The Off Topic Topic

[Capetan Mihali]

my reasoning re: palestine vs. israel -- why would anyone truly want just another middle eastern country vs. a modern, western nation?

Good point.  Why would anyone truly want just another shtetl wasteland vs. a modern, western nation?

[LaCroix]

there were no "shtetl wasteland(s)" in eastern europe when the nazis came, though. plus, the comparison is inherently flawed based on the fact that israel isn't actually hitler's germany

[Capetan Mihali]

there were no "shtetl wasteland(s)" in eastern europe when the nazis came, though. plus, the comparison is inherently flawed based on the fact that israel isn't actually hitler's germany

  Every comparison would be inherently flawed by the fact that the thing being compared "isn't actually" the thing it is being compared with... you really ought to reflect on this tautology before pursuing it.  The purpose of the comparison was to show, perhaps by a reductio ad absurdum, the consequences of comparing two civilizations, preferring one, and proceeding to endorse their destruction of the other -- which is "[your] reasoning re: palestine vs. israel."

And there were no wastelands when the Zionists came through either... despite the old "Jews miraculously made the desert bloom" canard that's been pushed for ages.

[LaCroix]

  Every comparison would be inherently flawed by the fact that the thing being compared "isn't actually" the thing it is being compared with... you really ought to reflect on this tautology before pursuing it.  The purpose of the comparison was to show, perhaps by a reductio ad absurdum, the consequences of comparing two civilizations, preferring one, and proceeding to endorse their destruction of the other -- which is "[your] reasoning re: palestine vs. israel."

And there were no wastelands when the Zionists came through either... despite the old "Jews miraculously made the desert bloom" canard that's been pushed for ages.

despite most comparisons not being "actually" the thing it's compared with, I'm pretty comfortable dismissing israel/nazi germany comparisons for reasons

I don't disagree that, many decades ago, jews recovering from the holocaust forcibly settled areas already inhabited by palestinians. I just don't think it matters because both sides were huge assholes during that period, and the jews won. since then, they've established a pretty decent country that citizens of modern nations can support. except maybe an emerging post-ayatollah iran, the rest of the middle east offers sadness, so why not

[Razgovory]

Hooray for fake maps!

[Capetan Mihali]

So where's the AIPAC-endorsed map depicting Jewish colonization of Arab land, 1948-present?  In its absence, I think mine is quite accurate.

[Capetan Mihali]

  Every comparison would be inherently flawed by the fact that the thing being compared "isn't actually" the thing it is being compared with... you really ought to reflect on this tautology before pursuing it.  The purpose of the comparison was to show, perhaps by a reductio ad absurdum, the consequences of comparing two civilizations, preferring one, and proceeding to endorse their destruction of the other -- which is "[your] reasoning re: palestine vs. israel."

And there were no wastelands when the Zionists came through either... despite the old "Jews miraculously made the desert bloom" canard that's been pushed for ages.

despite most comparisons not being "actually" the thing it's compared with, I'm pretty comfortable dismissing israel/nazi germany comparisons for reasons

I don't disagree that, many decades ago, jews recovering from the holocaust forcibly settled areas already inhabited by palestinians. I just don't think it matters because both sides were huge assholes during that period, and the jews won. since then, they've established a pretty decent country that citizens of modern nations can support. except maybe an emerging post-ayatollah iran, the rest of the middle east offers sadness, so why not

Firstly, Zionism was seeking alliances with 19th Century imperial powers (primarily the Otttomans then Britain but also France) a hundred years before the Holocaust and had made substantial Jewish settlements in Ottoman/British Palestine long before 1945.

Secondly, a pretty decent country for who?  Not for the Palestinians, not close to decent.  Pretty decent for the Jews, I guess; but "pretty decent" for the ruling ethnicity in an ethnocratic state wouldn't make me comfortable supporting such a state, as a citizen of a modern nation. 

By the standards you're applying to today's Israel, pre-1994 South Africa should have been a "pretty decent" country -- industrialized, civil society, separation of powers, etc. -- in the midst of a region lacking most of those things. 

Yet it was not a pretty decent country.  Why?  For the same reasons Israel isn't in 2016.  Because one ethnic group actively imported from abroad (i.e. via colonization) dominates the land and resources of the existing population, subjects them to all sorts of internal movement restrictions and indefinite detention which would never be applied to the dominant group, and reserved the majority of those precious civil rights (yes, yes, I know there are a couple Arabs in the Knesset) for themselves, along with almost all of the wealth generated by their prosperous industrialized economy, subsidized by the US of course to the tune of $3 billion .

[DGuller]

Oy, vey!

[CountDeMoney]

Capetan Mihali has gone off the kibbutz.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Soooooo it's been raining a lot here lately.

[Malthus]

  Every comparison would be inherently flawed by the fact that the thing being compared "isn't actually" the thing it is being compared with... you really ought to reflect on this tautology before pursuing it.  The purpose of the comparison was to show, perhaps by a reductio ad absurdum, the consequences of comparing two civilizations, preferring one, and proceeding to endorse their destruction of the other -- which is "[your] reasoning re: palestine vs. israel."

And there were no wastelands when the Zionists came through either... despite the old "Jews miraculously made the desert bloom" canard that's been pushed for ages.

despite most comparisons not being "actually" the thing it's compared with, I'm pretty comfortable dismissing israel/nazi germany comparisons for reasons

I don't disagree that, many decades ago, jews recovering from the holocaust forcibly settled areas already inhabited by palestinians. I just don't think it matters because both sides were huge assholes during that period, and the jews won. since then, they've established a pretty decent country that citizens of modern nations can support. except maybe an emerging post-ayatollah iran, the rest of the middle east offers sadness, so why not

Firstly, Zionism was seeking alliances with 19th Century imperial powers (primarily the Otttomans then Britain but also France) a hundred years before the Holocaust and had made substantial Jewish settlements in Ottoman/British Palestine long before 1945.

Secondly, a pretty decent country for who?  Not for the Palestinians, not close to decent.  Pretty decent for the Jews, I guess; but "pretty decent" for the ruling ethnicity in an ethnocratic state wouldn't make me comfortable supporting such a state, as a citizen of a modern nation. 

By the standards you're applying to today's Israel, pre-1994 South Africa should have been a "pretty decent" country -- industrialized, civil society, separation of powers, etc. -- in the midst of a region lacking most of those things. 

Yet it was not a pretty decent country.  Why?  For the same reasons Israel isn't in 2016.  Because one ethnic group actively imported from abroad (i.e. via colonization) dominates the land and resources of the existing population, subjects them to all sorts of internal movement restrictions and indefinite detention which would never be applied to the dominant group, and reserved the majority of those precious civil rights (yes, yes, I know there are a couple Arabs in the Knesset) for themselves, along with almost all of the wealth generated by their prosperous industrialized economy, subsidized by the US of course to the tune of $3 billion .

So much wrong in one post.

First, plenty of Palestinians have Israeli citizenship. If you have a point, it is that non-Israeli Palestinians have been treated badly - but then, they want to create their own country; it would make no sense for Israelis to treat them like citizens, when they actively don't want to be.

Second, "colonization". The word means to establish a "colony" of someone's home country elsewhere. That of course implies these folks have a home country to go back to, should the "colony" fail. Israelis are not "colonists", they are not outposts of Poland or Iraq; they can't "go back" anywhere.

Third, native Jewish Israelis are an absolute majority within Israel. They are not a small, oppressive minority. They are not analogous to SA, where SA folk of White descent form 9% of the population. In Israel in 2016, Jewish Israelis form 75% of the population of Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_South_Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

Are there problems of racism in Israel? Of course there are. Such issues aren't unique to that country though. Lots of countries have problems with unequal treatment of ethnic minorities: Blacks in the US, Native Canadians, etc. 

Is Israel founded on ethno-nationalist principles? Of course it is - so is pretty well every other country in the world, outside of NA ("Turkey", "Greece", "Germany" etc . - all of which have their own versions of the 'law of return').

[garbon]

Capetan Mihali has gone off the kibbutz.

He does this every so often. Like the changing of the seasons.

[Capetan Mihali]

Jews are an overwhelming majority of the population in 2016; but they weren't in 19487.  And yet you claim that the massive importation of Jews (at times, accomplished at considerable expense to the Israeli state and its backers) was not the colonization of Palestine because there are no "outposts" and the "settlers" don't necessarily have a home state (never mind all the Brooklynite-Israelis builiding IDF-defended compounds in the West Bank who could have perfectly well stayed in East Williamsburg).  Why should the process of imperialism -- of displacing an existing population and monopolizing their resources -- be restricted to the classical EUII examples?  Zionism is an imperialist project, and its founders had no shame in admitting that.

"They want their own country."  Er, they want the country they had and in which they had co-existed with Jews (as well as Armenians, Greeks, and others) for a long time before the Zionist movement intensified its promotion of aliyah, especially after the British took control of the region in the interwar period. 

As for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, do you really think they get treated like Jews in what should supposedly be their own country?  When an Arab man calling himself "Daniel" during a one-night stand with a Jewish woman merits an 18 month prison sentence for 'rape by deception'?  I had an "Arab Israeli" friend in college and he tended to just stick it out in the States over long breaks, since it was such a crap shoot as to what would happen to him crossing back into "his" country. 

And you completely mystify the fact that members of the same family live within and without Israel -- remember, Israel moved the borders, they didn't.  So an easy trip from Haifa to Ramallah to visit your sister can turn into a protracted, humiliating affair waiting to pass through checkpoints where an unexplained denial might be the result of your hours of standing on line and getting publicly searched and interrogated.

Sure other countries were founded on ethnic principle, and sure other regions were imperialistically subjugated; but, e.g., North America's experience with its indigenous people is generally considered an object lesson in immorality and greed, not something to learn from and improve upon in 2016.

[Capetan Mihali]

Capetan Mihali has gone off the kibbutz.

He does this every so often. Like the changing of the seasons.

Hey, all I did was make a rather un-inflammatory post commemorating May 15th.  I can't help it if these fanatics on Languish want to follow the issue around wherever it shows up.  

[Razgovory]

So where's the AIPAC-endorsed map depicting Jewish colonization of Arab land, 1948-present?  In its absence, I think mine is quite accurate.

I guess you didn't notice the shift between Jewish-to-Israeli which conflates two different things, or that one of the maps shows borders that never existed.  Or it neglects that the "Palestinian" territory was occupied by Egypt and Jordan.  I'm sorry but the maps are deliberate falsehoods intended to mislead.