Nope. You cannot choose your race. You can choose to become Jewish. Many people have.
Irrelevant, unless you are trying to claim that Palestinians are genetically evil and will be homicidal maniacs regardless of how they are treated*. If they are real human beings like the rest of us, then the first Israeli step towards any eventual peace is to stop going out of their way to make Palestinians hate Israelis. And if the Israelis don’t want to make eventual peace then we might as well wash our hands of them because they are bent on national suicide.
*Which I note is a common attitude towards Middle Easterners in our culture; we regard them as born evil, we constantly make the argument that “they already hate us as much as possible and always will so we might as well go ahead and bomb/conquer/exploit/torture them”. We demonize them to the point that we might as well come right out and claim them to be literal demons.
In America, you are deemed a citizen even if you aren’t born American. That is if one of your parents are American. I have a Canadian nephew and neice who are American citizens with American passports because their mother is American. My sister in law, their mother, was born in Canada as well. They treasure their dual status, being Dallas Cowboy fans and all.They could conceivably keep this up for millenia. Are they racist ?
If you view Jews as a race then antisemitism is racism. If not then it is mere xenophobic. I’m not sure it really makes a difference.
I don’t understand your question. America does not use race as a criterion for citizenship. Israel does.
The point being that Jews do not constitute a race. There are so many different types of Jew, from EuropeSpain and thethe Midle East (including Palistine), Africa, India and China. They are an entity simply based on a heritage established in and around Jerusalem just over several millenia ago.
And once again, you do not have to be a Jew to be an Israeli citizen.
What the hell kind of website is that?
There si no such thing, biologically speaking, as race. Nevertheless, Israel has distributes rights based on what it perceives as a purely genetic heritage, and denies them to people born in Israel who do not have that genetic heritage. That is racism. Israel = South Africa.
Show me where Israel applies genetic tests for citizenship.
You do realize that anyone can convert to Judaism. Even an Arab. There are Arab Jews.
Or you can drop out by becoming a Christian.
It isn’t a genetic heritage you are looking for. It is a cultural heritage dating back several millenia that unites these Jews against those who would harm them.
So there’s no such thing as race, but Israel is racist.
Right.
It’s perfectly possible to be bigoted against things that don’t exist. I’ve run into people who think that we should enslave or kill any aliens, artificial intelligences or uplifted animals, for example.
Fine, but can we at least standardize the terminology? Are “racist” and “bigoted” distinctive terms or not?
Racism is a specific type of bigotry, hard to pin down because the term “race” is poorly defined at best. Which is probably why the term “antisemitic” is preferred when speaking of prejudice against Jews, it sidesteps that issue.
By the way, artificial intelligences? I’m totally on board with enslaving them.
Well, now you’ve done it.
What’s the contradiction? Are you denying that racism exists or are you claiming that race has a biological meaning?
Not necessarily, no. Racism is subset of bigotry.
I’m just amused by you claiming the nonexistence of something and its application within the same paragraph.
[quote=“John_Mace, post:22, topic:554116”]
Israel certainly tried, the generally accepted figure was between 700,000 and 800,000. The story has now been told by Ilan Pappe in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine [2007] Israel has forbidden those people and their decendants from returning to their country. Which is what makes the the policy regarding settlements and Jewish immigration hard for many to understand.
Well, I can picture settlements and suicide bombings being bargaining chips. Israel allows settlers to demonstrate their willingness to just take land as it suits them, while Palestinians send in suicide bombers to demonstrate willingness to kill Israelis as it suits them, the idea being that if you’re not threatening the other side in some fashion, you have no power.
Thing is, I can picture Israel dragging the settlers back into Israel, even against the settlers’ wishes (it’s happened a few times, after all), thus demonstrating that they can, under some circumstances, trade away this bargaining chip. I’m rather curious if anyone in authority in Palestine has demonstrated comparable willingness by arresting and punishing those who facilitate suicide bombings.
Seriously, I am curious about this. Have there been arrests made and such?
Heh, and being a bit cynical, I can even imagine Israel offering the right of return to people who were born in what is now Israel prior to 1948. The youngest of them would be in their sixties, after all, well beyond typical childbearing years. If you were born outside of current Israeli borders - tough. Why would descendants have any such claim, anyway?
Yes. Several years ago before the negotiations at the time started, I recall the PLO making a big deal of arresting some terrorists as a show of good faith. Unfortunately I don’t have a source, you can imagine the type of results that come from a google search of ‘PLO arrest terrorists’…