Is it time for a real war? :(

[Felch]

Dude, Israel is not a democracy. It's an ethnocracy at best. Arab Israelis have to acknowledge they live in a 'Jewish' nation. There supposedly isn't something called an 'Israeli' nation, because that would mean Arab Israelis would be on par with Jewish Israelis. In reality Arabs are 2nd rate citizens, and then I'm not even talking about the occupied territories.

What's sad is that the Israeli Arabs have more political liberty than most Arabs under Arab rule.

[Asher]

Asher, let's make a running tally of your astounding displays of ignorance.

1. You equated "islamic" with "islamist" (my personal favorite)

Subtly is lost on you. He was using "Islamists" to talk about an entire country's populace. He's either stating the entire country is full of Islamists, or he was misusing the term. In either way it doesn't affect my statement.

2. You think that the Jews showed up in Israel for the first time in '48

I said no such thing. I said Israel was created in '48.

3. You compare Israel to Iran because it doesn't have gay marriage

I said no such thing. I was making the point that Zevico was wrong to state that Israel provides equal rights to everyone regardless of sexual orientation. This is patently false.

4. You think the West has indoctrinated the idea of Arabs as "race enemies"

I said no such thing. The "West", by and large, does not think of Arabs as "race enemies". Jews? Yes, they tend to. As do most Americans. But "The West"? No.

5. You pretend not to understand that the President of the United States is not actually directly elected

I said no such thing. I pointed out that Bush did not have the most votes when he won, which is a fact.

This is a very impressive list

It certainly does demonstrate how overrated TJ High is, doesn't it?

You either have comparable reading comprehension skills to Ben Kenobi or you are completely incapable of addressing my points so you hope to avoid it with that ridiculous post.

[Asher]

As an aside, Zevico's definition of Islamism's beliefs is only true of the most extreme Islamists.

It's equivalent of me saying: Conservatives believe that:
- Gays must be murdered
- Women must be completely subordinate to men
- Black people are of a lesser race
- Bush was a good president
- Obama is a communist Muslim terrorist

Of course, these are all absurd things to say when describing the population of the USA.

[Asher]

Tell me, HC -- which country had sovereignty over the land that Israel now sits on prior to 1948? Or do you believe it was magically created for the sole purpose of the Jews and the Jews alone, as per scripture?

[Felch]

Zevico: http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/about/
Read it. Free yourself from the propaganda. Seriously.

Why would anybody convert to Judaism? Are foreskins that much of a burden?

[Cort Haus]

Unfortunately a lot of good people have too negative a perception of Israel - often leading to hyperbolic denunciations and accusations.

This is a letter from a Scottish professor responding to a motion for a campus boycott of Israel. The Edinburgh Student's Association made a motion to
boycott all things Israeli since they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime. Dr. Denis Maceoin (who is not Jewish) is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs. Here is his letter to those students.

Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, addresses The Committee of the Edinburgh University Student Association.

Received by e-mail from the author, Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly,
TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain's great Middle East experts in their day.

I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law.

Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa.
Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.
Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge
to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence. It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin

[Asher]

The article is more than a bit silly. No one will argue that Israel is worse than Palestine for gays.

What some people (me included) argue is Israel is guilty of violating the sovereignty of its neighbours repeatedly and consistently. It doesn't even mention why many people are "anti-Israel", and it doesn't have anything to do with the things he's mentioned. The whole article was a giant, ridiculous strawman from someone who is clearly a career academic. He even throws in the requisite "anti-Semitic" accusation at the end. Bravo.

I've no beef with Jews, Arabs, Hindus, Christians, whatever. They're all the same to me. To me both sides are very guilty, and to pretend that Israel is a saint surrounded by thugs is pretty sad.

[OzzyKP]

As an aside, Zevico's definition of Islamism's beliefs is only true of the most extreme Islamists.

It's equivalent of me saying: Conservatives believe that:
- Gays must be murdered
- Women must be completely subordinate to men
- Black people are of a lesser race
- Bush was a good president
- Obama is a communist Muslim terrorist

Of course, these are all absurd things to say when describing the population of the USA.

Or perhaps the equivalent of you saying some absurd things about the US that you DID say:

- the US is a theocracy
- Bush wasn't democratically elected
- There is moral equivalence between the US, Iran and other countries on gay rights
- The GOP/Tea Party is not much different than the most hardcore Islamist regimes

You are no less guilty of spreading propaganda.

[Cort Haus]

Asher, I don't think he's arguing that it's a 'saint surrounded by thugs'. He's arguing against a boycott of the whole country, and explaining how it isn't the apartheid/nazi state that some people like to portray it. Not that I'm suggesting that you are saying it is.

It is fair to say though, that if it was necessary to pick one country in the ME to be gay in, it would be Israel ... which I think is a perspective worth bearing in mind.

As citizens of NATO countries, our govts routinely violate other countries' sovereignty, and not even in anything that could remotely be interpreted as self-defence against neighbours. We don't have to agree with these policies, but we wouldn't want our countries to be made pariahs.

[Az]

I don't believe anyone claimed that. But thin demagoguery with regards to the regime in Israel, and view of it as a Jewish state through the glasses of "apartheid" and "Nazism" as some like to do, is far from just not "saying that Israel is not a saint", Neither is "both sides are very guilty", a meaningless cop-out for the discussion of conflicts.

"Violating sovereignty" is a discussion for foreign policy and law, and has little to nothing do with claims that the Jews as a nation were "invented", which are, to be honest, quite offensive, outside an Internet forum. By whom, and to which purpose, I must ask?

In this part of the world, you cannot view the world through post-national glasses as someone who lives in a country which picks and chooses it's immigrants itself, and certainly a vilification of an "Ethnocracy" sounds especially silly coming from a guy from a country which has no form of stable government for quite some time now because in the heart of the EU, two groups of people cannot decide in which language do the ask for additional butter to put on their croissant - Hey Traianvs, look how silly this can get?

[Jon Miller]

Is there any other hypothesis for this movement of irrational condemnation, hatred, and desire to hurt Israel than racism?

Why join with cruel thugs who beat children and rape women to jump on and attack the thug who is nice to his mother and children and women?

And it isn't at all apparent that it is possible to not be thuggish when surrounded by thugs.

JM

[Jon Miller]

As citizens of NATO countries, our govts routinely violate other countries' sovereignty, and not even in anything that could remotely be interpreted as self-defence against neighbours. We don't have to agree with these policies, but we wouldn't want our countries to be made pariahs.

A fair thing to keep in mind.

I don't like a lot of Israel's actions, but I must admit (to my shame) that objectively the US isn't any better. Nor are many other 'western' nations.

JM

[Az]

-They think that it is their duty to help their Islamic brethren, the Palestinians - an absurd claim, since they don't actually help them at all, neither by this action, not at all, in any case.
-They think that Israel bribed Mubarak to get lower prices for natural gas - a weird claim, since Israel pays more than any other client that Egypt has for LNG, although it is quite possible that Mubarak was channeling a cut of the payment to himself.
-They, ahem, "think", that it is always good to shout against a historical enemy, and it probably is to blame for at least SOME of their problems.

Why do people in the west, so easily identifying mindless jingoistic nationalism in their surroundings cannot cope with it existing also outside the west? is this some case of white guilt, or something?

[Al B. Sure!]

Giving the Jews East Prussia would have made so much more sense.

[kentonio]

I have a hard time believing anyone who bought Nazi propaganda (or pro-Israel, or pro-Arab propaganda) is intelligent. Intelligent people see through that ****.

Wernher von Braun was a Nazi. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see you're probably wrong here.