Talk Elections

Currently in the United States, both the left and the right seem to agree on support for Israel.  What few pro-Palestine people there are are either portrayed as right-wing antisemites or left-wing loonies.

When will criticism of Israel ever become mainstream in American politics?

How many Israel threads have you made this weekend alone?

When the banks (;)) and international financiers (;)) stop controlling the media (;)) and thus the political process. So, never.

This is the only one, isn't it?

Never, unless the Reloveution (sp?) garners momentum.

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It won't.

It's sad really, especially when you consider that Israel violates international law a lot more than Iran.

Probably not unless the Dome of the Rock is torn down to rebuild the Temple.

When the anti-Israel crowd has more money and lives in greater numbers in more swing states than the pro-Israel crowd. Same as every other political issue ever.

Having a negative view of the PA is probably something a good portion of supporters of the Palestinian cause have.

Amen

Hopefully never.


But on the other hand Israel has never held 52 Americans hostage for 14 months. Neither does it stone women, threaten to "wipe" its enemies from the face of the earth, aid and abett international terrorism, hang homosexuals or conduct rigged elections. Its wonderful how the left can support regimes like this simply due to their hatred of Israel.

And nobody will ever vote for a catholic, black or woman for president, right?

The question is when pro-Palestinians will be a bigger part of the Democratic base then Jews are. I expect a vocal pro-Palestine block to develop within the Democratic caucus in the next 10-20 years.

It won't in the foreseeable future.


I really doubt that; you'll notice, the trend over the past few years has been for more public approval of Israel's actions, not less (in 2000 pro-Israelis were at about ~60%, now they're ~70%; pro-Palestinians have remained about the same at ~20%). If anything, the logical trend is that pro-Israeli groups become stronger, not the reverse.

I can't believe I agree with you for once.

Bipartisanship is good :)

Not necessarily. I doubt that support is as solid as it looks; Ron Paul would probably count himself as a supporter but that won't really help the Israeli groups. And there really aren't many other worlds to conquer for the pro-Israel crowd; we don't really do anything diplomatically that they don't support (with the minor blip of the Arab Spring excepted), we give them unquestioned backing in the UN, almost singlehandedly prevent them from being a world pariah, and spend about 1/5th of our foreign aid budget directly and indirectly supporting them, even when they face no tangible threats and have a GDP per capita the size of Spain. And with the isolationists gaining ground and austerity as the byword of the day, support for them can only go down.

Echoing that support for Palestinians is likely at least marginally higher than support for the PA (the PA is a pretty depressing institution)

There might be more potential when Islam ceases to be an issue. Right now concerns about Islam are crowding Israel out.

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I can't understand how a left-wing/liberal person can be pro-Israel.  Don't liberals usually stand for international law and human rights?

::)

Don't be ridiculous. Liberals stand for such things when a Democrat champions such ideals, yes, and are against such ideas whenever a Republican promotes them. That's how these things work.

lol

Actually, from what I understand, many of the liberal Jewish block within the Democratic party aren't that hostile towards Palestine, and don't approve of much of what the right-wing in Israel is doing.

How influential is J Street really though? It seems to me that AIPAC and the likes of Haim Saban still dominate the Democratic party.

Is there any recent polling on opinions of Palestine and Israel that breaks down by age by party? 18-29 Democrats are most likely less supportive of Israel then their elders, but it'd be nice to see how significant that discrepancy is.

edit: An older poll from Gallup has some better crosstabs:
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I also stand for gay rights, economic welfare, health care for all, and other progressive ideals, which Israel follows quite a bit. Also, I don't even know if Israel has committed any more war crimes than the Palestinians have. I mean, I'm not one of those right-wingers who thinks Israel is perfect, it has its problems, but it's the one of the only democracies in the middle east, and is one of, and quite likely the most, progressive country in the middle east.

Israeli trigger-happiness has directly led to more support for Islamists and dictators. It is well and good that it is a democracy, and yes its opponents are usually worse, but that doesn't excuse its overly jingoistic foreign policy and its absurd treatment of the Palestinians.

The problem is that a majority of Arabs refuse to accept Israel's right to exist, leading to a more aggresive (understandably) Israeli foreign policy, which in turn leads to more Arab resentment. Its a vicious cycle.

Exactly. And its one which could only be broken by either politically painful sacrifices on both sides (as likely as hell freezing over) or a powerful, neutral third party cracking heads together making them both sacrifice, a task which the US has failed very, very badly at.

while the numbers may not have budged pro-Palestinian activism has surged on the American left in the last 8-10 years.  so should a geopolitical event bring the issue to the fore, an infrastructure is there to take advantage of it.

Short of Israel attacking the United States or openly becoming an ally of an enemy regime, I doubt it will ever happen.

Speaking of Israel...

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Thought that was sorta interesting...

Israel is a great country, I don't want it to ever become an issue.

A great country doing some very evil things.

You're either ignorant or an HP.

I'll echo this, but I'll add the qualifier 'unless it becomes radically different than it is now.'


Like...?


I've read enough of your posts to know in your head I fit into the second category :)

Like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy).

<snicker>

Could you be more specific? It's a rather long article.

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid) comes to mind as just one example.

Israel would totally have allowed them to go to Gaza if they had agreed to be inspected at Ashdod. You don't think it was rather suspicious they refused to be inspected?

They were carrying goods that Israel prohibits in Gaza and that would be removed on inspection, such as cement, wood, iron, animal medications, musical instruments, notebooks, books, candles, crayons, clothing, cups, cutlery, crockery, refrigerators, washing machines, glasses, light bulbs, matches, needles, sheets, blankets, shoes, mattresses, spare parts, threads, fuel, ginger, chocolate, lentils, tomato paste, juice, fishing rods, hatcheries, wheelchairs, hearing aids, glass, steel, bitumen, paint, doors, pipes, generators, electrical cables, and electrical poles (not saying they were carrying all of these, but certainly some of them). The humanitarian need of such was what caused them to press on.

     I find the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis to be deeply concerning. The fact that so many people even on this forum don't seem to see it makes me think that many people will accept just about any kind of conduct out of the allies of the United States government.

You are aware that Israel violates international law, right?

I've always seen you as a hardcore national sovereignty type.  When did you start caring (or recognizing the legitimacy of) "international law?"

When I stopped believing in national sovereignty and all that other Ron Paulian stuff.

Ah I thought someone would bring this old chestnut of the Israel-Apartheid analogy up. Unlike in South Africa under apartheid, Arabs have always had the vote and the right to sit in the Knesset. Its restrictions on Palestinian movement into Israel are highly sensible security wise. Really I think this is a hugely overblown analysis of the situation. Also one that is perpertrated by people who are mainly on the left-wing of politics, like Jimmy Carter (whose foreign policy based upon "human rights" allowed for the coming to power of Ayatollah Khomenei, Robert Mugabe and the Sandinistas).

Because Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, Ian Smith, and Anastasio Somoza were such better options than those three.  Right.

Israel certainly treats its citizens different based on their religions, but nowhere near apartheid levels. There are well documented examples of the Israeli government giving preferential treatment to Jewish holy sites over the holy sites of other religions, being slow to react to anti-Arab hate speech and violence, having laws like the 'Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law' which disproportionately affect those of Arab birth, and quasi-governmental organizations like the Jewish National Fund which only sells land to Jews. Some of this is understandable, as Israel is set up specifically as a Jewish state, but the question of how much discrimination is too much in a democratic country is still an issue.

Now, the occupied terriories on the other hand are pretty easy to compare to apartheid. They have a different criminal justice system for Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories which gives harsher sentences to Palestinians, has extensive well built roads and other kinds of infrastructure only Israelis can use while at the same time maintaining severe restrictions to Palestinian movement, and create Israeli enclaves which are guarded by the IDF which Palestinians are kept out of (see the whole Hebron mess).

They certainly weren't ideal options, but they were better than what those countries ended up with.

I don't know about the others, but I think it was previous presidents' foreign policies that led to Ayatollah Khomenei.

Blaming Khomeini's rise on Operation AJAX is a gross oversimplification and a clear example of Anglo/US-centric historicization that completely ignores Iranian domestic politics and political developments except when they can be contextualized as part of the Cold War.

Fixed.

With that said, we shouldn't be sending US Dollars to Israel or other nations.  They can defend themselves blah blah blah.

However, I don't understand how people lose sleep over this.

There was someone who thought Smith was a much better option, but he's been banned.

Ernest: he could also dye his skin to help us with our racial disparity.