This commonly-cited 80% figure is even potentially low-balling it, because as best I can tell this number comes from a Pew Research Center poll that found 82% of US Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them (which they round down to describe as “eight-in-ten”, or 80%). And while I haven’t seen data about Jews in Israel or elsewhere in the diaspora being asked this question, I’m going to make the educated assumptions that a) Jews in Israel probably do not care less than other Jews about the country they live in, so it’s likely to match or—more likely—exceed that 82% figure and b) the opinion of the remaining ~2.2 Million Jews outside Israel & the US is unlikely to be so dramatically disparate that it skews the data in favor of hatred or indifference towards Israel (if anything, the relative security US Jews enjoy makes us less likely to view having a Jewish state to flee to if need be as a potential necessity for our safety). It’s incredibly likely the actual global percentage, once Israeli Jews & the rest of the diaspora are taken into account, would actually well exceed the 82% figure found here.
Other statistics (mostly taken from the same poll) include:
58% of US Jews say they are emotionally attached to Israel
45% of US Jews have lived in or visited Israel (as obviously 100% of Israeli Jews do)
82% of US Jews say caring about Israel is an essential (45%) or important (37%) part of being Jewish for them (mentioned again here despite being discussed above for the more granular breakdown)
73% of US Jews say the US is either the right amount of supportive (54%) or not supportive enough (19%) of Israel
77% of US Jews who have heard a lot or some about it say they oppose the BDS Movement (56% have heard a lot or some about the BDS Movement; 43% oppose it, 10% support it, & 2% did not answer)
even then, only 2-in-10 of the 10% who support BDS do so strongly; of the minority of US Jews who support BDS, eight-in-ten—or 80% of those supporters—only somewhat support it
While I personally would not consider any of these opinions as in-and-of-itself making someone a Zionist per se, expressing any of them is more than enough to make a Jew a Zionist in the eyes of Anti-Zionists; in fact, Jews regularly get harassment, boycotts, call outs, cancellations, & put on blocklists for far, far less.
Hell, I’m a living example of this. I’m a non-Zionist who hasn’t even been to Israel, has no personal emotional attachment to the Israeli government (though plenty to its people), and I’m not even sure I would say caring about Medinat Israel is an important part of what being Jewish means to me per se, beyond just wanting the people who live there to be safe & free, so I’m not even sure I’m exactly in that 82%.
And yet, to practically every anti-Zionist I have ever interacted with (if there are exceptions, they have primarily been non-JVPnik Jewish anti-Zionists), the simple fact that I have any problems with BDS, or misinformation about Israel & Jewish history, or antisemitism in the anti-Zionist movement—the fact that I care about Israelis at all—makes me a Zionist. That makes me wrong; that makes me evil; that makes me deserving of death.
What I want everyone to understand is that if, despite being slightly outside of that 82% figure, I am still a “Zionist” to them, all these things they’re saying about Zionists being evil or deserving violence isn’t just about 80% of Jews or even 82% of Jews—it’s about even more of us.
For perspective, the current core population of Jews globally is 15.7 Million. Here is what would mean in practice:
If you call someone a Zionist for expressing an emotional attachment to Israel, anything you say about Zionists applies to at least 9 Million Jews (58%)*
If you call someone a Zionist for living in or visiting Israel because it “normalizes Israel”, anything you say about Zionists applies to at least 10 Million Jews (64%)
If you call someone a Zionist for believing that caring Israel is an important or essential part of being Jewish, anything you say about Zionists applies to at least 13 Million Jews (82%)*
If you call someone a Zionist for approving of US support for Israel, anything you say about Zionists applies to at least 11 Million Jews (73%)*
If you call someone a Zionist for opposing BDS, anything you say about Zionists applies to at least 12 Million Jews (77%)*
*These numbers are reached by applying the percentages from the linked PRC poll to only the 15.7 Million Core Jewish Population; they do not include Jews in the Connected or Enlarged Jewish Population counts & assume the opinions of US Jews are globally representative. As previously discussed, the fact that the vast majority of Jews outside the US live in Israel means that the actual global percentage is likely to be higher. Additionally, depending on how Jewish identity is defined, the global Jewish population can be counted as 15.7 Million Core, 18 Million Connected, or 21 Million Enlarged. Thus all of these may actually apply to a significantly higher number of Jews, making this an incredibly conservative (i.e. bare minimum, erring on the side of undercounting) estimate.
Thus, you can see how it would be incredibly fucking concerning to the vast majority of Jews when people who regularly treat any or all of these opinions as indications that a Jew is an evil genocidal racist who deserves to die. In every instance, these criteria apply to nearly (or in excess of) double the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
If you are saying you want to kill all Zionists, you are saying you want to kill TWICE as many Jews as Hitler did.
If you are even okay being around people who say things like this, then you are communicating that you are okay being around people who say they want another, bigger Holocaust. If that is not what you want, then you need to stop treating people who express the above views as evil inhuman monsters who deserve violence. You need to stop talking about & treating people you perceive to be Zionists this way.
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