Are you under the impression that the French somehow purged the Breton and the Basques? France is not an ethnostate, sorry. It was a Catholic state before the Revolution and laïcité. Now, I don’t know, it’s a legacy power structure with a common educational system, or something.
Germany, yeah, you can say the German identity is mostly built on a dream of common cultural heritage. But Middle Europe was a shatter zone for so long that that kind of nationalism was always going to be obnoxious.
But hey, if you’re going to hold obnoxious German nationalism up as a norm and model, well, there you go.
… and Irish nationalism. And Polish nationalism. And Latvian nationalism. And Bulgarian, Finnish, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Turkish, etc. etc. Everyone is ok with those “ethnostates”. It’s just Israel that is the problem.
My post about legality being the defining thing was intended as sarcasm. Terr was challenging anyone to present specific law enabling discrimination against Palestinians. My sarcasm references the obvious fact that discrimination does not need to be a matter of stated and legislated law, but can be nothing more than the customary disdain for an oppressed group.
Which is to say, simply because it wasn’t nakedly displayed as law doesn’t mean it ain’t so. In the future, I will try to be more mindful and generous regarding your limitations.
Ah, no. “Everyone” is OK with ethnic folklore, dances, music and crafts. What we are not OK with is oppression backed by the threat of violence. That is not OK. If anyone here has explicitly stated that Israel is sole source of ME problems, point them our for appropriate ridicule, and we will surely oblige.
Allow me to put it bluntly: Palestinians complain that they are oppressed group, second class or worse in the land of their birth. Are they lying? Making it all up, out of whole cloth?
Yes, that is also true of “Muslims” in France, ethnic Turks in Germany, ethnic Koreans in Japan and about a thousand other examples.
That is what happens to members who are not part of the main ethnic group in ethnic states. That’s why I’ve always been fan of larger multi-ethnic states that don’t define themselves as “ethnic states” and why I think countries like Canada, Great Britain, and the US for all their flaws do a better at assimilating immigrants and immigrant communities than countries like Germany, France, and Israel.
Terr’s argument(and it’s no secret I despise him) is that why is it only Israel of all the ethno-states that people seem eager to demand stop being ethno-states and he’s pretty clearly got a point.
Maybe we’ve given up on France, Germany, and Japan because they have been horrid like that for forever. Maybe we still harbor some hope that Israel, as a relative newbie populated by people we generally like and respect, can put history behind it and get it right. I know that’s true of me.
Yeah, I’m a cock-eyed optimist, but you knew that.
For starters, every day this situation extends is another day when countless lives are at risk. The ethnic tensions between, say, the Japanese and the Koreans is troublesome, but not so urgent. The tensions between India and Pakistan remain a huge threat as well. But, yes, indeed, the ME tensions surrounding Israel are a whole 'nother level. The interlocking alliances, hatred and mistrusts make it more dangerous.
The Palestinians also have their points. How much better this might be if there were simply one side wrong, the other right. Alas.
All the Baltic States, which are filled with ethnic Russians sitting next to a pissed off nuclear super power headed by a man who loves invading countries which “oppress” ethnic Russians, as well as Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia(which lie in the Balkans which are at least as volatile as the ME) are far younger than Israel.
Ireland, Greece and Turkey are only slightly different older than Turkey.
And let’s not even bring up the Armenians.
Sorry but your arguments don’t hold water.
I’ve yet to hear any compelling arguments as to why the Jews and no one else shouldn’t have their own ethno-state.
I think the Balfour Decleration was one of the biggest mistakes of the 20th Century but it’s way to late to turn back the clock.
You think that tensions between India and Pakistan are much less dangerous than tensions between Israel and the Palestinians?:dubious:
They’ve had multiple wars, both have nukes and hate each other.
No, the Kashmir situation is vastly more dangerous.
And let’s not even get into Russia with Putin at the helm and the various “ex-Soviet” ethnic states surrounding him.
I’m reminded of all the idiots who squealed about Islam and the Arabs after 911 and forgot about China and Russia. They were racist and I won’t say all those who piss themselves in anger at the impudence of the Jews demanding a nation of their own are anti-Semites but they’re being hypocritical and short-sighted.
Shit, Italy isn’t that much older than the lot of them. What’s your point? Northern Ireland tried to have a Jim Crow system, and we saw how that worked out.
Can we, PLEASE? It has been so long since our last Turkish troll. I keep asking that Cecil rerun his Armenian Genocide column, but no dice.
Look at some of your other examples, You do remember when NATO sent in fucking troops to stop the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, right? Genocide, random official killings, the whole ball of wax. As I recall, we were against it. Same in Rwanda, but with less Western intervention. But that’s what comes from ethno-states. You have the haves with the power and the have-nots without. It is not a recipe for stability or permanence, and the ME needs stability and permanence.
So Israel and Palestine need to make nice. Stop treating Israeli Arabs as less than full Israelis. Set up some mutually-agreed-upon borders, and honor them. Haul the “settlers”, those illegal squatters that are mucking up the peace process, back into Israel or cut them off, telling them that they are all Palestinians now. Rein in the hardest-core Zionists and the farthest-right rabbis. Compromise. And ignore asshats like Terr who will scream that compromise is bad. It is not inherently bad, especially in this case, because Israel is holding most of the cards. It can afford to take the first step, which is to treat the Palestinians as equals. It can earn a little of their trust, but first it needs to stop swinging its dick. The US does that, too, and it has to stop.
I’ve never heard of AdBusters. Apparently it’s a super lefty Canadian firm that puts out a newspaper with a circulation of 40,000. It’s considered anti-semitic because it pointed out neo-cons were mostly Jewish and compared pictures of the Gaza strip to the Warsaw ghetto.
/Pol is one of the most popular political discussion sites on the Western internet. I’m not sure how to separate it from the greater 4chan site, which ranks top 400 in the USA and 800 worldwide on Alexa, but if you’ve ever browsed there you can see it has a ton of traffic and threads can get hundreds of posts in under an hour (during the Baltimore riots it was impossible to keep up). I’ve been amused by CTs that it’s mostly bored 20 something libs trolling each other pretending to be Jew hating white nationalists, but I kinda doubt it.
Are there lib sites where you can hate on Jews and talk about, I dunno, how we need universal healthcare but we can’t get it because Jews run all the insurance and medical companies and lobbies? Or how cops are so racist against black people and Mexicans, and it’s all the Jew’s fault? I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they’ve escaped my notice.
I’ve agreed that some of the economic criticism from the left has tinges of anti-antisemitism. Sometimes it can go pretty far and I’m not sure if they’re clueless or blowing a dog whistle. Like when they start calling Wall Street bankers parasites, or a greedy rentier class or how they should be put up against the wall when the revolution comes. Or how Goldman Sachs is a terrorist organization that has sleeper cells in the government. Of course if you ask if they mean the Jews they deny it.
I also am not sure what the Armenian Holocaust has to with with the actions of the modern day Armenian state. I was referring to Armenian actions in NK which has been vastly worse than anything the Israelis have done and not received one thousandth the criticism that the Israelis have gotten.
It’s interesting that I vaguely refer to the Armenian brutalization and ethnic cleansing of the Azerbajanis and I get rather snidely accused of denying the Armenian Holocaust.
Earlier in this thread and on several others I made much more cutting and open criticisms of Israel and while several people were pissed at me and yet none accused me of be a Holocaust denier much less an anti-Semite.
So much for the idea that you can’t criticize Israel without being labeled an anti-Semite.
I don’t remember anyone demanding the Serbia and Croatia being dismantled and not being allowed to be multi-ethnic states. Not even when Croatia was run by a President who was Holocaust denier and fan of the Ustache.
I’m not sure based on my earlier posts why I’d oppose any of that or what makes you think I’m not fairly familiar with the treatment of Israeli Arabs.
However, we can protest the treatment of ethnic minorities in lots of countries that are ethno-states without demanding they somehow reversing history.
There are also far more North Africans in France and far more non-Germans in Germany yet neither country receives one tenth the criticism that Israel gets.
I do, but only because there is more unequal treatment without Affirmative Action than with it, in my view. It is bad and I hope one day that society will be less unequal and we can get rid of it.
