It's really not and I don't think it's worth arguing with you but.. Zionism is the establishment of a Jewish majority state.. which requires the expulsion of much of the existing non-Jewish population. That not the same as other countries acknowledging the borders of Palestine.
Palestinians are the indigenous people to the land who were ethnically cleansed via Nakba. It's not "nationalism" to allow people to return to the land that was stolen from them.
Maybe because most of them were born there and also their parents and grandparents?
That is called birthright and the way I see it, it applies to both groups. And the conflict will never be solved (without large scale genocide), if both groups largely negate the other groups rights.
You're right, expelling Israelis from Palestine would be a crime exactly as it's been a crime expelling Palestinians. While I believe that Jews had no right in the first place to immigrate there, this doesn't change the status of their descendants who are born there and whose families are born there.
But let's be clear on this: Jews that are not currently in Israel have no right to immigrate there. Jews that are in Israel have no right on any part of the land that isn't already part of Israel proper; and finally, Jews (exactly as much as Palestinians do) have a right to life, property and safety but not necessarily to their own political entity.
But what about Palestinians who were born elsewhere? Do they have a right to go back to their ancestors land?
To me it seems close to the arguments of the jewish who see themself as native, "just" on a larger timescale. There is no easy solution that I can see. (except letting go of fanatism)
In the case of Palestinians, "their ancestors" means their fathers or grandfathers. They still have the keys of their homes. In the case of Jews, it means some mythical ancestor of 2 thousand years ago or more.
But yes, the question of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees is a tough one; but I think it's a distraction. The very minimum the international community should force Israel to, is to withdraw within the 1967 border and cease any interference with the territory and sovereignty of Palestinians. It won't happen because the goal of Israelis and Zionists everywhere is to conquer as much land as they can, and a constant state of attrition is the excuse they need to keep settling more ethnically-cleansed land.
Connecting these two concepts like Netanyahu et. al. are constantly (insincerely) doing, is actually breeding real antisemitism. I wish more people realized this.
Someone with a tendency towards racist generalisations might start disliking a particular group due to the zeitgeist identifying "disliking the behaviour of a political entity" with "disliking all members of an ethnic group", though. If they previously didn't hold any such views, then they would go from "not racist" to "racist". (If you disagree with my category boundaries, you can construct your own similar example for your preferred category boundaries.)
Just because something's wrong, that doesn't mean it's illogical. A logical conclusion from flawed premises is still logical.
The difference being that racists who do so are factually incorrect, when they blame the victims. You've just pointed to the actions of individuals (those who trained the racist in the racist culture) as a potential cause, and I'm inclined to agree with you: does that make us racists? I think not.
I don't think we should treat extremely powerful men as powerless victims of antisemitism who've done nothing to stoke the flames, a priori. Maybe they haven't: I certainly don't blame George Soros for the George Soros conspiracy theories (even though he partly does: I think he's wrong to blame himself any amount, since a non-Jew doing Black Wednesday or philanthropy wouldn't have emboldened the antisemites). But people in charge of states and militaries, who've been accused of war crimes by rather a lot of international justice bodies, who rarely let a chance to say "if you hate our decisions, you hate all members of this group" pass them by? They might be contributing to the bigotry. If a racist said something like that, we'd rightly condemn it as stoking the flames of hatred: why should it be any different, if someone else says it?
There's nothing supremacist about Zionism, it's just the support of Jewish self-determination. Efforts to twist it into something nefarious are just propaganda with no etymological basis.
Think about what you're saying. Zionism the idea that a particular ethnic group (the Jews) will have the authority to determine what happens in their country (Israel). That is a textbook case of ethnic supremacism. And that's not even mentioning the violent expulsion of the Arabs that this de facto entailed.
Most Zionists have a goal of preserving a Jewish majority for pragmatic reasons - history has shown that it's the only way to ensure the safety of Jews. That's not a supremacist ideology at all.
Moreover, no country is perfect, and we shouldn't have double standards just for Israel. Can you identify any other Middle Eastern country that compares favorably, in terms of diversity and tolerance of all religions and ethnicities?
"Judaism" sometimes refers to the religion, but many Jews are not religious. Jews are a group of people from Judea, hence its historical name. Some dispersion to other regions doesn't change where a group of people is from.
And think about how absurd it would be for anyone on the planet to go murder Africans and steal their land under the guise of it being our “homeland”. Sadly that has happened, but they didn’t bother to use that excuse.
- You could say that antisemites are a cause of Zionism, but that doesn't mean they intentionally support it. Not all antisemites are of the "go back to Palestine" type.
- Just as "antisemitism" doesn't actually mean hate of Semetic people, "antizionism" doesn't actually mean opposition to Zionism. Instead it developed into a rather separate hate movement. Many antizionism ostensibly support a 2SS, which would mean they actually support rather than oppose Zionism, but are nonetheless part of the antizionism movement.
