term used to describe all the things on the "other side" of holiness, like queers, and women who don't fit traditional definitions of femininity, women who go to college and want to have babies outside of marriage and without husbands. Sitra Achra is me. Now, as I sit on the other side, I try and find a way to see the two sides of myself together, to create a conversation between tradition and heresy.
Question that I'm asking in good faith because I really do want to know about it: why does Herzl describe israel as a colony if it isn't one?
(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)
Okay, there's actually a lot of interesting history around this, so let's dig into it.
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.
The simplistic quote-mining about "colonization" used today is a hundred years outdated: all such arguments were debunked before the state was even founded.
a recurring theme ive noticed is that when it comes to conflicts israel is a part of, israel only wins if it totally destroys any belligerent parties. meanwhile, in order for said belligerents to be "victorious," all they have to do is survive. i genuinely don't understand how ppl can hold such radically different standards for two groups and continue to take themselves seriously
dont forget that they also proceed to tell u "ummm y r u measuring success by how much u managed to destroy??" 1 breath after stating that rates of destruction = implied success :( like idk what kind of planet u have to live on to think that a country that is forced to parade the image of its leader in the form of cardboard because hes either too disabled or too afraid to come out of the bunker, is the country that somehow WON the exchange jasdhbfasdjkhb
Reading the whole Christian bible for the first time and what do you mean the first split between Jesus and the Pharisees is over netilat yadayim? “It is not what goes into a person's mouth that makes him ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes him unclean,” my brother in Hashem you still have to wash your hands before meals
wtf is this ego. who cares? you can ignore people saying that israel got no medals yk. but no you also have to drag in lebanon's name because you can't handle it?
since your ego just can't let that go and needs to put down another country you hate just for fun, lebanon had only 2 participants and your country had 10. yall had more chances and winning medals doesn't matter to me but clearly you need to feel superior
Damn that's crazy Lebanon has a bigger population and still couldn't find more ppl to compete 💔
HA people crying about Israel 'violating Lebanon's sovereignty' with zero context that Lebanon was supposed to stop Hezbollah south of the Litani River and they simply Have Not. This area has been a buffer/war zone for a long time.
Truly fascinating how “Israel/Zionism≠Jews” until synagogues are attacked and then Israel’s actions reflect on all Jews, and obviously synagogues are indoctrinating Jews into Zionism anyway. Really interesting
it's always "judaism has nothing to do with israel" until surprise surprise someone commits a hatecrime and then it's "well that judaism had everything to do with israel actually"
You know, I often think that so called leftists inability to accept Israeli Jews as an indigenous people or Israel as a successful example of decolonisation, aside from the obvious antisemitism, is also a mile wide, deep streak of noble savage anti indigenous racism.
Israel is a 21st century, incredibly modern, highly educated society, at the top of its field in technology, medicine, and science, has women’s rights and queer rights enshrined in law, and while it obviously has its societal problems like any other country on earth, citizens largely live comfortable lives (aside from having to run to bomb shelters every 5 minutes because of its trigger happy neigbours).
This clashes with the noble savage view of indigenous people as primitive, magic nature people living at the whim and mercy of evil overlords.
