No-one’s denying that a conflict exists between Israel and its neighbors. It’s just that instead of defining it in nebluous ideological terms, it would behoove the world to treat it as just another dispute between various peoples located in a certain region.
But, it isn’t. It should be that, but in practice it is an intractable point of conflict between the Islamic world and the Western word.
The problem – part of the problem – is that Muslims think of Israel/Palestine/Canaan as “Islamic land,” because it was once, and it is essential to their worldview that once territory has become part of Dar-al-Islam it must never again come under infidel rule. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them aren’t still smarting over the loss of Spain.
One of many.
And no, they haven’t forgotten Spain. Read Edward Said for some pining for al-Andalus.
What meaning has Zionism today? It appears that after the creation of the modern state of Israel Zionism is a dated movement almost empty of meaning. And certainly not worthy of all the attention some people are giving it, like suddenly getting all upset about luddites railing against looms.
What the hell are you talking about? Atheist intellectuals may have gotten the ball rolling on Zionism, but to treat a mention of the religious element as a hijack is insane.
Well, to most Israelis, Zionism is pretty much identical to what other nations call “patriotism.” To non-Israelis, it means support of Israel. But classic, old-school Zionist ideology is pretty much over, mainly because unlike most ideologies, it was sucessful. They set out to found a country, and they founded a country.
Well this has been fun…
No, seriously, I suppose the issue has come up in meetings, at dinner, with new acquaintances and it’s been mind-blowing how much I’ve heard the same stuff repeated from so-called “intelligent” people.
I’ve been to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and would have loved to have been able to visit other countries in the region. What I did notice was that there didn’t seem to be lots of church and synagogue activity in the first two countries, but lots of every religion under the sun in the last. And nowhere did I see any type of democracy similar to what we have in North America except in Israel, where in their Knesset, there were Arab reps who seemed to really have a legitimate voice.
But no, I’ve not been reading Texx Marrs, but thanks for bringing him to my attention. Just sounds like the bigoted type of conspiracy lover I like to avoid.
I suppose Durban brought out a lot of issues, but right before Durban I suppose I found too many people I thought should know better looking for the proverbial victim, and my questions here have borne some fruitful answers. And about the reference to the validity of Zionism today: isn’t the current charter of Hamas and the current climate reasons enough to keep the concept alive to make sure a people, (I don’t think I’d call Jews a race but a religious entity) survives as one bastion of free speech, free press, and a link from ancient to modern thought and action all in one unique country.
You did not treat it as a “mention of a religious element,” you pretended that that was the whole of the movement when the reality is the that people who actually believe that they are entitled the land because God gave it to them is a tiny minority that is actually ridiculed by most Israelis.
This is the document in question, the outcome of the Durban Review Conference.
I started reading it but got bored, it goes on too long. What’s the bit that people objected to?
http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/pdf/Durban_Review_outcome_document_En.pdf
This is pretty much the reason. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been around since the late 19th century. ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government) has been the bugaboo of extremist racist groups in the US like The Order and the Aryan Nations since the mid-70s at least. The existence of the militia movement came to media attention after the Oklahoma City bombing when McVeigh was linked to them, these militias conspiratorial enemy is usually the NWO or ZOG. Either way, a conspiracy to create a single government world run by the Jews, or the Freemasons, or the Rothschild’s, or whatever, with Zionism and a Jewish conspiracy figuring into it at one point.
Nowadays it seems like there’s a weird intersection of far-left ideology and “ZOG”-type “anti-Zionist” conspiracy theory stuff. The Jeff Rense show is a good example of what I mean.
No one actually objected to that document, per se. The initial draft of the 2001 Darwin Conference statement included several paragraphs such as
After the U.S. walked out of that conference, those sections were deleted.
In the run up to the Geneva conference, there were a number of claims by various Arab states, plus Iran, that the “issue” of “Zionism” still had to be addressed in this conference. In addition, a number of anti-semitic statements had been included in the regional meetings that preceded the conference. At that point, the U.S. and several other countries declined to participate. When Iran’s Ahmadinejad spoke at the Geneva Conference, he made a pointr of claiming that Iserael was founded on racism, prompting a number of countries’ representatives to walk out.
Is a boycott the right way to go then?
It’s par for the course to have widely differing views at a UN conference with lots of posturing beforehand. That’s the whole point of the UN - to bring together all the countries in the world despite the fact that they don’t agree with each other (or even hate each other).
Walking out during the Iran speech makes more sense - conveys disapproval without having to miss all the rest of the conference. This point is underlined if the actual document that came out at the end contained nothing that would prevent the US being a signatory to it (if they were there).