Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Zionism is the Main Cause of Anti-Semitism Throughout the World?

This picture appeared on the page of an intelligent, humorous, insightful, and compassionate individual on MySpace. -




If Zionism truly is the main cause of anti-Semitism throughout the world, why did it exist before Zionism?

The Pharaoh's hatred of the spiritual was easily manifested in the hatred of the Jews; they stood for understanding the depth of a person vs. the Egyptian understanding of the exaltation of the body, and so he tried to destroy them, all the Torah sources explain this. Did the Pharaoh hate them because they were Zionists or because of what they stood for? So my main question is, if Zionism truly is the main cause of anti-Semitism in the world, why did anti-Semitism exist before Zionism? What caused people who hated Jews to hate them before the State of Israel existed? And an even juicier question if you can connect the dots, why are there people who hate Jews after the State of Israel came to being? What's the only constant in this historical equation?

Phew! Now that I know that Zionism is really the cause for anti-Semitism in the world I can rest my conscious.

We also should wonder, is Zionism also the reason why the "Arabized" Janjaweed hate the African Sudanese? Or is it the reason why the Chinese oppressed the monks of Tibet? Is it why the early Americans basically killed off the Native Americans? Is it the reason why the Palestinians hate the Israeli's? Zionism is a form of nationalism; were the aforementioned groups driven to hatred due to nationalistic movements, or was there another reason that they hated those groups? Is Zionism the reason anti-Semites hate Jews, or perhaps is there another reason?

Think about it.

2 comments:

haKiruv said...

I think most of the Jewish monarchy would be classified as Zionists, in that many centralized the kingdom.

OrthodoxJew said...

Yes, I agree.

Regarding that realization, it can be viewed two ways. The first way: Zionism is really as true to the Torah as you can get. If you're a Muslim this will bother you because you (want to) believe that the Torah is a lie. As long as the Torah is a lie, your religion and everything for which it stands is true. If the Torah is true, Islam is false. If you're not Jewish and anti-Zionist, you have to fight with the fact that Jewish history and being is central to Israel and the striving to live there as free people, you also have to fight with the fact that Muslims took that land from Jews, or you can just ignore it. If you're a Jewish anti-Zionist you have to ignore that Redemption cannot occur without the Holy Land. The second way to view it is especially applicable to (Jewish) religious Zionist, who have to realize that Redemption has not occurred yet in Israel and that there are many issues with the Israeli national cultural paradigm. Therefore, modern-day Zionism is not a perfect parallel with historical Torah-based Zionism, perhaps it's not especially close. Nevertheless, I really believe that it has amazing potential and that's why I'm a religious Zionist. Keep it real, Yaniv...