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It might be useful to compare the political structures, sure. "Cheapens the struggle of" is not a statement about political structures, it is a statement about
by thwest 13y ago
It might be useful to compare the political structures, sure.
"Cheapens the struggle of" is not a statement about political structures, it is a statement about personal experiences. I don't think it is fruitful to reduce the experiential quality of living in an oppressive regime to some calculus of cheapness, wherein Having Supreme Court Judges counts as +$10.
- gadders 13y agoCheapens not in a monetary sense, but in a moral one. I think the experiences of Black South Africans were a lot worse than those experienced by Palestinians and Arabs within Israel. I think if people redefine "apartheid" downwards to cover any regime that people don't like then it becomes a meaningless term.
- jbooth 13y agoApartheid has a definition (differing sets of rights depending on your ethnicity), and Israel just barely skirts it by dint of the West Bank being technically a temporarily occupied territory. If you posit that the West Bank is effectively annexed and that the Israeli government has no plans to ever quit it, then technically the West Bank is governed by an apartheid system.
- thwest 13y agoI don't care what you think the preferable apartheid to live under would be, much like I don't care if you'd rather be a Roman or an American slave. The morality of the political structures at play here does not depend on winning a "shittiest conditions" competition. I disagree that we are redefining apartheid.
- gadders 13y agoNo-one is talking about a shittiest conditions contest, we talking about the ridiculous hyperbole that is used when discussing Israel.