In a rational society, any and all groups as valid targets for fair criticism. It doesn't mean that racists/reactionaries get a free pass, but it does mean that nobody gets special treatment.
Israel's actions are sometimes immoral and unjust (and to be fair, so are some of the steps the Palestinians occasionally take, especially Hamas) but it certainly is incredibly far from being apartheid.
Let that sink in.
Nobody in Europe is saying Israel shouldn't exist, just that it should be held to modern western moral standards and accountability with regards to human rights.
Lose the apartheid nonsense too, you’re insulting the Israelis, and the South Africans who suffered under the real deal.
And yes, Israel does have a drone assassination program - that's where the US got the idea for theirs. The US Hunter and Pioneer UAV systems are direct derivatives of Israeli models, etc.
You remember posting that, right?
Israel does have a drone assassination program - that's where the US got the idea for theirs. The US Hunter and Pioneer UAV systems are direct derivatives of Israeli models, etc.
Citations for that?
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_Israel
https://www.army-technology.com/features/featureuav-evolutio...
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/582099085/journalist-details-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killings_by_Israel_De...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/books/review-rise-and-kil...
“Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world.”
Just that Israel seems like a very small reparation to pay for centuries of oppression.
Israel is a far, far less "apartheid" nation than other middle eastern nations. So why does Israel get all the hate? Because of latent anti-Semitic beliefs in society, which is the point of my post.
easy to say when it's not your family that loses their land and lives in an open-air prison
Frankly I feel all religions of the book are ridiculous and we’d be better off if nobody had claim to the holy land. But ofc that will never happen.
Is it really that difficult for people in modern society to induce and identify the difference between nuanced beliefs and tacit/coded bigotry?
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ultra-orthodox-anti...
It’s considered racist to be “anti-“ any other country. If you went around being anti-Zimbabwe people would call you a racist, even though Zimbabwe has, by all accounts, an extremely shitty government.
You see, in this particular case things are a bit different, because what Israel is doing in Palestine has become one of its core policies in spite of condemnation from the international community (and many Israelis too, by the way), and it's been like this for decades.
The Jews have tried for decades to make peace. They've received rockets and hatred in response. They're fed up, and rightfully so.
Arabs have been there since centuries, some well planned religious migrations happened in last 100 years and then we have this mess. Why can't we go back to UN plan and call it a day ?
If they decided to convene a summit tomorrow and say "we accept the existence of Israel" instead of their hateful rhetoric that they want to see Israel wiped off the map, the entire problem would be solved.
The victim blaming here is deplorable. The Arabs refuse to accept a Jewish Homeland. Hence the wars, hence the sustained conflict.
Some intellectual honesty please? The two nations with the largest land border with Israel I.e Jordan and Egypt both recognize and have diplomatic relations with Israel.
>>The Arabs refuse to accept a Jewish Homeland
The question is a Jewish Homeland under what borders? The problem with Israel is that it was never ever content within it's borders. That was adequately demonstrated 7 years after it's independence when it invaded Egypt in 1956 to annex Sinai and double its territory. If not for Eisenhower putting sense into Ben Gurion.[1] The Arabs are right fully scared to recognize any entity that has no intention to define its final borders and keeps annexing land outside the UN plan. The Israeli claim of being "provoked" into capturing land also doesn't hold any water as the Sinai campaign of 1956 shows.
[1]https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-how-israel-gave...
I think most people don't have an opinion about Jews one way or another.
Most of the antisemtic people I've met are into conspiracy theories, and they seem to be evenly split between right and left.
On a related note, it's odd to me how people are so vociferously anti-Israel in Europe.
Can't they see that the Jews were treated as second class citizens on what had been their ancestral homelands for over a millennia following the original spread of Islam? This being the case, the creation of Israel is amends for the sustained history of Jewish oppression and displacement in the Middle East.
Willfully ignoring this seems like a choice motivated by latent bias against the Jews more than anything else.