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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   240 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 4, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If you asked them about their opinion on Israeli Arabs (assuming they know they exist), they'd probably be neutral to positively inclined.

Well obviously, the Israeli Arabs are just a well-off subset of the oppressed Palestinian people, in the anti-Israeli view. That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.

The common leftist position that every Israeli Jew deserves to be brutally murdered would be equally horrific in an alternative universe where everyone in Israel was Hindu.

I'm not sure that view is that common. The more common (if naive) view is that once the Israelis take their boot of the Palestinian throat, then everyone can live in peace and harmony in a post-sectarian democracy. The more likely outcome (massive civil war) may be realistic, but I don't think many leftists actually want it. Not least because the Palestinians would lose.

That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.

Some and some. There's at least one sitting Knesset member who's part of Bibi's Likud party, for example. Likewise, many Israeli Arabs have served in the IDF.

And I know a woman who is really tall, therefore men and women are the same height.

Less flippantly, that IDF unit has 500 men in a force of 169,500. And my bet is that a supermajority of Arabs serving in the IDF are Druze and Christians.

There are also pacificistic or anti-Zionist Israeli Jews, but they are clearly not the people driving current Israeli policy.

I never claimed that the average Arab Israeli is an enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist project, or that the majority of that group are, merely that it's misleading to claim that all of them are opposed.

A survey from a year ago found that 58% of Arab Israelis believe the most recent conflict has "fostered a sense of shared destiny between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis". An earlier survey found that 55% consider themselves "proud citizens of Israel".

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