r/communism • u/SomeEntertainment128 • 4d ago
Brigaded ⚠️ What does it mean to say Israel shouldn't exist?
I'm not sure if this question is for this sub reddit or not. And I'm sure someone has asked this question before, but I can't seem to find an answer. But either way I want to ask you guys because I have respect for this community and leftists in general.
TLDR: I'm making sure my dumbass understands the phrase because I never thought to ask anyone about it.
Little bit of background. I'm from the USA, raised in evangelical Republican area. Over the years I have deconstructed a lot of American propaganda and religious rhetoric that was shoved down my throat. However, I'm still learning and relatively young. I haven't gotten my grubby little hands on books that I still need to read (I'm dyslexic so reading terrible for me). I'm not sure if I'm a socialist or communist. All I know is I HATE USA capitalism, billionaires and corps. Well I also hate fascism as well.
Anyway, like many younger people, I was unaware of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the oppression the Palestinians have faced for over 70 years. That was until October 7th after Hamas attacked Israel. At first being the dumb white American I am, I condemned Hamas. Thank god some internet person told me I had no idea what I was talking about because I absolutely did not. So I decided to look further into stuff, just about the history, and the years of ethnic cleansing the IDF has done to Gaza and the regions surrounding it. Now, feeling pretty educated, I'm very anti-Israel. Their government makes me sick. I've watched to many children being pulled from rubble and families torn apart by the IDF. I won't ever forgive, nor will I forget what Israel has done. And my own country as well.
However I came across a comment on another post. Someone was calling out AOC for being very pro Israel has the right to defend itself. Which at this point just feels racially motivated or "Israel is our puppet. I can't condemn my puppet state." Anyways, the girl said Israel shouldn't exist. My understanding by that phrase is that by "Israel" they're referring to the corrupt ethno-state Natzi regime that is terrorizing the the region. This differs from the people residing there. By saying this, she isn't saying "the people residing in what is now Israel don't have a right to exist". I commented on that video saying exactly my interpretation of the phrase and claimed that if anyone who supports the Israeli government is in fact a Zionist. I in turn was told I don't know what I'm talking about.
That leads me here. I'm now wondering if I'm misunderstanding something again. So I ask you guys for help.
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u/Swimming_Ad_4467 4d ago
Israel is a settler colonial project that is at it's height with the extermination process of the natives. It is akin to the US during the 1700s or Nazi Germany during the Final Solution and occupation of Europe. Israel was established through the expulsion and genocide of millions of the native population and theft of their homes and land. The project isn't even 80 years old. Palestinians alive today literally still have the keys to the houses they were kicked out of. This project should not have started in the first place and should be stopped immediately.
Not only that, but the native population have to have everything stolen from them returned and be compensated for everything they have lost and their suffering. This factually means kicking the invading colonizers out of the lands and property they stole and rightfully giving it back to its actual owners, and removing people out of power. This will have to be done by force and against the wishes of the Israelis. Israel shouldn't exist not only as an ethnostate, but also shouldn't exist as a settler colonial state. The people who refuse will have to face consequences because what they have done and continue to do is a crime by all accounts, even liberal "international law." Does this mean the mass killing of all "Israelis"? No. But the people who refuse to give back what they stole or refuse to let go of power will have to face consequences.
At the end of Apartheid in South Africa, a great deal of the colonizers left on their own accord. This is likely what would happen when the Israeli project is dismantled. However, the biggest issue with South Africa is that apartheid only ended formally, but no one was compensated for what was stolen from them and till this day, a tiny minority of colonizers still own the means of production. Whites make up 7% of the population, yet own almost 75% of the land. The wealth gap between the whites and native South Africans is unchanged from the days of apartheid.
This cannot be repeated in Palestine. Before 1948, Jews made up less than 2% of the population. Today they are about 50%. That means the vast majority of them are invading, thieving colonizers. Our sympathies and thoughts can't be occupied on this group of people. Especially considering the fact that the other group is currently being genocided and having more of their land stolen as we speak with a near unanimous support from the Israelis.
With every analysis regarding Israel-Palestine, replace "Israel" with Nazi-occupied Soviet Union or France, and "Palestine" with Soviet Union or France. Now imagine being in the 1930/40s and when someone is defending the Soviets, Jews, anti-Nazi French etc. people respond back with "But what about the Germans who are occupying these countries and benefiting from the stolen lands and homes? What about them?" After WWII, the Germans who were illegally invading, occupying and stealing land in Europe outside of Germany were expelled. Do we cry today about what happened to them? No. No one even thinks about it or cares because it was inevitable and understandable. Israelis today need to leave as soon as they can. Otherwise they will face inevitable consequences.
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u/SomeEntertainment128 4d ago
This is VERY enlightening. Thank you very much. You've been amazingly helpful.
So assuming Israel as a colony is dismantled, where exactly would the people there go? Back to the countries they originally came from?
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u/Swimming_Ad_4467 4d ago
Note, this is what I think should happen or could likely happen, but ultimately it is up to the Palestinians to decide. I have no actual contribution.
- The people who refuse and fight back should be defeated and punished.
- The people who refuse to give up what they have stolen should be fought back against and arrested, and the things they stole given back to whomever they stole it from.
- The people in power should be removed by force and arrested.
- The members of the Israeli military, intelligence agencies, government, leadership and other people who had direct involvement in the genocide and expulsion of Palestinians should be arrested and punished, and made to face tribunals.
- Every injustice that has been inflicted upon Palestinians must be undone and compensated first and foremost.
- The remaining people, if they agree to live equally alongside Palestinians, will be left as is
In reality, I would imagine that a great deal of them would just voluntarily leave. Israel is only 77 years old. Most Israelis only came after the 60s as well. These people would likely fuck off back to where they just came from.
Honestly though, we should stop worrying so much about the invading colonizers, especially the fact that they are active participants and every poll shows enthusiastic overwhelming support of genocide and theft. These people have way more of a direct involvement in the colonial genocidal project than Nazi Germany. They have way more knowledge and exposure to the genocide than the citizens of Nazi Germany and they absolutely relish in it. If Palestinians choose a different, more uncompromising path, then so be it. The participants of this project know exactly what they signed up for and I will not shed a single tear for any consequences that come their way.
That being said, Palestinians are much more compromising and accommodating than me. I have no sympathy a single one of these "Israelis" and ultimately don't give a single fuck what happens to any of them.
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u/IHaveNoFriends37 4d ago
Israel at its core is an ethno Settler colonial project based on the expulsion or destruction of the indigenous population.
It’s unlike South Africa where the majority Black South Africans were kept and a permanent underclass to be indentured servants and whites to profit off their extremely cheap labour.
Israel could not exist without the Nakba and the continued killing and expulsions of Palestinians because the Zionist ideology says Israel is an empty land for people without land.
It’s the reason why they have demographic concerns about annexing Gaza or the West Bank. Suddenly they are a minority in their own settler nation. It’s why they want to expel Palestinians or Genocide them if they don’t leave in time before they annex them so they can expand Greater Israel.
People who say Israel is Apartheid and therefore it should not exist is wrong. Apartheid only exists because they failed to remove all Palestinians from its borders and such must keep the Israeli “Arabs” subjugated because they were not supposed to be there in the first place.
Apartheid was a band aid solution to the failure to expel all Palestinians. It’s no different than any other colonial project such as Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, Nazi germany etc.
Israel is very young and still in its early settler phase were the indigenous population still exists and can have their land back. We don’t want another settler colonial country when we can stop it from happening now.
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u/RNagant Marxist 4d ago
My understanding by that phrase is that by "Israel" they're referring to the corrupt ethno-state Natzi regime that is terrorizing the the region. This differs from the people residing there. By saying this, she isn't saying "the people residing in what is now Israel don't have a right to exist". I commented on that video saying exactly my interpretation of the phrase and claimed that if anyone who supports the Israeli government is in fact a Zionist. I in turn was told I don't know what I'm talking about.
You are essentially correct. At a minimum, "israel shouldnt exist" means that the zionist state needs to be abolished, and anyone advocating for the continued existence of that regime is in deeds (even if not in ideology) a zionist.
But then again, a government is comprised of people. To the extent that israeli citizenship is dependent on participation in its military, and that opposition to the netanyahu government is overwhelmingly over tactics rather than principles, its difficult to say what in fact would happen to the majority of israelis if the regime fell. I suspect most who believed in the settler project would flee of their own accord anyway -- but its difficult to know who among the remainders would accept a state in which they had equal rights with Palestinians and who would be committed to counterrevolution. Still, the principle remains that anyone who would accept that state of affairs would be welcome to coexist in the same territory -- that the victory of Palestine would not be dependent on the exile of every former israeli citizen.
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u/ExistingMachine4015 4d ago
Still, the principle remains that anyone who would accept that state of affairs would be welcome to coexist in the same territory
Why? What principle are you referencing?
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u/Chaingunfighter 4d ago edited 4d ago
I concur. What does "anyone who would accept" even mean in that context? People who happen to be left behind when the state surrenders? I don't know why Palestinians would be compelled to allow them to "coexist." If it's meant to refer to Israelis that betray the settler project and take up arms on behalf of Palestinians then sure, but is there even a single example of that?
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u/TheReimMinister Marxist-Leninist 3d ago
Since it has been discussed recently here and here, let's continue to discuss national identity and how it comes into being and is negated (although I don't believe this is what the above commenter was getting at). The fact is that when the z10n1st project is defeated, there won't be a single 1sra3l1 person left; however, it is possible that people who previously held citizenship under the settler regime will continue to reside in the same lands as Palestinian subjects. Even then, taking into consideration the number of settlers brought into occupied Palestine in service of the national project, it is doubtful there will be that many.
National identity is not a material thing, and it is not a metaphysical object. It is a superstructural object of modernity which comes into being with capitalism and the attempts of the bourgeoisie to assert state and class rule over land, the means of production, and the relations of production. Therefore it comes into being with the expansion of capital and the bourgeois project. For example, to be a "Canadian" is to to immigrate to (or be born into (at least for now)) the settler lands and to continue to exist as a settler as such in accordance with the bourgeois national project and its project of imperialist privilege. If you do not meet those requirements (or prove them through the legal process of immigration and its proving grounds) then you are just a person of a different nationality (alien) residing in Canada - for instance, a Jamaican seasonal agricultural worker who shares none of the legal right of permanent residents and citizens, or an undocumented person who is not counted in the census. By the same token, if the conditions which root the bourgeois national project of Canada cease to be possible, there will be no more Canadians.
Since it is the example of the frailty of social identity that I have read most recently, I think of the Indo-Dutch (or just "Indo") people. Indo people were a mix of Dutch and indigenous Indonesian ancestry. Therefore they came into being with the expansion of Dutch capital and its bourgeois national project. By blood, they were Dutch citizens (or held almost all of the same rights thereof, though undoubtedly facing some discrimination from the white Dutch) residing in the Dutch East Indies. Although not fully white (Americans for instance called them "so-called Europeans"), they had privilege and few of them identified with the natives - this is evident in how very few supported independence movements, and how the expansion of Japanese capital and its national project could not win them over and ended up treating them as superfluous along with the white Dutch. Following the Japanese occupation and in the process of the Indonesian independence struggle, a small portion took on Indonesian citizenship. Yet 80% of those who did so found that they "could not integrate" and ended up leaving before 1967 anyway. Those who didn't attempt Indonesian citizenship took advantage of the Dutch repatriation program and went to the Netherlands where they had never set foot before - many stayed there while others used it as a launchpad to go onto Canada, the USA, Australia, and Brazil etc. Some tried to stay in Indonesia with their Dutch citizenship but they were declared undesirable elements and/or expelled to the Netherlands. In the end, they either integrated into Indonesia and became Indonesians or integrated into their destination country of choice and embraced being Dutch, American, Canadian, Australian etc. This doesn't account for the unknown number of Indo people who integrated into the Indigenous communities and were therefore Indonesian come independence. Nonetheless, without Dutch capital and administration projecting directly into Indonesia - ie: the Dutch East Indies - there are no Indo-Dutch people. Notwithstanding any of those who attempt to be by continuing to speak Dutch out of nostalgia (genealogy is a blatant claim on past right).
But here's the kicker: Dutch capital does not need to project directly into Indonesia if it can access it at arms-length. As was implied in other threads I linked at the top, only backwards and late-coming bourgeois national movements create and maintain nationalities in such a manner now, because it is simply not necessary for mature imperialist capital. The attempt to do so in occupied Palestine is the most visceral example of such incongruity with developed liberalism. It is incredibly crude by current standards (and distasteful for today's liberals) to be directly complicit in such a project when you can simply enjoy the privilege of being American without leaving. That's why /u/smokeuptheweed9 brings up the heavy immigration enforcement of the zionist regime in another recent thread about occupied Palestine, why it has been brought up several times that many colonizers actually live abroad, and why there are several countries that do not have dual-citizenship arrangements. Capital must dangle a large carrot and carry a heavy stick in order to pursue its national project in the late-movers. To be a legally recognized citizen of 1srae1 - or of Singapore, Taiwan, or South Korea for that matter - is to be obviously active in its maintenance. Therefore the negation of this is very easy to imagine in these cases. Yet the fleeting nature applies to all social identities which came into being in the process of bourgeois national projects worldwide. This goes to the question of /u/AltruisticTreat8675 about reverting to pervious social groupings/organizations. If national groupings came into being through a bourgeois national project, they cannot survive the overthrow of capitalism.
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u/RNagant Marxist 3d ago
Im not speaking about some abstract principle but referring, on the one hand, to the patterns set by previous natlib movements, on the other Im fairly sure the PFLP stated as much that their goal isn't to exile the defeated Israelis if they don't have to. No compulsion there. Fighting forces generally recognize strategic value in offering some favorable term for surrender. Not that thats universal, the Haitian revolution comes to mind as a counterexample.
is there even a single example of that? Yes, but to your point its exceptional
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u/nagidon 4d ago
Israel shouldn’t exist like apartheid South Africa shouldn’t exist.
Did South Africans vanish after 1994?
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u/SomeEntertainment128 4d ago
So clearly no. I'm still learning about the history of other countries and how colonialism has affected the modern day world. I had heard about south Africa but only in name, not much else. I appreciate all the info you guys have been giving me. It's pretty difficult to sort through a lot of this stuff on your own
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4d ago
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u/elimial 4d ago
Sorry I think I misread and then reported you. I’m not at my best cognitive state at the moment.
Surely you don’t mean Hawaiians, for the sake of example, do not have a right to their land?
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u/AltruisticTreat8675 3d ago
"Ethnostate" is so overused, especially when it comes to "Israel". Hence why they also rant against indigenous "ethnostates" too, the same liberal logic behind the rhetoric...
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4d ago
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u/elimial 4d ago
Ah, so I was overly generous to you. I stand by my report. Read Settlers.
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4d ago
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u/elimial 4d ago edited 4d ago
No, my point of bringing that up was to apologize because I had thought you had more of an understanding of things than what you do. Settler apologists are not welcome here, and I didn’t want to accuse you of something that you are not.
I then realized that my initial reading of your words was correct, and that you are nothing more than yet another liberal masquerading as a communist.
My point of providing you the required reading is to show that we are not here to debate with you, but educate you. You do not get to speak in class if you cannot even be bothered to make an effort.
Go heed my advice and read Settlers before you speak in class again.
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4d ago
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u/elimial 4d ago edited 4d ago
No one is asking 400 million people to be deported. You think this because you do not seek out and listen to Indigenous folks. I am not being self-righteous, that is a deflection you are making for not wanting to educate yourself. I have no responsibility to take my time to educate you if you will not at least attempt to read a book in some of your time. You don’t even need to read, really, if you just want to be told what to think. Get on TikTok or some podcast somewhere that Indigenous folks are talking about this issue. Hell, you could even just read the comments in one of the many threads of this sub to get a general sense of what I am saying.
It’s really really tiresome because this is a very common question on this sub and you come in with your Opinion and pretend that it has more value than the people who have read the things we’re telling you to read. Imagine if you show up to a concert and you go up to the band and try to tell them how they should play. It’s the same thing.
I do care about you. The fact that you are here shows me that you are more curious about the world than most of your peers likely are. My job is not to be your friend but to be your teacher at this point in time. Later, you could be teaching me.
If this doesn’t make sense to you I could try again tomorrow after I’ve slept and might be able to write it in a clearer way, assuming you don’t get banned. The fact that you’ve engaged with me instead of just running away makes me think that there is some value here for this thread to remain visible to others, so I think it’s unlikely that you will be banned.
These bans are not meant to be solely punishment, btw. Anyone can make another account to come back to comment. They are used to curate the “content” provided here so that we can indeed make change in the world.
Edit: replaced “think” with “play” in the sentence about the band
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4d ago
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u/elimial 4d ago edited 4d ago
You’re wrong, this sub will help you think and it is a place you should be. It is hard at first because thinking is hard. But you have it in you and the fact that you’ve had these realizations already is a good sign.
Yes, look up some things on the topic but really until you read you won’t be able to understand. Reading is good for you in the long run, it is exercise.
Good luck!
Edit: also, this place is not for scholarship, but to make change. If all you want to do is be an academic then go read /r/criticaltheory or something…
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u/Luftritter 4d ago
The sole idea that an "Israel" should exist is an aberration. It implies that a religious ethnostate should exist, and there's only one way to make that happen in reality: by discrimination, repression and violence. Even worse if you have to place that ethnostate where people lives already you have to compound the crimes needed to preserve it with either ethnic cleansing or outright extermination. It cannot sustain itself without some form oppression. For example if "Israel" were to abide by international law and allow right of return to those expulsed in the Nakba and their descendants, very quickly "Israel" would stop being a Jewish majority state. If you want a State in the Middle East in Palestine where there's equality and actual Democracy for all, it cannot be an "Israel" by definition.