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Comment by Samuel_Michon | Hacker News Reader

Valid points, but I don’t think it’s a comparable situation. Israel is constantly being attacked by people living on its own soil. It’s fairer to compare US intelligence gathering in Iraq with Israel’s intelligence gathering within Israel. If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of rockets a day at California, the US government would be way less civil than Israel has been to the Gazans. (And they have been, remember the detainment camps for Japanese Americans?)

NB: I count 3 instances of ‘abhor’ in the article, none of them used correctly. (The original Hebrew article speaks of נפעם, ‘excited’.)

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I understand the US media is heavily skewed in support of Israel, but your comparison is not fair at all.

Why is Israel being constantly attacked on its soil? First of all because it's been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local Palestinian population for the past 65 years.

Secondly Israel is a theocratic state, where citizens of different religions have different sets of rights, where the situation has been described by Israeli commentator as bordering apartheid.

It's extremely misleading to say "If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of rockets a day at California…". The Palestinians have not started randomly bombing Israel out of the blue.

Also I wouldn't use the Israeli in Gaza as a paragon of virtue: I don't think that California would start using phosphorus bombs against Arizonan civilians, since it's explicitly forbidden by the Geneva convention. But since the US have actually used phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah in 2004, maybe you're right, they would be less civil.

  I understand the US media is heavily skewed
  in support of Israel

My impression is the US media is heavily skewed regarding Israel, however some are skewed one way, others the other. To a smaller extent, the same is true about European media.

The mainstream US media is universally skewed pro-Israel and attempts to present a pro-Palestinian, or even less than fawning, point of view are regularly shouted down as being anti-Semitic.

Speaking of ‘Palestinians’, meaning Muslims residing in historic Palestine, is anti-Semitic. There are Palestinian Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, etc. It’s about an area of origin, not a religion or a race. The label has been hijacked to create a false history of Muslims in the area. Please remember that Islam is a relatively young religion compared to Judaism and Christianity.

Uh...no. This is real simple. The people of Gaza and the West Bank use the demonym; Israelis do not. It is appropriate to call people what they call themselves, and so I do.

And even were it a reasonable comment on your part (it's not but it is in keeping with your rabidly pro-Israel, burn-the-Muslims worldview that your comment history demonstrates), I think using the demonym that the targets of systematic economic and cultural oppression use to describe themselves is somewhere well below the literal least we can do. (And to forestall the tired and obviously dishonest because the self-victimization is appalling: no, the Israelis don't get to have that excuse when they have the strongest military in the world completely backing any and all injustice they wish to perpetuate. Not allowed.)

I shouldn't have risen to your bait, but I'm tired and annoyed by people who would abuse America to do evil and you are one of them. You will, I am sure, leap to take the last word.

It's being attacked because the surrounding countries fundamentally object to the existence of an Jewish state and wish to destroy it.

To say "Israel has apartheid" really cheapens the struggle of Black South Africans.

//edit//Corrected glaring typo.

You probably wanted to say 'Jewish state'. Anyway I don't think I disagree with you: the surrounding countries do not want a Jewish state on their land, it was more or less imposed on them after WW2 and it has kept expanding ever since. Can you blame them for not wanting them?

Jews have lived in that region for thousands of years. It's not like there were none there and they all were bussed in.

Actually, they "all were bussed in".

> By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).

> According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Palestine

Your second figure doesn’t include Gaza and Judea & Samaria, while your first figure does. If you would include those areas, the percentage of Arabs in the area would be over 50%.

Most people in historic Palestine, be they Jews or Arabs, can’t say their family lived there 100 hundred years a go, the population has grown twenty-fold in the last century. However, there have been Jews and Arabs in that region for thousands of years. It would be silly to deny that.

Of course, on your second point. I think one way to peace would be for Israel to simply annex the occupied territories. It's preferable to the BS situation that exists now.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to (literally) the same land. I would like to see Israel extend it's democracy and rights to the Palestinians instead of putting them in open air jail (the West Bank wall reminds me of Escape from New York).

Right. Israel has "kept expanding". Ignore the strategic positions that allowed them to survive (the Golan), ignore the repeated aggressions from the Sinai which made Israel have to take it and give it back several times.

Besides, are you saying that wanting someone out of some place but justifies violence? If so, expect me to come at your house and get you out of there with a rifle and don't complain when I do so.

>> To say "Israel has apartheid" really cheapens the struggle of Black South Africans.

Is this something a Black South African who suffered under apartheid and is intimately familiar with the current occupied Palestine told you, or are you the Black South African yourself?

I'll answer for him.

Neither, I read about the apartheid from reliable sources and I know the situation but also read about statistics to make sure I'm not being unfair to either side.

But what about the people who say "Israel has apartheid"? Did you ask how they can claim that? Or do you just assume that they are/have met South Africans who lived under the Apartheid?

I didn't say 'Israel has apartheid'. I said that some Israeli commenters have compared the situation to apartheid. I used the verb border to be specific. There is a whole wikipedia page on the argument [1] if you want to know more about it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analog...

Sorry, I supposed that gadders quoted you accurately due to the quotes around "Israel has apartheid". I apologize.

I'll edit my reply to maintain the legitimacy of the question.

These are different kinds of statements that require different kinds of knowledge.

Israel clearly has two categories of citizens within its borders defined by tribal distinctions (race/religion). Whether this is formally 'apartheid' is an arguement worth having, since we can look at the UN definition and Israel's actions and have a meaningful discussion from an external perspective.

Comparing the subjectivities of the lives lived under the two regimes necessitates experiential knowledge that is most likely lacking in this audience. I don't find oppression olympics arguments to be fruitful. The moral calculus of today's actions does not depend on the price paid in South Africa, The Congo, The American South, or in Revolutionary China.

"within its borders" is correct or incorrect depending on whether you consider the West Bank inside Israeli borders.

No it's something that comparing, say, not having the right to vote (in South Africa) vs having Palestinian supreme court judges (Israel).

I'm guessing that during apartheid, South Africa didn't have black Supreme Courth judges.

It might be useful to compare the political structures, sure.

"Cheapens the struggle of" is not a statement about political structures, it is a statement about personal experiences. I don't think it is fruitful to reduce the experiential quality of living in an oppressive regime to some calculus of cheapness, wherein Having Supreme Court Judges counts as +$10.

Cheapens not in a monetary sense, but in a moral one.

I think the experiences of Black South Africans were a lot worse than those experienced by Palestinians and Arabs within Israel. I think if people redefine "apartheid" downwards to cover any regime that people don't like then it becomes a meaningless term.

Apartheid has a definition (differing sets of rights depending on your ethnicity), and Israel just barely skirts it by dint of the West Bank being technically a temporarily occupied territory.

If you posit that the West Bank is effectively annexed and that the Israeli government has no plans to ever quit it, then technically the West Bank is governed by an apartheid system.

I don't care what you think the preferable apartheid to live under would be, much like I don't care if you'd rather be a Roman or an American slave. The morality of the political structures at play here does not depend on winning a "shittiest conditions" competition.

I disagree that we are redefining apartheid.

No-one is talking about a shittiest conditions contest, we talking about the ridiculous hyperbole that is used when discussing Israel.

You know who said Israel has apartheid? The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa[1].

[1] http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/democracy-goverance-an...

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.

And if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

> [Israel has] been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local Palestinian population for the past 65 years.

There are thirty times as many ‘Palestinians’ in Israel than there were 65 years a go. Meanwhile, Israel is now about half the size as it was in 1948. It’s tiny: the size of New Jersey.

Is that true also if you count Israeli occupied territories? It seems to me that Palestinan controlled territories have shrunk quite a bit [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories#Ov...

In your pictures, only the last picture (current situation) shows Palestinian controlled territories. In the other images, the areas were controlled by the UK, Israel, Jordan, or Egypt. Meanwhile, the four images do show how much Israel has shrunk.

There are more Arabs in historic Palestine (the State of Israel, Gaza, Judea & Samaria) than there are Jews or Christians [1]. The current State of Israel is a lot smaller than historic Palestine (read: pre-1948 Palestine).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Projected_Population_for_P...

Israel is not a "theocratic" state.

Israel has laws to enable members of the Jewish nation (of any religion) to immigrate to Israel. Because the whole purpose of Israel was to combat the persecution of the Jewish nation (which includes the Jewish religion and ethnicity).

Also, Israel has some laws of religious nature (Relating mostly to discouraging work on Sabbath, marriage and burial). While the religious-based laws are a PITA in Israel (marriage is a real problem for many, burial of non-Jewish soldiers can be degrading, etc), it is far from a "theocracy".

> First of all because it's been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local Palestinian population for the past 65 years.

Hu? Israel's borders have shrunk - it used to include parts of what is now called Jordan. History didn't start in 1948 you know.

Map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kingdom_of_Israel_1020_map...

In 635 CE the Arabs stole it, control jumped around to various nations ever since, till finally the descendent's of the original local population (who never left, and lived there the entire time) regained it.

Any claim the local Palestinian population has is superseded by the original population.

Who was there before Israel?

The Philistines, who coexisted with Israel.

Casluhim, who were killed during Ethiopic War with Egypt.

Pathrusim - nothing much is known about them.

Caphtorites, also killed during the Ethiopic War.

Canaanites, weakened by Israel and finished off by the Assyrians.

Hittites - unknown.

Perizzites, weakened by Israel, and eventually absorbed by surrounding nations.

There are some others, but nothing is known about them other than a name.

The main takeaway is that none of these exist as a distinct people anymore. Jews are the oldest inhabitants of Israel that still exist as a recognizable group. (i.e. a shared history and culture)

True. Of course if a large segment of those whose connection of birth and heritage to the territory that Israel effectively owned were denied citizenship in the US, we might have a similar situation. (We do have this situation with American Samoa which I think is a significant problem but it's only half a million residents so not comparable at all.)

I think going into a major back and forth though would be off-topic here. I do think the problem is not one side's fault but the fact that quite a number of sides (way more than two) want to see conflict continue because it is what they know best.

Exactly. Israel is in a unique situation and has been on high alert since the inception.

Does not UN consider some of that soil to be occupied land?

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