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Do you really believe that opposition to Israel is (always? in the case of OP specifically? most of the time?) motivated by opposition to Jews, or is it a rhetorical device because you like Israel and want to tar opposition to it? I'm particularly interested in the answer because I am situated in the category whose existence you appear to deny (no issue with Jews as an ethnicity or religion, large issue with the state of Israel in its current form - not even as a theoretical concept, as I've previously argued they should have just taken some land from the Germans and founded it on the Baltic coast back in 1945 instead).
I'll go with "almost always."
Well, here are a few questions:
When you criticize or condemn Israel for something, do you criticize or condemn other countries that behave similarly or worse?
Do you care about the treatment of the Palestinian Arabs? If so, how do you feel about the treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Arab countries such as Lebanon?
Are you aware that the UN condemns Israel far more than any other country by far? Do you think that this is because the UN is biased against Israel or do you believe that Israel genuinely is the worst country in the world in terms of activities which merit condemnation?
Are you upset about US military support of Israel? If so, how do you feel about US military support of South Korea; Japan; Norway; Turkey; or the UK?
When Israel does things such as attacking hospitals, do you understand and accept that this is because terrorist organizations such as Hamas operate out of hospitals?
In my experience, the vast majority of people who criticize or condemn Israel single the Israel out for special treatment. The vast majority of people who claim to care about Palestinian Arabs are not even aware, let alone care about, the way Palestinian Arabs are treated in places like Lebanon. The vast majority of people who criticize or condemn Israel are not able to bring themselves to admit that the UN is horrifically biased against Israel. The vast majority of people who complain about US military support of Israel are hardly aware and do not care about US military support for other countries. The vast majority of Israel's critics minimize or ignore things like Hamas' use of hospitals, which gives Israel no practical choice other than to attack hospitals. It's difficult to square these attitudes with anything other than anti-Semitism. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that a lot of these people are simply NPC's repeating Leftist talking points -- they are a vehicle for other peoples' hatred of Jews, the equivalent of low level concentration camp guards.
I would, but unlike you I don't get the sense that there are currently other countries who are similar or worse. The country was founded less than 100 years ago on land violently stolen from the previous residents; more land continues to be stolen (settlers) on its periphery; the descendants of the same previous residents are stuck on its territory as an underclass with minimal sociopolitical rights and recently being slaughtered by the tens of thousands in a form of collective punishment for the violent resistance that formed among them. The most recent historical comparisons I can think of are South Africa and perhaps Korea/China under Japanese rule during/before WWII, and even in those cases I get the sense that the lot of the native population was actually better (both in terms of the sheer volume of violence they suffered relative to their total number, and in terms of how much of what was their ancestors' they were they denied the use of). Of course there is the objection that they are different in that the invaders had something like a homeland they could straightforwardly retreat to (this is more clear in the case of Japan than in the case of the white peoples of South Africa), but as someone who is not particularly convinced of a general right to an ethnostate I don't find this so compelling.
I somewhat do, but to my best knowledge little of my taxes is spent on supporting whatever other Arab countries do to them, so it's easier to see it as an instance of misery that I have no moral responsibility to stop. Also, per the above angle on Israel, I'm not sure I agree that other Arab countries mistreat them as badly.
See above, I get the sense that it is among the worst. If pressed, I think North Korea might cause (in the counterfactual sense of causation: literally deleting the state of North Korea, including every member of leadership, official document and government building, would make things better) more total undeserved misery per capita, but for better or worse one may argue that the UN's magisterium is to regulate the relations between nations/peoples, so that North Koreans torturing their own is none of its business.
It's a harder question whether various colourful events in Africa (like the recent genocides in Sudan) were worse, and in general I would wish for more UN intervention in those; but to do so properly from my point of view requires a memetic rehabilitation of uplift colonialism, where we may accept that if some peoples keep murdering each other at some point we ought to go in, confiscate their children and put them through a few generations of forced schooling in a different cultural background. At the same time, the current memetic landscape unfortunately does not require this; and either way, in practice the UN has a lot more influence on rich first-world countries than places like Sudan, so it makes sense for it to direct its condemnation energy in a direction where it can actually affect outcomes.
Neither of those is doing things as bad as what I said in my first paragraph! I should say that my citizenship is German, so my tax money is being spent on Israel to a significant extent but not so much on the others. But either way, the problem is not military support being intrinsically bad, but rather military support conveying upon the supporter some responsibility for what the military is then used for. Out of this list, if I were a US citizen, I would also prefer to defund Turkey.
I understand that this is a motivation, though I'm not convinced that it isn't simultaneously true that they are happy to have a pretext to flatten a hospital because it serves the longer-term goal of having fewer and less healthy Palestinians in the area.
Let's see if I understand your argument correctly:
In the 1940s, what is now Israel was collectively the property of the Arabs living in the area but NOT the property of the Jews living in the area.
Thus, by declaring a Jewish state and winning the Israeli war of independence, Israel has a sort of original sin which taints everything it does.
Therefore, if Israel blows up a hospital which is being used as a base by Hamas, it is illegitimate because Israel has no legitimate right of self defense.
Thus, if some other country blows up a hospital or a school or whatever, and even if that hospital was not being used for military purposes, it's still not as bad as Israel because that other country does not have Israel's "original sin."
Do I understand your position correctly?
Of course I have heard the "tax dollars" argument before. But if this were the reason for the ferocious and relentless criticism of Israel out there, one would expect Europeans to be far less anti-Israel than Americans. That's not the case at all. "Tax dollars" is an excuse, not the actual reason.
Are you similarly skeptical of the motives of other countries which are engaged in military conflicts?
No, not quite correctly.
In the 1940s, the area was populated by a handful of Jews and many Arabs. They owned their respective property; Arabs were presumably in the majority, and in particular sufficiently densely distributed that there was no viable contiguous Jewish state that could be founded on Jewish property.
Thereupon, Jewish colonists with Anglo-American backing started entering the area and killing and expelling the Arabs. Without these actions, the "war of independence" (which was really a unilateral war of aggression) could not have been won. This created a sort of "original sin" that is so recent that it has not met my statute of limitations.
Israel continues doing the same thing (killing Arabs, expelling them from their land and settling it). Israel is a democracy (as its supporters are enthusiastic to point out). Therefore, sins analogous to the "original sin" are newly committed by the Israeli state with popular consent with regularity.
I'm not as hung up on hospitals as you seem to be, though I would like to point out that Russia is regularly condemned for attacking Ukrainian dual-use infrastructure (including hospitals) that is likewise used by the Ukrainian military and still manages to have produced a far lower number of civilian casualties in Ukraine than Israel has among its enemies. This seems like pretty strong evidence that Israel is unusually happy to cause civilian casualties.
Either way, nothing about this requires even talking about whether they are justified to blow up hospitals or anyone else is! Even ignoring the tens of thousands of skulls, 1-3 alone amounts to an obvious moral case for returning what was stolen. If Israel relinquishes all land that was not owned by Jews in 1940, we can talk about who and what they are allowed to destroy in defense of what's left.
The only relevance that the "original sin" has to evaluating Israel's other actions (including blowing up hospitals) is that Israel habitually defends its ongoing violence and theft against the Arabs with violence committed by Arabs against them. Commonly, notions of legitimate self-defense are understood to only cover unprovoked actions. You can't attack and rob someone, have them strike you in self-defense, and then justify further aggression against them as self-defense against the preceding act.
This argument is nonsensical. There is no reason to assume that the total volume of possible outrage at atrocities committed elsewhere is the same in every country. If the amount of "tax dollars" has any relevance at all, at most you might argue that it determines the relative scale of our responsibility for Israel's actions, compared to other atrocities being committed with our monetary support - and there, I think there might be a good case that even though US support for Israel is in absolute terms much larger than ours, in relative terms there is comparatively more other immoral behaviour that American money pays for. It could be that 30% of all atrocities funded by EU military budget are Israeli and 10% of all atrocities funded by US military budget are, but the latter quantity is still much larger in monetary terms.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of the land in the area, likely the majority, was not privately owned. Rather, it was previously Ottoman land, succeeded to by the British, at least as far as control goes. You could call it "public land." Are you saying that this public land land was the property of the Arabs as a group; the Jews as a group; both; neither; or something else?
Ok, so any group which, in the last 100 years, has acquired territory by means of ethnic cleansing, backed by violence, is tainted with "original sin." Do I understand you correctly?
Can you tell me the most recent significant incident in this process so that I know what you are talking about?
Do you agree that Hamas regularly and aggressively uses human shields?
Ok, so in your view, Israel has no legitimate right of self-defense when it comes to any and all Arab terrorism against it. Do I understand you correctly?
I assume that by "atrocities," you are referring to the Israeli self-defense which you believe is per se illegitimate. What would you say are the primary reasons for variation, from country to country in opposition to Israel? And can we agree that at least on the surface, support of Israel with tax monies does not appear to be a significant factor? Also, I am a little confused by your post. Are you saying that there are European or other countries besides the US who are providing military support for Israel?
Last, I would appreciate an answer to my question from before: Are you similarly skeptical of the motives of other countries which are engaged in military conflicts?
I honestly don't know the details of how land titles in a British colony are divided up, but the details don't seem relevant. Per the table here we are talking about something like 75%+ Muslims. At the very least I would assume that their immediate residence, plus perhaps some tract of land around it, was owned by them. If the legal situation is such that you have small (by area) cities that are owned by individuals, and large tracts of non-residential land around them that are owned by the government/"public land" but essentially used by and for the small residential areas, then I'm quite happy to say that the "public land" is morally the collective property of those who own the small residential plots, in proportion to what percentage of the population they were. Manifestly, the colonists did expel the Arabs from their residences! Even if the situation was such that on paper 5% of the land was Arab and 95% was "public", it's rather disingenuous to treat the 5% "Arab land" that was stolen as a rounding error when clearly the colonists did not seem to think the Arabs could be allowed to keep it as a "rounding error" (because it turns out that the 5% private land was key to exploiting the 95% of public land).
Don't ignore context to generate overly ambitious strawman statements to refute. I'm happy with the following narrower version: any group which, in the last 100 years, has acquired territory by means of (...), where this ethnic cleansing and violence was not itself justified as retaliation against a previous act, is tainted with "original sin".
Here's one from the top of a Google search for . The Golan Heights is getting settlement and that is literally territory they seized from another sovereign and internationally recognised at the time state in war.
I don't know what exactly you mean by this, but I'm happy to accept a statement like "Hamas deliberately bases its operations in civilian areas for the purpose of concealment". Perhaps "aggressively uses human shields" is a Russell conjugation of this sort of thing, where in an allied country it's more of an innovative mom-and-pop shop startup story.
Eh, not quite. My point is mostly that we (the country I'm a subject of, and also the country you are a subject of) have a moral obligation to not aid them in their defense. In terms of "legitimacy" (what do you mean by this?), I do lean towards saying something like every living being has some sort of natural right to fight for its own survival - I would not morally fault the murderer who is sought out by his victim's surviving relatives in retaliation for fighting them off, even as I may cheer on the relatives to prevail.
I mean in particular self-defense that leaves cities looking like this, and for example everything that is mentioned in this article. I don't believe the argument that this is the only way they could defend themselves has been made, and in particular the Russia/Ukraine thing continues being a canonical test case - we are simultaneously hearing the assertion that Russia has worse training, less and inferior precision weaponry, is more brutal than Israel, and having no problem roundly condemning it and sanctioning it to hell, but somehow Russia manages to occupy Ukrainian cities without having to mow down people in bread lines and even the most thoroughly burned-over cities on the frontline there don't quite look that reduced to rubble.
I think I've made an extensive case that nobody else seems to be currently engaged in military conflicts that are this one-sidedly immoral.
If you want to take this conversation further, please try to actually engage with the points I make, rather than doing this mixture of warping a few excerpts into strawmen and requesting that I undersign a battery of prepared statements. I don't think you are actually doing your case a service, because you are doing it so sloppily that you are just inviting more opportunities to make the Israeli case look bad.
According to the AI (and this seems like the sort of thing AI is likely to be correct about), 70-75% of the land was "state land."
Ok, so by your reasoning, roughly 25% of the land area of British Mandatory Palestine was "Jewish Land." Agreed?
Ok, and what was the justified retaliation for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Hebron; Gaza City; and the Eastern part of Jerusalem? What could and should be done about these Arab thefts of Jewish land?
Ok, so if I understand your position correctly, notwithstanding the Oslo accords, essentially all of Area C is property of the Arabs according to you, correct? Also, I am skeptical that Arabs were killed and expelled to make way for the 6 settlements referred to in the article. Can you provide links and cites?
Last, what is the justified retaliation for Jordan's attack on Israel in 1967?
Ok, so you dispute any claim that Hamas deliberately operates in and around civilians in order to discourage Israel from attacking and to generate bad press for Israel if Israel does attack. Right?
Well what I mean is as follows: Suppose Israel engages some aggressive act, such as blowing up building which allegedly had a Hamas leader inside it. And suppose someone condemns Israel for doing so without condemning other countries who blow up buildings. To me, that raises the question of double-standards, which is evidence that the person is motivated by anti-Semitism. It seems like you are saying that the situations are different, because -- according to you -- Israel provoked the terrorist who was in the destroyed building. Therefore, according to you, it's not unprincipled to condemn Israel for destroying such a building while NOT condemning other countries who engage in similar activities. Is that your position or not? Because it seems like you are backing away from that position.
I disagree, but that's beside the point. My question was this:
Are you declining to answer?
++++++++++++++++
So it seems like your position is (1) the conflicts Israel has engaged in over the years are uniquely and one-sidely immoral on the part of Israel; and (2) therefore, you are uniquely skeptical of Israel's motives. Right?
Also, can please tell me two specific things Israel has done in recent wars which are uniquely immoral? Because I'm very skeptical of your claim.
Thank you for your CONCERN. It's so nice to know that you are so CONCERNED about my presenting my argument.
No, actually only 10-15% were Jewish, with the difference being flagged as "Christian" in the Wikipedia table. You could have found this out by looking at the Wikipedia table I linked. Are you just throwing out false claims to tire me out?
I'm not concerned for you. I was just trying to dissuade you from doing things that waste my time when they don't even help you. Since it didn't work, I will excuse myself from this conversation (with a general sense that I can rest my case).
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