Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel’s politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and
Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to “Nazi and Fascist parties” and described it as a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization”.
The Zionists have explained their view as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.”
and
Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.
It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.
Jewish culture and history, especially Zionism is as diverse as every other culture and people is. Picking the worst doesn’t show the whole picture about Zionism. There is a whole Socialist and even Anarchist tradition of and within Zionism.
EDIT: I didn’t mean to offend anybody and everybody has a right to criticize Israel. My whole point is that Israel’s history and especially Zionism is obviously not one-sided, but is also rich in liberal and progressive ideas, that are worth to studied.
If you are interested in Socialist Zionism I recommend the following article as a starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_ZionismThat’s so true!
And the Nazis had people like Strasser! You see, Nazis weren’t so bad, guys! Picking the worst like Hitler and Goebbels is so unfair! Nazism is as diverse as any other culture.
