HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: I saw someone describe Zionism as “the right of self-determination of the Jewish ...

I saw someone describe Zionism as

“the right of self-determination of the Jewish people in their historic homeland”

and yeah! That doesn’t sound bad! I would like Jewish people to enjoy self-determination in Israel/Palestine and, you know, everywhere else too! I want that for everyone everywhere!

The problem, though, is that “self-determination” isn’t being used here to describe actual individual freedom or free communities. Baked into this definition is *exclusionary sovereignty* that is embodied not in individual and autonomous people, but in “THE Jewish people” as a corporate body.

And this, more than anything else, is why there is endless violence: because while self-determination is inherently pluralistic—we are most free when we cooperate voluntarily in communities of equally free people—sovereignty is exclusionary. For “the Jewish people” to have their own state, the Palestinian people had to be excluded from their homes or reduced to subordinate and inferior status within Israel.

State sovereignty, like the private property model that is the other side of its coin, doesn’t allow for overlapping rights or shared ownership. You’re an owner or you’re not; you’re a full citizen or you’re not.