I identify as a progressive Zionist. This means both that I try to support Zionist ideals in a manner consistent with broader progressive obligations (particularly the need to be fair to groups not my own — Palestinians being the obvious ones), but …..

israel as a state for arabs and jews is really the only solution to this mess. no one would’ve been opposed to that if that was what happened in the very beginning.

Actually, doesn’t it seem that we are recognizing more and more these days that such alliances are difficult if not impossible?

Different peoples (whether defined by ethnicity, religion, or any other factor) can certainly share a common country, in theory. They can do so even if they detest each other, provided that there is sufficient ‘insulation’ from third parties (See; new york city.) But if/when they have mutual animosity, and also lack an insulating and/or controlling third party, it doesn’t seem to work that well.

In fact, the recent trend towards separatism seems to support this view.

israel as a state for arabs and jews is really the only solution to this mess. no one would’ve been opposed to that if that was what happened in the very beggining.

About a fifth of the Israeli – meaning pre-1967 part of Israel – populatation is Arab. There are Muslim Arabs in Israel’s security forces and military. No one really likes to talk about them (either because it shows that Israel can be quite at peace with Arabs when those Arabs aren’t trying to kill them, or because it shows that Arabs can be quite peaceful with Jews and other Israelis when permitted to be full Israeli citizens; either one irritates somebody’s worldview).

Mitchforth, the fact that the Ottomans and British had conquered that territory didn’t give them the right to give it away. Palestinians were living there; therefore, the land belonged to those Palestinians.

Jews had been living there too, therefore the land belonged to them. Makes just as much sense (and is the crux of dilemma really, since both have a moral claim to the territory).

This boils down to “Jews didn’t show sufficient commitment to calm, dispassionate, reflective, deliberate action as to all the potential alternatives to Zionism three years after the Holocaust“, which is just ridiculously insensitive. Moreover, no other alternative on the horizon immediately gave Jews things that the Holocaust showed were absolutely critical for them: most namely, a place to flee to in times of oppression, and also political autonomy and self-determination they wouldn’t have anywhere else. Maybe liberal democracies might eventually develop a sufficient ethical compass so that Jews can count on that later on, but there’s a) no way to guarantee it will ever happen and b) no indication of when we’ll get there (I suspect only when anti-Semitism has been eradicated entirely, at which point the question is moot). And in the mean time, Jews just have to sit on their hands and hope they don’t get killed again. That doesn’t mean we cease working on reformist efforts, but they can’t be the only legitimated avenue for liberation.

It’s amazing how such conditions are always imposed by the dominators on the dominated. Blacks, women, Jews, whoever — they’re always told they have a moral obligation to “turn the other cheek” to the violence against them (Christian metaphor intended), and if they refuse, now they’re the real bad guys. It’s a consistent theme in the rationalization of oppression.

Your burden puts the onus on the oppressed class to craft a liberation agenda which maps perfectly onto an idealized fantasy that doesn’t exist and systematized rules and procedures which were crafted with reference to the current oppressive reality — they have to be both the paragons of idealized justice which nobody else practices and meet technical hurdles designed specifically to ratify an existing power structure which keeps Jews at the bottom. Speaking only of the oppression created, it pays no mind to the oppression present, which is taken to be a neutral baseline built into the system which Jews can legitimately be forced to absorb. In a world with French nation-states, Arab nation-states, Persian nation-states, Chinese nation-states, all manner of nation-states, even a Palestinian nation-state intended to be created contemporaneously with Israel, only the Jewish-nation state is conceived as a request for “special rights”, because only the Jewish-nation state is seen as something external to the status quo state of affairs predicated on anti-Semitic domination (which of course, it was).

That, I submit, puts the bridge over my back (if you will). Rather, I think that the remedies chosen by the oppressed have presumptive validity and the burden is on the oppressors to forge alternate paths. So I’d turn the burden back onto you. For you to show the establishment of Israel in 1948 was unjust, you have to show an alternative that in 1948 could promise in 1948 that Jews would be protected from state sponsored violence, that would unconditionally grant asylum to Jewish refugees, and that would not politically marginalize Jews as a class. That liberal democracy might eventually get there in some misty-eyed idealistic future isn’t good enough, because Jews are dying today.

The establishment of Israel is based off one legitimate response to the sort of oppressive situation that Jews faced themselves under — one that has proven rather uniquely resistant (for a variety of reasons) to being “remedied” by enlightenment universalism (if — as I have argued against — that was the goal of enlightenment universalism at all). It’s “universal” in the sense that I think groups have a right to pursue autonomy in this fashion, but not in the sense that I demand that be their only choice. I advocate a pragmatic and pluralist outlook in how groups craft responses to oppression, one that emphasizes their standpoint and their experiences, rather than trying to impress upon them one size fits all solutions.

Rich white women siding up with rich lazy kuwaiti women, see, they all just stick together, rich with rich, privelage with privelage, every time- all the time, u think someone like that is going to tell me what to think? Listen, I got born in the west, I am British, these african american women who come this site they been in America for centuries also, u think u talking down to us just to protect ure rich racist Kuwaiti, Qatari and Bahrani friends? This is kyriarchy, people like this are part of a huge power system, America never said nothing about the systematic abuse of women in the Gulf, not one thing, you think we’re just on this earth to be kicked, punched, raped, beaten by ure rich Arabi friends, do you? There’s coming a time when everyone will RISE UP AND FIGHT BACK, you will see, all women will rip this system of abuse and humiliation down, and u will go down to- cos YOU defend it. That’s a feminist, huh, how come? Any person who dares to defend Arabi rape of Pakistani and black women- they’re tongue should be forever silenced and they should be dragged in chains through the streets, this is what I think.

Did I miss something? Who’s this rich white woman you speak of? Is there a comment that I missed or something?

and diminishes their legitimacy

Just to be clear- I meant to say this comparing of “oppression” would make the other oppressed groups feel like their greivances were being diminished by being compared to everyone else’s injustices.