I doubt it'll work. Before this, I merely thought of the Israeli government as a bunch of nazis who believe that driving people out of their homes is god's work. Now, I also think they're barbarians.
That's probably the least appropriate analogy ever.
> who believe that driving people out of their homes is god's work
Israel is actually a surprisingly secular country. If you don't know the most basic things about a country, maybe you shouldn't go around calling them nazis and barbarians. There's a word for those kind of attitudes.
But I do admit here that I've turned this not-understanding into choosing that it must be plain evil. Maybe it's something different. I'll not delete my original post to keep the thread understandable.
Zionism is the idea that Jews need a Jewish nation to take Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. History has basically proved that to be true.
What it's not:
1. The idea that Jews are in any way superior. All races have equal rights under Israeli law (although secular Jews have some obligations that other groups don't, i.e. mandatory military service) and Israel has a significant Arab population.
2. Religion-based. Early Zionists were all secular socialists. Religious Jews got on board later when they started to see Israel as a sign from God but the traditional position (and the reason why many Ultra-Orthodox Jews still don't support Israel) is that Jews weren't allowed a nation until the Messiah comes.
Israel isn't perfect (obviously) but your comments are completely disproportionate. You need to tone down the hate.
Makes perfect sense. If you settle a persecuted set of people on a totally unoccupied land, which would be totally harmless. What I don't understand is the need to persecute one already existing set of people to accommodate another set of people who just got persecuted.
If a persecuted tribe in Africa decides to settle down in Antarctica people wouldn't have a problem. But will it be OK, if they invade California drive out the existing set of people there and settle down.
This narrative about driving people out is an oversimplification at best, though, just as much for Israel as for California.
I don't see Hispanics flying around in F-16's bombing white American colonies. If they do, I will be the first to speak out. What you seem to be talking about is natural change in demographics, where a group of people grow in population and the other group doesn't grow much. And then there is natural movement(like immigration in case of Hispanics).
Also if its oversimplification, please explain us the right thing.
As a result you call my response intellectually dishonest, and ask me to go over to Reddit and talk to other fanatics.
Sorry, but no more replies from me. Also If have I hurt you by any means on this thread, accept my sincere apologies.
How on earth is the former causally linked to the latter?
If you think that's analogous to what happened in Palestine you need a history lesson.
Will it be ok, If they drive out existing residents of California?
But they weren't persecuted - they were paid off.
In 1917, at the end of WW1, Britain was given the mandate of administering Palestine - at the time a chunk of the recently-defeated-and-defunct Ottoman Empire. Part of this mandate was the Balfour Declaration, which basically said that Britain would work to build 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine ("it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine").
They worked with the "Jewish Agency for Palestine" (these days the Jewish Agency for Israel), who had been buying the land in the area from the previous owners - mostly Arab clans and local sheiks and so on. Nothing was seized, nobody was driven out or persecuted.
In practice the people in the area operated as 'millets' - micronations unified by religious belief, governing themselves according to religious law. When the British took over administration of the region in 1917, they didn't try to change this.
So for the most part, the landowners that the Jewish Agency was buying from were the governance. The trade wasn't like one citizen of a nation selling to another citizen of the nation; it was like one country selling land to another country (and so moving its borders).
The message is clear and simple: Don't mess with us, we will fk you over. Whether it is nice or not is a different matter.
I do not think that what Israel is doing is better or worse than what other countries have done or are currently doing and should not be treated any better or worse because of it. But it would be disingenuous to spin it as anything but what it is. To me, the strategy is to occupy and take over territory over time. It works. See the history of the United States versus native people, Australians versus aborigines, Chinese versus Tibetans. Might makes right. For Americans, we still benefit greatly from what happened in the past. Its not to say that the Palestinians are blameless, just that Israel has the 'bigger gun' in this fight.
Say what you will about history, but how people are treated right now is telling.
Why don't you do research on the early Zionists, if you're actually curious about the subject and not just trying to score points in an internet debate? Probably most of the early Zionists were very secularist.
I don't especially like the settlements, actually, and neither do a lot of Palestinians. I'd be happier if the lot of them were either removed or simply abandoned to the jurisdiction of Palestinian authorities.
Sharon actually closed a lot of them awhile ago, but just like any democracy, it's hard to get away with alienating any constituency. You'll notice that even though Sharon pulled all the settlements out of the Gaza Strip, it didn't seem to improve matters there any. Also, the settlements provide a lot of jobs and economic benefits to Palestinians. It's a complicated issue, much more complicated than this bullshit of yours about "the Israelis are Nazis" (which itself is pretty fucking racist, BTW).
As for the bulldozers, do you have any good sources on that? As far as I can readily find, most demolitions are either carried out because structures were constructed (often in Israel itself) without proper building permits (though this is allegedly enforced unfairly), or because there are terrorists actively holed up inside them. Interestingly, Israel also demolishes a lot of the settlements.
This is probably a good time to point out one of my simple ground rules about this issue: I think any criticism of any party, or any policy, is reasonable, as long as one accepts that both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist as independent states.
As a sidenote, I agree that the Nazi reference was over the top and I regret using it. I do not agree, however, that it was "fucking racist", since I called a government something, not a race or a nation's people.
There are also Palestinian factions which are unreasonable, including Hamas. I think it's doubly unfortunate that both Hamas and Likud have managed to win various elections.
EDIT: I'm editing this comment because HN won't allow me to respond to blvr's post. blvr, thanks for elaborating. I don't mean to sound hateful, and I'm willing to accept that I have it all wrong. But still, can you explain the colonization thing? Why do they do it? Note, this is not criticism: I'd really like to understand it better. It's been pointed out by many in this thread by now that I've been assuming things.
I don't know what you mean by 'the colonisation thing'. What are you talking about specifically?
Aie, damn. Lost in translation. I meant the settlements. But people have been elaborating about those in other comments by now. And I've come to stand corrected that even if the settlements are horrible, they're less horrible than suicide bombings and the likes.
It's a testament to the overall excellence of the HN community that the comment sparked a discussion, not a flamewar.
We should care about your opinion why?
Flagged.
But that's not what people are usually talking about when this argument comes up - instead, they're criticizing Israel's right to exist or Israel's right to defend itself (which amounts to the same thing). When they're not being so explicit, they want Israel to embark on a policy which would lead to the end of Israel (accepting indefensible borders, the 'right of return', etc.)
In short, they're making the 'anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism' argument. Personally, I think anti-Zionism is just the first type of antisemitism to try and simultaneously deny it's antisemitic. Let me try to explain with an analogy.
Let's say I was anti-France - that I believed French national identity was somehow illegitimate, and that therefore France shouldn't be a country. Since France shouldn't exist, France also isn't entitled to defend itself from external attack. However, I have no problem with French people! Great wine, great cheese - they just shouldn't be able to have a country. If a French person objects, I'll just patiently remind him that I'm not anti-French, I'm merely anti-France. Perhaps I'll criticize him a bit for inappropriately throwing out the anti-French card.
Sound ridiculous? Well, that's exactly how it sounds to me when someone argues that my people can't establish a state (in the same imperfect way most states are established) and then can't defend our state from attack. Everyone else's national self-determination is fine, but ours is somehow not.
So yes, when people make this sort of argument against Israel - a type of argument they would never make against Sweden or France or Mexico - in that case I do believe they're being more than a little biased against my people in particular, and therefore antisemitic.
You cannot deny, however, that Israel has been less than kind to the Palestinian people in many instances. Is pointing that out antisemitic? No. What about if it's pointed out in an absolutely tasteless way, for instance by using a Nazi reference? Still not. It's tasteless, and I apologize, but it's not denying Israel's right to exist or defend itself. I'm not convinced that maintaining a situation that essentially boils down to having first-class and second-class citizens is the only way to guarantee the continued existence of Israel.
And, it's important that we're allowed to discuss this. If any criticism of Israel's actions is called antisemitism, we're effectively censoring the entire debate. Now I'll be the first to admit that arguing on the internet has little direct value, but I daresay that the "antisemitism!!" gut reaction is at least as harmful as people like me rudely denouncing the people running a government in situation as complex as Israel's as "a bunch of Nazis".
you're now making factual assertions, which are false, and which you have never researched, you've only heard them from biased unscholarly sources like CNN. and you just believed them, without adequate questioning of them.
is it a coincidence that you believe false factual statements condemning israel, but not ones condemning france? or what?
and that you're so damn sure israel is guilty that you insist no one could even dispute it, even though you're highly ignorant on the topic and do not provide any factual arguments documenting any atrocities. (there are many purported documentations of such things. i've seen them before. they are not exactly high quality or persuasive. they only convince biased people or people who don't look too closely.)
For example, you obviously don't like being called an antisemite, and you don't want to think of yourself as an antisemite. I hope that pointing out your very real bigotry will bother you enough that you'll spend some time exploring the underlying facts and thinking more about why the Jewish state is held to a standard no other nation is, and whether its actions are actually 'atrocities' or whether this belief comes from other antisemitic propaganda and lies.
Best of luck.
the excuse that "i am only criticizing israel (which just happens to be the jewish state, what a coincidence), not jews" is an extremely common statement of anti-semites. using it without further elaboration only makes you look more anti-semitic.
Nevertheless, I have a hard time understanding what you hope to gain by your approach here. While you may be quite right that stating "i am only criticizing israel, not jews" is common among people who hate Jews, did you ever consider that this does not imply the inverse? It does not mean that everyone criticizing Israel hates Jews. As a programmer, you must understand this.
IMHO, the fastest way Israel support organisations can lose popular support in countries outside Israel is by calling people who criticize them (no matter how tastelessly) antisemites. I never understood why commenters like you and pro-Israel organisations appear to be so trigger happy with the term. It moves the entire discussion from the sphere of fact and opinion to the sphere of taboos.
I'll happily discuss fact and opinion with you. So whether or not Israel did right or wrong things - that's an HN-worthy discussion. But playing the antisemite card on a criticism of a government, even if this criticism is exceptionally harsh and inappropriate, that just doesn't work. I called a bunch of politicians something horrible. You called me something comparably horrible.
- criticizes israel in public, in ways anti-semites like to criticize israel - is not anti-semitic - does not include any clarifications in his criticism to differentiate himself from anti-semites
I think all good people know such clarifications are needed when you sound like you might be an anti-semite but actually aren't. If you leave them out, you're giving aid and comfort to anti-semitism and misleading people about your character, at best.
Note that any old clarifications won't work. Many anti-semites try to clarify how they aren't anti-semitic. A decent person would have to figure out how to say something that objectively differentiates himself. And he would care to do it if he wanted to publicly agree with the anti-semitic position on some specific point.