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No specific news item for this culture war post, but perusing the comments on the various Iran war takes, I'm consistently baffled by people's attitudes towards Israel that I think are willfully uncharitable and blind to the history of the Middle East in general.
First, there's this idea that Israel is the primary/principle cause of all instability in the region, and that if we suddenly removed all the Jews and gave back the land to the Palestinians, we would have peace. This is absurd. The violence in Lebanon between shiites/sunnis/christians, the question of the Kurds, and the Sunni/Shiite Cold (I guess hot now) war are all conflicts that have their origins long before the founding of Israel. Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.
Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations. A second Nakba to correct for the first Nakba doesn't exactly seem just to me, and it's not like many of those Jews can actually go back to where they were from before emigrating to Israel. The Arab countries forcibly expelled all Sephardic Jews in 1948 after Israel won its independence (also weird how this was totally okay but Israel actions during the 1948 war are "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing". Israel also hasn't actually lost a war yet, and they won in 1948 without any outside help except for some weapons for the Czech Republic, so this would be an extremely hard sell to a population that really doesn't want to leave.
Thirdly, it's not like Israel hasn't tried to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine question or with its neighbors. Rabin actually signed the Oslo accords (before he was assassinated) and it looked like the Palestinians would be able to move towards self governance. Unfortunately, every government the Palestinians have elected have made it their central platform to destroy Israel, so it's somewhat logical that Israel decided that they couldn't self-govern (similar logic to why Israel and Iran are fighting). When I was living in Israel in the summer of 2019 (not a Jew, just doing research), it looked this might be changing, but unfortunately October 2023 changed all that. In terms of its Arab neighbors, Israel has repeatedly given up territory for peace. Of course unfortunately neither Jordan nor Egypt want the West Bank/Gaza (and also refuse to treat second, third and even fourth generation Palestinian refuges as citizens).
Fourthly, there's a (somewhat true) idea that Israel has an outsized influence in US politics. But the US also has an extremely outsized influence in Israeli politics. Up until the mid 1970s, Israel was heavily socialist country that had far more ties to the Soviet Union than the US wanted. Market liberalization similar to what happened under Reagen/Thatcher destroyed the Israeli Kibbutz system economically (among other things, I have a very long essay on my blog about this) that completely destroyed the Israeli left. Netenyahu is the logical result of this.
Fifthly, the claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza seem to be greatly exaggerated and very selective when it comes to comparisons of other actual genocides going on in the world right now (Sudan). I've been hearing claims of genocide for at least ten years now, but somehow there are more Palestinians in Gaza now than there were then? If the Israelis are trying to genocide the Palestinians they're clearly not very good at it (might be more effective to give out birth control). Claims of apartheid are more fair, but are no different from how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries. Why the special criticism of Israel?
Maybe making a Jewish state in the Middle East wasn't a great idea. So what? We live in the world where that's been the case for nearly 80 years and it's not going away without another ethnic cleansing. Israel does cause a lot of chaos and conflict in the region, but 90% is in direct response to its neighbors wanting to destroy it and kill its entire population. Why is the answer to somehow endorse that, rather than admit that maybe its time for the Palestinians to give up claims to land they haven't lived on since WW2, and the population of the Middle East to accept (as their leaders by and large have) that Israel is here to stay.
Is it? The Israelis didn't seem to have much problem expelling the Palestinians from land they had inhabited for much longer.
The Nakba is estimated to have expelled 750k Palestinians from their land i.e. 7.4% of the current total population of Israel. From a purely pragmatic, logistics perspective, expelling 10 million people is going to be a lot harder than expelling 750k people.
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There is a myth that Palestinian Arabs are some kind of ancient people who was in the area for a long time. In reality, the majority of Palestinian Arabs are descendants of people who immigrated to modern day Israel from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. In large part due to economic activity spurred by early Zionists. That's why so many Palestinian Arabs have names like "Al-Masri" which means "Egyptian"
As far as expulsions go, those were limited to a few key areas. Which is why to this day Israel has a substantial Arab minority.
In any event, I think that by "impractical," what was meant that (1) the Jews in Israel will never voluntarily agree to it; and (2) they are sufficiently strong militarily that as a practical matter nobody can make them do it.
I gotta ask, do you honestly expect this to be even slightly convincing to anyone who isn't already on board? You sound like every denier who has ever had to justify something unjustifiable.
And, if you wanna go for right makes right morality, then surely you'll be perfectly fine if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?
Yes. But I think what you are asking is whether I expect to convince anyone who is an Israel-hater. The answer to that is "no."
Apparently you are not aware that the Arabs (this was before "Palestinians" were invented) expelled the Jews from Gaza City, Hebron, and many other places. And, as a supporter of Israel, I would have been okay with letting it go if they had stopped there instead of trying to wipe out all of Israel.
But in any event, to answer your question, if (1) the Palestinian Arabs achieved military supremacy; and (2) there was a Jewish minority in or near "Palestine" that constantly engaged in aggression and terrorism with the idea of wiping out all the Palestinian Arabs; then (3) those Arabs would be justified in expelling that portion of the Jewish minority that was causing problems, justified in occupying Jewish territory for defensive purposes, etc.
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Dizzy, do you believe that apartheid ethnostates are morally acceptable in the present age, or do you believe that all lawful residents within a country's borders are entitled to equal rights and equal treatment under the law? (Note that this is not a question about immigration, or a question about birthright citizenship)
I do not believe in apartheid, but the status of Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel is unclear. Arabs in Israel have full rights, but Gaza and the West Bank are still occupied territories under martial law. If that were to change and Palestinians were not granted full rights, I would consider it apartheid.
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I know the question wasn't directed at me, but you can't stop me, so here's my answer: Hell yes. In so far as there remain any ethnicities that can even agree on who belongs and who does not, let them have their proper nation-states that aren't just economic zones for anyone who manages to cross the border. I for one accept them. Or would, if any still existed.
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Israel is ~20% muslim arab palestinian, with full civil rights, representation in the Knesset and socioeconomic outcomes above average.
What you're calling an "ethnostate" is only because palestinians and jews are the same ethnicity.
What you're calling "apartheid" is the former residents of Jordanian and Egyptian occupied territory, which were never given citizenship nor a homeland by their former overlords either. And because Israel won't resettle an armed and hostile people who live beyond its borders within its borders, you call it apartheid. Every nation on earth that isn't resettling terrorist groups inside their country is an "apartheid state" by this measure.
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Peaceful, functional Arab Israelis who don't dabble in Deathcultism have quality of life far greater than surrounding similar populations. The only arabs that beat them out are the Oil lottery winners. The QALY maximizing solution for the Gaza issue would be for the Palestinians to cease their nonsense, as even if they win independence they'd produce Lebanon 2.0.
I notice that you didn't answer the question. Are you ashamed of your answer, even within this august body?
The fall of actual Apartheid is a pure bad for all but a small minority of the African populace who had sufficient seniority in the new state of South Africa to pocket sufficient to cover for the massive downgrade in QOL for everybody else. Similarly, a 'liberated' Palestine would not produce a functional state and their elected representatives are continually jabbing forks into the light socket of consequences.
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As I pointed out 8 months ago, since the end of the second world war, the average Middle Eastern state has been involved in 10 conflicts, including civil wars and revolutions. My interlocutor characterised Israel as a state which is in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them, but this seems to describe pretty much every Middle Eastern state, and Israel is actually the outlier in having undergone zero civil wars or revolutions since its founding.
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Israel is now an acceptable mainstream target for left-wingers (who don't get that many acceptable targets) so they'll go full 15 minutes hate on them. Many such cases
In what sense do you mean this?
Liberal normies don't get to go for many groups at risk of being called out for whateverism. Thus whenever a target like Antivaxers or MAGA or Israel recently they tend to channel a ton of suppressed anger into a rare conduit
That is already a rather large pool of targets, relatively speaking, compared to the situation of conservative normies.
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Yet Israel's territory has grown larger over time? They gave Sinai back to Egypt after taking Sinai off Egypt, OK. They didn't give back the Golan heights to Syria, they've recently taken more land off Syria. They've been busily taking land off Palestinians in the West Bank for years now, knocking people's houses down or just stealing their houses. Right now they're going into Lebanon perhaps looking to seize more land.
They have this comically villainous strategy in the 'mosquito protocol', using Gazan civilians as human shields, making them enter buildings ahead of IDF troops to clear out explosives or booby traps.
Or they just take potshots at peaceful protestors in Gaza, back in 2019: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/03/one-year-on-from-protests-gaza-civilians-devastating-injuries-highlight-urgent-need-for-arms-embargo-on-israel/
They had huge protests rallying behind soldiers who were briefly arrested for raping prisoners, in support of that kind of activity. You can actually watch video of the Israeli soldiers forming up in this cluster around a prisoner with shields on their backs to block the camera from seeing exactly what happens. There's actual video of an Israeli govt minister saying 'for them, anything is permitted' with regard to sodomizing prisoners with metal objects. The pro-rape faction seems to have decisively won, with the soldiers being freed of all charges.
Countries are formed by taking land, that's how it works. The essence of warfare is inflicting pain and suffering to reach a political goal. But Israel behaves in an especially egregious way for a supposed liberal democracy. Simultaneously they whine and bitch about anti-semitism and claim to be the victim whenever anyone criticises them. Amnesty international is apparently antisemitic, the UN is antisemitic, that American girl they ran over with a bulldozer was probably antisemitic, along with the USS Liberty survivors who maintain they were deliberately attacked. All these Palestinians were born into this world with hatred of Israel in their hearts, we are led to believe. It takes two to tango.
The Israelis go around complaining about Hamas using human shields while they do it themselves. They complain about the terrorism of others when their country was founded by terrorists - they shot a UN-appointed Swedish diplomat Bernadotte for being too pro-Arab, they captured and executed British troops, planned false-flag attacks against the West in Egypt and run a uniquely murderous intelligence agency in Mossad. It's a very obnoxious way for a country to behave. And yet their cheerleaders in the West like PragerU will say that the IDF is the 'most moral army'.
The hypocrisy upsets lots of people. Israel should be treated with the same naked contempt and grasping opportunism they treat other countries. They should be left to fight their own wars, use their own weapons, pay for them too. America has just plunged the world into a major economic crisis over their obsession with Israel, it's not at all a minor issue.
As a side note, this is untrue. J & S / WB belongs to Palestinian Arabs only in the sense that (1) the Arabs successfully ethnically cleansed Jews from the area in the 1930s and 1940s; and (2) under the principles of anti-Israel types, once the Arabs ethnically cleanse Jews from an area, it becomes Palestinian Land forever. So that if Jews return, they are "stealing" land.
Are you just as confident in this claim as you are confident that it was Israel that attacked the girls' school in Iran?
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It's much, much, much simpler than that. I think you and others are thinking too deeply about this.
The history of the region, the legacies of Operation Ajax and Kermit Roosevelt Jr. are not known or cared about by most Americans. They see all this stuff America is doing and personally see zero benefit from it. That's literally it. The argument for strong allies in the ME no longer holds; thanks to fracking and BigAg America is basically food and energy secure, the petrodollar is losing ground to the petro... yuan.. even if Americans personally wish they paid less at the pump due to oil being traded globally and therefore being subject to higher costs elsewhere.
So what they see is America getting into another ME mess for benefits they don't see, spending taxpayer money and lives for reasons they don't care about or understand. Meanwhile the benefits for Israel are pretty obvious to anyone who can even find it on a map and can guess at approximate drone and missile range.
There's also some people I'm sure wish for carveouts, exceptions, and advantages for the strong ingroup bias they personally have, and seeing Jews get away with it without being pilloried makes them do that thing with the monkey and the grapes.
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I don’t think it would be kumbayh in the Middle East if Israel suddenly disappeared, but historically the most common political arrangement in the Arab world is for there to be a large caliphate or empire dominating the region. Geographically, Israel splits the Arab world in two, preventing such an entity from forming. It might be good for the current great powers to keep the Arabs from coalescing into a single world power, but it does increase regional instability.
You’re right that Israel is not committing a genocide. I do think it’s apartheid though. Maybe apartheid is okay in certain circumstances (ending it didn’t work out particularly well for white South Africans), but this is not a political system that is typically tolerated in the civilized world. Something like the Gaza War would have happened if one of the apartheid-era bantustans had openly declared war on White South Africa.
I think there is an option for South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation. It would be difficult after October 7 and the Gaza War, but I think it is still possible. Israelis don’t want to do this, for understandable reasons, but they could if they collectively wanted to.
Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. He was killed by an Israeli for the explicit reason that he was willing to make peace with the Palestinians and hand over occupied land to them. This and the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre by Baruch Goldstein were massive escalations by Israeli extremists to torpedo the peace process.
I was a lot more sympathetic to Israel as an ethnostate proof-of-concept before they dragged my country into a major war. There is a criticism of ethnonationalism that since every ethnic group considers itself God’s gift to humanity, ethnostates will be especially prone to lash-out and start wars when they don’t get the respect they think they deserve. Israel has spectacularly failed to disprove this criticism.
How many wars have Japan, Korea and Liberia been involved in recently?
Even if Israel is an ethnostate, it's more diverse than several of these nations e.g. the 2 million Arab Israelis.
The Korean War has never officially ended, so depending on how you define "conflict" that might qualify. To a lesser extent, the Soviets declared war with Japan in 1945 but never officially ended the conflict.
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Almost certainly just a conflation of the revisionist fascist states of WW2 with ethnostates in general to better discredit the latter. At least, that's always been the purpose this criticism has served when I run into it.
Which is why the murderous and expansionist nature of the Soviets doesn't discredit propositional nations, nor is the theory debunked by the also-common criticism of the empires in WW1.
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I have found that in discussions of Israel, those who criticize Israel are reluctant to define terms like "apartheid." I think the reason for this is that it's not possible to define these sorts of terms broadly enough so that they apply to Israel while at the same time narrowly enough so that they don't apply to large numbers of other countries.
Would you be willing to provide a definition? Given your (tentative?) conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state, I think it's reasonable that you should explain what you mean by "apartheid."
Looking at the map, I would have to disagree. Israel is on the very edge of the Levant. Besides, in 1947 pretty much the entire Arab world was united against Israel and pan-Arabism fizzled out. If they are not able to unite with a clear common enemy, it's difficult to see how they would unite without one.
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Israel could work as an ethnostate. But they'd have to give up the Palestinian areas they control. If they'd turned over the West Bank and Gaza to the PLO in the 1990s they'd likely be much more of a stable normal country today.
Israel has repeatedly offered Gaza back to Egypt, and Egypt has always refused. They don't want millions of dysfunctional and violent Palestinians inside their borders any more than Lebanon did.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "Palestinian areas," but I think it's worth noting that Israel tried leaving Gaza and the result was a disaster. Given that there is very strong anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinian Arabs, I doubt that it's a matter of just picking the right organization to be in control.
That's why I said in the PLO 90s. Hamas throws a wrench in things, but it could still work many West Bank towns are under full Palestinian control, the PLO are not as willing to die as Hamas.
That's a problem too. It allows the more radical element to drive things.
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Yes, I'm aware. I'm extremely skeptical that would have worked given (1) the extreme anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinian Arabs; and (2) the widespread support for terrorism among the Palestinian Arabs.
In practice, that's not the case. The Israeli authorities enter from time to time to arrest certain people; if a troublemaker is known to come from a certain town, the Israeli authorities will put pressure on that town in various ways; and probably other things are done which aren't widely publicized.
If Israel just left J & S / WB to fester as was done with Gaza, I'm pretty confident that within a few years you'd have another Gaza. It's worth noting that to a large extent Hamas has enjoyed widespread popular support among Palestinian Arabs everywhere, not just in Gaza.
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Israel is not giving up anything.
And being "normal country"? This was the dream of old school Zionists, who imagined "Belgium of the East", cozy Viennese coffee house in the desert of Middle East. Not going to happen.
Current and coming generations have another plans and another dreams.
You are totally right, but as a small country clinging to the coast highly integrated into the global economy they'll have a much harder time going it alone then the Soviets or Iranians. It doesn't seem very stable to me. But it also seems no Islamic power can push them out and also they have nukes. So who knows how it ends.
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The Oslo accords, at best, would have required a significant amount of good faith on both sides to be workable. Like what the fuck even is this? It was never a practical means to peace.
And why is the kibbutz crisis attributable to Reagan or Thatcher specifically rather than plain neoliberalism, which was applied in many other parts of the world at the same time and with much harsher results?
Other than that, "Israel doesn't have a right to exist" is pointless navel gazing, and what happened in Gaza is generally reckless disregard for human life rather than true genocide, although the net effect is still a lot of war crimes.
It’s actually worse than that. There is no viable Palestinian state that consists of a tiny densely-populated coastal exclave, plus a much larger landlocked region with no navigable waterways.
I think the bigger issue is that there really isn't a Palestinian people. The Arabs in Hebron and the Arabs in Ramallah are referred to as "Palestinian" for political reasons, but beyond that there isn't much of a connection, aside from the fact that they are Arabs.
If the situation were somehow reversed and it was Jews who needed to set up a viable state consisting of Gaza and J & S / West Bank, it would be a million times easier.
Now do Ukraine. Or America for that matter.
I don't know enough to comment on the Ukraine. As far as America goes, I would put it somewhere between the Jews and the Palestinians. The Palestinians were invented solely as a way of undermining and opposing Israel -- there was never a unique Palestinian ethnicity, language, culture, religion, etc. America does better, although it currently suffers from its own kind of tribalism. It is questionable whether a large American exclave would stay American (query whether Alaska counts).
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If you created a tunnel connecting the two with a rail line and highway it could work.
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I’ve always been a fan of a three-state solution for exactly this reason
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I used to think there were principled arguments against Israel and that it made sense to distinguish between anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. I found it annoying when Jews would equate opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. It felt very manipulative, playing the "antisemitism" card when we're talking about objections to a nation's policies... And of course Israel is a country, countries are made of people and run by politicians, therefore Israel is often going to do things one can reasonably condemn.
I still believe there are a tiny number of people whose opposition to Israel is rooted in genuine principles. I think their arguments are mostly pretty unconvincing, but the New Historians, for example (a school of Israeli historians who are generally pretty critical of Israel and the Israeli narrative about its founding, but obviously don't literally want Israel to cease to exist... Benny Morris is the most notable one) are examples of "anti-Zionists but not anti-Semites."
But mostly, especially since the latest Gaza War, I no longer take criticism of Israel at face value. Sure, a lot of stuff Israel does is fucked up, a lot of stuff the US does is fucked up, and I would like all countries in the world to do fewer fucked up things. Kumbaya.
But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews." It's just become very obvious that you don't have to scratch an anti-Zionist too deeply to find someone who hates Jews. It's true out in the public amongst the "Free Palestine" demonstrators, it's true here among the posters who suddenly have deep humanitarian concern for Palestinians and Iranians. Do they have similar concerns for, say, Ukrainians and Russians? Or the participants and victims in any other conflict anywhere else in the world? Of course not.
Since October 7, demonstrators attacking anything remotely connected with Israel, whether it's an Israeli-run bakery or just a synagogue (which can always be accused of being "Zionist" because the number of synagogues that aren't full of Israel supporters is infinitesimal) have pretty much given the game away. When you claim you don't hate Jews, you just hate like 90% of all Jews, well, that kinda looks like you hate Jews to me.
So, your lengthy defense of Israel isn't wrong, but it's beside the point. Almost nobody is actually criticizing Israel because they think the Israelis should negotiate differently or if they just did this or that they could have peace. There are no circumstances in which Israel will ever be "okay" with them. They just hate Jews. Simple as.
I think you might be focusing a little too much on those on the Motte?
My experience is that there are three to five groups of people who are loudly anti-Israel in Western countries.
The right-wing anti-semites. This is the most popular group on the Motte, and you describe them pretty accurately. There are plenty of people who hate Jews for reasons that are more-or-less in the ballpark of far-right or neo-Nazi ideas; usually this comes with a racialist theory where Jews are a uniquely malevolent or parasitic group never acting in good faith, who exert disproportionate influence over Western countries. Often this group has a kind of private admiration for Israel, in that the state of Israel behaves towards Jews the way that they would like their country (or countries) to behave towards whites. Outside places like the Motte, and to an extent even here, this group likes to disguise or misrepresent its motives, usually because they realise that their whole platform is very unpopular in the West. Suddenly discovering empathy for poor Palestinians despite otherwise being heedless of Arab lives is an easy tell.
The left-wing anti-semites. I think you combine these with their right-wing counterparts, but I find it taxonomically useful to distinguish them. These are the ones who go all-in on the idea that Israel isn't really a country and settler-colonial states are inherently illegitimate and chant "from the river to the sea" on campuses. Whether the motive here is technically anti-semitism is debatable, particularly because there is a small but real number of Jews in this group, which the rest like to hold up as symbols, even as they go around loudly demanding that institutions divest themselves from all Jewish groups, or from anything related to Israel, or even just harass ordinary Jews who have failed to clearly denounce Israel. I called these group 'anti-semites' because I think they do associate all Jews (who have not clearly disaffiliated themselves from Israel) with Israel and will attack people just for being publicly Jewish; and because as far as can reasonably be discerned their actual position is that Israel should be destroyed.
(2a?) Left-wing bleeding hearts who haven't updated their beliefs for decades. I run into a lot of these in real life. It's probably fair to view them as the moderate wing of the anti-Israel left, or perhaps the anti-semites as the extremist wing of the anti-Israel left. But basically take the group I described in 2 but dial it down to people who really care about Palestinian lives, support a two-state solution, would be mortified at any implication that they're hostile to Jews, and generally ignore the existence of their more extreme counterparts.
The nationalists. This group largely codes right at the moment, but in the past has been more diverse and I think has room for some leftists in it. It's the one that says basically, "Why are we supporting this small, violent country? What's in it for us?" Unlike the first two, I don't think this one is particularly anti-semitic. Undoubtedly it's true that near-unconditional support for Israel has been a pillar of American foreign policy for decades, and it's understandable for parts of the American electorate to ask why, particularly as Israel seems to, whether intentionally or not, keep dragging America into conflicts that it does not seem in America's interests to fight. They stand out among the other groups for being relatively amoral - they do not care who's in the right, they do not care about Palestinian lives or welfare, and they will not litigate the last eighty years of Israel-Palestine conflict with you. They do not care. They will just ask - why are we involved in this mess?
Migrants. This group is fairly obvious. Some are Palestinians themselves, many are Muslims, many are from countries like Syria, Lebanon, or Egypt, and therefore have very explicable reasons for hating Israel. There's a very common belief in the Islamic world that Palestine is a 'nation of martyrs', and though this sometimes annoys other Muslims who feel that their persecution is downplayed or ignored (Kashmiri, Chechens, Rohingya, Uighurs, etc.), but nonetheless it is pretty universally accepted. I posted about one of these in Australia last year. This group is often significant among their own communities but are trapped in those bubbles and often ignored in the wider discourse, though sometimes one makes it into politics and becomes more widely known.
Yeah, that's most of the ones I onow: "I heard on the news/social media that Israel just killed a kid! Why can't they just stop killing Palestinians and get along?"
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Well, I think that it's anti-Semitism in the same way that white college professors who are anti-white are racist. I think that the basic playbook for Leftist types is to aggrandize themselves by claiming moral superiority over others. Ok, suppose some tribe in some African sh*thole is massacring another tribe. If Leftists make a fuss about it, the message is "we're morally superior to some barbaric tribe in Africa." Which, at some level, they know isn't saying much. It's much more impressive to say "We're morally superior to the Jews!!"
Generally speaking, I agree, although I think a lot of anti-Semites hide in this group. One thing that gives the game away is they are outraged about US military aid to Israel but don't seem to mind that the US spends a lot of resources (both money and personnel) in South Korea, Germany, Bahrain, etc. They are outraged about dual US/Israel citizens but don't really care about dual US/UK citizens. This selectivity suggests that something besides isolationism is motivating their isolationism.
Devil's advocate: Germany is far less likely to result in US forces/materiel being lost. If you assume the "Israeli aggression causes all Middle-east ills" line of thought, which I do not, you can even squeeze Bahrain into the same category as Germany, and I believe Bahrain also provides the US with an important naval port.
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I was originally going to agree with Amadan but then you reminded me these people existed - however in my experience they tend to act like information less wokes who can't discuss the situation at all or provide any solutions, only suggest that Israel is bad and should go away. In this way they carry water for the actual anti-semites.
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I'd broadly agree with the 1 camp without being anti-Israeli. It's a bit annoying that they've historically been able to conduct themselves in a manner that'd get any equivalent Western nation absolutely pilloried with minimal media/public censure (until they've lost control of the narrative recently) but I believe that in terms of maximizing utilitarian outcomes the world should be more tolerant of actions of that caliber. Plus if in the situation where the Palestinians had a similar level of dominance over the Israelis they'd be acting significantly worse.
I do also feel a certain schadenfraude when it comes to Jewish people who were used to/didn't see the inherent contradiction in the previous social meta of 'Israel is a special case and doesn't get criticized for boundary pushing' and are trying to hammer the anti-semitism meme a bit too hard. Especially when Jewish thinkers/media influence was made to curate an environment where they got given special exemption status instead of a broader laissez faire attitude.
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I assume you’re a well-informed poster. You and I and everyone on this board surely knows well that ‘Free Palestine’ groups claim to be anti-colonialist, anti-racist and leftist, plus supporters of the concept of national liberation and also of BLM, for example. Their opposition to Israel’s policies rather obviously stem from this ideology and not from a general hatred of the Jewish people and not from a hard opposition towards the concept of a Jewish state in itself, as they view Israel as a white supremacist, unrepentant, aggressor settler state, and many of their members and supporters are themselves Jews. We can, of course, make all sorts of criticism of them, but this needs to be admitted. I guess we can go so far as to call them anti-white, since they see Israeli settlers and Zionists as white. At the same time, not only is their rhetoric not anti-Semitic, they do not tolerate anti-Semitism either, especially not within their own ranks.
Obviously these groups have existed before October 7th, in fact they have existed for a long time, and their ideological rhetoric against Israeli colonialism was also deployed against the US political system, which they view as structurally racist and neo-colonialist. Back when BLM was more relevant, it was the latter that was getting these activists more media attention, and I can only assume that this made many people forget that these groups are also anti-Zionist, and that accusations of anti-Semitism do not work against them at all, for the simple reason that they genuinely do not see themselves as anti-Semitic and thus do not consider themselves compelled to apologize. It’s similar to the case of the ‘Democrats are the real racists’ narrative, which does not work on Democrats one bit.
To the extent that US political opposition towards Zionism and the Zionist lobby exists outside the leftist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist milieu, I think it’s fair to say that it all stems from isolationism, to the extent that it still even exists. And the common attribute of isolationists is that they wish to isolate the US from other conflict regions in the world as well, not just Israel, so I don’t think accusations of anti-Semitism apply in their case either.
I tend to disagree with this. For example, it's no secret that Palestinian Arabs living in Lebanon (some have been their for generations) are not allowed to be Lebanese citizens; barred from various professions; etc. And yet campus Leftists don't seem to bother with "Lebanese Apartheid Week." In fact, there are many minority groups all over the world the Left doesn't seem to care about all that much. Heck, I even read that there is actual slavery of black people still going on in 2026 in some places. There is some degree of objection to what China is doing in Tibet and the western provinces, but it's nowhere near the volume of anti-Israel activities.
So it seems pretty clear that, even if one ignores the fact that Jews are actually an indigenous people of the Levant, there is a lot more going on than just generalized opposition to ethnic nationalism, colonialism, and so on.
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I reached the same verdict in the UK when:
Maybe you could claim this is just guilt by association but organised anti-zionism here does not exist as a movement distinct from anti-semitism. In no other area of politics would supposedly very different groups with completely incompatible motives act in lockstep. The National Front doesn't march hand in hand with the Tories, for instance. So I can only conclude they are not, in fact, different. As for the argument that they can't be excluded for strategic turnout reasons, if your hundreds of thousands strong movement needs them that badly to function, then they can't be a minority of bad apples, can they?
And of course theres the issue where effectively every group claiming to be motivated by human rights was demonstrated to be lying back in 2020, but that's more a me thing.
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This is a completely rational and a smart way to think and a completely rational and smart thing to say anywhere in the world except in a forum where we agree to deal with each other's arguments as stated and not the nefarious motives we imagine behind the arguments.
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Am I super autistic or just a unicorn or I don’t technically fall under this definition: “ you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews."
I’m not anti-Zionists. I guess might makes right? I am critical of Israel. I hate the ADL. I hate AIPAC and how they interfere with our elections. I also have many Jewish friends. Tonight I made dinner for an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn. I get concerned that 75% of the largest political donations in the 2020 election were Jewish. I semi-like Larry Ellisons new media empire because I think it will back the right but still concerned that he’s a Jew and could turn on my interests at a future point.
So yes I get concerned that 1% of the population with super high incomes that will generate half of the richest people in my country and 40% of the Nobel Laureates might have interests that disagree with my interests.
Because the move from critiquing institutions like the ADL or AIPAC to gesturing at “Jews” as a coherent bloc with aligned interests is where the analysis tends to degrade. It collapses a wide range of individuals, incentives, and internal disagreements into a kind of ethnic shorthand that explains too much and therefore explains very little. At that point, it begins to resemble the exact pattern Amadan is pointing to when he talks about criticism of Israel bleeding into garden variety joo poasting. I'm not particularly sensitive to charges of antisemitism but it just makes the conversation tiring.
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The problem with the ME are the people. Even many leftist are just admitting you don’t want them as immigrants (unless highly filtered like the US). I believe Yglesias said this week that you don’t want European style unfiltered Middle East immigration and been seeing a few people I think are at least partially left saying it saying it on twitter. I’ve seen a Pakistani friend whose a Doctor go back to Pakistan and say I thought all brown people were smart but this was awful. Yglesias literally wrote a book “One Billion Americans” in 2020. positively selected Muslim immigrants No longer a billion Americans. Just skim the top 1-3% from Pakistan.
I think I’ve heard Yglesias and Noah Smith types are best described as the ones who say wrongthink right before it’s acceptable for people on the left to think something.
I think during the founding of Israel the did things that fit the genocide definition that’s established by a Jew at the UN. Though I don’t believe post Oct 7 actions are genocide but legitimate military action to neutralize military action taken against them.
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