If we’re inspecting the motives of the BDS movement, then it is an argument, and an important one. Suppose we met someone who said they were boycotting certain businesses because of greed or environmental pollution. And suppose we found they were boycotting precisely those businesses owned by Jews, and not any others. And suppose that there were many companies not owned by Jews which clearly were more greedy and polluted more than any company owned by a Jew. And suppose the boycotter offered no explanation for why only Jewish businesses were targeted. Wouldn’t it make sense to suspect that anti-semitism was the real motive?
Obvious question: have any of the activists pushing universities and pension funds to boycott Israel actually made this argument? Or is it a post hoc argument intended to justify a flaw that the activists themselves never thought about?
Regardless, it’s a weak justification. What exactly is the evidence that left-wing universities and pension funds have extra leverage against Israel? Do they invest particularly large amounts in Israel? (Do they invest in Israel at all?) If not, then what’s the justification for the “more leverage” belief?
Alternatively, you could simply point out where I was mistaken or I misunderstood rather than calling me dishonest. That would be productive and actually further the discussion.
No, it could not have. South Africa was a terrible human rights abuser, arguably the worst on earth, certainly near the worst. Israel is not a terrible human rights abuser, nor ever has been. This fact leaves your argument dead in the water.
In fact, Israel has a much better human rights record than its hostile Arab neighbors. Mass murder or torture are routine in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many other Arab countries. Hamas calls for the extermination of all Jews in its charter. Iran and other Arab nations have supported terrorism against Jews and others all over the world. Surrounded by such despicable specimens of government, Israel has spent decades bending over backwards to achieve peace. Time and again, Israel has negotiated in good faith, only to have the Palestinians or others return their kindness with terrorism.
And the left responds by yelling “boycott Israel!”
I thought you were some kind of intellectual. I have to spell out that I specifically was addressing the premise that it’s suspicious that Israel is singled out? Back during Apartheid,who opined that it was oh so peculiar that South Africa was being singled out?
ITR, there was plenty of human rights abusers in the Apartheid era. Try again.
I’m sure. Please continue with your arguments that I’m sure you’ve memorized years ago and repeat regardless of what the other people say as exhibited with our little exchange.
I don’t know about “widespread,” but it’s certainly there. Especially in Europe. But it’s on the right as well. IME that’s where most of the “Jews run the world” CTs go, especially paired with white nationalism. YMMV.
Uh, what? I agree there were many human rights abusers, but that obvious does nothing to resuscitate your failed argument. I thinks it’s you who needs to try again, and try much harder.
If by “Palestinian Arab” you mean a Palestinian living on the West Bank or the Gaza Strip under the occupation and by “Iranian Jew” you mean one of the poor Jews living in Iran who hasn’t been able to get out then I’d say bout suck severely.
That said if you told me to pick one I’d go with being an Iranian Jew. They have far more autonomy and face vastly less daily persecution and harassment, are far less likely to live in squalor, have vastly better prospects when it comes to employment and improving their lives and managing to lead a relatively comfortable life.
Also, frankly many of the Jewish communities in Iran have been around much longer than many of the Palestinian communities in the Occupied territories and having close knit ties to the community that’s been around for centuries upon centuries isn’t something to sneeze at.
Moreover, while the Iranian government is unquestionably anti-Semitic(please none of this "they’re not anti-Semitic they’re anti-Zionist bullshit) and does occasionally do crap like arrest some Jewish intellectuals on trumped up charges of being Israeli spies, for the most part Jews in Iran are more likely to face soft discrimination more similar to the way Christians in Egypt or Syria were treated until very recently as opposed to the way Jews are treated in most Arab countries or the way the Palestinians in the Occupied territories are treated.
Now, in fairness I should add if the Jews of Iran were to ever start engaging in widespread violence against the Iranian government comparable what the people rebelling agains the Israeli occupation and existence of Israel were to do, the Iranian government would be vastly, vastly more brutal in their response.
Obviously if you were to compare the Arab citizens of Israel to the Jewish citizens of Iran that’s a different story, but if you’re just comparing to Iranian Jews to the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, yes I’d rather be an Iranian Jew.
I am not going to gainsay what you say here, but it strikes me as particularly unmeaningful, because you have steeped it in a pot of vitriol. If you can restate this in way way that is not like a river of venom, maybe it could be addressed with reason.
Thing is, as I see it, take away US support and Israel would almost certainly be consumed rather quickly by their hostile neighbors.So, as a US citizen, I kind of feel that if they are receiving support from the US, even if it is just implicit, I would like to feel that their dad, who can beat up your dad, is coming into the fight with justification. Given the way they treat the Palestinian Arabs, which is part of the reason their neighbors are hostile in the first place, I have some misgivings about being supportive.
Here, I suspect anti-semites on the left might be tamer than those on the right, as I kind of doubt, from what I know of leftists, that anti-semites on the left would be thinking of violence or genocide.
No, the mind slamming shut was your comment of “if the Wiesenthal Center equates all attempts to divest in Israeli companies as anti-Semitic” without actually reading the link.
Point the second, more pertinent to this thread is whether those who accept self-reported rates of racism or sexism doubt the self-reports of anti-Semitism.
You mean the way they were consumed by their neighbors prior to late 1960s?
The US didn’t start giving huge amounts of support to Israel till after the Six Day War.
Is the bolded part a reference to the Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
If so it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense. The Arabs were trying to wipe out the Israelis long before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact the Palestinian political leadership had officially renounced any claim to sovereignty over the West Bank or the Gaza Strip and only did so after Israel beat back Jordan’s invading army in 1967.
Frankly, the Arabs didn’t object to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but to Israel’s existence, believing the Jews were alien interlopers who had no legitimate claim to the land and shouldn’t have a state of their own on what they viewed as Arab land.
You mean like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Assads in Syria or the PFLP and such groups.
Would you consider the massacre of a couple of dozen Jewish schoolchildren at Ma’alot to be an example of “violence”?
I can hypothesize (accepting for the sake of argument that one honestly believes that Israel is as clear a villain as was the South African regime) … not out of anti-Whitism but out of an identification with our own recent history with Whites and Blacks and class and power. Yes, there was a reason that that cause was elevated in importance over other brutal regimes of the time (and no need to restrict them to those with minority ruling classes): it resonated with themes already extant in many people’s minds.
Pretty much the same explanation, that resonating with themes already extant. It’s just that the themes resonating with this one are of a different nature I think.