He is anti-Israel (well, depending on the political stunt of the day), radical on all accounts, makes a “Jews are rich dudes who don’t care about the black man” stereotyped comment…
He’s said some really weird things about Jews. It’s like, as long as the Jews aren’t part of the Capitalist Man, they should be Zen. We’re not allowed, to, you know, be too white. :o Cause he’s pretty adamant that we are not. (Which is weird, coming from a guy who isn’t…Jewish. Not that I care to be labeled any kind of race, since I lack racial pride.)
He’s he talks about fighting anti-antisemitism with his ‘Jewish brothers’ but then he does things like suggest that Obama is an Oreo who’d rather hang out with Jews. :dubious:
Um, what you are missing is that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not Israel. Palestinians born there do not consider themselves Israeli citizens, are not considered by Israelis to be Israeli citizens. Palestinians actually born in Israel are, in fact, citizens.
Unlike (say) Turks born in Germany prior to the year 2000.
Certainly, Israel restricts the entry of citizenship applications from Arab nations, and from the occupied territories. But that is hardly unusual - many countries selectively restrict citizenship applications from persons located in targeted countries, either for economic or social-political reasons.
You are confusing the two situations: (1) rejecting persons born to the “wrong ethnicity” within the territory of a nation (which Israel does not do, but which Germany does do); and (2) restricting citizenship applications from persons outside the country based on their country of origin - which is, in fact, quite common (Israel does this, and so do many other countries, either de facto or de jure - witness for example the extreme difficulty in my own country of Canada in getting “family reunification” citizenship where the family members are from places like Ukraine).
The fact that those born in Israel are in fact citizens irrespective of arab-ness is witnessed in your own links, such as this quote from the Scotsman:
Again, you are simply wrong in this. Or do you think you know the law better than a Palestinian lawyer?
To quote again from your own link,
To repeat:
Simply repeating over and over again factually wrong information isn’t very effective. There is no “racist” denial of citizenship to Arabs born in Israel, even if one parent isn’t a citizen. It is simply not so.
Of course that’s just one side of the story. The majority of land was under the control of non-Jewish arabs despite the fact that the fee simple ownership was mostly by non-resident landlords and Jews. I swear, the similiarities between your style of argument and another poster here is amazing.
Of course it was also against the objection of EVERY arab state in the region, including all of Palestine’s neighbors and most of the resdients of palestine (including virtually all of the Palestinians).
Yes, yes, if they had just taken the crappy deal back then, they wouldn’t be facing the prospect of a REALLY crappy deal today.
Its silly to think that Jews were responsible for the economic crisis, Angelo Mozilo was as responsible for the crisis as anyone and noone is saying its the Italians. As much of a criminal as Madoff was, the crisis led to the unraveling of his ponzi scheme, not the other way around. Greenspan might have been somewhat responsible but that is more due to his objectivism than his Judaism.
Its silly to think that Jews as a class are any more suspect of dual loyalty than the Irish during their conflict with England or Taiwanese when it comes to the US role in the Taiwan-China relationship but the neoconservatives certainly seem to be disproportionately concerned about America’s policy with respect to Israel. Doug Feith comes to mind.
I think some liberals have started focusing on Israel’s faults due to its association with the neoconservatives and the implications that may have had on our foreign policy decisions while they were influential.
I agree there is no point in negotiating with someone who will accept nothing less than your total destruction. Fortunately, this has not been the Palestinian position in quite some time. Recently
For me, I saw a lot of people identifying the neoconservatives with zionism. I think that caused some irrational anti-zionism among some liberals.
It is, in fact, the express position of Hamas - but not that of the PA.
However, in the last month, Hamas and the PA have agreed to amalgamate.
How this will play out is anyone’s guess. The optomistic believe that Hamas will agree to accept the PA’s pragmatic stance; the pessimists, that the amalgamated group will adopt Hamas’ rejectionist stance.
It is really, really difficult to work up much enthusiasm for “negotiations” when the starting position of the other side is, in essence, ‘armed struggle is the only option - we will destroy you all’.
So I see what you mean about Ba’athists and socialism but it seems to be a different kind of socialism than what we are familiar with. For me the treatment of women in these countries just throws them out of the left wing of anything. Perhaps its just me the associations I have with East Asian socialism and gender.
Those on the left support the underdogs. After the end of the Second World War it was easy to see Jews in this role. When Israel was founded against the opposition of the entire Arab world, it was easy to see Israel as David fighting Goliath.
Israel’s victory in the Six Day War was so total that is was difficult to see the Israelis as oppressed any more. Now it was the Palestinians who resembled David fighting the Israeli Goliath. Also, in the United States and Europe Jews had become prosperous, so it became difficult to see them as victims of social and economic injustice.
This does not mean that hostility to Jews by anyone is justified.
The tendency of the secular left to sympathize with Muslims is ironic. Everything the secular left hates about the religious right and the Bible Belt is far more true of Muslims and Islamic society.
I’ve had this discussion with FinnAgain and you seem to be engaging in some oversimplification as well. Those folks in Beirut and Damascus owned much of the land that could be owned in fee simple and therefore sold to the Jewish land fund. But that was a small percentage of the land in Palestine, like 6% of the land in Palestine. Much of the land was subject to communal ownership and usufructs which were all owned by Palestinians. Of course there was also a lot of unarable unusable land that noone really had (or wanted) a claim to that Israelis have turned into usable land (and even under Ottoman law, I believe that would have conveyed some ownership rights to someone who turned wilderness into arable land). But without a doubt there was significant land that belonged to the palestinians and your position on the land issue makes me think that you aren’t as neutral as you claim, despite your disapproval of the Balfour declaration.
While I’m sure it’s technically true that at least some Jews took land that wasn’t theirs by force, there seems to be far, far more to the story. Much of that force was defensive in nature- a response to being attacked.
[qUOTE]
The taking of Palestinian land wasn’t some technical footfault that happened at the edges. Palestinians left on the eve of war. A LOT of people leave someplace on the eve of war, wouldn’t you, especially if the war was being fought over whether these people you don’t know could take your land? Many of those who didn’t leave were chased out. More recently there have been incidents of land grabs (legal and illegal) from Palestinians for settlement activity.
The taking of land might be considered spoils of war but then you open yourself up to arguments that land that was won through war can be reclaimed through war, and that seems like an invitation to perpetual violence to me.
Well, you can put them on reservations and shoot anyone that tries to leave. It worked for us and it looks like its working for them too… for a while at least.
