So @EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net had a nice comment here in a previous thread explaining the dynamic of Jewish people’s attitude toward Israel.
I think everyone here understands that it is in Israel’s benefit to (1) conflate antisemitism and antizionism to both silence dissent and (2) foster the perception that antisemitism is increasing, and even (3) encourage actual antisemitism/ally with antisemites so that Jews living in countries around the world feel under threat. Israel can then position itself as the final lifeboat for Jewish people to survive capitalism as it degrades into fascism that will almost certainly target them. Of course fleeing to Israel means becoming a settler-fascist yourself, but this is quite a tough choice to put in front of somebody and there are quite a few mental escape hatches one can use about working to change the system from within once you’re there or whatever.
So the problem we face is this: Under the assumption that the support (enthusiastic or mere tolerance) of Jewish people in the US for Israel is important to maintaining US support for Israel, or at least for maintaining the veneer of legitimacy for this support, how can we convince people to give up their lifeboat? I think this is quite a large ask. Many of us here believe the imperial core is inevitably degrading into fascism under the repetitive two-step of overt slides to the right & neoliberalism slightly arresting this process but making people widely despise electoral politics. This fascism will target Jewish people, and the fascists are perfectly happy to have somewhere to ship Jewish people off to instead of killing them as they build their white ethnostate. Many other minorities will also be targeted but do not have the luxury of a similar lifeboat. How can we square this circle?
Yes, it’s definitely by design. Without going giving a wall-of-text history of political Zionism, the movement that really got traction and both led to the creation of “Jewish Zionism” and the state of Israel was a British evangelical protestant movement that not only wanted to make the UK free of Jews (again) but also bring about the preconditions for the Christian prophesy for the return of their messiah. The Balfour, who gave the “Balfour Declaration” his name, was a rabid antisemite that wanted Jews out of the UK. The only Jewish member of the cabinet at the time was the only member of the cabinet who opposed the Balfour Declaration. The Christian theological underpinning of political Zionism has, as its end goal, the biblical apocolypse where, first all Jews are headed into the holy land and the a few are converted to Christianity while the rest are killed (and go to hell). This movement proceeded the Nazi holocaust and was the UK’s answer to “the Jewish Question.” Early Jewish Zionists were not necessarily set upon Palestine as the future Jewish state, but they couldn’t get any real traction with Christians in power in the west until they structured the request to align with this apocalyptic end-game.