491–500 of 735 posts
The parallels to the Jim Crow South and its borderline hysterical obsession with managing the ethno-racial balance are very strong.
Israel would cease to exist if there was no Jewish majority anymore. Just one more Arab country instead. Would you be ok with that?
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USA just passed omnibus 2022 $1.5T spending bill which has $250 Million for Israel iron dome upgrades.. there is a POWERFUL Israeli lobby in the USA that won't let such sanctions get off the floor.
What are you proposing? Just let their enemies bomb all of them out of existence?
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I think continuing to occupy West Bank and Gaza is unconscionable. But you’re mischaracterising the strategic importance of the West Bank. If it was a sovereign nation, the logical thing for the West Bank government to do would be to place artillery on the high ground near Israeli cities. The artillery would be sufficiently protected and would be capable of causing widespread destruction. That’s powerful negotiating…
> it would be a death sentence for Israel That's a massive exaggeration. It would theoretically be a risk for Israeli citizens living close to the border, but would lead to an overwhelming punitive response from the Israeli army, strongly backed by America. Israel has by far the most capable military in the region, routinely inflicts casualty ratios of 10-20:1 in its favour in any conflict with Palestinians, and is b…
But artillery still exists. And if the enemy has the high ground and the cities are in the plains, the death toll will be in the tens of thousands before victory is achieved.
This is the reason every citizen in Seoul knows where the nearest bomb shelter is. I can understand (but not condone) someone wanting to avoid that fate.
...and the answer is easy: marry anyone you want, but there'll be enhanced background checks for some people.
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> Just being shocked is not an argument. Most people don't feel the need to argue against openly legislated apartheid; we can just be shocked. If I see a car crash, I don't argue with it either. Everybody understands that laws like this are essential for building up an ethnostate, but most people don't think that's a defense.
Don't get me wrong, I'm shocked as well, I just think that's not enough, you have to at least be able to justify why the two probabilities that I mentioned before are small, which in my opinion, is a hard thing to do.
Doesn't occur is maybe the wrong word, it occurs as an alien and dangerous idea, like gazing into the maw of a tiger. Does it not feel dangerous to you, to even start weighing the needs of one ethnicity against the needs of another?
Look I always encourage people to read the Israeli constitution. Jewish state. Fact. Not multicultural, not secular. Jewish. That was the founders design.
The President considers race mixing a "tragedy".
It's a law to try and maintain racial purity.
It's certainly interesting how an oppressed people became the oppressor.
There isn’t even recognition that the Israeli legislature might not be representative of most Jewish Israelis and instead be a consequence of political incumbents that are hard to unseat from power, like political dynasties in many countries.
Nor does it accept that even if this is the majority will of Jewish Israelis, there are plenty of Jews in Israel who disagree with the law (which is obviously true), and shouldn’t be lumped in as “oppressors”. The same way Trump and his followers actions shouldn’t impugn the moral character of all Americans.
No, this is a wholesale indiscriminate attack on Jewish people, global or Israeli. Purposefully vague and universal in it’s attack of an entire ethnic minority group There is no chance this comment isn’t xenophobic to it’s core.
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What you say is true but it is also true that the religious minorities in Israel don't amount for much when it comes to the law. Israel's 'religious right' (the ultra-orthodox parties) have a lot of influence over marriage law in particular.
ultra-orthodox are not right wing, in general they are apolitical and will join any type of coalition as long as they get the budget for their community.
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> there is something inherent in middle eastern culture writ large that makes people utterly incapable of living peacefully together By any means this is the case, but in the current state of affairs, given the amount of hatred in the region, if Israel was a region of Palestine with no sovereignty, I don't think it would fare well for the Jews. How do I know this? This is publicly routinely announced by the Palestini…
There is no unified Palestinian government. I’m going to assume you are referring to hamas, who hasn’t faced election since the mid 2000s in Gaza (though to be fair they would probably win again today). I’m not asserting there is any clean path forward, but at the same time the hypothetical you are offering wouldn’t happen overnight either. The question is whether we are able to justify actions as they are now . Will…
I'm referring to whoever de facto is the ultimate authority in the region, there may be several individuals/groups that have the authority.
> I’m not asserting there is any clean path forward, but at the same time the hypothetical you are offering wouldn’t happen overnight either.
Agreed.
> The question is whether we are able to justify actions as they are now
Agreed.