No it doesn’t make you an antisemite, although I’m torn between my reaction to your obvious fishing for insult and my gratitude for your reading at least that far.
My objections to Israeli actions may not match yours or anyone else’s. They’ve ethnically-cleansed as they pleased, they target “military-age” members of the “other,” they kill with Old Testament indiscrimination, traded Jonathan Pollard’s filched US intelligence to the Soviets, and this navy veteran’s feelings about the USS Liberty are the same as they are about the USS Arizona, etc. etc. That’s just my short list.
None of which means I begrudge them having their own nation, just the way in which they resort to running the place. I know there should be an Israel, and I know it can live up to its promise.
But then I seem to be in the minority, holding the same view of the USA in the 2020s. Was I wrong to believe that about SA forty years ago?
I get it, though. Hitler murdered six million Jews, who then took it out on the Arab. Cecil Rhods and Lord Kitchener murdered 30 thousand Boers, and they took it out on the Blacks.
Do you want to be the nation who proves how Israel can get beyond apartheid? Because you’re in the best place to exert that model. Or just another voice they hear telling them all to drown?
Me either; at least, I don’t think it’s in any way “demonstrated” that Jews as a minority population are uniquely in danger of genocide from hostile majorities.
Plenty of non-Jewish minority populations have been subjected to genocidal slaughter in the various nations in which they resided. Does that make all of them entitled to a separate sovereign nation-state “under their total control”?
That’s not my only objection - I also don’t believe Jews are in danger of being wiped out in many of the other places they currently have large populations. There’s not going to be a genocide of Jews in the USA or Canada or the UK or France or South Africa.
“But they said that about Germany in 1933”. Well, it’s not 1933 anymore. And even in 1933, Jews in America were not going to get wiped out.
Does that sound anything like a sensible approach to the issue of national sovereignty, though? Are we going to just play pretend with imaginary nation-state carve-outs for other persecuted minorities, in order to look more even-handed?
Nah, I don’t think that’s defensible. I think there are plenty of decent realpolitik-type arguments to be made for accepting the existence of Israel as a nation-state, in some form and within some boundaries, simply on the grounds that Israel as a nation-state does exist. Even if its original establishment was in many ways contested and unjust to other residents of the territory (same like Pakistan and a number of other post-colonial nation-states, not to mention a whole bunch of colonial-era ones including the US), well, it’s here now.
But arguing for some kind of prima facienecessity for the existence of a Jewish nation-state because Jews need to be protected from minority-population genocide, and then saying about all the other genocided minority populations “eh, we’ll make a list and pretend we’re thinking seriously about their claims to separate nation-states too, although obviously nothing will actually be done about it”? No, I’m not down with that.
Believe me, as somebody entitled by birth to make aliyah to Israel should I choose, I appreciate my extraordinary privilege in having the option to gain majority status with a specially designated nationality for the purpose. But I don’t feel it’s morally right to have that privilege at the expense of so much suffering on the part of others who have an at least equal claim to that homeland. And I’m also not cool with having that privilege justified on the grounds of past suffering as a minority population, while the vulnerability of other minority populations that have likewise been subjected to genocide is airily handwaved away with “make me a list”.
We can obviously see how Palestinians would benefit from their own nation-state to protect Palestinian interests, right? That’s why we oppose the Ben Gvirs and the Smotriches.
You don’t think someone like the Kurds would benefit from a Kurdish nation that actually prioritizes the Kurdish people rather than viewing them as an obstacle in the path of an Arab/Persian/Turkish state?
Not to mention the many, many, many victims of Russification or Sinofication. From Tibetans and Uyghurs, to the Siberian and Muslim communities that die for Mother Russia in the muddy fields of Ukraine at a rate many times greater than Muscovites - being a minority in someone else’s empire is a terrible way to live. I would certainly and wholeheartedly support independence for all of these groups; I’m frankly surprised that anyone who claims to be for the liberation of human beings from materially oppressive conditions would be against self-determination for these groups.
You mean, the way the US and the West in general dragged the Kurds along when we wanted them to fight ISIS, only to abandon them to their fate to please demagogues in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey? Yeah, that was exceedingly bad form on the West’s part. A massive betrayal that has cost thousands of lives and which stands as a black mark against the principles we claim to value. That is definitely not what I am calling for. These people deserve genuine support, not lip service.
You clipped my quote, where I noted that Palestine should get nationhood, to make your point that Israel shouldn’t get nationhood while other oppressed people aren’t enjoying nationhood. So would you include Palestine among them like I did, but you deliberately deleted?
That isn’t what I said at all. I never argued that Israel “shouldn’t get nationhood”: on the contrary, I argued for realistic recognition of the fact that Israel has nationhood.
What I object to, as I said very clearly, is after-the-fact assertions about some kind of moral necessity for the existence of Israeli nationhood because of Jews being a persecuted minority, while the absence of nationhood for other persecuted minorities is in practice just taken for granted.
ISTM that if we really believed that other persecuted minorities besides Jews also deserved the security of having their own nation-states, we would be working a lot harder to actually bring that about. I suggest we start with the Palestinians, as they seem to be the folks at highest risk of severe insecurity (to put it mildly) right now.
I certainly won’t say that “everyone with a beef gets his own country.” Without even bringing in the Americans who wanted one so they could keep their slaves, there’s the current ones who want a racially pure theocracy. Nopes all around.
There’s the impractical and unnecessary ones too. The Cherokee deserve full rights as Americans, and all reparations in the form of assistance achieving that. Giving them North Carolina and northern Georgia would be impossible. (Plus that would deny the city of Atlanta to the African Americans, who’ve proven there that they can make a place for themselves as Americans if they’re given an honest chance). The same with the Dalits of India. Just take the feet off their necks and help them prosper in their mutual homeland.
But that doesn’t work in Israel and Palestine. The only opposition to the two state solution are the extremists who stand to profit from hate and suffering.
True. There are gray areas of course, and tons of cases where oppressed minorities who have been subjected to genocidal violence are nonetheless not on any kind of fast track to separate territorial sovereignty. (Tamils in Sri Lanka, Tutsi in Rwanda, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the list goes on.) But if oppressed minorities in general aren’t going to get separate territorial sovereignty, at the very least they need and deserve to have full citizenship and rights in whatever nation-state(s) are controlling their homeland.
I’m not talking about Democrats, liberals, probably not even all progressives. I’m talking about the group of people who are specifically concerned with oppression, prioritise race and gender issues, talk about intersectionality, prefer equity to equality. Maybe calling them the social justice movement would be better?
I encounter them every day on social media, I see their ideas and values filtering into the mainstream and adopted by progressive orgs. Increasingly these concepts are taught in schools. I don’t have a good name for these people or these ideas: from the way they reject any name, I can only conclude they don’t want to distinguish themselves from the larger progressive movement. But you are not going to convince me that something I can see with my own eyes doesn’t exist, or is just a few random individuals.
Me neither. It’s perfectly possible to teach people about institutional racism without appropriating a broader term that has always included racial prejudice. I think that whatever its intentions, the P+P definition works to excuse prejudice against privileged groups, including some minorities, and that is bad.
It’s quite funny that the ADL was using a similar definition until recently, despite it being obviously counterproductive to its aims:
I do see something wrong with saying that racism means prejudice based on race plus institutional power: it’s a bad definition and the major effect of it is to downplay certain types of racism. Institutional power is not required for five guys to beat up one due to racial prejudice. It is not even required for a CEO to racially discriminate in hiring, as one publicly admitted to doing yesterday. I see no benefit to using a different word to describe the same event depending on the races of the participants, and, since language does influence thought, a significant potential for harm.
They imply that it is impossible to discriminate against white people, but this is obviously untrue. Having some kind of oppressed identity does not mean an individual has no personal power, and cannot have power over an individual member of the privileged group. It’s not as common, but that does not make individual acts less bad. It is also far from impossible to commit hate crimes against a member of a more privileged group, and this should definitely not be excused.
I think it’s bad to say or imply that discrimination or other racist acts against white people, men, straight people etc doesn’t happen or is not as wrong. It’s even more dangerous when it’s applied to ‘successful’ minorities, who have more reason to fear being singled out and usually less ability to protect themselves.
And if you can’t bring yourself to say that Palestinians cannot be anti-Semitic, given they are currently oppressed by Israeli Jews, I suggest that indicates it’s not a good definition.
