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> In theory, criticizing a country and country's right to exist are different things. > In practice, usually people who are most vocal critics of Israel don't t

> In theory, criticizing a country and country's right to exist are different things. > In practice, usually people who are most vocal critics of Israel don't think it should exist in the first place. You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question. > Which is an ugly half-truth. To put things in this way would require either ignorance of the region's history or some ugly dose of bias. Or simply disagreement. 'Bias' implies that your perspective is not itself similarly influenced by bias.

golergka 10y ago
> You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question. I must've misunderstood it then. Well, isn't it obvious? If you don't deny other ethnicities their nationhood and state, but somehow think that jews don't deserve the same treatment, how can it be not anti-semitic?
- tanderson92 10y ago
  And again, if nobody lived in Palestine (the geographical region) then you would have a point that there is an equivalence. Otherwise, you need to argue that there is a higher moral value to giving the horribly oppressed Jewish people a state than the immorality of taking away the land of indigenous peoples. But that is a matter of judgement (esp. given anti-Semitism in the UK/US, esp. the UK, at the time leading to us not accepting them all as political refugees), not bigotry. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094 https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immig...
  - golergka 10y ago
    I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you taking about? "Taking away land"? As in, buying worthless swamps and making them into fertile land? Or resisting genocidal wars? Or destroying homes of terrorist families that get cash rewards for the fact that their son and brother killed hews?
    - dang 10y ago
      > I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you taking about? You can't comment like this here, regardless of how strongly you feel about a subject. We've warned you about this repeatedly before. Please don't do it again.
YZF 10y ago
Pretty much every country on this planet is not populated by people "native" to that country. So saying Israel has no right to exist based on this argument while applying that argument only to Israel is discriminatory. This is before we even address the question of whether this claim is even true or how it is to be judged. If someone's political opinion is that everyone should move back to where their ancestors lived at some specific time in history and they apply it to everyone equally then I would think that's weird and not going to happen but I'd be fine with that. Typically I don't like to engage in political discussion about the middle east because most people have no clue about the history of the region and interpret what's going on over there through some lens with a very shallow depth of field. That tends to apply to Israelis as well. That said I think antisemitism is still a concern that we have to speak out about and definitely some modern incarnations of antisemitism are directed towards Israel. That doesn't mean that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic but it's just something that makes things more complicated.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  Thanks for this. It's a good explanation which addresses the point I was thinking about. You raise some good points which I'll have to think more about. Just quickly, I am thinking that the fact there are Palestinians alive today who have been displaced renders the question much more urgent and potent than the problematic elimination of Native Americans >100 years ago, for example.

golergka 10y ago

> You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question. I must've misunderstood it then. Well, isn't it obvious? If you don't deny other ethnicities their nationhood and state, but somehow think that jews don't deserve the same treatment, how can it be not anti-semitic?

tanderson92 10y ago
And again, if nobody lived in Palestine (the geographical region) then you would have a point that there is an equivalence. Otherwise, you need to argue that there is a higher moral value to giving the horribly oppressed Jewish people a state than the immorality of taking away the land of indigenous peoples. But that is a matter of judgement (esp. given anti-Semitism in the UK/US, esp. the UK, at the time leading to us not accepting them all as political refugees), not bigotry. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094 https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immig...
- golergka 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you taking about? "Taking away land"? As in, buying worthless swamps and making them into fertile land? Or resisting genocidal wars? Or destroying homes of terrorist families that get cash rewards for the fact that their son and brother killed hews?
  - dang 10y ago
    > I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you taking about? You can't comment like this here, regardless of how strongly you feel about a subject. We've warned you about this repeatedly before. Please don't do it again.

YZF 10y ago

Pretty much every country on this planet is not populated by people "native" to that country. So saying Israel has no right to exist based on this argument while applying that argument only to Israel is discriminatory. This is before we even address the question of whether this claim is even true or how it is to be judged. If someone's political opinion is that everyone should move back to where their ancestors lived at some specific time in history and they apply it to everyone equally then I would think that's weird and not going to happen but I'd be fine with that. Typically I don't like to engage in political discussion about the middle east because most people have no clue about the history of the region and interpret what's going on over there through some lens with a very shallow depth of field. That tends to apply to Israelis as well. That said I think antisemitism is still a concern that we have to speak out about and definitely some modern incarnations of antisemitism are directed towards Israel. That doesn't mean that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic but it's just something that makes things more complicated.

tanderson92 10y ago
Thanks for this. It's a good explanation which addresses the point I was thinking about. You raise some good points which I'll have to think more about. Just quickly, I am thinking that the fact there are Palestinians alive today who have been displaced renders the question much more urgent and potent than the problematic elimination of Native Americans >100 years ago, for example.