Being Jewish is also multi-tiered because it's associated with both a religion and an ethnicity. I'd love to popularize being thought of Ashkenazi and not Jewish. I don't have a familial bond with Israel for probably 17 centuries and I don't really care if I ever did. My culture is more strongly associated with Eastern Europe and we were run out of town on a rail 100 years ago.
Yes, but the average American also thinks of an Ashkenazi Jew when they think of a Jew, and has no idea that Sephardim & mizrahim even exist, even if they don't know the words for any of it.
Ashkenazi is just an old hebrew word for German. If you strip away both Germany (the HRE, more specifically), and Judaism then the term doesn't have much meaning. At least, not as an identity that people have assumed historically.
Ashkenazi Jews before the war just called themselves Jews, with secular emancipationists often appending nationality.
The etymology of the word "Ashkenazi" is irrelevant (argument from etymology is a fallacy), as for a long time now the word has been used in a different, wider meaning. And Ashkenazi is a valid distinction versus e.g. Sephardi Jews: Ashkenazi Jews used a different reading for Hebrew, adopted different codes of dress, employed different structures of doctrinal authority and hermeneutics of Scripture, etc.
Naturally under the Ashkenazi umbrella there were people of different cultures (and different degrees of assimilation to the surrounding non-Jewish population), but those Jews were still more similar to one another than to non-Ashkenazi Jews.
I'm not arguing the etymology. I'm just saying that "Ashkenazi, as a demonym would be a new idea historically. I have no problem with people forming new identities.
It's also not about accent. There are distinct Sephardic reading styles. It's not technically doctrinally different either, at least formally. In religious terms, distinctions are termed is "customary/minhagim" which are lower on the hierarchy.
In any case, etymology is not far off the mark. Ashkenazi judaism isn't just named after germany, it originated in the HRE and Ashkenazim spoke a German dialect.
My grandmother was a native polish speaker, secular, and would not have identified as "askenazi" before the war. She identified as polish, strongly, and was as comfortable in a sephardic synagogue as an ashkenazi one. My grandfather, a Yiddish speaker, was more comfortable in an ashkenazi synagogue. Most are mixed, these days, whatever the majority is.
If you were your ancestors who were "run out of town on a rail" you would care very, very deeply about your familial bond to Israel. Like yours, my family was run out of town. Unlike yours, many in my family did not run fast enough. If only there was a place they could run to either as first resort or when quota had been reached in other places. If only there was a place that could make running a specific people out of town a very costly pursuit for those who were making those people run.
Israel is and will always remain the eternal Homeland of the Jewish people. Am Yisrael Chai.
I acknowledge the darkness of history and a desire for security in territory owned by the group you identify with. However, Israel is now repeating history by displacing present-day non-Jewish people who also have familial bonds to the territory.
Why? We were run out of Israel on a rail too. Ancestry of any kind means nothing to me. Sunk cost. As far as I'm concerned, my ancestral homeland is New York. And I'm pretty happy with that. My wife's parents are from Korea and they had a rough time there. They think of New York as home too. Speaking of new ethnic identities, I think of my kids as being Neoamerican.
That's the argument certain Native Americans use to say that they are the only ones whose home is America. Do you see how this argument makes you look?
Saying that Israel is a jewish homeland does not necessarily mean that it is not anyone else's home. It does to some, but they are an extreme minority. It's also contrary to our declaration of independence.
I'm not american, but I'll hazard a guess that "certain Native Americans" who take this position are also more often assumed than real.
The history of Israel is centered around a rebellion to prevent the other people who lived there from getting joint rule. Just look at the history - this is the document that prompted the Jewish insurgency in mandatory palestine. [0]
Let me hazard a guess that I know the history of my own country better than you. That doesn't make me right, but don't be condescending.
"history of Israel is centered around" - bollocks.
First, the main faction, which later became the government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire. In fact, they offered to contribute troops and enforced a truce on the grounds that the UK was fighting nazis. It was a minority faction that fought the British, both before and after this event.
Second, nothing about the white papers had anything to do with voting rights. There were no voting rights during the British period. Arabs had voting rights in Israel once Israel existed, but that's neither her nor there. The "rebellion" was about immigration restrictions. More to the point, it was about emigration restrictions, cutting off the last escape route out of the third reich.
Third, the "Palestinian Civil War," as the British called it, had started 10 years prior, shortly after the first partition of Palestine. It started when it became clear the French & British were going to chop the region into nation states and skedaddle.
> It was a minority faction that fought the British, both before and after this event.
The people actively involved in fighting are going to be a minority in any rebellion you would ever study.
> First, the main faction, which later became the government, did not "rebel" against the British Empire.
They were clearly opposed to the idea of a state with joint rule between different ethnic groups. What is the Jewish Resistance Movement if not a rebellion against the British mandate?
It is disingenuous to suggest that they did not "rebel", indeed, I have an older friend who has recounted blowing up British police stations as a member of the Palmach, which was not the minority faction.
> There were no voting rights during the British period. Arabs had voting rights in Israel once Israel existed, but that's neither her nor there
Most post-British former-colonies had majority rule voting rights. You're right (and I was wrong) that the white paper didn't explicitly address that, but it did address the creation of a multi-ethnic state.
You've got the history garbled. The Palmach enforced a truce during this period. I suppose you could call Etzel rebels. They aren't the ones who formed the State of Israel, or led the majority militia. There were also jerusalemite militias insurrecting. against British rule and bedouin rebels in Transjordan. A lot of people disliked the British presence. Palmach didn't like them either, but they declared a truce so long as they were fighting Nazism.
None of the fighting had anything to do with anything but migration, with the primary emphasis on getting Jews out of the Reich. Ships being returned to Italian ports were the main incendiary. You are caught up the the boilerplate, which preceded any document from that era. It was the British trying to square the circle of contradictory promises made to different factions. Jews & Arabs. Hashemites & Bedouins, etc.
It's also not the beginning of anything, neither conflict with the British or Arabs. It's certainly not what the country is "centred on." Most notably, it's the only time Jewish militias fought one another.
Who care about insurrection against Britain anyway? Why?
Sure, if you only look at the first 5 years after the white paper. Post-1945, the Palmach were actively bombing police stations & bridges, I know this for a fact, my friend/acquaintance was literally there doing this, he disliked Etzel/Irgun, but they were both fighting the British at that point.
There are plenty of non-zionist people who survived the Holocaust, it is disingenuous to paint caring about Israel as the natural, inevitable reaction to the Holocaust.
The whole concept of having a natural "homeland" because of your DNA/ethnicity/race is bullshit, land doesn't care what color your skin is or what religion you practice.
The majority were not zionist, including my family. The Holocaust changed that.
The premise of zionism was never "having a natural "homeland" because of your DNA." The premise of Zionism was that Jews could not stay in Europe, particularly in the age of nation states. Most commonly, this was referred to as "The Jewish Question."
The majority of secular Jews believed in emancipation. The majority of religious jews believed that only god could create the Jewish state. They were also skeptical of Zionism's desire for secular Jewish identity.
That said, my grandparents never referred to themselves as zionists. Before the war, zionism just meant "want a jewish state to exist." Foreign politicians (eg Churchill) were referred to as zionist for this reason. After the war, it generally meant exuberance about zionists political ideologies of the time. Founding Kibbutz, farming, hebrew language revival, etc. "Zionists" wanted to take hebrew names, for example. Today, "zionist" just means Israeli patriotism.
The Holocaust definitely changed how the majority of people felt, but it doesn't mean that I can't be critical of that sentiment.
Bundism also continued to exist after the Holocaust, albeit in a diminished form.
"premise of Zionism was that Jews could not stay in Europe" -> the creation of a state where citizenship is granted explicitly on the basis of your ethnicity, in the form of a "right of return" is 100% the premise I suggested.
I don't think you can't be critical of that sentiment.
I do dispute that it was a a sentiment at all, at least in grandparents' case. It wasn't ideology either. It was just a fact. They couldn't stay in europe. A right of return to a Jewish State^ was the only practical way to survive, besides conversion. My grandfather considered that route, as an atheist, but his first wife dissented. He also looked very Jewish. That was their conclusion att. You are free to disagree.
The majority of post war immigration was non ideological. There wasn't much daylight between ideological and non-ideological zionism, for the most part.
It also (in my opinion, this time) proved true for 1.5 million people who found that they could not stay in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, etc. The new world wasn't an option for them, as it had been for many europeans.
I might agree with you that nation states, or the common form of nation state, isn't ideal. It is quite terrible in its purist form. However, I don't see why this criticism is so often leveled at Zionism exclusively. I'm also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism of Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries' have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
Meanwhile, most Israelis supported South Sudanese and Kurdish independence for similar reasons. Me included. I think that Kurds have been screwed since the fall of the Ottomans, because they ended up without a state. Lebanon was founded on this premise. Pakistan. Lots of examples
^Zionism originally called for a homeland, not necessarily a state, and hoped to achieve this as cultural autonomy and migration rights under Ottoman sovereignty. Nation States were not the norm, when zionism was first conceived.
I don't know your grandparents, so really can't hope to prevail in any discussion about what their sentiments were.
I don't dispute that most of this immigration was non-ideological, I wasn't trying to suggest that it wasn't. Nor am I opposed in any way to Jewish immigration to Israel.
Moreover, racial & ethnic separatism is a very common and understandable reaction to oppression. But I still remain critical of it - just as I would be if Black people in the United States established a separate Black state in North America.
The crime, in my view, was the insurgency, bombings, and driving out of the British following their announcement that they planned to transition Palestine into an independent, multi-racial state with majority-rule. Fighting against that goal in order to form an ethno-state is, in my view, analogous to what the white minority in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia pulled after similar British announcements around their colonial state. The primary difference is that Israel remains, Rhodesia no longer does.
> I'm also Irish, and have never heard such a criticism of Irish Republicanism. Besides that, lots of countries' have rights of return, ethnonational symbolism, etc.
My understanding is that Irish republicanism is not based on the same principles as Zionism, namely there is no opposition for a multi-ethnic/racial state with majority democratic rule.
There is quite a lot of similarity between the two movements, current antagonism aside. Language revival being the most commonly noted. IDK what you would consider "principles of," but they're both nation state ideologies of the time... as opposed to republican universalism (a la france) of previous centuries.
It is also true that ireland was segregated along religious/national lines, and that protestants in ROI (I am catholic-jewish-atheist, as the old joke goes) are nonexistent today. They were about 25% before independence. Driving out protestants is emphatically not a principle of irish republicanism. Many/most founders of Irish Republicanism were, in fact, protestant. Most emigrated, moved north or converted in the generation following independence. There is some dark, rarely mentioned parts of our history of that time.
I'll also note that driving out arabs is emphatically not a principle of zionism, never was. The coming of the nation state had other ideas. zionism started in the ottoman period, and aspired to cultural autonomy of a kind that was practiced there. A nation state goal was adopted after France and Germany decided this was the future of the region.
People seem to forget how mixed Europe was before the wars, before nation states. Poland was about 50% polish. Jews, Germans and other minorities made up the rest. Its now 99% Polish-catholic. My grandfather's region (now eastern Slovakia) were Slovaks, Jews, Czechs and Ukrainians in a "majority-minority" mix. Now 99% Slovak. All of mainland europe shares this history.
When the Ottoman empire fell, giving way to nation states, same. Greek & Turkish ethnic "exchange." The Syriac & Armenian genocide. Yugoslavia & multiethnic arab countries segregated more recently. India, despite Gandhi's efforts. Etc. Empires were more multicultural than the current states.
I'll note that the philosophical distinction between universalism and ethno nationalism is barely noticeable in actual history.
Re: racial & ethnic separatism
Seeing independence as synonymous with racial & ethnic separatism is a leap. But, as I said, but if it applies to Israel it applies to half the world. In Israeli law, now and since founding, there is no preference or limits on any citizen. The only preferential law is the right of return. Actual discrimination, especially during wars, is a real thing. It is a failure though, not an ideal.
Rhodesia practiced apartheid and only allowed whites to vote. Israel never practiced apartheid, and all citizens can vote.
During the 1948 war about >1m palestinians became refugees, most ending up in the Jordanian or Egyptian parts of Palestine. >1m european jewish refugees arrived from europe and >1m arab-jewish refugees who were forced out of various countries. Thats how the demographics came to be. There was never a time when israel, as an independent state, had a jewish minority.
Despite the downvotes this post has a point - if you want to protect your religion/ethnicity you have to do it yourself.
Rise of anti-semitism in Europe - nothing is done
Jews seek safety in other countries - immigration denied
Holocaust happens - world sympathizes and moves on
Israel is under no illusions as to what happens if they don’t have a home and defend it. I kind of don’t blame them for ignoring the worlds criticisms.
Generally we don't justify US military funding on the basis of "protecting the White race." The strongest military in the world will be representing a majority non-white nation in a decade or two.
>Generally we don't justify US military funding on the basis of "protecting the White race."
Someone should probably tell all the people invaded and oppressed by the USA that it's gotten woke now and white supremacist settler-colonialism is over.
I have absolutely no interest in protecting my ethnicity. Plenty of ethnicities have gone extinct and I fully expect most extant ethnicities (and religions) to fade away eventually too. No one will be upset when there are no more Jews any more than they miss Manichaens or Hittites. Borders and superstitions serve no practical purpose. To be clear, I'm not advocating genocide or violence of any kind. I'm just saying attrition is inevitable.
