Yesterday, the Zioness Movement released a very nice pamphlet on how progressive Jews can participate in the current protests while remaining unapologetically Zionist, along with how to answer a number of socialist Left lies about Israel.
Here’s an example:
The loony Left is freaking out, because they can’t stand the fact that supporting Israel is a truly progressive cause. So they are trying very hard to smear the pamphlet, which just makes them look even crazier to anyone besides those who are already divorced from reality:
But calling Israel “racist” and “apartheid” is old and thoroughly discredited. New accusations are interesting. And I saw one – that Jews are not indigenous to Israel, because indigenous doesn’t mean what indigenous means – and using the word properly is close to antisemitic, somehow.
Jacob Ari Labendz is the Clayman Assistant Professor of Judaic and Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies at Youngstown State University.
Later we learn that Ashkenaz Jews are indigenous – to Europe.
Labendz' argument is that "indigeneity is a relational concept in the context of colonialism. It’s not an essential characteristic."
Wikipedia’s definition of indigenous is as good as any (there is no universally accepted definition: )
Indigenous peoples, also known in some regions as First peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal peoples or Native peoples or autochthonous peoples, are ethnic groups who are the original or earliest known inhabitants of an area, in contrast to groups that have settled, occupied or colonized the area more recently. Groups are usually described as indigenous when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with a given region.
Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. ...They are the descendants - according to a common definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.
Since there are no Canaanites or Jebusites or Nabatean peoples around, that means that Jews are the earliest extant inhabitants of Israel. And the Romans, Byzantines, and Muslims who invaded and settled there hundreds or thousands of years later were the colonialists.
While Jewish traditions have changed since then, Jewish laws and customs have remained remarkably stable - prayer in synagogue, regular Torah readings, eating kosher, wearing tefillin, putting up mezuzot, mikveh, holiday observances such as sukkah and matzoh, circumcision. And a large number of Jewish laws are dependent specifically on the land of Israel, such as the sabbatical year and terumat hamaaser.
Jews have kept their traditions over 2000 years at least as much as today's native Americans have kept theirs since the 17th century.
Labendz, however, apparently believes that Jews returning to Zion are the colonialists (or perhaps "settler colonialists.") Even more bizarrely, he thinks that somehow Jews are indigenous to the shtetl and Jewish ghettoes of Europe.
Noting the actual history of Jews and Judah in the Middle East and how they have kept their emotional and religious ties to the Land for 2000 years is, somehow, “verging on antisemitism.” According to modern intellectual bigots, Ashkenaz Jews should embrace the continent that has a history of demeaning them, oppressing them, "otherizing" them and sometimes murdering them as their homeland. The implication is that this is where they belong, in permanent diaspora, as a permanent minority, and any desire they have for self-determination is racist. (This is also Judith Butler's position.)
That sure sounds much closer to antisemitism to me.