this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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The ironic thing is, conflating any and all criticism of the state of Israel with anti-semitism could be argued as anti-semitic itself, because to suggest that jewish people in general and the Israeli state/military are one in the same such that criticism of the later is also hateful towards the former, is also to suggest that jewish people as a whole are responsible for the actions of Israel.
As cultural groups as a whole are inherently unable to be guilty of crimes (since even if a large number of people belonging to one commit some crime, such a group will also contain members that cannot be guilty of it, like young children), but states and similar entities, being organized and capable of decision-making, can be, then any attempt to link the moral culpability of a state and that of a cultural group is inherently to apply unfair accusations to that group, and thus hateful to it.
Should one be allowed to have a national state if that national state is an ethnostate, practices apartheid, and commits genocide? I'm seriously asking because that is a standard I would hold any country to. And I don't see how it means that "Jewish people can't have a homeland", just that it's unacceptable to build a homeland on the mass graves of the natives.
Ridiculous. How does that single out Israel? No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a "terrorist". How are Israel held to a different standard?
Sounds to me like a genocidal excuse fantasy.
Thank you for asking this. I'm against ethnostates regardless of the ethnicity and am genuinely curious to hear OP's response
I agree with your argument in general, but hasn't the US shot drone missiles (accidentally, for certain values of that word) at plenty of civilians as part of its was on terror?
Eh, it isn't on the same level as erasing an entire bloodline on a genocidal crusade, but yes. Does that make it okay? Did the US not get shit for that and continue to get shit for that? During this whole war on Gaza, I've seen the history of America being used as a tell-tale example of how not to do this or any war ever in the future... And it doesn't make Israel look any more "stellar", especially not when it hides behind others' atrocities to dilute its own in the eyes of the world. No different than Putin who makes similar remarks on a regular basis.
Right. Biden explicitly said “Don’t make the same mistakes we made in 9/11. There’s no reason we had to be in a war in Afghanistan. There’s no reason we had to do so many things that we did.”
Like, Biden pushes HARD for that war. That's the voice of regret. I suspect Israel will have similar regrets.
Too much death.
Bidens words say one thing but his actions say kill all you like
Pretty much. I wasn't saying that so much to defend Biden as to agree with the fact that the US has done similar in the past.
I honestly think that Biden is conflicted;
On the one hand, I'm sure that it's sound geopolitical strategy to support Israel. For the same kind of reasons it's sound geopolitical strategy to support Ukraine.
On the other hand, Benny McGenocide over there is fucking it up for Biden and everyone else that supported Israel.
Biden reacted too slow, but he also had to balance competing interests. Definitely a no-win situation. He could not have easily stopped support for Israel, and I truly believe that he's not a fan of the genocide.
His track record for pushing the US into war following 9/11 does reveal his character too. Actions do speak louder than words. It would be interesting to know what exactly was going on in his head back then. I think the conversation with netanyahu is interesting in that it shows what sounds like regret.
You're right though. He's done what he's done. He'll only ever at best be the least worst option.
The whole situation makes me sick and sad. War crimes answered with war crimes.
Related: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-biden-administration-once-again-bypasses-congress-on-an-emergency-weapons-sale-to-israel
It’s a complex answer to why I’d personally hold a drone operator in 2001ish to a similar but higher standard than a guard at their post, versus the IAF today. The former are working with semi limited/limited information: this uniform = enemy but there’s a dark shape in an alley, there’s the front line of contact but why is that person digging by the roadside, drone rolled up from its 32hr autonomous flight plan and now there’s live intel feed - all limited information. In those scenarios genuine, honest mistakes are possible but always avoidable. That’s the “fog” part of the ‘fog of war’ - making life or death decisions quickly with limited knowledge.
All that doesn’t apply to the IAF right now… The fog is clear now; the ISR and SIGINT capabilities of Israel are very strong, drones and satellites are all over Gaza, the bombing targets are clearly identified along with the “collateral” civilian deaths it will cause:
That’s no longer an “ooops, well we tried hard to limit civilian deaths” if you’re callous about the human cost to achieve your political/military goals. But as long as they’re not your people I guess?
Not accidental, coincidental. They had lists of targets and next to each the level of acceptable collateral damage. Afghanistan showed very clearly where that kind of "ah fuck it" attitude leads: Somehow the German-occupied regions were much, much calmer than the US ones. Now you'll hear Americans say "yeah of course we took the hard tasks and left you the rest" but the thing is: Americans made it hard for themselves. Taliban actually once wrote an apology letter to the Bundeswehr, saying "sorry for attacking your convoy, some idiots of ours confused you for Americans".
Personally I'd put it this way: Every ethnicity is entitled to a place to rightfully call home, a place to feel secure and welcome in. Our Frisian minority here never tried for independence, it just didn't come up. It's their rightful home, living there since time immemorial just like the majority, even as a mere district in a state in a federal state in a continental union. Quite literally zero ethnic tensions over the millennia: Sibling tribes, one happens to be numerically dominant. This place to feel secure and welcome in thing though is pretty much incompatible with what Israel is doing right now as with all the shit Kahanites and their stooges and stirrup holders are up to that's never going to happen, they'll never feel safe while continuing to antagonise. Fascists and their fucking need for eternal wars. I can still vividly recall when I gave up on Israel (part of my family moved there after the war, solid Labour Zionists): I was sitting on the floor, playing with Lego, listening to the radio, news came on, reported that the fucker killed Rabin.
It's also the -- not really critique, more like a question, that I have towards Germany's stance on the whole thing: To support Jews having that homeland, sure, of course, but how far do we take this. Can we really call Israel a home for Jews if it's just some random fascists no Jew elsewhere actually wants to have anything to do with, and do we really have to let it come to that before getting out the chairs for an intervention circle. Kinda waiting for New York Jews to rename a quarter there to Israel to put an end to this fiasco.
There are over 20 ethnostates in the immediate region....are you saying none of them have a right to exist or just the Jewish one?
Each of those states is built on Arab imperialism, built on the graves of the natives as you say. Most of them have banned various cultures (including Jews) and commited genocide or are currently involved in one....
A base level of restraint would be fucking fantastic. Israel has killed more journalists in the past 10 weeks than ANYONE has EVER killed in a whole year. They dropped more bombs in a single week than America dropped in an entire year fighting ISIS, and in an area the size of a city. Calling it self defense is whitewashing intentional genocide.
The whole 'why is Israel singled out?' is just Israel's main PR and main excuse for genocide. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they make such a claim. You can tell them all these facts and they'll pull out of their ass some other country with a shitty history and say, "OMG why are you holding us Israelis at a different standard?" as if we all forgot how it was after 9/11, how people protested the Iraq War, how no one justifies what Americans did to the natives... These people live in their own reality where everything is skewed and malformed to allow them to live in peace knowing too well they are committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.
I really applaud all the Israelis who refuse to serve in the IDF and who see it for what it is.
Zionism has had a long and troubled history by this point, and I don't even know much below the surface. I'll tell you right up front I view Israel as an apartheid state and I'm not even a leftist. It's just right out there in the open, for anyone to see.
Here in the US, we have a Christian Nationalism movement that would love to set up exactly what Israel has in "The American Redoubt", also known as "Greater Idaho".
Fucking terrifies me and my property isn't even in their sights for conquest. Building a nation state along ethnic or religious boundaries is wrong in my opinion. I hold that opinion because I'm an American who believes in immigration, mixing of races, and freedom for all. Just the phrase "Jewish nation" makes my skin crawl.
quick edit: of course, all the ethnostates surrounding Israel are immoral in my view also.
"They get more freedoms and a better quality of life than anywhere else in the middle east. In the written law at the very least, they have equal rights."
This is a hell of a statement to make.
For an interesting point of view, I recommend a book called "The Hundred Years War on Palestine." It starts in 1917 and discusses the origins of the state before 1948. It then continues until 2017. I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts if you read it.
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Hundred-Years-War-on-Palestine-by-Rashid-Khalidi-author/9781781259344
"What do you mean black slaves don't have it as good as the whites? It says right in our founding documents all men are created equal!"
Pretty much the same take I had.
Ya nailed it. See, the thing is here, both of you are citizens of nations where you don't have a lot of actual personal choice in what your government does to "represent" you, despite both ostensibly being "representative government."
They're both apartheid states. I live in one, I didn't choose to. You live in one, you didn't choose to.
However, in the case of the US, we don't keep them all in one single, open-air prison with a giant fence between us and them, and bomb the living shit out of all of them if one of them does something fucked up. Usually, we prosecute that individual.
I'm not saying the US is better, it's not. Just look at Guantanamo Bay.
But I am saying the situation with Israel and Palestine is way more fucked up, based on the close proximity, how long this has been going on, and things like Netanyahu probably funding Hamas. Netanyahu is just like US conservatives, he's willing to fund his enemies just so he can keep using them as scapegoats. Netanyahu has been a fucking piece of shit for over twenty fucking years in Israeli politics, and just like the US, we seem to be unable or unwilling to deal with criminal fucking scumbags like him.
USA is a fascist state and always has been, that does not justify what Israeli settlers and the IDF are doing currently
there were no "No Irish Allowed" signs during The Troubles either. This conflict, as with all other competing ethnic quarrels, is complex. But it isn't any more complex than those conflicts. In fact, I'd say that the ongoing conflict in Malaysia is more complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also to address the whataboutism, yes, I'd argue that the US is an apartheid state against the natives. Palestinians are living in a genocidal apartheid state. The treatment of Palestinians by the settlers in the West Bank are a clear sign of this. What recourse do the Palestinians have when an Israeli squats on their house while running out for groceries?
Which is the chicken-and-egg problem of ethno/theostates, isn't it? If most/all of a group are isolated to one geographical location, and largely absent from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for hate to spread in that rest of the world, because nobody there has lived experience, can have that moment of "but I know Elsa/Ahmed/Luna/whoever, and they're decent person" to challenge propaganda when they hear it (and anyone who's a minority where they live has at least one story of being the cause of such a realisation). But if you're a group that lives in those little geographical pockets, it becomes that much harder to move out, because you give up your support network and move into an area of potentially hostile people.
And of course, bigots know about this and weaponise it. Speaking as a trans person and noticing the current wave of vile legislation against us in the shit parts of the US, it sure as hell feels like the objective there is to force anyone who can leave to do so, and punish those who can't, specifically to prevent a sufficient mass of trans people building up that those same deradicalising experiences can happen (hence why the use of a stereotypical trans name in above example). But in a way it's both better and worse for us, because we aren't just born into certain bloodlines or cultures, we emerge almost everywhere, so and have to fight to make the whole world queer-friendly, rather than just being able to set up somewhere in a small pocket and let the whole world slowly become most hostile to us in response.
The US was founded on a genocide that didn't fully stop until the late 20th century. That much is true. We're not an apartheid state because we don't have a population of Native Americans who aren't allowed to leave their designated areas. We do have areas called "Indian Reservations" where Native Americans have limited sovereignty (somewhat comparable to that of a US state), but the people who live there are free to leave and many of them do.
We might very well be an apartheid state if the native population hadn't been genocided to the point that nobody sees them as a threat, so I'm not claiming any kind of historical moral superiority. And the US government still treats Native American groups badly in a lot of ways, but they're at least not treated badly enough to inspire them to form terrorist groups, and it's not because Native American cultures are inherently pacifistic—native attacks on white settlers were quite common in the 1700s and 1800s.
The lesson I take from it is that even people with the worst historical grievances are willing to set them aside if they're given the same opportunities as everyone else.
Israel has no right to exist where it does right now. No group of people has a right to force others out of their homes to establish a nation for themselves. By your logic if all peoples have a right to establish a nation wherever they see fit then the Roma people can justifiably show up in tel aviv tomorrow and start conquering the place since they have no nation of their own
Seriously what a fucking unhinged Zionist rant, and people here are just upvoting that garbage?
Really shows how deep the propaganda goes. No, Israel does NOT have a right to annex Palestinian land. Genocidal fucks.
Really upsetting that people think it's acceptable to advocate for an ethnostate in a queer space.
It's the fediverse, and you're confusing fascism and chauvinism.
This is a theoretical moral quandary I've tried to determine for myself and have yet to figure out:
How long is "long enough" between when one group forces another group out of its land and when the invading group should/can be accepted as the "rightful" group for that area?
I often point out that some Palestinian people who were forced out of their homes in the creation of Israel are still alive as reasoning for why it's not right to have Israel exist where it is, so I know that "within a lifetime" is too short. At the same time, I also know that thousands of years (i.e. Israelite homeland) is too long to reclaim land, so I've narrowed it down (if you can call it that) to "more than a lifetime, less than a few millennia."
What about a couple hundred years? Is it when everyone who originally lived on the land has grown old and died? When their children have? Grandchildren?
So much of human history is violence resulting in displacement. I feel like the line has historically been drawn at "when the original group is either wiped out or too weak to say anything anymore," which is not the moral line for which I'm looking.
I'd be really interested to see what anyone else thinks on this.
Take a look at the effects of colonisation. In 1788 the British First Fleet established a colony in Sydney, land of the Eora Nation, which is now functionally extinct. The following 245 years have led to the near-destruction of the some 200 nations and language groups across the Australian continent. Many are extinct, and genocides (particularly the "Black War" in Tasmania), intermarriage, forbidding indigenous language communication, and disease wiped out most of the rest of the cultural and linguistic heritage of Australia, dating back (in the northern parts east of Darwin at least) up to 65,000 years.
Do the Wiradjuri deserve a state? It would occupy much of NSW and Victoria, if Australia ceded their traditional boundaries. Yet their continuous culture spans far longer than the Jews or Arab Muslims. So I think the answer to your question depends on the circumstances a people have been subjected to, and whether there are enough of them left, with enough resources, to fight the status quo. Ultimately, might makes right, and after the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany a mere 80-odd years ago, there were enough European Jews who had fled the genocides, and enough of a nation/diaspora to band together and influence the world after the dust settled. The same cannot be said for the Indigenous Tasmanians, unfortunately, whose culture was annihilated to the point that their languages only exist on early recordings by anthropologists.
Please Roma, I would donate money for this to happen, unfortunately that would just end with genocide too though.
Please explain to me what "existential threat" is being posed to you by the children being murdered in Palestine?
I think you're conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.
Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn't and Christianity certainly shouldn't either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.
Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that's what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but "exterminating all non-Jews in the country" isn't a legitimate interest. In fact, you'll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors' country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it's normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn't give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You'll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their "war on terrorism", and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There's a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.
So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there's a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the "Jewish nation" part.
That said, I'm just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don't know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
WWII was triggered by Nazi Germany's attempt to take over the world. Ending the Holocaust was just a fortunate side-effect of beating back the Germans and removing the Nazis from power. Nobody in power have a shit about Jews until people started seeing images from the death camps after they were liberated.
Not all criticisms of Israel are antisemitic, just criticisms of Israel stealing land and murdering civilians. From the river to the sea friend :3
When I hear Israel has a right to exist because Jewish people need a home, I immediately wonder whether the person saying so would agree that Nazi Germany had a right to exist because German people needed a home. Nazi Germany is gone now and ethnic Germans seem better off for it.
Are Nazi Germans an ethnic group like Jews are?
Are the fascists running Israel an ethnic group? No, they're a bunch of war criminals who should be hanged for their actions so Israel can have some hope of transforming into a decent country whose people acknowledge its crimes.
I'm not going to argue that some of them, Bibi in particular need to be jailed but comparing them to Nazis is blatantly bullshit and if you don't understand that, please take a trip to aushwitz or the memorial in DC for an education.
I'm educated, buddy. Just because you're too emotionally invested in Israel being blameless to see the parallel doesn't make it bullshit.
I just admitted that israelis have blame.... there is no parallel here. Let me know when they start trucking Palestinians in from Jordan and Samaria to get burned up by the thousands.
As savage as this is, from a demographic perspective you're talking 2% of a population. A population that's growing faster than any other on the planet. We're not even talking about it being decimated. By contrast, the Holocaust wiped out 50% of the global Jewish population and it still hasn't recovered. There's no comparison and attempting to make one demeans the Holocaust, holomodor and the actual genocides going on right now.
You fucking ghoul. You're literally saying Palestinian lives are worth less than Jewish ones. You're the worst kind of racist.
So does this mean that Israel exist as an apartheid state for the Jews?
Did you miss the part where I said "“exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest"?
But yeah, perhaps I should also mention that locking them up, putting them in ghettos, denying them equal opportunity, etc. isn't a legitimate interest either.
EDIT: apparently I can't Lemmy, I thought you were replying to me when we were in fact replying to the same comment.
I’m going to start doing this now lol
Edit: pointing it out**