The US is not a democracy. In any case, if 'utopian idealist' is what one gets labeled for opposing Israeli apartheid, and the systematic, longue durée genocide of its colonial natives, then so be it.

Gee, it's almost like the idea of an 'Isreali form of democracy' is not a form of democracy at all. It's almost as if the state itself is racist to its core, built into it's foundations. — StreetlightX

As American as Jim Crow & apple pie. Post-1967 Zionism = Manifest Destiny redux. :up:

Supposedly if they did, apartheid would have been OK, yes? — StreetlightX

You sound so naive. It’s not. a question of being ok, but of how groups respond to the rhetoric of the opposing side. It’s thing to commit an action of terrorism in the name of liberation , it’s another to produce a never ending stream of rhetoric that isn’t simply about freedom from oppression but about the illegitimacy of another whole population, even in the context of a hypothetical shared democratic state.

I get the impression you’re not happy with any existing state. That’s a dangerous place to be in from an emotional
health point of view. If you’re not careful
you’ll turn into a Chomsky.

It’s another to produce a never ending stream of rhetoric that isn’t simply about freedom from oppression but about the illegitimacy of another whole population — Joshs

On this we agree, but not for reasons you think.

Help me win better. I don't follow - I don't understand - your comment. My bad. can you make it clearer? — tim wood

Oh I was just saying his point was so stupid you probably shouldn't even engage it.

I get the impression you’re not happy with any existing state. That’s a dangerous place to be in from an emotional health point of view. — Joshs

Your concern is touching. And would we all one day turn into Chomsky's the world would be an incomparably better place.

Chomsky's the world — StreetlightX

:100:

All nation states, to the extent they have power, use force. Israel is no exception. It's just that they got into colonialism a few years later than others.

And now everybody can see how brutal it is. What boggles the mind is the excuses they come up with! "Human shields", "They don't want peace", "Move to Jordan", etc. etc.

Really? Then there's nothing more to say except to agree to disagree. — 180 Proof

Between us? Sure. On the topic itself, all that says is that we don't fully encompass it. I hold it must be encompassable to be solved, and I hold that it must be solvable. And I'm biased to the long view. The neighbors had their knives out from the beginning and have never sheathed them.

Wrt police reform, to focus on the atrocity of the day of either Palestinian or Israeli as an indictment of Israel is akin to suggesting that the police, or the function of police, is bad because there are bad policeman.

Now the question: do Israelis commit atrocities? And first let us juxtapose it against a similar question: do the neighbors commit atrocities?

It seems to me the atrocities against Israel are acts of commission. And by contrast atrocities by Israelis incidental and both qualitatively and quantitatively lesser. A man intent on your destruction, who has repeatedly made clear by word and deed his intentions shoots at you. You have a gun and you shoot back - history has shown you that's all you can do. And you take shelter behind concrete, he behind his women and children. And in the fight some of them are killed. So who's to blame?

As American as Jim Crow & apple pie. Zionism = Manifest Destiny redux. ↪StreetlightX :up: — 180 Proof

It’s painful for me to read this. I’m not saying I completely disagree with it, but something is missing from the historical context. My father’s parents and grandparents lived in Palestine up until 1917 when the Ottoman occupation forced Jews to take up arms against the British, at which point they immigrated to the U.S., which prevented their extermination by the Nazis. They were among the waves of zionists coming from
Central Europe. As you may or may not know, there were a number of varieties of Zionism. Some believed in the Biblical injunction to return to Israel and rebuild the temple. The passover haggadah we read as children said and still says, as a prayer, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’.
Then there were the Zionists who were trying to escape the endless cycles of oppression and progrum , believing that only in a Jewish state could a Jew protect
themselves. Finally, there were socialist utopians with no religious affiliation who wanted to build a model community. I think there was a sincere if naive belief among those pioneers that a Jewish State could
also be a democracy that welcomed and was fair to all, Jew and non-Jew alike. I think this naivite led to incomprehension at the array of hostile Arab powers aimed at the destruction of this Jewish state. It also led to the delegitimization of the concerns of palestinians.

And now everybody can see how brutal it is. What boggles the mind is the excuses they come up with! "Human shields", "They don't want peace", "Move to Jordan", etc. etc. — Manuel

Of all of them, "move to Jordan" has got to be the most mind-numbingly idiotic.

And would we all one day turn into Chomsky's the world would be an incomparably better place. — StreetlightX

Chomsky’s the kind of guy who, if stuck on a desert island, would alienate the pragmatists, steal the conch
and form a cult of personality.

And straight up racist too.

It's instructive to see how "Israeli" and "Jewish" are used interchangeably here. But all Palestinians are just Arabs, who cares where they live? It's the same thing. All Arabs have states, what they want another one? :roll:

We haven't improved much on racism. Somewhat sure, but damn, we've got ways to go...

. I think this naivite led to incomprehension at the array of hostile Arab powers aimed at the destruction of this Jewish state. — Joshs

But they weren't hostile at first. Wasn't it Jewish intolerance that started it?

Ha, fair point.

But they weren't hostile at first. Wasn't it Jewish intolerance that started it? — frank

There were atrocities on both sides , which I think resulted from profound cultural differences and distrusts. Heres an interesting discussion on the reasons from the expulsion of palestinians after the war of independence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_exodus

I meant when the Jews first started coming.

But yes, The Israelis put a lot of effort into making life hard for the Palestinians who remained, apparently expecting them to give up and leave.

The Israelis put a lot of effort into making life hard for the Palestinians who remained, apparently expecting them to give up and leave. — frank

They wouldn’t have expected them to give up and leave if they knew how to get along with them. The Israelis didn’t expect or want the tremendous diversity of non-Jewish ethnicities already living in Israel to get up and leave. So why the Palestinians?

I think the cultural clash was a recipe for disaster. A poor , traditionalist culture invaded by modern educated Europeans invariably ends up with the former losing power and autonomy, and produces a vicious cycle
of resentment and paranoia , and self-justifying overreaction on the part of those with the power. Would it have made a difference if the Jewish arrivants had been more enlightened? Today’s polarized political climate in the West suggest not. Lesser educated rural
traditionalists distrust and feel opposed by the growing urban multiculturalists. Ironically, these Trumpists side with Israel over the palestinians. Why, because nationalistic Enlightenment liberalism is the traditionalist in political idea they are familiar with.

What's heartening about the recent reactions to present Isreali violence is the near total moral clarity around it. For years discussions of Isreal-Palestine have been bogged down by people reaching for the political anesthetic of 'historical complexity', making out the situation to be this horribly messy and unnavigable morass upon which no straightforward judgement could be made. You still see these attempts, like @Joshs pathos-laden historical warbling.

But more and more it's clear that Isreal is a state with full agency, brimming with state of the art weapons and a fully developed state apparatus which has long been autonomous from whatever history got it to where it is. I suspect it's even a victim of its own propaganda, which has worked tirelessly to portray it as a bastion of civilization surrounded by a sea of hostile barbarians, all waiting to pounce. Yet when push comes to shove it's this supposedly civilized state which has exercized the utmost brutality upon a completely wretched population, all the while bleeting about self-defense.

At issue - and everyone but the most propagandized can recognize this - is the present-day reproduction of violence and opression by the Israeli state that has jack shit to to with its history and everything to do with the exercise of sheer, untrammeled power, visited upon a destitue population, immeserated and left with little other than a hollowed out political vocabulary of violence. This is not about 'history' or 'culture' or 'fledgling democracries'. This is a land grab and slow burn genocide, worked upon the planet's biggest open air concentration camp. The irrelevance of the 'complexities of history' could not be more clear or more stark.

like Joshs pathos-laden historical warbling. — StreetlightX

No wonder you don’t like psychology. You’re incapable of nuanced empathic insight.

There is no empathy to be had for people defending genocide, no matter how hard you'd like to pull on heart strings.

Ironically, these Trumpists side with Israel over the palestinians. Why, because nationalistic Enlightenment liberalism is the traditionalist in political idea they are familiar with. — Joshs

I think the Republicans are the party of hardened pragmatists. Their allegiance is to people like Netanyahu, not to young Israeli leftists. :up:

The hardcore, old school Israelis are still in charge. Why?

There is no empathy to be had for people defending genocide, no matter how hard you'd like to pull on heart strings. — StreetlightX

The more I read your cartoonish takes on complex
political conflicts , the more I get the sense that you’re not talking about the large political world at all, but working out your own personal emotional issues.

think the Republicans are the party of hardened pragmatists. — frank

Let me see if I understand you. You’re saying that the new, populist Trump -dominated Republican party, as opposed to the party of Bush and Reagan, is pragmatic?

I'm not the one waxing lyrical about haggadah readings and pining for the good 'ol days of Zionist factionalism while Israel is leveling buildings and flashbanging mosques.

Don't talk to me about sublimating politics into emotional work outs.

Wiki is not a good source for most things political. I advice an actual history book or comments from people living at the time. The writing was on the wall in 1948 that Israel was turning into a fascist shithole: https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948

Let me see if I understand you. You’re saying that the new, populist Trump -dominated Republican party, as opposed to the party of Bush and Reagan, is pragmatic? — Joshs

I think they see themselves that way. It's ok to be brutal to illegal immigrants because otherwise, they'll pour in.

Why? How do you see the new Republicans?

You do sort of come across as mentally ill sometimes.

How do you see the new Republicans? — frank

Although I’m a liberal, I agree with Conservative commentators like David Brooks, Ross Douthat and David Frum that the Trumpist republicans are a sinking ship and are completely out of touch with new economic realities.

The writing was on the wall in 1948 that Israel was turning into a racist sithole: — Benkei

Its early leadership didn’t go the direction of terrorist Begin. When he was elected , he moderated somewhat.
The right in Israel now is unquestionably dominated by racist shitheads, but why should Israel
be different from Russia, Hungary, Poland,Sweden, Germany or the U.S.? It’s today’s fashion.