Supporting Israel

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

I think people simply fail to grasp, or refuse to grasp, the central difficulty that Israel represents, and which sets it apart from any other modern country. It is built upon the forced ethnic cleansing of one cultural group in favour of another, immigrant, cultural group. It requires a proficiency in mental gymnastics to support a Law of Return for any Jew, no matter how ancestrally ancient they are removed from what is, in reality, simply a land mass, whilst disavowing the right of return for those refugees who can give demonstrable claim to originating from this land.

It is the illogicality, and profound injustice, of the situation that has the overwhelming majority of the world decrying Israel, and it is the perversity of the US position, supporting Israel irrespective of its actions, that leaves this world majority forever scratching its head.

[Túrin Turambar]

Practically every country in the world today is built on the forced cleansing of one ethnic group over another at some point in time, and to a far greater degree than Israel. It isn't like the Arabs are any more indigenous to the region than the Jews are, or that there had been a self-governing Arab state in the at any time since the 13th century.

It is this double-standard that troubles me about many of the more strident critics of Israel. For example, the Soviet Army was responsible for the brutal ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe's German communities in 1945. The Red Army's actions far surpassed what the Israelis did - hell, 20% of Israel's population today is Arab, yet the German communities of Prussia and Silesia were completely destroyed. Yet I've never heard anyone who questions the right of the Jews to have a state in the Middle East also question the right of the Poles to have a state that includes Silesia and Prussia. Or calls for a right of return of the descendants of German refugees to Carpathia.

That's not to say that it's morally right to take over people's land, but I just see many of the critics of Israel viewing it as a special case when it isn't.

Besides, I'm not sure if this is actually meant to be a thread for debating Israel's right to exist or the two-state solution in general anyway. Saying that after writing this post .

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

Practically every country in the world today is built on the forced cleansing of one ethnic group over another at some point in time, and to a far greater degree than Israel. It isn't like the Arabs are any more indigenous to the region than the Jews are, or that there had been a self-governing Arab state in the at any time since the 13th century.

It is this double-standard that troubles me about many of the more strident critics of Israel. For example, the Soviet Army was responsible for the brutal ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe's German communities in 1945. The Red Army's actions far surpassed what the Israelis did - hell, 20% of Israel's population today is Arab, yet the German communities of Prussia and Silesia were completely destroyed. Yet I've never heard anyone who questions the right of the Jews to have a state in the Middle East also question the right of the Poles to have a state that includes Silesia and Prussia. Or calls for a right of return of the descendants of German refugees to Carpathia.

That's not to say that it's morally right to take over people's land, but I just see many of the critics of Israel viewing it as a special case when it isn't.

Besides, I'm not sure if this is actually meant to be a thread for debating Israel's right to exist or the two-state solution in general anyway. Saying that after writing this post .

Methinks thou doth protest too much. I would most certainly state that Germans should be allowed to live unmolested and with equal rights in Silesia and Prussia. And, lo! and behold! within the framework of the European Community... they can!

The uniqueness of Israel is that there is an ongoing ethnic "war" in which people with no discernible links to an area of land, because of some sort of ethno-cultural-religious mumbo jumbo, receive a "God-given" (irrespective of religious observance) right to immigrate into a land from which the indigenous population are excluded simply because they are the wrong ethno-cultural-religious group.

Again, I am left scratching my head at this apparent desire to support such a racist/ethnist/culturalist practice.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

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