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And trying to destroy Israel (cos it's just like South Africa!1) is completely rational? Plenty of lunatics on both sides of the fence here. I don't like the wo

And trying to destroy Israel (cos it's just like South Africa!1) is completely rational? Plenty of lunatics on both sides of the fence here. I don't like the woke religion more than the evangelical religion.

gostsamo 5y ago
Oh, the question is how this law benefits the citizens of Texas. Not sure how the walk religion is involved unless you think that defending the citizens of Texas from the walk tendencies they might exhibit is for their own good... for the record though, I don't care much about neither the US's culture wars nor for the attempts of Israel to travel two thousand years in the past. Both look like extremely dumb ideas but taking sides means only increasing the idiocy at hand.
ornel 5y ago
How did the boycott against the South African state "destroy" South Africa? It just made it a democratic country, something Israel is not
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state. Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans. Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination. It will also in all likelihood create chaos, because I just don't see how you can take two ethnic communities of about the same size, that hate each other for a century, and make them live in one democratic country. It would be about as realistic as turning Russia and Germany into one big democratic country. I actually think that Russia and Germany stand a much better chance.
  - Hizonner 5y ago
    > Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state. It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist. Fpr that matter, it was determined long ago that I should be king of the world. It's just a question of whose determinations you happen to decide to accept... > Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans. Wait, Jews are "a people" and Boers aren't? How did that happen? The Boers are "a people" by any reasonably principled definition, and nonetheless South African apartheid was unacceptable. Representing "a people" does not give you a license to treat other people like shit. ... and you say "a people" like that's a good thing. In fact, the concept of "peoples" (nations, whatever you want to call them) is dangerous and destructive, and the (unfortunately natural and built in) human tendency to form attachments to arbitrary abstract groups is one of the top contenders for what's going to destroy the whole goddamned species. > Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination. Only individual human beings have rights, not "peoples". Especially self determination. The idea of group "self determination" is self-evidently moronic. To have self determination, you have to have a reasonably unified will and probably a reasonably unified mind. "Peoples" have neither. > It will also in all likelihood create chaos, Probably true. There is no good answer at this point. Things were already bad, and the foolish decision to create Israel really locked in the doom.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      > It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist. It would have spared millions of innocent deaths if Jews had a country during WW2. So maybe it's not always that stupid. And in fact, taking a whiff at the current state of things for Jews in the diaspora, I still think Jews should have a place of their own. I am not forecasting another holocaust, hell no, but it sure becomes harder to be openly Jewish in the West.
      - Hizonner 5y ago
        All of those innocent deaths were "justified" by the "need" to defend the "Aryan people". The whole Nazi project was precisely to create an ethnostate. The enthnicity they had in mind didn't have much of a historical existence, true, and neither did the genetic group they imagined to make it up. But what defines an ethnicity? They had a founding myth, and they definitely managed to generate some real "Aryan" self-identification in people's minds. What does any ethnicity, including Jews, have besides founding myths and shared self-identification? It seems to me that the Nazis either had as valid a "people" to work with as any other, or at least were well on the way to creating one. And yet somehow I really can't work up any sympathy at all for the Nazi's "purification" project, or for the "Aryan people". Speaking of "states for peoples", a whole lot of those innocent deaths were aided by other states' unwillingness to admit Jews who were trying to get away from the Nazis. It seems they also wanted to keep their countries pure for their own "peoples". Maybe if they'd been less concerned about having states "for their peoples", they'd have been more willing to take in the actual individual human beings who were about to be slaughtered. For that matter, even after the war, creating Israel let the winners feel a bit better about themselves while still not, you know, letting too many Jews in. I don't know if not having to "take" Jews was a major motivation, but I've heard that some of their leaders at least thought about that. Oh, and by the way, while the Nazis definitely had a special hardon for Jews, they killed a shit-ton of non-Jews, too. If making sure people have their own country is the method we're using to save people when a genocidal psychotic system takes over the place they're living, then it seems like maybe we have to create some more countries. Should the Roma get a country? They're definitely a "people", and they were targeted on the basis of it. Should there be a gay country? OK, not a "people", but still a targeted group that's at very serious risk in a bunch of countries today, if that's the criterion you're using. Or, better yet, why not just take the view that Nazis, or equivalent, don't get to run any countries? And why not put a big fence around that possibility by saying that countries shouldn't be built on ethnicity at all? Would it be so awful to have a system of administrative districts without "national identity"? Maybe there's no way to get there. I fully understand that that's now how people work. But I don't like the idea that the way to protect against ethnic violence is to feed and further legitimize the "this for our people only" tendency, to do things that generate stronger ethnic divisions, or to make your personal safety contingent on you being able to find a state that happens to consider you one of "its people".
  - sndman 5y ago
    "Therefore it would be necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs,...Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy." --Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, (We and the Arabs) (1923)
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      Point being? There are problematic quotes from some Zionist leaders. There are actual Nazi quotes from Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian Mufti was a known Nazi supporter and had close relations with the Nazi leadership (including visits to concentration camps etc). Even the current PA leader Abbas, who is considered a moderate, wrote a PHD which basically denies or mitigates the holocaust. While some aspects of Zionism were indeed troubling in today's standards, when push came to shove the Zionist leadership accepted partition to two states (in 1947). How does quoting Jabotinsky from a century ago help us in solving this conflict? Unless your only point is that current Israel should be dismanteld.
      - sndman 5y ago
        The quote speaks for itself, no?
        joelbluminator 5y ago
        Yeah...no we are definitely talking past each other. good night!
      - sndman 5y ago
        'The Arabs will have to go but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war." --Ben-Gurion's Diary,12July1937,and in New Judea, August-September 1937, p.220. "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." --David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938 ''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
sndman 5y ago
Bit of an overreaction, no? How would a boycott destroy one of the most powerful military forces on earth? BDS isn't trying to destroy Israel. It's only attempting to bring attention to the government's inhuman treatment of Palestinians. Human Rights watch calls the situation in the OT "apartheid" (note the little ' A'). https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra... B'Tselem Israeli Human RIghts group: https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid Not all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  BDS wants to dismantle/discontinue or whatever word you see fit Israel in it's current form by advocating for "the right of return". That means bringing in around 5-6 million refugees (overwhelmingly 2nd and 3rd generation descendants of the original refugees, since it was 73 years ago not many of the original people are alive) to create a Palestinian majority country. By any meaningful sense it won't be Israel anymore just as the U.S won't be the U.S if 300 million Chinese people move there. So I feel like destroy is a harsh but sensible word to use.
  - sndman 5y ago
    ''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It isn't a productive political dissent though as many Palestinian products go through Israel to the international market. Still, it should be allowed.

gostsamo 5y ago

Oh, the question is how this law benefits the citizens of Texas. Not sure how the walk religion is involved unless you think that defending the citizens of Texas from the walk tendencies they might exhibit is for their own good... for the record though, I don't care much about neither the US's culture wars nor for the attempts of Israel to travel two thousand years in the past. Both look like extremely dumb ideas but taking sides means only increasing the idiocy at hand.

ornel 5y ago

How did the boycott against the South African state "destroy" South Africa? It just made it a democratic country, something Israel is not

joelbluminator 5y ago
Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state. Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans. Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination. It will also in all likelihood create chaos, because I just don't see how you can take two ethnic communities of about the same size, that hate each other for a century, and make them live in one democratic country. It would be about as realistic as turning Russia and Germany into one big democratic country. I actually think that Russia and Germany stand a much better chance.
- Hizonner 5y ago
  > Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state. It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist. Fpr that matter, it was determined long ago that I should be king of the world. It's just a question of whose determinations you happen to decide to accept... > Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans. Wait, Jews are "a people" and Boers aren't? How did that happen? The Boers are "a people" by any reasonably principled definition, and nonetheless South African apartheid was unacceptable. Representing "a people" does not give you a license to treat other people like shit. ... and you say "a people" like that's a good thing. In fact, the concept of "peoples" (nations, whatever you want to call them) is dangerous and destructive, and the (unfortunately natural and built in) human tendency to form attachments to arbitrary abstract groups is one of the top contenders for what's going to destroy the whole goddamned species. > Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination. Only individual human beings have rights, not "peoples". Especially self determination. The idea of group "self determination" is self-evidently moronic. To have self determination, you have to have a reasonably unified will and probably a reasonably unified mind. "Peoples" have neither. > It will also in all likelihood create chaos, Probably true. There is no good answer at this point. Things were already bad, and the foolish decision to create Israel really locked in the doom.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    > It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist. It would have spared millions of innocent deaths if Jews had a country during WW2. So maybe it's not always that stupid. And in fact, taking a whiff at the current state of things for Jews in the diaspora, I still think Jews should have a place of their own. I am not forecasting another holocaust, hell no, but it sure becomes harder to be openly Jewish in the West.
    - Hizonner 5y ago
      All of those innocent deaths were "justified" by the "need" to defend the "Aryan people". The whole Nazi project was precisely to create an ethnostate. The enthnicity they had in mind didn't have much of a historical existence, true, and neither did the genetic group they imagined to make it up. But what defines an ethnicity? They had a founding myth, and they definitely managed to generate some real "Aryan" self-identification in people's minds. What does any ethnicity, including Jews, have besides founding myths and shared self-identification? It seems to me that the Nazis either had as valid a "people" to work with as any other, or at least were well on the way to creating one. And yet somehow I really can't work up any sympathy at all for the Nazi's "purification" project, or for the "Aryan people". Speaking of "states for peoples", a whole lot of those innocent deaths were aided by other states' unwillingness to admit Jews who were trying to get away from the Nazis. It seems they also wanted to keep their countries pure for their own "peoples". Maybe if they'd been less concerned about having states "for their peoples", they'd have been more willing to take in the actual individual human beings who were about to be slaughtered. For that matter, even after the war, creating Israel let the winners feel a bit better about themselves while still not, you know, letting too many Jews in. I don't know if not having to "take" Jews was a major motivation, but I've heard that some of their leaders at least thought about that. Oh, and by the way, while the Nazis definitely had a special hardon for Jews, they killed a shit-ton of non-Jews, too. If making sure people have their own country is the method we're using to save people when a genocidal psychotic system takes over the place they're living, then it seems like maybe we have to create some more countries. Should the Roma get a country? They're definitely a "people", and they were targeted on the basis of it. Should there be a gay country? OK, not a "people", but still a targeted group that's at very serious risk in a bunch of countries today, if that's the criterion you're using. Or, better yet, why not just take the view that Nazis, or equivalent, don't get to run any countries? And why not put a big fence around that possibility by saying that countries shouldn't be built on ethnicity at all? Would it be so awful to have a system of administrative districts without "national identity"? Maybe there's no way to get there. I fully understand that that's now how people work. But I don't like the idea that the way to protect against ethnic violence is to feed and further legitimize the "this for our people only" tendency, to do things that generate stronger ethnic divisions, or to make your personal safety contingent on you being able to find a state that happens to consider you one of "its people".
- sndman 5y ago
  "Therefore it would be necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs,...Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy." --Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, (We and the Arabs) (1923)
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    Point being? There are problematic quotes from some Zionist leaders. There are actual Nazi quotes from Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian Mufti was a known Nazi supporter and had close relations with the Nazi leadership (including visits to concentration camps etc). Even the current PA leader Abbas, who is considered a moderate, wrote a PHD which basically denies or mitigates the holocaust. While some aspects of Zionism were indeed troubling in today's standards, when push came to shove the Zionist leadership accepted partition to two states (in 1947). How does quoting Jabotinsky from a century ago help us in solving this conflict? Unless your only point is that current Israel should be dismanteld.
    - sndman 5y ago
      The quote speaks for itself, no?
      - joelbluminator 5y ago
        Yeah...no we are definitely talking past each other. good night!
    - sndman 5y ago
      'The Arabs will have to go but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war." --Ben-Gurion's Diary,12July1937,and in New Judea, August-September 1937, p.220. "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." --David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938 ''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.

sndman 5y ago

Bit of an overreaction, no? How would a boycott destroy one of the most powerful military forces on earth? BDS isn't trying to destroy Israel. It's only attempting to bring attention to the government's inhuman treatment of Palestinians. Human Rights watch calls the situation in the OT "apartheid" (note the little ' A'). https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra... B'Tselem Israeli Human RIghts group: https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid Not all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism.

joelbluminator 5y ago
BDS wants to dismantle/discontinue or whatever word you see fit Israel in it's current form by advocating for "the right of return". That means bringing in around 5-6 million refugees (overwhelmingly 2nd and 3rd generation descendants of the original refugees, since it was 73 years ago not many of the original people are alive) to create a Palestinian majority country. By any meaningful sense it won't be Israel anymore just as the U.S won't be the U.S if 300 million Chinese people move there. So I feel like destroy is a harsh but sensible word to use.
- sndman 5y ago
  ''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
raxxorrax 5y ago
It isn't a productive political dissent though as many Palestinian products go through Israel to the international market. Still, it should be allowed.