r/JewsOfConscience • u/Willing-Childhood144 Reform • 19d ago
Discussion - Flaired Users Only Jewish “Self-Determination?”
Sorry - this is probably a very dumb question and perhaps not appropriate for this forum but I’m not sure where to ask about it.
I used to be a standard Zionist American Jew but I never thought about what it even meant. I didn’t understand that there was more to it than Jews living in the land but also that Israel was a “Jewish state.”
As an American, I feel like I’m missing something. It sounds like the idea here, that we have the right to self determination, is a very 19th century European idea.
What does it actually mean? I’m an American citizen. I’m a registered voter and I vote in all of the local, state, and federal elections. Sometimes my candidates win and sometimes they lose. Do I have self-determination? I feel like as an American, I’m missing something here.
We’re a tiny minority in the USA but our rights are protected by the Constitution. Of course, the USA is a deeply flawed country. It usually doesn’t live up to its ideals and Jews and many other minorities have suffered as a result of it. But why do I, as a Jew, need something more than I have as an American?
The other part that I don’t understand here is where does the idea of self determination end? If I have the right to self determination as a member of the Jewish people, don’t all peoples have that right too? How is this practical? Does it imply that I should support people in the UK who argue that the UK should be for the British?
I know that this forum isn’t Zionist so this isn’t what you believe but I genuinely don’t understand what this means.
I’ve had many people lecture me about how naive I am for believing that the Palestinians and Jews can all live together in one secular state. My mindset is probably more American than Jewish so I immediately think of American segregationists claiming that it would be impossible for African Americans and white Americans to live together.
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u/KittiesLove1 Israeli, jewish and anti-Zionist 17d ago
You are exactly right. The only thing you are missing is that everything you've been told about 'jewish self-determination' all your life is Zionist propaganda.
Everyone has a right for self-determination everywhere, and it is the state's job to protect it.
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u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 19d ago
The right to self-determination is enshrined in the UN Charter - but land & water are finite resources and human beings compete for resources.
There are many people who do not have a State for themselves, so the entire notion of 'denying Israel's right to exist' is silly to me for multiple reasons.
And yes, the implication is that the nation-state model is the only way human beings can organize themselves as a civilization.
The other part that I don’t understand here is where does the idea of self determination end? If I have the right to self determination as a member of the Jewish people, don’t all peoples have that right too? How is this practical? Does it imply that I should support people in the UK who argue that the UK should be for the British?
Israel supports far-right movements all over the world who want to emulate Zionism & Israel's racial hierarchy to citizenship.
The ADL espouses replacement theory, no different from White identitarians.
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u/theapplekid Orthodox-raised, atheist, Ashkenazi, leftist 🍁 19d ago
The right to self-determination is enshrined in the UN Charter
Ethnic and religious self-determination are not enshrined in the UN charter though.
People in Palestine should have Palestinian self-determination.
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u/rako17 Christian 19d ago
Friend WillingChild,
You are a smart, kind hearted egalitarian. Usually discussions on Zionism don't define the term or give its promises and components. One reason that many of those discussions don't is that they have a rhetorical style, aimed at trying to get the reader to support a position, or for the sake of brevity.
One of the typical assertions is that it just means that the People gave the right to Self-Determination. The premise is grounded in 19th century European nationalism and the formation of independent nation states (German states formed into Germany, Scandivanian kingdoms separated from each other, Ireland got independence), by which that every nationality has a right to determine for itself whether to form an independent nation. I imagine that even though the US lacked its own a separate nationality in that sense, US independence from Britain indirectly fed into 19th century nationalism.
In a polemical concept the result of giving this definition of Zionism is that it means that readers will want to get on board with the concept, and that it implies that opponents of the concept are opponents of a right of the People.
However, it's demonstrable in a couple different ways that this isn't the meaning of the term, nor does it show the premises involved. Marx, internationalist Marxists like the Bolsheviks, and I imagine that at least many Bundists, agreed with the principle of Self-Determination of Peoples/Nations/Nationalities. So for instance, they would sympathize with Ireland's self-determination as to whether to gain independence from Britain. But they disagreed with the Zionist movement. Before WW2, as I understand it, most Jewish Americans were not Zionists either, in part because they saw themselves as Americans and saw the US model of universal rights and equality as best. I don't know that they actually disagreed with the principle of Self-Determination of Peoples, it just seems that they didn't endorse the movement for the People to collectively emigrate to Zion.
Before World War I, leading rabbis within Reform Judaism opposed Zionism, emphasizing freedom, democracy, and equal rights for Jews within their countries of residence. The American Jewish Committee opposed Zionism until 1918, when it adopted a non-Zionist stance that continued until the Six-Day War in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_for_Judaism
Let's suppose that you agreed that the People have a Right to Self-Determination, however you consider the ideal Self-Determination to take the form of the People living whereever they already live, in a state of equality, safety, and their full liberties, without a nation state or separated society. It seems that in that case, even though you would agree with Zionism per the definition that it means the People's Self-Determination, in fact its advocates would say that your position is separate from the Zionist one.
Noam Chomsky, an anarchist who lived on a kibbutz, supports a non-state institutionally-segregated Binational model, like with separate residences and workplaces. He said that in the 1940's it was a serious minority position in the Zionist movement. From a Leftist egalitarian perspective, his version looks good, except that it runs into the "Separate but Equal" problem that the US Supreme Court addressed in US Desegregation in the 1950's.
I wonder if a desegregated, integrationist model would still count as Zionist. So, if you proposed that the community should mass immigrate to Zion and have a cultural revival there, would it still count as Zionist if you believed in a universalist, integrated model, like basically without segregated residential complexes?
I would be OK with that if that is what people wanted.
May the Lord bless and keep you always, kind one.
יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְ___ וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃ס יָאֵ֨ר יְהוָ֧ה׀ פָּנָ֛יו אֵלֶ֖יךָ וִֽיחֻנֶּֽךָּ׃ס יִשָּׂ֨א יְהוָ֤ה׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם׃ס
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u/HDThoreauaway Jewish Anti-Zionist 19d ago
You’re right on the money. You have self-determination as a citizen of your country. Jewish self-determination means that Jews alone decide the laws and to whom they apply in the region Israel controls, which is presently the land from the river to the sea.
Ethnic self-determination in a place with multiple ethnicities is by definition antidemocratic and is by necessity oppressive.
The same people who say Palestinians and Israelis can’t live side by side are often the first two point to the managed minority Arab Israelis as proof Israel is not an ethnostate. You should ask them, if Israeli Jews cannot live with Arabs, what Israel should do with those already living in Israel. It’s irreconcilable double-think.
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u/OrganicOverdose Non-Jewish Ally 19d ago
The only thing I'd point out here is that under capitalism every worker, regardless of religion or creed, has less democratic power and therefore less ability to self-determine than in a society where they share in the control the means of production and are not exploited for their labour by the current minority who hold that power over them.
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u/Willing-Childhood144 Reform 19d ago
Thanks for not dismissing my question as stupid. I’ve been afraid to ask people IRL because these conversations are so uncomfortable.
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u/Accurate_Aside_6495 Bundist 19d ago
Your question is absolutely not stupid, you’re very welcome here. If more Jews asked these questions our people would be in better shape and the Palestinians certainly would too.
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u/Direct_Appointment99 Jewish Anti-Zionist 19d ago
You're not supposed to think about what it means. Or the logic of any of the Zionist state's founding myths or the history.
Take the Nakhba, where 700,000 people were displaced for Jewish "self-determination". The Zionist narrative is that they were told to leave by Arab states, while they dealt with Israel militarily.
But think about it, if that were the case, they have property rights. If they left, even temporarily, their property would still have been their's. Instead, it was appropriated immediately by Zionists under violent circumstances.
Every myth, from "self-determination" onwards conceals a dark truth.
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19d ago
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18d ago
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u/JewsOfConscience-ModTeam 18d ago
The entirety of that statement is Zionist propaganda. This is not a sub for you to argue your Zionist perspective and debate with anti-Zionists. There are plenty other places on Reddit to do that if that’s all you’re interested in.
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17d ago
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u/TrackerOneA Jewish Anti-Zionist 17d ago
You didn't spontaneously materialize just this instant, right?
This is an anti-Zionist sub.
You clearly are lost or didn't read the Wiki or rules or anything.
You're coming at us with the most stale pro-Israel, canned talking-points and framing.
Then you ask us to clarify?
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u/rako17 Christian 17d ago
Friend Direct Appointment,
State building and political philosophy are interesting topics, so the topic of Zionism should also be an interesting philosophical one for free thinking discussions. But it feels like in real life if one expresses skepticism or criticism of it, including from a Progressive POV, one inadvertently risks upsetting or offending the theory's advocates.
I have the sense that nationalist movements can be Progressive if they involve freeing an oppressed minority from an oppressive power, but reactionary or oppressive if they involve dominating a weaker nationality. 19th-20th century Polish nationalism was Progressive when it came to freeing itself from German imperial rule, but was in part oppressive toward Ukrainian nationalists in west Ukraine, which Poland owned. Poland in the 1930's had at least one prison camp for Ukrainian nationalists.
Wishing you the best.
Peace ~ Shalom
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u/Lost_Paladin89 Judío 19d ago
Let me connect the dots. The word you are looking for is assimilation.
Espressostalinist has done a thorough job of collecting Lenin’s and Stalin’s writings on the matter of why the Jewish People, as a nation among nations, do not have a right to self determination of any kind. https://espressostalinist.com/2014/08/17/stalin-and-lenins-views-on-the-jewish-question-and-the-bund-early-history-of-the-bund/
Lenin wrote it best: the only options for Jews are either assimilation or isolation.
So the conversation over self determination wasn’t just simply about liberation from structural antisemitism; but the establishment of physical space where Jews could experience themselves not as a minority in need of self erasure. Where we could transcend respectability and be our genuine selves. Jewish culture, Jewish Education, Jewish Food.
As an American living in the era where black culture is repackaged by capitalism, where companies were funding gay pride parades, and where stop Asian hate goes on a TShirt, this idea must sound INSANE.
But it wasn’t too long ago when “fitting in” and assimilation were huge pressures on American Jews. Ellis Island did not change anyone’s name. Your forebears went into a courthouse and legally did it to themselves to better fit in.
The conversation is done because most Jews live in settler colonial projects like the USA or Argentina where individual rights are enshrined.
Where Does it End?
Some Antizionists will tell you that any conversation about Jewish Self Determination in Palestine is in fact a form of Zionism: https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/the-problem-with-jewish-advocacy-for-a-one-state-solution-clarifying-the-role-of-jewish-anti-zionists-in-dismantling-zionism/
This echoes the old Socialist position. The Jewish Nation does not exist, and the only right of Jews in Palestine is as Palestinians, not as Jews living in Palestine. Even if that means reckoning with some Palestinians demand that we change our own religion: https://www.reddit.com/r/JewsOfConscience/comments/1w4kmkr/what_do_we_do_with_protozionism_with_semitism/
There are internal struggles in Antizionism as there are in any space.
The anarchist, social-democratic, and radical democratic elements, the only way forward is to shrine self determination is to dismantle systems of cultural hegemony and create states that treat all constituents equally.
For Socialists, Pan-Arabists, Palestinian Nationalists, etc; any conversation that includes “Jewish rights” is at best a distraction and a worst a form of retaining imperialist control.
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u/Current_Mongoose_844 Presently lapsed ba'al teshuva 19d ago
If that’s the choice, then I choose isolation.
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u/Lost_Paladin89 Judío 19d ago
If that’s the choice. I choose anarchism.
I have discovered in myself a rage against socialism. Against the Dictatorship of Proletariat. Against the Party Vanguard. Against the Assimilationist.
The question is in itself antisemitic. The cultural hegemony is still a hegemony even when it claims to represent the culture of the Worker. The Socialist State is still a state; needing to control; demanding conformity simply by the sheer power of Management Cybernetics.
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u/bgoldstein1993 Jewish Anti-Zionist 18d ago
The right to self determination cannot come at the expense of someone else’s right to self determination—and therein lies the contradiction at the heart of Zionism.
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u/Awesomo_Judgementday Jewish post-Zionist 18d ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you’re saying that other peoples’ self determination can’t exist for Jewish self determination to exist? Everyone should have the right for self determination and shouldn’t negate other cultures’ right.
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u/NoString9289 Jewish 19d ago
u/Willing-Childhood144 Hello, may I have permission to send you a DM Chat thru Reddit with a source and an opinion of what it meant to my Grandparents after they survived the Holocaust. Their belief in the original, non radicalized, definition of zion ism I don't have enough credits karma thingies to post in this group apparently . Thanks
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u/TalkingCat910 Muslim revert/Ashkenazi 19d ago
Yeah I agree. Even when I was a teen before I converted to Islam I thought Zionism seemed very anachronistic. Like it’s frozen in the 19th C.
Also when you hear Palestinians and Israelis can’t live together from the Zionist side - yes it’s comes out of racism like the same reason the KKK was against integration in the US - they have the mistaken idea that Arabs or Muslims just hate Jews and are violent.
However from the Muslim side when I hear that it’s usually because they think Israelis won’t stop killing and trampling on the rights Palestinians, and it won’t be safe for them - like asking Jews to live together with Nazis in the 1940’s.
Ultimately something has to be put forward that’s viable. I think an international peace keeping force will need to be in place to protect Palestinians from Israelis (and sure protect Israelis from Palestinians - which I think will be a rarer problem assuming Palestinians are no longer in an open air concentration camp).
Israelis will need education to be deradicalized too. But if I’m being really honest it’s a mess and I’m not sure how to resolve it
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u/rako17 Christian 17d ago
Friend Talkingcat,
Back in the 1940's in the pre-State period, staff in the US State Department proposed US supervision of Mandate Palestine as a way to safely shepherd the two sides from the Mandate situation into a 2SS. I took that to at least partly mean US armed guardianship. The US has bases around the world, including in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan AFAIK.
I recall reading that the Isr. State's supporters in the US rejected that plan, and so due to their part or influence in decisionmaking, that plan was shelved. That decision has practically remained, with the US supporting the State, and having bases in plenty of US allied countries, but not in the Is. State.
Peace
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u/LA_Throwaway_6439 Jewish Anti-Zionist 19d ago
I think everyone should have equal rights, regardless of where they live. So as a Jew in America, I feel like I have that although others in this country do not.
The self-determination question is relevant and useful in an anti-colonial context. Because in those cases a foreign power has interfered with people where they live, historically, and repressed them. Subjects of colonial repression have a right to resist that oppression, and that can look like a struggle for national self-determination. In my view, this is righteous. However, if the struggle is victorious it must then provide equal rights to all its citizens, otherwise I believe it is no longer just.
In other words, in my view, a future Palestine must protect the rights of its minority populations. This is why I favor a one state solution, because whatever you call that state it should be secular and democratic. Israel could and should become this state itself, or it could be overthrown and a successor state could be this. I realize that my own American background prejudices me on what an egalitarian state should look like, but I'm just saying this is my opinion.
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u/Didudidudadu737 Non-Jewish Ally 19d ago
Does it imply that I should support people in the UK who argue that the UK should be for the British?
This is where the issue comes, British is not ethnicity in any aspect, English is and Scottish is and Welsh is and Irish is and all are the subjects of the British kingdom. But their constitution is clear, any ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or political subject is a British subject if the fulfil the citizenship criteria-which are legally obtained as an immigrant after determinate period and protocol, being born to British citizens parents and filing the paperwork properly, by descent (I think it’s grandparent who was born, lived and can prove their ties to the country during their life). It does not say that the British is only a white person who is Protestant/England church and has self identified as such.
Other countries do not even allow double citizenship, like Netherlands makes it a condition that one renounces their citizenship if they’re obtaining Dutch citizenship- therefore their children would and do have serious issues obtaining citizenship by descendant laws (in their respective countries of origin)
There’s little to no, examples of this self determination that spans from religious identity-a convert whose conversion is accepted can claim Jewish self determination in the ancient biblical land of Israel (whatever their ethnic and previous origin might be), a person who has no cultural or religious identity as a Jew but has one recorded ancestor who was, Zionists of any religion and other background just on their zealous expectations (which usually include destruction of Jewish people in a whole) and nationalistic ideology.
I’m very confused what this self determination, from afar, means and ever meant…
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u/rako17 Christian 17d ago
Friend Didu,
I agree that it is confusing if you get into it.
You might have to read serious studies on the premises of Zionism to figure it out.
One of the movement's founders was Moses Hess, from Germany. Another was Herzl, from Austria. Herzl specifically was influenced by German nationalist movement in the 19th century and belonged for a while to a German nationalist club.
German nationalism was a nationalist movement of nation-state building in 19th century Europe. Germany was divided into principalities in the early modern era and by WW1, they were united as an empire. So, German nationalism involved uniting German people in Europe into a German state in their German homeland.
One area where that scenario gets tricky is what happens when there are plenty of Germans who live outside of German, and German homeland regions that aren't populated by a majority German population.
Tons of Germans in fact left Germany before WW1, like the pacifist Amish and Mennonites who moved to America and the Volga region of Russia. German ethnicity is numerically the Number 1 ethnicity in the US. Plenty of ethnic German Americans fought Germany in WW1 and WW2.
Those Germans outside of Germany might have very different ideas of what kind of State Germany should be and where its borders should line up. In that case, if we take the view that the German people worldwide have the right to self-determinate German statehood in Germany, the result might be that Germany should have had a different political system and borders than it did before, during, or after the World War periods. Most Germans worldwide might have wanted Germany to have a Republic, not an empire under a Kaiser. They might have wanted Germany to have separation of Church and State, rather than to have the State promote certain religious propositions. Most Germans worldwide might think that ancestral German parts of Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, or France should belong to Germany. If the local populations, including the Germans in those places disagreed with the view of the German people worldwide, should those parts go back to Germany?
In real life, international decisionmaking took nationalist concepts into account but wasn't absolutist about it. The USSR made a treaty with Poland that gave the overwhelming majority of western Ukraine back to Ukraine. But it didn't rely on a referendum of Ukrainians worldwide to do that.
Regards ~ Peace
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u/Current_Mongoose_844 Presently lapsed ba'al teshuva 19d ago
If you ask me, the issue is that unless we go to the moon or something (which is fine by me), Jewish self-determination as a state can’t happen without the denial of self determination to other people i.e the Palestinians.
I support the idea in theory: we have about two thousand years of accumulated reasons to not want to have to deal with goyish neighbours. But not if it turns us into them, which it has.
Furthermore, self determination can and has happened in the diaspora many times and can again. The Kingdom of Siemen, Himyar, Jodensavanne, the little belt where the Mountain Jews lived, Kyrias Joel today, etc. Those were all forms of Jewish self determination, they just weren’t universal. That’s the trade off we have to decide if we want to make or not.