I can’t tell you how frustrated I am from this from all directions. The inability to identify different things that are related but not one and the same. Yes, there are valid criticisms of the Israeli government, as with any government, but only some of these criticisms are actually anti-semitic. Not all are, and not all aren’t.
A podcast I listened to explained pretty well how to tell the difference between a valid criticism of Israel and an anti-semitic one:
If someone criticizes a particular action or policy of Israel on the same basis and reasoning that they would criticize any other country in Israel’s shoes, that’s normal. But if someone criticizes Israel’s very existence, or holds Israel to an unattainable higher standard than any other country in history, that’s anti-semitic.
Israel is a nation state for the Jewish nation, and to say that Israel does not have a right to exist is the same as saying that the Jewish nation is not allowed their own nation state. In other words, all nations can have nation states - except Jews. This is transparently anti-semitic. It’s also the exact meaning behind “from the river to the sea” - that leaves no room for the Jewish nation state.
The same reasoning applies when holding Israel to a higher standard: all states are allowed to defend themselves against existential threats to them, and all states are allowed to hold national interests - except Israel the Jewish state. That one is not allowed to have national interests, and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields. Again, this singles out the nation state for the Jewish people as the only one with less rights, and so is anti-semitic.
But that’s not all criticisms of Israel - far from it! And what frustrates me even more than anti-semitic protests of “from the river to the sea” over the world, is when legitimate criticisms of Israel are disregarded over here by the government and some of the media, grouped together with the less legitimate statements and called out as anti-semitic. IMHO that’s a fool-proof recipe to isolate us from the rest of the western world even more than we already are!
Heck, we know our government deserves criticism. The first half of 2023 had massive protests here aimed squarely at the government.
P.S. for any Hebrew speakers out there, the podcast is this fantastic one and I definitely didn’t do it justice: https://www.bac.org.il/podcasts/?seriesID=9 and I think it was episode 80.
Should one be allowed to have a national state if that national state is an ethnostate, practices apartheid, and commits genocide? I’m seriously asking because that is a standard I would hold any country to. And I don’t see how it means that “Jewish people can’t have a homeland”, just that it’s unacceptable to build a homeland on the mass graves of the natives.
and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.
Ridiculous. How does that single out Israel? No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a “terrorist”. How are Israel held to a different standard?
No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a “terrorist”.
I agree with your argument in general, but hasn’t the US shot drone missiles (accidentally, for certain values of that word) at plenty of civilians as part of its was on terror?
Eh, it isn’t on the same level as erasing an entire bloodline on a genocidal crusade, but yes. Does that make it okay? Did the US not get shit for that and continue to get shit for that? During this whole war on Gaza, I’ve seen the history of America being used as a tell-tale example of how not to do this or any war ever in the future… And it doesn’t make Israel look any more “stellar”, especially not when it hides behind others’ atrocities to dilute its own in the eyes of the world. No different than Putin who makes similar remarks on a regular basis.
Personally I’d put it this way: Every ethnicity is entitled to a place to rightfully call home, a place to feel secure and welcome in. Our Frisian minority here never tried for independence, it just didn’t come up. It’s their rightful home, living there since time immemorial just like the majority, even as a mere district in a state in a federal state in a continental union. Quite literally zero ethnic tensions over the millennia: Sibling tribes, one happens to be numerically dominant. This place to feel secure and welcome in thing though is pretty much incompatible with what Israel is doing right now as with all the shit Kahanites and their stooges and stirrup holders are up to that’s never going to happen, they’ll never feel safe while continuing to antagonise. Fascists and their fucking need for eternal wars. I can still vividly recall when I gave up on Israel (part of my family moved there after the war, solid Labour Zionists): I was sitting on the floor, playing with Lego, listening to the radio, news came on, reported that the fucker killed Rabin.
It’s also the – not really critique, more like a question, that I have towards Germany’s stance on the whole thing: To support Jews having that homeland, sure, of course, but how far do we take this. Can we really call Israel a home for Jews if it’s just some random fascists no Jew elsewhere actually wants to have anything to do with, and do we really have to let it come to that before getting out the chairs for an intervention circle. Kinda waiting for New York Jews to rename a quarter there to Israel to put an end to this fiasco.
Israel has no right to exist where it does right now. No group of people has a right to force others out of their homes to establish a nation for themselves. By your logic if all peoples have a right to establish a nation wherever they see fit then the Roma people can justifiably show up in tel aviv tomorrow and start conquering the place since they have no nation of their own
When I hear Israel has a right to exist because Jewish people need a home, I immediately wonder whether the person saying so would agree that Nazi Germany had a right to exist because German people needed a home. Nazi Germany is gone now and ethnic Germans seem better off for it.
Are the fascists running Israel an ethnic group? No, they’re a bunch of war criminals who should be hanged for their actions so Israel can have some hope of transforming into a decent country whose people acknowledge its crimes.
I’m not going to argue that some of them, Bibi in particular need to be jailed but comparing them to Nazis is blatantly bullshit and if you don’t understand that, please take a trip to aushwitz or the memorial in DC for an education.
I just admitted that israelis have blame… there is no parallel here. Let me know when they start trucking Palestinians in from Jordan and Samaria to get burned up by the thousands.
As savage as this is, from a demographic perspective you’re talking 2% of a population. A population that’s growing faster than any other on the planet. We’re not even talking about it being decimated. By contrast, the Holocaust wiped out 50% of the global Jewish population and it still hasn’t recovered. There’s no comparison and attempting to make one demeans the Holocaust, holomodor and the actual genocides going on right now.
and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields.
A base level of restraint would be fucking fantastic. Israel has killed more journalists in the past 10 weeks than ANYONE has EVER killed in a whole year. They dropped more bombs in a single week than America dropped in an entire year fighting ISIS, and in an area the size of a city. Calling it self defense is whitewashing intentional genocide.
The whole ‘why is Israel singled out?’ is just Israel’s main PR and main excuse for genocide. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they make such a claim. You can tell them all these facts and they’ll pull out of their ass some other country with a shitty history and say, “OMG why are you holding us Israelis at a different standard?” as if we all forgot how it was after 9/11, how people protested the Iraq War, how no one justifies what Americans did to the natives… These people live in their own reality where everything is skewed and malformed to allow them to live in peace knowing too well they are committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.
I really applaud all the Israelis who refuse to serve in the IDF and who see it for what it is.
I think you’re conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.
Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn’t and Christianity certainly shouldn’t either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.
Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that’s what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but “exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest. In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it’s normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn’t give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You’ll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their “war on terrorism”, and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There’s a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.
So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there’s a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the “Jewish nation” part.
That said, I’m just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don’t know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country.
WWII was triggered by Nazi Germany’s attempt to take over the world. Ending the Holocaust was just a fortunate side-effect of beating back the Germans and removing the Nazis from power. Nobody in power have a shit about Jews until people started seeing images from the death camps after they were liberated.
Israeli here…
I can’t tell you how frustrated I am from this from all directions. The inability to identify different things that are related but not one and the same. Yes, there are valid criticisms of the Israeli government, as with any government, but only some of these criticisms are actually anti-semitic. Not all are, and not all aren’t.
A podcast I listened to explained pretty well how to tell the difference between a valid criticism of Israel and an anti-semitic one:
If someone criticizes a particular action or policy of Israel on the same basis and reasoning that they would criticize any other country in Israel’s shoes, that’s normal. But if someone criticizes Israel’s very existence, or holds Israel to an unattainable higher standard than any other country in history, that’s anti-semitic.
Israel is a nation state for the Jewish nation, and to say that Israel does not have a right to exist is the same as saying that the Jewish nation is not allowed their own nation state. In other words, all nations can have nation states - except Jews. This is transparently anti-semitic. It’s also the exact meaning behind “from the river to the sea” - that leaves no room for the Jewish nation state.
The same reasoning applies when holding Israel to a higher standard: all states are allowed to defend themselves against existential threats to them, and all states are allowed to hold national interests - except Israel the Jewish state. That one is not allowed to have national interests, and it must restrain itself impeccably when fighting against terrorists with human shields. Again, this singles out the nation state for the Jewish people as the only one with less rights, and so is anti-semitic.
But that’s not all criticisms of Israel - far from it! And what frustrates me even more than anti-semitic protests of “from the river to the sea” over the world, is when legitimate criticisms of Israel are disregarded over here by the government and some of the media, grouped together with the less legitimate statements and called out as anti-semitic. IMHO that’s a fool-proof recipe to isolate us from the rest of the western world even more than we already are!
Heck, we know our government deserves criticism. The first half of 2023 had massive protests here aimed squarely at the government.
P.S. for any Hebrew speakers out there, the podcast is this fantastic one and I definitely didn’t do it justice: https://www.bac.org.il/podcasts/?seriesID=9 and I think it was episode 80.
Should one be allowed to have a national state if that national state is an ethnostate, practices apartheid, and commits genocide? I’m seriously asking because that is a standard I would hold any country to. And I don’t see how it means that “Jewish people can’t have a homeland”, just that it’s unacceptable to build a homeland on the mass graves of the natives.
Ridiculous. How does that single out Israel? No other nation shoots through 30 members of a single family to kill a “terrorist”. How are Israel held to a different standard?
Sounds to me like a genocidal excuse fantasy.
I agree with your argument in general, but hasn’t the US shot drone missiles (accidentally, for certain values of that word) at plenty of civilians as part of its was on terror?
Eh, it isn’t on the same level as erasing an entire bloodline on a genocidal crusade, but yes. Does that make it okay? Did the US not get shit for that and continue to get shit for that? During this whole war on Gaza, I’ve seen the history of America being used as a tell-tale example of how not to do this or any war ever in the future… And it doesn’t make Israel look any more “stellar”, especially not when it hides behind others’ atrocities to dilute its own in the eyes of the world. No different than Putin who makes similar remarks on a regular basis.
Personally I’d put it this way: Every ethnicity is entitled to a place to rightfully call home, a place to feel secure and welcome in. Our Frisian minority here never tried for independence, it just didn’t come up. It’s their rightful home, living there since time immemorial just like the majority, even as a mere district in a state in a federal state in a continental union. Quite literally zero ethnic tensions over the millennia: Sibling tribes, one happens to be numerically dominant. This place to feel secure and welcome in thing though is pretty much incompatible with what Israel is doing right now as with all the shit Kahanites and their stooges and stirrup holders are up to that’s never going to happen, they’ll never feel safe while continuing to antagonise. Fascists and their fucking need for eternal wars. I can still vividly recall when I gave up on Israel (part of my family moved there after the war, solid Labour Zionists): I was sitting on the floor, playing with Lego, listening to the radio, news came on, reported that the fucker killed Rabin.
It’s also the – not really critique, more like a question, that I have towards Germany’s stance on the whole thing: To support Jews having that homeland, sure, of course, but how far do we take this. Can we really call Israel a home for Jews if it’s just some random fascists no Jew elsewhere actually wants to have anything to do with, and do we really have to let it come to that before getting out the chairs for an intervention circle. Kinda waiting for New York Jews to rename a quarter there to Israel to put an end to this fiasco.
Please explain to me what “existential threat” is being posed to you by the children being murdered in Palestine?
Israel has no right to exist where it does right now. No group of people has a right to force others out of their homes to establish a nation for themselves. By your logic if all peoples have a right to establish a nation wherever they see fit then the Roma people can justifiably show up in tel aviv tomorrow and start conquering the place since they have no nation of their own
Please Roma, I would donate money for this to happen, unfortunately that would just end with genocide too though.
Really upsetting that people think it’s acceptable to advocate for an ethnostate in a queer space.
When I hear Israel has a right to exist because Jewish people need a home, I immediately wonder whether the person saying so would agree that Nazi Germany had a right to exist because German people needed a home. Nazi Germany is gone now and ethnic Germans seem better off for it.
Are Nazi Germans an ethnic group like Jews are?
Are the fascists running Israel an ethnic group? No, they’re a bunch of war criminals who should be hanged for their actions so Israel can have some hope of transforming into a decent country whose people acknowledge its crimes.
I’m not going to argue that some of them, Bibi in particular need to be jailed but comparing them to Nazis is blatantly bullshit and if you don’t understand that, please take a trip to aushwitz or the memorial in DC for an education.
I’m educated, buddy. Just because you’re too emotionally invested in Israel being blameless to see the parallel doesn’t make it bullshit.
I just admitted that israelis have blame… there is no parallel here. Let me know when they start trucking Palestinians in from Jordan and Samaria to get burned up by the thousands.
As savage as this is, from a demographic perspective you’re talking 2% of a population. A population that’s growing faster than any other on the planet. We’re not even talking about it being decimated. By contrast, the Holocaust wiped out 50% of the global Jewish population and it still hasn’t recovered. There’s no comparison and attempting to make one demeans the Holocaust, holomodor and the actual genocides going on right now.
A base level of restraint would be fucking fantastic. Israel has killed more journalists in the past 10 weeks than ANYONE has EVER killed in a whole year. They dropped more bombs in a single week than America dropped in an entire year fighting ISIS, and in an area the size of a city. Calling it self defense is whitewashing intentional genocide.
The whole ‘why is Israel singled out?’ is just Israel’s main PR and main excuse for genocide. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they make such a claim. You can tell them all these facts and they’ll pull out of their ass some other country with a shitty history and say, “OMG why are you holding us Israelis at a different standard?” as if we all forgot how it was after 9/11, how people protested the Iraq War, how no one justifies what Americans did to the natives… These people live in their own reality where everything is skewed and malformed to allow them to live in peace knowing too well they are committing ethnic cleansing and genocide.
I really applaud all the Israelis who refuse to serve in the IDF and who see it for what it is.
I think you’re conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.
Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn’t and Christianity certainly shouldn’t either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.
Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that’s what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but “exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest. In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it’s normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn’t give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You’ll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their “war on terrorism”, and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There’s a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.
So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there’s a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the “Jewish nation” part.
That said, I’m just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don’t know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
WWII was triggered by Nazi Germany’s attempt to take over the world. Ending the Holocaust was just a fortunate side-effect of beating back the Germans and removing the Nazis from power. Nobody in power have a shit about Jews until people started seeing images from the death camps after they were liberated.