391–400 of 405 posts
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Hamas is an overtly genocidal organization; their charter says it in plain language, and their deliberate massacre of civilians on October 7 ratifies it. There's no argument to have here. Say that Gazans aren't Hamas, and cannot be collectively punished for the actions of a psychotic millenarian military cult, and I'll agree wholeheartedly with you.
Hamas is an overtly genocidal organization; their charter says it in plain language The 2017 Charter absolutely does not, and if you think it does you'll have to cite specific paragraphs to back up this view. In fact it specifically rejects antisemitism and goes on further to say: Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.
You know what else happened with Hamas in 2017? A huge internal conflict and series of purges that left Yehya Sinwar, who is a literal Bond villain, in charge of the organization. It's wild to see anybody try to rehabilitate Hamas with "2017".
(We're still just nerding out on this, I assume).
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Hamas is an overtly genocidal organization; their charter says it in plain language The 2017 Charter absolutely does not, and if you think it does you'll have to cite specific paragraphs to back up this view. In fact it specifically rejects antisemitism and goes on further to say: Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.
They just launched a genocidal attack on Israeli women, children, and grandparents. I don't have to parse the distinctions between their overtly genocidal charter, which they didn't disavow, and their new document. They re-avowed the original charter on October 7. Only on Twitter is this a live debate. You know what else happened with Hamas in 2017? A huge internal conflict and series of purges that left Yehya Sinwar…
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> In human terms, one could also look it as an attempt to restore basic dignity and liberty to these folks, more or less on par to what is provided to prospective citizens of Jewish ancestry via the Law of Return. I agree. So then I don't get the demonization against Zionism. Sometimes ethnostates make sense due to special circumstances in history and in the present.
I don't see most critiques of Zionism as "demonization", though I would agree they are sometimes misinformed and involve lousy choices of wording and phrasing. Many of most serious (and highly informed) of these critiques come from Jewish and Israeli sources, BTW.
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That's true, regarding the fringe neo-Kahanist "Greater Israel" coalition Netanyahu assembled. But as you know, it's also true of Hamas; that's the "some" you're referring to. Issue polling is tricky, but it's likely that a majority of Israelis oppose the positions of Netayahu's coalition. (It's probably true that a majority of Gazans at this point oppose the Hamas program; it's very difficult to know, because both I…
Not to quibble, but because you like to nerd out on these things: Maximalist land claims from the Israeli side go back much further than the Kahanist movement - specifically to the Revisionist Zionism movement founded circa 1925. Which arguably became the de-facto position of Israel after the 1967 war up to the current day (basically: "We weren't really planning to grab all this territory, but being as things somehow…
You are cherry picking the facts that agree with your world view and ignoring the rest.
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I don't see most critiques of Zionism as "demonization", though I would agree they are sometimes misinformed and involve lousy choices of wording and phrasing. Many of most serious (and highly informed) of these critiques come from Jewish and Israeli sources, BTW.
I don't know if just because someone is Israeli or Jewish it makes his opinion that much more valid - especially when people cherry pick the views that already conform to their opinion and ignore all the rest (e.g if the person is an Israeli anti zionist they will listen to him, if he's an Israeli Zionist they will cancel him). As for the criticism itself, too much of the time (imo) it focuses on Israel as a uniquely…
[The criticism] focuses on Israel as a uniquely colonizing entity
In essence the criticism seems to boil down to this:
Israel indisputably maintains the longest-running military occupation in the world, at present. Which it is aggressively expanding in both the West Bank and Gaza, as we speak.
Its attitude towards the Arab population has been ineluctably colonial from the very start of the movement. As expressed in most every piece of Zionist writing you will find, and the recorded statements from basically everyone involved. And then the large-scale massacres and violent displacements starting in 1947.
In a supposedly post-colonial world, there are very few countries with an analogous situation or history.
Is this the criticism you're referring to?
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Not to quibble, but because you like to nerd out on these things: Maximalist land claims from the Israeli side go back much further than the Kahanist movement - specifically to the Revisionist Zionism movement founded circa 1925. Which arguably became the de-facto position of Israel after the 1967 war up to the current day (basically: "We weren't really planning to grab all this territory, but being as things somehow…
Zionists accepted the 1947 partition plan (and as far as I know Peel's 1937 plan to a much smaller territory). The Palestinian leadership rejected both outright. In addition Zionists proposed the 2 state solution twice (Camp David 2001, Olmert's plan in 2008) to be rejected twice. To this day there hasn't been a clear consent by a Palestinian leader to let go of the Palestinian right of return, nor has there been a p…
You can cherry pick all you want, as long as you stick to the subject.
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Does this qualify? https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ucb-police-seek-... "The five people were part of a group of about 200 protesters, who on Feb. 26 broke down the door of Zellerbach Playhouse and smashed a window to prevent Israeli lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat from addressing a group of Jewish students. Danielle Sobkin, co-president of Bears for Israel, one of the campus groups who invited Bar-Yoshafat, said…
5 hateful racist people in a group of 200. That’s not unusual.
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I am talking about Jews in Israel. They are a bit more than half Mizrahi/Sephardi/Beta-Israel (not European) and a bit less than half Ashkenazi (European). The vast majority of Sephardi and Mezrahi in Israel are from what are now muslim countries in the Middle East. Together with 20% of the population that are Muslim or Christian Palestinians people of middle-eastern descent comprise well over 50% of the population (…
I went digging around for numbers in these wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews#Population These articles agree that Jews of European ancestry comprise around 44.2% vs 44.9% of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ancestry. The study that gave these numbers admitted on having methodological limitations, so it may be undercounting M…
Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU. Several Arab states are also members of the EBU, including neighbor states Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, along with Libya and Morocco (which has in fact participated). The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation.
It seems pretty clear that whatever other factors you want to weigh here, you can't judge Israel's Europeanness by its inclusion in Eurovision.
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I went digging around for numbers in these wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews#Population These articles agree that Jews of European ancestry comprise around 44.2% vs 44.9% of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) ancestry. The study that gave these numbers admitted on having methodological limitations, so it may be undercounting M…
I'm necroposting here, but this has been stuck in my head for a week: Israel participates in Eurovision because it's a member of the EBU. Several Arab states are also members of the EBU, including neighbor states Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, along with Libya and Morocco (which has in fact participated). The Arab states are boycotting Eurovision because of Israel's participation. It seems pretty clear that whatever oth…