Bookchin and Zionism

There's a lot of discourse on Bookchin in general, especially with his general split from anarchism in search of a new school of thought that better addresses the concerns of late stage capitalism, however I feel like Bookchin's early Zionist thought gets overlooked. I feel like it's useful to properly dissect Bookchin's Zionism and reflect how that might have influenced some problematic parts of his work. I think back to even "What is Social Ecology," in which he asserts in one way or another that it is human nature to be exclusionary and "tribalistic," which if you look at the work of even earlier ecologists they note that theories of competition are not as present in nature as previously thought, even in extreme conditions. It is more ecologically accurate to say that altruism and cooperation is what drives life forward, rather than competition, which I believe to also be a basis of anarchist thought, the basic idea that people are good and when given the choice they will choose to be "good," in this case let's say: cooperative. Bookchin's hinting at the idea that nature is dominated by competition in What is Social Ecology, coupled with his ideas around Zionism kind of leave a bad taste in my mouth about the whole foundation of his thinking. While some say that people overreact to his works on Zionism, often citing his remark that he wished Jewish people and Palestinians could live together "like the Swiss," a reductive and non-historical view, what is lost in this idea is the fact that Zionism in and of itself is an imperialist concept that threatens the existence of both Palestine as a people and as a sovereignty. The fact that Bookchin endorsed the state of Israel at all means he endorsed the violent colonial history that created that state. His imagination of a "Swiss-like" confederation in the region reduces the situation to an ostensible local socio-political conflict with sufficient historical context, which is not the case. His wish for a state where "Jewish people and Arab people" can live together in harmony also erases the history of Jewish Palestinian residents that have thrived for generations before the creation of the state of Israel. The creation of the state of Israel has also come to create a hierarchy within the Jewish community, mainly stemming from Israeli Jewish people vs diaspora Jewish people, and later with the Israeli invention of the "mizrahim," which creates an arbitrary category to needlessly separate Jewish people from certain parts of the world from those in Israel and in its allied nations. At the inception of the state of Israel, Zionists spoke out about how they felt Jewish people living in diaspora were poor, uneducated, and unfit for a new Jewish state. Early Zionists wished for their own hierarchy structure and system of oppression, not for the liberation of Jewish people worldwide. If that was truly the case, they would have cared about the longstanding communities that had been created out of diaspora, and would want the societies that those in the diaspora live in to be tolerant of Jewish people and celebratory of them. The goal should not have been to have one place where Jewish people could go and feel safe, but to have Jewish people feel safe wherever they happen to go, be, or live! I say all of this put more weight behind Bookchin's support of Zionism. Bookchin to me falls into a class of male ecologists who learn the principles of evolution and community ecology, and because of the constraints of masculinity, are more susceptible to ideas of imperalism and hierarchy, and determine that the secret to nature is competition, kill or be killed. This is evident in the way that Bookchin describes human nature in social ecology, and in his support of Zionism. He also ignores the fact that Israel has weaponized ecology in order to subjugate the Palestinian people. In their use of highly flammable, fast growing eucalyptus trees planted and then burned in Palestine, and to the burning of olive trees, both culturally and physically destructive. He fails to mention that the "land without a people" concept is based on the American Empire's blueprint of a "New Eden," a hallmark of modern settler colonialism that uses a constructed imperial mythos to justify the forced removal of Indigenous people, which has been used all across the Americas notably in the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica. It's time to seriously reevaluate this part of Bookchin's thinking instead of brushing over it. Even though people claim that we can use his ideas without using the problematic bits, and that we're not idiots and can think for ourselves even when we appreciate a certain political thinker, his ideas have been heavily proliferated through both anarchist and environmental circles. That has to have had an effect, so it's worth looking into what we can problematize from what's been used from Bookchin. This could help form an even better theory than social ecology.