No. of Recommendations: 4
Many countries in the world have an indigenous population that is not a member of the ethnic and cultural group that predominates. To use one example, Japan has has managed to resolve the "indigenous but not Japanese" question posed by the Ainu people by....well, by not doing anything particular at all. As a general, abstract principle there's not really a problem with having an "indigenous but not _______" population in a country.
The Ainu people are an infinitesimally small percentage population of Japan, and their language and identity as a people were actively repressed by the Japanese in the late nineteenth century, much like indigenous Americans and Australians. It's a poor response to my point since the Japanese refused to recognize the Ainu people as a distinct culture and compelled them into Japanese citizenship. If Israel refused to recognize Palestinians as Muslims and Christians, and compelled them to convert to Judaism and to speak Hebrew only then would the analogy work. Of course that is absurd because Muslims and Christians comprise about 50% of the population of "greater Israel". But you of course chose this absurd analogy because you want to avoid more apt comparisons of societies in which indigenous people are denied citizenship rights in the land of their birth, isn't it? More apt comparisons like Apartheid South Africa, or Myanmar? Again, none of what you have to say is a response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Zionism is the belief that this people should be allowed to have their own country.
Zionism is not the belief that the Jewish people should be allowed to have their own country. It is a political project to establish a country in which only Jews have a majoritarian right to citizenship and statehood. That project has been ongoing for a century and a half, and the most recent manifestation of that project is the current government of Israel which is pursuing this project on a grander scale as it tries to build greater Israel. Not every state is a "nation" state. While the US was founded on a genocidal Anglo American project to build a national state, the evolution of that project has been a multi-ethnic society which offers citizenship to all people born within the territorial purview of the state. This is very different, and I think much better, than the idea of an ethnically pure state in which cultural and ethnic identity are the basis of civil rights and political inclusion. Such ethno-national states inevitably lead to the kinds of genocidal policies we see in the Israeli state today because they cannot resolve the question of what to do with the indigenous people who are not "us".
Zionism is a political ideology and a racist state building project. Period. The ethnocidal policies of Japan respecting the Ainu people was an equally racist state building project. The difference between 21st century Japan and 21st century Israel is that one of those two countries has acknowledged the error of their ways.
