Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Carried over from the Noam Chomsky thread, cos this doesn't belong there........



I'd be interested to know what you think is racist about Zionism. I don't personally - more on that later pro'ly - but I'd like your perspective first. Anyone else can jump in too.



Fun fact: Most of the land on which the early Zionists settled was actually bought legally from absentee landlords. The popular image of the gun-wielding Zionist forcing defenceless Arab families out of their homes is a myth.



Not really, though. The Jews were dhimmis under Ottoman Sharia law - i.e. second-class citizens with practically no rights. So they could only co-exist with the Muslims as happily as a pariah race can co-exist with a master race.

sorry, WHF. i suppose i wasn't clear. I certianly didn't mean that European Jews kicked out a bunch of poor helpless people or anything like that but this is rather what i mean:

during WWI when the Ottoman empire was falling, western figureheads wanted help destroying it from the inside. essentially, they promised anybody whatever they wanted because everybody was sick of the "sick man of europe" mucking things up, because it was, hardcore. so what happened:
The british and french made the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided up the ottoman empire amongst Britain and France and reserved palestine or command by the western allies.
The british also promised muslim caliph Husayn (of saudi arabia) an independent Arab state (which gets messy admittedly because the promise was vague. either way, britain and france essentially had no plans of actually allowing this as they still divided up the empire into what THEY wanted to control).
THEN the british decided to make a Jewish home in Palestine (despite the fact that, intended or not they knew the Arabs were already settuing up shop for that to be their "independent state"


which is essentially the fundemental root of arab-isreali conflicts. f course, then each side commits some atrocities, slaughter by both parties of innocents, and nobody is blameless.

and as far as what i said about peace in palestine before, i suppose i mean realtive peace. There weren't massive wars or any type of tension as terrible as that that's going on now before the whole WWI fiasco and the subsequent importation of european jews.
i still maintain that a lot of the animosity is not religious, but a matter of european/middle eastern that has mainfested itself in religious boundaries (at least at first. of course, it's not worth mentioning ALL of the other reasons following the wars and the settling of israel that people in the Palestine/Israel are mad at each other. that's a long list.)

and zionism as racism? I know some people call anti-zionists racists or anti-semites, which i vehemently oppose, but i haven't heard people term zionism itself as racism.

there's nothing tyrannical about Israel, and their "stances" toward Muslims are fine...Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and it's as free a society as you'll find anywhere in the world. 20% of the Israeli population is Arab, and they have full rights, they vote, and they have representation in the Knesset (parliament). the Palestinian issue is something totally separate, and is a result of terrorism and the fact that Arab leaders have intentionally hurt the Palestinian cause in order to make Israel look bad. don't fall for it. the Palestinians' suffering is very real, but most of it is a result of their own leaders' incompetence or malice.




that's a bit misleading. modern Israel only takes up a tiny percentage of what was called "Palestine" under the Ottomans. the British had offered both the Jews and Arabs independence in Palestine, but the Arabs thought that their offer meant they would get ALL of it, while the Jews understood that this meant that the land would be divided. the country that's now called Jordan was originally part of "Palestine," and it's actually 80% Palestinian by population today. this was supposed to be the Arab country, and everything west of the Jordan was going to be Israel. but then the British divided the remaining land AGAIN, creating the "partition plan" which was more along real population lines in terms of the Jewish/Arab proportion of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (it should be noted that a major reason that the populations work out the way they do are because of Arab massacres against Jews throughout the Twentieth Century that reduced the Jewish population of the eastern part of the area by either killing them or expelling them). the Jews accepted the partition plan, even though it was much less than they were offered, and the Arabs rejected it.

the Palestinians were never really planning to set up their own independent state. Jordan is 80% Palestinian by population, but since it's not governed by Palestinians they don't think it really counts. and between 1948-1967 when the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, there was absolutely no movement for independence on the part of the Palestinians; they were content to be ruled by foreign powers as long as they were Arabs. the Palestinian movement for statehood is much more recent, and they don't even seem that serious about it.

the violence is all about the Arab rejection of any non-Muslim/Arab independent country in the Middle East. also, Israel's democracy undermines the military dictatorships that rule every single Arab country.

actually Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom DO have similar laws for people who can trace their ancestry back to those countries. as do many, many other countries. check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis

and nobody accuses them of being racist.

Ahh, okay then. I meant it as a general comment, because I have heard other people cart out the old "forced off their land" myth far too often.

You know, Yeltensic, your criticism of Israel combined with your avatar of Hitler kinda makes one wonder...

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Mind you, Sephardic Jews (from Yemen or Morocco etc) are still in more need to move to a (hypothetically) Jew-safe country than any European Jew - even the Holocaust survivors.

You don't know Lahi very well, do you?

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to be fair, the majority of the Jews in the world ARE Holocaust survivors or their relatives. but the purpose of the existence of Israel in the first place is to have one place in the world where Jews will always be welcome and protected. history has shown that every place that the Jews have lived has turned on them, either expelled them or tried to wipe them out at some point. that's why Israel is necessary. there isn't another nation or group that requires that same sort of protection.

Every White Supremacist in the country would like to have a word with you.

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They don't make up very much of the country, but they are there.

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No, it doesn't.

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Funny you should mention that, I lived in Alabama for a year and never heard of a place called Incestville.

Checks Google maps, nope, it's not a place.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

How about I just toastpaint this?


M'kay?

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Hey BTG, what's your problem? Not sure why you feel the need to take potshots at me all the time.

And since it apparently wasn't completely obvious, I was hinting that people critical of Israel AND ALSO have Adolf Hitler as their avatar may seem to be anti-Semitic.

But thank you for misconstruing my statement to "People who are critical of Israel are anti-Semitic."

It was kinda fun, having my words twisted by people who dislike me. You should try it more often. It can be like a game.

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today it is. Germany used to be extremely Jewish-friendly too. and before that, so was Spain. things change. Jews have learned not to get too comfortable.



of course other ethnic groups have been persecuted. but none quite so consistently or for as long as the Jews have. and also, most of those persecuted ethnic groups (though not all of them) have homelands to which they at least have the option of fleeing if the persecution becomes impossible to bear.

Germany, and Europe in general, was becoming more and more Jew-friendly throughout the late 18th and 19th Centuries...in the 19th Century Jews in Germany were full citizens and participated in all spheres of German life. there was always some anti-Semitism (as there is always discrimination against minorities in any place) but there wasn't systemic oppression. that didn't start until the 1930s, and ended up with the Holocaust. the change happened extremely quickly.



i don't imagine that he is at the moment, no. but the point is that Judaism is more than just a religion, it's a nationality in itself. and Israel is the Jewish homeland, therefore it's the home of all Jews. you don't even have to be technically Jewish to qualify for automatic citizenship, you only need to have one Jewish grandparent (which is the same criteria for getting sent to the death camps under the Nazis, incidentally). besides, there are plenty of other ways to get Israeli citizenship if you want it, it's by no means limited to Jews.

if you're German, or Hungarian, or whatever, according to the criteria of those nations, you're afforded similar preferences under their laws. it's the same thing for Israel according to their criteria.

right, but Germany in the late 19th Century was basically the most Jewish-friendly place in the world at the time. there was a brief blip of guilt on the part of Europe after the Holocaust but it seems to be returning to normal now, as you say. in tends to go in cycles. the difference is that now that Israel exists, no matter how anti-Semitic Germany, or anywhere else, gets in the future, there will always be one place that will defend Jews -- either by offering unconditional asylum, or with military action.



but it's not just them...even the United States and Canada have similar laws. and i'm not saying that it's either right or wrong, just that nobody ever calls any other country "racist" for having laws that grant citizenship to people with origins from those nations. only Israel is called racist for it, which is hypocritical.



allowing everyone automatic immigration would be insane and impossible. every country has the right to determine their own immigration laws. if you want to move to Israel you don't have to be Jewish to do it. just apply. if your parents are, say, Canadian but you were born outside Canada, you can apply for automatic Canadian citizenship too. Jewishness is a national identity, it just hadn't been tied to the physical nation for a long time, for reasons beyond its control. but it's the same thing.

As a person of Jewish descent, I find the first point absolutely hilarious. I'd just like to point that out.

because they shouldn't have to wait until they're being persecuted. sometimes by then it's too late. by the time Germany got bad, most countries in the world wouldn't let Jews emigrate anymore. Canada's official policy was "None is too many."



it's not really that dangerous there. actually you should be more concerned about getting killed in a traffic accident in Israel than in a terrorist attack; Israeli drivers are terrible and car crashes are a major problem. but there's almost no violent crime in Israel, so compared to the States or somewhere you're much less likely to die in a terrorist attack in Israel than be murdered in America.



no, i don't mean reuniting families. if your parents are Canadian but don't live in Canada, and you want to MOVE to Canada, you get preference for citizenship. my friend is Canadian but applied for and got Dutch citizenship despite never having been to the Netherlands, so that she could could work in the EU.

but if you're equally against it no matter what country it is, then it's a legitimate opinion. i disagree with you, but there are plenty of people who would uphold any other country's right to its own immigration policies while calling Israel's policies racist. by singling out Israel, they are expressing their anti-Semitism. you're not doing that, though. so it's cool. [/i]

This is what I don't get. Arabs basically have nations like Israel. They are called "Arab Nations", they are predominantly Arab, and their land is far greater than that of Israel. Israel, on the other hand, has about a 1/3 Arab population (That might be Jerusalem, I don't remember), and Arabs are present in government. There are no real laws against Arabs, those immigration practices are almost commonplace. And the bits about how persecuted Jews is kind of awkward, because the other nations with streamlined immigration passage for natives don't do it because their people are persecuted, they do it simply because the people are psuedo natives. Israel is not a horrible nation, why is it treated as such?

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GENGHIS KHAN!!!!!

it's more like 20%, but yeah.

the really ironic thing is that Jews aren't even allowed to live or own property in most Arab countries. as a matter of fact, there's way more persecution of Palestinians in most other Arab countries (the exception being Jordan) than has ever been against them by Israel. but nobody wants to hear that. there was recently a massacre in Iraq where around 600 Palestinians were murdered for having supported Saddam before the American invasion. if 600 Palestinians were killed by Israel there would have been a worldwide uproar. but since it was other Arabs who did it, nobody gives a crap.

in some places in Europe, apparently it's getting close to the way it was in the 30s. i have family in Hungary who are really becoming fearful, and similar things are going on in France.



i'm not sure. not necessarily.

Ok, I have imigrated to israel through the aliyah service. that imigration thing. what many of you non-jews don't nderstand is that anti-semitism is everywhere. For instance, when i was in paris during this past summer, a woman spit on me because of my yarmulke. here, us jews have a place to stay and be comfortable. the only problem is that if a soldier should kill a palestinian theres an international conspiracy but if a palestinian walks in to a convenience store and blows him self up no one gives a D***.

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"Don't forget the crap-flap!" -Strongbad from "pop-up"

Hey israelitruckfan, could you tell us a bit more about the immigration process that you went through? It would be interesting to get a first-hand take on the whole thing.



Quoted for truth.

And that's a very pernicious kind of racism, because it seems that these same people are holding Israelis up to a higher moral standard than Arabs. Because like israeltruckfan says, people like this don't seem to question the morality of sending young people to blow themselves up in shops, not half as much as they tend to target Israel for its misdeeds (real or imagined).

Why is it that Israel is criticized for not allowing Palestinian self-rule when the lands set aside by the UN for that very thing were taken by Egypt and Syria? (OK, so Israel also took some of that, but if the Arabs were really upset about the Palestinians not having a "homeland", why didn't the Egyptians or Syria allow them to form a country of their own in those lands?).

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I guess the glib answer is "Cos they want to push Israel into the sea".

The original partition lines set in 1947 are pretty much the same that's in place today though. See here - notice how much land the Palestinians have lost since then as a result of the conflict, though.

It was only in the subsequent wars then the borders moved all over the place - at one point Israel had conquered the entire Sinai peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Sinai was eventually handed back after a peace accord with Egypt, but the Golan Heights weren't. So Egypt was only taking back what was originally theirs.

But, well, making part of the Sinai peninsula a part of Palestine wouldn't help much. Mostly because the large majority of Palestinians live in Jordon, and Egypt wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the oil fields of Sinai. The rest of it is worthless inhabitable desert, really.

And since they haven't gotten the Golan Heights back, the Syrians probably wouldn't be willing to sacrifice more territory for the sake of a Palestinian homeland.

it's even worse than that -- Israel would love nothing more than to grant Palestinian self-rule, and all they've ever asked in return is an end to terrorism, which the Palestinians have never even considered granting. and it's not merely that Egypt and Jordan didn't grant the Palestinians self-rule when they were in charge of the territories, but that there was no Palestinian desire for self-rule whatsoever (or at the very least there was no movement towards it) until Israel gained control of those territories. the Palestinians didn't care if they were ruled by a foreign power, as long as it was an Arab foreign power.

Do you belive in all this stuff, yeltenistisc?

Well, back to the subject... The way we immigrated was like this. you make a phone call to Israel, they ask you, your rabbi, family members and friends if you are jewish. then you ring like 15 bags on the airplane and when you get there they ask you some more questions and give you your I.D. card. they then give you a ride from the air port to where ever you'd be living and thats pretty much it.

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"Don't forget the crap-flap!" -Strongbad from "pop-up"