Because they have an independent sovereign country. Borders. Currency. Form of government. All the accoutrements. The “Palestinian” nationality had none of that, and no history to make up for that lack.
I talked to old Israelis about that time. Not 1905 but a bit later. Yes, “Palestinian Jews” or “Palestinians” for short. Arabs used to call themselves “Greater Syrians”.
This is absurd. Off the top of my head:
-People can be bigoted against Israelis/Israel but not Jews.
-People can subscribe to partisan doctrines and be anti-Israel because their political fellow travelers are as well.
-People can mistakenly view Israel as a vestige of “colonialism” and therefore oppose it as the last relic of a discredited geopolitical movement.
-People can be wilfully ignorant and may actually believe that Israel is committing slow-motion genocide.
-People can simply accept the narrative that is told in certain circles like the European left and remain intellectually incurious and believe that Israel is one of the worst nations on the planet and/or deserves the lion’s share of global attention and condemnation.
Of course there are some anti-semites who hate Israel because it’s the Jewish state, and some anti-Israel bigots who come to hate Jews because Israel is the Jewish state, but claiming that anti-Semitism is the sole cause of disproportionate anti-Israel fervor is nonsense.
I didn’t claim “anti-Semitism is the sole cause of disproportionate anti-Israel fervor”. Where did you get that from?
You’re talking about Ibn Khaldun the North African historian, right? The guy who came up with a theory of history that says that civilizations become civilized and then decadent and then are taken over by barbarians who start the process again?
I ask, because, first of all, in his autobiography, he defines himself as an Arab (which some historians think is an invention, but):
And second, in his other book, the one with the theory of history, he goes on to discuss the Arabs, and even goes on to distinguish “people who are called Arabs”, by which he means people whose native language is Arabic, and “true Arabs”,and he goes on to define them (bolding mine):
In other words, “Arab” is a real term to him. He recognizes it as a distinct ethnic group, even if his definition of Arab is more limited than our definition of Arab. (He pretty much restricts it to the Bedouin.)
Enough. There are already more than sufficient Dopers who will hop up on the cross and claim that nobody can ever criticize Israel without being called an anti-Semite without you adding fuel to their persecution fantasies. Just quit it.
Huh? Did I even mention anti-Semitism? Where are you getting this from?
As I have said before: criticizing Israel doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. Criticizing Israel only, and never criticizing any other country with the same vehemence, when you have no personal connection to Israel whatsoever, makes you…let’s just say, motivated by something other than just a righteous sense of political justice.
When you said “So when people who have no connection to Israel get so worked up about it, the reason is “Jews”. There is no other explanation.”, I’d imagine.
Where is anti-Semitism in that statement of mine?
Anti-semitism is hatred of Jews. “Worked up” does not have to involve hatred, does it?
When the aforementioned Malay or Nigerian or Ethiopian knows what “Jew” means but would have no idea what a “Basque” is, or a “Kurd”, or “Welsh” - is that “anti-Semitism”? I don’t think so.
When the aforementioned people believe that Jews “secretly rule the world”, and when they believe, as you pointed out in your post, “blood libels”, then yes, that’s a claim of antisemitism. If you’re saying “The only reason people get worked up at Israel when they don’t get worked up at other countries is because Israel has Jews”, you’re accusing them of antisemitism.
Only if you prefer to think that way. I don’t. But I do think that the only reason people get worked up at Israel when they don’t get worked up at other countries is because Israel is a Jewish state.
You avoided the question I asked before: when the aforementioned Malay or Nigerian or Ethiopian knows what “Jew” means but would have no idea what a “Basque” is, or a “Kurd”, or “Welsh” - is that “anti-Semitism” as well?
Not necessarily. But when you say “the only reason people get worked up at Israel when they don’t get worked up at other countries is because Israel is a Jewish state.”, if that’s not implying anti-semitism, then you’re going to have to spell out the implications of the statement, because I don’t get them. Why, in your mind, for non-antisemitic reasons, would somebody get worked up about a Jewish state?
They did? They didn’t do a very good job then.
Would that this would sink in considering how often the two are conflated as meaning the same thing.
First of all, “worked up” does not have to be negative. It can be positive as well. There are plenty of people who have no connection to Israel who feel friendly towards it.
As I said, it’s Jews. That may mean hate, love, like, curiosity or confusion, but there is no other people that invokes such “worked up” stuff. And it gets transferred to the Jewish State.
Yes, there are some. They are a pitiful remnant.
In one of my software contract jobs I worked with a Zoroastrian. We talked about the religion. According to him it is dying out. Most of the religious writings is lost.
Pardon, but you said they were wiped out by “the Arabs” in 641. That there are 210,000 of them around 1,370 years later tends to make your statement entirely false.
Going from majority population to a fraction of percent is being “wiped out”.
What would Saladin have considered himself to be, as a Muslim without what Europeans would consider a nationality?
He considered himself a Muslim.
“Nationality” is a modern concept that arrived late to the Middle East.
Until very recently, people in the Middle East identified themselves strictly by their religion.
Modern day Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims may identify themselves as being Arabs, but their 19th Century ancestors didn’t and would have thought it was absurd to put them in the same group.
As for Saladin, by today’s standards he was a Kurd, but referring to him as a Kurd would be like referring to Julius Caesar as an Italian.
You’re correct that I was a bit imprecise.
Until recently, the only people in the Middle East who thought of themselves as “Arabs” and who were considered by the people of the Middle East to be Arabs were some Bedouin.
Ibn Khaldun certainly did not identify himself as an Arab and would have been insulted by the suggestion that he was because of the connotations of the word. It would be a little like calling a modern American “a hick.”
The best comparison I can think of is that Americans, Canadians and Australians all speak English, but don’t see themselves as being Englishmen.
Similarly people from Senegal and the Ivory Coast don’t call themselves Frenchmen.