I've seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.
First, because I have to say it:
Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.
But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state. Israel could have been created in Germany or Siberia or frankly Florida for that matter (in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to "the one state solution"). In many ways, the US with its civil rights act serves the same purpose, and in fact, most Jews live in the US.
Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust. Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.
So I wanted to point out some anti-semetic tropes I've seen on this website and call them out so you can recognize them.
Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.
This can be done through omission. If you aren't clear whether you're talking about jews or a specific institution (for example, the I"D"F or the settlements or Likud), many people will read your statement as being about Jews. Be careful with the word "they"
erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness
The zionist entity is not a Jewish colonial project, but an Anglo colonial project. It was created by the British and now is funded by the US Americans. Jews are an oppressed minority whose oppression is leveraged against other oppressed peoples. Similarly to how the US uses Kurds to Balkanize Iraq or The Hmong to wage counterinsurgency in Laos, it's uses Jews to destabilize the Levant.
Outside of the US, jews are largely understood as a racial group and oppressed on that basis. Especially in the Arab world where the Islamic hyper nationalism has gained ground in response to colonialism and been funded further by colonialists to their own ends (google "the safari club" or "Israel funds Hamas")
Blood Libel
This one is the assertion that Jews are uniquely bloodthirsty / murder non Jewish children. The classic example of this myth that people are familiar with is Runplestiltskin.
It is true that the IDF under the direction of Likud and the US state is murdering many Gazans, the majority of whom are children. but! be careful to specify. When people talk about "jews" or "israelis" generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope. Again, be careful with the word "they" and specify which entities you're talking about.
calling for ethnic cleansing
Okay, wtf ya'll. It's not jews as an ethnicity that are oppressing Palestinians, it is US imperial power. Jews have always lived in Palestine and the occupation only began in the 40s as part of a British initiative.
Jews will always be part of a palestinian state, and frankly need protections as ethnic and religious minorities. We do not seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, but their integration into it as citizens.
Jews are safe in the US not because its a colonial state but because of civil rights protections and generational wealth. If we can create civil rights protections in Palestine and a social safety net (ideally communism but I'll settle for social democracy), then jews will be safe in Palestine.
Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion
America controls Israel and not vice versa. APEC is not a cabal brainwashing otherwise Nobel Christian politicians. US politicians support Israel because they're colonial politicians and Israel is our colony. APEC exists because lobbying is how power is exercised in the US, but if we had patronage instead, APEC' functions would be carried our by a governor or an ambassador or whatever.
conclusion
Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you're criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you've been doing that. Don't equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.
Because as I've linked elsewhere in this thread, other posters have indicated that the only solution to this problem is total removal of the Israeli population (which of course includes indigenous Jews). That's not correct, and also morally objectionable, and has caused at least several users (such as the OP) some distress.
I'm not mad at them for saying that, as obviously people can say rhings they don't really mean when emotionally distressed (which they have every right to be right now), but I can push back on it, in the same way I push back on Israeli war crime apologia on Reddit.
It's not tone deaf to point out that this need not happen. The whole reason Likud has supported and propped up Hamas is because they want to make peaceful coexistence seem impossible to justify their continued ethnic cleansing project. There's no reason to think it's impossible and saying otherwise is right-wing Zionist talking point to boot.
I see people calling for the expulsion of settlers, but I haven't seen anyone call for the expulsion of Jewish people from Israel in general. Jews, Muslims and Christians have coexisted in the region for hundreds of years, what changed this was the secular settler colonial project of Zionism. I think you're also underestimating how racist the Israeli state is to Jewish people who are not European.
It's not literally impossible, in the idealist sense, but materially the Zionist project is ongoing with full force and has no signs of stopping. They're not going to wake up one and decide they will get along with the Palestinians. The Zionists won't stop until they are either forcefully removed from power or the Palestinians are all dead or displaced, like the Zionists want them be. And no, Hamas received funding from Zionists as a divide and conquer tactic to weaken the leftist, secular PLO, who were not any less violent in their struggle for liberation. Until the Zionist government of Israel falls (and it will not happen peacefully, it never does), peaceful coexistence will remain impossible, and violent reaction from the oppressed with remain justified. And Hand-wringing over talks of the expulsion of settlers, as those same settlers hold all the power, and as they commit mass murder, IS tone policing.
Great, I've seen people call for the removal of all Israelis, and the mods subsequent deleted that post, so we've seen different things and I'm responding to what I, and the thread OP have seen.
Right, and as you point out, they "hold all the power". When you insist that any discussion of the peaceful settlement be dismissed, you accept that stronger military is going to continue to impose it's will on the weaker. And in this case we both agree that Israeli is the stronger force and has the goal of ethnic cleansing. To me this premise and logic unavoidable arrives at the conclusion that the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is unavoidable, a conclusion I find abhorrent, and so that premise I reject.
Israeli needs to stop bombing the Palestinians, which requires the Israeli Jewish population to not believe (however spuriously and unjustifiably) their survival depends on bombing Palestinians, which absolutely requires peaceful coexistence to be an envisionable and articulable end scenario for this conflict.
Except for the historical examples I keep citing. Honestly, I can't think of a single historical example of a settler-colonial government being successfully, violently removed by the indigenous population (Vietnam being colonial as opposed to settler-colonial project). If you have one though, I'd love to hear it.
Your solution would depend entirely on the good will of the settlers, and again, this has never happened in the history of mankind, it's pure idealism. Life is not an anime where the protagonist gives an inspiring speech to the bad guy and he suddenly has a change of heart and decides to stop being bad. The Nazis only stopped their genocide because they got BTFO by the Soviets, slavery only died out due to the efforts of the oppressed, not because some white people decided they had a conscience. You're taking away colonized people's right to self determination when you say things like this. And no, they are not doing this because they think coexistence is impossible. The very foundation of the Israeli stated was based on 19th century settler colonialism. Do you know what this means? It means deliberately displacing or murdering the current occupation so the settlers can move in. They don't do it because they think the Palestinians don't want to get along with them, they do it because they think the Palestinians are inferior and that European Jews are entitled to this piece of land. Emphasis on European, they don't want Ethiopian Jews living there and they certainly are not sympathetic to the Jewish population that was just always there either. They will not stop until this goal is accomplished. Let's see what the founders of the Zionist ideology think about the Palestinians:
As you can see, Israelis are not doing this because Hamas exists. It was the entire project from the start. You think these people, who still move in to claim Palestinian homes, whose ideology is predicated upon colonialism, who move into the borders of Gaza to harass Palestinians, are going to magically have a change of heart, or that dialogue with settlers is possible? Do you also think the soviets should have debated the nazis out of being nazis, that the Haitians should have just talked to the French about the whole slavery thing, or that Italians were too harsh to hang Mussolini upside down? Absolute nonsense.
Exactly, this is a right-wing zionist talking point. That's my whole point. Theodor Herzl is absolutely full of shit. He should be called out as being full of shit, and modern day Israelis should call him out as being full of shit in the same way we leftists in America call out Thomas Jefferson as being full of shit. His Zionist project was and is immoral and unconscionable and it, as well as it's justifications and talking points should be stamped out and renounced full throatily by current Israelis.
The end of slavery in the anglosphere did absolutely hinge on the existence and pressure of British and American abolitionists. Slaves didn't violently overthrow their captors and end the institution. I don't know whether claiming otherwise is historical revisionism or illiteracy. What do you think prompted South Carolina's succession and the Civil War that resulted in the 13th Amendment? It wasn't the Nat Turner rebellion.
Clearly not all of them, but historically outside pressure and internal disputes between abolitionist and pro-genocide settler factions has absolutely played a role in every prior successful settler-colonial struggle, and indeed almost every anti-oppression struggle. To wit, it wasn't allied forces who hanged Mussolini, it was his anti-oppression compatriots.
They didn't, but the lasting effects of the Haitian revolution and similar revolts definitely did, which is white-washed away in history lessons on the imperial core. It sure didn't end because the British were wittle smol beans.
Ah, that explains it. Anyway, I'm done arguing with settler apologists for today.
I swear to God nobody actually knows what words mean anymore. You're the one insisting I toe the Zionist line and refusal to parrot their talking points doesn't make me a apologist for them.
Yeah, and when the Southern planter elites used the Haitain rebellion as proof that whites and blacks could not live side beside peacefully as equals (which they did), they were also full of shit, like the Zionists.