zionism (again)

[Iyyar]

And you are comparing apples with oranges. The Middle East is not the
United States and Muslim countries also have in place laws which preclude
Jewish ownership of land and are specific to a Muslim identity. Israel
came into being at a time when which really hasn't changed very much,
except that Israel also allowed Arab participation in the government,
provided Muslims with a democratic system of government which provides for
every ideology to be represented in the government and in many ways is far
more superior; that is, far more democratic than anything we have here. It
really is unfair to call them racist for being self-preservationist
especially with 2000 years of flagrant and persistent anti-Jewish decrees
and explusions, Inquisitions, Crusades and all the rest. In time Israel
would not exist at all. Any criticism must take all that into
consideration or it is unfair and not untypical of the LEFT I have been
apart of for 40 years.

g0lem
http://pnews.org/

 [on the interNUT since 82]

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, C. G. Estabrook wrote:


>
> On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> > ...what I objected to originally [was] the thesis that the Jewish
> > state was founded on a racial identity.
>
> You do have to accomplish prodigies of interpretation regarding the word
> "racial" to evade a point that obvious.  (And M. Forstater's quotations
> are pretty devastating.)
>
> But let's imagine a parallel.  Suppose a party comes to power in the US
> (president, both houses of congress, compliant supreme court) representing
> a faction of the Christian Right; it proceeds to pass a series of laws
> (perhaps they'd call it "The Covenant of the People of America") that
> include the following provisions:
> 	[1] Jews are not allowed to own land in the 93% of the country
> reserved for gentiles (each defined solely on the basis of who their
> parents were);
> 	[2] Jews are not allowed to marry gentiles; nor may they convert
> to Christianity and thereby escape the legal disabilities of Jews;
> 	[3] Jews are not allowed to serve in the military, although all
> gentiles (with some exceptions) are required to, and have access to
> advantages available only to veterans; and
> 	[4] Jews must carry identification indicating that they are Jews.
>
> We'd agree that the laws were anti-Semitic; I'd certainly call them
> racist. But you wouldn't say that that legal structure was "founded on a
> racial identity"?  That sounds like playing with words to me.  (And those
> are of course provisions that apply to Palestinians within the Green
> Line.)  --CGE
>
>
>
>
>