If people are ignorant bigots, that is not “partially” Israel’s responsibility, no matter how horrible you think Israel is. That’s like saying blaming all Muslims for 9/11 is “partially” the responsibility of al-Qaeda. No, it is wholly the responsibility of the ignorant bigots making such an absurd attribution.
Uh, just how long do you think there has been an actual country named “Germany”?
Hint: it has existed a little over twice as long as a country named “Israel”.
Glad to see you concede the point, but I think you go too far in your concession - there is obviously a shared history.
But the notion that Israel is engaged in any sort of “demographic dismemberment” in Gaza is, of course, total nonsense, as is the notion that what really motivates Hamas is Israeli settlements in the WB. Naturally, you weren’t hinting at either of these points, though.
Agreed! How dare those uppity Jews dare to want the same rights as Germans!
Look, there’s a word for saying it’s okay for Germany to declare itself “Land of the Germans” but not for Israelis to declare they’re the Land of the Jews.
Hypocritical.
Beyond that, Germany is hardly alone in that. Hell, Israel isn’t even the only country in the ME who does this, yet nobody whines about the Turks or the Armenians.
Put the shoe on the other foot: if Israel were a really tiny nation the size and location of Gaza, and this were happening to Israel, you would be okay with this? You wouldn’t call it any kind of genocide? I would.
If I put the shoe on the other foot, and imagine this happening to Jews, I realize that I am far too quite and complacent about the US role. If Gaza were happening to Jews and the US funding it, politically supporting and offering the wall of silence and ethnic contempt for the people in Gaza. I’d definitely call it genocide, and I’d definitely make Nazi comparisons.
The shoe on the other foot test makes me realize just how biased I am in favor of the Jews living in Israel and how much special pleading I do generously grant them.
No, if the “shoe were on the other foot” I would not call it genocide for the simple reason that it isn’t genocide.
The point you appear unable to grasp is that these terms - Nazi, fascist, genocide - have actual meanings. They are not simply different ways for saying ‘things I don’t like’.
Let’s be clear on bombings. The Allies committed far more heinous bombing crimes in WWII against civilians than the Nazis. I think it is fair to say that the Nazis would have been much worse if they had the capability, but they didn’t. Bombing of cities (civilians) was against the Geneva Convention at the time and still is. Overall, the Nazis were still the most evil movement in history. Imperial Japan runs a close second, leaving Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Kahn and the Romans and others somewhat behind.
Destroying an entire residential building to get at one of 48 apartments demonstrates the contempt for Gazan life that is repeated thousands and thousands of times over the past decades.
That is a logical argument with correct premises and a practical real world correct conclusion. The attacks on Jews in Europe in response to Gaza are bigoted, ignorant, criminal and solely the responsibility of the criminals carrying them out. They are not in any sense the responsibility of Israel. The criminals that carry out crimes in Europe using Israel’s crimes in Gaza as an excuse are less than looters during riot. And when Israel destroys a 48 unit apartment building to get to what they believe is going on in one unit, that is the same thing, but multiplied 47 times.
We don’t know if the shops and houses of Jews destroyed in Europe were owned by people sympathetic to Israel or not. Their private thoughts or public thoughts do not justify crimes against them. Same with all the residents of Gaza.
If my neighbor is running a meth lab in the apartment down the hall, you get a warrant and raid the apartment. You don’t blow up the building destroying all the homes and the people who were in it and couldn’t get out.
It’s a “contempt for Gazan life” that, in point of fact, did not cost any Gazan lives.
Why was that? According to your article, it was because of Israeli measures to warn folks away.
Seems a very strange way to demonstrate one’s “contempt for Gazan life”. I personally can think of far better ways to do that, assuming I wanted to.
That, in a nutshell, demonstrates a major difference between “war” and “arresting a methhead”.
Oh, why did the Allies fight WW2 when all they had to do was arrest Hitler? 
It was all so easy!
Perhaps he just choose sides. Nothing wrong with choosing the side of your family. Not everything can be weighted up in a grand scale of right and wrong.
And this is the basic difference. There was a declared war between real countries with armies fighting in WWII.
Gaza isn’t a country. If criminals are attacking another country from Gaza, that isn’t an act of war. It is a criminal act by criminals (well, alleged criminals, not as though they are going to be captured and tried) against citizens of a sovereign nation. Were Gaza a sovereign nation, which it most certainly is not, extradition could be demanded, stepped up police measures and cooperation could be demanded and if those not met, border invasions and acts of war against the alleged criminals or government taken and the country occupied, all of which under the international law require responsibilities of the various nations, especially the “victor”.
Recognition or not, they have an army, and the support (coerced or not) of the local population. They can’t simply be “arrested”.
You appear to be demanding that Israel (1) recognize their government, (2) then declare war on them properly and (3) invade and occupy. All of which, assuming Israel actually did it, would result in a much longer casualty list than what they are doing now - and no real guarantee that the issue would be solved (remember, up until a decade age, they did occupy Gaza!).
Okay, if the shoe were on the other foot
(1) What would you call it?
(2) Would you not want to fund it?
This post is jaw-droppingly ignorant.
Jews have been treated far worse in a huge number of Muslim Middle Eastern countries without anyone in the US or the World caring.
Did the US or the world care about the vastly, vastly worse treatment of Jews in Libya, Algeria, Yemen, or Iraq from which they’ve been ethnically cleansed.
Now, since you then go on to spin a highly improbable claim of being a Jew lover who’s biased in favor of them and that if Jews were being treated as such you’d be outraged and demand the US do something about it you can produce some proof.
Please point me to a single post you made where you were outraged at the US for supporting a country like Jordan where selling property to a Jew is a capital crime?
Please point me to some posts where you’ve condemned the horrible treatment of the Syrian Jews?
Please point me to some posts where you’ve bitterly complained about the US backing Egypt when Egypt was funding films presenting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Thanks in advance.
I’d call it a “war”.
As to whether I’d want to support one side or the other in this “war”, that would depend on the “circumstances”.
(1) No, I am not demanding that Israel recognize their government. They have no government under international law standards that requires for a government to have that status that most nations, especially the important ones, recognize that government. Gaza does not have a government.
(2) No, I am against declaring war, any party against another.
(3) Invade and occupy. No, I am against an invasion.
Additionally, the “army” you refer to, which is not recognized by an army by any nation in the world, isn’t an army. The people are not allowed to form a government of any kind.
What the reality of the situation is under international law is that Israel is exercising de facto control over all international relations for Gaza by blockading whatever they want and whomever they want. They are cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world, and refusing to take on the responsibilities of an occupier, instead letting Gaza be controlled by a group of terrorist criminals and leaving the people at their mercy and killing the people as collateral damage when the entirely predictable consequences of that spill over.
This has been going on with variations for five decades.
When you are telling residents to leave their homes because you are going to shell them, and then shell them, you are the de facto power in charge.
Uh, it isn’t “recognition” that makes an army, but men with guns working under authority. Hamas has those.
As for “not having a government” - it has one. Hamas. Hamas was even duly elected. Though it has since ceased holding elections.
Bizzare that you keep repeating the mantra that Israel “letting” Hamas govern is its crime. Just how, in your opinion, is Israel supposed to stop Hamas from governing - given that you have apparently ruled out war?
How do you reconcile that view with the existence of the Palestinian Legislative Council?
The reason I keep repeating what a government is by international law definitions is because that is what a government is. According to my definition, the one used in international law, the people of the Warsaw Ghetto had no government. According to you guys, what they had was a government.
Can you quote the definition you’re referring to?
As I understand it, your whole insistence on defining Hamas away from government and the conflict away from being a war is something of a red herring. First because it absurdly suggests that prior to the rise of the modern nation-state there were no wars; secondly because the relevant international treaties, the Geneva Conventions, refer to armed conflict and establish protocols for armed combatants, having anticipated that not all organized deadly violence for political purposes would be carried out by the armies of nation-states.
Ultimately, it would be nice if every single person is judged only on his own actions and not those of his peers or group, but I don’t think anyone is that saintly to do so. We all take into account group behavior if you are reacting to an individual member of that group, I think its pretty impossible not to live by that heuristic. For many people who don’t know any Jews personally, they cannot but identify Israel as a model of Jewish behavior. And like it or not, Israel doesn’t just style itself as some random country out in the desert, it loudly proclaims itself as Jewish as if to serve as a model of Jewish identity, that’s why its partly their fault. They can stop and totally declare themselves secular, declare their politics to be practical, and their conflicts with the Palestinians to be terrestrial, but if they seek to cloak themselves in their religion, then its not wrong that some people take them at their word.
And nobody’s blaming “all” Muslims for 9/11, but it would be accurate to say that some Muslims outside of those 19 hijackers and Al-Qaeda bear some responsibility. That amount and degree varies depending on how you feel about Muslims, but I would bet anything that at least one Muslim unaffiliated with the terrorists hold some degree of responsibility. Just as I would say that there are Jews not affiliated with Israel that nevertheless condone and promote its actions. Again, you are trying to squash the part of it that is anti-semetic and biased, which is fine, but denying even an infinitesimal link makes you seem crazy.
You may not want to hear this but there are factors that throw Israel’s legitimacy into question. Yes, of course you’ll ask as if ignorant “What factors?” I’m sure your knowledge of ME politics can list a few, but I’m not going to do so because then we’ll just get into a line by line debate on which factors are legitimate. All you have to accept is that Israel, unlike most other countries, is being assailed by both arms and politics, and 70 years later there’s something to be said about many of its neighbors not finding it legitimate. Despite what some people might feel about Turkey, nobody’s going to question that its legitimate. Israel’s kinda in its own category. Therefore they shouldn’t expect to be treated like others.
The two of you can talk until you’re blue in the face about why people should or should not see Israel as any different. But it won’t change the reality that it is different. Accept that and move on, or be honest with yourselves and admit you’re only doing it because you’re afraid the arguments of the bigots will eventually become reality