In a few days, I will create a poll with the title: โWhat is your opinion of Zionism?โ It will have 11 options:
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1
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5
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The average of all votes will be taken. If the average approval is greater than it 50%, this market will resolve YES. If it is less than or equal to 50%, it will resolve NO.
Please interpret the word โZionismโ however you see appropriate.
1,000๐ Top traders
| # | Trader | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | แน1,182 | |
| 2 | แน74 | |
| 3 | แน63 | |
| 4 | แน61 | |
| 5 | แน49 |
People are also trading
I have a theory that more established Manifold users (users with the most Mana) are older, and therefore have a more positive opinion of Zionism. The more established Manifold users voted in the poll earlier, and bet YES in this market, and therefore, the poll and this market skewed more positive in the beginning. However, younger, less established users eventually pushed the poll below 50%. But the more established users still had the most mana to inaccurately maintain this market above 50% until @Bayesian recalibrated the market.
The final average approval of the poll is 49%
@eliot this is cool! It's at 4.99 right now. I'm confused why you sold YES at 44% ๐ค
@Bayesian At some point you have to wonder if people are voting according to their honest personal opinions or if they are just voting it close to 50%. What if you did the same poll with "will it be over/under 55%"? I wonder if it would get close to 55%. Given how close it is, I expect there are a bunch of people playing with it.
@Bayesian You can try making ANOTHER poll after, and not putting any markets on it. What is your opinion of Zionism? Pay a lot of Mana to advertise to more people to prevent effects from repeating the sample. And see what happens.
Or you can pick a bunch of topics, run just some polls on some and some polls and betting on the 50% on others, betting 60% on others, and so on, and see what happens. You should NOT make a market on the results of that experiment because this could then again bias the experiment. ;P
@nathanwei my prior for the 4.99 number being a coincidence is higher bc i checked throughout the last days and it hung around 4.8, 5.15, stuff like that. I think if we reran the counterfactual poll without the market it would still hang around that. I don't personally want to run that poll for personal reasons but uh it would be interesting if anyone else did lol
@nathanwei It does seem possible that people are artificially balancing the poll so the average is as close to 5 as possible. After this market and the poll is resolved, it would be interesting to re-run the poll without a prediction market to see if the results are different.
@Bayesian Sold at 44% because the votes dropped briefly, and after seeing how close it was, I stopped trusting my gut on holding YES.
Prompt
Right wing zionism, one paragraph.
ChatGPT
Right-wing Zionism in Israel is characterized by a strong emphasis on Jewish sovereignty over the entire historical land of Israel, including areas currently under Palestinian control. Adherents often prioritize security concerns and territorial claims based on religious and historical connections to the land over diplomatic solutions that might involve territorial concessions. This ideological stance typically supports the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and advocates for policies that emphasize the Jewish character of the state. Right-wing Zionists tend to be skeptical of peace negotiations that they perceive as compromising Israel's security or its Jewish identity, and they often hold conservative views on social and cultural issues within Israeli society.
@ICRainbow
Chatgpt:
Left-wing Zionism, also known as socialist Zionism, combines Zionist nationalism with socialist principles, advocating for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine through the lens of social justice, equality, and workers' rights. Originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, figures like Ber Borochov and parties such as Poale Zion were instrumental in its development, emphasizing the importance of Jewish self-labor and the creation of a socialist society in the land of Israel. This movement played a key role in the early Jewish settlement in Palestine, leading to the establishment of kibbutzim and moshavim, communal and cooperative agricultural settlements that embodied its ideals of collective labor and shared resources. Over time, left-wing Zionism has evolved, engaging with broader social and political issues within Israel, including peace initiatives and minority rights, while maintaining its core vision of a socially equitable Jewish state.
(I dont know if Left wing Zionism actually exist)
Yeah, people tend to be pretty uneducated about Zionism. Socialist Zionism dominated the movement for decades, the socialists founded Israel, created the IDF and Israel had 17 socialist governments in a row for three decades until the first Likud government.
That happened because the Mizrahi jews which were massacred and expelled from their home countries in the Middle East and forced to move to Israel started to demographically overtake the left-wing Ashkenazi jews who founded Israel. And the Mizrahi vote Likud.
@ICRainbow Yes, like with everything.
FYI: the current Israeli coalition is a mix of center-right, far right, and extreme right wing zionism. The center-right have rhetoric like "We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly" and โWe will eliminate everything - they will regret it.โ The extreme right hand out automatic rifles to illegal occupants.. It's all very grim.
Zionism, in general, is an ideology which grants and denies rights based on ethnicity.
@GazDownright Hamas are the human animals, and "we will eliminate everything" refers to everything Hamas, not everything in Gaza.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/02/claudine-gay-israel-icj-context/677341/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/01/israel-south-africa-genocide-case-fake-quotes/677198/
@GazDownright "Zionism, in general, is an ideology which grants and denies rights based on ethnicity."
It isn't.
@ICRainbow There absolutely is leftist Zionism. The vast majority of the Israeli left is Zionist.
As an Israeli, I have to say that the ChatGPT definitions are actually really accurate.
Zionism, in general, is an ideology which grants and denies rights based on ethnicity.
How would you explain the fact that the Zionist left opposed the nationality law, which enshrined the extra rights of Jews in Israel is base law (the closest thing Israel has to a constitution). The Israel left sees Zionism and equality (including between ethnicities) as compatible.
Personally, I'm worried that when people see themselves as anti-zionists (or simple hate zionism but without the label), they not only reject the definition of right-wing zionism as defined here, but also the first, historical definition, and thus deny Israel's right to exist.
There's even a term for people who accept zionism in the first definition but not the later ones. It's called post-zionism.
@Shump Disclaimer: I have nothing against individual Israelis whatsoever. But, it's hard to discuss these topics with Israelis, as they are intrinsically subjective - naturally biased. And I mean that in the best possible way. But, since you invite me, I'll engage.
For a white-ish, Western, non-muslim, non-jew, and trained social scientist like myself, I observe a couple of things.
Everything positive achieved with the establishment of the State of Israel tends to be ascribed to the Zionist ideology. In contrast, every negative outcome (the killings, the displacements, the occupations, the evictions, the jailings) tends to be attributed to poor implementation of Zionism. Note: many right-wing Israelis will even tell you these things are a necessary part of Zionism.
Unfortunately, you can't absolve an ideology of its wrongdoings by pointing to poor implementation; thus, Zionism is the source of the wrongdoing and, therefore, partially to blame, in the same way that other ideologies are to blame for things.
A second thing: It's a genuinely commendable and just cause to safeguard a people that's being prosecuted and killed. Like the Jews in Europe were. But Zionism has a flaw in that it is intrinsically hierarchical: it is about the Jewish people. So even if some zionists profess equality and even implement it, other ethnicities will always have a separate/secondary status within a Zionist state.
The third thing is that Zionism has the removal of sovereignty from other people baked into its core tenet. When the UN professed that one area of the earth belonged to one specific ethnicity, it intrinsically caused the displacement of others. This was an objectively unjust act (two wrongs don't make a right) and, unfortunately, one that emerged from the colonialist ideology of the West at the time, another intrinsically unjust ideology.
For the sake of disclosure, I'm in the one-state solution camp. I'd like to see a single state in that area that is truly equal for all its peoples, including those who arrived as a consequence of Zionism, but Zionism, ironically perhaps, doesn't have room for this.
@Shump "right to exist" is a surprisingly thorny concept. In the interests of trying to generate more light than heat I'll shift to the USA to demonstrate what I mean.
Does the USA have a right to exist? Well, if we're asking "does the USA today have a right not to be destroyed and its people killed or displaced?" then the answer is clearly yes (apart from some potential pedantry about what it means for a state to have rights).
But if we're asking "did the European settlers who killed and displaced lots of Native Americans, eventually giving rise to the USA, have a right to do so?" then I think there's a reasonable case for no.
So does the USA have a "right to exist? (I could make a similar point about any country, even one that's not a former colony. Every country has had a complicated history, with bad things being done "in the interest of the country", sometimes in a foundational way.)
As far as I'm aware, there's not really a USA equivalent of "Zionism" so I'll shift back to Israel/Palestine. One can be of the opinion that the historical removal of the Palestinian people from the land that is now Israel was unjustified and bad, without being of the opinion that we should somehow try to "reverse" it by destroying the state of Israel. I think most self-described anti-zionists are basically saying that (along with the opposition to right-wing zionism that you already covered). And I think it's unfair to say to those people "you're denying Israel's right to exist", because that's kind of conflating the history with the present in a way that makes your interlocutor look bad without actually clarifying anything or making a substantive argument.
@GazDownright Honestly I find your attitude to be a bit disrespectful. You claim to know it all about Zionism, but you don't even want to engage and try to understand the people who ascrobe to this ideology? You seem to have automatically shut off the possibility that you will accept some of what I have to say on the basis of my ethnicity. What the hell. I'm not even Zionist myself, Israelis are not all one thing, and I have a lot of criticism towards Zionism myself, but I think some of your criticism is unwarranted.
Everything positive achieved with the establishment of the State of Israel tends to be ascribed to the Zionist ideology. In contrast, every negative outcome (the killings, the displacements, the occupations, the evictions, the jailings) tends to be attributed to poor implementation of Zionism
That's simply not true. I have never heard anyone ascribe these negative outcomes to Zionism. There is a construction of a national myth around the creation of the state of Israel, but that's not really how it works. Nobody says "Israel succeeded because we are Zionist" either.
I do agree with the second criticism. It's the main reason I don't see myself as Zionist. I think left wing Zionists engage in a kind of doublethink where they somehow simultaneously believe that Israel should be a Jewish state with a bunch of extra political rights and that everyone should be equal, and that the Jewish and Democratic status of the country have no conflict between them.
The third thing is that Zionism has the removal of sovereignty from other people baked into its core tenet
That's not right either. Zionists supported the UN partition plan. It was Zionists who negotiatied the Oslo accords, which gave the Palestinians a bit of sovereignty. It was Zionists who kept negotiating for the creation of a Palestinian state, and the majority of Zionists still want a two state solution.
@Fion Oy vey. That's not thorny at all, this exact view is the thing I'm worried about, and I do think clearly crosses the line between criticism of Israel to antisemitism.
Keeping with your analogy, if people see that living White Americans as genocidal colonizers who killed millions of natives for greed, would you not say that they have a terribly low opinion of White Americans as a whole?
When people believe in this myth of Israel as some fundamentally colonial, genocidal state, this is exactly what they think. The see the Jews as Evil privileged people, hungry for Palestinian blood. And if that's not antisemitism I don't know what is.
I hope you only meant this analogy in terms of explaining differences in definitions, because it really doesn't hold when you're considering the history of Israel. Israel was never an exploitative colony, extracting resources and labor from the natives to benefit a ruling class at home. Israel is a nation of refugees, people who desparately needed a home after the Holocaust. They didn't come to exploit the natives, and I'm doubtful they got much out of them.
Do refugees not have the right for safe harbor? Do people not have the right for self-determination?
@Shump I was trying to preface myself by acknowledging something fundamental. That there wouldn't be modern-day Israelis if it weren't for Zionism, which is why it is so tough to talk about Zionism with Jewish (especially) Israelis, because any criticism could be misinterpreted as delegitimizing your identity. I apologize if I was being disrespectful. I believe I wasn't shutting you off but being upfront about my perspective.
Note: I am a former scholar of ethnicity, national identity, ideological identity, and cultural appropriation in general, which in turn informs my analysis of Zionism.
My first observation is that Israel is a direct result of Jewish Zionism (catalyzed by the Holocaust and, to a lesser extent, intra-European politics), so whether good or bad happens in and around Israel, Zionism is ultimately the source of those things. Wouldn't you agree?
I like how you describe left-wing Zionisits as engage in doublerhink. I'll keep that in mind.
My third observation was that even if the partition plan was, to some, a compromise, it still removed due sovereignty from Palestinians. While the peoples of Jordan and Egypt eventually were free to exercise their sovereignty as Britain released their colonial grip, the Palestinians have not yet been free to do so. That's what I mean when I say the core tenet of Zionism intrinsically (and factually) denies others their sovereignty. The core tenet, as I understand it, being "the return of the Jewish people and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel."
@Shump I certainly agree that anybody who says Jews are evil and hungry for Palestinian blood is antisemitic.
And yes, I agree that the histories of the USA and Israel are different in important and relevant ways. I was just giving an example of how a state's "right to exist" is not a helpful concept. One can simultaneously say "state X was formed through unjustified and unacceptable acts" and "state X should be allowed to continue to exist today". Judgement about history doesn't always imply a clear course of action in the present.
Refugees need sympathy, support, and safety. But they mustn't forcibly displace other people. And yes, people do have the right to self-determination, including Palestinians.
By the way, I realise you're debating with two people at the same time, here, and I also recognise that we're talking about something that's literally and figuratively very close to home for you. I appreciate your patience and politeness so far, but I think I'm going to back out of this discussion now. Happy for you to respond to what I've said here, but just to let you know I might not respond after that.
@GazDownright Sorry for getting a bit angry. I can see that you mean no disrespect. I also have my problems with the mainstream of Israeli ideology, what you might call Zionism, which is why it can be annoying to be bundled together with that.
1. Not really? I don't see why everthing that happens in Israel is a direct consequence of Zionism. At least not in a meaningful sense. It's a little bit how people tend to relate every bad thing to capitalism. It's true in the literal sense that since Capitalism is the pervailing system, you can relate it to pretty much everything. But it's just not a meaningful attribution because the same can be applied to everything else. It's pretty useless to talk about the Israel's economic developement, for example, happening because of Zionism. It's just reductionist.
But really, I find that it's mostly foreigners who do the "Zionism is everything that I like", or the opposite version, "Zionism is everything that I dislike". Israelis mostly treat Zionism as a given, we generally don't see much of a need to justify it. Which also explains why they tend to get so offended when somebody opposes it. It's part of their identity, one that we simply don't question.
My point is that it's not really Zionism's fault. Generally Zionists don't oppose a Palestinian state as an ideological tenet, but rather as what people see as a neccesary compromise, a brute reality. The idea was always that the Palestinians can have whatever rights and sovereignty that they want, as long as it doesn't hurt us. The problem is that it does hurt us. Which leads me to my second main problem with "Zionism" as a whole. As with other forms of nationalism, it puts the interests of the nation and its people first, sometimes to the detriment of everything else. Peace discussions, for example, have always been framed as "is it in Israel's interest to do peace?". Which honestly, I don't think is an easy question to answer. The interests of Palestinians, however, are never considered. And this is the absurd of the occupation. Because every time their welfare comes up, Israelies will deny that it's their concern at all. It's an okay (although still occasionally problematic) thing to do in a normal nation state with well-defined borders, but it's not an okay thing to do when you're occupying millions of people. You can't just rule over people while totally disregarding their concerns. The same is happening in Gaza right now. The IDF is occupying signifcant parts of Gaza, but Israel still refuses to take any resposibility for actually controlling this area and making it liveable. We want Hamas gone, but are not willing to make any kind of replacement to it.
@Shump Well, all negotiated solutions that end both conflicts are good for both parties. That's the point of a negotiated solution. If something like the creation of a Palestinian state really is positive-sum for the world but negative-sum for Israel, you can bribe Israel to do it and if you bribe with the right amount of money it becomes Pareto-optimal.
@GazDownright "When the UN professed that one area of the earth belonged to one specific ethnicity, it intrinsically caused the displacement of others."
This is literally untrue. Transfer was not an inevitable consequence of the partition plan. One could argue that it was a likely consequence of the Palestinians rejecting the partition plan, but that's at least two steps removed from what you said.
"This was an objectively unjust act (two wrongs don't make a right) and, unfortunately, one that emerged from the colonialist ideology of the West at the time, another intrinsically unjust ideology."
Sorry, what state is Israel a colony of? If it's not a colony, it seems difficult for this to be colonialism.
"For the sake of disclosure, I'm in the one-state solution camp. I'd like to see a single state in that area that is truly equal for all its peoples, including those who arrived as a consequence of Zionism, but Zionism, ironically perhaps, doesn't have room for this."
Only 9% of Gaza inhabitants in 2020 and 11% of West Bank inhabitants supported a single state with equal rights as contrasted with 56% and 66% respectively who wanted to "reclai[m] all of historical Palestine from the river to the sea". But sure. It's the Zionists who can't live together with equal rights in a single nation. What utter rubbish.
"While the peoples of Jordan and Egypt eventually were free to exercise their sovereignty as Britain released their colonial grip, the Palestinians have not yet been free to do so. That's what I mean when I say the core tenet of Zionism intrinsically (and factually) denies others their sovereignty."
This is not what the word intrinsically means. You need to establish that in all possible worlds in which a Zionist project has obtained, Palestinians lack sovereignty, that it logically follows from the meaning of the words. You simply cannot do this. It is not possible.
@Fion Westerners and pacifists arenโt the only agents here. 10/7 revealed that Israelis who expect theyโd be massacred without their security state are correct. Pacifists can talk about dismantling Israel and leaving its population in place. Pacifists wouldnโt have done 10/7.