Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

Feel free to highlight the many falsehoods. I didn't say anything that Human Rights Watch and the UN haven't confirmed many times before.

Hate is hate and should not be tolerated. My experience with that, often/most of the time, the one's who criticize others (no matter if it's a country, religion, human being, way of thinking, ... ) are not willing to take criticism of themselves at all. And that's the problem. Right now, you see it at best with the demonstrations against COVID measures. And most of the time, the ones organizing or participating in the demonstrations are far right nationals who cover their nazi-izm with the "we are a lot and we don't want". But it's a lie. It's solely a private agenda to "to catch the dumbest" and make the system break down in the hope of getting enough individuals together to form another form of state - like Hitler & NSDAP did.

Examples: Musicians, a vegan chief, a few others, radicalized themselves up to hating EVERYTHING they relied on and used their whole life. Suddenly, the public social & health systems are bad (but they still want to use them), the government want to kill children with masks or vaccine (is it like that?), everyone's is a lier.. and so forth..

If one look deeper in that, one will see, that actually, they are earning a lot of money, which comes from the "believers".

Or, there was a incident last week, a 20y old boy was shot in the head as a sign of the protest against masks - just because he told the killer to wear a mask and it's mandatory in shops.

All hate need to be punished as hard as possible. The one's hating should be rejected by the society at the highest levels. No chances should be given.

It doesn't have to do anything with freedom of speech, when the speech is against a certain group or directed to individuals or is intended to destabilize something.

That's why we have wars, competition among nations, Putin & Trump, Nazis and ultraright & ultraleft parties.

The same can be applied to Israel as a country ruled by the ultraconservatives (who hate against others), to Palestine (who are not willing to arrange things and instead are openly saying, Israel must be diminished and have no right for existence), to the US and other supporters of the current politics, and Russia & Iran, Arabia, China.

We should all rejected that and do our best to mute the hate. The ones who don't understand that, are already part of the game :)

I like your approach of balance before judgment. I'd like to pick a bit at your individual arguments

I think talking about "theft" of land is always going to be tricky. Someone else goes back further. Abraham wasn't born in Jerusalem. Nor is it productive - who "owns" Alsace and Lorraine? What about Northern Ireland? Land in the Americas - European (mostly) immigrants, or Native Americans? So I would leave those bits aside, and concede that he who conquers, retains, as much as we like or dislike that. Fair game to Israel for being better at waging wars, most of which were indeed started by its neighbours.

What does stand is Israeli state's treatment of Palestinians. Regardless of what state owns the land, people deserve some basic living rights. And it's not like every Arab joined Hamas in 1949. UNRWA puts the number of Palestinian refugees at about 5 million [1] - that's a lot, given the current population of Israel is something like 10 million. And that doesn't even count Palestinians displaced internally. Why would these people be displaced if their own state, now Israel not British Palestine, gave them decent living conditions? Surely anything beats a refugee camp, in which over 1.5 million Palestinians still live?

Israel's gesture of giving Palestinian people a country is clearly an afterthought. We'll keep this, and you get the other bits. Winner's privilege I guess. But it's mostly unproductive, desertified land. In any case, what Palestinian people got is not what they owned pre-1949. Now if I take something away from someone and give them something else, that's not nice, regardless of whether we call it "land theft" or "country giving".

I think you're right that Israel is in a difficult spot with negotiations with Palestinians: any concession appears to be exploited by Hamas et al to wage war and terrorism against Israeli (mostly Jewish) people. I don't know how to fix it, it's a hard problem many tackled, and Israel has every right to defend itself and its citizens. It is key to remember though that this situation is indeed created by the Israeli state. With no acceptance at all of terrorism, or the wars waged by its Arab neighbours, Israel created the environment in which Palestinians feel they have no other options than destructive and cruel terrorism. What good-faith peace plan can they engage in? In Gaza they can barely build a house, with no building supplies and next-to no electricity. Seriously, what life ambitions can someone have if they are born in the Gaza strip? Or a 10-year old whose village was just demolished in the West Bank?

Ironically, what you label as the most anti-semitic theory ("worldwide lobby apparatus") is I think true. Whenever Poland meddles with anything to do with Jewish history (which happens with some regularity, and usually in a very heavy-handed way), at the very least it gets lambasted by the US Secretary of State, and of course Israeli politicians - and often more allies. It would clearly be ridiculous to suggest that there is an evil clandestine council of Jews ruling the world, but to claim that Israel's international influence is only as big as its own voice is just as crazy. I'll stay away from any labels of "good" or "bad" influence, I'll settle for "extremely effective".

EDIT: it struck me after writing all this. Perhaps this is the core of the contention: Israel is just so damn effective at everything it does. Armed forces, vaccinations, international politics, and many more. And while every country is actually trying to get ahead of its competition, by means fair or (usually) unfair, most have at best a just-over-50% success rate. Small-minded, selfish policies, land grabs and skirmishes succeed as often as they fail, and usually are too small to create a lasting distaste. But Israel is just so good at the game everyone plays, and it becomes visible. Surrounding Arab countries play the same game, but are mostly losing (let's keep the civilians out of it). Now the question is: if you're so much better than the opponent, should you play a different game? Should you keep pushing then further and further into the dirt, just because you can? I don't know. But it gives me the heebie-jeebies to think I could have been born Palestinian in the shadow of an Israeli state.

[1] https://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions