I didn't realize how much baggage was associated with Zionism. I think I'm wrong with the thought that Jews ans Zionism are one and the same. I mean no offense it's just what I thought.
Changing definitions is a key component of effective propaganda. In this case, the movement formally known as the ceasefire movement has cleverly repurposed the term Zionism to be about modern Israeli government policy and as such, you can now randomly hate on all Zionists (therefore, the majority of Jews). And this default and fallacious usage is a gateway to a range of anti-Semitic behaviours.
Well, the rainbow flag with the Star of David is just embarrassing. It's like people don't even go to Synagogue on Yom Kippur, where they would hear Leviticus 18.
Your comment would be more on the mark if half of the cultural Jews in Israel were not fundamentally agnostic. The ones who take Leviticus 18 seriously are also, curiously, the ones who refuse to defend Israel.
That is only correct if the West Bank and Jordan revert to being part of Jordan.
But thank you for making the case for genocidal ethnic cleansing. As long as Israel has jurisdiction over the West Bank and East Jerusalem there is only a single state, and it’s happened in a way that embarrasses the Zionist cause. Perpetual accelerating squatting, with the theft of land and homes, and hugely different laws for members of the privileged tribe as opposed to the other tribe. EVERY major human rights organization says Israel is guilty of apartheid in the part of Palestine it rules but which is outside of Israel’s borders. This includes the Israeli B’Tselem.
As I said, the members of neither tribe are going away. Two options exist. Live together in peace and equality or be like the Hutus and Tutsis.
The history of native Americans is a sad one but they assuredly aren’t going away and they are full fledged US citizens with equal rights under the law. They have reservations set aside for them but they can also freely live anywhere they want in the country. Israel can learn from this. Maybe make the West Bank and East Jerusalem reservations for indigenous Arabs but then also grant them rights to freely live in Tel Aviv if they want.
Israel will do what it wants and I expect bad decisions for years to come. But the US should in no way be complicit. The trend line for uncritical American taxpayer charity is headed in the wrong direction.
Be sure you know how to spell “PARIAH”. I say this with regret and pray for peace and equity.
As I said earlier, the illegal occupation, which has been sustained over many decades, and the accelerating rate of squatting, with land theft and home theft in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have literally made a two state solution impossible. Add to that Netanyahu’s ironclad statement that he would never permit a sovereign Palestine to exist, and you have a conundrum.
There are as many indigenous Arabs in the area Israel controls as there are Jews and the demographic trends are all negative for the Jews,. The members of neither tribe are going away. Nor should they. And we know apartheid doesn’t work well over a long period of time and that genocidal ethnic cleansing is an absolute no no. You make your choices and then you live with them.
Dan, dollars to donuts that you have no stake in any of this. And also, AGAIN, that you are some white guy sitting on actual stolen land in America, projecting your own guilt onto the situation in the Middle East, which has nothing to do with you. “Illegal occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing” 🙄Everything you know about this is from the Guardian.
Au contraire. With the US on the cusp of getting once again dragged into a misguided war in the Middle East, as an American taxpayer who has charitably supported Israel over decades, plus as a U.S. citizen who mourns the fact that almost all of the over 40,000 dead in Gaza (including almost 20,000 infants and children) have been killed by American killing machines provided to Israel on a no cost basis, I have a huge stake in this.
If you’re an American, you do to.
If you are an Israeli know you like the charity but I feel for you. Everything you know about evolving American sentiments is from the Times of Israel and its Hasbara feeds. The trend lines are all negative. At least start paying for the armaments you want from the US, like other countries do.
Start reading Peter Beinart’s Stack. Guaranteed to be Hasbara free.
What a snooze fest. 😴 Dan, you are someone who only cares about dead Arabs when the Jews are involved. I’ll read Peter Beinart when you read Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, and Douglas Murray. Have a lovely evening.
Perhaps the most intellectually lazy comment today. I care more about dead people when the US, my country, has a direct hand in killing them. I read across a broad spectrum and often comment the face of echo chambers such as this.
The idea that everything either ARG or myself know about the conflict is from "Hasbara" tells me a lot about how you think. What YOU know is, of course, from super reliable sources, on the other hand. You say this while you cite 40k dead, a statistic that comes directly from Hamas, who count so extremely fast, and sometimes even when there are no deaths. But not even Hamas claims that 20,000 deaths are infants and children.
I'm fine with America not providing finances to Israel, but the reason the U.S. does so isn't out of charity but rather because it's strategic for them.
Not everything you know comes from Hasbara. Just a great deal of it. Then there is the echo chamber, AIPAC, bought and sold intimidated US politicians, your peer group, etc.
Israel’s behavior is not proving to be a great strategic asset for us as it doesn’t elevate our status in the view of the global community. I know the people that World Central Kitchen find the asset value to be immense though.
Israel is perhaps 10% as valuable to the U.S. as Qatar when it comes to being a strategic asset. US CentCom is fundamentally based in Qatar, and that small country has more American arms reserves held in it than any other country in the world. Perhaps the United States could set up corollary big bases in Israel, get the free use of its ports, etc. Israeli society could benefit from having 25-30,000 members of multiple creeds and ethnicities of the US military based there. As such a steadfast ally and it would be less likely to mistake US Navy ships for the enemy (as with the USS Liberty).
It’s encouraging that we both agree that American taxpayer charity to Israel should be ended and redirected to needier places. Perhaps we can build a groundswell of support for that and have Israel actually buy arms from the United States. You know, like the UAE does…
Don’t rely on me. Try UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children or, dare I say it, Amnesty International or B’Tselem. Peter Beinart’s stacks are always a useful resource.
If a Zionist is “is someone who supports the rights of Jewish people to self-determine in their ancestral land, the Land of Israel”, what does that mean re the rights of the indigenous Arab people to self-determination in their ancestral land, the Land of Palestine?
Because there’s the rub. In all of Palestine, including Israel within its established borders, there are about the same number of Jews and indigenous Arabs.
Although we have seen significant numbers of Jews leave Israel in the last year, while significant numbers of Arabs have simultaneously been killed, two overarching truths must be recognized. Neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are going away, nor should they. And, Israel cannot kill all of the Arabs or intimidate them into perpetual submission. And, of course, any efforts at ethnic cleansing or sustained ethnic supremacy would be classically genocidal.
With a full 10%+ of Israel’s Jewish citizens now living on stolen land and in stolen homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, it’s certain that neither Israel nor global Zionists will insist that Israelis living in illegally occupied areas return to within Israel’s boundaries. Indeed, the right wing has captured Israeli politics and policy making so much that (1) endorsing Israel’s expansion from the river to the sea (Eretz Israel) is perfectly acceptable and (2) Netanyahu and others in political power clearly tell us they will never accept a sovereign Palestinian state.
So talk of a two state solution is nonsense. Now it’s up to the Jews in Israel, along with Palestine’s indigenous Arabs, to determine the basis, going forward, for the single state that already exists from the river to the sea. Will it be a democracy with equal rights for all in every respect (right of return?)? Will it be a theocracy where one religious and cultural tribe is by law always superior to the other? Will all of the single state’s residents be citizens, or will half or more be consigned to Bantustans because of their tribal affiliation, and subject to different laws than the privileged tribe?
The South Africa history cannot be ignored.
Tough questions. Zionists around the world (Joe Biden: “I’m proud to call myself a Zionist.”) have a voice, as do global Arabs. The US has significant leverage where discussions of the way forward are concerned, since, to a considerable extent, Israel is a ward of American taxpayers. But, as we’ve long seen, it’s doubtful that the US will play a very constructive role due to domestic politics.
One thing I know is that many of us won’t be alive to witness an acceptable humanitarian outcome, as the carnage continues.
The Palestinians have a state, Dan. It’s called Jordan. And they would have had another one if they wanted. Many times over. The single state solution is a stupid idea that only bourgeois Americans and Europeans entertain. No one on either side wants that. If you had spent any time in that part of the world, you would know that too. Furthermore, I strongly suspect that you are sitting in a house that is on stolen land Dan. Land to which you, unlike the Jews in Israel, have no indigenous claim, unless by small chance you are Native American. I would say that is the pot calling the kettle black wouldn’t you?
Yeah, I’m sure you guys were laughing in Germany in the 20s as well. It’s amazing how for all your ostensible verbal intelligence you have no self-awareness and seemingly no historical awareness once you manage to steal and treat yourselves into power. There have been Jewish states before. They didn’t last. You probably couldn’t even tell me their names. I’m not sure why you expect this time will be different.
Maybe “John” should get rid of the phone he is using to type his antisemitic hot takes on. We invented all your shit Johnny, and that just pisses you off doesn’t it? 😘
Most scholars of nationalism no longer believe in the divide between civic vs ethnic nationalism (Kohn’s dichotomy), as no state is culturally neutral (not even the U.S. where most states have declared English as their sole official language in response to the demographic growth of the Hispanic community). Israel may insist more on its ethnic character but even Israeli post-Zionists who want to turn Israel into a Hebrew speaking constitutional republic do not want it to be culturally neutral. There is certainly room for improvement, but blaming Israeli Jews for refusing to become a minority has nothing to do with "civic nationalism". No country is devoid of political ethnicity.
Zionism and anti-Zionism have long been part of Jewish cultures; there are those of us who do not support the nationalist project.
One of the problems with Zionism is that it's a form of ethnonationalism - it's based on the idea that the point of nations is to be homelands for certain ethnicities. Anyone who rejects ethnonationalism broadly - who feels that nations are for their citizens, and that citizenship is not something that should be tied to ethnicity, rejects it in each of the specifics where it turns up.
If Israel were to embrace civic nationalism - committing to treating jewish citizens and potential citizens the same as it does anybody else, ending aliyah programs and the law of return, repealing the nation-state law of 2018, keeping people enthused about ethnic cleansing like Ze'evi, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir out of its cabinet, ending religious control over marriage and exemptions from military service (although the Israeli courts may be fixing the latter) then a lot of the moderate non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism would disappear; it would be a modern nation and deserve to be treated as such. That wouldn't help getting those who hate those of us with some Jewish ethnicity to stop hating, but they're not all the opposition there is.
The Jewish people are imperiled by dint of the mutating mind virus of antisemitism which, even in the wake of the Holocaust, we cannot inoculate humanity against. The world needs its scapegoat apparently and we are it. Israel is the means by which thousands of years of persecution finally came to an end. Anti-Zionism is a fringe view among modern Jews for good reason. The Norm Finkelstein’s of the world do not represent us. Israel is tolerant of everyone and its minorities have full rights, as they should. There are as many Arabs per capita in Israel as there are African-Americans in the US. But it has a strong preference for Jewish immigrants, as it should. Israel is a Jewish state because the world cannot treat Jews like human beings. When they pick another avatar for their own self-loathing then we can seriously discuss whether Israel needs to exist as an “ethnostate”.
Imagine you had a new coworker at the office. You here at the water cooler that this person has been fired from hundreds of jobs all over the world before. This sounds a bit incredible to you so you don’t really put much stock in it. But the rumors persist and one day you decide to ask this new coworker for yourself. They inform you that they have indeed been fired from hundreds of jobs all over the world. You stare at them incredulously as they tell you that, even though they have been fired this many times from this many places, they never did anything wrong. They tell you that everyone else was jealous of how clever and righteous they were and conspired against them. They tell you that every single employer and coworker have dealt with has some kind of “mind virus”. Would you believe this person? Would you feel comfortable being in the same room with them?
I think it's okay not to support ethnonationalism, so long as you don't support it generally, anywhere. It's not something exclusive to Israel. It's found across many, many countries, none of which get attacked for it.
The problem with Israel is that it was conceived as such a state as a way of protecting Jews, seeing how everywhere they lived that wasn't their own state, eventually ended up in discrimination and violence. If it was no longer a Jewish state, there would be no protection.
That's why I do support it. And I'm okay with other countries choosing for themselves whether that's what they want to be.
I live in a country that's not.
Israel still allows immigration by non Jews.
I do understand the position of those who disagree on this though.
I do agree with you about the insane people in gov like Ben Gvir...that's the problem with coalition gov systems, the crazies get a voice too. Agree re religious controls...Israel has become more and more secular over time though.
Hungary seems to be robustly criticized. Any suggestion that the US should be perpetuated as a white Christian national would rightly be condemned as racist.
I believe in a separation between church and state, but for Hungary to limit their immigration to maintain their culture is their right. Japan does this without much criticism. All the Arab countries do as well. You're not going to find many non Koreans living in South Korea either, but Israel gets singled out? And in Israel's case their policy is due to wanting to protect Jews, not because they view other races as undesirable. Meanwhile, it does allow immigration to non-Jews and over 20% of those who are citizens are not Jewish, which is far more than in most countries.
Dubai is 80% expatriates. Hungary is heavily criticized. Israel gets singled out in the US for two reasons.
One is that Israel is more or less a ward of the US and, as such, recipient of endless charity from American taxpayers. The percentage of total US foreign aid directed at a country of 7 million Jews (and only coincidentally a couple million indigenous Arabs) is frankly inexplicable and embarrassing. I know you can find the charts that show this for Israel as compared to all of the other countries in the world over the last 40 years. Perhaps desperate Haiti, only 600 miles from the United States versus 6300 miles, needs charitable foreign aid from the United States as much as Israel does.
Two is that the approximately 7 million indigenous Arabs in the area that Israel governs (that would be Israel within its internationally recognized boundaries, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights) were all there, or at least their ancestors were, for hundreds of uninterrupted generations long before Israel was created, with that creation largely being derivative of yet one more example of feckless British attempts at partition of colonial areas they governed. None of this applies to Hungary, Japan, South Korea, etc.
As a sovereign nation governing 14 million people in the total of Palestine, including the occupied areas, Israel is obligated to protect everyone in those areas, not just the Jews. If it doesn’t want to have that obligation outside Israel’s borders, it always has the option to withdraw from the (illegally) occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and ensure that all Israeli citizens actually live within Israel. You might want to check with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, as well as Netanyahu, on this though.
You completely omit the whole reason for the "governing" - which Israel doesn't really do. The PLO governs the West Bank and has an agreement with Israel. Israel does to some extent occupy the land, but due to safety issues, not some desire. Gaza was completely under Hamas control and look how that turned out. You can't discuss this issue and current circumstances without also discussing the non stop violence towards Israel. Endless rockets, stabbings, bombings... Whether Israel came to exist there rightly or not is a big and complex discussion, but today, it's reality. So any solution to the has to both take Into account Israeli security concerns and Palestinian rights.
To say your comment is naive, perhaps intentionally so, is a huge understatement, Katherine.
The entire West Bank is fundamentally under IDF control and governance. The squatters there continue to run wild, killing, stealing land, destroying property, while the IDF, which arms the squatters, looks on benignly. Prosecutions almost never occur and almost 750 indigenous Arabs have been killed there since 10/7.
And, of course, huge numbers of indigenous Arabs are held without charges or access to the courts under the infamous process of administrative detention. I’m sure you have read up on the recent video-documented gang rapes of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards. These guards have been subjected to no more than house arrests and no charges have been brought against them despite the concrete video evidence.
East Jerusalem, which is outside Israeli borders, is totally under Israeli control. As are the Golan Heights.
To say that Gaza was self-governing before the carnage commenced is laughable. The people of Gaza controlled literally nothing that went into and out of what was accurately described as the world‘s largest open air prison. And they didn’t control their supply of water, electricity, etc. Israel controlled all of that.
Feigning ignorance on these things doesn’t work. Again, Israel is responsible for the well-being of all people in areas that governs, and those areas include absolutely all of Palestine, including Israel. Eretz Israel.
There are abundant numbers of things that are not Hasbara-derived online, which you can reference. You may want to start with reports that have been written by literally every major human rights organization in the world, including the Israeli B’Tselem.
It’s amazing how you can lie like this with a straight face. Israel has no normalized, immigration or naturalization processes for people not considered Jewish or proximate to Jews via the law of return.
Seems like you're the one spreading lies. The law of return is one method of immigration, not different than, say England's ancestry based immigration. Israel also has a regular immigration process for non Jews.
I didn't realize how much baggage was associated with Zionism. I think I'm wrong with the thought that Jews ans Zionism are one and the same. I mean no offense it's just what I thought.
Thanks
Changing definitions is a key component of effective propaganda. In this case, the movement formally known as the ceasefire movement has cleverly repurposed the term Zionism to be about modern Israeli government policy and as such, you can now randomly hate on all Zionists (therefore, the majority of Jews). And this default and fallacious usage is a gateway to a range of anti-Semitic behaviours.
Back to proud designation. I was told not to call myself a zionist because it's a slur by someone who had no real opinion on israel.
I now just say it proudly all the time.
https://marlowe1.substack.com/p/editing-teddy-bear-cannibal-massacre
This is spot on. The word "Jew" used to get slung around the way "Zionist" is today. And we know what both words meant. K*ke.
Well, the rainbow flag with the Star of David is just embarrassing. It's like people don't even go to Synagogue on Yom Kippur, where they would hear Leviticus 18.
Your comment would be more on the mark if half of the cultural Jews in Israel were not fundamentally agnostic. The ones who take Leviticus 18 seriously are also, curiously, the ones who refuse to defend Israel.
> Your comment would be more on the mark if half of the cultural Jews in Israel were not fundamentally agnostic.
That's going to become a problem long term.
That is only correct if the West Bank and Jordan revert to being part of Jordan.
But thank you for making the case for genocidal ethnic cleansing. As long as Israel has jurisdiction over the West Bank and East Jerusalem there is only a single state, and it’s happened in a way that embarrasses the Zionist cause. Perpetual accelerating squatting, with the theft of land and homes, and hugely different laws for members of the privileged tribe as opposed to the other tribe. EVERY major human rights organization says Israel is guilty of apartheid in the part of Palestine it rules but which is outside of Israel’s borders. This includes the Israeli B’Tselem.
As I said, the members of neither tribe are going away. Two options exist. Live together in peace and equality or be like the Hutus and Tutsis.
The history of native Americans is a sad one but they assuredly aren’t going away and they are full fledged US citizens with equal rights under the law. They have reservations set aside for them but they can also freely live anywhere they want in the country. Israel can learn from this. Maybe make the West Bank and East Jerusalem reservations for indigenous Arabs but then also grant them rights to freely live in Tel Aviv if they want.
Israel will do what it wants and I expect bad decisions for years to come. But the US should in no way be complicit. The trend line for uncritical American taxpayer charity is headed in the wrong direction.
Be sure you know how to spell “PARIAH”. I say this with regret and pray for peace and equity.
> Live together in peace and equality
The Arabs have made it very clear they aren't interested in that.
As have the Jews.
As I said earlier, the illegal occupation, which has been sustained over many decades, and the accelerating rate of squatting, with land theft and home theft in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have literally made a two state solution impossible. Add to that Netanyahu’s ironclad statement that he would never permit a sovereign Palestine to exist, and you have a conundrum.
There are as many indigenous Arabs in the area Israel controls as there are Jews and the demographic trends are all negative for the Jews,. The members of neither tribe are going away. Nor should they. And we know apartheid doesn’t work well over a long period of time and that genocidal ethnic cleansing is an absolute no no. You make your choices and then you live with them.
Dan, dollars to donuts that you have no stake in any of this. And also, AGAIN, that you are some white guy sitting on actual stolen land in America, projecting your own guilt onto the situation in the Middle East, which has nothing to do with you. “Illegal occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing” 🙄Everything you know about this is from the Guardian.
Au contraire. With the US on the cusp of getting once again dragged into a misguided war in the Middle East, as an American taxpayer who has charitably supported Israel over decades, plus as a U.S. citizen who mourns the fact that almost all of the over 40,000 dead in Gaza (including almost 20,000 infants and children) have been killed by American killing machines provided to Israel on a no cost basis, I have a huge stake in this.
If you’re an American, you do to.
If you are an Israeli know you like the charity but I feel for you. Everything you know about evolving American sentiments is from the Times of Israel and its Hasbara feeds. The trend lines are all negative. At least start paying for the armaments you want from the US, like other countries do.
Start reading Peter Beinart’s Stack. Guaranteed to be Hasbara free.
What a snooze fest. 😴 Dan, you are someone who only cares about dead Arabs when the Jews are involved. I’ll read Peter Beinart when you read Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, and Douglas Murray. Have a lovely evening.
Perhaps the most intellectually lazy comment today. I care more about dead people when the US, my country, has a direct hand in killing them. I read across a broad spectrum and often comment the face of echo chambers such as this.
You have a good day too!
The idea that everything either ARG or myself know about the conflict is from "Hasbara" tells me a lot about how you think. What YOU know is, of course, from super reliable sources, on the other hand. You say this while you cite 40k dead, a statistic that comes directly from Hamas, who count so extremely fast, and sometimes even when there are no deaths. But not even Hamas claims that 20,000 deaths are infants and children.
I'm fine with America not providing finances to Israel, but the reason the U.S. does so isn't out of charity but rather because it's strategic for them.
Word.
Not everything you know comes from Hasbara. Just a great deal of it. Then there is the echo chamber, AIPAC, bought and sold intimidated US politicians, your peer group, etc.
Israel’s behavior is not proving to be a great strategic asset for us as it doesn’t elevate our status in the view of the global community. I know the people that World Central Kitchen find the asset value to be immense though.
Israel is perhaps 10% as valuable to the U.S. as Qatar when it comes to being a strategic asset. US CentCom is fundamentally based in Qatar, and that small country has more American arms reserves held in it than any other country in the world. Perhaps the United States could set up corollary big bases in Israel, get the free use of its ports, etc. Israeli society could benefit from having 25-30,000 members of multiple creeds and ethnicities of the US military based there. As such a steadfast ally and it would be less likely to mistake US Navy ships for the enemy (as with the USS Liberty).
It’s encouraging that we both agree that American taxpayer charity to Israel should be ended and redirected to needier places. Perhaps we can build a groundswell of support for that and have Israel actually buy arms from the United States. You know, like the UAE does…
Don’t rely on me. Try UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children or, dare I say it, Amnesty International or B’Tselem. Peter Beinart’s stacks are always a useful resource.
> There are as many indigenous Arabs in the area Israel controls
If we're on the subject of "indigenous", then I might ask how there came to be so many Arabs outside of Arabia?
? What is Arabia? Perhaps you mean Saudi Arabia?
https://www.britannica.com/place/Arabia-peninsula-Asia
Learn the basics about the region you're talking about before making a fool of yourself.
> As have the Jews.
Once the Arabs made it absolutely clear they weren't interested, the Jews adapted to that fact.
If a Zionist is “is someone who supports the rights of Jewish people to self-determine in their ancestral land, the Land of Israel”, what does that mean re the rights of the indigenous Arab people to self-determination in their ancestral land, the Land of Palestine?
Because there’s the rub. In all of Palestine, including Israel within its established borders, there are about the same number of Jews and indigenous Arabs.
Although we have seen significant numbers of Jews leave Israel in the last year, while significant numbers of Arabs have simultaneously been killed, two overarching truths must be recognized. Neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are going away, nor should they. And, Israel cannot kill all of the Arabs or intimidate them into perpetual submission. And, of course, any efforts at ethnic cleansing or sustained ethnic supremacy would be classically genocidal.
With a full 10%+ of Israel’s Jewish citizens now living on stolen land and in stolen homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, it’s certain that neither Israel nor global Zionists will insist that Israelis living in illegally occupied areas return to within Israel’s boundaries. Indeed, the right wing has captured Israeli politics and policy making so much that (1) endorsing Israel’s expansion from the river to the sea (Eretz Israel) is perfectly acceptable and (2) Netanyahu and others in political power clearly tell us they will never accept a sovereign Palestinian state.
So talk of a two state solution is nonsense. Now it’s up to the Jews in Israel, along with Palestine’s indigenous Arabs, to determine the basis, going forward, for the single state that already exists from the river to the sea. Will it be a democracy with equal rights for all in every respect (right of return?)? Will it be a theocracy where one religious and cultural tribe is by law always superior to the other? Will all of the single state’s residents be citizens, or will half or more be consigned to Bantustans because of their tribal affiliation, and subject to different laws than the privileged tribe?
The South Africa history cannot be ignored.
Tough questions. Zionists around the world (Joe Biden: “I’m proud to call myself a Zionist.”) have a voice, as do global Arabs. The US has significant leverage where discussions of the way forward are concerned, since, to a considerable extent, Israel is a ward of American taxpayers. But, as we’ve long seen, it’s doubtful that the US will play a very constructive role due to domestic politics.
One thing I know is that many of us won’t be alive to witness an acceptable humanitarian outcome, as the carnage continues.
The Palestinians have a state, Dan. It’s called Jordan. And they would have had another one if they wanted. Many times over. The single state solution is a stupid idea that only bourgeois Americans and Europeans entertain. No one on either side wants that. If you had spent any time in that part of the world, you would know that too. Furthermore, I strongly suspect that you are sitting in a house that is on stolen land Dan. Land to which you, unlike the Jews in Israel, have no indigenous claim, unless by small chance you are Native American. I would say that is the pot calling the kettle black wouldn’t you?
C'mon! Everyone knows we only drink the blood of Iranian Firstborns! Sheesh! 😂
Sorry, whenever I see Palestinian I just laugh.
Yeah, I’m sure you guys were laughing in Germany in the 20s as well. It’s amazing how for all your ostensible verbal intelligence you have no self-awareness and seemingly no historical awareness once you manage to steal and treat yourselves into power. There have been Jewish states before. They didn’t last. You probably couldn’t even tell me their names. I’m not sure why you expect this time will be different.
Why don't you enlighten those of us who can't tell you the names of the other Jewish states. I would really like to know.
Where is the Baha’i Faith state?
Maybe “John” should get rid of the phone he is using to type his antisemitic hot takes on. We invented all your shit Johnny, and that just pisses you off doesn’t it? 😘
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_states_and_dynasties
And no one has ever even heard of them….
You invented nothing and stole everything. The accolades you give yourselves from the institutions you control mean nothing to me.
John, get help. You have a massive inferiority complex. Oh wait, we invented therapy too. 😏
Most scholars of nationalism no longer believe in the divide between civic vs ethnic nationalism (Kohn’s dichotomy), as no state is culturally neutral (not even the U.S. where most states have declared English as their sole official language in response to the demographic growth of the Hispanic community). Israel may insist more on its ethnic character but even Israeli post-Zionists who want to turn Israel into a Hebrew speaking constitutional republic do not want it to be culturally neutral. There is certainly room for improvement, but blaming Israeli Jews for refusing to become a minority has nothing to do with "civic nationalism". No country is devoid of political ethnicity.
Zionism and anti-Zionism have long been part of Jewish cultures; there are those of us who do not support the nationalist project.
One of the problems with Zionism is that it's a form of ethnonationalism - it's based on the idea that the point of nations is to be homelands for certain ethnicities. Anyone who rejects ethnonationalism broadly - who feels that nations are for their citizens, and that citizenship is not something that should be tied to ethnicity, rejects it in each of the specifics where it turns up.
If Israel were to embrace civic nationalism - committing to treating jewish citizens and potential citizens the same as it does anybody else, ending aliyah programs and the law of return, repealing the nation-state law of 2018, keeping people enthused about ethnic cleansing like Ze'evi, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir out of its cabinet, ending religious control over marriage and exemptions from military service (although the Israeli courts may be fixing the latter) then a lot of the moderate non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism would disappear; it would be a modern nation and deserve to be treated as such. That wouldn't help getting those who hate those of us with some Jewish ethnicity to stop hating, but they're not all the opposition there is.
The Jewish people are imperiled by dint of the mutating mind virus of antisemitism which, even in the wake of the Holocaust, we cannot inoculate humanity against. The world needs its scapegoat apparently and we are it. Israel is the means by which thousands of years of persecution finally came to an end. Anti-Zionism is a fringe view among modern Jews for good reason. The Norm Finkelstein’s of the world do not represent us. Israel is tolerant of everyone and its minorities have full rights, as they should. There are as many Arabs per capita in Israel as there are African-Americans in the US. But it has a strong preference for Jewish immigrants, as it should. Israel is a Jewish state because the world cannot treat Jews like human beings. When they pick another avatar for their own self-loathing then we can seriously discuss whether Israel needs to exist as an “ethnostate”.
The percentage of Arabs in Israel is twice the percentage of blacks in the US.
Imagine you had a new coworker at the office. You here at the water cooler that this person has been fired from hundreds of jobs all over the world before. This sounds a bit incredible to you so you don’t really put much stock in it. But the rumors persist and one day you decide to ask this new coworker for yourself. They inform you that they have indeed been fired from hundreds of jobs all over the world. You stare at them incredulously as they tell you that, even though they have been fired this many times from this many places, they never did anything wrong. They tell you that everyone else was jealous of how clever and righteous they were and conspired against them. They tell you that every single employer and coworker have dealt with has some kind of “mind virus”. Would you believe this person? Would you feel comfortable being in the same room with them?
What a long-winded, boring way to say you hate Jews. And every time you open your mouths, you prove the point I made above. Thanks. :)
I think it's okay not to support ethnonationalism, so long as you don't support it generally, anywhere. It's not something exclusive to Israel. It's found across many, many countries, none of which get attacked for it.
The problem with Israel is that it was conceived as such a state as a way of protecting Jews, seeing how everywhere they lived that wasn't their own state, eventually ended up in discrimination and violence. If it was no longer a Jewish state, there would be no protection.
That's why I do support it. And I'm okay with other countries choosing for themselves whether that's what they want to be.
I live in a country that's not.
Israel still allows immigration by non Jews.
I do understand the position of those who disagree on this though.
I do agree with you about the insane people in gov like Ben Gvir...that's the problem with coalition gov systems, the crazies get a voice too. Agree re religious controls...Israel has become more and more secular over time though.
Hungary seems to be robustly criticized. Any suggestion that the US should be perpetuated as a white Christian national would rightly be condemned as racist.
I believe in a separation between church and state, but for Hungary to limit their immigration to maintain their culture is their right. Japan does this without much criticism. All the Arab countries do as well. You're not going to find many non Koreans living in South Korea either, but Israel gets singled out? And in Israel's case their policy is due to wanting to protect Jews, not because they view other races as undesirable. Meanwhile, it does allow immigration to non-Jews and over 20% of those who are citizens are not Jewish, which is far more than in most countries.
Dubai is 80% expatriates. Hungary is heavily criticized. Israel gets singled out in the US for two reasons.
One is that Israel is more or less a ward of the US and, as such, recipient of endless charity from American taxpayers. The percentage of total US foreign aid directed at a country of 7 million Jews (and only coincidentally a couple million indigenous Arabs) is frankly inexplicable and embarrassing. I know you can find the charts that show this for Israel as compared to all of the other countries in the world over the last 40 years. Perhaps desperate Haiti, only 600 miles from the United States versus 6300 miles, needs charitable foreign aid from the United States as much as Israel does.
Two is that the approximately 7 million indigenous Arabs in the area that Israel governs (that would be Israel within its internationally recognized boundaries, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights) were all there, or at least their ancestors were, for hundreds of uninterrupted generations long before Israel was created, with that creation largely being derivative of yet one more example of feckless British attempts at partition of colonial areas they governed. None of this applies to Hungary, Japan, South Korea, etc.
As a sovereign nation governing 14 million people in the total of Palestine, including the occupied areas, Israel is obligated to protect everyone in those areas, not just the Jews. If it doesn’t want to have that obligation outside Israel’s borders, it always has the option to withdraw from the (illegally) occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and ensure that all Israeli citizens actually live within Israel. You might want to check with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, as well as Netanyahu, on this though.
You completely omit the whole reason for the "governing" - which Israel doesn't really do. The PLO governs the West Bank and has an agreement with Israel. Israel does to some extent occupy the land, but due to safety issues, not some desire. Gaza was completely under Hamas control and look how that turned out. You can't discuss this issue and current circumstances without also discussing the non stop violence towards Israel. Endless rockets, stabbings, bombings... Whether Israel came to exist there rightly or not is a big and complex discussion, but today, it's reality. So any solution to the has to both take Into account Israeli security concerns and Palestinian rights.
To say your comment is naive, perhaps intentionally so, is a huge understatement, Katherine.
The entire West Bank is fundamentally under IDF control and governance. The squatters there continue to run wild, killing, stealing land, destroying property, while the IDF, which arms the squatters, looks on benignly. Prosecutions almost never occur and almost 750 indigenous Arabs have been killed there since 10/7.
And, of course, huge numbers of indigenous Arabs are held without charges or access to the courts under the infamous process of administrative detention. I’m sure you have read up on the recent video-documented gang rapes of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards. These guards have been subjected to no more than house arrests and no charges have been brought against them despite the concrete video evidence.
East Jerusalem, which is outside Israeli borders, is totally under Israeli control. As are the Golan Heights.
To say that Gaza was self-governing before the carnage commenced is laughable. The people of Gaza controlled literally nothing that went into and out of what was accurately described as the world‘s largest open air prison. And they didn’t control their supply of water, electricity, etc. Israel controlled all of that.
Feigning ignorance on these things doesn’t work. Again, Israel is responsible for the well-being of all people in areas that governs, and those areas include absolutely all of Palestine, including Israel. Eretz Israel.
There are abundant numbers of things that are not Hasbara-derived online, which you can reference. You may want to start with reports that have been written by literally every major human rights organization in the world, including the Israeli B’Tselem.
It’s amazing how you can lie like this with a straight face. Israel has no normalized, immigration or naturalization processes for people not considered Jewish or proximate to Jews via the law of return.
Seems like you're the one spreading lies. The law of return is one method of immigration, not different than, say England's ancestry based immigration. Israel also has a regular immigration process for non Jews.