Picture of the first government of Israel. Was Zionism not popular in Balkan countries?
Posted by northbk5@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 95 comments
Aromatic_Total9094@reddit
is the belarusan guy jew?
pdonchev@reddit
Balkan Jews are Sephardic and in general have been very secular and not particularly observant. The bulk of the early Israeli activists seems to have been ultraconservative Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern (as opposed to Southeastern) Europe.
Historically the Ottoman empire has been much more tolerant to Jews than European powers (Western, Central and Eastern).
gagalin@reddit
As a Balkan Turk living in Germany, I can truly understand why North-European Jews ended up being ultraconservative as opposed to those living with us in the Ottoman Empire, or those living in the South in general. There surely was a Christian aspect to the story, but also the coldness of Northern cultures leads minorities into conservatism. Just as it’s happening today with Muslims living in the North. I’m not speaking of the latest Arab migrations but of Muslims during 1950-2000’s. Where are the “conservative Muslims” of South/South-East Europe? They didn’t exist, not until this last decade. Because the culture is much more welcoming than that of the North.
Absolute_Satan@reddit
Not really the movement was split pretty equally between conservatives and non conservatives for example the founder of hagana was an ultra socialist.
gagalin@reddit
Many Jews during the Greek war of independence (1832) were massacred together with us Turks. I don’t know how many were left, because no Turk was left.
After the Balkan wars (1912) many Jews in Thessaloniki etc. migrated together with us Turks into Anatolia. Many in Yugoslavia have died during WWII, few were saved.
1337Beaverau@reddit
Moldova is sort of balkan...
TXDobber@reddit
Did OP miss the fundamental point that Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement—not Balkan, not broadly European, and certainly not just a “white people” ideology? Its goal was the establishment of a Jewish-majority state in the ancestral homeland: the land of ancient Israel, ruled by King David, which by the 20th century was Ottoman, then British Palestine. Before the Holocaust, Zionism was a fringe, largely academic idea. After the Holocaust, it gained widespread support among surviving Jews, especially European Jews, who saw a sovereign homeland as a necessary refuge.
The establishment of the State of Israel largely fulfilled the core aim of Zionism, but debates have persisted about the nature of that state. Zionism isn’t monolithic: from the early dominance of Labor Zionists (who enjoyed Soviet backing and helped build the state), to Liberal Zionists, to the Revisionist Zionists of Likud and Netanyahu, and the rise of Religious Zionists on the right (think Ben Gvir, hardcore settlers, etc). Labor Zionism has diminished since the Second Intifada but shows signs of revival under figures like Yair Golan.
Yes, many early Zionists were “Polish,” “Ukrainian,” or “Moldovan”, but that’s incidental. Zionism is rooted in Jewish identity, not in the nationality of one’s diaspora. It’s about Jewish peoplehood and self-determination, not the countries Jews happened to live in before.
Frankly, most people who use “Zionist” as an insult reveal a deep ignorance of what Zionism actually is, its history, its internal diversity, and the people who shaped it.
Vegetable-Brick1589@reddit
But that doesn't mean they aren't Ukrainian/Polish/German, etc. Because they are, they can rewrite all of history, but as it stands, they came there as settler with an imperialistic ideology.
TXDobber@reddit
Recognizing that many early Zionists were born in places like Ukraine, Poland, or Germany does not mean their national identities superseded their Jewish identity. Jews in these countries, even before the Holocaust, were often treated as perpetual outsiders, rejected, persecuted, and in many cases slaughtered in pogroms because they were not seen as truly Ukrainian, Polish, or German. Their citizenships were fragile, their belonging was conditional or even nonexistent.
Zionism arose not from imperial ambition, but from the historical reality that Jews had no sovereign homeland of their own and faced existential threats across the globe, people act like antisemitism started when the Nazis rose, when nah, the Nazis were the just the ultimate manifestation of centuries of antisemitism. Zionists were not “settlers” in the imperial sense, which expanding a mother country’s power overseas; they believed were returning to their ancestral homeland, one they had maintained religious, cultural, and emotional ties to for millennia, one that has consistently maintained a large population of Jews. There was no empire behind them; in fact, most historians argue they fought against imperial rule to establish self-determination, first against the Ottomans, then the British, who issues the white paper to cap Jewish migration, even during the Holocaust, so as to placate the Arabs.
Framing Jewish return as “settler colonialism” ignores the historical context of Jewish migration and the context behind JT. It erases both Jewish ties to the land and the long-standing historical continuity of Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael across the centuries.
In short: birthplace does not define identity, and Jews do not view themselves in “my nationality is my number one identity” as you might. and Zionism was not an imperial project lmao, it was a religious movement born from centuries of statelessness and persecution. Call it what you want, but imperialism? Most definitely not.
odvratnikzla@reddit
Zionism absolutely is a settler-colonial project. In fact, if you look up the definition of colonialism, you will find a description of what happened on that land. Calling it a religious movement is borderline antisemitic -- no religion proposes expulsion of indigenous populations and the creation of an ethnostate. No, it was a simple nationalist movement with a stated goal of creating a nation-state for a specific ethnic group, not unlike other nationalist movements that sprung up in Europe around the same time.
You claim that Israel was a project of self-determination. Who was determening themselves? The majority Palestinian Arab population that lived there? The Western imperial powers that established it?
TXDobber@reddit
Framing Zionism as “settler-colonialism” fundamentally misrepresents both Zionism itself and the historical position of Jews. Classic settler-colonialism involves a metropole, a home empire, sending settlers to exploit new lands for the benefit of the imperial center. Jews had no empire, no metropole, no mother country backing their return to their ancestral homeland. In fact the only colonial power involved (the British) actively sought to prevent Jewish immigration. In fact, Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration under the White Paper of 1939, trapping many Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, who knows how many died who could’ve lived. They were a stateless, and persecuted people, most certainly not an imperial power expanding outward.
Zionism is a nationalist movement, as you correctly note, but uniquely among nationalist movements, it was a movement of a people without a state, without a military, and without the patronage of any empire, just the collective funding of Jews around the world. The aim was not conquest, but survival after two thousand years of exile, pogroms, and finally genocide, and the establishment of a Jewish state. Jewish communities had existed continuously in places like Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, and Tiberias long before European states even existed.
As for the question of “self-determination”: the Jewish people, dispersed but maintaining a continuous identity tied to the land, were exercising their right to self-determination as affirmed and supported by the newly formed United Nations, including the great powers (USA, USSR, UK, France). Palestinian Arabs also have legitimate claims to self-determination, but Jewish self-determination does not negate theirs, nor vice versa… it’s delusional to believe one’s existence denies the other. Also important to note that Palestinian nationalism barely existed as a cohesive force, the major Arab powers, Transjordan, Egypt, and Syria, weren’t advocating for an independent Palestinian state. They were carving up the British Mandate among themselves. Transjordan’s very name (“across the Jordan”) shows they laid claim to vast sections of the Mandate. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century, after Israel’s creation, that distinct Palestinian national identity began to crystallize in political form. Before that, many local Arab elites identified with broader Arab and vague Islamic nationalism, not a separate Palestinian identity.
Oversimplifying Zionism as colonialism erases the context of centuries of Jewish statelessness, persecution, and the long existing ties to the land. It also flattens the moral complexity of two peoples seeking national homes in the same space, turning a situation that is grey, trying to force it to appear black and white.
odvratnikzla@reddit
What you are describing is not settler colonialism, it's exploitation colonialism, they are two different concepts. Settler colonialism involves a group of outside settlers coming in and dominating an indigenous population, displacing and replacing them with settlements and the society of the settlers. While this typicaly does include support from an imperial power, it is not a requirement. Importantly, the new land settled for exploitation of resources. European settlers going into a foreign land and claiming it as their own, displacing the indigenous people is, and always will be settler colonialism, regardles of how oppressed they previously were in Europe. But don't trust me, ask the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who described it as "something colonial" in a letter to Cecil Rhodes.
The state was created by foreign powers by adopting a plan proposed by the British, in a territory where they had power. It can hardly be said that there was no imperial support.
As to your second paragraph: Being a victim of genocide does not justify commiting genocide. If the objective was simply survival or establishment of an independent state, that could have been done peacefuly. Instead, the plan for the new state included mostly areas that were almost entirely Arab. In fact, in 1946 only Jaffa had a Jewish majority. Beyond Jaffa, only Jerusalem and Haifa had over a third Jewish population. Taking half the country and kicking the non-Jews out is quite literally genocide.
The appeal to "self-determination" is still fallacious. The people who live there were not asked. Their right to self-determination would have been violated regardless of whether it was Egypt, Jordan or somebody else that took over. The Russians determining to invade Ukraine does not constitute self-determination.
I'm sorry if this is not the case, but the last paragraph makes me think your answer is ChatGPT. But to reply to it regardless, two things can be bad at the same time.
Dolmetscher1987@reddit
There's no such thing as a Palestinian genocide, in the historical and legal sense of the word "genocide".
TXDobber@reddit
Dawg you’re trying to wedge Zionism into a settler-colonial framework that doesn’t actually fit the history.
Saying settler colonialism doesn’t require an imperial power is you stretching the definition to fit your narrative, and you know it. In every classical case of settler colonialism, whether British America, British Australia, or French Algeria, settlers came with the backing of a state apparatus that supplied soldiers, bureaucrats, and economic extraction. Jewish immigrants moving to Mandatory Palestine didn’t have a state, in fact many of them were forced from their states. They were stateless refugees, many of whom barely survived extermination. They weren’t agents of an empire… they were running from nationalistic forces that made it clear Jews had no place in their countries, and then tried to erase them.
As for Herzl mentioning “colonial” in a letter to Rhodes, Herzl used the language of his time because that’s how you got political backing in the 19th century, because, again, the Zionists were entirely reliant on their own funds and the goodwill of European states because, again, they had no state backing or supporting them directly. The difference is, Zionism wasn’t about enriching Europe or creating a European satellite, it was about escaping Europe forever.
Brother almost every country that emerged after colonialism was “created” by foreign powers drawing lines on a map. Look at Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon. Every one of Israel’s neighbors exists inside borders drawn by European powers. If that’s your standard, then by your logic, none of the modern states in the Middle East, Africa, or parts of Asia are legitimate either. Are you prepared to call the independence of Algeria, India, or Egypt invalid too? See how ridiculous that sounds?
And even if we play with that argument, Britain didn’t even support Zionism consistently, in fact I’d argue they consistently flipped their position depending on who was more pissed off. They regularly contradicted themselves with the Balfour Declaration, then they flipped and blocked Jewish immigration during the Holocaust with the 1939 White Paper, literally trapping Jews in Nazi controlled territory, all to placate Arabs in the Mandate. If anything, imperial powers betrayed the Jews more often than they helped them, their actions leading to needless death.
And youre really gonna claim the partition and the First Arab-Israeli War was a fucking genocide???
Partition was an internationally agreed upon solution precisely because it was the solution most likely to avoid violence, while giving each side a state. Remind me again, who opposed the partition? It was the Arab leadership who categorically rejected the partition and launched a war, explicitly vowing to destroy the Zionist state and do god knows what to the Jewish population. Zionists accepted a partition where they got a fractured, barely-defensible state, they most certainly did not plan a genocide, because if they did, why did they allow several hundred thousand Arabs to stay in the lands they had won in the war up in the Galilee???
When you launch a war to destroy a state that was legally created, and to wipe a people out, then you go and lose that war, despite having al the advantages they did, and you lose territory in the process, that’s not “genocide.” That’s called losing a war you started.
You’re trying to create a fantasy reality that did not exist at the time. The United Nations went out of its way to include both Jewish and Arab perspectives on the question of self-determination. It was the Arab leadership who rejected the process entirely, refusing to participate and insisting on maximalist demands that had no support from the international community. They had no leverage left, and the world had already shown its preference for a partition. The Jews accepted the UN’s proposal for a Jewish state, but the Arabs chose to prioritise their own maximalist demands through violence instead. So, no… the right to self-determination was offered to both sides, but one side rejected it and chose war instead because they refused to accept a Jewish state next to them. If anything, the Arab states threw the Palestinians under the bus.
This is also nonsense because Russia is a sovereign state invading another sovereign state to subjugate it and reduce its sovereignty while expanding their own. Jews weren’t a fucking state; they were a stateless people trying to carve out survival in a territory that, under Ottoman and then British rule, had no independent Arab state either.
You can hate Zionism all you want… that’s your right to your own opinion, but at least be honest about what it is, and what it isn’t.
lmao
odvratnikzla@reddit
I am not trying to fit it into anything. It is the definition of settler colonialism. Thinking it was justified or not does not make it something else. You are refusing to accept the definition of the phrase "settler colonialism" and inventing your own. Even if we say it was the lesser of two evils and speculate a fantasy of what would have happened otherwise, IT IS STILL SETTLER COLONIALISM BY DEFINITION.
Asking 78% of the country, that comprises the majority in almost every town, city or village into fractured pockets because the international community arbitrairly supports the idea over another still does not justify it. If somebody said that you need split your house in 2, and let a random family move in indefinitely, you would rightfully be outraged. If then to your outrage they replied by asking you to seek compromise, I imagine you would be even more mad.
The Russia example was to illustrate how foreigners deciding for you is not self-determination, whether they have a state or not. Again, you are not arguing with me, you are arguing with a technical definition and saying that it does not mean what it means, because it does not fit your idealistic framing.
Yes, I am being honest, and you should be as well. We could shift the goal posts all eternity, but the definition of settler colonialism isn't up for debate. It is a phrase that historians use to describe a very specific thing. We cannot conflate it with other things to justify things we like. We cannot make alternative history scenarios on what would have happened to the settlers if they had stayed in their homelands. We cannot justify the murder and expulsion of civilians, because we are at war with other states.
Able_Serve_9280@reddit
My grandfather was a war criminal Cue the music
Dolmetscher1987@reddit
In general terms I agree with you, but I wouldn't define Zionism as religious, not at least necessarily, since there are different varieties of it (some secular, some religious).
Vegetable-Brick1589@reddit
Still makes them Eastern European settlers? I understand that their ideology says otherwise, but with all due respect, we shouldn't change historical facts for a political religious believe.
That's a societal issue. Many people suffered that doesn't change you being an Eastern European settlers in a foreign land. Regardless of religious political beliefs.
They are settlers in EVERY sense. Do you think Palestinians give a shit or have any say in what they suffered in Eastern Europe?
Not everything revolves around Europe. Just because they suffered in Europe doesn't not make them settle in a foreign land.
The meaning of settler colonialism is: Settler colonialism is a logic and structure of displacement by settlers, using colonial rule, over an environment for replacing it and its indigenous peoples with settlements and the society of the settlers.
It doesn't need a "mother land" many settler colonies took settlers from all over. Because they wouldn't be able to supply settler with only their own population.
You can believe many things, but it doesn't make them justify settler colonialism like you do here.
We can use the same matrix for many groups of people like for example, the muslim Andalusians.
But they would still be settlers regardless of how you feel about it.
Large? That is just a lie population increase at the end of the ottomans rule and with the British Mandate. The population of Jews prior to the Mandate was 9%(mind you, these also settled there in the 19-20 century known as the first aliyah). Many other Islamic/European nations had FAR bigger numbers and percentages.
So did the Americans? Would you now argue that they aren't settlers? Stop fighting demons it as a historic fact and a present issue still in the West Bank.
They didn't cap anything they allowed it but just put a number behind it, while illegal settlers could still go in. Any Jew who entered a neutral country was given clearance to Palestine as well.
And nothing in the white paper they promised was upheld. So you calling the white paper out is kinda useless.
Also, stop with the "During the holocaust" if you want to actually debat this you need to put emotional arguments aside. Because Palestine has nothing to do with the holocaust.
The-Dmguy@reddit
Zionism IS a european nationalist movement. It was heavily influenced by western european nationalist racial ideologies and was founded by people who were culturally european and always saw themselves as such.
TXDobber@reddit
Claiming Zionism is a “European nationalist movement” just because it emerged in a European context badly misunderstands both Zionism and nationalism itself. Yes, figures like Herzl were European Jews by culture and education, but their nationalism wasn’t aimed at carving out space inside Europe. It was a response to Europe’s violent rejection of Jews as permanent outsiders. Zionism was about leaving Europe, not embedding within it.
If the logic is that influence by European ideas makes a movement “European,” then you’d have to say Vietnamese nationalism is European too, after all, Ho Chi Minh formed his political thinking while studying in Paris, shaped by European revolutionary and nationalist thought. Yet no one claims Vietnam’s fight for independence was a European colonial project, quite the opposite, actually. Influence is not ownership, it’s simply just influence.
Zionism, like Vietnamese nationalism, adapted tools of modern political thought to solve a local, existential crisis: in this case, the survival of a people who had no state and faced annihilation across the globe.
Zionism isn’t European nationalism transplanted; it’s a Jewish movement for Jewish self-determination in the Jewish homeland. Trying to reduce it to “European settler colonialism” just shows an unwillingness, or refusal, to engage with Jewish history on its own terms.
countdraculana@reddit
It’s also blatantly delusional and just them putting their fingers in their ears and repeating slogans when they hear something they don’t like. Curious how Jews are just as Levantine as Palestinians are and sometimes even more Levantine than them but Palestinians are just Levantine to these people instead of Arab or Egyptian when all that’s different between Jews and Palestinians in that regard is these Levantines [Jews] are mixed with different types of Euro rather than Gulf Arab and/or Egyptian. Jewish endogamy carrying all this way can’t be denied but if you’d like to be delusional to fit a narrative you don’t need because you can criticize and be against Israel without it then go ahead
amigdala80@reddit
Where do you put Evangelic church people ?
TXDobber@reddit
dumbass American conservatives who have IQs of less than 60
cinnamons9@reddit
Well, the OP is kinda obsessed with Jews and thinks we see other people as subhuman or something lol
Opposum1900@reddit
another baiting post with zero relation to the sub . the attempt relate the photo to the Balkans is cringe.
-sandwich@reddit
fuck zionism
Opposum1900@reddit
Big-Judgment-@reddit
I know in late but I'm a Bulgarian Israeli, my grandparents moved to Israel in 1950 and there is a small community's of Bulgarian Jews and Romanian Jews but not alot of us are here
Most balanced Jews died in the holocaust with the exception of Bulgarian Romanian and a small community of greeks
OMalice@reddit
off-topic but it's interesting to me how zionists rarely are semites. These are all khazars or descendants of ashkenaz, hence not of the tribes ofjudah. yet, you’re always an "antisemite" when questioning israel or its actions.
Imaginary-Chain5714@reddit
I love how you guys suddenly bring up race theory to debunk the Jews coming to the land of Palestine. Don’t be surprised someone calls you antisemitic when you bring up a debunked antisemetic theory
OMalice@reddit
how's that dna testing going in israel famalam? oh, that's right, it brought some unforseen trouble and it had to be heavily regulated. funny that
Imaginary-Chain5714@reddit
Considering a massive dna company just got hacked and had all its information leaked, I’m pretty happy that our DNA tests are regulated by the government
No_Turnip_8236@reddit
“I don’t why people call me antisemtic for propagating antisemtic “Kazhar” theory” holy shit man get a grip
Those are Jews aka Semites
What did you think happened to Jews expelled from the kingdom of Israel by the Romans?
alklklkdtA@reddit
very native middle eastern looking fellows
WorldlinessRadiant77@reddit
The Bulgarian Jews moved to Israel a bit after the war as did the Romanian ones.
Jews in Greece and Yugoslavia suffered greatly during the Holocaust. The death rate for Belgrade was close to 100% and it wasn’t much better in Thessaloniki.
Lord_Artem17@reddit
Didn't Romania sell its jews to Israel?
Vargau@reddit
Yep, we did. My great uncle and his family (including kids and grandkids) were sold to the Israeli gov for $1500 per individual, even though on paper he was Christian.
My great great grandfather bribed into destroying the original family archive papers in the early 1930’s because he refused to move to the Mandate Palestine like the rest of the family did.
It did help the family in not getting deported, but later the communist Securitate outed most of the remaining jews, unless you were a true communist party member or proletarian.
Shternio@reddit
Insane. My grandpa is a Bessarabian Jew so when Israel was established, he was in the USSR, nobody let Jews out there..
Alexsioni@reddit
It sold Germans if I’m not mistaken, not Jews.
CerbulLopatar@reddit
Do you want to buy a german?
Alexsioni@reddit
Ce întrebare am creat…😭
Lord_Artem17@reddit
Nope. https://forward.com/culture/2923/the-cold-war-e2-80-99s-strangest-bedfellows-how-romania/
nindza22@reddit
Yes, I'm from Serbia, and in my town the Sinagogue was razed to the ground by Germans. But on the building occupying that space nowadays there is a memorial tablet that reminds that Sinagogue was once there.
imborahey@reddit
ZRENJANIN MENTIONED RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
TrudimseBogami@reddit
Živi ga brat
wajkot@reddit
Belgrade was under direct German military command though, while collaborator states like Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania were allowed to implement their own policies
z-null@reddit
Everyone was a puppet state, Croatia included. I know that in Serbian mythos, Croatia was independent and even worse than SS, but in reality very little could be done independently. It's one of those deals where you are free to do what someone else wants, how they want it.
Single-Programmer-86@reddit
“puppet state”
Single-Programmer-86@reddit
how yes now
Single-Plum3089@reddit
nedic did nothing
WorldlinessRadiant77@reddit
I’m not blaming the Serbs for it and the same is true for Thessaloniki.
Furthermore while Bulgaria and Romania could and did prevent deportations from their “cores” they couldn’t do anything about the occupied territories where the Gestapo had free rein.
Btw my mentor came from a line of Croatian Jews that moved to Bulgaria in 1941. His grandfather later joined the Yugoslav partisans, but the immediate decision to flee saved his life and his family.
Bernardito10@reddit
Never forget what Boris III did for the Bulgarian jews,if not for his that might have been their fate
LibertyChecked28@reddit
He didn't do anything out of his own will, B.O.C had placed it's neck on the chopping block in defence of the Bulgarian Jews at the time where the whole country was threatened with a civil war. Had Boris lll deported them he would've had to purge the Orthodox Priests first, which would've caused the whole country to implode given the Bulgarian Goverment was already "enemies" with most of Bulgaria to beguin with.
And even then the Jews ware still being proactively treated like $h!t to the point where they ware the biggest suporters of the Partizans out of the sheer necessity for it.
fiestah@reddit
Yea, you are right. The fascist Bulgaria made sure all Macedonian Jews were shipped by train to Treblinka, Ausvits and Jasenovac where they were terminated.
_Jonur_@reddit
I don't think people had the mental capacity to care about the Jews too in the Balkans. First came the Christians and wiped out everyone who wouldn't convert. Then came the Muslims. Same story but worse. After those two forms of pestilence, there is not much you can do. Just patience until we return to our pagan roots and get rid of both these curses.
MasterNinjaFury@reddit
What are you one abut. Who did the Christians wipe out??? And whats that got to do with Jews of the 1900's?
_Jonur_@reddit
In theory, you could start by reading about Thessalonica Massacre and it would unveil to you every massacre the Christians commit in order to establish and force their religion onto European peoples. But we both know you won't, being a Byzantine and religious fanatic, so there's no point.
nikolastefan@reddit
Cringe
apo--@reddit
Do you worship stones now?
Absolute_Satan@reddit
Some yes, also little round cutouts of metal
Useful_Can7463@reddit
Most of them died. Especially in places like Macedonia. But more than half of the survivors in Yugoslavia left for Israel. Also, they were all mostly Sephardic Jews. Israel, especially early on, was dominated by Ashkenazi Jews. At least in terms of the top positions in government, military. Even today there is still a perception of the "Ashkenazi elite" in Israel.
coolgobyfish@reddit
none of those people is left wing))) it's a nazi country at this point.
TheMidnightBear@reddit
Oh, ffs, spiteful right-wing vote everywhere.
cinnamons9@reddit
Yeah Mizrahi Jews strongly support Netanyahu and Likud.
Traditional_Top9730@reddit
A lot of Jews were wiped out in the balkans. Majority. Hell, Croatia had their own concentration camps called Jasenovac since they were under a nazi puppet govt.
geniuslogitech@reddit
I worked on a highschool project regarding jews and ww2 here in Serbia, tldr is almost all of them who didn't manage to escape on trains to Switzerland got killed, ones who escaped were helped by some of the founders of communist party in Yugoslavia, when ww2 ended Tito took power with help of Stalin and those communists were also against jews because they were richer on average than other ethnic groups. All of their property got seized so they didn't have where to come back anyway. They only rly started coming back en masse in 2000. All of the jews I ever met here in Serbia think of Serbia as their country, that's why they came back here after decades, who wanted to go to Israel already went there long time ago.
Tldr:/ there weren't any jews back then, they died or escaped but had nowhere to return, only started returning en masse after 2000.(at least in Serbia), those are ones who didn't go to Isreal before which make it obvious they are not zionists, they came back to Serbia instead, place where their parents or grandparents were born. Most of the time if you ask jewish person in Serbia about their background they will say it like "ja sam srbin iz Švajcarske/SAD ali sam jevrejin" it kind of translates to "I'm serb from Switzerland/USA but I'm (also) jewish"
Leg-Alert@reddit
What? A big part of the jewish population in Israel has Romanian origins, right now its like 400k
BDP-SCP@reddit
Istria never had a large(r) Jewish community it was simply way too poor. With the grow of Pula as the main military port of Austro. Hungaria navy probably some families moved to Pula. The pargest community was for sure in Trieste, most of them were killled after the German takeover in 1943.
Tribune_Aguila@reddit
Beyond what was already pointed out, simple put there never were that many jews in the Balkans to start off with outside of Romania (which is represented there by the two Moldovan ones). The only other (maybe) Balkan nation with a similarly large jewish population was Hungary, where the jews were both assimilationists and not zionists, and also wiped out in an incredibly short ammount of time in 1944.
TastyRancidLemons@reddit
The Romaniote Jews of Greece were never welcome in Jewish circles. They remained in Greece. I have no clue where they are now, if they still exist.
Hot-Cauliflower5107@reddit
I am not sure it was popular and even it if was I am rather skeptical that most Jews felt free to act on it. Since Ottoman times Jews weren't perceived in the greatest light. Many places In North Macedonia had a market or bazaar day on Saturday, specifically meant to exclude Jewish traders from the market.
jaleach@reddit
How many of them were actual terrorists before the creation of Israel?
Sekwan2000@reddit
Beautiful diversity
Sheb1995@reddit
Prior to WWII, there was not a whole lot of nationalist anti-Semitism, simply because the population of the Jews was quite small. There was no Dreyfus-type affair incidents, like in Western Europe and no history of pogroms, like in Eastern Europe.
Therefore, you were going to find a lot more of the early Zionist intellectuals and organisers in those parts of Europe than you would in the Balkans.
sweet_snail@reddit
Hopefully they rot in hell, amen!
Suspicious-Layer-110@reddit
Somewhat unrelated but Yair Lapid was meant to be Prime Minister until his power sharing government fell apart, his father who was also a prominent politician was from Novi Sad.
Catire92@reddit
Most if not all of the persons on the photograph are Ashkenazi Jews, who didn’t really live in the Balkans. More in Germany, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.
Suspicious-Layer-110@reddit
I mean pre WWII 92% of all Jews were Ashkenazi, but even then there just were nowhere near as many as in other parts of Europe.
Typical_Army6488@reddit
Can't believe there's no Russia
Suspicious-Layer-110@reddit
There aren't really many Jews that lived in the territory of Russia except some mall amount of Mountain Jews in the south.
Many of the countries they're from were part of the Russian Empire for 1-200 years but Russia didn't want Jews so they basically made a law saying Jews couldn't settle outside of where they already lived (The Pale of Settlement) and small amounts were allowed if they served out their 25 years in the Czar's army, converted or were very notable traders or artisans.
Vast majority of Jews in Russia only arrived after the Russian Revolution in 1917 when they got citizenship.
MakeoverBelly@reddit
ITT: people not understanding just how many Jews lived in Eastern Europe - mostly today's Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia. The answer is almost all of them.
deaddyfreddy@reddit
prizrak_2301@reddit
Was ?... It is still not popular...all balkan disputes aside, we consider them bigger threat than eachother.
OsarmaBeanLatin@reddit
It was in Romania. A lot of Israeli descending from European Jews have Romanian Jews as their ancestors. Many of them left after WW2 and during the Communist era when Ceaușescu ransomed them to Israel. Hell the Anthem of Israel was written in Romania
Fun-Quail-7959@reddit
only one woman
johndelopoulos@reddit
I love this picture, because it has citizens from all these countries, that physically have zero resemblence to natives, ending this way the theory of "European converters who have nothing to do with Salomon"
Kharuz_Aluz@reddit
Theodor Herzel was inspired by Bosnian Jew. And there were multiple Zionist movement before Herzel and WZO establishment. Like David Shuv's movement ([Founder of Rosh Pina. But there were much less Jews living in the Balkans than Jews living in Eastern and Western Europe so they got outshined by Ashkenazi Jews. Back then Ashkenazi Jews were 90% of the Jewry population.
Competitive_Big_4625@reddit
I've read that although Zionists existed, most of the Jewish people of Thessaloniki wanted it to be independent so that they could continue living there. Things got harder for them after Greece took over and in the end most of them would be wiped out by the nazis, with the few remaining leaving for Israel
heschslapp@reddit
The main thing is that Balkan nations must never let Zionism dig its poisonous roots in our region.
The past is the past, but we must defend the future from fascist colonisers.
LowCranberry180@reddit
As you know most Jews in the Balkans came from Spain. The Jewish population of Ottoman Empire had reached nearly 200,000 at the start of the 20th century.^([45]) The territories lost between 1829 and 1913 to the new Christian Balkan states significantly lowered this number.
The Jews of Turkey reacted very favorably to the creation of the State of Israel. Between 1948 and 1951, 34,547 Jews immigrated to Israel, nearly 40% of the Turkish Jewish population at the time.
pdonchev@reddit
Specifically for Bulgaria, and aside from the difference between Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
Before WW2 local Jews did not seem to be much interested in Palestine / Israel. After WW2 and the establishment of communist regime, Jews were allowed, on several occasions, to leave for Israel, which they did in significant part - many of them were not fans of the common property ideology, and many others had already had their property seized by the fascist regime during and before WW2, and Israel probably represented new opportunities. They were quite late, though, to be in early Israel. The ones that remained were likely supporting the communist ideology or had strong connection with the country, and were very secular.
Also, Bulgaria did not have that many Jews to begin with. The fascist regime in WW2 tried (and failed due to strong resistance from society) to export 50k people to Germany, which probably represented most Jews in Bulgaria. Nowadays around 1000 people have self identified as Jews in the census, and around 5k have partial Jewish descent according to a local Jewish organization. It's normal that countries with much larger Jewish populations were better represented in early Israel.
Arminius001@reddit
Even though the Jews in Albania at the time only numbered around 1k to 2km they didnt have a say about the state of Israel, Enver Hoxha made sure of that, he cut of all outside access of the world. Idk about the other balkan countries
Disdain_HW@reddit
I think the op is asking if Balkan Jews didn't support the idea of an independent Jewish state? While I don't know the answer to that, I have a different, much more unfortunate answer for you regarding Balkan jews: it's called the Holocaust and the documentaries very rarely show just how bad it was here but to put it into very simple terms it was basically "successful" from the point of view of the Nazis.
Relevant_Mobile6989@reddit
Zionism has little to do with the Balkans. The Jewish community there has always been a small, well-integrated minority, often conducting business within close-knit circles. It's unclear how many Jews genuinely aspired to have a country of their own, especially since many had deep roots in Europe. Genetic studies suggest that European Jews were largely culturally Jewish, shaped by centuries of migration and settlement. It's quite rare for a migrant group to remain unmixed with the local population over such a long period.
That said, the image in question is open to interpretation. Zionism was a nationalist movement that gained significant traction only after the Holocaust. Prior to that, it remained a relatively fringe idea, particularly among poorer communities in the Balkans, Jews and non-Jews alike.
Zviyuk@reddit
These are Jews from countries they were born in. I don't get connection between this picture and popularity of zionism in the Balkans?