Anti-Semetic Vs Anti-Zionist
As a jew, I find it profoundly disturbing that anyone uses “anti-Semitic” as a phrase referring to anyone who is anti-Israel.
I just want to make this point.
I am Semitic. And I am a general supporter of Israel. I believe that the sympathy for the Palestinian cause with a near-exclusive focus on Israeli behavior misses the mark. It is more complex than that.
However, it is my personal belief that since Meir Kahane’s extremely conservation and Jewish-protectionist views became a dominant force in Israeli politics in the 80s, that Israel has not acted as a straight-forward democracy. Since Kahane, a number of important Israeli leaders have died in the pursuit of turning the country back towards its best self.
I am sympathetic to the feeling of desperation inside Israel that by population, Israel would stop being a jewish state in the near future had they not changed the rules of what was once a pure(r) democracy. My generation and the next didn’t live through the jewish holocaust and do not carry the same fear of “never forget” and being a tribe without a homeland. We live in a world full of biases, including anti-semitism, and we do not see our oppression as being that much more important than the oppression of others. I see that as progress. Some see it as being short-sighted… that we should continue, as a culture, to fear the hatred that has been so much a part of our history.
So it is not an easy issue.
Still… having even severe anti-Israel views is not the same as being an anti-Semite. And listening to the views of severe anti-Israel views without leaving a room or throwing a drink in someone
Arabs and Palestinians literally cannot be anti-Semitic since they are Semitic peoples. Unless they are so in the same way a self-loathing Jew may be termed anti-Semitic. As Krusty said, “I thought I was a self-hating Jew, but it turns out I was just a plain old anti-Semite.”
It’s funny with so many jewish people in the entertainment industry, they lack any sense of humor on Israel. If you bring up the point that the Palestinians and Jews hardly need a reason to fight anymore, though the formation of Israel and the carving up of the territory by the Brits is what has led them to this constant state of tension.
I just can’t figure out the logic of taking your people into a region where everyone at every border believes it’s a moral and religious imperative to wipe them off the face of the earth. They believe that land is their right and their privilege, and that will not change until someone finally detonates a nuke in the holy land. It’s only a matter of time. They say that it is diffcult to fight an opponent who is willing to die for their cause. The same applies to people of Israel and their leaders who put every one of their lives at risk at the hand of jihadists.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the jewish people began to try and take back their land and through war and political manuevering were able to declare their sovreignty. But the people of that region have a long, long memory. I hear people say why the other countries in the region can’t ‘get over it’, and i tell them that Israel, as a country, hasn’t even been in existence for 100 years. That’s a grain of sand in the hourglass to the Arabs. And while I have no horse in this race, i often find myself wondering what would drive someone to carve themselves out a country where you are surrounded by nations who want to see nothing more than the streets littered with the dead.
Probably emerging from the aftermath of a government-sponsored program to murder as many of your fellow co-religionists, after multiple centuries of pogroms and discrimination, would have something to do with it.
DP- What exactly qualifies a person as “extreme right”?
Do you consider yourself ‘extreme left’?
jeff, good point. still, after so much death and suffering, wouldnt you think you would look for someplace a little more peaceful?
guess i’ll never get it.
Like where, Alaska?
Michael Chabon had a similar idea.
And honestly, i don’t know. A whole lot of persecuted people came to America. Seemed to work out a little better thus far.
Fighting for grains of sand in the desert. Putting your life at risk for real estate. There are righteous battles, without a doubt, but it seems as if they are locked into a struggle that has no positive resolution.
And the portions are so small.
“I just can’t figure out the logic of taking your people into a region where everyone at every border believes it’s a moral and religious imperative to wipe them off the face of the earth.”
Anghus, nobody in that region felt it was a moral or religious imperative to wipe the Jews off the earth UNTIL they were given the land of Israel. If you read the Quran, which is the book of Abraham, you’ll see that there are a lot of similarities to the Torah. There is nothing in Islam that says they must hate the Jews more than they must hate any other religion.
So, to say it was silly for the Jews to move to that region or whatever is kind of inaccurate because it’s only “silly” in hindsight.
mysteryperfecta — I’ll tell you what I think of as “extreme left”: Ward Churchill.
Someone so political that he cannot shed a tear for the victims of 9-11, but rather regards all of them as part of a corrupt system worthy of destruction.
I’m fairly left by U.S. standards, but that kind of belief loses me.
And the extreme right, to my mind, are the segregationists, the clinic bombers (so rare), theocrats, etc. DP asserts that I support the extreme right, which tells me that he’s using a broad definition in an attempt to marginalize.
I would say the extreme right is epitomized by Sarah Palin, hence McCain’s failure to capture moderate/independent vote. As well as losing some faithful GOP members.
Palin’s problem isn’t that she’s too far to the right (which she is, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘extreme’, depending on the policy issue) but rather that she’s an arrogant lying demagogue with contempt for those more intelligent than her and a thin handle on the major issues.
The extreme right in Israel is something completely different than the extreme right here.
In Israel, I would define it, in this case, by pushing the agenda of actually diminishing the rights of non-jewish citizens by either devaluing their votes of removing them from the state.
As for my politics in the U.S., no… not even close to being an extreme lefty. I am a left-leaning centrist. I am also a strict constitutionalist, though there are obviously some disagreements from me about interpretation. For instance, I do believe the is a right to be armed, but I do not believe that this means there can be no limit on the restriction of ownership or that registration is verbotten.
Jerusalem is a very, very contentious piece of land for reasons that reach beyond anti-semitism. Israel has, mostly, been much more generous about the city to non-Jews than the arabs were to the jews when they controlled that land.
But jews feeling a need for a homeland certainly wanted that piece of land as their homeland. This fuels the rage. But there is no doubt that Israel would be a target in that region no matter where the land was.