Oops, double post
Their reasons for hating Israel aren’t necessarily irrational. I can certainly see where they are coming from in that regard. What I think is irrational is that they direct so much outrage against Israel and not at other countries who are also doing brutal shit, in many cases much more brutal than anything Israel ever did. There is an anti-Israel contigent on college campuses that is not matched by a similar movement against any other country, including countries that America does business with like Saudi Arabia.
Can you cite an example of a brutal regime which the left wing supports? I think this “double standard” is a canard.
Nationalism IS a socialist trait.
Leftists do put the interest of the people above the qindividual. Example: progressive taxation.
Israel as a genocidal nation. Nice.
My friend, I’m not saying they support brutal regimes - my point was that certain people on the left (more than on the right, it seems to me) bash Israel endlessly and not do the same for other countries that they would probably view as brutal.
If you would read what I wrote, nowhere did I ever use the word “support.”
If you ask them what they think about other brutal regimes, I assure you they will bash them. Israel gets more attention because Israel gets a lot of our money, and because it has a much greater influence on our foreign policy.
ETA, those other regimes also don’t have typically have defenders in our government, so there’s no point in wasting energy arguing about something that no one disagrees with.
I think this comes down partially at least to Israel, as a developed western democracy, getting more coverage in the media than other countries where questionable actions are taken by the government. Couple that with the fact that the Israel/Palestine problem has been ongoing throughout the lifetimes of probably at this stage most people on earth, I can see how it would get more criticism and negative attention than other trouble spots.
Left wingers also sometimes seem to oppose Israel even when it’s against their own interests. There’s a group called Queers for Palestine. Queers for Palestine! A group opposed to the only country with gay rights in the Middle East. Do they have any idea how they would be treated if they lived their lifestyle openly in the Gaza Strip? This is what I mean by irrational, people.
Is there “Queers for Kurdistan”? No.
Indeed a Palestinian activist from Italy was murdered by Al-Qaeda style extremenists in Palestine.
So then you think it was disgusting that some Jews and some gays supported having Saddam Hussein overthrown and a democratic government set up considering how homophobic and anti-Semitic Iraq is.
Here’s another example of shady
What about the billions that Arafat and Abbas had kept for themselves? How much infrastructure could the Palestinians have at this point? The UN and Europe have done a great job propping up that failed leadership for years. Where’s the outcry?
Exactly.
This is the double standard BS that people talk about.
There’s a difference between criticizing Israel and demonizing Israel. Oh yeah, let’s clap our hands at Hamas & Abbas signing a unity agreement while the former still wants Israel off the map. Great.
they weren’t Jews for Iraq.
Ibn Warraq:
Perish the thought. It’s what happened to Egypt vis a vis Israel in the 1970s. It’s what happened to Japan and Germany at the end of World War II.
The Palestinians are just a bunch who hasn’t quite gotten that message yet.
spark240:
And what exactly do you see Israel as wanting by way of violence?
ElvisL1ves:
Because Palestinians had Israeli-sponsored prosperity before the Intifada. Because Egypt and Jordan demonstrated that approaching Israel peacefully will lead to peaceful results. Most of all, because they don’t have the ability to destroy Israel militarily, so even if they don’t trust Israel’s good intentions, they might as well try a new tactic rather than continue lobbing the odd rocket and inviting retaliatory strikes.
Shouldn’t the example of the few Arab leaders who laid down their arms and sought peaceful negotiations with Israel and were rewarded with peace treaties demonstrate that Israel only responds by force for force, and will negotiate peacefully when approached in peace?
So why don’t they bash the Palestinian authorities? Why aren’t they decrying the stealing of humanitarian aid by Hamas? 
Being for Palestine does not have to mean being opposed to Israel.
What does Israeli violence against Palestinians achieve in the present and for the future? Does it make Israelis safer and happier people? I believe it is the reverse.
An end to the violence would help everybody’s prospects.
I’d expect an independent Palestine to have close economic ties with Israel and Egypt. Their population would be larger than that of dozens of perfectly viable independent states. By land area they’d rank lower, but still bigger than, say, Luxembourg, or many of the island countries. If they had peace with their neighbors, I don’t see why their survival should be in particular doubt.
You said,
I take it that you meant convincing the Palestinians that they will never get what they want through violence. And indeed they won’t; I think that has been made pretty clear.
But the reverse is also true. Israelis can’t get what they want, ultimately, through violence either.
A militarized land, surrounded by more-or-less unfriendly peoples, fear, isolation and castigation in many international circles, a military edge against hostile neighbors partly dependent on the cooperation and largesse of a distant and fading power… is that what Israelis want? How long can that last anyway?
I think average Israelis want to live, themselves and their communities and their nation. Also, to have peace, within their nation and with all their neighbors; personal and political freedoms; a measure of prosperity, and reasonable assurances for their children’s future. And somehow I suspect average Palestinians want much the same.
Of course. I’m all for a Palestinian state. I’d love to see infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and a…I donno…grocery stores.
You’re equating military with violence. That’s kind of a blurry line, no? The suicide bombers and militants don’t have ‘army’ uniforms, per se. But it’s a military escalation. It’s not an attack on Palestinians.
definitely.
IF they had the proper leadership. Not with the leadership they have now.
No one wants to send the message that violence is going to win you anything. People mistakenly see Israel and Palestine as the same entity. It is not. This is not a case of citizen uprising here.
Again, you’re equating military to violence. I am not saying that warfare is not violent, but there is a huge difference between lobbying rockets into Israel v. Israel trying to take out military targets or blocking arms smuggling to Hamas.
At least 50 years…no, seriously, this is not what Israelis have ever wanted. But when they take steps back (look at history - I’m not spouting rhetoric) - then the Palestinian leadership says oh hey victory! let’s push the buttons.
Yes.
I hope. In their own country.
The Arab leadership has rejected statehood since before WWII. It’s not…it’s not how Dio claims. Jewish and Arab immigrants settled and their population numbers grew considerably in the early 20thC. The Zionist movement helped build infrastructure, schools, farming communities…but there was no Palestinian nationalism at the time. There wasn’t even a Jordan, or Syria, or Lebanon. So this idea that in 1948, Jews just wiped off hundreds of thousands o Palestinians of their centuries-owned land is false.
Unfortunately, Palestinians believe this. I sincerely believe those kids who blow themselves up really do believe the trash they are fed. And that, my friend, is why peace isn’t possible. It has to be forced somehow.
So Europe will deny citizenship to babies born within their borders based solely on their race? Which country does that?
Better yet, which country will deny citizenship to babies born within their borders who have one citizen as a parent because of the race or nationality of the other parent?
Um, what? Israel grants citizenship to all born within its borders.
As for citizenship based on ethnicity rather than location of birth, see the following list:
Note that a person born of Arab or Turkish parents could not gain German citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany until the year 2000, when some reforms were introduced (though a person born of Arab, or Turkish, parents is entitled to automatic Israeli citizenship by virtue of birth in Israel!)
Germany is far more an “aparthied” state than Israel, if this is the grounds of complaint.
Noone is defending the larger human rights abuses in other countries, theyd efend the human rights abuses in Israel tho. Also human rights abuses in Myanmar don’t result in the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops and the expenditure of trillions of dollars.
I condemn Israel regularly. I don’t bother condemning Syria regularly because noone ever takes the other side of that argument.
Israel is one of the only countries I can think of where they got to choose their neighbors. All of teh anti-israeli sentiment in the iddle east necessarily didn’t exist until people started agitating for the creation of the state of Israel. I think its been established that anti-semitism was no higher (and many would argue it was lower) in the middle east prior to Zionism than it was anywhere else in the world. Don’t you think that perhaps the creation of the state of israel is teh cause of all this hatred?
So if I set up camp in your living room and I am very polite, only responding with force to your attempts to remove me and only trying to eliminate any threat you might pose to me, that makes you the bad guy and me the good guy? You can only reach the position you are espousing by ignoring the circumstances of the creation of the state of Israel.
A better analogy would be if America was doing these things to Native American terrorists because we denied American Indians the right to become American citizens. I suspect that the left would be criticizing American policy on that front as well.
Israel does not consider Gaza and the West Bank foreign countries? I had not realized that the two state solution had already been implemented.
It foments terror. It is a central issue for terrorists in then middle east.
So how would Israel react if a bunch of Druze or Mormons decided that they wanted to create their own nation within the state of Israel, got UN sanction for doing so despite Israel’s objection, moved in, and held most of Israel by force of arms and shoved most of the Jews into a walled off tel aviv? But otherwise this new Druze or Mormon state was democratically and economically enlightened.
And some people are just playing the race card because they cannot respond to their critics.
Once again the difference is that noone jumps to the defense of the North Korea regime. Ask anyone who criticizes Israel if they think the North Korean regime is better than Likud. Commisar might agree with that statement but he is the exception that proves the rule.