https://www.haaretz.com/food/2026-07-18/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/before-1948-hummus-was-an-arab-food-most-european-jews-never-ate-it/0000019f-6ac5-de8e-afff-fbff81000000

In light of recent news of the impending rollout of Israel's concentration camp in Gaza, I thought this would be fitting to repost.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2025-07-10/ty-article-opinion/israel-wants-to-build-the-most-moral-concentration-camp-in-the-world/00000197-f0b3-d963-addf-f4b7029a0000

Jacob Israël de Haan was a Dutch lawyer, journalist and poet. A queer man, de Haan published one of the first Dutch novels depicting a homosexual relationship between two men. After becoming interested in Zionism and Jewish nationalism, de Haan emigrated to Palestine in 1918. Not long after he arrived, he disavowed Zionism due to his sympathy with Arabs and his dismay at the conditions the Zionists were creating.

“Two thousand years of exile and unhappiness have taught them [the Zionists] nothing. Instead of making an attempt to understand the innermost causes of our unhappiness they now try to circumvent it, as it were, by building a “national home” on foundations provided by Western power politics: and in the process of building a national home, they are committing the crime of depriving another people of its home.” — Jacob Israel de Haan, in conversation with Mohammed Asad, 1924

De Haan increasingly grew religious, joined the Haredi community of Jerusalem and became their legal representation. As the main representative of the anti-zionist Haredi Jews, he met regularly with Arab leaders and took an important role in the local and regional opposition to Zionism. 

After multiple threats to his life, on June 30, 1924, he was assassinated by Avraham Tehomi of the Haganah, a Zionist militia that would later become the IDF. He was assassinated the morning he was supposed to leave for London to argue for anti-Zionism. This was the first Zionist political assassination in Mandate Palestine.

“I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (the second president of Israel 1952-1963)... I have no regrets because he (de Haan) wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism.” —Avraham Tehomi, the confessed assassin

Despite his homosexuality, he is honored today by Neturei Karta as hero and a martyr.

Sources:

Bush, Lawrence. "June 30: Jacob Israel de Haan” Jewish Currents Magazine, 2014
https://jewishcurrents.org/june-30-jacob-israel-de-haan

Drishya. "The Queer Dissident Zionism Could Not Contain: Jacob Israël de Haan" The Polis Project. April 2026. https://thepolisproject.com/read/jacob-israel-de-haan-queer-anti-zionist/

Giebelas, Ludy. “Jacob Israel de Haan in Mandate Palestine: Was the Victim of the First Zionist Political Assassination a ‘Jewish Lawrence of Arabia’?” Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 46, 2014, pp. 107–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43855720

Witt, Nathan. “Jacob Israel de Haan: A Queer and Lapsed Zionist in Mandate Palestine. Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 87, Autumn 2021. Institute for Palestine Studies. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1651902

Algeria is often cited as the example of decolonisation where the revolution was completed and the settlers were all kicked out. Accordingly, it is proposed that Palestine follow this strategy and aim for the “removal of all settlers”. This is contrasted with alternative examples of “coexistence”, primarily South Africa, where much of the modern economic power is still controlled by “former settlers”.

This fundamentally misunderstands Algeria—it wasn’t “kick out all the French”, it was “become Algerian citizens, reside under Algerian Law, or leave”. This was the agreement proposed to the Pied-Noirs by the FLN in 1954 and agreed on with France in 1962. Most were stuck in their colonial identity, feared retribution or the loss of their economic privileges and left, but many stayed and remain to this day as Algerians.

The Algerian solution is therefore perfectly compatible with the concept of One Democratic State. Equal rights for all on the basis of citizenship, dissolve the settler-native dichotomy. However, each situation is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For example, Algeria was part of France, a single metropole, of which all settlers (even those who had lived there for generations) were citizens.

This means that after the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian state, ex-Israelis will have to weigh matters related to their practical ability to leave and their readiness to drop colonial privileges, and many will mirror the Pied-Noirs and choose to leave. Meanwhile, matters regarding justice and reparations for Palestinians will have to be addressed as a foundation for liberation and a democratic legitimacy. History can teach lessons about such situations, but every material circumstance is unique and must be treated as such.

A month ago, I launched a small initiative in Gaza called Catchup.

The idea was simple: provide university students with free access to a workspace, electricity, and internet so they could continue studying and working.

Today, the first group of 26 students completed their first month.

In a place where electricity, internet, and even a quiet place to sit cannot be taken for granted, seeing students show up every day, work on their courses, attend online classes, and continue moving forward has been one of the most meaningful things I have experienced.

These photos are from the space over the past few weeks.

I wanted to share them because amid everything happening in Gaza, there are still people trying to build something, learn something, and keep going.

I understand a lot of people feel he doesn’t go far enough and I get that line of thinking. However I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that a Holocaust scholar, and not only one but a very famous one, is decrying Zionism as a dead ideology. Most Holocaust institutions are forcing their employees to either support Israel and do Never Again is Now events and decry pro-Palestinian protesters as evil, or at the very least, say nothing and have no public opinion. It may not be far enough but it’s huge. And huge that he’s using the g-word publicly.

Having tenure and being a dean means he can kind of do what he likes, which many people don’t have that luxury.

(Peter Beinart talk to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, U.S. sanctioning ICC over Benjamin Netanyahu warrant, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Gaza, West Bank, Ariel Sharon, Illegal settlements, empowering settler violence, Salam Fayyad 2013, October 7 2023, Hamas)

Link to full documentary here: https://youtu.be/ezh2Hwn5dt0

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

Hello group, not sure if this is the right place to ask but as a non-Jew who is anti-zionist and against anti-semitism…I didn’t pay much attention to the plight of what’s happening in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine until Oct 7th…and that’s on me. I’ve been doing my best to research what I can so I know how to talk to people about the situation going on and the issues with it. I can’t imagine how my Jewish homies must feel being promised a safe home for the Jewish people only for it to end up being a militarized colonial state. One thing I can’t find a concrete answer to is if Einstein was Zionist. I’m fishing a lot of mixed information on his history of Zionism. Is there an article anywhere that I can read or several articles? Thanks for listening and helping me out. ❤️.

Jacob Israël de Haan was a Dutch lawyer, journalist and poet. A queer man, de Haan published one of the first Dutch novels depicting a homosexual relationship between two men. After becoming interested in Zionism and Jewish nationalism, de Haan emigrated to Palestine in 1918. Not long after he arrived, he disavowed Zionism due to his sympathy with Arabs and his dismay at the conditions the Zionists were creating.

Two thousand years of exile and unhappiness have taught them [the Zionists] nothing. Instead of making an attempt to understand the innermost causes of our unhappiness they now try to circumvent it, as it were, by building a “national home” on foundations provided by Western power politics: and in the process of building a national home, they are committing the crime of depriving another people of its home. — Jacob Israel de Haan, in conversation with Mohammed Asad, 1924

De Haan increasingly grew religious, joined the Haredi community of Jerusalem and became their legal representation. As the main representative of the anti-zionist Haredi Jews, he met regularly with Arab leaders and took an important role in the local and regional opposition to Zionism. 

After multiple threats to his life, on June 30, 1924, he was assassinated by Avraham Tehomi of the Haganah, a Zionist militia that would later become the IDF. This was the first Zionist political assassination in Mandate Palestine.

“I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (the second president of Israel 1952-1963)... I have no regrets because he (de Haan) wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism.” —Avraham Tehomi, the confessed assassin 

Despite his homosexuality, he is honored today by Neturei Karta as hero and a martyr.

sources:

Bush, Lawrence. "June 30: Jacob Israel de Haan” Jewish Currents Magazine, 2014

Giebels, Ludy. “Jacob Israel de Haan in Mandate Palestine: Was the Victim of the First Zionist Political Assassination a ‘Jewish Lawrence of Arabia’?” Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 46, 2014, pp. 107–29. 

Nathan Witt. “Jacob Israel de Haan: A Queer and Lapsed Zionist in Mandate Palestine. Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 87, Autumn 2021

In Canada, there has been a lot of controversy over a new exhibition at the Canadian Human Rights Museum titled "Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present". Before the exhibition even opened, various Zionist groups tried for months to remove it, delay its opening, or subject it to additional external consultation. The main point raised by critics is that the exhibition's discussion of the Nakba does not present adequate historical "context", meaning it doesn't sufficiently discuss/highlight Arab states' aggression toward Israel or Arab states' expulsion of their own Jewish residents. This has been all over the Canadian news for the past few weeks.

While there's a lot of discussion to be had about how a human rights museum should present history, etc., the controversy has gotten me interested in how Zionists understand the Nakba. I understand that the "context" critics of the exhibition point to is true--although I'm not super well-versed in the details. Still, much of the online discourse seems to suggest things like, for example, that the "Nakba" only refers to Arab states' failed attempt to destroy the Israeli state and/or all Jews in Israel, and that it is somehow false to say the "Nakba" refers to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Israel. I've even seen Zionists suggest that the term "Nakba" itself is anti-Semitic, presumably because (in their view) the whole of the Nakba is a biased misrepresentation of history.

What I don't understand is how the Zionist worldview justifies or accounts for the central facts of the Nakba, which as I understand it includes the facts that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes and forcibly removed from their lands, that this was orchestrated by Israeli Jews and the Israeli state, that it created an enormous population of stateless people that persists to today, and that the Israeli state continues to prevent that population and its descendants from returning to or making any claims for the land they inhabited. How is it that Zionists believe it is factually incorrect or biased to say that these things happened? Even if there is important context to these events (obviously, there is always context to any historical event), how do Zionists account for these central facts?

Videos:

https://x.com/HatsOffff/status/2093436405980463583

Article:

• LA Times - Colonel Says Rabin Ordered Breaking of Palestinians’ Bones

Book excerpt:

The footage was blurry, filmed by the photojournalist at a distance, using a long-distance lens as a protective strategy against potential military retribution. The Palestinian youths at its center—cousins Wa’al and Usama Joudeh—are seen seated, their arms tied behind their back, as a group of four soldiers kick and beat them, endeavoring to break their bones with rocks. The attack was protracted and meticulous. “The soldiers do not seem to be in any danger,” an Israeli reporter would note later, “nor do they seem disturbed by the events. They are utterly focused on meting out the beating.”6

[...]The entirety of the footage—some thirty minutes in length—was never screened on Israeli television. Only a portion would be aired on the evening news following orders from the head of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA). The damage would be too substantial, he argued, should Israeli viewers see it all.10 The video quickly circulated within international media outlets, and massive outcry followed: “the incident aroused a storm of protest, and Israeli embassies in Washington, London, Paris, and Amsterdam were flooded with angry calls. In some countries the incident sparked anti-Israel demonstrations.”11 In Nicosia, a mob attacked the Israeli embassy, barely restrained by the police. In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Elie Wiesel would note that “I have never seen such intense hatred for Israel in the world.”12

The Israeli national conversation about the footage focused on questions of military strategy and soldier practice. Within the pages of the press, and on the floor of the Israeli parliament, debates ensued concerning best “methods for acting successfully against the Arab rioters.”13 Some parliamentarians proposed a journalist ban from the occupied territories: “it has become apparent that the rioters in Judea and Samaria and Gaza are staging disturbances because of the media presence.”14 The military responded by tightening press access. The four soldiers involved were given brief custodial sentences and eventually returned to their units. The Israeli parliament declined to investigate Rabin’s role.15

• Stein, Rebecca L.. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) (pp. 157-158). (Function). Kindle Edition.