Talk Elections

I have phrased the question as a 'why' rather than a 'do' as support for Israel in the US is near universal (and rather common in the western world overall), however I think there are major differences in why that support is.

Some right wingers accuse the left of not supporting Israel as much (that is, not completely blindly) because we do sometimes criticize some of their policies.  I think part of that is based on how the nation is seen - as a modern democracy, or as a religious icon.  Whereas in the religious right Israels safety is considered only a temporary concern - based on their desire for armageddon and eventual widespread destruction.  Others (such as neocons) see it  as a stepping stone for increasing influence in the region not caring for whether it is fair or not (we have often allied with dictators for temporary gain.  For example, we opposed freedom and democracy in South Africa because the fearmongers kept insisting that a government by, of, and for the people was practically the definition of socialism)

I added a few other options, just to cover all the bases.

Israel should be supported up as a Western counter to the Muslims.

I don't especially support them, I'm neutral. Really.

I just allow myself to comment what I like/agree with and what I don't like/disagree with, what's happening there.

The first three.

I support Israel's "right to exist" for the same reason that I support the "right to exist" of any country. Yes, Israel has a few dodgy foundational issues. So do most countries. Now, supporting the policies of the current government would be a very different question and would get a very different sort of answer.

Option 7, but the idea of a "right to exist" is really totally irrelevant.

Option 6, but same idea.

Because it's their land.

What does this even mean?

I do, because two injustices do not a justice make.  One may disagree on whether creating Israel was an appropriate thing to do (I, personally, believe it was not), but by now there are some 5 million or more people for whom this is the only conceivable home. At this point, I think, Israel is a fact, and its existence does not need any justification beyond the one needed by any other nation state: it is there, and getting rid of it would be a personal disaster for many. 

At the same time, I firmly reject the idea of Israel as a Jewish state that has anything to do w/ myself. Israel is an Israeli state, the state of the Israeli people, which, in my view, has little, if anything, to do w/ those of us in the diaspora. I have no loyalty to it whatsoever, and I'd be offended if anyone suggested as much. Though I, personally, do not like a lot about Israel, I have to recognize the fact that it is sufficiently a liberal democracy - of course, only within its recognized borders - to provide its citizens with legitimate opportunities for influencing political process and the structure of the state. Thus, though I may dislike a lot of things about the Israeli state, my dislike is not much different from my dislike of Switzerland (another place some of my ancestors once called home - I do have crappy ancestral homelands, to think about it :) ) or South Korea.

Now,  though Israeli existence itself, at this point, needs no further justification, the same is not true for the status of the Occupied Territories (including, for that matter, East Jerusalem). These are not part of the Israeli liberal polity and the way Israel has been behaving itself there justifies international concern. The status quo there is unacceptable for the same reason Israel's right to exist is indisputable: continuation of it is creating multiple personal tragedies. Whether the status quo is replaced w/ two states or w/ a single bi-communal Israeli-Palestinian state (frankly, my preferred option), either outcome would be an acceptable improvement. The current situation should not continue.

Just doing otherwise is too much trouble.

The Jewish people deserve a safe homeland.

That isn't what they preach, troll.

You know, there were probably *much* safer places than Palestine circa 1947 to go. Large parts of South America are/were barely inhabited (Central Brazil; why not?), Western Australia?, South Island (New Zealand), Various Carribean or Pacific Islands....

Not that I would criticize those individual migrants from Europe or anything.

This is, very clearly, not what almost anyone there preaches. I might say, this is unfortunately, but the fact is: this would be directly against whatever Zionist doctrine that is out there.

Europe is less safe than Israel?

I don't support Israel, and it was a mistake to create a nation that treats it's natives as second class citizens, or worse yet, scum. This issue is completely beyond anything resembling 'rights'.

Reasons 1 and 3. Every people has the right to have a country.

Other - they've been there long enough that a few generations have passed and removing them would be like removing the natives in any other location. Israel has some bad policies towards the Palestinians and probably shouldn't have been founded in that location in the first place, but at this point it would be rather dumb to just think that they should pack their bags and leave. It would be like saying everyone in America should pack up and leave so the Native Americans can have their land back - at this point it's just not gonna happen, and even if people were willing the logistical issues of doing so would be insane.

I don't think this is directed at what I said, but on the off chance it is, that's not what I meant. I'd never advocate for a 'pick up and leave' "solution" in this. People are there to stay, that's a given.

Because the Jewish people have a right to a safe homeland


Awful...

Well, if we consider this only argument, then my advice to "the Jewish people" is to get off from there!! And fast!

This part of the world might be the less safe for them today...

Actually, beside the Zionist justifications, on which I wouldn't debate, I don't feel concerned by that, if we take the only argument of a safe home, then they could have stayed in Europe. The Holocaust, because of the awful (forgive my English, other words may be more appropriate to what it has been) thing it has been, made it. While it burned a lot of people, it burned with them all the anti-semite feelings that existed, (well or at least the huge part of them), and that's a luck we can say that "at least", it permitted this, it created a vaccine against anti-semitism in West, making that West may now be the safest place for Jew, more than ever. And maybe to the point that it becomes sometimes a bit too much when we see the growing paranoia here concerning the anti-Jews feelings.

Yes, since the end of the nazi regime, the only problem that people had with Jews it is about Zionism, it is no more against Jew, the big problem is Israel, no more the Jewish people, which wasn't the case before, before Jews had to face an actual anti-semitism. One more example of this is that, in the first part of the last century, the Arab leaders, seeing that they needed to modernize their lands, called some Jews, because they found they were smart and able to help them to modernize themselves, they even proposed some territories to these Jews then. Unluckily the deal didn't work, and unluckily I've forgotten the references about this historical episode, maybe others heard about it.

Actually, there is no more the actual anti-semitism of before today, there is just some anti-zionism, so this argument of the safe land may be the last to use. After, of course, the Zionist issue became so much passionated that it revived all the old fantasies, but these ones are no more the source of hatred they were before.

Note that here I'm not advocating against Israel, just stating about this argument.

And, no, I'm not really neutral. I think Israel can carry some big improvements in this region, but this to only one condition, that they stop to claim for a "Jewish" state. They wanna continue? May they enjoy their sorrow, and surely their destruction on the long term...

I'm not neutral, I plead for an only state, the creation of a new entity, with the both people, Arabs and Jews, overcoming their identity to create a new one. The f**k, that would be beautiful, and strong. It's them to see...

Option 3, and none else. There were certainly better places to put them, however.

No assumptions intended, but, hmm, here you speak a bit like if it was some cattle, which is not very welcome, especially when we refer to the post-Holocaust period...

Name three.

Mostly because it exists. And when a majority of a country's population wishes their country to continue to exist, it should continue to exist.

I don't support their 'right' to exist; no State has a 'right' to exist. They either exist, or they do not.

1. Encourage them to immigrate the US mainland, let them rebuild a Jewish society here.

2. Ghyl Tarkove's idea about Central Brazil, I think Brazil would have welcomed settlers into that area, as they did encourage people to move from the coasts.

3. There's always Alaska.


You notice that I'm not advocating creating a new state, just other areas for them to move. If we were going to create a new state, which we did, Israel is the obvious choice as that is where they originate.



I was merely suggesting that there may have been better areas to encourage them to move or settle, sorry if I did not clarify so well. :)

None of the choices comport precisely with my point of view. My view, is yes, Israel does have a "right" to exit (the very question is a bit condescending actually) because the folks that live there, were born there, have a right not to ejected, killed, or otherwise reduced to another diaspora. We don't think Americans who came here more recently are anything less than Americans who trace their linage to the Puritans. Re-litigating history on the one hand (the Arab claim), and springing executory interests on the other (the Jewish historical claim), is a fool's errand. It is a recipe for perpetual conflict, That impulse must be resisted. It is a matter of human decency. It is what is right. The rest is noise.

And the idea that the Jews are interlopers who must be removed, through the long slow logic of demographics, is a profoundly immoral idea. Once their neighbors accept the idea of pluralism, and it becomes hard wiring, instinctual, than perhaps the conversation can change. Until then, let the wall remain strong - and thick.

If option one isn't for the formation of a new state, another state within in a state, then what good does that do? Jews are welcomed to come over, and there is already a sizable amount here; I doubt they'll settle for second best over a nation of their own.

Option two and three sound like massive impositions, namely in the second, on the Brazilians, and the third, on the Jews themselves.

Because just because their country was founded in a not-particularly-moral way 60 years ago doesn't mean it's less legitimate than a country founded in a not-particularly-moral way 200 years ago. I support their right to exist as a country, much as I support the right of Bolivia or Ghana to exist.

I don't support fawning over them like many people do.

It means that God gave the land to Abraham, and Isaac was his heir, not Ishmael.

*facepalm*

That is an excellent point. The one good thing good about Israel's as a state rather than just a group of people is  that one can oppose the country while before it was created one would be labeled a racist for opposing crimes despite the fact many are still labeled racist for opposing Israel. It really goes further back to when the Rothschilds got started in the 1700's and even further back the ancient Pharasies. Jewish leadership has always been immoral and corrupt and Jews and only liberate themselves if they turn against the corrupt leadership but unfortounatly the majority of Jews either go a long with them or are silent.

I DON'T SUPPORT ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST, I'M A HAMAS PALESTINIAN COMMIE LOVER LOL.

Just a precision, to be sure there is no confusion.

When I personally blame the claim of a "Jewish" state, it is because I think it is very bad to shut one state to a notion of ethnicity. I prefer when states are based on principles (maybe my French prism intervenes here). Furthermore, from a pragmatic and I would even say fair point of view, I think it's some madness to wanna keep it in this reality. If they can go for one state non shut to a notion of ethnicity (no matter it is the Jewish one for me), I think they would make a huge step to some big productive progress there.

That's all what I meant, I personally don't buy this notion of corrupt leadership at all.

Well, the government of Israel and the Jewish organizations in the West promote racial Supremacism I get accused of being anti-semitic but I am not even saying that all Jews are racist but most fail to take and stand against what their leadership is doing and that is what causes persecutions throughout history. Many Jews even admired the Rothschilds for their sucess and very few condemed them and when they destroyed Germany's economy and caused them to loose WWI the Nazis were able the capitalize on that to gain power.

This many of stealing one's avatar begins to be really ridiculous.

I suspect - I cannot prove, but I suspect - that white/European/non-Jewish Zionism is actually the product of an anti-Semitism that doesn't want to express itself. What better way to be rid of a neighbor that one hates than to help him make payments on a home far removed from one's own? That it's the conservatives (the usual suspects) who are all the more strongly pro-Israel seems to somewhat justify my belief.

In the same way america belongs to the honkeys.

I suggest you're letting your imagination get the better of you

I personally just thinks it's some "bad conscience" concerning the Holocaust, a "bad conscience" which is so heavy to carry that it leads people in West to do too much about that, that's in that sense that I often speak of an "anti-Jew" paranoia. There may be what you talk about, but personally, I don't see at all as the most part, by far. Plus, I'm surprised that here you forgot that one part of the right of your country has also its religious beliefs to go along with that. But, actually, personally, to me, it is the "bad conscience" before everything.

3,5,7.  I know conflicting answers.  They deserve a homeland, but not the right to bully the Arab world.  The US also needs a presence in that region to counter terrorism.  Sounds right winged, I know, but in the end when push comes to shove I'm worried about another attack on our soil and having Israel there keeps potential threats in check.

Really? How?

1,2,7

anything that truly exists does not need the "right to exist" for what it's worth

This.

since I'm on a roll, let me say my critique more specifically,

From what lofty aspiration do the "rights" of state bureaucracies derive?  I hear this term all the time, like the "right" for states to own such and such weapons or the "right" to protect its interests and so on.  Do the rights of the state trump human rights if they come on conflict?  I hope Israeli policymakers are thinking more about their people's rights than their state's rights when they are authorizing violent measures. Hell, you have to work to bring it out of me since it sounds bad on paper, but I've been a fairly staunch critic of overuse of the term "rights"  for like 90% of what people use it for.  it creates such an ugly world where there's no possible compromise.  right to our land vs. right to have a homeland, right to life vs. right to choice blah humbug

I consider myself more neutral than anyone else I know to begin with because I think both the Isrealis and the Palestinians have extremely legitimate yet irresolvable claims...sort of like trying to divide a baby between two equal parents. 

I don't.  I think Jewish people have a right to live peacefully in Palestine but don't have any right to carve out an apartheid-like zone in order to create a Jewish state.  Note that I don't support the right of the refugee camps that are Gaza and the West Bank to exist as a state either, as that would amount to supporting a terrorist state (which foreign powers prop up with our generous foreign aid contributions that feed an entire class of armed militants).  I think citizens of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean regardless of religious or race have the right to exist freely and without bounds.

I voted for the first three because Israel is a good and valuable antion that represents the potential for other Middle Eastern democracies to succeed.

By occupying all the neighboring territory and treating the inhabitants of the occupied lands as third-class aliens?

Sure, Israel currently gives a weird taste of democracy there in the territories.

I don't, I'm neutral.

In much the same way that the European empires spread democracy?

I'd rather not have that sort of democracy.

For the territories, yes, sort of, it was meant to agree with what you said.

Not that I (or anyone else) takes it seriously, but Josef Stalin had a suggestion:

()
As for Israel's "right to exist," I don't see how it's any different than asking why Spain has a right to exist, or China has a right to exist, or Saudi Arabia has a right to exist.  This might have been a valid debate in 1947, but it certainly isn't now.

I don't necessarily think that an ethno-religious-based state is a good thing, and I'm not really fond of nationalism, but we don't live in an ideal world, so the one-state Israel/Palestine solution is completely unworkable (sadly).

Fixed.

If any state lacks a right to exist, it's Saud.

The Jewish Oblast is actually a much more logical location than Palestine. If Israel had been set up there, there would be no fighting.

I'm kind of against Israel in its current location on principle. Even if it's not 1947 anymore, the very basis of Zionism is so mindnumbingly fucking retarded it makes me disgusted to see any state based on it survive. But of course wiping out Israel wouldn't be humanitarian, so I say settle for them learning to not push around their neighbors because of some bullsh!t based on stuff that happened 2000 years ago.

But it would've required living A. in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and B. in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

Mission Accomplished!

Very logical. For a concentration camp.

We're talking a very a "special" logic here.  He actually said "much more".

I'm talking about looking at some chunk of land ignoring all other factors. Obviously anywhere under Stalin isn't a great place, but if we were to assume instead that say Israel was never founded successfully and then Russia ceded that land after the Soviet collapse for a Jewish state, it would be much less controversial and result in less wars than the current state of Israel.

Really the most "fair" thing to do would've been to carve out some state in Germany. But like I said, I just find the logic behind Zionism so idiotic I can't be sympathetic to any state based on it. Where your people lived 2000 years ago should not matter one iota today.

Silesia could have quite easily been designated a Jewish state.

This is an argument I never understood. Are you saying that the British Empire shouldn't have allowed Jews to move to Palestine? It's funny how the left is suddenly so anti-immigration and clinging to some sort of nativist belief when it comes to Israel.

100% agreed.

That is very much my point of view.

The first three reasons -which is why I support a two-state solution.  Unfortunately, given the unrestricted expansion of Jewish settlements onto Palestinian land, it is looking as if it is increasingly likely that the Palestinians will be turning to a one-state solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-state_solution) instead.  Which is pretty much the de facto situation on the ground anyway.  

I support its continued existance because it is an established democracy, but I would have opposed its creation in 1948.

This was the best answer, Israel have a right to exist, because several generations of Israeli have been born and have lived there. It's no different from the Polish right to the land east of the Oder.

Third, mostly, which is why I support a two-state solution.

Should be a secular state in which Palestinian's and Israeli's live together(peacefully).

Why is a thread from 2009 bumped? I believe that Israelis and Palestinians have the right to have an existence. Especially the latter which are the ones who suffer a military occupation since 45 years ago, if my maths are not wrong. I won't cast my vote in polls like this. Now, try to put Jews and Arabs in agreement and try to arrange the world. You'll have my moral support.

I support Israel's right to exist because:

1) I like the idea of a state increasingly dominated by the ultra-conservatives like the Haredi
2) It bugs a lot of leftists.

Which would have involved expelling the local Germans and would have been morally superior how?

I suppose Israel has a "right to exist" as much as any other country. We like to thumb our noses down on the way Israel was created but seriously, how many countries in the world don't have controversial foundational issues?

I also think it's weird that the Israel-Palestine conflict garners so much attention from some of the left, there is a lot more worse things in the world to save your outrage for.

Have you ever heard the phrase "Final Solution"?  Certainly if one were to create a Jewish-state after World War II by dispossessing those already there, Silesia was a more moral option than Palestine.  Even more moral would have been a Jewish state centered on Nuremberg.

Yes, because living surrounded by the people that just tried to wipe your nation out sounded like a great idea in 1947.

Because the Jewish people have a right to a safe homeland; because they've been there for a while; and because the land is held literally holy in their religion.


A lot of attention is brought to the conflict by anti-Semites.

On one hand, I could say they had it coming.

But given how the returning Jews were treated in many parts of Europe, and the Soviet expansionism that followed, I don't see this plan working out well for the Jews of Europe. Settling in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine was the only feasible option.

A tiny state on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea is not exactly safe.  It won't last more than a couple centuries, just as the Crusader states of a millennium ago did not last.

Perhaps the Crusader States in the Holy Land are a good point, indeed. By the way, Palestine and concretely Jerusalem, is a sacred land for Jews, Christians and Arabs too.

Slightly deviating from the topic -at what point does a two-state solution become an impossibility? 

1967.

Every reason to support it.

I don't support it for any of the first four reasons and think that it's creation was a great mistake. I support their existence only because by having existed for over 60 years, Israel's existence is now an established fact and destroying Israel would mostly be affecting people who have no responsibility for what happened when Israel was founded and would be just as great an injustice as the one that happened to the Arabs in 1948.