Reply to Antizionism is not antisemitism/the current conflict

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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. [b]But I don't question Israel's right to exist, which I guess makes me a Zionist[/b].[/quote]

The question is, do you think Israel has a right to exist as an undemocratic religious nationalist state?

A country called Israel that provided equal rights to all people, including those interested in obtaining citizenship? Few people have an issue with that. It's not the name of the country, but the premise and policies.

And I disagree with you on South Asia - life has very much not moved on after partition in many, many ways, and you seem to have an ill understanding of the region.
[/quote]

Do you think the 43 other countries that have an official state religion have a right to exist? https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/10/03/many-countries-favor-specific-religions-officially-or-unofficially/.

If not, are you out there openly protesting their existence? No? Only Israel? Hmm curious.

Israel absolutely does provide equal rights to all its people. We’ve been over this. 20% of Israeli citizens (2.1 million people) are non-Jewish Arabs and they enjoy FULL rights under the law. Re: OBTAINING citizenship, you can absolutely become an Israeli citizen if you are not Jewish (compare to many Muslim majority countries where Jews are legally barred from obtaining citizenship). Jews are given preference in immigration matters because Israel was founded as a refuge for Jews, because the rest of the world murdered half of us and kept trying to persecute the rest. All countries have preferences built into their Immigration systems, including the US.[/quote]

Categorically, this is false. Palestinian citizens are subject to over sixty discriminatory laws, are not allowed to build new cities and the cities that they have are severely underfunded comparatively speaking. [/quote]

Categorically, you have been brainwashed by propaganda. The “sixty five laws” are listed here in case anyone is interested in clicking through them: https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index. I am absolutely not afraid to post this link because what they are classifying as “discriminatory” is patently ridiculous. These wouldn’t even be considered unconstitutional in the United States.

I clicked on a few random ones, like this one: https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/610. It’s basically  a GI Bill that provides tuition assistance to veterans. The website says that, even though the law says absolutely nothing about Jews/non-jews, it discriminates against Palestinian Israeli citizens because they are exempt from military service. Not banned/prohibited, mind you, EXEMPT. Arab Israelis can and do serve in the IDF.

Here’s a tidbit from another one I happened to click on: “While neutral on its face, in practice the law is used almost exclusively against Palestinians, who make up the overwhelming majority of detainees classified as ‘security’ detainees.” Oh so the law discriminates against those suspected of terrorist activities? Give me a f-ing break. [/quote]

If you are even going to argue that Palestinian citizens are somehow treated equal to Israeli ones, then it is clear who is brainwashed. Just as a recent example, it was well documented that they were refused entry into bomb shelters during the recent Iran missile strikes. [/quote]

Next thing from their playbook is to gaslight you into believing there is no apartheid in Israel and no genocide occurring in Gaza. [/quote]

There is no genocide. Hamas started a war and they are losing it, it’s actually pretty simple. Was the Iraq war a genocide? Because that killed about four times as many Iraqi civilians. That’s not even getting into the fact that the number of Palestinians killed since October 7 (roughly 56,000) is inclusive of civilians AND militants. Hamas does not distinguish between the two. [/quote]

And...there it is. You're a loon. We can all see very well what has and is happening. We've seen the dead babies, the starving children. They are TARGETING civilians. It's Israel that fails to distinguish between the two. Either you know that, and you're a liar, or you're fully brainwashed and talking to you is a waste of breath. [/quote]

I am not disputing that all of that is absolutely tragic. War is extremely ugly. Innocents always suffer, including innocent children. That doesn’t make it a genocide though. I haven’t seen any credible reports that definitively establish that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians. It is CERTAINLY not their stated goal.

Let me ask you, though - if you believe Israel is committing genocide because it intentionally targets civilians, do you also believe October 7 was genocide? Why or why not?[/quote]

No, I don’t. Scale, for one. Effectiveness, for another. A one day attack, albeit with hostages, compared to a sustained multi-year campaign with tens of thousands of civilian deaths, with leaders of this campaign saying it will not stop until this nebulous goal of eradicating Hamas (which they make no effort to distinguish from civilian Palestinian citizens) is achieved. Acting like they are remotely the same is why people with your viewpoint are not to be taken seriously.

[b]If what's happening in Palestine doesn't qualify as a genocide, what would qualify as a genocide? Many experts who study genocide have in fact said it does meet the definition. Why do you continue to deny it?[/b][/quote]

Rwanda. 
Nazi Germany.

Genocide does not usually involve give the victims the ability to stop the genocide by surrendering.

We killed 10% of all Germans during WWII, was that a genocide?  Of course not because we were at war and the Germans could stop it at any time by surrendering.
Are there war crimes being committed?  Almost certainly.  Every war has war crimes.  There are plenty of war crimes to go around in this war.  
Seriously, for every war crime you can name for the IDF, I can name a war crime for Hamas.
Beither side is playing it clean but Hamas started this.
[/quote]

War does not target civilians.  They cannot surrender for Hamas anymore than I can prevent Trump from behaving recklessly. [b]You're sick and I hope you burn.[/b] [/quote]

People like you have hated people like me for thousands of years.  
You only have sympathy for the people that started this war is because they are losing horribly.
They can surrender at any time.  But instead of heaping scorn on hamas for starting all of this or pushing for hamas to surrender so all of this can stop, you insist that we either lose or quit.
This war will end when the Hamas leadership has surrendered, been tried and executed.[/quote]

Your raging belief in your own natural superiority above others, along with your astonishing track record of inability to coexist peacefully with literally anyone else, as ironically evidenced by your posts in this thread, are the reasons that some people have hated people like you for thousands of years.[/quote]

Bigots like you justify their bigotry in all sorts of ways.
It's nothing new or novel.

We didn't invade anyone in 1948.[/quote]

I commented on your actual posts. You are clearly a raging bigot. On the other hand, you have zero basis upon which to falsely label me a bigot. But go on, I guess, with the only tactic you’ve mastered, attacking others (at the expense of self-reflection, apparently).[/quote]

To recap, these were your exact words:

“Your raging belief in your own natural superiority above others, along with your astonishing track record of inability to coexist peacefully with literally anyone else, as ironically evidenced by your posts in this thread, are the reasons that some people have hated people like you for thousands of years.”

I don’t think there’s really any way to read this other than “Jews think they’re better than everyone and can’t get along with anyone which is why they’ve been persecuted for thousands of years.” Except you used even more extreme language. Like, what else could you possibly mean by “some people have hated people like you for thousands of years”?

Do you not think the above is an antisemitic statement? Genuinely, I’d like to know.[/quote]

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