Israel and Palestine

So pointing out that the Palestinians would suffer under the rule of Fatah or Hamas means advocating the mass murder of Palestinians.

Think I'm done here. We've moved beyond rational conversation.

Would? They already do suffer under such organisations, I have no problem with that fact, it's a very real fact, both organisations are more detrimental to the peace process than the Israeli government.

But using that to justify Israeli settlements and the seizing fo Palestinian lands (which is in fact ethnic cleansing, slow ethnic cleansing maybe but ethnic cleansing it is)? Yeah that's not gonna fly.

edited 24th Jul '17 2:52:29 PM by Silasw

If murder is murder then colonization is colonization and ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing.

Lets not apply a double standard here.

Just as important as "let's not apply a double standard here" is "let's not apply a double standard when calling out the application of double standards", because in my experience the pro-Israeli camp tends to get more leeway in this regard... probably because they love abusing the "YOU'RE BEING ANTISEMITIC!" card to scare people out of properly criticizing them.

edited 24th Jul '17 8:50:46 PM by MarqFJA

There's nothing about double standards here. Pretend otherwise as much as you like, living in house, illegal as that house may be, is not morally equivalent to murder.

It really doesn't help that a lot of their critics are antisemite. It's a bit like trying to criticize capitalism during the Red Scare, you'll get called a Bolshevik right away.

Which sucks, since I feel like one should be able to call Netanyahu an asshole without being decried as an anti-Semite.

You can say Bibi is a populist demagoug that cant make decisions and enables fascists, but going all "Israel is an imperialist apartheid state that has support through lobby control via rich people in other countries" is not ok at all

You can criticise Bibi or Israeli policy all day without being shouted down as an anti-Semite; you just have to keep your criticism on-point and avoid clearly loaded terms like "Imperialist", "Apartheid" or, Gods below forbid, "Nazi regime". Look at the (sane) left here: they criticise Bibi all the time and they continue doing so without being shouted down. Maybe, if someone is calling you an anti-Semite, it's not because they want to shout down your criticism.

One won't be called that by you guys because you're reasonable, but the Israeli government itself makes no distinction, didn't it recently shut down one of its ambassadors for calling out anti-Semitism by an ally of Bibi?

Also while I'm pretty sure we can all agree that any reference to the Nazis is loaded and indicates an unwillingness to debate in good faith I can't say to the same about using the word "Imperialism" or comparing modern Israel to Apartheid South Africa.

That's especially true when the comparison hear keeps being made by someone who actually lived under Aparthied.

X6 A lot of that falls on the pro-Palestinian campaign groups though, they do have a nasty tendency to either include anti-semites, anti-Israelis or be willing to work alongside such people. Even the best of the pro-Palestinian campaign tend to keep some pretty awful company.

edited 25th Jul '17 4:16:13 AM by Silasw

Euo might've lived in Apartheid SA but she didn't live here (or in the Palestinian territories for that matter); so if we say that life experience is king, hers is lacking on the other side of the comparison.
That said, there are two strata to what I said:

1. If you'll use loaded words like Imperialism or Apartheid (and those are loaded) you'll be shouted down. That's a statement of fact.
2. You shouldn't use such loaded words if you want any sane Israeli to take you seriously. That's... I guess you could call this an ought-statement, but it's less ethics and more pragmatism.

Great, I spend days being a Good Girl and not chiming in when I got the Apartheid bells chiming in my head, and you still manage to dismiss what is happening in the West Bank as somehow totally unrelated to townships, land grabs and ever-decreasing homelands...

Sure, knock yourself out. But, I spent hours in lessons learning about Isreal and how justified your fight to exist was and how malingering, primitive, lazy, violent Palestinians couldn't be trusted to run their own affairs any more than any Black could. It was part of our state-mandated RE curriculum.

Suggestion: watch District 9 — tell me you don't see it. I dare you. Blomkamp didn't go out of his way to describe Apartheid, segregation or all that — but, he did base it on what it was like being a kid of the 80s. All his films are. So, it's there. You'll spot the similarities. But, only if you stop putting your head into sandy holes while singing Father Abraham.

edited 25th Jul '17 5:12:56 AM by Euodiachloris

Part of the problem with Godwin's Law is that the Geneva Conventions that Israel is operating in violation of were specifically drawn up as a response to Nazi Germany's misdeeds during World War II. It's hard to discuss civilian transfers into occupied territory without bringing up Generalplan Ost and its consequences, for example.

Except that isn't the only example. There are lots of other examples throughout history quite a ways back.

The US settlement of the west for example.

Yes, colonisation didn't start with World War II, but it was very specifically Generalplan Ost (and its catastrophic reversal) that Article 49 was created in response to - after all, it was happening at that very moment. It's also particularly relevant to I/P due to being an ethnic cleansing of land that both sides had some measure of historical claim to and shared culture within, which resulted in fairly complex interactions between the invaders and natives.

@desdendelle: are you aware that the United Nations has accused Israel of establishing an apartheid regime? Or that a former Mossad chief said that Netanyahu's policies would lead to apartheid?

It's not something people are just pulling out of their ass, it's a legitimate comparison literally made by people whose job it is to make comparisons like that.

There's some evidence to support that the UN General assembly is biased against ISRAEL, though, and out of sheer antisemitism, at that.

Could you provide a link to that evidence? I'd like to evaluate it for myself.

The UN also called Zionism racism and thinks Israel is the worst human rights offender in the world, so they have zero credibility when it comes to the I/P Conflict. And Meir Dagan ain't more special than any other security bigwig; he said so, so what? Without access to his info it's hard to tell whether there's any factual basis for his worry.^pedantry  also note that "will lead to apartheid" means there's no apartheid now.

Again, links please. I'm not going to accept that just because you say so; I'd like to evaluate the evidence for myself.

Also, assuming there IS no apartheid now (which is not something I'm convinced of), wouldn't it be better to stop the policies taking Israel in that direction before it gets to that point? "Not a problem yet" is not an excuse to keep moving in the direction that you know will eventually make it a problem. Cf. oil companies - "we have enough for now, who cares if we run out later."

UN calls Zionism racism; there are more anti-Israel UNHRC resolutions than against any other nation in the world, and Israel is the only nation "worthy" of a permanent item in the UNHRC's agenda.
And, well, changing Israel's policies isn't as simple as changing them (paradoxically enough), because a) a lot of people don't want them to change for a variety of reasons and b) were Israel to leave the WB we'd get exploding buses again and we'd rather not suffer through that again.

Okay, thank you for providing links.

Zionism isn't racism. It may have flaws, and it may enable racism (I've seen a lot of Jewish folks using absolutely abhorrent language towards Palestinians, specifically because they're Palestinian), but it is not itself racism (and I would say enabling racism is not actually a flaw with Zionism; people will take any excuse to be racist). However, it should be noted that that specific text was voted out of the draft and wasn't officially sanctioned by the UN, so it's disingenuous to just say "UN said Zionism was racist" and leave it at that.

The other link is more extensive, I'll need some time to look it over. Back in a bit.

zionism is a little loaded term in a way seen it carry a lot of political interpretations ok is own, a lot of people feel Israel want To become a judge into what is good or bad critism like other régimes like the castros or venezuelan one, mean while Many people just use zionism as Code word for jews.

That is why I dont use zionism

The accusations of UN bias are pretty fair, while I'd argue that Israel deserves many (perhaps even all) the condemnations it has gotten for human rights violations, the fact that everyone else is being allowed to get away with shit shows a clear bias.

I also agree that regardless of how apt the comparison with some aspects of Nazi policy are they shouldn't be made. It's simply to destructive to any kind of dialogue, and there are other very apt comparisons. Like Apartheid.

It doesn't help that during the time of Apartheid Israel was one of Apartheid South Africa's closest allies, with the two nations cooperating on the development of nuclear weapons. The comparison isn't being made with someone the Israeli government was an enemy of, it's being made with someone it was very close to. It's like comparing the current American neo-colonialism with the French empire, these guys went your enemies, you were their close friends.

Said better than i ever could, regarding bias. Israel deserves some if not all of what it's gotten, but focusing on them and ignoring countries like North Korea, Russia, and others is unacceptable.