Reply to Antizionism is not antisemitism/the current conflict

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it's perfectly right and fair to criticize the Netanyahu government and its policies. There is nothing anti-semitic about that. But progressives seem to have adopted a narrative that states that Israel is a brutal western colonist state that violently conquered and displaced a peaceful indigenous people - like the conquistadors in the Americas in the 16th Century. And that's a stupid narrative. The entire Middle East was borne out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. None of the countries there today are natural, organic nation states.

Prior to 1918, Lebanon didn't exist. Nor did Syria. Or Jordan. Or Iraq. Besides Egypt, every country in the Middle East is a modern construct that derives legitimacy from the United Nations, which drew the lines of the post-colonial world. In addition to Syria, Jordan, Iraq and elsewhere, the UN granted statehood and independence to places called Israel and Palestine. But the Arabs in Palestine chose not to accept their independence and chose war instead. And they and the region have been paying the price ever since for rejecting the post colonial boundaries that were established by the United Nations during a chaotic time when more than a 100 new countries were formed.

It was a stupid decision by Palestinians. The establishment of countries in South Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh - and Africa involved far more movement among peoples than anything in the Middle East. And yet all those countries have been countries for nearly 80 years and life has moved on. But Palestinians are cursed by short-sightedness and misplaced feelings of grievance. Israel exists. It is as legitimate as any country in the Middle East. And Palestinians just make life worse and worse for themselves by their endless bad decisions - from rejecting the UN plan in 1948 to committing those massacres on October 7th. I dislike Netanyahu and the right wing settlers in the West Bank - that is a legitimate thing to sanction Israel for. But I don't question Israel's right to exist, which I guess makes me a Zionist.[/quote]

Israel stole land to create a Jewish state. Israel refuses to address the problems caused by this. Netanyahu(who is moderate/left of center by Israeli standards) has a position that there will never be a Palestinian state and every country in the Middle East must be kept as a failed state. So now the policy of Israel is to kill all Palestinians.

Israel has no strategic interest in United States and is not an ally. At this point I have seen Israel and have to say it causes nothing but pain, terror, death, oppression and crimes against humanity. Why would a country like that have a right to exist? This is like saying Nazi German has a right to exist.[/quote]

See it’s this kind of extreme hyperbole that make me think your antizionism is actually motivated by antisemitism.

Israel is not Nazi Germany. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a minor conflict comparatively speaking. Even if you take Palestinian estimates at face value (I don’t), at the upper end, 135,000 Palestinians have been killed in the entire almost 80-year history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. [b]To put that into perspective for you, that means in 80 years of war (not genocide, war), the conflict has killed about 2% the number Palestinians as the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Assuming fatalities were to continue at the same rate, in order to match the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict would have to continue for another 3,556 YEARS.[/b]

135,000 is like half the amount of Iraqi civilians that were killed in the Iraq war. Should America have a right to exist? Do you call it a genocidal state that “causes nothing but pain, terror, death, oppression and crimes against humanity”? 
[/quote]

This is where I have an issue...making comparisons to the holocaust. I don't think you can do that from either perspective. Just because the conflict has supposedly killed only about 2% the number of Palestinians as the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust...that is besides the point and irrelevant IMHO.

The Holocaust happened, and it was atrocious. But I'm quite tired of the "woe is me" harping on the past and any comparisons to the holocaust. I'm Catholic and true historians know that Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. Sure, they were a majority...but....Catholics were targeted too, as were many other non-Jews.

We live in the present. 
IMHO it is not acceptable to kill only 2% of Palestinians NOW by comparing to the millions of Jews killed in the PAST during the holocaust.
 [/quote]

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