Was going to add this to a post I saw (the gist being a rebuttal of antizionist “separating Jews from Israel” talking points), but the app refreshed when I came back and now I can’t find the original post lol
A lot of people seem to not grasp that just because things are “different” or conceptually distinct doesn’t mean they’re entirely separate or inherently unrelated, where any relation between them is entirely arbitrary & artificial.
Are there distinctions between Jews, the state of Israel, and the land of Israel? Yes. But the overlap and relationship between these things has so much overlap that you cannot honestly fully separate them.
If I had to visualize it as a Venn diagram, it might look something like this.
Eretz Yisrael is incredibly important to Jewish history & Jewish religion, and half of all Jews reside there, as citizens of Medinat Yisrael (where most of its population is Jews, and the makeup of its government reflects that), which represents the most substantial embodiment of Am Yisrael’s political autonomy at present or in the last two millennia—which is very clearly necessary with the amount of violence Jews face—and whose borders encompass most of Eretz Yisrael.
The historical boundaries of the land of Israel are not 1-for-1 with the modern state of Israel’s borders; there are plenty of Israelis who aren’t Jews, including in the government; there are Jews living in the diaspora; some of them do not care for the state of Israel at all. So yes, these three things are different ideas. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are still tightly related in every direction, and the exceptions are statistical outliers, not normative..
It’s not that we are “conflating” these things; it’s that they are inherently blended concepts with inherent heavy overlap.
As the ambassador to the US from Israel just said at a conference I attended in NYC "Are we going to abandon half of all Jews just because their country too has fallen to populism?" and it felt so on point. We have a connection to the land, always have and always will. So many American Jews want to pretend we dont because of the actions of the government.
But that's just telling half of your own people that if they fall victim we will abandon them rather than trying to help out. would you abandon family just because they got radicalized? would you abandon a brother if he were living with an abusive spouse? Or would you do everything in your power to try and heal them.
If you're Jewish, Tikkun Olam is our primary directive, and you're just lying about being about it if you cant even try and heal the hate in our own Tribe. No, you wont solve populism in another country by yourself, but you certainly can be part of the mending effort.
A huge difference can be made if the rhetoric is reframed by Jews as "this is our sibling, and we are disappointed and demand that you change, but I understand that we are linked and am here for you." Bibi doesn't have complete support from the Israeli populace either, so you may find some friends along the way - and you may help someone - and there is a hell of a lot to learn so you may learn something too.
Either way, stop the abandonment rhetoric.
