Senate The European Politics Thread

A gave my thoughts and moved on. You can accept or not. I'm not arguing with you.

 

Hell, criticism of the state of Israel isn't necessarily anti-Zionism either. There were/are a good number of Zionists who recognized that wherever the "Jewish homeland" was, there were going to be people already there so maybe they should try to cooperate instead of expelling them and herding them into a giant ghetto and stealing their land and natural resources and rendering them stateless and just generally acting like the gentile-run European colonial powers they were trying to flee.

 

Anti-zionism is, for all intents and purposes, criticism of Israel's policies regarding the occupied terrorities and the religious dogmas behind it.
Much deserved criticism.
Anti-Semitism is racism.

 

It's also criticism of the idea that Israel should be a Jewish state. A lot of Zionists ask "don't you think Israel has a right to exist?" and I always feel like there's an implied "as a Jewish state" unsaid at the end. Obviously, I think there should be a state on that land. Obviously Israelis and Jews have a right to be able to live in peace. But not in a Jewish state.

 

I've never heard of the term used in that way. That's basically just being for the separation of church and state, which interestingly enough is an idea largely developed in France.

 

Well, yes, Zionism was designed as "a Jewish state," so you're correct -- and why shouldn't it be allowed to exist as such? (note, speaking from a two-state solution standpoint -- not as the single-state it is now)

 

There's a difference here, but my French is not up to the standard it should for context; is he saying, basically, that it's a reinvention of the classical antisemitism; that basically, the anti-Semitisim of old is the anti-Zionism of today? Or, is he saying anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism?

 

He's saying it's anti-Semitic to hate on the beautiful Swiss town of Sion.

 

Well it's probably full of Jewish art and gold, so...

 

Ethnic and religious states place one group higher than the other. You can either have a liberal democracy or an ethnic state, but you can't have both.

 

No? Having something as a state- or official-religion doesn't mean that, unless you think that England is that way, of course. There are plenty of places with official- or state-religions that fully guarantee freedom of religion.

 

And I think to be fair, Israel does actually have a very good framework for protecting Arab Israelis and they've been reasonably represented in society. I don't think it's accurate to claim Israel places higher value on an ethnicity; it just does not place sufficient regard on the indigenous identity of Palestinians.

 

That's not what I mean. I'm talking about having an ethnic state or a religious state, not having a state religion.

 

I think you're conflating matters Vivec. The extent to which Israel is an ethnic state is really just confined to one narrow aspect, which is that citizenship can be automatically conferred based on ethno-religious grounds. It does not, however, make citizenship an exclusively ethno-religious proposition. Nor does it mean that the Palestinians living under PA administration are representative of the way in which Druze, Christian and Muslim Israelis are treated under Israeli law or by Israeli society.

 

Then why the need for even a nominal ethnoreligious state? Feelings sake?

 

I feel like you could easily research the 18th and 19th century anti-Semitic fads and pogroms, as well as nearly 2000 years of Catholic repression of Jews, to understand why the British - especially Alfred Lord Balfour - felt the restoration of Jews to Palestine, and a Jewish state, was essential, Vivec.

 

So, emotional reasons. They get special treatment because of emotional reasons.

 

They get special treatment, Vivec, because for centuries they have been a dispossessed people whom we in the West scapegoated to the point of indifference on a global scale to their near systematic extinction. Had we been more consistent in this approach, the world might have been a better place. That we have not does not mean the creation of the state of Israel was wrong; it just means we did the right thing once and too infrequently.

Similarly if you were to say, in a manner that echoes Edward Said, did we not do a monstrous injustice by the Palestinians, I would say yes. I would then note the world is not a binary place and what makes peace so astonishingly difficult is that both sides have an equally valid claim to the land and the state.

 

So I hope that because of the last 60 years and the next probable 100 years of horrible treatment the Palestinians are going to get, they'll be getting special treatment after that, yes?

 

Is this part and parcel of the socialist wardrobe change, this absolute extremism? This ridigly enforced binary worldview?

 

Yes, if wanting fair treatment for the Palestinians means being "rigid" and "antisemitic" (as Macron would say), then yes, I am both.

 

I recommend reading A Peace to End All Peace; the "British" aren't as homogeneous as you're making them out to be with regards to the creation of a Jewish state.

 

OK, but that does not have to mean you flip the scales the opposite direction. You don't liberate the Palestinians by oppressing the Israelis and vice versa.

blackmyron - I'm literally summarising complicated history in one sentence that exists purely to urge someone to do some research and you're critiquing it for superficiliaty? Top job mate.

 

I'm literally just asking why the Palestinians won't get special treatment for their suffering while the Jews do.

 

Because like wealth, another topic with apparent confusion, it's not zero sum.

The main issues that need to be ironed out are that Israeli has statehood and thus leverage; and that Israel has a right to insist upon security conditions. And that the land given to the Jews was British land at the time. Any attempt to rectify the damage done in 1948 without resolving these would be one sided naively assuming two wrongs make a right.

Just like a person's wealth was actually not forged at the expense of scores of poor, you don't give justice to the Palestinians by stripping it from the Israelis.