I come across a finite number of rationalizations or arguments for various aspects of the Zionist project and thought I'd put responses to those that I've come across in one place.
I very strongly request comments, additions and criticisms of this post. After several months of tweaking, I expect to post a far better version of this.
If anyone is able to entirely rewrite any of the responses, I would gladly replace my language with yours, within reason.
1. Jews were expelled by the RomansThe Romans were not a settler empire. The Romans conquered Spain, England, Germany, Egypt and other areas, replaced the rulers with a leadership structure loyal to Rome and left the inhabitants in place. Of Jews evacuated when Rome sacked Jerusalem, some may have gone far away but there is no reason most would not have stayed relatively close, other parts of Palestine or what are now Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria. There is no record of Romans ever expelling all or most Jews from the area now known as Palestine, and that had never been Roman practice anywhere, even after putting down rebellions. Judaism was a diasporic religion long before the Roman conquest. By the time of that conquest the number of Jews outside of Palestine likely already surpassed the number of Jews inside. After Roman conquests, the ethnic composition of conquered territories remained essentially unchanged. Over centuries some of the original Jewish inhabitants of the territory converted to other religions, Christianity, Islam or others, some left, other people migrated in. Some of the descendents of the Jewish inhabitants from before the Roman conquest remained continuously in Palestine even until the present day. Some descendents are Jews, some are descendents of Jews who converted along the way to Islam or Christianity and are now seen as Arabs. The idea that Jews were forced out of Palestine by the Romans to make way for another population in a process comparable to the expulsion of Arabs 1948 to allow a sufficiently majority Jewish state is simply false.
2. Arabs are also foreigners to PalestineThe Arabs were also not a settler empire. The Arabs conquered what are now known as Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan and other places, replaced the rulers with a leadership structure loyal to the ideals and culture of Arabia and left the inhabitants in place. These inhabitants, after learning the Arabic language and accepting the Arabs’ religion became known as Arabs themselves. The Egyptian population is now considered Arab. There was no large-scale replacement of the original inhabitants with settlers from Arabia. Egyptians became Arab when the original inhabitants adopted the Arab language and culture and converted to Islam. The Syrians became “Arabs” mostly through conversion. The Palestinians, including some descendents of Jewish Palestinians, became Arabs the same way everyone else in that area became Arab.
3. According to Mark Twain, the land that became Israel was nearly barrenThere is a famous quotation from Mark Twain that traveling in Palestine he noticed that the land was “nearly barren”. Nearly barren doesn’t have much meaning other than “not uninhabited”. Does he mean less populated than New York or St. Louis at Twain’s time? Does he mean the population was less dense than the population of Native Americans whose dispossession from their lands the US was completing as he wrote? Taken on its face, Twain’s claim only means that there were some people in the territory. Other more careful studies of the population from around that time indicate that the population had a vast Arab majority. Even if the area only had ten people, that is enough that they had a right to reject an outside effort to give the territory to an outside group as that outside group’s homeland.
4. There is no historic Palestine. The land that became Israel was colonized by the Arab, Ottoman, British and other Empires.The inhabitants of the territory, regardless of who ruled it, had and have a right not to be displaced. Further they have a right, if they choose, to remove their foreign colonial rulers.
5. The 1948 UN allocation was reasonableThe UN allocation clearly allocated land disproportionally to the Jewish state. The Arabs believed that in terms of the value of the land the allocation process was also skewed in favor of the Jewish portion. The Arabs also believed that regardless of the allocation, the Zionist movement was stockpiling weapons with Western help, to immediately cease more land and expel much of the Arab population the Jewish partition. Zionist theorists of the time did not believe a stable Jewish democracy state could be built with the slim majority The UN was an explicitly colonialist institution at the time. As it partitioned Palestine, the UN also decreed that the Congo would be restored to Belgian ownership, Vietnam and Algeria to French ownership and other colonial holdings to their European rulers. Arabs were over two-thirds of the population of the territory and if they did not believe the allocation was reasonable, then the allocation was not reasonable. The UN had no more right to determine for the Palestinians in the Jewish partition that they should be under Jewish rule than they had to determine that Angola should be under Portuguese rule.
6. There was no alternative available in 1948The best alternative then would have been a one-state arrangement in which every individual has equality protection before the law and equal political power.
7. Jordan was given to the Arabs so all of Palestine should have been given to JewsAll of Palestine had a 2 to 1 non-Jewish majority. The people of Palestine had a right to reject the creation of a Jewish state on their territory and the violation of that right was an injustice.
8. The Palestinian refugees of 1948 left hoping the Arabs would winPeople leave war zones for their safety. I'm sure they did hope a Jewish state would be prevented from being established on their homeland, but that does not mean they relinquish their human right to flee to safety and return.
9. Israel hosts refugees from Muslim countriesSome immigrants to Israel were refugees, others went voluntarily or were pulled by Israelis. A lot of immigrants came from countries such as the US and European countries that clearly are not refugees. Some were, some were not, none left war zones comparable to Palestine in 1948, but a right to return or compensation is the individual right of any Jew who left any Arab, Muslim or any other state involuntarily.
10. Israel’s war for independence was a war of self-defenseIsrael fired first. The first organized military actions were perpetrated by Jewish military groups, in many cases against Arab civilians, months before any Arab organized military even began preparing to intervene.
11. Israel’s subsequent wars were wars of self-defenseUsing the rule that the first party to fire started the war, Israel fought a war of self defense in 1973. The US invasion of Iraq was described as self-defense by its architects. Japan believed it was forced to bomb Pearl Harbor in self defense. The side that fires first started the war is a rule that is generally accepted to apply to every conflict other than wars involving Israel.
12. Descendants of refugees should not be eligible for refugee statusThis is a difference of opinion between supporters of Israel and most of the people in the region. The fact of the matter is that Jordan and Egypt are lead by dictators who are nearly comically subservient to pro-Zionist interests. But they are not accepting the refugees. The argument that these refugees should be accepted by Israel is stronger than the argument that they should be accepted in Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon since none of these are the states they or their relatives fled. Since the founding ideal of Israel is that a group that had a sovereign state in that territory thousands of years earlier had a right to return, it is hypocritical, and certainly seems hypocritical in the region to say that descendants from 60 years ago should not have a right to return because they are of the wrong ethnicity.
13. Israel was a strategic asset for the US during the cold warThe USSR was a militantly atheistic country. For religious reasons, the Middle East would have much more naturally aligned with the US against the USSR in that struggle. Middle Eastern actors always displayed a level of discomfort in engagements with Russia because atheists are very strongly condemned in the Muslim religion. Nasser, before the 1967 war with Israel told an audience of trade unionists that the only reason he aligned with the USSR is because the USSR took a better stance than the US and the US’ NATO allies with respect to Israel. The United States was able to maintain the cooperation of many Middle Eastern dictatorships despite the unpopularity of its ties with Israel, but from Israel’s inception, US goals have been more difficult to reach in the region because of Israel.
14. Israel is a strategic asset for the US todayIsrael borders countries that do not have large supplies of oil or an ability to block oil flow from the Persian Gulf. But Israel inflames opinions of the populations of countries that are strategically important to the United States. Israel has never used its military, in 60 years, to assist in securing either supplies or transport of oil. Israel makes alliances more difficult and expensive to maintain, but for example, could not participate in the US invasion of Iraq. There really is no fundamental dispute between either Arab Nationalism or Islamism and the West other than the legitimacy of Israel.
15. The dispute is perpetuated by Arab leaders who want to divert attention from their failuresIran was ruled by a US-installed stooge for a generation, but Iranians still do not accept Israel’s legitimacy. Saudi Arabia would prefer its people to de-prioritize the Palestinian conflict, since Saudi Arabia often sides with Israel against the wishes of the Saudi people. Jordan and Egypt have sponsored government campaigns explicitly to persuade their people that cooperation with Israel against other Arabs is an expression of putting their country first. No poll in any country ruled by relatively pro-Israel leaders has shown these efforts to be effective.
16. There are two legitimate national causes that must be accommodated at least with a Jewish state.It is difficult to believe that in 1890 Jews who were a small minority of the population of the territory had a legitimate national right to a state in that territory. This claim would be comparable to a claim that Scientologists in the United States have a national right to a state comprised of some US territory. It is more difficult to believe that European Jews of 1890, some descendants of converts, some descendants of people who left Palestine voluntarily and some descendants of people removed by force thousands of years earlier, had a national right to a state in that territory. That is comparable to a claim that an American group believing in Norse mythology have a legitimate right a homeland in Scandinavia, even at the cost of displacing the current population of mostly Christians and atheists there. Today, Jews in Palestine have a right to remain in safety. But they do not have a human or national right to a permanent political majority any more than White Americans have a right to a permanently White US presidency.
17. Every other nation has a stateMany distinct ethnic groups and religions comparable to Jews do not have sovereign states. Mormons, Kurds, Zoroastrians, Afrikaaners, African-Americans, Blackfoot Native American Indians. This statement relies on a strange definition of “nation” to mean groups of people that have states, plus Jews whether Jews have a state or not. There is no reasonable definition of "nation" for which Jews are the only "nation" without a state.
18. It is possible for Palestinians to convert to JudaismIt is effectively impossible for Palestinians to convert to Judaism to get a right to return to Israel as citizens. Conversions to Judaism in Israel must go through a far more stringent and arbitrary process than conversions to Judaism in Western countries. Very few or no Palestinians have successfully converted to Judaism despite the obvious material advantages such a conversion could give them.
19. Other countries have an ethnic basisThe problem with Israel is not its ethnic basis. The first problem is that there is a large group of people that wants to return, but cannot because it is of the wrong ethnic group. The second problem is that preventing the people of the region who agree that the refugees should be able to return from expressing their will requires vast expenditures of resources by the US and other Western countries that leads to a tremendous amount of oppression and misery throughout the region. Israel’s victims are more than the 5 or so million non-Jews living under occupation and the 4 million refugees outside of occupied territories. They include the 80 million Egyptians, 6 million Jordanians and 25 million Saudis forced to live under pro-US dictatorships, shored up by US intelligence organizations, in order to keep the region safe for Israel. They also include the millions of Iranians whose economy the US has steadily attempted to thwart since the Iranian revolution to ensure Iran has fewer resources with which it could confront Israel.
20. There are dozens of Muslim countries but only one Jewish countryThere are no Mormon countries. There is no universal principle that every religion should have a certain number of countries where it should be the majority.
21. Israel is small compared to non-Jewish land in the regionThere is no size smaller than which it is not an injustice to displace one group of people to make room for an ethnic homeland of another group of people.
22. Israel is the only democracy in the regionIncluding people under Israeli control but excluded from Israel’s political process, Israel disenfranchises nearly a majority of its people because of their ethnicity. The United States also supports dictatorship and opposes democratic reforms that would make Israel’s neighbor more reflective of the commonly held belief among their people that Israel as a Jewish state is illegitimate
23. Israel is an economic miracleIsrael has been the recipient of many economic and trade advantages from the West, beyond the annual billions of dollars that are directly given to that country. Israel trades with the West on better terms than its neighbors, possibly because of Western decisions that Israel should have an economic lead over its neighbors.
24. Opposition to Israel is anti-SemiticIt seems that way to people emotionally tied to Israel. Really anti-Zionist arguments are no more inherently anti-Semitic than anti-Apartheid activism is anti-Afrikaaner. However, people who identify emotionally with Israel do feel attacked when anyone expresses doubt about the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. While this may not be a rational feeling, it is a valid feeling that should be anticipated and respected. Those who advocate ending Israel's status as an ethnic state should take extra care to express that they do not believe that Jews are inherently bad in any way and that they do not harbor animosity against the Jewish religion, ethnic group or Jewish individuals. Attacks on Zionism often create the honestly held but usually incorrect perception that the source of the attacks hates Jews.
25. Martin Luther King, Jr. said anti-Zionism is anti-SemitismHe may have, in which case he was wrong. None of his recorded speeches indicates such a view. Of all of the things he wrote, he never himself wrote that on paper. There is a purported letter that is now widely understood to be a hoax, that never appeared in the magazine to which it is attributed. There is a recollection of a supporter of Zionism of King supposedly saying something similar at a dinner party. King is not recorded as being in the Cambridge area at the time the dinner party in Cambridge supposedly occured. One of King's associates recalled a private conversation but first discussed the memory publicly decades later. Possibly King felt that way. He never wrote it down in his own voice. If he felt that way he is just as mistaken as anyone else who feels that way. There is still no inherent animosity towards Jews required to believe there should not be an explicitly Jewish state in Palestine created at the expense and against the will of Palestine's non-Jewish residents.
26. The Hamas charter calls for killing JewsHamas’ charter notes a passage in the Koran in which Arabs kill Jews. The passage taken alone does not specify if these are Jewish civilians or soldiers. Elsewhere the Koran explicitly forbids killing civilians. The interpretation most consistent with the Koran on the whole is that these are soldiers. Nothing in the that passage, anywhere else in the Koran or the Hamas charter indicates that it should be interpreted as meaning all Jews will or should be killed. Hamas officials have repeatedly stated that Jews who choose should be free to live safely in an Islamic state. There is no reason to believe Hamas would not be able to impose its views even in an single state in which all the refugees vote assuming Jews would vote against them, but a constitution could be designed, as constitutions have been designed in many places throughout the world, that protects Jewish rights and has individual protections that cannot be outvoted by a majority.
27. Israel is the only way to prevent discrimination against JewsIsrael is not today a safer place for Jews than many other places, including the United States. Discrimination is a serious problem that cannot be solved by trying to carve majority states for every ethnic group that has or could suffer discrimination.
28. Abandoning Israel would lead to regional warsThis is a failure of imagination. A commitment to a orderly and gradual move to a one-person one-vote state including refugees over a set period of between a decade and a generation would end the source of the dispute over Zionism. Hamas and other anti-Zionist groups accept that they will not defeat Israel in the short term and have already offered a hudna, or to stop fighting for an extended period. A commitment to, at a set point in the somewhat near future, end Israel's Jewish-majority status could end all fighting against Israel this year.
29. Jews would be forcibly removed in any non-Zionist outcomeThis is clearly false. It is easy to draw an outcome that does not require Jews to be removed. Jews would have a right to leave. And Middle Eastern opponents of Zionism often make the point that if the United States believes it is critical that there be a homeland with a guaranteed Jewish majority, Jewish political rule and automatic acceptance of Jewish refugees, the United States can set aside some of its own territory for that. If there is a Palestinian majority, Jewish people who do not mind living in a state with a non-Jewish majority in Palestine would of course be free to remain.
30. Jews do not want to, and should not be asked to take the risk that they might be oppressed in a post-Zionist IsraelIsrael cannot defend its status as an ethnic Jewish state on its own. Israel requires huge sacrifices from its patrons. There are many costs involved in the US and its allies ensuring that Israel has the military and economic advantages over its neighbors it needs to be safe. For example, in terms of missed opportunities for trade and resources devoted to ensuring that Iran does not become more able to comfortably confront Israel, or the costs of helping Egypt's unpopular but relatively pro-Israel dictator remain in power, or the moral cost of allying with nations that openly torture any of their own anti-Zionist citizens such as Jordan, it would probably be probably more efficient for the US to use fewer resources to arrange a long-term guarantee of the individual rights of Jews in a non-Jewish majority state.
