It was not long ago that many nations in the west made a impressive display of solidarity in favor of free speech following the massacre of the writers and cartoonists at the magazine Charlie Hebdo. There were marches and speeches celebrating the right to free speech and the need to be vigilant against attempts at censorship.
And yet, as Glenn Greenwald points out, despite those stirring words, those same nations are now actually criminalizing peaceful activism and speech. But only if the target is Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its oppression of Palestinian people.
The UK Government today announced that it is now illegal for “local [city] councils, public bodies and even some university student unions . . . to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” Thus, any entities that support or participate in the global boycott of Israeli settlements will face “severe penalties” under the criminal law.
This may sound like an extreme infringement of free speech and political activism – and of course it is – but it is far from unusual in the west. The opposite is now true. There is a very coordinated and well-financed campaign led by Israel and its supporters literally to criminalize political activism against Israeli occupation, based on the particular fear that the worldwide campaign of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) – modeled after the 1980s campaign that brought down the Israel-allied apartheid regime in South Africa – is succeeding.
The Israeli website +972 reported last year about a pending bill that “would ban entry to foreigners who promote the [BDS] movement that aims to pressure Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights.” In 2011, a law passed in Israel which “effectively ban[ned] any public call for a boycott — economic, cultural or academic — against Israel or its West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense.”
But the current censorship goal is to make such activism a crime not only in Israel, but in western countries generally. And it is succeeding.
…In the U.S., unbeknownst to many, there are similar legislative proscriptions on such activism, and a pending bill would strengthen the outlawing of BDS. As the Washington Post reported last June, “a wave of anti-BDS legislation is sweeping the U.S.” Numerous bills in Congress encourage or require state action to combat BDS.
Eyal Press warned in a must-read New York Times Op-Ed last month that under a Customs Bill passed by both houses of Congress and headed to the White House, “American officials will be obligated to treat the settlements as part of Israel in future trade negotiations,” a provision specifically designed “to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a grass-roots campaign.” But as Press notes, under existing law – which is almost never discussed – “Washington already forbids American companies to cooperate with state-led boycotts of Israel.”
The real purpose of this new law, as Press explains it, is to force American companies to treat settlements in the West Bank – which virtually the entire world views as illegal – as a valid part of Israel, by outlawing any behavior that would be deemed cooperative with a boycott of companies occupying the West Bank. U.S. companies would be forced to pretend that products produced in the occupied territories are actually produced in “Israel.” The White House announced that it will sign the bill despite its opposition to the AIPAC-backed pro-settlement provision.
…The suppression of anti-occupation activism is particularly acute on American college campuses. Among other things, that is deeply ironic. In the U.S. over the past year, there has been a widespread media debate over censorship on college campuses. Notably, the pundits who have most vocally condemned this censorship and held themselves out as free speech crusaders – such as New York‘s Jonathan Chait – have completely ignored what is far and away the most widespread form of campus censorship: namely, punishment of those who engage in activism against Israeli actions.
…But in terms of systematic, state-sponsored, formalized punishments for speech and activism, nothing compares to the growing multi-nation effort to criminalize activism against Israeli occupation. Rafeef Ziadah, a Palestinian a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told The Intercept: “Israel is increasingly unable to defend its regime of apartheid and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people and its regular massacres of Palestinians in Gaza so is resorting to asking supportive governments in the US and Europe to undermine free speech as a way of shielding it from criticism and measures aimed at holding it to account.”
This demonstrates once again the glaring hypocrisy when it comes to Israel, enjoying the support and protection of western nations, even while it has become effectively an apartheid state when it comes to its dealings with the Palestinian people.
This is not deterring the activists. A group of Jewish students from McGill University in Canada has published an article where they fight back against the charge most commonly used to suppress criticism, that being critical of Israeli policies is to be anti-Semitic. They are symbolic of the rising anti-Zionist sentiment among young people who are appealing to the long traditions of social justice in their religion that they say is being perverted by current Jewish leadership.
Coming to the realization that being Jewish does not require supporting Israel is cause for both internal and social conflict. At McGill in particular, it can be quite a marginalizing experience. Campus rhetoric consistently pairs anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, preventing Jewish students from speaking out comfortably against Israel’s state policies for fear of being labelled a “self-hating Jew.” On a campus where the heart of Jewish life is dominated by Hillel, an organization whose vision is one where “every student is inspired to make a commitment to Jewish life, learning and Israel,” and by Chabad, which wants its members to “apply the timeless Jewish principle of Ahavat [the love of] Israel” – not to mention Israel on Campus – it is crucial for Jews to act to break down the hegemony of this discourse at our university.
We define anti-Zionism as the opposition to the State of Israel as it exists today. We do not aim to speak for all Jews at McGill, nor for all Jewish anti-Zionists; the terms “Zionism” and “anti-Zionism” are both loaded and can be defined in many different ways, and our group members ascribe to various definitions within this range. Irrespective of these identifiers, however, we feel that we must begin to take up space in a campus discourse that has been polarized for too long. It is precisely because of our deep connection to Israel created by the consistent conflation of Judaism and Zionism that we can no longer merely question what we’ve been taught – we must take action.
Fighting for justice is integral to Jewish identity, considering the centuries of persecution and exile that constitute our people’s history. We root our actions in traditions that stem from lineages of Jewish feminist thought – such as that of Judith Plaskow, a religious studies professor at Manhattan College, who writes in Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective that “the economic, social, and moral costs of military occupation make it incompatible with equity within one’s own boundaries. The rightful claim of Palestinians to a land of their own renders occupation profoundly unjust.” By reclaiming Jewish traditions of resistance, we hope to encourage others to make room for a critical Jewish perspective.
The McGill students’ view are merely one sign of a widening disillusionment with Israel’s policies.
A recent poll found that 47 percent of the UK’s Jewish population believe that the Israeli government is “constantly creating obstacles to avoid engaging in the peace process.” Three quarters said that the expansion of settlements on the West Bank is a “major obstacle to peace.” Just under a third even said they wouldn’t demand that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
…You could chalk these new feelings of detachment from the Israeli state up to a shift in government policy. Netanyahu’s Likud party was re-elected into power in 2015, veering further rightwards with its pledge to end talk of further withdrawals from occupied land. “If I’m elected, there will be no Palestinian State,” Netanyahu boasted on the final day of the campaign.
Somewhere, deep in darkest recesses of the internet, a former commenter is startled from his slumber, shouts out “SCHICKLGRUBER!” and then once more lies his head down to sleep.
Did SLC finally manage to get himself banned here, or does he just not bother any more?
Equating BDS and human rights protests to anti-semitism requires not just a double standard but also historical revisionism. Yes, I am intentionally using that phrase and all its meaning.
Just as holocaust deniers try to rewrite the past and pretend crimes didn’t happen, those who hurl “anti-semitism” at critics of Israel are rewriting the present. The people facing extermination eighty years ago are not the people facing extermination today. Discussing that fact is not “anti-semitism”, no matter how much people repeat the lie. And yes, that turn of phrase is also intentional.
Friendly@#2:
Did SLC finally manage to get himself banned here, or does he just not bother any more?
I doubt he’d have gotten banned -- the various bloggers tolerated him to a remarkable degree; if he’d been a nazi he’d have been silenced but since he was a zionist-nationalist he got a pass.
I think he stopped bothering. In order to defend his views he wound up going on record with increasingly outlandish positions, and a couple of us were standing by to throw is his past quotes on the table any time he tried to pretend to be reasonable or credible. The alternative, not being such a horrible person, didn’t appear to occur to him -- I think he left when Ed Brayton left; maybe he’s stinking up Ed’s blog whereever Ed went.
There’s always another nationalist/tribalist bootlicker ready to fill the vacuum, though.
What? How could such laws be enforced? That’s not just anti-free speech, but anti-market. Can that really fly in the UK? Wouldn’t they need to come up with actual evidence that they’ve boycotted?
At the very least, it’s important to have that conversation out in the open. I don’t really support BDS tactics, but I certainly don’t think that should be seen as illegal. That’s preposterous.
@4 Marcus
Yes, he’s been on Ed’s new blog over at Patheos. Ed doesn’t write much about Israel/Palestine so he’s pretty tolerable.
Just for the record, no one has been banned here.
Mano, I think you’ve also (to a degree) participated in some of that glaring hypocrisy. You did nothing about SLC1’s ultranationalist and tribal rantings, in spite of the way he derailed many commenting chains with fruitless arguments about Israel. The question is: if he’d been a stormfronter coming in here and spewing racist hatred, would you have tolderated that, too? If he’d been an MRA throwing around anti-feminist dogwhistles, would you have suggested he find someplace else to put it? There were several times on this blog when SLC1 even threw down the antisemite card on a couple of us for having the temerity to disagree with his opinions about Israel.
Would you have put up with that from a racist, or a misogynist or a homophobe, Mano?
Clearly, an organisation that would avoid purchasing goods produced in the West Bank should simply avoid purchasing goods produced in all of Israel. Which… I thought they were already doing.
Ed doesn’t write much about Israel/Palestine so he’s pretty tolerable.
Yeah, because racist assholes are tolerable as long as they’re talking about how goofy christians are, or how dumb Donald Trump is, or whatever.
I think one of the problems is that you can have assholes that “pass” on a lot of axes except for one; they can be ‘respected’ members of the blogtariat until suddenly they explode into a Dawkins-like pustule of embarrassment for everyone.
It’s got to be tough for someone who has a blog. You don’t want to enforce an “agree with me or else” policy -- because that’s basically what Israel is doing here -- and it’s wrong in a blog for the same reasons. On the flip side: “yeah, you’re just fine with me as long as you’re not being an asshole about that specific thing seems like a great way to have a lot of ‘friends’ that are assholes.
Israel Announces $26 Million Cyberattack on BDS Movement and Muslim Social Media Users in the West.
Israel Announces $26 Million Cyberattack on BDS Movement and Muslim Social Media Users in the West.
“… and Muslim”
When you go to the dark side, you become what you hated.
Pierce R. Butler (#11) --
South Africa used to “ban” people in an attempt to silence them. “Banning” included not just house arrest and not in the presence of more than one person other than family members. But most notably, banning preventing the victim from being allowed to publish their words. It was censorship with the threat of prison, terrorism, violence and murder for those who dared to speak out. Kinda like now.
@10 Marcus Ranum
Is this sarcasm? Because it’s not really false or anything. It’s like at Thanksgiving Dinner where you’re not supposed to engage Uncle Jerry about black people because wow.
Well, you probably fit into that category on some issues as well. I feel like there’s a lack of self-reflection in that sort of attitude. We are trying to be as enlightened as we can be.
But he was pretty infuriating on this topic so I totally get where you’re coming from.
doublereed@#14:
Well, you probably fit into that category on some issues as well.
Quite possibly. But if I were getting consistent pushback about my attitude I’d rethink it, instead of automatically doubling down.
There’s an oft-trotted accusation that people are trying to enforce social conformity, which seems to me to be incorrect -- what you’re dealing with is a consensus that a certain view is disgusting. It’s very hard (in my opinion) to make an objective argument why one opinion is better than another -- but it’s fairly easy to line up opinions and say “you disagree with most of us.” In that situation, if you’re the one person holding a repugnant view, well, yeah, maybe it’s time to rethink it or go play somewhere else. There’s the question of when do you force someone to go play somewhere else, and when do you simply all jump on them and try to convince them, or treat them with extended dismissive scorn.
I recognize extended dismissive scorn when I see it, because I’ve delivered a lot of it. If I was catching a lot of it incoming from the preponderance of people in a discussion -- yeah, I’d rethink my views.
I’ve never understood people who get a lengthy shower in dismissive scorn and come out of it convinced more than ever that their opinion is best.
You’ve never been on reddit?
Is this sarcasm? Because it’s not really false or anything. It’s like at Thanksgiving Dinner where you’re not supposed to engage Uncle Jerry about black people because wow.
No, I wasn’t being sarcastic.
I wouldn’t sit at a thanksgiving table with racist Uncle Jerry.
It’s easier to deal with the fallout from just refusing to put up with someone, than to sit there and hate yourself for enabling their douchery.
So, if SLC1 were still here talking about shickelgruber and 15mt nukes, would you just sit with a smile on your face? Is the only reason you’re willing to engage with him (if you are) because he’s anonymous and you’re relatively anonymous, and it’s not going to cost you anything to confront him? I guess that’s a useful way of measuring how many fucks you give… i.e.: about a milli-fuck.
You’ve never been on reddit?
I left. I don’t want to waste my time hanging out with assholes and there seem to be a lot of them there. Maybe because they’re tolerated?
I hope our esteemed host does not set a limit on links to AlterNet.org:
5 of the Most Appalling Acts of Incitement From Israel This Week: Top Army Rabbi Dances with Author of Notorious ‘Murder Manual’.
It seems my little joke stirred things up. I apologize.
I look forward to the forthcoming quintuple post of the usual already refuted dreck sometime later today.
What a misleading headline! The accurate version would read “Anti-Semitic hate campaign correctly banned.”
Because that’s exactly what the BDS is. And there is a very ugly under-current of Judaeophobia and anti-Americanism and echo of past history behind it :
Source -- one among a great many : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_boycotts
There’s a long awful hate-filled history of anti-Semitic boycotts including the BDS with its present facade of “mere” Israel-bashing and we know where they lead and what they are and that there are good reasons why this form of hate speech like homophobic and transphobic and misogynist hate speech should NOT be tolerated or accepted.
Its a pity so many commenters here have allowed their ideological blinkers to blind them to that simple reality along with some other key facts of the Palestinian issue.
For notable instances :
1) That the territories of Judea and Samaria are disputed not “occupied” and that the Jewish people do have legitimate claims -- historic, cultural and longstanding -- to that land.
2) Plus that the obstacles to peace have been coming mostly from the Arab side -- Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the brainwashing transformed Arab children into homicide-bomber worshippers and hate-filled religious bigots.
3) Plus the repeated rejections of generous peace offers by the Palestinians in addition to Israel voluntarily giving up the Gaza strip and then getting rockets fired back at it from there afterwards.
No nation should be so unfairly singled out and wrongly attacked and the victim of a constant campaign to delegitimise its very right to exist for doing what any nation would do in Israel’s place -- indeed probably most nations would respond with much greater violence and harsher warfare than Israel has ever done.
Incidentally, why no similar BDS campaigns against say China over Tibet and Xinjiang or Indonesia over West Papua and other islands and places seeking to break away from the Javanese empire or Russia over Chechyna etc .. As the Jewish people have seemingly said throughout their existence -- why us? Why is hate speech and hate campaigns like the BDS acceptable here only against Israel and Jewish people and businesses?
@21. Holms : I take it you refer to me here? But the thing is what I note and say is NOT “dreck” as you falsely mischaracterise it but are actually all valid facts and points that have NOT been refuted -- the mere fact that you disagree and have argued the opposite -and incorrect side -- does not, btw, count as refutation.
Also what’s wrong with having multiple comments especially when responding to (by your request?) multiple people arguing multiple points and themselves making multiple posts? Its a form of discussion and often comments are easiest and best done in such quintuplets rather than in huge single posts which arethen considered “tl:dr, too verbose, etc … I see nothing wrong and in fact much good with my style of engagement here -- which I ‘spose you’d have to expect me to say! If you think it’s wrong, then please explain why and what changes you’d like me to make that you’d find preferable and why? 9
PS. Incidentally Holms I’ve also replied to your comment(s) here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/singham/2016/02/15/another-republican-debate-fiasco/#comment-4330520
If you have actual refutations of my arguments here then please provide links to them. IF they’re as “refuted” as you say as often as you say that should be no problem for you.
Note that restrictions on the number of links and lack of ability to edit except by making additional corrected comments are additional reasons for the “quintuple”or multiple posts here.
I’ll also note that I support the 8 state solution for the Palestinians and do NOT advocate war other than in self-defence and wish all people to be treated like people -- fairly and well .
Citations and some good sources -- Evidence for (1) noted in # 22 is here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGYxLWUKwWo
See :
http://palestinianemirates.com/
For the 8 state solution which I support which actually gives the Palestinians not merely one state but seven additional ones as well as the Gaza state they already have -- and Jordan which was specifically carved off from the British Mandate to serve as the Arab state alongside the Jewish one of Israel.
22
It is exactly as hateful to boycott Israeli goods to show disapproval of Israeli policies / actions, as it is to boycott Chick Fil A to show disapproval of their stated position against gay marriage. That is, it is not hateful in the slightest.
Or are you saying that all boycotts are to be considered hateful? I don’t see you objecting to any other boycott in those terms. Oh right, this is just part of your special pleading on behalf of Israel as usual. For example, you cite:
Note that this passage actually details twoboycotts, yet it is clear you do not disapprove of the fact that Jews were engaging in a boycott of their own as a form of protest.
I suspect that this is because you very well know that there is nothing wrong with a boycott in the general case. The consumer can spend however they wish, based on whatever reasoning they wish, you just apply your reasoning extremely selectively.
Note also that there is a vast difference between boycotting out of prejudice vs. boycotting as a protest against agtions. Boycotting Israeli goods because Israel has loads of Jews is based on disliking Jews, boycotting Israeli goods as a protest against Israeli government policy is based on disliking government policy.
Of course you are well aware of this as this distinction has been pointed out to you many times, you are simply omitting this inconvenient fact because you are incorrigibly dishonest on this topic.
Moving on…
If having historical ties to the region is sufficient to claim the land, then you are omitting the fact that the Palestinians also have historical ties and are by that reasoning equally entitled to it. I take it then that you would approve their annexing whatever Jewish property they wanted…? You know, assuming you were to apply your logic consistently WHOOPS there’s my mistake.
So. Jews, and anyone else for that matter, are welcome to any land that they purchased fairly from the previous legal owner. This, very obviously, does not include annexation.
Yeah, it’s a real mystery where all that hatred comes from… never mind the fact that three murders were recently used as a causus belli to invade Gaza and kill 3,000. Oh and the total air, land, and sea blockade. And the deliberate destruction of roads, power generation and water purification. And a no go zone declared in which any Palestinian will be murdered. And the deliberate drainage and contamination of the Gazan water table, along with total control over West Bank water distribution with the result that Israel simply helps itself to 80% iirc of the water in the region. And denial of basic aid in the form of construction materials, medical supplies, and ever water. And the continued annexation of Palestinian land, coontravening not only the UN, not only Palestinian rights, but even their own supreme court.
/s (for the slow of comprehension)
In other words, Israel is the one in the driver’s seat, Israel is the one that has the power to put a stop to the killing because Israel is the one doing the killing.
“Generous” OH MY STARS!
It amazes me that you can say the above, while having Israel in mind rather than Palestine.
Most nations would commit war crimes? A quick look around the world shows that to be false. Oh and yet again, praising Israel for only murdering thousands when they have the power to murder millions is a sad indictment of the low low standard of Israeli behaviour. You may as well praise the Catholic Church for ‘only’ molesting x number of children insted of 2x.
But China does face international criticism for its abuses; Russia does face international criticism for its abuses etc etc etc. The key difference being Israel has the backing of USA, making it a) immune to UN sanction and b) a political matter much closer to home for our esteemed American blog author.
#23
Your reasoning has been dissected and shown to be dishonest every time this topic comes up, so no.
The problem with this defense is that you most certainly do not make any attempt to reply in a nice organised fashion, in which each of your posts is in reply to a single other post. Rather, it is highly evident, to me at least, that you simply blurt out whatever crosses your mind in a rambling stream of consiousness string of replies, in which you hit post almost randomly only to post again and again as each random thought strikes your fancy.
I’ve been noticing for a while now that Israel is not-so-slowly becoming exactly the monster it was formed to (supposedly) escape.
I got nothing against Jews or Muslims.
I just take issue when certain countries use disproportionate force in “retribution” for a few tiny rocks or a shouty teenager. Also, when aforementioned countries steal other people’s land and then kill the inhabitants for disagreeing.
And yes, I can confirm that the completely-nutless (and witless) colnago/SLC is over at Ed’s stinking up the place with his “genocide is cool” bullshit.
(My apologies for the back-to-back posts!)
SteveOr blusters and claims again and again:
the Jewish people do have legitimate claims – historic, cultural and longstanding – to that land
I know I’ve asked you this before, but why do you think the jewish people’s claim is more valid than the akkadians, sumerians, or babylonians?
Of course the jews are just as descended from those lot as the palestinians who were living there before they were driven off their land by the european colonists.
The whole “historic cultural and longstanding claim to territory” thing is some amazing reeking bullshit. I mean, one could just as easily say that the germans were exercising their historic, cultural, longstanding claim to german lands and real estate when they started deporting people to death camps. I know that’s an offensive idea. So maybe they had a historic, cultural, and longstanding claim to austria. Whatever. The idea of someone coming along and displacing anyone based on some claim going back hundreds of years is offensively stupid.
What, do I get to go back to norway and re-occupy my family’s old farmstead? Wait, I swear god wants me to have it. And it was my family’s for centuries.
How about Egypt’s moronic leadership sentencing a toddler for murder for a political demonstration? That is pretty chilling to free speech there. Even more so than the bullshit they did with the al-Jarzeera journalists.
Don’t go there!
@26. Holms : “It is exactly as hateful to boycott Israeli goods to show disapproval of Israeli policies / actions, as it is to boycott Chick Fil A to show disapproval of their stated position against gay marriage. That is, it is not hateful in the slightest.”
Those are two totally different things. The Chik-Fil A boycott is a legitimate one against a group of homophobes whereas the BDS is clearly and absolutely an anti-Semitic hate campaign as proven by European law courts -- see :
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/10/30/its-official-bds-is-hate-speech/#
Plus see :
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/culture-civilization/religion/judaism/hate-speech-illustrates-true-face-of-bds-university-of-michigan-anti-semitism/
Which already answers your question here :
No, clearly I wouldn’t say all boycotts are hateful but some of them are and when they are hateful as in the case of the BDS they should be opposed. Do you support hate speech Holms ? If you support the BDS then that is exactly what you are doing. Do you think you know better than a French court and other experts who are telling you that you are wrong and I am correct here?
See cited quotes and sources above -- the BDS is boycotting out of prejudice with the excuse of blaming Israel’s actions is just not credible. The BDS hate campaign *is* anti-Semitic and that is simply the fact however much you or anyone else may try to incorrigibly dishonestly ignore that after it has been repeatedly pointed out to you.
OFFS! Italics fail take II for clarity sure wish we could edit :
@26. Holms :
Those are very obviusoly indeed two totally different things. The Chik-Fil A boycott is a legitimate one against a group of homophobes whereas the BDS is clearly and absolutely an anti-Semitic hate campaign as proven by European law courts – see :
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/10/30/its-official-bds-is-hate-speech/#
Plus see :
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/culture-civilization/religion/judaism/hate-speech-illustrates-true-face-of-bds-university-of-michigan-anti-semitism/
Which already answers your question here :
No, clearly I wouldn’t, have not been saying and am NOT saying that all boycotts are hateful but some of them are and when they are hateful as in the case of the BDS they should be opposed. Do you support hate speech Holms ? If you support the BDS then that is exactly what you *are* doing! Do you think you know better than a French court and other experts who are telling you that you are wrong and I am correct here?
See cited quotes and sources above – the BDS is boycotting out of prejudice with the [pitiful fig-leaf excuse of blaming Israel’s actions being just not credible. The BDS hate campaign *is* anti-Semitic and that is simply the fact however much you or anyone else may try to incorrigibly dishonestly ignore that after it has been repeatedly pointed out to you.
Marcus Ranum (#29) --
I suspect the sociopath keeps the FTB search box on the browser’s speeddial and checks it hourly for any mention of Israel. Maybe he is being paid to do this, given how much time he spends doing it. His obsession can be seen in the form of multiple posts of excessive verbal diarrhoea.
Which I still scroll past and don’t read.
Continued @ 26. Holms :
You obviously know very little about Israeli and regional history. See the informative and spot on ‘Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth About the West Bank’ clip by Danny Ayalon which I linked to in #25.
(You should watch and learn from all Ayalon’s other clips too.)
Israel captured Judea and Samaria (back -- originally Jewish) from Jordan which was illegally occupying it during a war aimed at exterminating the Jewish state by a number of Arab ones. So, yes, Israel does have the legal right to that land which is disputed NOT occupied. Try to watch again until you actually get it. Yes, okay, the Arabs do have a right to some of the disputed land they have lived on -- and this right has already been met with Jordan and Gaza and perhaps a future Palestinian state or states when agreed to by them and mutually acceptable with the Israelis after the Arabs have stopped all that Jihadist genocide shit they keep trying to do. Israel keeps offering to swap land for peace and the Arabs keep turning down the generous offers Israel make for peace.
Yes very generous indeed. Again -- take a look at an atlas or globe sometime and compare the size of Israel and the number of surrounding states and ask why exactly the Arabs who want to exterminate them should be given anything at all! You have never answered this question which I’ve asked you to do several times.
Remember here that the Israelis have given their blood,sweat,tears and lives for the land here which you would hand over to horrific brutal enemies of theirs who would then use it to try to genocide them. Exhibit A : Gaza and Hamas. How generous do you think they should be -- how generous would you be in such circumstances?
Actually it really isn’t. It is lifetimes and generations of Arab hate propaganda and a culture deeply steeped to its core in anti-Semitism and violence :
arabisraeliconflict (dot) info / arab-israel-facts/fact8-palestinian-children
Is this really the side you want to stand on & support Holms? (& everyone really.)
@34. left0ver1under : You are wrong on all counts there as usual and arguably guilty of defamation. Shame on you. Your inability to actually argue with the points raised and your resort to unfounded lies and insults is duly noted.
@29. Marckus RanumB says “I know I’ve asked you this before, but why do you think the jewish people’s claim is more valid than the akkadians, sumerians, or babylonians?”
As I’ve answered you before that claim of yours is hillariously laughable as well as just sad.
The Sumerians, Babylonians etc .. are in Mesopotamia and died out long ago. Their modern descendants have their own nations -- Iraq, Syria etc .. and aren’t they doing a great job of the places they do run! /Sarc
Yegods! For someone who claims historical expertise you sure are totally historically ignorant! Your characterisation there is again just ludicrous and very false. The Israelites and Jewish history have long been in Israel long before that deluded thug Mohammad even existed and the Jewish Israelis are Israel’s indigenous peoples -- the Arabs were the ones with the Colonial empires, well, them and the Ottomans and Romans.
PS. Did you ever answer my questiosnonthe other thread btw?
@26. Holms : “Most nations would commit war crimes? A quick look around the world shows that to be false.”
Does it? I don’t think so. Especially given that you would accuse America and its allies as well as Russia , China, Indonesia, most of the tinpot dictatorship and Islamist third world hellholes.
That’s without most nations being under the sort of desperate circumstances with the genocidal seige, BDS BS constant international attack and having the nightmarish bloodthirsty neighbours that Israel has to endure. Its no wonder the Israelis get angry and feel desperate sometimes.
No, I don’t think anyone should committ war crimes nor am I advocating it for anyone.
I pay US taxes. If Israel doesn’t want me to be critical of it’s actions, it can stop throwing a tantrum and simply stop taking my money. Or stop doing utterly despicable things that deserve criticism.
Or better yet, do both.
#33
Those are very obviusoly indeed two totally different things. The Chik-Fil A boycott is a legitimate one against a group of homophobes whereas the BDS is clearly and absolutely an anti-Semitic hate campaign as proven by European law courts – see :
You imbecile, did you even read your own source? Here:
The ruling was not against BDS in the general sense, but against the particularly thuggish group campaigning for it. Your characterisation that this constitutes ‘European law courts’ passing a ruling on BDS is thus grossly inaccurate; one court in one European nation passed a ruling on one BDS campaign. Beyond that, your source is merely an opinion piece.
You follow this with your standard (and tedious) accusation of being in favour of hate speech / anti-semitism, and then this gem:
You have a dubious interpretation of a small court case as your basis for claiming BDS = bigotry. I on the other hand have a United Stated appeals court affirming the dismissal of charges against a shop network for boycotting Israeli goods, stating that participation in the boycott is protected by the first amendment. So, unlike the court case you cited, this one clearly takes a stance on the broader concept of boycotting as a means to achieve social change.
Thus, boycotting a group as a protest against their actions remains a legitimate form of protest, and protest against national policy is distinctly unlike protest against an ethnicity / religion.
#35
That’s an impressive failure on your part. Mere seconds after accusing me of being ignorant of history, you actually claim that Jews were the original owners of the region! Amazing, nuff said.
Actually, I have answered that and similar multiple times. Earlier in this thread in fact, I stated “So. Jews, and anyone else for that matter, are welcome to any land that they purchased fairly from the previous legal owner. This, very obviously, does not include annexation.” Or in other words, the Arabs have every right to retain they land they already own, free from annexation.
You even quoted that reply! Therefore your statement that I had not answered that question is another childish lie.
Generous. You keep using that word etc… please refer to my post #26, the paragraph beginning “Yeah, it’s a real mystery where all that hatred comes from…” for examples of Israeli ‘generosity’ towards Gazans in particular. You know, the one you almost quoted but cut short and ignored.
#36
Oh nice, an assertion of ‘you are wrong’ lacking any argument.
#38
I almost admire the sheer nerve you have, to claim that out of Palestinians and Israelis, Israelis are the people being besieged. Wow.
Again, I can only point you to the paragraph in my post #26 that I referenced above. Go ahead and give me a justification for denying water to Gaza for example.
Without agreeing on criminalising boycotts of Israel, I am dubious of BDS methods of boycotting anything and everything Israeli, including academic and cultural boycotts. Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein had criticisms of this that I largely agree with. Why single out Israel for these kinds of tactics when plenty of countries, like some of Israel’s neighbours, have worse human rights records? It makes more sense to me to limit these tactics specifically to the occupation and settlements, which are obviously illegal and unjust. Targeting Israel as a whole raises the question, why not do the same to most other countries too?
That’s true enough, there is a lot of social ill in the world and thus we can imagine a large number of ‘boycott X nation’ sorts of movements that could take place and with the same logical basis. A friend of mine for example took the supreme sacrifice of boycotting Russian goods (he gave up his favourite vodka brand!) as a protest against their recent stance against gay people.
The fact that these other hypothetical boycott movements haven’t taken place (or have, have not grabbed public attention to the same degree) is not an example of hypocrisy in my view; the underlying logic of that argument is merely that social movements for other ills ideally should exist, but that is hardly the fault of those that do. In my view, that argument is about as logical as calling cancer research charities hypocritical because they only attempt to fix a subset of the world’s medical ills. If another medical issue is being neglected by charities / governments, that is hardly an argument against the existence of anti-cancer research. It just means there is room for more, but public attention is a fickle thing.
To put it another way, international social pressure is considered good and proper against many nations past and present, should those campaigns be abandoned simply because some other nations are escaping public outcry? I don’t think so.
These sorts of boycott campaigns are usually targeted at countries which are otherwise regarded as members of the civilised world, which seem to care about their status as members of the civilised world, which are not being subjected to appropriate (in the judgement of the boycott advocates) diplomatic pressures by our governments, and which, thanks to the nature of their economies and trade and cultural relations, can actually be affected by such actions. In other words, where they might work.
There isn’t an organised “Boycott Saudi Arabia” campaign because (a) practically everybody who might potentially be a target of such a campaign is already agreed that Saudi Arabia are a bunch of bastards and are already refusing to have anything to do with them, (b) Saudi Arabia is already the subject of a fair bit of diplomatic pressure (although I’d argue not nearly enough), and (c) the Saudis probably wouldn’t give a damn anyway, because they’re a bunch of bastards (see point a). Oh, and given that Saudi Arabia’s primary export is oil, which is a fungible, globally-traded commodity, the only really effective way for individuals to boycott Saudi Arabia would be to stop using oil entirely. (Which I’m already trying to do anyway, for other reasons, but it’s obviously a tall order.) It’s not like you can urge people to divest from Saudi Aramco, because it’s a state-owned company and nobody else is invested in it in the first place.
Even in the case of academic and cultural boycotts, these are not usually directed at overtly dictatorial regimes, on the grounds that they’re unlikely to make any difference, and will probably only really harm the principle sources of opposition to the regime. The relationship between cultural institutions is fundamentally different in theocracies from what it is in democracies, so we have to treat them differently.
In short, we single out Israel for these sort of tactics because Israel is the sort of society where they might actually work, and that (ironically enough) is actually to Israel’s credit.
patrick2 (#42) --
Yeah, why single out the US for human rights abuses and war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq when Syria, North Korea and the PRC are doing it?
Your “argument” is as idiotic as it is dishonest.
@29. Marckus RanumB
At least you didn’t call me “Shickelgruber”
The Sumerians, Babylonians etc .. are in Mesopotamia and died out long ago.
Of course they didn’t “die out” — they left lots of descendants. All of whom interbred with everyone else in the region, including everyone else who has ever lived there. Only a fucking idiot racist who understands nothing whatsoever about population genetics would think that there’s a single “people” that could arise out of such a mixing bowl. Everyone in the region is interrelated and you’ve got everything ranging from the sumerians, babylonians, akkadians, ptolemaic greeks, egyptians, romans, and even the mongols (known as ‘mamelukes’ — the people who lived in that region before the european recolonialization are the descendants of everyone -- and the distant cousins of the european colonialists that chased them off their land.
You keep saying that my point is laughable but it’s obvious you simply don’t understand it. More to the point, you’re basing your ‘history’ on an arbitrary and convenient start-point. History doesn’t just start when the jews claim they displaced the philistines.
Oh, yeah, do you know what the ‘philistines’ were? Here’s a hint: they left their name to history -- nowadays it’s pronounced ‘palestine’ …
Their modern descendants have their own nations – Iraq, Syria etc .. and aren’t they doing a great job of the places they do run! /Sarc
They also had palestine.
Let me see if I can understand your argument. Because there are people living in iraq and syria, uh, the people living in palestine have no rights? That’s as fucked up as saying that because there were jews who owned land in russia, the ones living in poland had no rights. I don’t know anyone who’d say anything that fucked up, but that’s what you appear to be positing.
Also: your knowledge of history is lacking. One of the reasons the residents of iraq and syria are not having a particularly good time is because they have been fucked over by successive waves of colonialists. The most recent -- the british and americans -- have prevented the locals from having any significant political self-determination. But the current european attempt to colonize the area (I am referring to israel) is not likely to last as long as the ‘kingdom of jerusalem’ that the europeans built following the first crusade. That one lasted 200 years or so.
Anyhow, blaming the people of iraq and syria for their political problems is akin to an abusive husband blaming his wife for having a black eye. It’s disgusting and tasteless. You’re either an ignorant fuck or an asshole. Or both.
The Israelites and Jewish history have long been in Israel long before that deluded thug Mohammad even existed and the Jewish Israelis are Israel’s indigenous peoples – the Arabs were the ones with the Colonial empires, well, them and the Ottomans and Romans.
Dimwit, I was not referring to islam. Yes, the jews are descended from the babylonians/akkadians/sumerians. That happened long before the fiction of mohammed -- and long before the fictions of moses and david and so forth. Modern archeology has turned up zero support for all the fictions of the hebrew bible. They’re canaanites -- like their cousins who they displaced from palestine in the 20th century. But those sorts of things are fictions -- populations in that area are so mixed that even a crazed racist can’t claim there’s some kind of blood line that means anything. Everyone in that region has greeks, romans, egyptians, and even mongols in their woodpiles.
Did you ever answer my questiosnonthe other thread btw?
I don’t know.
But if I ignored some of your rantings it doesn’t make them any more or less right.
left0ver1under #44
I didn’t say anything about singling Israel out for war crimes and human rights abuses, I’m all for boycotts and sanctions targeting the occupation and settlements. I was talking about blanket boycotts of the country.
Dunc #42
Holms#42
Those are fair points. Like I said, I agree with targeting settlement products and the like, but I’m more sceptical of cultural and academic boycotts, or Israeli products as a whole. Partly it’s that I find academic and cultural boycotts of countries highly obnoxious unless they can be justified. And in this case, I’m not sure they achieve anything that a boycott campaign targeting only the settlements and occupation couldn’t achieve.
The model is surely the boycott of South Africa over apartheid. The boycott was not of “apartheid products” -- it was a generalised blanket boycott of products of that country, and of the artistic and sporting and other types of engagement with that country. Did it “work”? And was it wrong for the boycott to be so comprehensive? Do you think it would have worked if it had been less comprehensive, more targeted, as you suggest in this case?
In the case of South Africa, there’s a pretty strong argument that the cultural and sporting boycott was the most effective aspect of the boycott campaign, because it sent a very strong message that they were no longer regarded as part of the civilised world. Economic and trade decisions can have many aspects, but when you stop inviting people to your parties (and start refusing to attend parties they’re invited to), it sends a pretty clear message.
Whether this can translate to the Israeli situation or not, I don’t know.
Y’know I’m sure I could say a million and one things on this issue and thread.
But .. ‘ll spare ya for now anyhow.
Its been a long day, I’m tired and drunk. I’ve worked hard and have to work hard again tomorrow.
So I’m just going to say, ask, beg this of y’all.
Stop hating on Israel please. Its already suffered & suffering enough and its people deserve and need your love and undrestadningand compassion NOT hate.
They get too much hate, too much singling out and unfair treatment already.
Israelis * are people like youse.
And they deserve like you’d want for yourselves better.
Ya gunna deny ’em that and deny that they too are people?
(Even the Jewish settlers you probably all don’t know and appreciate and care for.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_attack
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-israel-violence-idUSTRE72B0B920110312
Go Arabs eh? Keep on killing and never stiop just since they haven’t stopped wishing more genocide onthe Jews isnce 1948 and before.
If you want to help the Palestinians -tell ém to make peace not war. Give up their dream of extermination of Israel and driving the Jews into the sea and just stop fucking killing people! Next peace offer you get. Fucking take it.
Too many dead. Jews are people too. How the fuck do so many not seem to see and accept that?
Yikes, five people killed at once. Horrible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_%282008%E2%80%9309%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Israeli_raid_on_Lebanon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Defense
Will that work?
Yeah, and Charlie Brown really should kick that football next time Lucy gives him the chance…
BTW. Oh & just for holms :
Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel! Israel!
And damn right Greater Israel and more of it -- and more Jewish may it be! Have you ever seen how small the one Jewish state (or read Der Judenstaat ) is and yet how great it is for science and democracy and what its people have achieved despite all the hate and ferocity of evil flung their way?
@Dunc : There’s a certain saying about missing things that springs to mind here .. Hmmn, Let’s see. Oh yeah that’s right :
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/In-the-Trenches/The-Palestinians-Once-again-missing-an-opportunity-366976
The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace.
Its a political axiom right up there with never invading Russia in winter and, oh yeah, the Jews are always the good guys in history who survive despite the odds and power of their enemies.
But you’re gonna what, tell them to finally do otherwise and take a fucking peace deal and stop fucking murdering people and seeking to exterminate the Jewish state yet again -- coz the last , what, fifty thousand times or so worked out sowellfor them?!? Or egg them on into keeping the same Hamas-sive insanity :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT-a-WWJgBg
they have been doing since well, the Arabs started this war which they could’ve totally avoided had they just accepted the Israeli states existence and decided to live peacefully alongside it -- and Jordan as well which had already been made just for them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
Fucking Hamas fanbois here.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/hamas-accused-war-crimes-gaza-war-150527045950777.html
What the fuck are fighting for and seeking and who are standing beside and cheering on?
Think about it! For pity’s sake! You won’t though will you?
Ya gunna prove me right or wrong?
Mate, you said it yourself -- you’re tired and drunk. Go to bed.
Oh, look -- it’s an explicit endorsement of military expansionism and ethnic cleansing on a scale that would generally count as genocide. In vino veritas, eh?
@ ^Dunc : Çept that is NOT what I actually said. Surprise, sir-not-prise.
OTOH y’know how does explicitly seek genocide?
http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/muslim-arab-world/c/hamas-in-their-own-words.html?referrer=https://www.google.com.au/#.Vs73cJx96M8
Oh yeah, that side that you and others here are supporting. Oops!
(Said it for you. Thank me later when y’knoew y’wake up to reality. Which I did some years ago. I once thought here ;like you did pretty much y’know.)
who not how foe second sentence there. D’oh!
It is possible to oppose Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories without supporting Hamas, in much the same way that it was possible to oppose Hitler without supporting Stalin. This sort of zero-sum approach you take to the problem is why everybody here thinks you’re an idiot.
As for not explicitly supporting genocide, please explain how it would be possible to establish Greater Israel, and make it even more Jewish than Israel currently is, without getting rid of all the non-Jewish people who currently live there -- i.e. engaging in ethnic cleansing. That’s exactly the sort of thing that got Slobodan Milošević tried for genocide.
Actually, no, please don’t… About the only thing worse than dealing with a racist idiot is dealing with a drunken racist idiot.
For my part, I don’t hate Israel simply for being Israel, but I am disgusted by the actions of their leadership and their apologists.
Your constant efforts to denigrate us as anti-semitic are pathetic enough, but worse are your insinuations and outright accusations that we support Muslim terrorist groups.
Fuck you.
*Sigh*
I see another silly meme has taken root in your shallow thoughts.
…Wow. Everything I have noticed and criticised in your ramblings pales in comparison to this.
“The Jews are always the good guys in history” -- StevoR.
They can do no wrong, by your own admission. No atrocity can tarnish them, their behavior literally does not matter to you: you will defend them always, because they “are always the good guys in history”. Amazing.
In vino veritas indeed!