The USA and Israel

[Sculptor]

GIve Israel back to the Jews? Of course.... wait a minute now. So let's return the map to the condition it was at the time of Hadrian? What could go wrong?
How absurd a document of the Balfour Decaration. And it is not essentially racist?

While I fundamentally agree with this, it also sort of becomes hard to consider because it's too late to undo it. How would you undo this terrible injustice?

Israelis would first have to acknowlege it.
I think Israel is a fait-acompli and would not be possible to reverse its foundation. But it needs to respect international law, the UN and its resolutions, and halt expansionism.

[Alexis Jacobi]

In America, though perhaps in other places too, the battle rages against what we used to believe existed: free speech rights.

Katie Halper describes how her piece using the term apartheid about Israel was suppressed and she was fired from appearing on The Hill (a YouTube news program).

[Immanuel Can]

The argument being made today is that Israel is non-different, at least in some senses which are notable, from South Africa.

Whoever is making it is insanely dumb and ill-informed. That's all anybody can say.

Maybe somebody should nominate them as president of Penn State, Harvard or MIT. That would be a good job for somebody like that, it seems...and the positions are now open, I gather.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The argument being made today is that Israel is non-different, at least in some senses which are notable, from South Africa.

Whoever is making it is insanely dumb and ill-informed. That's all anybody can say.

Maybe somebody should nominate them as president of Penn State, Harvard or MIT. That would be a good job for somebody like that, it seems...and the positions are now open, I gather.

One of your time-tested argumentation techniques is to fail to take the full argument that someone presents to you and to the forum, and to take out a small portion that you then argue against. You do this time and again. I regard the tactic as underhanded.

I carefully spoke when I said "at least in some senses which are notable" and thus the qualifier makes the assertion that something apartheid-like exists in Israel, but that it is not the same. It has comparable features is what should have been taken away from what I wrote. Not that it was the same. You chose to disregard that. Therefore you deliberately misstate what I tried to say. For your own purposes, obviously.

If you were to say that everyone who notices apartheid-like characteristics in Israel today is "insanely dumb and ill-informed" you would merely be making an outrageous claim (ad hominem I will also add, and you are very concerned about the use of ad hominem) while avoiding a fair-minded examination of the actual issue.

Your techniques of argument are corrupt. My endeavor is to try to understand why this is. In a post a page or two back I wrote about how we become invested in lies and obscurations. I presented a coherent piece (an interview of Miko Peled) where a strong argument is put forward that challenges the typical Israeli narrative. And I also presented a piece which takes a penetrating look at Christian Zionism.

But here's the thing: you take none of it into consideration. For that reason I said: "One of your time-tested argumentation techniques is to fail to take the full argument that someone presents to you and to the forum, and to take out a small portion that you then argue against."

Why is it that you do that? You refuse to take the full argument into consideration and respond fulsomely to it. But you extract out of it an element in it and begin to argue against that.

Your style of argument is corrupt. Again: Why is this? How do you justify it?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Maybe somebody should nominate them as president of Penn State, Harvard or MIT. That would be a good job for somebody like that, it seems...and the positions are now open, I gather.

There is an intense ideological confusion among people generally, I think this is safe to say. The Presidents of those universities, if they are fired or reprimanded, are learning that though they are the heads of the US's most important universities, that thinking freely and independently, and being capable of articulating one's views, is no longer allowed.

Why is this? What has happened that cultural and ideological issues have become so intensely heated that communication breaks down and it seems more appropriate to 'cancel' people than to allow debates and conversations to continue?

Just a short while back it was the American Right that was accusing students of being *snow-flakes* and as timid youths incapable of free thought, unwilling to even hear opposing ideas. Now it seems to be one particular faction that is shutting down conversation in the most extreme way.

At those Congressional hearings a farce was played out: a rehearsal, an enactment. Stefanik set up a trap through the use of a stark binary. It was all a trick. And the trick is used all the time (and quite often in those hearings for grandstanding purposes).

You will either toe the Party Line or you will be destroyed.

What does it mean that thousands of university students, and 3/4ths of the world today, see the Israel-Palestine conflict in ways that are unacceptable to those who manage power-systems?

Try as you-plural might the on-going conversation is not going to be shut down.

[Immanuel Can]

I carefully spoke when I said "at least in some senses which are notable"

They're very different situations. The analogy is so strained as to be absurd.

But I understand the purpose for which it has been floated. It's like when people say, "Israel is the new Third Reich": it's just an absurd attempt to associate Israel which whatever other "worst case" one can come up with, no matter how unlike it may be, and to position the Palestinians as mere "innocent victims," and thus to muddy the waters with a false analogy.

It's hogwash. Nice try, though.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Another false rhetorical technique. I did not say they were *the same situations*. That is what you say that I said (or what I refer to in reference to those who draw comparisons). And it is mere opinion to declare that a comparison is absurd. A comparison must be made carefully if one is to be made.

But I understand the purpose for which it has been floated.

That does not appear to be true. You declare that any opposition to Israel as a settler-occupier state, and all references to the initial crimes of Israel against Palestinians, and any reference to apartheid-like conditions, are falsely premised and have no merit.

The reason you do this, from what I gather, is because you see Israeli Jews as *God's people* who are being shepherded by history, by God and God's people (notably the Christian Zionists) back into the state of Israel for ulterior religious and apocalyptic reasons. For you to see in any other way would amount to turning against a supporting *pillar of belief* and heaven knows that would be catastrophic for you.

You say that you have special understanding about these *purposes* that you feel you have insight into, but you are blind to the purposes that drive your entire perspective.

I believe that I see you (fairly, accurately) for what you are.

[Immanuel Can]

I believe that I see you (fairly, accurately) for what you are.

I believe I don't care a fig. Quite frankly, I'm not overwhelmingly impressed by your discernment...not least of which is exhibited in the facile analogy attempted between Apartheid and Israel.

Nice try.

[Alexis Jacobi]

From a 2017 article in the NYTs: Why Israel Is Nothing Like Apartheid South Africa [Benjamin Pogrund is the author of “Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel”.]

The most deceptive of the B.D.S. movement’s demands is for the return of Palestinians who fled Israel or were chased out at gunpoint, mostly in the 1948 war. This “right of return” seems reasonable and just, but relatively few people realize that — uniquely among the world’s 65 million refugees — the Palestinians’ descendants are defined as refugees. The original 750,000 Palestinian refugees now number six million to seven million. A mass return would destroy Israel as a Jewish state, which is the whole purpose of its existence.

South African apartheid rigidly enforced racial laws. Israel is not remotely comparable. Yet the members of the B.D.S. movement are not stupid. For them to propagate this analogy in the name of human rights is cynical and manipulative. It reveals their true attitude toward Jews and the Jewish state. Their aims would eliminate Israel. That is what’s at stake when we allow the apartheid comparison.

There are sound reasons why a comparison can be made, and there are sound reasons why a strict comparison should be avoided.

But one thing that he says is true: that the incorporation of millions of Arabs would alter the nature of the State. It could no longer function as a Jewish state.

I wrote about this issue (about cultural and social identifications) in a post a few pages back.

Their aims would eliminate Israel. That is what’s at stake when we allow the apartheid comparison.

In a sense this is so. It would not eliminate Judaism however. It is hard to say what would result. But people like Miko Peled see Israel's evolution into a pan-ethnic democracy as the only route.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm not overwhelmingly impressed by your discernment

Whose discernment on this thread do you most align with?

[Immanuel Can]

I'm not overwhelmingly impressed by your discernment

Whose discernment on this thread do you most align with?

Not yours.

I have quite an appreciation for all kinds of people who disagree with me, but based on good reasons. I have no respect for people who resort to ad homs and other evasions instead of reasoned arguments, or who are adept at the skill of talking for long periods of time with their eyes closed.

[Alexis Jacobi]

What many people are talking about now is for a modification of the state into a single state with equal citizenship for all, based on residency, not origins, race, religion or ethnicity.

I do not say that I see this as even possible ... but I know that it is being talked about.

As it stands the Israeli state is founded on an identification that could not be allowed, and is not allowed, in any other state that I can think of.

Curiously, the radical right and the Dissident Right bemoan to the hypocrisy that Israel gets to define itself religiously and racially, but no European state or community could be allowed such an identity focus.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I have quite an appreciation for all kinds of people who disagree with me, but based on good reasons.

Who on this thread makes the best *reasoned* arguments?

You refer to "other evasions". What 'other evasions' are you referring to?

[Immanuel Can]

Who on this thread makes the best *reasoned* arguments?

Quite a few people, actually...but lamentably, fewer as time goes on, it seems. More and more space is being occupied by the blatherers who really don't know what philosophical discussion is for, and think it's about "wins" or "zingers," or some other nonsense. But there are still those who take the time for brief, thoughtful, relevant points and open-minded discussion...and it's certainly not limited to just one side of any debate.

But things like the virulent and stupid antisemitism being spouted in this thread, in complete ignorance of Jewish history or their long-standing association with the Promised Land, ignorance of the Palestinian complicity in seeing them wiped out, in disregard of the Holocaust (which is a big reason for modern Israel's existence), in total disregard for the destruction of Israel and every Jew alive, and even in complete uninterest in the recent butchery of civilians by Hamas...and then the dumping on Israel, as if Hamas is leaving them any choice at all...

That stuff's pathetic. It has nothing to do with philosophy. It has everything to do with base, stupid evil.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I am beginning to form the view that Israel does not have the right to exist in its present form. So I am supposing that you would regard that as the most antisemitic statement that it is possible to make.

Let me say that if it had happened, somehow, that what is Israel now could have been achieved without the displacement, killing, theft and oppression that proto-Israel engaged in, and the state of Israel were simply *there*, I would I think support a Jewish state: a state composed by people who identified as Jews.

Similarly, I have tried to imagine how other states -- France, Poland, Romania come to mind -- could define themselves either ethnically or religiously and do so without being condemned. Is it possible?

How can one support these types of *identifications* today when the democratic national ideal is the standard?

What about the original founders of the United States (the early colonies) who defined themselves and the Federation they envisioned as being for white Europeans and Christians?

What if someone today were to desire to create such communities or even an exclusive state?

I recognize that modern Israel is composed of many many different ethnic strains (and Jews with differently colored skin if that is how one wished to look at it and then Israeli-Arabs) and that its 'racism' is not of the precise same sort.

But if Israel can define itself through religious identification, and that of having had a Jewish mother (or parent), on what basis could one decry other people choosing to define themselves through what terms they wished and forming states and communities on that exclusive basis?