You’re not claiming Israel is a racist state, but other people in this thread are. They’ve raised the specter of apartheid; of ethnic cleansing. But what I’m proposing is that Israel acts in a way that best protects Israelis, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks. If they can do this without inconveniencing Palestinians, all the better. If it requires disruptions in Palestinian’s lives, that’s an unfortunate consequence.
The Israelis I know say that, in general, their lives are better than ever. Terrorist attacks are way down, and they are more prosperous than ever. They don’t really have any incentive to change the status quo.
One of the key engineers for our software team lives in Israel, although all the rest of us are in California. He likes it there. He’s as productive as any of us.
Rashid Khalidi claims that a sense of Palestinian national identity happened as early as the 1920s. I think that’s too early, and motivated at least in part by his political biases, but I’d say a sense of Palestinian nationhood developed by the 1960s at the latest, and that by the time of the First Intifada, almost all the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza identified themselves as “Palestinian”.
Peace is in the best interests of the Israeli people. That which furthers peace is very likely advisable, that which hinders peace is almost certainly not. When seeking a rapprochment with a long-standing enemy, it is helpful not to start by peeing in his Cheerios. This remains true regardless of whether or not unsolicited Cheerio urination is sanctioned by international law, or not.
How can it possibly be denied that Israel is a racist state when basic rights and privileges of citizenship are granted or denied based on nothing but race? Its entire raison d’etre and official state mission is one of racial entitlement. I don’t think that the Jews should leave Israel or anything, but I do think the concept of a race-based state is outdated and unsustainable.
First of all, Jews, like Hispanics, may be of any race. Second, there are non-Jewish citizens of Israel, who have legally the same rights that Jewish citizens do.
Kofi Anan, while he was head of the UN, is on record as saying the occupation is illegal. I will note that while he certainly is an authority, he isn’t the only authority.
Incidentally, if the granting of privileges based on “Jewish” descent/idenity isn’t racist because “Jews can be of any race,” then I guess antisemitism can’t be racist either, right? By the same logic.
No, Arab citizens (with the exception of the Druze, who are Arabs, remember) aren’t required to serve in the military, but they may if they choose to, and Lt. Col. Amos Yarkoni, aka Abd el-Majid Hidr, a Bedouin, and founder of the Shaked Reconnaissance Battalion, actually won the Medal of Distinguished Service. He sort of became a national hero, and there was a joke going around about him and another commander, that went something like "Fuad the Jew and Amos the Bedouin (another famous commander at the time was Fuad Ben-Eliezar, and the joke is, there’s a Jew with an Arab name, and a Bedouin with a Jewish name.)
That’s simply a strategy to demonize them by using a loaded term inaccurately. Not sure if it’s appeal to emotion or some other logical fallacy, but it is a logical fallacy.
OTOH, we could just cut to the chase and call them Nazis.