dead1 wroteJews have been persecuted for over 2,000 years wherever they live.So why are you against a homeland that at least offers some sort of security against potential aggressors and one that promotes the rights of Jews?
I started typing a long and detailed answer, but accidentally closed the window and lost it all! So I'll try and be brief and probably lose you all with the lack of detail, but I could write about this for hours because it's a deep and fascinating topic with real personal meaning for me. I've come from being a Jewish supporter of Israel to being an atheist non-supporter, and I'm still torn at times. So looking at this broad and complex matter bluntly and quickly - making it clear that I don't want to dismantle Israel or destroy it with nuclear weapons or whatever, this is just why I think Israel as a state should not have been brought into being.
Zionism is, again, a nationalist political movement that accepts as truth the idea that Jews will always be persecuted, wherever they are. Clearly, nowadays when Jews are accepted as equals in what, nearly all countries around the world, this is proven untrue. And that's basically it! The father of Zionism -
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl</a>
was a secular Jew who believed this and wanted to set up a kind of utopian society where non-Jews were treated equally under a Third-Way economic system. Palestine wasn't even on offer at first, he took a British offer of part of Uganda on board at first -
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Uganda_Programme">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Uganda_Programme</a>
He offended a lot of secular Jews with this idea, as well as religious Jews who were put off by the anti-religious aspects of Zionism. So who wanted Israel? Jews, or Zionists? The two only became one group as the idea grew with popularity, and nowadays Jewish Zionism is common. But at first, they were very diverse ideologies.
Elsewhere, does Israel offer security when they've fought wars since the day it was established, when terrorist organisations commit actions like suicide bombings and civilian attacks? Not at all, it's far safer in the west, even with events like 9/11. Does Israel offer rights, when religious Jews were oppressed from the moment they arrived there, when those of Sephardic (eastern) background are treated even nowadays as second-class citizens by the (European) Ashkenazi? Blame class differences if you like (trapt!) but Israel is far from the tolerant ideal of Herzl even before we consider the Palestinians.
So, to me, Israel was set up under a false premise, and philosophically I believe that it should not exist. Practically, I accept that it exists and that there now exists a group of people called Israelis who have a right to their country. But because of the long-standing ill-treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis, something that rankled even whilst I still considered myself Jewish, I can't support an Israeli state that so violates my beliefs of freedom and fairness. Even were I to accept that Jews need a state of their own to escape persecution, the benefits of such have been outweighed by all the bloodshed since, on both sides.
