>--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> So, if someone criticizes Israel's policies and
>> conduct in Palestine,
>> how can you tell whether they're anti-semitic or
>> not? This is not a
>> rhetorical question.
>
>
>In addition to the points made by Michael Givel and
>Joel Schalit, I would add one more.
>
>Any criticism of Zionism as such which isn't based
>upon a principled opposition to nations and states as
>such, I would characterize as anti-semitic.
This is preposterous. The following says something contradictory, though not quite so bad:
>Zionism in the most literal sense means a movement for
>a Jewish nation-state. Anybody who opposes such a
>movement among Jews, but has no problem with other
>self-defined national groups having their own
>respective nation-states, I would view as being
>anti-semitic.
Note that there is a difference between insisting that *any* criticism of Zionism be based on a principled opposition to nations and states and asserting that opposition to the demand of any particular religious or cultural sect for a state of its own, anywhere it wants it (even if the people who already live there don't want it and would be definition be required to be expelled) must be based on bigotry against the members of the sect.
Addressing firstly the first proposition, presumably Angel means a principled opposition to nations and states under any circumstances, though he's characteristically vague on that important point. Of course only a hopeless utopian fool could express a principled opposition to nations and states under any and every material circumstances, the very idea of a capitalist system operating outside of the framework of the state is absurd.
So, assuming that is what Angel is saying, then what he is also saying (in the first para above) is that *any* criticism (no matter how mild) of Zionism, must be down to anti-semitism. That assertion is childlike in its stupidity. Possibly Angel is quite young, probably as thick as two short planks. maybe he even suffers from some form of mental retardation. (How bad is the pollution in Germany? Heavy metal poisoning would solve the puzzle?)
But the second para, while not quite so bad, is still bad and just as ignorant. It ignores the widespread objections to the very notion of mono-cultural or mono-religious nation states, that Wendy Lyons has already mentioned.
In particular of course mono-cultural states based on a geographic area where several other religious and cultural groups already live. Nothing is more certain to lead to genocide than this kind of mad plan, since the cleansing of people from religious and cultural groups which don't fit the plan for such a state is the only realistic way to prevent them undermining the mono-cultural or mono-religious design. Let them stay and its only a matter of time before they start making demands for such as protection against discrimination, equal rights under the law and so forth. Which, in the case of the mono-cultural, mono-religious state, is effectively a demand for the destruction of that state.
Perhaps Zionism would be relatively inoffensive if it could find a territory where other religious and cultural groups weren't already in residence? Or at least where there are not quite so many other religious and ethnic groups, so densely populated. But certainly you couldn't pick a worse place in the entire world for this exercise in social engineering than the one they did.
Personally though, I prefer multi-cultural states. And frankly I don't think that a bit of tolerance of different religious views and different cultural backgrounds is an impossible task, even in the context of a class society. I don't see why it is necessary to impose your own irrelevant prejudices on everyone. Perhaps Angel would care to explain why he believes that this is an inextricable part of human nature.
While he's at it, he might care to think about how such a view of human nature is compatible with whatever his immature notion of "communism" is?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas