Virginia Delegate Sam Rasoul, whose family was displaced by Israel, wrote about the ‘evils’ of Zionism, prompting a flurry of attacks from Tim Kaine, Abigail Spanberger, and other party colleagues.
Israel lost the public referendum. Accept this and get with the program, or prepare to lose elections (preferably in the primaries)
Israel’s PR machine has a stranglehold on the democratic party leadership. It’s a key part of their strategy depth - because if this American unconditional support for Israel is independent of which party is in power. They’re going to do everything possible to maintain it.
They should be nervous by now.
They’re too obsessed with Trump as the only evil to see that, and they’ll continue voting for Zionist Democrats and blaming everyone who doesn’t.
You have two options. The third option is the exact same as the first option.
This part is not complicated.
“Obsessed” is pretty strong considering he’s turning the country into a fascist dictatorship. Everyone knows he’s not the only evil, but some people want to put out the fire on their doorstep first. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Trump is a Zionist dicksuck too. Pass it on.
Isn’t the goal of Zionism to form an ethno-state? That right there is my number one problem with this ideology. Is that any different then the KKK? Just you know, with Jewish people?
Ethno-states were all the rage in 19th-century Europe. Everywhere they got into power, they oppressed religious and ethnic minorities and in some cases resorted to ethnic cleansing. The usual result is a deracinated one-size-fits-all national identity based on some self-serving myths about the dominant group, with resultant loss of diversity in the face of coerced conformity.
And now you have Castilians putting the boot to Catalans, Basques and Galicians, Serbs shitting on Bosnian Muslims, Croats and anyone else who’s not Serbian, everyone fucking with Roma people, Germans in the 20th century murdering Jews, Turks murdering Armenians and expelling ethnic Greeks, and so forth ad nauseam.
The Zionists are no different in this regard, except perhaps that more effort went into constructing a Jewish national identity after than wide cultural divergences that occurred in the Diaspora-- for example, reviving the Hebrew language, which hadn’t been in household use among Jewish people for over two millennia (for example, people in Roman-occupied Palestine spoke Aramaic or koine Greek).
And if it hasn’t been made abundantly clear: I despite ethno-nationalism and regard it as a proto-fascist ideology that has caused untold harm. Only the few countries that decoupled ethnicity from national identity (such as Scotland and some of the Northern Tier countries) have avoided becoming brainless dystopic hellholes.
You have my vote.
And my hacks.
They’re nationalists, yes. Specifically early Zionists wanted to form a Socialist State.
That is, they’re National Socialists.
How long do you guys think people like Jeffrey Epstein were blackmailing U.S. politicians for Israel?
20 years? It probably went both ways.
Well at least these pro-zionist pieces of shit are willing to out themselves so we know who they are.
One day they will always have been against it tho
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed
Putin and Netanyahoo need to vanish, they are a fascistic blackmailing blight on the world
And Putin’s flunky Trump should fuck off too.
Sorry, Democrats are evil. Did you not read the article?
Trump stays. And all that ethno-state bullshit really comes to the fore.
While those men are unquestionably evil, if it wasn’t them it would just be some other unquestionably evil person. They’re a symptom, not the disease. I’m not disagreeing with you, they should absolutely ‘vanish’.
Known top Democrats Eileen Filler-Corn, Abigail Spanberger, and Tim Kaine. I mean, there are plenty of rabidly pro-Israel top Democrats, but none of them are in this article.
The emphasis on “Zionism” is a little bit weird, too. I’ve seen Bernie Sanders be accused of being a “Zionist,” because he doesn’t want Israel to be destroyed. I mean, I guess that’s… true? Maybe? “Zionist” seems like something you can apply to a huge number of pretty reasonable people by that definition. It seems like kind of a textbook way to start to throw mud at a massively pro-Palestinian person, and accuse him of being anti-Palestinian, through cleverly dishonest use of language.
I don’t want Israel to be destroyed. Am I a Zionist?
Edit: I looked up a little more about it. This Palestinian state congressman, who is a Democratic committee chair, has been talking vigorously on social media about the evils of Israel’s most recent “war” since October 2023. It only turned into an issue with this specific post, because the language means one thing to him, but a very different thing to some people who are reading it, and so they objected.
because the language means one thing to him, but a very different thing to some people who are reading it, and so they objected
Or they’re acting in bad faith.
Certainly possible, most politicians are, I think. I was just saying that you wouldn’t have to be some nutty apartheid-supporter to look at Rasoul’s statement and have some objections to it.
This is his message that drew the condemnations:
“One day, everyone will have always been against this genocide. After 22 months of the most horrific crimes, there is no doubt that Israel is conducting the most evil cleansing in human history as we fund and watch it play out minute by minute.
Much love to so many of my Jewish friends who have stood up from the first weeks of this horror to say this is not in our name. We know that this was never about religion, rather a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way. This is Zionism.
Zionists yearn to be the only victim and deflect from the evils perpetuated in its name. Instead of calling for an end to genocide, Zionists have bastardized antisemitism making the world less safe for my Jewish friends.
There is no middle ground in this supremacist mess. The rights stripped from Palestinians for decades are being stripped here now. The concentration camps in Gaza are being built here. Zionism has proven how evil our society can be, and sadly we are beginning to experience it here in our great Republic.
Now is our time to rise up and stand on the right side of history.”
He’s talking about the Zionism that is perpetrating the crimes in Gaza. It is your choice to focus on a “not all zionists” take, and it is your choice to focus on the crimes being talked about. In my opinion, just like “not all men” is (at best) a silly response to legitimate grievances about rape culture, the “not all zionists” take is also (at best) silly in the face of apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.
It is your choice to focus on a “not all zionists” take
That’s not at all what I was saying. It’s actually backwards from what I was trying to say.
Am I a Zionist (if I want peace, and justice for Palestinian victims of the current genocide, but I also don’t want Israel to be destroyed)? Is Bernie Sanders?
I …don’t care? I personally don’t consider the word “zionist” to be a slur. If there is a version of zionism that can coexist with full Palestinian freedom, with full Israeli accountability for what they have done and are doing, and with fully equal democratic rights for all the people in Israel-Palestine regardless of creed and ethnic origin, including the right of return for all refugees as well as reparations in the context of a genuine Truth and Reconciliation process, then I have no problem being called that kind of a zionist too. I don’t see it, but if you have one that you can point at, sure, why not.
EDIT: to clarify: on the other hand if such a version of zionism does not (edit2: or cannot) exist, then why would anyone want to be associated with an ideology incompatible with universal freedom and democracy? The mere “existence” if this or that state is irrelevant, if such a state cannot be a free and democratic place for all the people in its territory. If Israel cannot be a democracy with human rights for all the people living under its power, then I honestly don’t care if it exists or not. As a gentile Canadian/European dual citizen, I would much rather spend my energy making Canada and Europe safe places for Jewish life and prosperity such that Jewish people can thrive and be happy here, than support some hopeless apartheid ethnostate.
If there is a version of zionism that can coexist with full Palestinian freedom, with full Israeli accountability for what they have done and are doing, and with fully equal democratic rights for all the people in Israel-Palestine regardless of creed and ethnic origin, including the right of return for all refugees as well as reparations in the context of a genuine Truth and Reconciliation process, then I have no problem being called that kind of a zionist too.
So are you saying “not all Zionists,” then? I pretty much agree with everything you just said, I agree with all of that. Maybe more, truth and reconciliation is probably more productive, but my prescribed solution would be a little more inclusive of measured revenge to disincentivize repetition in the future. But yes we generally agree about all of that.
This was my central point: A lot of times, breaking down things into “isms” and “ists” can lead people to huge failures of thinking. I get why this Palestinian person is attacking Zionism. It makes sense to me. I’m just saying that once you start using a word that can both mean “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way” or also mean something so mild that you don’t mind being identified with one version of it, that starts to become a dangerous word to use, because it helps people become more confused instead of helping them understand what is happening and what you wanted to communicate.
Like I said, I’ve seen people attack Bernie Sanders for being anti-Palestinian, it’s not just some kind of idle speculation about how people could get confused by it.
To me this sounds like a problem of honest universalist democratic zionists (whoever those are) to be solving, and definitely not something to be foisted upon the Palestinians to figure out all the nuances of zionism. I don’t see value in tone policing the people speaking out for the victims. If honest democratic zionists haven’t been able to rebrand, redefine, salvage zionism, that’s their problem, not the Palestinians’. The Palestinians have other, more pressing problems. If you (not you personally, the generic “you”) honestly believe that zionism can be salvaged for democracy and universal human rights, your time would be much better spent yelling at the vast majority of zionists who mean something completely different than you, and something much more sinister and evil, that wagging fingers to Palestinians.
not something to be foisted upon the Palestinians to figure out all the nuances of zionism
I’m not talking to Palestinians, I’m talking to you. I’m pretty sure I explicitly said that I get why this person would say things that way. Sure, he’s allowed. You’re not. For you, I feel like it’s fine for me to point out when you’re using language that can be used in a careless way that can (and does) hinder the Palestinian cause by being used to attack their defenders. Right?
I don’t see value in tone policing the people speaking out for the victims.
I would never dream of responding to this person’s post by trying to tone-police him. I’m responding to the OP article, which is describing some people as “top Democrats” who are not top Democrats, putting their statements next to statements from the ADL to create an overall gestalt about “Democrats” by bringing in other things from other sources, other dishonest things. And I’m responding to you. Again, he gets to say these things in the way he wants to say them, it’s fine, he’s earned it. You have not. I get to disagree with you about your use of language.
I feel like I’ve reiterated enough at this point what my issue is. One person in the article is describing Zionism as “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way.” Pretty much everyone in this conversation, I think, is against that. One other person is describing it as “the desire of Jewish people to have a state of Israel.” Some people might be against that, for valid reasons at this point, but I don’t think it is fair to attack someone who wants the second thing as if they were supporting the first thing. Using one word for both of those things and saying things like that it’s the job of the “honest universalist democratic zionists” to make you stop, and otherwise you’re going to continue with it, is just weird.
You’re talking about Zionism as if it’s a single international club, with central definitions and leadership that can include or exclude particular people. Honestly you seem like you’re just persistently missing the point of what I’m trying to say. I’ve said it a few different times at this point, and it seems like you’re still not grasping what I’m saying, so I’m going to give up trying. Cheers.
Well, we have spent the last few comments discussing what other zionisms could be like, so I don’t know where the idea that I am asserting zionism in the abstract is a monolith is coming from. But it is actually true that zionism in the concrete, or “really existing zionism” if you will, has certain characteristics and is in fact the current ideological basis for an ongoing genocide. Abstract vs concrete. It matters.
Other than that, I think we are confusing a couple of things.
- The article (and I) am talking about how a Virginia politician is being treated (tone policed, etc) by the top democrats in Virginia.
- You seem to be talking about how you and I are interacting in this thread.
I disagree with your reading of the article as somehow smearing “Democrats”. It’s about Virginia politics. Top democrats in Virginia talking about a Virginia delegate. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. Nothing dishonest about focusing on Virginia. It is in that context that my comments refer, in that context that the word zionism is being used, not to this discussion between us. Anyway, nice talking to you.
Fun fact, recognizing Israel as a country had wide support from antisemitic groups all across the US and Europe.
It was seen as a solution to get rid of the Jews once and for all. Just deport them all to the Middle East so that they’re someone else’s problem.
Using the same loose logic could easily be used to say that Zionism is antisemitic. It’s the kind of stupid logic that conservatives use all the time to make the facts fit their feelings.
Makes perfect sense.
Almost as if you can’t look for morality or amorality in broad categories, and you need to look at what someone’s actually doing (or advocating or whatever), and be specific.
Almost as if you can’t look for morality or amorality in broad categories
Some broad categories are beyond the pale. For example, there’s no moral way to implement an apartheid state.
Absolutely correct. So anyone who’s doing that (or supporting it, making excuses for it, whatever), that’s real fucked up and they’re a bad person. I should have clarified, that type of broad category I’m fine with.
What I was saying is that someone who has been tirelessly advocating for the US to stop funding Israel, showing photos of the genocide and starvation on the senate floor, introducing votes to defund Israel, showing up at protests, all that kind of thing, if you manage to introduce a category of “Zionist” into the conversation, and then say “Well he’s a Zionist so he’s supporting genocide,” that’s a stupid way to reason. That’s what I’m saying about broad categories. That type of broad category (using imprecise language to strategically make it sound like someone’s supporting something they’re not supporting) are useful tools for getting people confused.
I think it depends on what you view as Israel. Israel’s current government system is Zionist, but a people’s government is not equivalent to their people. So just as I can say that everyone in Gaza is not Hamas, I can say that every person in Israel isn’t this Zionist regime. I couldn’t care what they called the area on a map, whether it has 1 non Zionist country, 2 seperate non-zionist countries, or 12 small non- zionist countries, just so long as root out the Zionism / reform their governments into the acceptance of a people not based on their language, religion, color of their skin, sex, gender, etc. Doubt we’ll see it most places until we start fixing economic issues everywhere though.
My point is that attacking someone as a “Zionist,” now that Israel exists and has for a while, is kind of meaningless and dishonest at this point. Specifically because the label can mean a few very different things, you can ratchet someone into a viewpoint they don’t actually hold by using the loosest possible definition when classifying them as Zionist and then using the most damning possible definition when attacking them for being a Zionist.
Personally, I wouldn’t care at all if a terrible government like Israel’s is destroyed. I don’t mind that at all. It’s not worth saving. Those who commit genocide deserve no quarter.
I’m not against the people of Israel, just their stupid government. Much like I’m for the PEOPLE of the USA but our government can go fuck itself.
I’m not against the people of Israel, just their stupid government.
Most of the “people of israel” support most actions by said government.
Most that are against the genocide are only because they want their kid-soldiers to come back to their families.
Look at previous governments, they’ve never been benevolent towards Palestine and when they tried their Prime minister got shot dead by one of their own.Sure there are israelis that oppose the genocide on humanitarian grounds, but that’s a slim minority (and probably mostly lives elsewhere).
they’ve never been benevolent towards Palestine and when they tried their Prime minister got shot dead by one of their own.
That’s really glossing over a ton of fascinating stuff, but all of it’s instructive.
I think what Rasoul wrote was pretty measured and accurate, apart from calling the present actions the most evil cleansing in human history.
The objection from Kaine at least seems to hinge on Rasoul’s use of “Zionism.” You can see where there is miscommunication in Kaine’s quote:
Tim Kaine, one of Virginia’s two Democratic senators, declared: “I forcefully reject any claim that Zionism — the desire of Jewish people to have a state of Israel — is inherently racist or evil.”
So if Kaine thinks the desire to have an Israeli state is Zionism, then Rasoul lambasting Zionism is going to feel like an attack on the existence of Israel.
The one-ethnicity, one-state idea is intellectually and morally bankrupt. It only works if all out-group members are either oppressed, expelled or exterminated.
So White Christian Nationalists wanting to have their own ethnostate and exterminate non-whites is bad, but Jewish Nationalists (Zionists) wanting to have their own ethnostate and exterminate non-Jews is ok?
Almost every state is built around a dominant ethnicity. Israel is not 100% Jewish. And as long as they treat minorities fairly, it’s not inherently bad.
Exterminating other races is unequivocally bad in all cases, but you only included that to appeal to emotion.
And as long as they treat minorities fairly, it’s not inherently bad.
They don’t. So it is.
Then the US is already an ethnostate. And so are Norway, Germany, and Italy to different degrees.
China and Japan are arguably better examples of ethnostates than Israel.
An ethnostate does not simply imply a that a majority of one ethnic group exists. Apartheid is not normal for most states.
An ethnocracy is a type of political structure in which the state apparatus is controlled by a dominant ethnic group (or groups) to further that group’s perceived interests, power, dominance, and resources.
Yeah. It’s also notable that Rasoul is a Democratic committee chair, and he’s been railing against Israel’s “war” for years now, and all of that has always been fine. It became an issue with this particular post, for the reasons you specified, and now people are trying to use it as a way to spin up this whole thing where the Democrats hate the Palestinians and want to silence his criticism of Israel, and this is just more proof.
Zionism is, by definition, a nationalist ideology.
I think a lot of people do not understand that Zionism actually does have a specific meaning and ideological underpinning spanning the last 150 years. It is not simply the contention that this place over in the Levant should be called Israel and have a bunch of Jews there.
Fuck Israel, genocidal scum!
Democrats need to focus on this country. I hope all those bribe checks cashed. Its clear they are not working for their constituents.
Republicans: Fast fascism!
Democrats: Fast fascism with extra steps!
I think a couple of you have nailed the crux of the story here. Using Zionist in everyday speech is not something most of us have done much of, because it tended to be in a word-cloud that included other words like “exterminate” and “The Jews” and you know what I’m talking about here so if you’ve lived with that being almost every context you see “Zionist” in, it’s a pretty quick No on further discussion. That’s the disconnect.
What the modern state of Israel is doing is atrocious. If we need to use the word “Zionist” to explain it okay, but I would argue we don’t need to in order to stop this genocide. Also The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a great book.
And this “look! Democrats love genocide” shit is rancid. What Democrats wanted was to not be in the fascist hellhole shitslide we are now in. That garbage take was straight outta Moscow and did what it was intended to do, which was keep people from voting Harris and it absolutely did. Now everything is much worse.
I don’t know about your last take, though. It was clear from polling that siding with Israel was not going to be well received and, faced with the most important election not to lose, the Democrats decided that continuing to support the genocide was more important than stopping the slide into a fascist hellscape.
This was a deliberate decision of theirs. They weighed the choices and decided on what we have now. They are not on your side.
This was a deliberate decision of theirs. They weighed the choices and decided on what we have now. They are not on your side.
It was, and once again worthless Democratic consultants have fucked us all. It absolutely was the wrong election strategy.
But if the only thing people see is the top layer, they are intentionally being ignorant. Support for Israel - or Ukraine, or the UK or any foreign country isn’t supposed to work like DOGE; Completely destroyed in days, leaving only acrimony, mistrust, and a very uncertain, if inevitable, future. That’s what people are demanding and it’s as incompetent as anything trump burps up fifty times a day.
Something like “They are not on your side” is some Xitter facebook garbage. The world doesn’t work like that despite how much Musk wishes it did, or how much twenty-year olds believe it does. If Democrats are “not on your side” you’re either a republiQan, a clueless fascist supporter, or a “leftist” with zero representation in any office and zero chances for any change in the next decade.
The Left (all liberal flavors) has about one year left to get its shit together. All I see right now is “fuck the one party we could be in for change. Because (it really doesn’t matter - to the billionaires - why) reasons.” That’s not just self-defeating, it’s once again very preventable and only perpetrated by ignorance. Get in there.
Well, I think I see the problem. You seem to think that the Democrats are a leftist party. They are a right-wing party that cosplays as leftist. Their goal is to soak up all of the actual lefitst votes, so that we don’t get actual leftist candidates.
Democrats are not on my side as long as they continue to:
- support bombing children
- support rapists as candidates
- support genocide
- support torture programs
- support facists
- support increasing the military and intelligence budgets
- fight against healthcare for all
- fight against civil rights
These would all be obvious wins for the Democrats, but they are clearly more interested in continuing the status-quo, than supporting what the voters want.
They are a right-wing party that cosplays as leftist.
Wow that sounds like it should really mean something.
What, uh, what does it mean? I mean, I know “cosplay” but how does a right-wing party “cosplay” as a left-wing party? Can that even be a thing? No.
Here, let me help. On the “left” side of the spectrum are political goals. Let’s pretend like we both know what those are and we agree with them, okay? This is just a thought exercise. Okay, now that we know what the left’s goals are, let’s see if there’s any examples in history to suggest those goals were being worked towards. Ok?
Now, let’s say YES, there were examples in history of left-wing goals being worked towards, in the form of legislation, in the form of votes in chambers, and in the form of political public speech. It doesn’t matter what the examples are - you can make them up if you prefer - but this next step requires that we actually have examples to point to.
If you want to say NO, there are no examples of left-wing goals being worked towards then we can just end here. That’s sad.
BUT, good news! We’ve hypothetically agreed that some-if-not-all left-wing goals have been worked towards at some point. Now - which party did that work? Take your time.
If you made up examples, you’ve probably got some made up parties in there too, which - hooray for imagination. However, if you can possibly think of any left-wing goals that were worked towards in real life, you will be very likely limited to two parties. So. Which party works towards the left-wing goals?
Is the anarchists? Of course! But they’re not elected (they’re anarchists, it doesn’t really work for them.) Is it the socialists? Yes! But not so much in official capacity. More like unofficial good works, right? Is it the Greens? HA! oh hail no. No, it is not the greens.
I know that you know I can find those examples. And I know that you know what at least some of them are, so I’m going to be so bold as to assume that point is granted. Now, you’ve got quite a crime spree for this same party, namely the bombing and the raping and the genociding and the fascisting and the biting and the kicking and so on, Mmwh’ay. I’d like you to consider that none of those things are left wing goals being worked towards. And the people who may be accused of such things, are at best outliers like Sinema and Manchin, or at worst are part of a cultural trend towards doing what the American public says it wants done which is wrong.
Either way, Next November, you’ll have a choice to make. And once again that choice is the same as it was last November.
I’d like to remind you that last November didn’t work out for us.
Edit: unless the socialists and / or other ists actually run a candidate! Boy wouldn’t that be something to see.
