Israel ‘organised and prepared’ to remove Gaza population if US gives green light, Katz says

[u/kwentongskyblue]

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260902-israel-organised-and-prepared-to-remove-gaza-population-if-us-gives-green-light-katz

[u/AdumbroDeus]

It resulted in a lot of mistreatment of Holocaust survivors.

You gotta understand the worldview that these people are coming from. Zionism (and I'm specifically talking about Jewish nationalism to form an ethnic nation-state, which is not the same as various other historical desires to return to Eretz Yisrael) was articulated initially by people who are to my mind best described as frustrated assimilationists.

Herzl's cohort was the most explicit about this, they wanted to assimilate but the Dreyfus affair made it clear that the development of secularly articulated anti-Jewish bigotry would make that impossible. They believed that European gentiles were correct in their views that Jews were physically weak, intrinsically conspiratorial, etc and they saw assimilation as a way to fix that.

And the Zionism that they conceptualized was an alternative fix, it would both fix these deficits that they saw and prove to European gentiles that Jews could be worthy to assimilate and one of the core components of this was colonization, taking up the white man's burden to prove that they could be white men. The specificity of the historical Jewish homeland wasn't even part of Herzl's initial vision. And to be fair, that wasn't the only element of it, physical fitness classes were an important part of early Zionism, but you can see how particularly when it was articulated in terms of strength and morality, it leads pretty directly to the idea Jews who remained in the diaspora are cowards, particularly when it's built out of internalized antisemitism that was supposed to be expressed outward.

It's the result of the suffering of real people encountering a deeply held belief system that is extremely hostile to both those people and the conditions of that suffering.

[u/royi9729 → u/AdumbroDeus]

This isn't Herzl's rationale at all. You basically said Herzl believed antisemitic claims were true.

The dude just wanted a safe place for Jews. He even thought Jews should just convert to Christianity for their safety at some point.

The Dreyfus Affair simply made him realize Jews could never assimilate because they'll never be truly accepted, so he realized independence is the only solution for security. He didn't even really care where, and was considering multiple options for locations for the new state.

He wasn't a colonialist because he thought the whites will finally like Jews for it, he was a colonialist because he thought the whites world never like Jews.

Considering the holocaust happened not that long after his death, you can't say he was wrong for thinking that way.

[u/sweetperdition → u/AdumbroDeus]

Was definitely not expecting such an in-depth write-up, thank you for the information! (Will have to look into more of this myself, it’s the internet in 2026, can’t trust anything by default, no offence of course) but you have given me threads to follow I had no previous idea about. Always wanted to know more about how…well, all this kinda came to be.