Trump and Netanyahu are going to get Israel destroyed. A future of perpetual war and atrocities is no future at all. Peace and human rights is the only way to guarantee a future for Israel long term.
… and in honor of the highjack, I will say ONE thing about Israel, and then tiptoe from the abyss. Don’t crack down on people’s freedom of speech about it. People have a right to dissent.
Israel aren’t the ones who need to be convinced of that. Tell it to Hamas.
They both need to be convinced. They’re both failing to hold rapists accountable. They’ve both committed atrocities. They’ve both killed thousands of civilians.
And who do you suppose needs more convincing?
The liberal, secular, multicultural democracy that guarantees freedom of religion and equal rights to all its citizens and respects LGBTQ people?
Or the theocratic kleptocratic ethnostate financially supported by foreign kings and dictators which uses its citizens as human shields, steals relief food from its intended recipients and sells it back to them, conscripts children as soldiers and kamikaze bombers, uses schools and hospitals as military staging areas, and executes gays and apostates?
Right now, they’re both about as bad as it gets. Both willing to kill thousands of civilians while accomplishing nothing, both protecting rapists, both escalating rather than working towards peace, both making lives miserable for Palestinian civilians… They’re basically allies. Right wing Israel needs Hamas, just like Hamas needs a right wing Israel. An Israel that genuinely values human rights and peace would be Hamas’s worst nightmare. Netanyahu is basically Hamas’s best ally.
So you’re morally incapable of seeing any difference between liberal secular democracy and theocratic dictatorship. Got it.
Who’s a “liberal secular democracy”? Certainly not this version of Israel. About as liberal, and as democratic, as the Jim Crow South, or apartheid South Africa.
And you’re saying that on the basis of… what, exactly?
Are religious minorities discriminated against? Nope. Religious freedom is guaranteed in the Basic Law, Christians, Muslims, and Druze are able to marry and settle religious affairs in accordance with their own traditions, and any marriage considered valid under the laws of the country where it was performed is recognized as valid. In fact, non-Jews are exempt from conscription and Muslims get special access to the Temple Mount, the literal holiest site in Judaism, that Jews are not allowed to have.
Are ethnic minorities denied the right to vote? Nope. 1 in 5 Israeli citizens are Muslim and Muslims hold 10% of the seats in the Knesset and there is a Muslim on the Supreme Court.
Are elections rigged? Nope, they are internationally acknowledged to be free and fair.
Are non-Jews denied freedom of movement or employment or equal treatment under the law? Nope.
You’re talking out your ass.
…Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. They are ethnic cleansing the West Bank. They are annexing Southern Lebanon. Occupying parts of Syria.
It doesn’t matter if they are a secular democracy or a theocratic dictatorship. They are committing atrocities and warcrimes on a massive scale.
You could say pretty much the same about apartheid South Africa, or the Jim Crow South, if you were only talking about their preferred populations. Sure, Israel seems to be fine for its citizens. But what about the hundreds of thousands of others under Israeli government control and authority, but without rights? Not so good for them. No rights and no protection, not from IDF rape and murder and not from rampaging bands of thugs in the West Bank. A lot like Blacks in the Jim Crow South and apartheid South Africa.
Gee whiz, I wonder why it could possibly be that Palestinians don’t have the same rights within Israel as Israeli citizens?
Maybe - just maybe - it’s because they’re not Israelis, they’ve never been Israelis, and they don’t even WANT to be Israelis. Is Canada an apartheid state because Americans can’t vote for the Prime Minister?
The path to a better future for Palestinians isn’t being kludged into some Franken-state with Israel that would require an iron-wrought constitution to keep it from tearing itself apart, it’s an independent state with a functioning democracy. And for that to happen, Hamas has to be defeated, because the last time Gaza had self-rule without a functioning democracy the result was 10/7.
Nah, it’s because Israel does not want Palestinians to have those rights. And from Israel’s perspective as a self-identified Jewish ethnostate, that makes perfect sense, because they want the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens to be Jews.
But Israel war hawks saying “we can’t make any progress on an independent Palestinian state until Hamas is eradicated” is not a good-faith principled argument for constructive political engagement. It’s just an excuse to go on ignoring the continued dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, and conveniently putting all the blame for it on Palestinians themselves. A huge and fundamental part of Israeli politics is very, very committed to the goal of Palestinians never, under any circumstances, having meaningful sovereignty and self-determination in any part of the territory claimed for Eretz Israel.
And I can’t imagine why they’d possibly be worried about such a thing, can you? It’s not like they endured 1900 years of constant persecution, expulsions, murder, and the industrialized slaughter of a third of the entire population or anything.
And yet, a Muslim citizen of Israel has far more rights than a Muslim citizen of most Muslim states, let alone a Jewish citizen (the ones that didn’t force all the Jews to leave on threat of death, anyway).
Here lies the end of the 187 posts I moved from the thread about trump hysteria
Well, being Jewish (technically, half-), I can understand that perfectly well (and in fact, of course, one doesn’t need to be Jewish at all to get that picture).
However, my Jewish-influenced upbringing also placed a high value on rationality, compassion, righteousness and principled intelligence. I was not taught that it was okay to ignore and even perpetuate the oppression of others as long as I could make some kind of bullshit claim that it was necessary to do so in order to allegedly increase the security of Jews.
[ETA: Oh, now I see, thanks @puzzlegal.]
Like I said, it’s awwwwwfully convenient for the war hawks (and war-crimes hawks) to go on framing this as though the existence of terrorism and disputed sovereignty automatically provides a complete free pass for any degree and any duration of sustained systematic oppression.
If Israel’s intent is to never let the Palestinians have sovereignty, then I disagree with that. An independent Palestine is the best solution in the long run.
But as long as that state is under the control of violent extremists who do not accept the legitimacy of Israel and its right to exist as a safe haven for Jews, it’s just going to result in the same thing repeating itself eventually.
I’ve never understood the attempted rhetorical sleight of hand that occurs when defenders of Israeli policy focus on the state’s treatment of Muslim citizens, rather than all Muslims within Israel’s practical political control (or the available means of becoming a citizen). Isn’t 90% of the apartheid critique about Muslim non-citizens and the de jure religious discrimination about who can become a citizen?
There are Muslim Israelis and there are Muslim Palestinians. Israeli citizenship is based on birthright, not religion.(For all I know there may even be some Muslim Israelis who are ethnically Jewish or Jewish Israelis who are ethnically Arab.) Muslim Palestinians are not Israelis and don’t want to be Israelis - they want to be citizens of an independent Palestine. The comparisons to apartheid South Africa are invalid because there was no class of black South Africans who inherited whiteness from their parents and were exempt from segregation.
I’m not arguing dor “sustained systematic oppression”. What I want is a two-state solution where both parties recognize the others’ legitimacy and right to exist. Anything less than that doesn’t fix the problem, it just kicks the can down the road until the next 10/7. As long as Hamas refuses to acknowledge Israel’s legitimacy, they can’t be part of a meaningful solution.