This comment was posted to reddit on Apr 05, 2015 at 10:45 pm and was deleted within 23 hour(s) and 43 minutes.
Things I learned recently about Israel.
Zionism is not a racist Ideology as you state it is it is simply an ideology that wishes to allow jews the right of self determination i.e. the jewish peoples right to form there own state in the same way there is a state for the Irish or Finish people and there should be a state for the palestinian people there is a state for the jewish people. Ask yourself is Ireland a nazi state? no but it is the state of the Irish people. Zionism is not about taking away rights from palestinians in fact Jabotinsky the founder of revisionist Zionism (the most extreme form) said "We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled."
Yes zionism is not based off the American model. But there are ethnic states in western Europe i.e.. Ireland and Germany both have similar laws with there rights of return well . And there are many western democratic countries that have regions like Catalonia or Scotland (Scotland voted not to but Catalonia looks like it wants to) break away based on cultural differences and ethnic nationalism but both of these aforementioned regions say that if they were to break away they would create democracies and give full rights to all citizens ethnic nationalism is obviously not and eastern European philosophy it can be found as Ive stated western Europe but it is also found in Asia (look at japan) and Latin America (zapatistas) and your entire notion that it is somehow inherently oppressive is simply not true.
This is huge misconception spread by Christians that Zionism is a religious endeavor there are certainly base our right to a homeland of a biblical context but the simple fact is Zionism is a secular ideology based of the writings of Theodore Herzl and atheist jew. I know that a lot of people don't understand what an atheist jew is and thats another reason this confusion comes up around Israel Jews are a people as well as being a religious group. In Israel roughly 50% of the population is non religious David Ben-Gurion was an atheist. The right of return also doesn't have anything to so with religion it has to do with peoplehood for instance my mother an atheist could get residence there under the law just as easily as a haredi. And before you say thats racist here is a list of the countries that have similar laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return. Israel is not nor has it ever been theocracy its ideas came from secular philosophers who saw the failure of assimilation in Europe and wanted to create a safe place for jews.
I the twenties both Arabs and Jews committed horrible massacres on each other this was retaliatory for both sides but still wrong but this inter communal violence was not a central part of zionist ideology. During WWII the Irgun and the Haganah fought alongside the british then after demanded independence and tried to achieve it through what ever means necessary including terrorism however you have to understand the context this was directly after the Holocaust 250,000 jews were still living in DP camps across Europe I am saying that this excuses the terrorism against the british who would not give us a state not the massacres. The Deir Yassin massacre was condemned by the Haganah which essentially became the IDF so it was not zionist policy to murder Arabs and in-fact over one and a half million arabs live in Israel today who were not expelled or murdered.
This was inter-communal massacres on both sides just look at all the arab riots and was in the middle of a civil war in Mandatory Palestine while British still controlled it most of were refugees from the conflict not expelled by the israeli military and the commands from the leadership of the Haganah were not to massacre civilians so Its irrelevant wether or not these massacres were carried out because they were the actions of local commanders not people who organized the overall plan of Zionism in Israel because it is not the fault of Zionists or Israel that some commanders disobeyed orders and committed horrible atrocities.
Israel has the basic laws which govern Israel rather like a constitution among other things it guarantees full rights to all citizens regardless of race or religion.
So what? In America we label people as black or Latino even though they might be Hutu or Zulu. Or for Latinos they might be Mexican or Native American from Columbia. We also in America do this to arabs wether there Yemeni or Lebanese they go down in the census as white. This is a completely irrelevant point obviously only there to make people think that Israel is a racist state.
No it doesn't. Arabs citizens of Israel have full rights under the law they can vote, own homes anywhere in Israel, work any job they want, serve on the supreme court as one arab is doing currently, choose to serve in the military (Arabs are not conscripted like jews this policy is supported by all the arab parties and by the majority of the arab public so its not some racist thing jews forced on them.), and finally they can form there own political parities the Joint arab list is the third largest party in the Knesset. Now I am talking about Arab citizens of Israel not Palestinians who live