A note about Israel

This keeps coming up. So a quick note about Israel.

If you cannot clearly identify and distinguish the differences between all of these things …

• Zionism as a historical movement
• Zionism as a contemporary political position
• the state of Israel as a geopolitical entity
• the process by which the state of Israel was founded
• the state of Israel's right to exist
• the history of Israel's policies
• Israel's current policies
• Jewish ethnic identity
• Jewish religious identity
• Jewish racialized identity
• the religion of Judaism
• 1967
• 1948
• The Balfour Declaration

… then your opinion about Israel is not informed enough to be relevant.

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Update:

I've had some people suggest to me that this post implies a position on Israel's policies. Since the policy positions people have inferred from this post have never matched my actual position, I think I can rightly claim that any implications you read in this post reflect not me, but Something Else.

My point is neither more nor less than that the atmosphere is full of bullshit about Israel pointed in many different directions. It is hard to develop an informed opinion in this environment, and unless you do the work to become informed, you will fall into somebody's trap.