Jewish students chained themselves to gates at Columbia University Wednesday in support of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student protest leader now in an ICE jail in Louisiana. On March 8th, federal agents detained Khalil at his university-owned apartment building, even though he’s a legal permanent resident of the United States. They revoked his green card.
Sort of a side tangent about definitions. I was always taught, by someone that was previously pro Israel, Zionism is simply the desire of return to the homeland. Which is a very watered down dishonest definition hiding the nationalism of a desire for an ethostate. If someone thinks it means just returning home, then their view of others calling it evil makes it feel like antisemitism, even if it’s not. People can’t communicate because the laymen’s words often get used in 100 different ways that don’t match. I think that’s often one source of miscommunication even among well meaning people. Another is that the anti Israel movement is peppered with actual anti-Semites poisoning the well. I’ve protested against Israel, but as a Jew it can be very uncomfortable, I’ve repeatedly met actual anti-Semites that way. I think these things make it very easy for people dug in to see antisemitism everywhere.
I see that reaction from my father all the time. He’s a lefty, progressive, but talk about Israel and you have to tread very carefully. He hates the Likud and present day genocide, but is suspicious of the motives of a lot of the outside criticism.
You should explain to your father that zionism did not emerge in a vacuum within the Jewish community. It was controversial the moment it arose and was as supported as yiddishist movements that were expressly anti-zionist. This was an intense divide that even resulted in violence on both sides by both sides. Nazis and the staggeringly entrenched antisemitism of eastern Europe/Russia ended up sorting it out in favor of the zionist anti-yiddishists, though.
His views have already come a long way, I was more using it as illustrative of communication being a big part of the problem here. He experienced a lot of cruel antisemitism in his life, that makes people see things with blinders on because he is reasonably afraid of history repeating itself.