Thread by @YousefMunayyer

This is actually quite misleading and dangerously so. I think it is worth explaining why because this apparently benign explanation actually shapes a tremendous amount of misunderstanding of Palestinians.

https://twitter.com/Laura_E_Adkins/status/1742518397483512070

Zionism is not merely the "belief in a Jewish right to self-determination and a state in their ancestral homeland" it is more than that, both in the practical implementation and mainstream interpretation of this belief. Let's talk about both.

As far as the mainstream interpretation of this, at least since the early 1900s, self-determination in Zionism has been understood to necessitate not merely communal representation in governance but specifically majoritarianism.

This meant that achieving self-determination for Zionists meant achieving and maintaining a demographic majority of control over governance.

To be clear, this is the mainstream interpretation since the early 1900s. Are there other interpretations, sure, particularly prior to that and some after but always a tiny minority.

This is the mainstream interpretation of self-determination in the Zionist movement prior to 1948 and it is the interpretation that is embodied in the state of Israel since then as well.

Now let us think about the practical implementation piece. The Zionist movement did not seek to achieve its goals in a vacuum. It sought to achieve them in a very specific space (Palestine) and at a very specific moment in history (around the turn of the last century).

And what does this place, Palestine, look like at this time? The most relevant feature to this conversation is that the overwhelming majority of its population are native born Palestinian Arabs ~90%, mostly Muslims with a Christian minority and a smaller Jewish minority.

So what then does practical implementation of the mainstream interpretation of Zionist self-determination (majoritarianism) mean in this moment? It means denying the self-determination of the Palestinian Arab population.

It means imposing the will of a tiny minority against the will of the vast majority of Palestinian inhabitants. This is fundamentally anti-Palestinian. There is really not other way to square it.

Most mainstream Zionists at the time, and their imperial backers in Britain, both *understood and justified* the fact that they were deliberately denying the self-determination of the vast majority of the native inhabitants of the land.

Is there a Zionism that can divorce itself from majoritarianism? I don't know, but that certainly isn't the Zionism that exists today or that has long been practically implemented in Palestine.

Zionists today can seek to justify the imposition of Jewish majoritarianism as Zionists and British leaders long ago did and since have (it is less persuasive by the day) but to claim that doing so is not "anti-Palestinian" just doesn't square with reality.

It is quite telling that to get to an understanding of Zionism that can be presented as not anti-Palestinian, you have to present it in a vacuum that actually ignores the existence of Palestinians. Gives the game away really.

I think many who misunderstand this do so out of ignorance of the Palestinian experiences but others still rely on this ignorance to push a vile anti-Palestinian agenda aimed at painting Palestinians as savage antisemites who deserve anything done to them, even genocide.

If you frame Zionism merely as the self-determination of Jews, it is not a far jump to turn Palestinian opposition to Zionism into antisemitism. i.e. If they oppose self-determination of the Jews well then that must be about hating Jews.

But Palestinians oppose Zionism not because Zionism was a movement of Jews but because it was a movement that sought to deny the self-determination of Palestinians.

If Zionism was a movement of Chinese or Brazilians or Norwegians or whoever that sought to deny the self-determination of Palestinians, Palestinians would still be just as opposed to it.