An Infinite Path

One must begin by refusing the usual grunt and eye roll worthy tired blackmail: that any criticism of Israeli Zionism is antisemitic, being a prejudice or hatred toward all Jews. That vulgar conflation is not only so disingenuous, but has done immense intellectual and moral damage.Zionism, in its political form, is a 19th-century nationalist project, born in the age of ethnic romanticism and imperial cartography. It proposed, quite explicitly, that people of Jewish faith were not merely adherents of a religion or participants in a rich, diasporic civilization, but a singular nation that required territorial consolidation in historic Palestine. That proposition, even before one examines its consequences, is already a narrowing of Jewish identity. It reduces a vast, plural, diasporic tradition into something closer to a flag and a border. Now, how does this harm Jews?These insight sub-episodes are mirrored on our primary YouTube channel which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@NilesHeckman/videos