There's no evidence the British harboured particular sympathy to zionism. — Echarmion

Plenty of evidence they wanted to get rid of Jews, which is what Balfour intended.

It's always funny when people think to tell me about Dutch history as if I'm ignorant of the history of my own country. You're confusing states with nation states, which came a lot later than the Westphalian system.

Dutch tolerance is in fact a fairy tale that was romanticised thanks to the links to the pilgrim fathers and the dominance that the Netherlands got in the 17th century when the system of religious tolerance continued. But it was tolerant to the point that different people could live next to each other but it didn't accept exchange between the two to the point that they had their own church, schools, bakery, hairdresser etc. that was largely also a reflection of regional differences. Even in that period of "tolerance" (starting in 1543 with the 17 provinces) the Great Iconoclasm happened. It was pragmatism that brought them back together. Certainly, nothing as high minded as liberalism crossed these men's minds. In reality, this religious tolerance existed in other European countries as well at the time. Meanwhile all those Jews that were welcome were still pushed into ghettos and they had to bury their dead far away from the cities.

The pilgrim fathers moved to a country that was receptive of protestants (calvinisten) and the Dutch had just signed a treaty with the Spanish - it was close and relatively safe at a time that local rulers were quick to (pretend to) be calvinist or at least 'tolerant' to the point they kept their heads and power. The pilgrims still got into religious fights in Amsterdam after which they moved to Leiden, where they then were disgusted with the drinking and gambling going on.

Even so, all this, including the first colonies, predates liberalism as a political movement and any links to Dutch thinkers is tenuous at best.

And in a single breath you are blaming Palestinians. Interesting reflex. Nothing about Israeli behaviour that could change to bring safety and happiness closer? Nothing coming to mind? Are you that unimaginative or that dishonest with yourself?

As I said, tiptoeing around it. No colleague frames this in terms of religion but safety and happiness where it concerns their own children.

I'm not sure what you're question is. If Gaza citizens have to suffer for the crimes of Hamas then its corollary would be true as well: Israelis should suffer to.

Since I think it's a dumb argument to make I believe my position is that doesn't work.

I just wanted to highlight this as an example of how a narrative is being build around evil pro-Palestinian protesters that this poor woman apparently has fallen for but it's the same narrative that gets Israeli politicians to wear the star of David at the UN. It's fabricated and often a concerted approach. I've noticed Jewish colleagues tiptoeing around answering a simple question: "in an ideal world what do you wish the lives of Palestinian children looks like?" after we went in depth into what they would like for their own children. You hear the cognitive dissonance warring with loyalty.

Did they think they could oppress people for decades and not get attacked? — RogueAI

I fixed it for you.

Maybe stop it with the double standards. If Gaza civilians have to accept their fate because of the crimes of Hamas then certainly Israelis should suffer a hundredfold. It's a fucking dumb argument.

As I said hubris. I can't even be bothered to deconstruct all the implicit assumptions. Nation states? A dumb idea. Liberal democracy? Another dumb idea. Your lack of imagination and that of Fukuyama that this is some kind of end point is simply the sad state of political philosopy of the current era. I find Rawls conception of a just society much more compelling and that certainly doesn't result in a "liberal democracy" if fully embraced. And the optimum period of western European countries, which you presumably will claim are "Western" and "civilised" marked them as social democracies, which to a large extent they still are despite the attempts by liberals to dismantle it with deteroriating levels of well-being as a result, levels of exploitation in our supply chains that were unprecedented and the destruction of our environment to boot. And see how hard people in power - mostly as a result of accumulated wealth - struggle against the changes necessary to have a fairer, healthier more beautiful world.

No, let us hope liberal democracy is not and will not be the end of history or we're fucked.

The categorisation of the world in distinct "civilisations" and then also to pretend you can actually speak on behalf of it, is just so utterly devoid of any critical self-reflection that it's meaningless to engage with it.

I think the most likely outcome is permanent occupation by Israel of all or a substantial part of Gaza.

Aha, you mean a bigger massacre.

The only possibility is that Gaza gets to be a massacre, and then to improve their image Israel does something. — ssu

So you're saying it isn't already? 10,000 in the meantime right?

From your mouth to God's ears. Leave it to the Dems to fuck up a shoe in though...

If for Germans it's their Nazi past, for the US it's the racism of slavery and segregation. — ssu

Let's not pin that on the US alone. Almost all of Europe was in on it. We just like to wash our hands from it because on paper everybody is now equal.

BTW, I find this whole thread distasteful hubris in its pretension there are monolithic cultures. It's just a repeat of everything Huntington got wrong (and thus philosophically boring as well).

Apparently there's nothing to get your base as excited as hatred for the other side. That's how Trump won the first time and now with bland 80-year Mr. Potato-face representing the Democrats there's not enough to hate for the Republicans to get sufficiently riled up.

But certainly politics couldn't be that dumb right? Right? :scream:

Yeah, that's a totally historically accurate description of what happened in south africa. :roll:

Cool, have fun ruling over your skulls and heads on pikes. Then YOU can be the Lord of the Flies. — schopenhauer1

It's called boycotts, sanctions and divestments. It's not the first time it brought down an apartheid regime. But sure, you can go on pretending it's all too complicated and therefore argue in favour of the status quo and do fuck all when solutions are obvious.

This is just needlessly stoking flames to live on forever. — schopenhauer1

That's bullshit. What stokes the flames is that there are no consequences for these thieves so they continue to do it.

Right of return is the idea that Palestinians who previously lived on specific tracts of land that are now lived in by Israeli Jews have the right to those specific properties back (or their descendents have that right). It's not just about the general ability for them to freely move around the area.

Either Jews have to be moved out or Palestinians have to accept reparations, someone has to give something up either way. — flannel jesus

Interesting detail to be aware of is that those Arabs were mostly expelled and the remainder fled. And since we usually don't reward thieves, the Israelis will have to move out AND pay reparations. Since Israelis have such extensive experience in colonising areas, they should easily be able to move to another place within Israel.

Ok so that's unrealistic. — schopenhauer1

It's only unrealistic for as long the West thinks an inherently racist basis for a nation is worth supporting.

Costa Rica hasn't had an army since 1949

And it virtually overnight returned Afghanistan to the Middle Ages under the control of extremest religious zealots. — jgill

Errr... Which president invaded Afghanistan and which president handed it back to the Taliban?

Any outcome in the US is a bad outcome. Some are just worse than others.

So was this Israeli cabinet minister sacked just for what he said or rather for his extremist, Freudian slip – saying the quiet part out loud – nuking Gaza? — 180 Proof

That endlosung has been openly talked about on social media in Israel for decades. You know the type of hate speech that lands you in jail in any other "democracy". This poor man only lost his job. Oh... Wait... No, just suspended.

Read again instead of misquoting the definition and asking dumb questions as a result.

Why don't you look up the definition of genocide as agreed in the general assembly and get back to me so you can all eat crow?

Oh you know what, I'll save you the trouble:

On 11 December 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations resolved that genocide was a crime under international law. This was approved and ratified as a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948. The Convention defines genocide as:

‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• killing members of the group
• causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

I emphasised the part that applies in this situation. So no, it's definitely not an exaggeration. It's like suggesting what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs isn't genocide because they aren't killed. Just their way of life and identify.

And what did that get them? Slower genocide I suppose.

Welcome and interesting first post. I'm aware of the passages in the Bible but wasn't aware of the likely/possible relation to the political struggles in the area and the Romans you described.

When did some groups start disliking or hating Jewish people? Is there anything particular about their lifestyles that is unappealing? And why do most religions not have a word for anti(that religion)? There aren't actually that many Jewish people in the world on a whole. I don't know what threat some people see. — TiredThinker

Dumb religions. In this case Christianity because a Jew betrayed Jesus. So Christians thought all Jews were evil sons of bitches and were excluded from everything and pushed into ghettos, except the one thing Christians weren't allowed to: lend money!

So Jews got in the lending game and since they were the only ones they cornered the market and did rather well. The rulers of the country saw they were getting rich and started to tax them. So the Jews raised their rates, and the rulers raised their taxes. That went on until the borrowers started to default and the "evil greedy Jew" charicature was born because understandably they'd rather squeeze a borrower than lose their heads for not paying taxes. During these centuries every country thought they had a Jew problem so they were kicked around all the time.

The Balfour declaration was the UK's solution to their Jew problem. Hitler tried to kill them all. Eastern Europe had their pogroms in more or less the same time period.

That's in a nutshell the historic perspective. Of course, the insistence of Israel as the nation state for Jews and how Israel treats Palestinians is definitely giving rise to a new wave of anti-semitism.

Whatever you say sweety.

I'm unfortunately not familiar enough with Jim Crow details to tell the difference so will have to trust your judgment in that. It could be that the reason Amnesty and B'tselem refer to it as Apartheid is because the international community took action against Apartheid and that is what they believe is needed now.

I'm sure the fantasy that a tribal society invented the nation-state well before it ever existed makes you feel smart because it gives you an excuse to disagree with me.

What makes Israeli policy in Israel's borders similar to Apartheid? I always thought the comparison was apt, but for the Occupied Territories.

Israeli policy in Gaza is hard to compare even with Nazi policy towards the French, let alone the policies they are best known for. There is a difference between callous ROE and lack of concern for collateral damage and attempts to exterminate the population. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good question. I was drafting an extensive list but then realised B'Tselem wrote about it. Please check this out: https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid It writes about both the Occupied Territories and Israel proper but if you read carefully you can find the dinstinguishing features.

Here's an overview of laws passed in Israel that discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish: https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index

The Nation State basic law, enacted in 2018, enshrines the Jewish people’s right to self-determination to the exclusion of all others. It establishes that distinguishing Jews in Israel (and throughout the world) from non-Jews is fundamental and legitimate. Based on this distinction, the law permits institutionalized discrimination in favor of Jews in settlement, housing, land development, citizenship, language and culture. It is true that the Israeli regime largely followed these principles before. Yet Jewish supremacy has now been enshrined in basic law, making it a binding constitutional principle – unlike ordinary law or practices by authorities, which can be challenged. This signals to all state institutions that they not only can, but must, promote Jewish supremacy in the entire area under Israeli control. — B'Tselem

And I know there were also operational things like issuing Jewish driver licenses and passports on other days than those for non-Jewish, so with a simple glance your "loyalty" was established but I cannot find whether this is still the case or not.

So the concept of nations doesn't arise at least 2,000 years after Judaïsm was made up but they are a "nation-race". Of course, I totally get that people who read a right to land based on some scribbles from people that probably got high on shrooms and think it was the revelation of God then can read "nation" into their favourite piece of insane ramblings but nobody who doesn't have a horse in this race is fooled by that. Even a century after nations arose nobody spoke about Jews in that way. So yes, it's a totally politically expedient invention. Obviously. But carry one.

They're not starting a party you can vote for just sending out what amounts to a commercial. It doesn't even amount to a slap in the face of Trump but I'm sure it's trending well on tiktok or whatever.

He posted 22 minutes after your post that contains several links to videos, the main one being 26 minutes long. I'm pretty sure he didn't even watch it.

This is the problem with your counter argument. — Christoffer

It's not a counter argument. I'm highlighting the arrogant and elitist way you speak about people that don't view the world in terms that you do.

"these people" is an expression separating yourself from them which makes you think in terms of "pushing back" against them. Do you want to push back against your neighbours or possibly even family because you don't agree with them?

It's also telling that anybody that voted for Trump is automatically an anti-intellectual in your book.

So the point is that your way of speaking about others betray several assumptions that make it completely understandable why "these people" don't vote for the candidate you'd vote for.

I heard was basically an attempt to offer a justification for Israel's right to the land. — Hanover

That post was a historic account, where I agreed with the principle that Jews (not Israel) were offered land to establish themselves due to the centuries of persecution. I questioned the wisdom of the location that was chosen. I don't think Israel's sovereignty of land that has been recognised is in question and it's weird you read is as such when that account in fact it supports the view that the State in principle is well established also from an ethical point of view.

nor do they believe that their rights to the land are based upon or subject to international approval. — Hanover

A silly implied argument, nobody else thinks about it therefore it shouldn't be an issue. Seriously? The reason nobody thinks about it is because nobody is challenging those rights, whereas Israel's rights have been challenged from the beginning. And it's also not true that borders don't continue to be an issue, they're just negotiated by governments. For instance, the Germans and Dutch have several treaties on how to share gas deposits that extend under their respective borders. There will be joint development of platforms in the north sea as a result but the underlying reason is competing claims to those deposits.

Edit: out of time for now, I'll get back to more later.

simple questions: how old is Judaism? How old are nation states? How old are passports as a means to enforce national borders? It's a subversion for political reasons.

these people — Christoffer

Your fellow citizens and possible neighbours.

We are now at the point where Israel implements Nazi policies in the occupied territories, South African style Apartheid in its own territories and shows the same disdain for international law as Putin does. Quite a feat.