OK. So I understand that you are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians.And so on. The list includes many achievements by Israeli companies, scientists and researchers. At the end of the piece, we learn that Israel is even making life better for the Palestinians -- which must surely come as news to those living behind the wall, forbidden to operate within the professional world.
That's fine with me, as long as you have truly weighed up all the facts.
So, you want to boycott Israel?
I'll be sorry to miss you, but if you are doing it - do it properly.
Let me help you.
Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops, lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva...
The words that made me wince were these: "So I understand that you are...in love with the Palestinians."
That very wording was used by the Nazis to denigrate anyone who showed any sympathy for the untermenschen. If you're so much in love with the Jews, maybe you should share their fate...
Remember?
Remember how southerners used to deride civil rights activists as "nigger lovers"? Remember ugly taunts like "If you love the negroes so much, would you let your daughter marry one?"
Racists -- even when trying to act on their best behavior -- always speak in the same fashion.
The fact is, the accomplishments of Israeli scientists, research firms and scholars are as nothing compared to the accomplishments of Nazi scientists, research firms, and scholars. And yet, despite Germany's cultural accomplishments and corporate successes, a boycott of Hitler's evil regime was perfectly justified. So were the bombs dropped on that nation throughout the war.
The analogy between Hitler's Germany and modern Israel is not overdrawn; it is exact. Anyone with any sense knows that the rightist faction in Israel wants nothing less than physical removal and annihilation of the rightful inhabitants of that land. Because Israel has copied the crimes of Nazis -- has become the stereotypical abused child who evolves into an abuser -- that nation will one day suffer the same fate as the Third Reich. Such are the wages of genocide.I do not support a boycott. I support eradication of the Jewish state -- of the very concept of a state devoted to the supremacy of one race or religion. For the same reason, I also support the eradication of Saudi Arabia. (I would except Vatican City only because it is one-third the size of the Los Angeles Zoo; its status as an independent state is really an agreed-upon fiction.)
I do not speak of physical annihilation of the people; I speak of annihilating a government and an ideology. Just as the Germans had, through their crimes, lost the right to self-determination (in my view, they should not have regained sovereignty until the passing of every single German alive during the Nazi era), so too have the Israelis. The civilized world must impose a solution upon them -- by force if necessary, though non-violent means are, of course, preferable.
A pluralist, open, non-racist society -- a single-state solution -- is the only option for that patch of real estate. If any Jews in Israel cannot stomach such an outcome, then I say let the bigots find a new home in the sea.
11 comments:
sofla said...
Whoa, Nellie!
You are a brave man, Joe! Have you made alternate arrangements for when you suffer the DNS attacks?
I'll disagree only to this extent. It is very normal for countries to have homogeneous populations. Go to Japan or Korea or China, and you will find a vast preponderance of the given nationality, with very little if any minority population. Naturally, given a largely same population, any outsiders there are will feel somewhat alienated, and pressured to conform to the majority of the country's habits and customs.
I don't think that is necessarily bad, let alone so bad that I would support the dissolution of each and every country where that occurs.
Where the majority is enshrined in law as a superior group, and minorities given inferior legal status, of course, that kind of arrangement ought to be ended or reformed.
But generally, there are not that many 'melting pot' countries at all, nor should that be a goal to force that situation. Israel is not that case, because they have willfully on their own taken control of an incipient MAJORITY population, and given them apartheid like legal status.
And, as xymphora has commented, the South Africans didn't ruthlessly suppress, bomb or torture their majority black population, making the comparison of a de facto apartheid situation in Israel actually an unfair comparison to the old apartheid South Africa!
the Cannon sez..
(I would except Vatican City only because it is one-third the size of the Los Angeles Zoo; its status as an independent state is really an agreed-upon fiction.)
except for the Vatican being a zoo sized safe house for criminals like Marcinkus to escape Italian prosecution.right?
Let's not forget their crafty conterfeit accomplishments giving false ID's to Bormann and many (many) other nazi war criminals, what a tidy tiny fictional state it is..coo coo head
"A pluralist, open, non-racist society -- a single-state solution -- is the only option for that patch of real estate."
You obviously aren't very well-read on history or political science, but not a big deal, everyone espousing the binational state is.
There are many reason why it's illogical and wrong (morally).
To start with, there is one Jewish majority state in the world - there is already a Palestinian majority state (Jordan) and many Arab majority states (and the creation of Palestine as a state would create another, the two-state solution is the only correct solution).
Also, the Palestinians wouldn't want to share a non-racist secular state (which Israel already is) with the Jews. The Palestinian leadership has already been given many chances to have their own state, and has walked away every time (and Arafat would walk away and initiate terror attacks). Somewhere between 70 and 87 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel, and this isn't because of any type of oppression - it is because of the systemic racism of the Palestinian society and education system.
To believe that the Palestinians would live in a non-Islamic states with a sizable Jewish minority is just a foolish fantasy - what with the joy over the death of Jews and they repeated attempt of the Arab world to exterminate Israel.
"And, as xymphora has commented, the South Africans didn't ruthlessly suppress, bomb or torture their majority black population, making the comparison of a de facto apartheid situation in Israel actually an unfair comparison to the old apartheid South Africa! "
And the Israelis don't do that. In fact, the only group that the Israelis don't give the same rights is reform or secular Jews - arabs have the same rights as Orthodox Jews.
Where the majority is enshrined in law as a superior group, and minorities given inferior legal status, of course, that kind of arrangement ought to be ended or reformed."
There are no such laws in the Israeli system.
"Israel is not that case, because they have willfully on their own taken control of an incipient MAJORITY population, and given them apartheid like legal status."
No, they were attacked and gained territory in a defensive war. Really, do any of you know anything about the history of the Middle East?
"If any Jews in Israel cannot stomach such an outcome, then I say let the bigots find a new home in the sea."
Hmm where I have I heard someone saw something about pushing the Jews into the sea? It is because of the Palestinian Authority and the systemic racism in their society that there could never be a non-racist, secular state. You're either ignorant or an idiot to think otherwise.
It's funny that you call others racist. Perhaps you should look in the mirror?
shawn, everything you say is PURE HORSESHIT. Stop reading biased accounts and pick up some accurate history. Start with the works of Victor Ostrovsky, where you will learn of human experimentation by Israelis on Palestinians, plus many other atrocities. Then go on to The Samson Option, Dangerous Liaison, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall, the works of Norman Finkelstein...well, there are plenty of other books.
The point is, the truth has been coming out and we are no longer buying your fictions.
Hell, read your own "holy scriptures" without any romanticized notions. You'll see that no Jew ever had a right to set foot in that territory -- not Solomon, not Jesus, none of 'em. The land was won through unforgivable genocide -- and no, genocide was NOT common in ancient times.
Jews simply have no right to be there!
Of course, by the same argument, I have no right to be sitting in Chumash territory.
WOW Joe! You are that brave, Haa?
I never knew. Forgive me for ever getting mad at you for anything.
Anyone who dares says what you said....well....my hat off to you...my man!
Shawn writes:
"In fact, the only group that the Israelis don't give the same rights is reform or secular Jews - arabs have the same rights as Orthodox Jews."
This is absolutely and provably untrue.
Arabs living in Israel (i.e., they or their families were there before the state of Israel was established) are in every sense second-class citizens. They do NOT have the same rights as Israelis. I am NOT talking about discrimination (which also exists). I am talking about the rights of Israeli Arabs, under the law.
Of course, virtually everything else you adduce to exculpate Israel is untrue, but this one is is not subject to debate. All you have to do is consult the Israeli legislature.
I can tell you -- as Jew myself -- that Israel has forfeited whatever tenuous claim it had to this land. There is no moral claim, only the strength of its army, and U.S. support. In that respect, Israel is not unlike many states, including some which are far worse than Israel. However, let's put an end to the moral posturing. The injuries the Jews suffered throughout history do not provide a whit of cover, for what Israel is doing now. And when you have an American administration which proclaims Ariel Sharon a "man of peace" and allows a criminal assault against a defenseless Lebanon, purportedly because an Israeli soldier was kidnapped (how many Palestinian civilians, does Israel kidnap and imprison without trial, every day of the week?) the moral argument is an outrageous insult to general intelligence.
Yeah, but the thought that haunts is the parallel to our own situation here in the U.S. Many of us hail from families which came here as a result of persecution. Or our forebears knew persecution after they came to these shores. And we are all now living on stolen territory, having persecuted and slaughtered the original inhabitants.
Yet where are we going to go?
But, in fact, no one is proposing to throw Israeli Jews into the sea. The state of Israel isn't going anywhere, and everyone knows it, whatever the rights and wrongs of its original founding.
The question is Israeli behavior, and the moral claims adduced for the existence of the Israeli state.
Unfortunately, the range of permitted debate in this country is so narrow -- far more so, than in Israel, as anyone who reads Hebrew can tell you (and I would guess this doesn't include Shawn) -- that Israeli outrages are allowed to continue. One word from the U.S. would stop it.
Lunatic dreams, be they Nazi Aryan, Christian, Muslim or Zionist always end badly. Time to stop supporting lunatics.
sofla said...
Shawn may be right, that Arab Israelis have strong and comparable rights to Jewish Israelis. I did not mean to refer to Arab Israelis in my comments, just as former president Carter has taken pains to make clear in his book about Israeli apartheid practices in Palestine. In interviews I've seen, he points out that the country Israel doesn't appear in his title, and that he expressly does not claim apartheid type rules for Arabs with Israeli citizenship living in Israel proper.
No, the point is about the several millions of Arab Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, or Judea and Samaria, if you prefer. They are not granted the rights of Israeli citizens, nor even just the rights that pertain to occupied peoples under the Geneva accords.
They are treated like animals, with thousands of admittedly non-combatant civilians killed as 'collateral damage,' with a variety of punishment methods that were among the favorites of the Nazis (group punishments), amounting to war crimes or crimes against humanity and human rights. This is the opinion of the EEU and the world in general, the reason that Israel stands in violation of some 60+ binding UN Security Council resolutions, and why many American and Israeli Jews are extremely critical of her policies.
The '67 7-days war, in which Israel seized the Arab sector of Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula, was not a war of defense, nor was Israel attacked first (nor do they even claim that is the case now, although that was their first false position).
This has been made clear in Israel, with the published memoirs of the civilian and military leaders of those days. Mosche Dayan, Menachim Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, all wrote of the nature of their starting this war for territorial aggrandizement, and that it wouldn't have occured except that they started it. *(The book Dangerous Liaison by the Cockburns has details on those quotes.)
When the Israelis do it, they call it a bid for an Eretz Israel, a greater Israel (in territorial terms). When the Nazi regime did it, they called it lebensraum (living room). Same idea, different justifications, same moral opprobrium attached. Aggressive war is the quintessential war crime, according to the Nuremburg standards. Not only does it merit the execution of any who ordered it, but certainly the spoils of such an illegal war must be disgorged, as the UN ordered Saddam to yield back Kuwait, and went to war against him when he refused.
In fact, Israel has been ordered to remove itself from all its captured territory, to move back to the pre-'67 war boundaries, by UN R. 242, 248, and about 60 other resolutions. It is also illegal to appropriate lands in an occupied territory, and Israel to the contrary has put 500,000 settlers peppered throughout the West Bank.
Post a Comment