Israeli Fascism

I have a hard time seeing Zionism as a legitimate movement -- I prefer to define it by the political project that Zionism has produced -- a genocidal ethnostate -- but Zionism is indefensible even if granted its most favourable terms: Jews have a right to safety and self-determination within their indigenous homeland

What is indigeneity? -- it's a context-dependent concept, but I would say historical indigeneity is a people's ancestral connection to a territory, including a connection that survives displacement and diaspora; whereas political indigeneity is the recognition of a people as indigenous within the context of the formation of modern states, often in relation to a population that has been subordinated -- Zionism invokes the former to justify a political project that must also contend with the latter -- ancestral connection alone cannot establish an exclusive right to sovereignty over a territory already inhabited by another people, the Palestinians

Looking further, we have to also ask: "can one convert to an indigenous identity?" --this is because Jewishness holds a unique place where it is an ethnicity, culture, and religion simultaneously -- if indigeneity is grounded in ancestral connection to a particular territory, how can someone with no ancestral connection to that territory become eligible for Jewish "right to return" through conversion to Judaism? -- a state cannot coherently ground exclusive territorial privileges in indigeneity while simultaneously defining eligibility for membership in the privileged national group in a way that does not require ancestral connection to the territory -- particularly when that same principle of return is not applied equally to displaced Palestinians and their descendants

Finally, we need to ask what self-determination looks like -- does it entail the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish-majority state in a territory shared with another people who also possess a legitimate claim to self-determination? -- if Jewish self-determination requires a permanent Jewish demographic majority, what happens when the population does not naturally sustain that majority? -- if maintaining that majority requires restricting immigration, residency, citizenship, or the political rights of Palestinians, how can those restrictions be reconciled with Palestinian self-determination? -- if Jewish sovereignty is compatible with equal political rights for everyone in the territory, must the state accept the possibility that Jews will no longer constitute a majority?

My problem, then, is not necessarily with the idea that Jews belong in their ancestral homeland, or that they deserve safety and self-determination -- it's with the assumption that these rights must take the form of a Jewish nation-state, and that the establishment and preservation of that state can justify the displacement, exclusion, and unequal political status of another people - the Palestinians

And even after granting Zionism its most good faith definition, I still can't answer these questions in a way that doesn't lead us to the ethnonationalist project of Zionism as it currently exists -- although I'm open to reading how others may approach these questions

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