At the center of the debate are key changes in the language used to describe Zionism, the movement that called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in what is now Israel.

The 2023 version of the page framed Zionism as a nationalist movement born in the 19th century that sought to secure Jewish self-determination.

In contrast, the 2024 version of the entry introduces more charged terminology, describing Zionism as an “ethno-cultural nationalist” movement that engaged in “colonization of a land outside of Europe,” with a heightened focus on the resulting conflicts with Palestinian Arabs.

“Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible,” it reads.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    22 hours ago

    Some quotes from the founder af Zionism, Theodore Herzl:

    Supposing, for example, we were obliged to clear a country of wild beasts, we should not set about the task in the fashion of Europeans of the fifth century. We should not take spear and lance and go out singly in pursuit of bears; we would organize a large and active hunting party, drive the animals together, and throw a melinite bomb into their midst.

    If it is God’s will that we return to our historic fatherland, we should like to do so as representatives of Western civilization, and bring cleanliness, order, and the well-distilled customs of the Occident to this plague-ridden, blighted comer of the Orient.

    If whole branches of Jews must be destroyed, it is worth it, as long as a Jewish state in Palestine is created.

    We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.

  • anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    22 hours ago

    wikipedia more accurate on Israeli occupation than the politics of Ukrainian nazi groups like azov and right sektor who would’ve thought

  • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    “Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible”

    Where is the lie?

    • mearce@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 days ago

      Did this happen in an official capacity/appears in writing? Or is this just the common understanding?

      /gen

      • communism@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        Yes, Herzl himself referred to Zionism as a colonial movement. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes:

        You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews … How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.

        The first Zionist banks were called “Jewish Colonial Trust” too. The nascent Zionist movement was always an openly colonial project. I suppose now that colonialism is not the cool thing to do anymore some Zionists are shying away from the term, but some still do openly identify their politics that way.

          • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOP
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            24
            ·
            edit-2
            2 days ago

            No Destiny reads debunked propaganda. In his “debate” with Finkelstein he claimed Finkelstein lied about those four boys on a beach by quoting the IDF’s debunked statement about a “Hamas compound” which was never found.

            Destiny is a very poorly researched Hasbara troll.

          • ChuzaUzarNaim @lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            ·
            2 days ago

            Lol, the first source he cites in these is wikipedia, then perhaps one book. For some of them, the only source is wikipedia.

            Not beating the allegations with this one, champ (that’s short for champion)

            • anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              22 hours ago

              Lol, the first source he cites in these is wikipedia, then perhaps one book.

              And I bet that book was found in the footnote of wikipedia

              Also wikipedia still cites the Black Book of Communism, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest. And though any and all Russian sources are “unreliable,” to them, CIA outlets originally staffed by local fascists like Radio Free Europe/Liberty/Asia are all apparently “highly reliable.” Their policies are inherently incestuous and reinforce the liberal western-imperialist status-quo. Anything outside the “accepted center” of authorship, regardless of the actual merit and quality of the report/study and its sources and information is labelled as “fringe.” To say nothing of the well-known astroturfing by corporations and intelligence agencies and all the “earnest voice” type stuff. And just very belligerent ill-informed people of the redditor variety, who have too much time on their hands and are far more opinionated than they have any right to be so their garbage sits in the articles for many eyes which see them, either unsourced, with a garbage source, or with a source that straight up doesn’t say the thing they imply it says.

              • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                22 hours ago

                or with a source that straight up doesn’t say the thing they imply it says.

                I swear these are more common than the reverse when I click a source.

  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    2 days ago

    The jewish and the palestinians have something in common. They were both driven from their home. It’s a shame that coexistence wasn’t the way it went but that’s humans for you… everyone who isn’t one of you is an other, and humans hate others.

    Peace seems to always lose.

    • anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      22 hours ago

      driven from their home.

      Maybe the Zionists should have taken that to the EUROPEANS WHO DID THAT and forced seizure of THEIR land and made THEM compensate; not passed that shit off on palestinians and colonize them who had nothing to do with european judeophobia. equating these two is ridiculous because the Palestinians are resisting against THE VERY PEOPLE WHO TOOK THEIR LAND, rather than going to some other, poorer place, and getting funneled weapons to brutalize and colonize and genocide them. You don’t see Palestinians driving tanks and bombs into Namibian villages and mass murdering them and stealing their land.

      These things are not equal and it takes real liberal ‘enlightened centrist’ brainworms to speak in such vapid vacant platitudes as you are doing. friend your brain needs dewormed.

    • diegeticalt (any)@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      The residents of Palestine were peacefully coexisting Jews, Arabs, and Muslim descendants of the bronze-age indigenous people before the inception of Zionism by the British Empire in the early 1900s.

      This is not a question of “religious coexistence”, it’s a question of murderous settler-colonialism and Empire.

      Free Palestine.

      • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        The area was effectively a bloodbath until the twilight years of the ottoman empire for a very brief period.

        From the muslim conquest of the levant in the 7th century, to the christian crusades across several centuries… there has been seemingly countless wars in the name of religion in the region. The conflict goes back much, much longer than 124 years.

        Anyway, you talk about this being a question of something. I see no questions whatsoever. I just see hate after hate, bloodshed after bloodshed. It won’t end until humans bring themselves to extinction or one side wipes out the other because we’re incapable as a species of anything else.

        I’m glad that the UN is pushing to get Israel out of the Gaza Strip at the least, but the damage is already done. The cycle will just continue because the hate will never end.

        • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 day ago

          The claim the other person was making was very, very obviously not the absurdity you represent it as.

          The residents of Palestine were peacefully coexisting Jews, Arabs, and Muslim descendants of the bronze-age indigenous people before the inception of Zionism by the British Empire in the early 1900s.

          Nowhere does this say “were peacefully coexisting since the bronze age,” it says “these populations that descended from groups there since the bronze age were, during some period of time prior to zionism, peacefully coexisting.”

          There are other problems with what you said, e.g. I wouldn’t blame the indigenous Christian inhabitants for the Crusades, but I don’t really want to get into this, I just want to point out that you wildly misrepresented your interlocutor.

          • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 day ago

            Okay, so then i’ll focus on the specific claim of right during/before the early 1900s everyone was peacefully coexisting.

            Sure, near the end of the ottoman empire there was a very brief period where there was some coexistence. Very brief.

            • Drop Bear@theblower.au
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 day ago

              “near the end of the ottoman empire there was a very brief period where there was some coexistence” @Lets_Eat_Grandma

              For centuries, Muslims, Christians and Jews shared Palestine. How “peaceful” that was is debatable. That Palestinians of all creeds had homes on those lands is beyond dispute.

              Then, the Zionists started arriving. They wanted to be the Master Race of the region. That’s the problem.

              @GarbageShootAlt2
              @palestine
              @israel

              #IsraelPalestineConflict
              #Israel
              #Palestine
              #WarCrimes
              #CrimesAgainstHumanity
              #genocide

              • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                21 hours ago

                This format of hashtags and @ is new to me on here, but then again I don’t think I’ve seen a theblower.au commenter before. Are you having to type all of that out when you finish your reply or does it auto pull context and tag it for you? seems like a lot of work and not sure on the reasons to categorize the replies like that.

                • Drop Bear@theblower.au
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  20 hours ago

                  TheBlower is an Australian mastodon instance @Cataphract
                  Mastodon and Lemmy are both parts of the Fediverse (using the ActivityPub protocol), so they communicate. Integration is pretty horrible, but improving.

                  Strings beginning with @ are mastodon addresses (or lemmy addresses translated by a mastodon interface). Mastodon copies across addresses and can autocomplete additional ones.

                  On mastodon, you can follow hashtags, so they play a substantial role. On the desktop, it’s fairly easy to copy/paste. Most mobile app’s are terrible, so hashtags tend to be neglected.

                  #Fediverse
                  #ActivityPub
                  #lemmy
                  #mastodon