Really? How many square miles, in (say) the past two decades?
Israeli Forests
- Thread starter Tigranes
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Really? How many square miles, in (say) the past two decades?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
What do I survey land in the middle east for fun or something
Even a rough estimate would do. I don't think a few neighborhoods are worth all this fuss, really, and I was under the impression that Israel's expansion was limited to that (if we count the Gaza withdrawal, then the number becomes negative).
inthesomeday
Immortan
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Gandhi, whose country was politically freed by the blood of Islamist and communist martyrs and whose country remains economically colonized by the west because no war was fought for economic justice.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Yeah whatever, let the violence and the land grab continue, who cares anyway
inthesomeday
Immortan
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The weirdest thing about right-wing whataboutism is that when they pull it out it’s never even about things they ever pretended to care about in the first place.
Tigranes
Armenian
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Anywhere? I wish. Not even in Estonia. As of April 2017, only 29 UN member-states had officially recognized the historical events as genocide. Turkey is not a Germany, she actively blackmails and bullies anyone who consider to recognize. If you take a tour to Eastern Turkey and see completely deteriorated but still impressive Armenian church or monastery -- Turkish guide will tell you: Anatolians build it. Who are Anatolians -- I don't know, but "New Turkey" would like to obliterate even the word "Armenian" from anything in former Western Armenia. Just like the names of Israeli forests will obliterate the names of Palestinian villages.
Tigranes
Armenian
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I hope you personally see yourself among intelligent people, but, you know, among that other fortunate bunch of them who don't think that condemnation of state policy amounts to zoological hatred towards each and every national of that state and even outside of that state. If I say that Trump's America is acting unfair against refuges -- it does not mean that I hate every single American, including those from liberal California. It is also possible to have many good Jewish friends,
Jewish nanny, Jewish teacher-mentor, admire 20% of Jewish Noble prize winners -- and be critical of internal and external policies of State of Israel. The organization Zohar which protests forest is also Jewish organization.
People who use terms like antisemitism, racism, sexism need a constant reminder that it is a double edged sword. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Blanket accusation of anyone who does not have prejudice is in fact reverse antisemitism, reverse racism, reverse sexism.
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I love black people, I just oppose every major institution/movement advancing their place in society.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That's a pretty grandiose way to describe the State of Israel.
Oerdin
Deity
It all depends on if their is a double standard towards Israel or not. If there is then it is the very definition of anti-Semitism but if there is not then it most likely isn't. On this topic double standards abound.
So you agree Turkey has a horrible human rights record even at present, continues to discriminate against minorities and does not take any step to redress the monstrous deeds of their not so distant past.
Where then is the outrage against Turkey? How many condamnations from the UN they got? How many motions against them were voted? How many politicians from mainstream Western parties are asking for a boycott against turkey? Which western university is boycotting Turkish academics? How many movements call for the boycott and disinvestment of Turkey?
And Israel? Why the double standard? I propose an explanation. The people obsessed about the supposed evils of Israel are actually antisemites. The far left of western countries is overrun by antisemites. The moderate left often panders to antisemites. Leftists love to claim everyone but themselves is a racist. But if a right wing politician had the same history of "accidental" racism against blacks as Jeremy Corbyn has against Jews, he would be labeled a Klansman. And not without reason. That he continues to lead a major party speaks very loudly of his electorate.
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That's a pretty grandiose way to describe the State of Israel.
If Jews are persecuted anywhere, the State of Israel will take them in. It's hard to overstate the importance of this. Not even the great USA did much for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
Also, I want to refute nonsense about "being against only the Israeli government's actions," as if the population doesn't overwhelmingly support refusing the Palestinians their nonsensical return, support the settlements to varying degrees, support the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, etc. But it never enters the minds of Western liberals that they might not have the whole picture, instead of the poor deluded Israeli public that can't understand what their government is doing.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That doesn't really represent "advancing their place in society". It's almost the opposite, a safety net for when society rejects them altogether. Certainly it's a bit hyperbolic to suggest that the State of Israel has made some unparalleled contribution to the well-being of Jews living outside of Israel, not to mention rather unjust to the efforts of Jewish communities in those countries.
So? If there were an equivalent for black people or Yazidis, the analogy would still hold.
The State of Israel has made unparalleled contributions to Jews in all parts of the world. It's just that the Jews who received the benefits aren't living there anymore.
I would go so far as to argue that opposing Zionism today is antisemitic (unless you oppose all nationalism), for the same reason that an old-timey racist saying that he doesn't hate the Jews, he just wants them to go live in their own land like everybody else would be considered so.
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Is the benefit going to turn out to be "moving to Israel"? If you move a Jewish person to a country in which Jews are already top of the pile, that is not in itself a concrete advancement for Jewish people taken as a whole, even if it might represent a concrete advance for one specific Jewish person. You're not actually doing anything, in that action, to improve the standing of Jews vis-a-vis other ethnic or religion groups within their country, you're just opting them out of the game altogether. You may as well send to Mars, for all the benefit it offers those left behind.
I'm not contesting that the establishment and development of the State of Israel hasn't been beneficial to Israelis. (Or that it has. I'm keeping my mouth shut, on that one.) It's just, for Jews living outside of Israel, their own efforts, their own institutions, have made more of a difference than some distant Levantine republic. If anything, gratitude should flow the other way, from Israel to the diaspora that elevated it from a fragile, impoverished state on the fringe of Europe to a prosperous and modern nation.
I suspect this distorted sense of history is one of the many fracture that is opening between the Jews of the diaspora and the Jews of Israel.
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Israel has saved the lives of Diaspora Jews, even as it 'destroyed' those communities by shipping their members to the Levant. I didn't take you for an ethnonationalist, but who else would argue that the community is more important than the lives of individuals?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
But again, air-lifting people out of their society is not the same thing as improving their station within it. At the most immediate level, it does nothing for members of the group who are not extracted, or decline the offer. It does not represent any sort of collective improvement, even if might come to represent an individual improvement for many, most or even all members of the group. If fifty percent of black American took the next plane to Nigeria, we would not regard that as an improvement in the status of black Americans collectively, because the act offered no improvement to those that remained, and may even have worsened their condition by diminishing their communities and placing them even more starkly in the position of a minority.
The argument that the State of Israel represents a collective improvement for world Jewry rests on the claim that Israel itself somehow embodies the essence of Jewishness, even for those who have never so much as visited Israel. That's a much harder hill to defend- especially, as I said, that the diaspora communities that remain strong today, especially in the United States, have done more for Israel than it's ever offered them in return, at least in material terms.
