Thread by @stevesalaita

The most damning aspect of Zionism is that white nationalists hate Jews but love Israel.

Okay, because people will argue semantics, perhaps I should have said "like" or "admire" rather than "love," but whatever diction we choose there's an abundance of evidence for the original point.

While I have you here, a few additional comments. Thanks for the good feedback, first of all. You've given me much to consider.

While some neo-Nazi types (along with some paleo-conservatives) identify as "pro-Palestine," there are significant differences between those types and their peers who express admiration for Israel. Here are four:

1. "White Zionists," as Richard Spencer calls them, adhere to the spirit and practice of Zionism (in its state-sanctioned iteration); the logic of Western colonization, from which this nonsense derives, is anathema (and hostile) to Palestine's national movement.

2. In fact, Palestinians, going back decades, in both homeland and diaspora, have worked hard to rebuke modes of resistance predicated on (or tolerant of) anti-Semitism. The Palestinian intellectual tradition testifies to this sensibility.

3. There's a tremendous difference of power between Zionism and its victims. Palestinians, like all colonized groups, are inherently reviled by the institutional forces that constitute and validate racial violence. Jewish people are, too. But Israel isn't.

4. Every (current) rationalization for Zionism emphasizes the need of Jewish people to escape anti-Semitism. What does it mean that the site of escape can become an avatar to no small number of anti-Semites? Palestine's national movement suffers no such contradiction.

The original post, then, doesn't simply identify a damning problem, but a debilitating one. Israel functions in the world as an agent of US power and so Zionism cannot disassociate itself from the practice of white supremacy and imperialism.

Perhaps the original post can be refined to say, "The most damning consequence of Zionism is that white nationalists can hate Jews but still love Israel." The mere possibility is enough to undermine its central convictions.