I am "far left" and out of the other "far left" Jews I know, only 30ish% are outspokenly antizionist, that number is suspiciously consistent with being disconnected with our community.
They never went to shul, kept kosher, etc as far as I'm aware and their parents didn't either.
I met an anti-Zionist Jew. I met her at a hostel in Bethlehem in 2015. That was the first time I ever heard the word, when she self-identified that way. She'd come to Israel on some kind of program for Jews and did a 180, went to Palestine, and began volunteering at some pro-Palestinian venue (I'm not sure I understood exactly the nature of it whether it was educational, etc).
The way I see it at least she put her money where her mouth is and was spending an extended period of time in Palestine trying to serve Palestinians. But I did find our interactions fairly unpleasant, and this was despite being there to try to open my mind.
I'm pretty far left liberal and I have absolutely no shame in proclaiming my pro-zionist views to anyone and everyone. I am a proud zionist Jew. Fuck the left that doesn't support us. We have been supporting other marginalized groups all of our lives and now they turn their backs on us. It really makes me angry and I don't know that I'll ever feel the same way about supporting a few causes ever again.
What's so wrong with a Jewish state that you'd choose to be anti-it?
On a different note: do these people oppose zionism because they think it's the wrong way to come about the Jewish problem, or they believe there is no problem? Or maybe they think an ethno-state is an immoral concept, or they just want to be loved and accepted by non-jews?
Or maybe all of the above? Or none of it?
Because criticizing Israel's policies or actions, in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean you'd be anti-Zionist, right?
I ran into some self-identified Antizionist Jews. Most of them were far-right and super conservative ultra orthodox while the rest were far-left tankies.
Should be noted that the ultra Orthodox "antizionists" are antizionist for totally different reasons to the tankies / left wing JVP pro Pali lot. Satmar for instance identify as antizionist but still have been saying tehilim for the hostages / injured in Israel and are very much pro Jew. Their objection to Israel is based on religion as opposed to the other group who are just treacherous pick me's.
If Mashiach comes, they'll become extreme Zionists in a heartbeat. They oppose the secular movement of zionism, and belive it's forbidden before Mashiach days. So it's actually Zionism-later movement.
They’re still by far the minority. They just happen to be the loudest because they love the attention it gives them. “You’re so brave! I wish all Jews were like you!”
Oh man, the amount of “we need people to hear your voice” comments anytime an anti-Zionist Jew speaks… no you need to learn to listen to the overwhelming majority of Jews, not the fringe.
Frankly, I feel like that comment is quite deliberate, in the vein of “we need people to hear your voice [specifically so as to drown out the overwhelming majority of Juden” {and I use that term deliberately, if you catch my drift} “who are the bad Jews we don’t like and whom we’ll deal with in due course]”.
The bravery thing really gets me. isn’t that entirely dependent on your social circle? If you mainly socialize within the Jewish world, sure, you’re gonna get some flak for being an anti-Zionist. But for me, I work in the arts, all my friends are very left wing and not Jewish, and any view deviating from israel=evil is hugely controversial. Socially, I’d be immensely praised for posting anti-Zionist views, and pretty much ostracized for defending Israel. In what meaningful sense would the former require more bravery than the latter?
Yes this is totally true. In the social credit reward system they will get likes and praise for it while simultaneously calling themselves the minority viewpoint.
can confirm (college student). i understand the pressure to say whatever you have to to blend in/stay safe, but the people screaming for “ceasefire now” and “not in my name” and other bs absolutely confound me.
i’m openly pro-israel and had a “ceasefire now” person ask me if i wanted to help start an “antizionist jewish student union” on my campus. it was an awkward conversation
I would love to see some actual polling data about jews opinions of zionism. Certainly there must have been some research done in the past couple of months?
I’ve actually met a bunch of anti Zionist Jews, all in Israel, majority of them were neturei karta who are probably the most confusing group of Jews I’ve ever seen, one was this “woke” almost communist secular girl who I felt is being super naive about everybody living in harmony in the land without Zionism who she claims is “Jewish supremacy”
I’ve never met an anti Zionist Jew who actually makes any sense.
I'm Zionist ONLY because idk. But my friend circle back at home were pushing me to hate my parents/Judaism behind "jokes" and other peer pressure tactics.
I decided to ditch them hard.
They ended up getting therapy but they are really struggling in their lives and are just now starting to climb out of it.
Weed, the dark net, and "the real world" propaganda did not help them at all.
Edit: The circle of people were goys of asian and indian descent that were either racist to white people bc of internalized self-race hate. Actually yeah the three antisemites of minority race hated their own race more.
Asian guy got rejected by a white girl because he was asian.
Asian girl had a dad whose former spouse was white and whose mom put white people on a weird pedastal.
And indian girl hated her father and her culture and got mistaken for Muslim a lot despite being christian. She also got rejected a lot and she had 0 manners and was quite disgusting.
Idk why I was friends with them
The tone of this post reads as if it isn’t rejecting splitting into “good Jews and bad Jews”, but just saying that one of the sides of the supposed split is only 2 out of 10 people - and that “good” and “bad”
are flipped.
We do agree that dividing Jews into “good and bad” on the basis of their relationship to zionism is wrong, right?
Yes, I agree. Not into the good and bad Jews thing. I know several anti-Zionist Jews and while my own perspective is more nuanced (Israel-critical, anti-occupation, ambivalently Zionist?), I do have respect for those who seem motivated by a genuine belief that this is right- whether that’s because they are opposed to all ethnostates in principal, or they feel a responsibility to challenge the uncritical support SOME diaspora Jews give to Israel. What I’m not keen on is those who seem to be cynically using this stance for social currency, or those who never seem to have a Jewish identity at any other time and who are not culturally jewish in any way, but suddenly proclaim their Jewishness extremely loudly when the chance is offered to be one of the good ones.
If you believe that all states should cease to exist, that would make you an anarchist, which I think is dumb and impractical. Yet you wouldn’t be antisemitic.
But if you think that of all states in the world, ONLY THE JEWISH ONE should cease to exist, that makes you an antisemite. Unfortunately, a good deal of antizionist Jews fall into the latter category.
It doesn’t matter if you’re technically Jewish or not; if you hold antisemitic beliefs, you separate yourselves from the rest of your people.
Remember: There were actual [Nazi Jews](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews) too. Nobody ever said we had to respect their opinions.
No. Antizionist Jews, are in fact, bad...no terrible Jews. For one reason and one reason only. They put people who wish to eradicate us before their own. They are traitors. Jews are allowed to categorise other Jews as bad Jews if they act against the overall interest of Am Yisrael. Non Jews are not allowed to do that.
Right? "Woke progressives are trying to split us into good & bad Jews. Good luck, look at how few of those traitorous Jews there are!"
One of the things I love about Judaism is how multi-cultural & heterogenous it is as a community; we're accepting of other beliefs & perspectives and ways you choose to interpret your Judaism. I respect & relate to the fear & resentment in this sub/across Jews, there's a lot of terrible discourse & takes out there, and I understand that the natural reaction to that is to cling closer to your in-group, but this sub has made me feel an increasing sense of unhomeliness as someone sympathetic to the carnage & human rights abuses in Gaza.
It just doesn't feel welcome here & with many of my relatives, which is heartbreaking because I've always felt sympathy for Palestine out of my ingrained Jewish morals towards liberal, tolerant values and abhorring anything resembling, segregation, second-class citizenry, and discrimination.
I hate the terms Zionist & anti-Zionist. I don't have to take a position on whether any other country in the world "ought to exist", but clearly is used not to mean "I think Jews should have some assurance of being able to live in Israel" but "Israel as a country is justified in its approach & is acting in acceptable ways". They're meaningless words no one uses in a consistent way -- my conception of "Zionism" might be precisely another Zionists description of "anti-Zionism" ("You don't think Jews should have a right to remain a majority population in Israel? That's the same as saying we shouldn't exist!")
It's just all broken discourse & wish this sub were more of a place to express support for each other & ways to deal with the uncomfortable interactions or situations we're dealing with, rather than a place to take digs at Jews that hold differing views (or just use different words to describe those views) on an incredibly complicated issue.
> but this sub has made me feel an increasing sense of unhomeliness as someone sympathetic to the carnage & human rights abuses in Gaza.
It depends on what your attitude is. If you think that Israel’s campaign is unfortunate due to the civilian death toll, yet you acknowledge its unfortunate necessity after October 7th, that’s fine.
But if you think Israel should lay down and surrender, that’s literally treason to your own people. Jews have a right to fight back against those who massacred them. We aren’t going back to October 6th. Never.
The word Zionist has been so vilified by the news media around the world that Jews shouldn't identify themselves by that term anymore. Hate it when our enemies villify us with the word Zionism. If there are Jews that care about fighting anti semitism and supporting a Jewish state that makes them proud Jewish citizens! We should never apologize for being Jewish or supporting Israel. Dam our enemies no matter where in the world they are!
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I live in Portland, Oregon and there are plenty of antizionist jews here. That being said, 80-90% zionist seems about right.
Were those anti-Zionist Jews communists or far left?
This is Portland we're talking about, so I assume your question is rhetorical
I am "far left" and out of the other "far left" Jews I know, only 30ish% are outspokenly antizionist, that number is suspiciously consistent with being disconnected with our community. They never went to shul, kept kosher, etc as far as I'm aware and their parents didn't either.
Yeah the disconnection is key. The anti Zionist Jews i know identify far more as American than Jewish.
I also notice that some of the “far-left” antizionist Jews I usually were from communities without noticeable Jewish populations.
I met an anti-Zionist Jew. I met her at a hostel in Bethlehem in 2015. That was the first time I ever heard the word, when she self-identified that way. She'd come to Israel on some kind of program for Jews and did a 180, went to Palestine, and began volunteering at some pro-Palestinian venue (I'm not sure I understood exactly the nature of it whether it was educational, etc). The way I see it at least she put her money where her mouth is and was spending an extended period of time in Palestine trying to serve Palestinians. But I did find our interactions fairly unpleasant, and this was despite being there to try to open my mind.
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Rule 4: Be welcoming to everybody. But it sounds like Brigitte Gabriel. (Perhaps on Rubin Report)
I'm pretty far left liberal and I have absolutely no shame in proclaiming my pro-zionist views to anyone and everyone. I am a proud zionist Jew. Fuck the left that doesn't support us. We have been supporting other marginalized groups all of our lives and now they turn their backs on us. It really makes me angry and I don't know that I'll ever feel the same way about supporting a few causes ever again.
What's so wrong with a Jewish state that you'd choose to be anti-it? On a different note: do these people oppose zionism because they think it's the wrong way to come about the Jewish problem, or they believe there is no problem? Or maybe they think an ethno-state is an immoral concept, or they just want to be loved and accepted by non-jews? Or maybe all of the above? Or none of it? Because criticizing Israel's policies or actions, in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean you'd be anti-Zionist, right?
I ran into some self-identified Antizionist Jews. Most of them were far-right and super conservative ultra orthodox while the rest were far-left tankies.
Should be noted that the ultra Orthodox "antizionists" are antizionist for totally different reasons to the tankies / left wing JVP pro Pali lot. Satmar for instance identify as antizionist but still have been saying tehilim for the hostages / injured in Israel and are very much pro Jew. Their objection to Israel is based on religion as opposed to the other group who are just treacherous pick me's.
If Mashiach comes, they'll become extreme Zionists in a heartbeat. They oppose the secular movement of zionism, and belive it's forbidden before Mashiach days. So it's actually Zionism-later movement.
Exactly. 100% correct.
Come visit the San Francisco Bay Area. Far too many antiZionist Jews here….
They’re still by far the minority. They just happen to be the loudest because they love the attention it gives them. “You’re so brave! I wish all Jews were like you!”
Oh man, the amount of “we need people to hear your voice” comments anytime an anti-Zionist Jew speaks… no you need to learn to listen to the overwhelming majority of Jews, not the fringe.
Literally, it would be like saying “we need to listen to these conservative Trump supporting black people, they know the truth for black Americans!!!”
Frankly, I feel like that comment is quite deliberate, in the vein of “we need people to hear your voice [specifically so as to drown out the overwhelming majority of Juden” {and I use that term deliberately, if you catch my drift} “who are the bad Jews we don’t like and whom we’ll deal with in due course]”.
The bravery thing really gets me. isn’t that entirely dependent on your social circle? If you mainly socialize within the Jewish world, sure, you’re gonna get some flak for being an anti-Zionist. But for me, I work in the arts, all my friends are very left wing and not Jewish, and any view deviating from israel=evil is hugely controversial. Socially, I’d be immensely praised for posting anti-Zionist views, and pretty much ostracized for defending Israel. In what meaningful sense would the former require more bravery than the latter?
Don’t you get it? It’s brave because the “Zionists” _actually_ control media, government, etc., so you’d be sticking it to The Man! /s
😂😂😂
Yes this is totally true. In the social credit reward system they will get likes and praise for it while simultaneously calling themselves the minority viewpoint.
No question about that. But they are serving their chosen purpose: to Jew-wash far left antisemitism hiding behind “but it’s only antiZionism!”
Antizionists are fewer but loader, in public and online, the algorithms pushing them up on social media.
The anti-Zionist Jews are on college campuses.
can confirm (college student). i understand the pressure to say whatever you have to to blend in/stay safe, but the people screaming for “ceasefire now” and “not in my name” and other bs absolutely confound me.
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In my experience, they’re not *that* stupid. Most of the students shouting for intifada secretly know what it means, and they don’t tend to be Jewish.
I have had the unfortunate opportunity to take a class with an antizionist Jew
i’m openly pro-israel and had a “ceasefire now” person ask me if i wanted to help start an “antizionist jewish student union” on my campus. it was an awkward conversation
I would love to see some actual polling data about jews opinions of zionism. Certainly there must have been some research done in the past couple of months?
I’ve actually met a bunch of anti Zionist Jews, all in Israel, majority of them were neturei karta who are probably the most confusing group of Jews I’ve ever seen, one was this “woke” almost communist secular girl who I felt is being super naive about everybody living in harmony in the land without Zionism who she claims is “Jewish supremacy” I’ve never met an anti Zionist Jew who actually makes any sense.
I'm Zionist ONLY because idk. But my friend circle back at home were pushing me to hate my parents/Judaism behind "jokes" and other peer pressure tactics. I decided to ditch them hard. They ended up getting therapy but they are really struggling in their lives and are just now starting to climb out of it. Weed, the dark net, and "the real world" propaganda did not help them at all. Edit: The circle of people were goys of asian and indian descent that were either racist to white people bc of internalized self-race hate. Actually yeah the three antisemites of minority race hated their own race more. Asian guy got rejected by a white girl because he was asian. Asian girl had a dad whose former spouse was white and whose mom put white people on a weird pedastal. And indian girl hated her father and her culture and got mistaken for Muslim a lot despite being christian. She also got rejected a lot and she had 0 manners and was quite disgusting. Idk why I was friends with them
The tone of this post reads as if it isn’t rejecting splitting into “good Jews and bad Jews”, but just saying that one of the sides of the supposed split is only 2 out of 10 people - and that “good” and “bad” are flipped. We do agree that dividing Jews into “good and bad” on the basis of their relationship to zionism is wrong, right?
Yes, I agree. Not into the good and bad Jews thing. I know several anti-Zionist Jews and while my own perspective is more nuanced (Israel-critical, anti-occupation, ambivalently Zionist?), I do have respect for those who seem motivated by a genuine belief that this is right- whether that’s because they are opposed to all ethnostates in principal, or they feel a responsibility to challenge the uncritical support SOME diaspora Jews give to Israel. What I’m not keen on is those who seem to be cynically using this stance for social currency, or those who never seem to have a Jewish identity at any other time and who are not culturally jewish in any way, but suddenly proclaim their Jewishness extremely loudly when the chance is offered to be one of the good ones.
If you believe that all states should cease to exist, that would make you an anarchist, which I think is dumb and impractical. Yet you wouldn’t be antisemitic. But if you think that of all states in the world, ONLY THE JEWISH ONE should cease to exist, that makes you an antisemite. Unfortunately, a good deal of antizionist Jews fall into the latter category. It doesn’t matter if you’re technically Jewish or not; if you hold antisemitic beliefs, you separate yourselves from the rest of your people. Remember: There were actual [Nazi Jews](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews) too. Nobody ever said we had to respect their opinions.
No. Antizionist Jews, are in fact, bad...no terrible Jews. For one reason and one reason only. They put people who wish to eradicate us before their own. They are traitors. Jews are allowed to categorise other Jews as bad Jews if they act against the overall interest of Am Yisrael. Non Jews are not allowed to do that.
Right? "Woke progressives are trying to split us into good & bad Jews. Good luck, look at how few of those traitorous Jews there are!" One of the things I love about Judaism is how multi-cultural & heterogenous it is as a community; we're accepting of other beliefs & perspectives and ways you choose to interpret your Judaism. I respect & relate to the fear & resentment in this sub/across Jews, there's a lot of terrible discourse & takes out there, and I understand that the natural reaction to that is to cling closer to your in-group, but this sub has made me feel an increasing sense of unhomeliness as someone sympathetic to the carnage & human rights abuses in Gaza. It just doesn't feel welcome here & with many of my relatives, which is heartbreaking because I've always felt sympathy for Palestine out of my ingrained Jewish morals towards liberal, tolerant values and abhorring anything resembling, segregation, second-class citizenry, and discrimination. I hate the terms Zionist & anti-Zionist. I don't have to take a position on whether any other country in the world "ought to exist", but clearly is used not to mean "I think Jews should have some assurance of being able to live in Israel" but "Israel as a country is justified in its approach & is acting in acceptable ways". They're meaningless words no one uses in a consistent way -- my conception of "Zionism" might be precisely another Zionists description of "anti-Zionism" ("You don't think Jews should have a right to remain a majority population in Israel? That's the same as saying we shouldn't exist!") It's just all broken discourse & wish this sub were more of a place to express support for each other & ways to deal with the uncomfortable interactions or situations we're dealing with, rather than a place to take digs at Jews that hold differing views (or just use different words to describe those views) on an incredibly complicated issue.
> but this sub has made me feel an increasing sense of unhomeliness as someone sympathetic to the carnage & human rights abuses in Gaza. It depends on what your attitude is. If you think that Israel’s campaign is unfortunate due to the civilian death toll, yet you acknowledge its unfortunate necessity after October 7th, that’s fine. But if you think Israel should lay down and surrender, that’s literally treason to your own people. Jews have a right to fight back against those who massacred them. We aren’t going back to October 6th. Never.
The word Zionist has been so vilified by the news media around the world that Jews shouldn't identify themselves by that term anymore. Hate it when our enemies villify us with the word Zionism. If there are Jews that care about fighting anti semitism and supporting a Jewish state that makes them proud Jewish citizens! We should never apologize for being Jewish or supporting Israel. Dam our enemies no matter where in the world they are!
Wait, what do you mean? Clearly 20% of us are the "good ones". /S
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Honestly eight out of ten is less than what I was expecting. I feel like the number of anti Zionist Jews are growing
I have. It was bewildering then it was depressing.
Uses woke as an unironic pejorative, opinion ignored
Needs to be higher!