 Hi friends and subscribers welcome back to my youtube channel this is Daniel Rosal and this channel focuses mostly on videos about Jerusalem and Israel Recently many of us have been partaking in some very heated online exchanges about the evolving security picture in Israel and Those of us who are pro-israel in our views have surely come up against the following contention used countless times by those we're arguing with I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm just anti-Zionist In this video I'm going to argue that opposing Zionism is basically an un-Jewish and anti-Jewish thing to do and that anti-Zionists are whether Intentionally or not therefore qualified as anti-Semites. This might be a controversial take and it's not one that everybody will like or appreciate But hey, I don't put these videos out to be uncontroversial It's going to involve looking at Judaism and Zionism and spoiler alert It's going to argue that Zionism is an inextricable part of the religion ready. Let's begin Judaism is a religion that's existed in some form for more than 3500 years According to Jewish tradition the biblical figure of Abraham is considered to be the first Jew in recorded history Judaism began in the ancient region of Canaan, which today is encompassed by Israel Judaism as a religion was always intended to be practiced in the land of Israel The land of Israel or Eretz Israel and Hebrew is a territory That's not exactly synonymous with the confines and borders of the modern state of Israel the term infers rather territory Which enjoys a unique elevated religious status in Judaism, but for the purpose of simplification Let's assume that the two are almost one in the same The backbone of Judaism as a unique religion and way of life could be said to be a list of 613 commandments or mitzvot that are set out in the Jewish Bible in Jewish practice These are subject to expounding and debate in Judaism's oral law before being finally codified as halacha or binding spiritual practice A substantial percentage of these laws as they apply today can only be followed in the land of Israel According to one count There are 26 different commandments that only apply within the parameters of the land of Israel Including the mandate to let agriculture land lie fallow every seven years a practice called Shemitah in Hebrew and separating a ties of produce for a Kohen In fact the Judaism of the biblical era was centered around an elaborate series of rituals that took as their center point on earth A temple in Jerusalem the destruction of the second of those two temples was seen as something of a nadir in Jewish history And that date is marked to this day by a fast and other morning practices These take place on the ninth day of Av in the Jewish calendar called Tisha be Av in Hebrew The Jewish liturgy is full of references to being forced out of the land of Israel due to our sins One of the only parts of the Torah that Jews are allowed to learn on Tisha be Av Dwells upon what sins on the part of the Jews could have prompted the divine decree that allowed for the destruction of the temple Of course, Judaism is an organized religion And although I rarely touched upon religion in this youtube channel God is kind of the integral character to this whole picture here the return on mass to the land of Israel That took place in 1948 is therefore seen by many commentators as the happening that manifested in plain sight Divine intervention some even see it as the first flourishing of the messianic era Seen thusly if we see the Jews forced exile from their land at the hands of the Romans as evidence of divine displeasure Zionism marked a reversal of that historic misfortune. This simple narrative however obscures a couple of truths For one Jews never entirely left the land of Israel And of course when the Jews returned to that land in 1948 other people had since begun living there This is essentially the genesis of the israel-palestinian conflict And well as to say that that's a whole separate topic for another time But Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel marked a major turning point in the history of Judaism and the fortunes of the Jewish people an event which marked the possibility of ending a nomadic existence as a diasporic people in favor of returning to our historic homeland Zionism is called Zionism by the way because Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem that appears in the bible as a sort of symbol and Metaphor for Jerusalem as a whole in the bible It connotes Jerusalem during the time of the temple later it came to denote the Jerusalem We know today that is bereft of such a structure either way Although Zionism as an organized national political movement emerged long after the birth of Judaism as a religion Many understand it at best as a kind of reactionary movement Because if Jews were never uprooted from the land of Israel in the first place There would simply be no need for Zionism because we never would have left Israel But as Jews were forced to leave Israel It's the national liberation movement that reforged the unbreakable connection between the Jewish people And this tiny patch of land in the Middle East It's true that not all Jews live in Israel and that many of them continue to live in the Jewish diaspora by choice It's also probably true that assessing what percentage of Jews identify as Zionists is likely impossible Nevertheless, I would challenge that it's likely to be extremely high While a very small minority of Jews hold the opinion that Jewish self-determination in Israel is forbidden by Jewish law At least without what they consider to be manifestly divine intervention The percentage of Jews who feel that way is an awful lot smaller than the many photos are taken in would lead you to believe Judaism is a religion and Zionism is a question with religious import And for the vast majority of world Jews Zionism is part and parcel of the faith In the context of the broad sway of Jewish history, how could it be seen in any other light? Non-Jews, of course, love to take intellectual cover from this tiny minority of anti-Zionist Jews And explain to Jews that Zionism isn't authentically Jewish and that rather it's a kind of dirty political appendage to their Judaism But that really couldn't be any further from the truth Zionism may be both nationalistic and political in character But it's also authentically Jewish as much at least as Moses, Jerusalem and king david So can you really oppose Zionism without opposing Jews themselves? Well, that's kind of a bit like saying that you love and support Americans But you also waste that they didn't have a homeland in the usa and that the us didn't exist Denying people the right to self-determination and to practice their religion fully and freely isn't love And it's a perversion of support want to get more videos from me about Jerusalem and Israel. Please subscribe to receive more videos