This sounded like a good discussion until the last sentence. Why are Zionists so quick to display contempt and - I'm sorry - racism towards Palestinians? Does it threaten you that this stateless refugee has a blue tick?
https://twitter.com/chloetsila/status/1313388534741585922
But on to the points. The founders of the state of Israel were definitely foreign to the Middle East. Herzl was born in Hungary. Ben Gurion was born in Poland. Golda Meir was born in Ukraine. Chaim Weizmann was born in Russia. These are facts. They were European Jews.
This isn't to say that the Jews aren't native to the Middle East, they are. But both of these things can be true at once. Zionism was first conceived by people who never lived in the Middle East and apart from a far-removed origin, they were foreigners to land and culture.
Besides, Zionist founders were very explicit that their venture was colonial (read entire thread, some of them didn't mince words):
https://twitter.com/AManInTheSun/status/930889680173879296
After the Holocaust in the 1940s and the upheavals in the MENA in the 1950s, the meaning of Zionism did, I believe, shift from being a pure colonial venture to also being a liberation project for world (and the MENA's) Jewry. Yet towards us, it continued to be a colonial project.
Again, both of these things can be true. Zionism meant liberation and self-determination for Jews and it meant colonization, displacement, subjugation, alienation, and occupation for us.
The language of decoloniality is the language of the oppressed. We use this language to describe the power structures that hold us down. Your attempts to coopt this *will* be challenged, and *will* fail. We speak our experience. You're speaking of what you never experienced.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
