Albert Einstein: Anti-zionist, Anti-Israel

Cypress said:
Zionism is a loaded word which requires discretion when it is invoked.

The cultural Zionism Einstein supported seems perfectly reasonable to me: the right of Jewish people to return to live in their ancestral homeland in the Levant.

The nationalist Zionism of establishing an independent Jewish political nation state was what Einstein opposed, and that seems wise to me

Shorter story: Jewish cultural identity okay. Jewish nationalism at the expense of others = questionable.
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Agreed. I think that was the point of Asquith's 'Jewish National Home', as opposed to the current racist regime occupying Palestine. Some sort of centre where their Book came from once upon a time was fine with almost everyone: large-scale settlement was another matter, and came about as a result of general horror at the nazi death camps and the trump-like horror of the Allied governments at the thought of housing all those displaced persons after the War.
 
Throughout Einstein’s life, he had been devoted to Zionist causes. His papers are featured by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In part, Einstein was responsible for the formation of the International Rescue Committee in 1933. Einstein advocated for a Jewish homeland throughout his life, which caused a rift for many American Jews during his visit to America in 1921. According to Isaacson in a 2009 article in The Atlantic, Jewish leaders like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter wanted Jewish people to assimilate, not agitate for a homeland.

“Long before the emergence of Hitler I made the cause of Zionism mine because through it I saw a means of correcting a flagrant wrong….The Jewish people alone has for centuries been in the anomalous position of being victimized and hounded as a people, though bereft of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has,” Einstein wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India
However, while Einstein advocated for a Zionist state, he railed against the “Freedom Party” in Israel that gained prominence during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Einstein was especially critical of Menachen Begin, calling him a “fascist element” in the New York Times. About half a year earlier, the Deir Yassin massacre took place, in which far-right Zionist paramilitary groups killed 107 Palestinian Arabs, including many women and children.

https://medium.com/frame-of-referen...jected-being-president-of-israel-7d5acc7280a6
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Notice the reason. Einstein had just lived through the fucking Holocaust. I'm certain he didn't want to give any assholes a reason to have a second one. Einstein was speaking out of fear for his people, not that he thought Zionism was wrong.
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You actually are speaking for Albert Einstein?

I think most people will give that all the credibility it deserves.

Bye now.
 
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