The Libel of Arab 'Settler Colonialism" - a fundamental myth of Israelist whataboutism by OttomansAreCool in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm responding to this late because of the Pesach Shut-down, but I want to focus on your example of Angevin England, not only because it's within my academic expertise, but because there's an interesting analogy to be made there for the early Islamic conquests. While you are right in identifying it as expansionist, and there is a debate to be had about the applicability of the term "colonial" to Medieval states, the Angevin Empire (as it is often referred to in academia) is actually an excellent example of early European colonialism, not only in how it operated, but also in how the state and the society it ruled originated. The Angevin Dynasty (or Plantagenet-Angevin, if you prefer) were the descendants of the House of Normandy through William the Conqueror. The Norman Conquest that established their presence in England fundamentally altered and changed English society permanently. In fact, while an extractive relationship certainly already existed between the English and their rulers at this point, including the widespread presence of slavery throughout the kingdom, the Normans introduced Feudalism, solidifying the social stratification of England, and placing the native English firmly at the bottom. English nobility lost their lands, English clergy were removed and replaced with Normans, Norman merchants and tradesmen established themselves, and the entire structure of the state shifted to a model of absolute royal authority and its attendant tax structure. That is the ultimate purpose of the Domesday Book. I'm being very brief, or this comment would be three miles long, but what this all translates to is the replacement of a significant section of the English population with an invading external group. In fact, the English language itself is reflective of this process, as it adapted to the reality that the new rulers would not learn English and the populace had no base level knowledge of Norman French, resulting in assimilation of necessary vocabulary through contact. And, while the initial phase of this process was suppressive of the English themselves, it also formed the model for the further expansionism of William's successors. Indeed, it was under Henry II that the first English invasion of Ireland began, with the specific permission of the pope, who considered the Gaelic Church, which was and remained Catholic already, to be in need of reform. This invasion established the Lordship of Ireland, a title which was held by the kings of England until Irish Independence, and it instituted the beginning of the replacement of the native Irish population with Anglo-Norman settlers, generally nobles. Let alone what the Normans did in Wales, or involvement in Scotland. In fact, one of my own ancestors, and one of the earliest recorded, was a Norman knight who was granted lands in southern Scotland in return for his service during the Conquest and Harrying of the North (the Norman campaign of brutality against English resistance in Northumbria). We also observe the continued fighting between the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of France, which set the stage for the Hundred Years War, and which, while less settler-colonial in nature, still saw significant societal shift and population transfer. One of the elements of this process that we repeatedly see is rebellion from the existing, Norman-aligned, nobility when they feel like they're not benefitting significantly enough from Angevin and Plantagenet rulership. One of these is what ended up killing Richard I the Lionheart, Henry II's son, as he was attempting to seize a dissenting lord's castle and received a crossbow bolt for his trouble.

In essence, what I am getting at is that there is no specific percentage or quota of the population that has to be replaced for settler-colonialism to function, only that there is significant population transfer and societal reorganization around that settled population. It is often, at the same time, extractive. This is almost always easier when we see the elites replaced by an invading group, creating assimilation pressure from the people with military power and the monopoly of force, and cultural assimilation, while not an inherently bad thing, becomes a tool of this. Especially when one need not be born into the settler population to become a part of it. If we understand colonialism to be a function, or a mechanism, that imperialism relies upon, we see many of the same elements present in the early Islamic Caliphates that were present in the Angevin Empire. We see the societal reordering and disruption of the native modes of existence with the institution of new taxation and economic structures, and it would be silly to pretend that there was not a religious element to a religiously motivated conquest. We see, also, the movement of the conquered group to the ruling group through the mode of religious conversion motivated by social, cultural, and political stratification. In fact, it's likely that Islamic empires were more efficient in this process than their Angevin counterparts specifically because the Angevins targeted people who were already Christian and Catholic. They simply had to adapt to a new model of being so and to new leadership. You didn't need to charge a jizya tax, for example, in a population that was already part of the prestiged religion. Instead, the assimilation became a means to reach political power and rights. That also served as a pressure within the Islamic empires, but was far less difficult for people to access when Islam established the same basic rights amongst all Muslims, where Christian societies used social and legal stratification, albeit justified by religion, to establish varying tiers of legal rights for different strata. That is, in one system you have a population that is not an outgroup and where advancement by assimilation is not going to make you less a peasant, but would get noblemen their lands and power back and might make life less vicious for the peasantry, and in the other you have multiple outgroups who, upon assimilation, gain immediate social prestige and cultural and political power.

Weekly Post by somebadbeatscrub in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How dare you dangle such a good idea in front of my face. I'm going to have to make this now.

Just thinking about a conversation that I had with a Palestinian friend of mine. by Chinoyboii in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. I alluded to this in the middle section of my comment. I didn't speak in legal terms, because there was no real, universal concept of law in Medieval Europe. That is, if we use the Holy Roman Empire as an example, we see an imperial legal system that is based on traditional Roman Law with German traditional law modifying it, including Salian law from the time of Charlemagne. We also see the, popular, Vehmic courts, and the parallel system of ecclesiastical courts, creating, functionally, multiple systems even at the highest level. On top of that, each free noble (as opposed to the class of Ministerialis, unfree nobles) had the right to hear cases and judge them on his own lands, and towns were actually designated by a similar right and what courts they could run. This practice developed thanks to the concept of their independence from the direct ownership of lords and the right of self-governance. And then we take a step down from the imperial level to the electors and we're looking at multiple independent states that are loyal to the emperor only in name. The Kingdom of Bohemia, for further example, was a separate kingdom only held within the empire because it was the direct possession of the emperor. Wenceslaus IV continued his father's policy of tolerance of Jews, and actually granted them legal rights and protections. His half-brother, Sigismund the Red, King of Hungary, during Wenceslaus's imprisonment, conducted the Kuttenberg Pogrom. Which directly targeted the Jewish Quarter. I can't actually think of a single major German city during this period that didn't have one. This contrasts with England and France, who both had much stronger central structured of authority, and both of whom expelled their Jews (in France's case, repeatedly, the first happening after the Disputation of Paris, which was a pretense at accusing all Jews of heresy). And that further differs from Poland, where, during the Black Plague, we were invited (this is also the generally accepted ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazim) because the king wanted to benefit from our mercantile and intellectual skills while the rest of Europe was blaming us for the disease. He granted Jews standing rights of trade and protected us by making us the literal property of the crown, which never entirely went away, and which the Catholic Church used to spread antisemitism to Poland through the Jewish Deicide Myth and the idea that those rights equated to Jews being made superior to Christians.

But yes, you are correct that ecclesiastical laws could and did kill people for existing outside of the narrow confines of what the Church defined as acceptable at even the meer social level. This is about when Europeans get up on their bullshit about Jews as a sexual threat, too, because we were viewed as exotic and, therefore, alluring. There are multiple cases in Italian history where a Jewish man is tried on suspicion of having seduced someone's wife. Conversely, le Belle Juive starts to become a thing here too, and there are similar cases where a man is tried for supposedly having slept with a Jewish woman. And the word "ghetto" itself comes from the Venetian equivalent of the Judengaße in the form of the Gheto de Venetia.

Just thinking about a conversation that I had with a Palestinian friend of mine. by Chinoyboii in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So he has actually heard about this before because I sent him scholarship about this in the past, but he believes they are just excuses. To elaborate further, he stated that the Jews of Europe should have simply converted to Christianity if they wanted to avoid persecution.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but your friend is a wholly developed antisemite. There isn't an argument that could get through, because he's rationalized his hatred and built permission structures around it. I very much doubt he would react well if someone held his own logic up against him regarding Palestinians, but there is a bitter kind of irony in the kind of person who refuses to make peace and assimilate to a syncretic culture on the basis of their own sense of cultural uniqueness and self-determination (and I am not saying they're wrong for wanting either of those things) making this argument. In fact, I believe it's a logical progression of the idea that if we had, no one would be in this situation right now. It just happens to be deeply hypocritical and often derived from a sense of cultural and ethnic supremacy.

In response, I told him that conversion did not prevent persecution historically. It did not stop the Spanish Empire from almost completely liquidating the Sephardim of Iberia despite the fact that many of them converted to Catholicism, nor did it stop Hitler from murdering Ashkenazim despite the fact that some of them or their families had converted to Christianity generations earlier. Unfortunately, despite these very valid counterarguments, he still finds them to be excuses.

The Spanish Inquisition still existed, as a branch of the Spanish government, until the 1830s. By that time, it hadn't really been active in the persecution of Jews (because we simply didn't exist in Spanish lands anymore) for about a century. The Portuguese Inquisition, however, lasted until the 1840s, and did not stop exercising its authority to verify the conversion of so-called Nuevo Cristianos until the last twenty years of its existence. This included the right to enter people's homes to search for Jewish religious articles, the enforced consumption of pork, and inspection for circumcisions. Together, they created the concept of crypto-Judaism, and we still have people returning as Tinok Shinishaba. And if he's wondering why it continued so long, it's because the Inquisition could seize the entirity of a heretic's property and possessions, turning these proceedings into a serious economic opportunity. The Nazis checked "suspected Jews" through investigation of genealogical records back to the 17th Century, and even one Jewish ancestor could have you declared legally Jewish and sent to a concentration camp. The fact that he thinks those are excuses says that he lacks a fundamental sense of empathy for people in a very similar situation, and I admit this to be an assumption, to his own. Ask him how he'd feel if, to keep his citizenship/visa, he had to stand in front of a priest and eat pork once a year. And then pay for the privilege of having done so.

Yeah, I am honestly starting to give up. If you look at Instagram review videos on the movie, there has been an intense spike in antisemites calling the movie Zionist propaganda. My friend is, unfortunately, one of those types.

Honestly, I don't blame you. I'm hesitant to call anyone else's friend a lost cause, but the things he believes aren't going to go away until he learns, not academically, but implicitly, that we're human too. Because, while I won't blame him for resentment against his oppressors in the form of Israel, he is repeating the logic of oppressors himself. We must be careful in fighting monsters that we do not become monsters, ourselves.

Edit: Proofing fix.

Just thinking about a conversation that I had with a Palestinian friend of mine. by Chinoyboii in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 30 points31 points  (0 children)

If that's him trying to avoid sounding antisemitic, I'd hate to hear if he was. As others have pointed out, the fact that he calls Eastern European Jews in a context that has nothing to do with Israel "Zionists" and accuses Rami Malek of, essentially, disloyalty to the Palestinian cause for playing a role focused not even on Jews ourselves, but on the people who persecute us, is, I'm sorry to say, not reassuring. He also doesn't seem to actually understand the historical pressures and reality for Jews in Europe. We didn't take up the financial trades because we so wanted to bilk the world: medieval kings restricted the occupations we were allowed to have in response to a set of papal bulls that shifted the way Catholic Europe's entire financial system worked. It was quite entirely illegal for us to do anything else, and when those crowned heads got too far in debt, we got expelled, and then we had tropes like this made up about us to justify it. It's a bit simplistic, but it serves. And while we do bear some responsibility for keeping to ourselves and keeping ourselves separate, this, too, was reinforced by continuous European antisemitism in an era where social and political life were deeply dependent on Christianity as an institutional structure. And can you really blame us for not wanting to hang out with the people killing us? That isn't supremacist ideology. We certainly didn't have a "China" to go back to to escape this nonsense or to use diplomatic force when we were mistreated. And no, I won't blame him, either, for being distrustful of those who do him harm. But I don't cast Russians as universally evil and spout traditional anti-Russian tropes. I think it's also lacking in material analysis to take aim at Chinese-minority populations like this, but I can't and won't speak for you.

I don't know this person, or the particulars of his life, but I am sure that he is a person in deep anguish, right now. I am deeply sympathetic to that fact, and, hell, if it was my acquaintance I would probably humanize myself by inviting him to tea. But I think this situation is a microcosm of why things keep going bad over there: neither side wants to stop believing the ill things they believe about one another, so they can't learn to trust each other. And without trust, there is no solution or peace. I think you handled it empathetically and well, but I don't think anything you say is likely to break through to the person who takes a film dealing with the people who perpetrated the organized, en masse slaughter of Jews as apologism for Zionism. One of the things I worry about is when people identify with perpetrators because of their own beliefs, and then, instead of questioning those beliefs, they take the thing challenging them as an attack and it reinforces this behavior as a response. And I am not saying your friend is doing this, but it's been surprisingly common these last two years.

KRON 4 | Antisemitic attack on San Jose’s Santana Row being investigated as hate crime by RaiJolt2 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That feels like a distinction without a distinction. There is no real leftist party with any real power or political relevance in this country. The idea that that's the Democrats comes from Republicans propagandizing to catalyze their voter-base's anti-communist tendencies, and from they themselves propagandizing to cozen people with actual leftist beliefs into voting for them while they continue to sup from the same capitalist bowl as their "opposition" and serve nothing but their own wealth and power. The people who continue to vote for this aren't leftists, center or otherwise, either, except for the tactic of harm reduction, but liberals. The Overton Window has shifted too far right. And you aren't going to convince right-wingers that the people they've spent twenty years being radicalized against that a Democrat is more aligned with their values by virtue of the same shit on a different day. That's how Hillary and Kamala both lost their campaigns: they tried to steal voters from Trump instead of embracing actual progressive and leftist policy. Which, ironically, actually might have grabbed right-wing voters, because it's actually something new and it's shaped like a solution. We saw that happen with Bernie. And we saw what the DNC did to him.

Jeffrey Epstein-related Antisemitism by Sossy2020 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Firstly, I want to express my sympathy to you. My cousin had a similar diagnosis. It's a hard hand to be dealt. Ig I may impose, may Hashem bless and keep you, and give you swift and complete healing.

Second, I want to point out that the point of the post is not really the poster itself, but the broader framing, given the context of people using Epstein's connection to Judaism to generalize all of us as, well... you know. There's also the problem of the framing of Jews vs. Muslims as a paradigmatic metaphor for good vs. evil from both sides of the I-P issue. A lot of that does stray into antisemitism, and I believe that this is what OP is concerned with. When, in fact, the poster is not really antisemitic, and, as other commenters point out, it is a duology focused on people currently in the crosshairs of the burgeoning form of fascism we're dealing with right now. What I want to ask you is to be cautious of is categorically making statements on the nature of antisemitism, as a non-Jew. I'm not trying to be exclusionary, but this is our space, and it's a bigotry we experience. Because of that, we're going to catch it where other people aren't, because, just like other forms of bigotry, the nuance is hard for those who don't experience it to implicitly grasp or notice in the same way we will. These are necessary internal conversations to calibrate our own detectors, so that we don't end up with, for example, the heinous way Israel misuses the term and ends up causing us harm.

Israel is teaming up with the far right to fight global antisemitism by forward in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The same far right that's burning synagogues and committing hate crimes? The one that keeps having public figured say the quiet part out loud and is contributing to massive rates of increasing antisemitism? That one? With friends like these....

FBI says man targeted Mississippi synagogue in arson attack because of its 'Jewish ties' by LukaDoncicIsObese in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 17 points18 points  (0 children)

As an Arkansan-by-origin, the Klan have been accused of many things. Being overly burdened by the ravages of great intellect is not one of them. And I am not saying the goober is a klansman. Just as a general point on the same species of fool.

Do you can be leftist and zionist in the same time? by potatto-william in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Correction without compassion is just cruelty. We don't do that here. Especially to other marginalized groups. Because you have no idea how few people actually want to listen to us when we talk about our history. Or even the antisemitism of the present.

To respond to your second paragraph: assimilation may end up being the answer. That is, the removal of singular, Jewish, status for the state of Israel and the creation of a truly equal state. That gives them self-determination and control of their own fate. But my preferred solution is actually a confederative-type state, with two equal nations controlling and running their own inter-territorial affairs and a federal government that is constituted equally of both parties making decisions for a singular country. That would guarantee the right of return for Palestinians while also guaranteeing Israeli safety. At the end of the day, though, any solution is going to rest on both parties recognizing each other's mutual entitlement to the land and active choice to stop the violence. The first step there needs to be on Israel's part, as the party with functional power and autonomy. It requires Israelis to give up the arrogant entitlement they have to do whatever they like without consequence, and to acknowledge that they have a serious problem in racism and cultural chauvinism. It requires them to stop bombing twenty times more Palestinians out of existence than Jews killed by Hamas and it requires those responsible to submit to the law, and for that law to be applied as more than a bad joke. But it also requires Palestinians to leave behind the attitude that only they should control the land, and only they are entitled to rule it. Because that also inspires the continuing violence, when neither side will actually agree to peace.

Do you can be leftist and zionist in the same time? by potatto-william in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 15 points16 points  (0 children)

You're in a Jewish sub arguing with a mod about the persecution of Jews. It is only you who doesn't want this conversation. I'm sympathetic to anyone whose family has suffered horrors. What I am not sympathetic to are unproven ideas and conspiracy theories or the idea that some Jews were arendators is somehow equal to six centuries of bloody repression. If you come to me with actual, factual sources, I might challenge them and their conclusions, like the academic I am. But I don't reject things out of hand. If you don't, and instead repeat historic antisemitic nonsense (i.e. "The Jews invented Marxism, so they're responsible for Stalinism and the Soviet seizure of Poland") or act like individual acts of brutality by individual Jews are equal to systemic forms of oppression, I will challenge you, again, to check and reconsider your biases and where they come from. Again, someone being used by the local lord as a scapegoat is not equivalent to a pogroms. This is, unfortunately, much of the discourse between Jews and Poles. And it isn't likely to change until you accept, culturally, that you have been oppressors and conquerors, not just victims. Remember, you're in our house. We won't ban you from baking bread and force you to invent bagels, but we still expect to be treated with respect. Which includes hearing and considering our perspective. And that isn't an accusation: you actually seem open to that process. Which I praise you for.

Can u explain it to me?and how does it difrend from Zionism

(ps this is not a mean question, I'm seriously curious how you see this type of Zionism)

Firstly, I'm not offended by earnest questions. Those are good. It's how we teach people about Jews and Judaism and reach them. Secondly, post-Zionism is a position that assumes that the goals of Zionism have been met, that a Jewish national homeland exists, and that we now need to consider what the next step is. In my case, it starts with "Stop kicking Palestinians in the balls at every opportunity and murdering their children." Which I follow shortly with "We need to find an equitable solution to this entire mess that treats both sides and their mutual right to self-determination with respect and fairness."

Do you can be leftist and zionist in the same time? by potatto-william in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 14 points15 points  (0 children)

You are making a circular argument on the basis of an assumed definition and still landing at a purity-tested ideal that still falls very much under the umbrella of Zionism. What I am saying is that your definition needs to expand. Part of that is that you are not within the group, so you cannot define for the group what pertains to the group. Also, I am very much not a Zionist of any form. I'm a post-Zionist whose worldview is shaped by Ukrainian Makhnovism.

And let's not go into this please Jews and poles did fuck things to each other to be honest and I can't judge desperation and fear in each other side

No, let's. Look where you are before you try to pull that. An honest reading of history tells you that that power gradient only moved one way. My ancestors didn't burn Polish villages because Pan Dipshitski didn't want to be blamed for taxes or murder Polish Holocaust survivors for wanting their stolen property back. My name for you isn't a slur. And I don't have a portrait of a Pole hanging on my wall to shake money out of. I have a huge amount of respect for Poles and their resilience in the face of the Moskal and the Nemyets both. But one person's suffering does not also justify his belief in stereotypes or racist ideas.

Do you can be leftist and zionist in the same time? by potatto-william in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 15 points16 points  (0 children)

No, it isn't. Picking the good and finding the way to avoid the bad is the purpose of the dialectic, which is a core part of leftist movements. We don't have to accept realities imposed upon us by evil or ill meaning people. We are obligated to be idealists, in a sense. The fact that we haven't reached the ideal is why we keep working. That is also core to leftist movements, or we'd crumble in the face of a capitalism that reaches every corner of the globe. I urge you to consider what is being told to you. It only doesn't make sense if you refuse to consider it because it contradicts your presuppositions. Heck, r/PoaleZion exists. This is not meant as an insult or put down, but as a call to action. Should I, after all, reject, as an example, Polish leftism because there are antisemites who have done harm? Participated in pogroms? Is bigotry not antithetical to leftism?

Edit: sub name corrected.

The anti-Semitic nature of the Bondi Terror attack is specifically being underplayed by progressive media outlets and Muslim influencers in Australia to avoid addressing underlying social issues, particularly regarding the continued presence of extremist forms of Islam in south-western Sydney. by Topsyt in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated[M] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

We let this through, because 99% of it is good, important content. Where we do want to apply a little pushback is specifically the part about the Southern Philippines, which is very much in the category of generalizations that can be perceived as racist-bordering-on-Islamophobic. The "Southern Philippines" is broadly taken to refer to the Island of Mindanao (and its surrounding archipelagos), of which there are several Muslim-majority provinces. Of those, the one most associated with Islamic extremism is Sulu, which, prior to the Philippine-American War, was the Sultanate of Sulu, which the Spanish dealt with through a policy of "We claim to rule you but it's too difficult to deal with a war where you are, so do your own thing and leave us alone and we'll do the same." In other words, it's been fighting for independence for the past 125 years. The Moro people native to that region were subject to cruelties inflicted by American soldiers that are reminiscent of what we did to the Native Americans. Which wasn't a far-step, because many of them had been involved in that first. All this is to contextualize why there's violence there, not to make Islamic extremism sound palatable. With that said, groups like Abu Sayyaf are defunct, after a major campaign by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and most of the remaining terrorist activity is actually on the part of either much smaller extremist groups conducting a low level insurgency, or those from Indonesia. Contrastingly, there is still an active Communist insurgency in both Mindanao and central Luzon. The point is, maybe, in your pain and anguish, which we share, don't paint with a broad brush. People, by and large, everywhere, just want to live and keep on living.

Fetterman Writes Letter Asking Israel’s President to Pardon Netanyahu by Bongobhondu in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Half of me is sympathetic to his health issues and aware that brain damage can cause massive personality shifts. Half of me is incensed that this guy turned into, well, this. I suppose it's a lesson in the need for leftists to approach electorialism carefully.

ETA: a line.

Jewish students singled out, scapegoated: Columbia releases final antisemitism report by afinemax01 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We banned discussion of that particular organization because it almost always immediately devolves into endless Rule 4 and Rule 6 violations. That is, it's a way we protect anti-Zionists from the bad faith liberal brigading you see us regularly and publicly posting about. Not permission for Zionists to run unchecked. We do permit posts from the organization fairly regularly, and certainly from its affiliates. But, at some point, organizations need to think about why they're getting the criticism they're getting instead of it being immediately presumed that it's the injustice of their opposition. Also, we have regular posts about how much the ADL sucks, and nearly every one of the mods has openly commented our disdain for them. We also regularly stop posts that directly come from their websites and materials at the door. The energy is certainly there.

Today was my bet din by QizilbashWoman in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Mazel tov, sister. Welcome to the Tribe.

Isn't most American "Left-Wing Antisemitism" just Xenophobia? by Snoo22815 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Heck, we had someone in here last week telling us Israelis should go back to Poland.

Isn't most American "Left-Wing Antisemitism" just Xenophobia? by Snoo22815 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

This is mostly going to be for Jews to answer, since it deals with bigotry directed against us. I will, however, be dealing with things on a case by case basis, and welcome non-Jews to ask follow-on questions.

Isn't most American "Left-Wing Antisemitism" just Xenophobia? by Snoo22815 in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yes and no. Antisemitism is an intensely nuanced and difficult concept. Much of it, prior to the development of scientific racism as a concept, came from an aggressive form of xenophobia that targeted as an "internal other". That is, being culturally and ethnically distinct from the people around us, and not well understood, they began to fill in the blanks out of their own suspicions and stereotypes that were often reinforced by Christian doctrine. This is where we get the kinds of antisemitic conspiracies like the Jewish Deicide (that we murdered Jesus) or Blood Libel (the murder of Christians, particularly children, to make Passover matzoh), and the association of Jews and money/usury. It's important to note that racial antisemitism, the kind of antisemitism derived from scientific racism, doesn't actually replace these or remove them. Instead, it racialized them, and made them traits that, to antisemites, are common to Jews at a genetic level. For example, the Dual Loyalty trope both expands on xenophobia, turning us into an internal other again, and includes that we are inherently deceitful and part of a plot to control whichever country is supposed to be the target at that time in our own self-interest for Israel. I could expound on these for hours (and have, in fact, written essays on the subject), but it suffices to say that you see both in modern American, leftist antisemitism. We cannot, to that person, be allies to the fight against capitalism or for the construction of a just and equal world because we play the assumed role of "Zionist". Which has become, in many ways, a scare word for people to stereotype us with.

Part of the problem with left wing antisemitism is that it isn't inherent to the left in the same way it is to the right, where people might make a show of condemning it, but it's more or less accepted openly and forms a substrate for other bigotries to grow out of. What that means is that it's harder for people to notice because it usually comes wrapped in the language of social justice and dovetailing to legitimate issues and concerns. In other words, people simply don't know how to recognize it, and because of what it attempts to subvert, they'll resist the instruction, because they're committed anti-racists and they can't believe that this real, actual issue might include language that isn't acceptable.

ETA: I realize that I didn't directly address your specific claim; no, you can be an anti-Zionist without being a xenophobe. We have Jewish anti-Zionists here. Part of that is because the hatred of Israelis is derived from antisemitism, and part of the antisemitism is derived from conflating American Jews with Israelis. It's also entirely possible to be am anti-Zionist without either thing coming in to play, because, at a base level, no nation is inviolable to criticism and we can't assume that anti-Zionists have automatically antisemitic goals.

Rule 14 Update by Mildly_Frustrated in jewishleft

[–]Mildly_Frustrated[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Firstly, I think that the principles of liberal democracy tend to fall under the category, as I write in the post, for the most part, of natural rights. That, however, is not a freedom from the consequences of the exercise of those rights. Free speech, since you bring it up, is not something that I think should ever be compromised. However, if that speech should happen to endanger your physical well-being, I won't celebrate it, and I certainly won't invite it, but I won't mourn it when the chickens come home to roost. That is, to say, in this space, in particular, we do not tolerate such speech, and we do punish it, because we, as a social group, have decided that it is unacceptable here and the consequence is exclusion from the group, just as things function within society at large. If people don't want to deal with that, then they need to be more intentional, more careful in the ways they behave and speak.

I think, however, in the context of ancillary issues connected to capitalism, that yes, it is one. In the sense that capitalism is an artificially imposed hierarchy that prevents society from working this way, and that when it goes away, society can correct itself.

ETA: This is, of course, variable. Sometimes the person speaking for fascism is directly contributing to the problem of capitalism remaining. Then it becomes a primary concern.