The same article also contains an account of the scene as mourners gathered to commemorate Corrie at the spot where she was fatally injured. "The desolate sandy stretch is now strewn with the rubble from the demolition of houses which she could not prevent. As the memorial service got under way, the Israeli army sent its own representative. A tank pulled up beside the mourners and sprayed them with tear gas. A bizarre game of cat-and-mouse began as the peace activists chased the tank around to throw flowers on it, and the Israeli soldiers inside threatened, in return, to run them down.
Throw Flowers at a tank -> Get Run Over.
Wonder if the soldiers on the tank got in any trouble because of their aborhent behavior? Oh, who am I kidding, of course not.
Got in trouble for making threats?
I mean, what the hell do you want to be done to them for just talking?
Let alone the fact that, in Middle Eastern culture, aggresive posturing when some one pisses you off is basically par for the course. As long as they didn't ACTUALLY run them over, whatthe hell did they do to get punished for?
Did you miss the part where they sprayed the mourners with tear gas? Or is that acceptable behavior for Israeli soldiers, too?
Well, Evander, is it acceptable for IDF soldiers to tear gas mourners for no particular reason, or not? I'm hoping that your silence is not an implicit 'yes it is acceptable'.
Does the fact that the US is predominantly Christian make you feel that you won't be treated fairly and equally?
Again, no. I think that most people are reasonable enough to not substantially demote me as a human in the public forum as a result of my religious beliefs.
The thing is that your sentiment is not shared my most Israelis. If you read Evander's comments, there's an underlying thread - Zionism is necessary as we cannot trust any non-Jewish society to protect the interests of the Jewish people. This is why Israel institutes such policies so that it remains mainly Jewish.
You are significantly skirting the issue. The fact of the matter is, both here and in Israel some type of Judeo-Christian belief system is in the majority. Now, around those systems exists very similar types of general moral sentiments provided you're not in any of the unfortunate outliers (gay, transgendered, happen to need an abortion etc.) then you're going to feel pretty damn comfortable around them.
Now, let's take the Palestinians and their thoughts on morality as defined - largely - by religious views and suddenly add them as a majority voting block to any of these existing democracies. How secure are you going to feel about that?
Because I don't know about you, but given that I feel pretty alienated by US politics and basically am terrified of every slight fundamentalist religious incursion into my own government, I'm not going to be overly pleased by a large group entering my democracy which all vote the same way on certain issues I disagree with them strongly over.
And that is more or less exactly how a lot of Israeli's feel about adding the Palestinians as full citizens. And frankly, that's not unreasonable, which is why a 2-state solution is a much better idea.
Thank you, totally agreed.
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
I agree with most of your points, but apparently Consocialationist democracy has been practiced in three countries that would have been peaceful anyway (or are they considered naturally peaceful because they are consociationalist? My goodness that's hard to type, but anyway it seems like a chicken or egg issue) and Lebanon, which isn't a paragon of either internal nor external stability (though that can usually be put at the feet of Israel and Syria.) My point is that it might not be the be all and end all (and considering that its Israel and Palestine we're talking about, I'd be darned if it was.)
Yes, I realize consociationalist democracy isn't the end-all-be-all form of government for states like Israel, I realize that it wouldn't magically solve all of Israel's problems, and I realize that it, like any other form of government, could fail. I also realize that, given Israel's bullheaded resistence to anything resembling a one-state solution, it's pretty much impossible that we'd see this form of government over a two-state solution, anyway (at least not over the next 50 years).
The point is that Evander, and damn near every Zionist I argue this with, says, "Well fine, Zionism has some faults, but can you imagine any other form of government that would grant Jews, as an ethnicity, the political, civil, and economic control over their own fates that they desire - and one that might work better than Israel's current form of government?" This has always been my answer to that question.
In a perfect world, Israel would be a functioning consociationalist state, with Jews, Palestinians, Druze, and probably even Christians representing constituent minorities. In a less perfect world, Israel and Palestine would exist alongside each other, and both would be consociationalist or liberal, but have different distributions of their minorities. In the real world, that probably won't happen, because (and this is what I have been arguing all along), Zionism seems to encourage ethnic exceptionalist democracies not only in Israel, but also in Palestinians.
(side not as an addendum to that last comment: the PLO, at its inception, called for a liberal democratic Palestinian state where Jews and Palestinians would be fully equal in every respect. It would have made Palestine one of the more liberal countries in the region. Depending on who you are, you can either take these promises in good faith or discount them as rhetoric. Regardless, they have since abandoned such promises in favor of becoming a state resembling more of a Palestinian Israel - ethnic democracy for Palestinians).
Also, those comments towards Lebanon are a little unfair. Lebanon, before 1970, was easily the most stable democracy in the entire region - more so than Israel - and was deemed the "Switzerland of the East" by a lot of Europeans. It was only with the influx of Palestinian refugees, Syrian organizations like Hezbollah, and IDF influence that the military factions leading to the civil war emerged. Even accounting for the civil war, Lebanon had been doing pretty well for itself over the last 10 years before Israel bombed it back another 20.
Zionism is unnecessary. The Jews, as a group, do not need protecting from everyone. It is a testament to how powerful the group was even during the most recent example of persecution that they're the ones that got their own country. The UN didn't mandate the creation of Gaylandia or Gypsystan, just Israel. I worry about Kurds, Tibetans, and ethnic groups in Africa being wiped out. On my big list of groups to worry about, I put Jews a little below the Amish, but somewhat above Lutherans and people with brown hair. None of those groups need their own state to flee to, and neither do Jews. There's no reasonable expectation of widespread persecution of Jews in the Western world.
Even if there was, creating your own country will not guarantee any sort of safety if your group is as hated as the Jews seem to feel they are. It just makes for a more concentrated target, putting all your Jews in one basket, so to speak. Survival of a minority involves reaching positions of power in democratic governments in order to enact legislation that benefits your group and removes the possibility of persecution. It's already happened plenty in the US, and all the UN resolutions that Evander's posted have only gone to show that Jews have UN support.
Even if this wasn't the case, creating a country for the sole purpose of preserving some sort of ethnic or religious majority is a backwards move in the modern world. It's isolationist in an era when national pride and lack of understanding across ethnic and religious boundaries are causing conflict as technology makes the world smaller. It's virtually guaranteeing future instability because Nationalism is already a destructive force. Couple Nationalism with self-indentifying as a persecuted religion or ethnic group, and you're just asking for trouble.
That's why, independent of Zionist being discriminatory, I think it's a horrible and unneccessary idea.
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
Christianity has a built-in theological argument against theocratic rule, in the "render unto Caesar" line.
Islam has no such line to my knowledge, and rather has some explicitely theocratic messages built into its traditions.
This doesn't mean that Christendom wasn't a far worse theocracy than pretty much anything to take place in muslim-controlled areas, nor does it mean that muslims can't have a secular ideal for government, which many do.
Zionism is unnecessary. The Jews, as a group, do not need protecting from everyone. It is a testament to how powerful the group was even during the most recent example of persecution that they're the ones that got their own country. The UN didn't mandate the creation of Gaylandia or Gypsystan, just Israel. I worry about Kurds, Tibetans, and ethnic groups in Africa being wiped out. On my big list of groups to worry about, I put Jews a little below the Amish, but somewhat above Lutherans and people with brown hair. None of those groups need their own state to flee to, and neither do Jews. There's no reasonable expectation of widespread persecution of Jews in the Western world.
Even if there was, creating your own country will not guarantee any sort of safety if your group is as hated as the Jews seem to feel they are. It just makes for a more concentrated target, putting all your Jews in one basket, so to speak. Survival of a minority involves reaching positions of power in democratic governments in order to enact legislation that benefits your group and removes the possibility of persecution. It's already happened plenty in the US, and all the UN resolutions that Evander's posted have only gone to show that Jews have UN support.
Even if this wasn't the case, creating a country for the sole purpose of preserving some sort of ethnic or religious majority is a backwards move in the modern world. It's isolationist in an era when national pride and lack of understanding across ethnic and religious boundaries are causing conflict as technology makes the world smaller. It's virtually guaranteeing future instability because Nationalism is already a destructive force. Couple Nationalism with self-indentifying as a persecuted religion or ethnic group, and you're just asking for trouble.
That's why, independent of Zionist being discriminatory, I think it's a horrible and unneccessary idea.
The funny thing is, I don't think it is Nationalism. And that's what makes alot of people confused/nervous. It's more like Tribalism or Ethnicitism (that even a word?).
Look at the Right of Return. Regardless of what you think of it, it targets Jews around the world. Whether they be American or Yugoslavian, their seen as Jews, because their parent(s) and their grandparent(s) were and so on back down the line.
The whole idea is around basing your identity on your ethnicity (ie - what your parents are) rather then your nationality (ie - the country your from). They then decided to go off and form their own country, for the safety of their own ethnic group. And they're determined to keep themselves in charge of it.
And the thing is you can't join an ethnicity, your born into it. America had tons of Irish and Italians and such immigrating a few generations ago. And not all of them were welcomed with open arms (see Gangs of New York). But now their Americans. Because Nationalism is the way most people, in the 1st world anyway, identify themselves. Your American, or your Canadian, or your Irish or your a kiwi or whatever. Zionism still identifies people by their ethnicity, saying "Your Jewish!" and then attempts to make of those people a nation. And then tries it's best to keep that ethnicity in charge of that nation and favors the immigration of people of that ethnicity over others. It's a dated idea that most people of today aren't familiar with, because we live in an age of nationalism.
Actually, I don't see much problem with the Jewish stance that they want control over their nation because it is in line with the goal of creating the nation in the first place.
I don't either; and I also think it's awesome that Arabs who get married to non-Israeli Arabs can't get their spouses to live with them in Israel, but a Jew born in America can live in Israel if he can afford the ticket, because hey, fuck Arabs.
It's awesome that I am not allowed to visit Mecca, because even though it is an important historical site to the history of the entire world, one group of people has decided that no one else can go there.
Israel is like Saudi Arabia? This is supposed to make my opinion of it go up?
Yeah, Evander, you don't get to say "Israel is better than every other country in the region," then hold them to the standard of every other country in the region.
Actually, I don't see much problem with the Jewish stance that they want control over their nation because it is in line with the goal of creating the nation in the first place.
I don't either; and I also think it's awesome that Arabs who get married to non-Israeli Arabs can't get their spouses to live with them in Israel, but a Jew born in America can live in Israel if he can afford the ticket, because hey, fuck Arabs.
It's awesome that I am not allowed to visit Mecca, because even though it is an important historical site to the history of the entire world, one group of people has decided that no one else can go there.
Israel is like Saudi Arabia? This is supposed to make my opinion of it go up?
Yeah, Evander, you don't get to say "Israel is better than every other country in the region," then hold them to the standard of every other country in the region.
I like how not getting to visit a city is exactly the same as not being allowed to bring your spouse to live with you in your home country. Also, apples = oranges.
Zionism is unnecessary. The Jews, as a group, do not need protecting from everyone. It is a testament to how powerful the group was even during the most recent example of persecution that they're the ones that got their own country. The UN didn't mandate the creation of Gaylandia or Gypsystan, just Israel. I worry about Kurds, Tibetans, and ethnic groups in Africa being wiped out. On my big list of groups to worry about, I put Jews a little below the Amish, but somewhat above Lutherans and people with brown hair. None of those groups need their own state to flee to, and neither do Jews. There's no reasonable expectation of widespread persecution of Jews in the Western world.
Even if there was, creating your own country will not guarantee any sort of safety if your group is as hated as the Jews seem to feel they are. It just makes for a more concentrated target, putting all your Jews in one basket, so to speak. Survival of a minority involves reaching positions of power in democratic governments in order to enact legislation that benefits your group and removes the possibility of persecution. It's already happened plenty in the US, and all the UN resolutions that Evander's posted have only gone to show that Jews have UN support.
Even if this wasn't the case, creating a country for the sole purpose of preserving some sort of ethnic or religious majority is a backwards move in the modern world. It's isolationist in an era when national pride and lack of understanding across ethnic and religious boundaries are causing conflict as technology makes the world smaller. It's virtually guaranteeing future instability because Nationalism is already a destructive force. Couple Nationalism with self-indentifying as a persecuted religion or ethnic group, and you're just asking for trouble.
That's why, independent of Zionist being discriminatory, I think it's a horrible and unneccessary idea.
The funny thing is, I don't think it is Nationalism. And that's what makes alot of people confused/nervous. It's more like Tribalism or Ethnicitism (that even a word?).
Look at the Right of Return. Regardless of what you think of it, it targets Jews around the world. Whether they be American or Yugoslavian, their seen as Jews, because their parent(s) and their grandparent(s) were and so on back down the line.
The whole idea is around basing your identity on your ethnicity (ie - what your parents are) rather then your nationality (ie - the country your from). They then decided to go off and form their own country, for the safety of their own ethnic group. And they're determined to keep themselves in charge of it.
And the thing is you can't join an ethnicity, your born into it. America had tons of Irish and Italians and such immigrating a few generations ago. And not all of them were welcomed with open arms (see Gangs of New York). But now their Americans. Because Nationalism is the way most people, in the 1st world anyway, identify themselves. Your American, or your Canadian, or your Irish or your a kiwi or whatever. Zionism still identifies people by their ethnicity, saying "Your Jewish!" and then attempts to make of those people a nation. And then tries it's best to keep that ethnicity in charge of that nation and favors the immigration of people of that ethnicity over others. It's a dated idea that most people of today aren't familiar with, because we live in an age of nationalism.
The thing is that Zionism is a nationalist movement that was created in response to the growth of nationalism in the late 1800s, where you saw countries strengthening their internal structure by pushing a common identity. The problem was that these movements were indeed exclusionary, and there was a strong sentiment that Jews, among other ethnicities, could never really be true citizens of the state - their loyalties were divided, as the logic of the time went. (Read up on the Dreyfuss Affair for a good example of how this logic worked.) So in response, leading Jewish thinkers of the time followed the same train of thought, and called for a Jewish state. This was eventually warped by religious leaders that joined Zionism into a restoration of the historical Jewish nation in its historical borders.
The problem with this, however, is that the movement that prompted the birth of Zionism is in of itself discredited. While you do still see pushes for nationalism, in the west, they're no longer focused so much on racial aspects as they are on other commonalities like language and history. That's not to say that the classic xenophobia has gone completely away, as we can see with the way the wave of Muslim immigration has been handled in Europe. On the same token, the US didn't suffer from these issues quite as much as we're a nation of immigrants...and besides, it became easy to reclassify Jews, Irish, Italians, and such as "white" with our own internal issues with race (How The Irish Became White is good reading here.)
I agree with most of your points, but apparently Consocialationist democracy has been practiced in three countries that would have been peaceful anyway (or are they considered naturally peaceful because they are consociationalist? My goodness that's hard to type, but anyway it seems like a chicken or egg issue) and Lebanon, which isn't a paragon of either internal nor external stability (though that can usually be put at the feet of Israel and Syria.) My point is that it might not be the be all and end all (and considering that its Israel and Palestine we're talking about, I'd be darned if it was.)
Yes, I realize consociationalist democracy isn't the end-all-be-all form of government for states like Israel, I realize that it wouldn't magically solve all of Israel's problems, and I realize that it, like any other form of government, could fail. I also realize that, given Israel's bullheaded resistence to anything resembling a one-state solution, it's pretty much impossible that we'd see this form of government over a two-state solution, anyway (at least not over the next 50 years).
The point is that Evander, and damn near every Zionist I argue this with, says, "Well fine, Zionism has some faults, but can you imagine any other form of government that would grant Jews, as an ethnicity, the political, civil, and economic control over their own fates that they desire - and one that might work better than Israel's current form of government?" This has always been my answer to that question.
In a perfect world, Israel would be a functioning consociationalist state, with Jews, Palestinians, Druze, and probably even Christians representing constituent minorities. In a less perfect world, Israel and Palestine would exist alongside each other, and both would be consociationalist or liberal, but have different distributions of their minorities. In the real world, that probably won't happen, because (and this is what I have been arguing all along), Zionism seems to encourage ethnic exceptionalist democracies not only in Israel, but also in Palestinians.
(side not as an addendum to that last comment: the PLO, at its inception, called for a liberal democratic Palestinian state where Jews and Palestinians would be fully equal in every respect. It would have made Palestine one of the more liberal countries in the region. Depending on who you are, you can either take these promises in good faith or discount them as rhetoric. Regardless, they have since abandoned such promises in favor of becoming a state resembling more of a Palestinian Israel - ethnic democracy for Palestinians).
Also, those comments towards Lebanon are a little unfair. Lebanon, before 1970, was easily the most stable democracy in the entire region - more so than Israel - and was deemed the "Switzerland of the East" by a lot of Europeans. It was only with the influx of Palestinian refugees, Syrian organizations like Hezbollah, and IDF influence that the military factions leading to the civil war emerged. Even accounting for the civil war, Lebanon had been doing pretty well for itself over the last 10 years before Israel bombed it back another 20.
It seems like I'm agreeing with your main points but disagreeing with some side notes again.
What the PLO said on its inception is about as relevant to the conflict today and the possible makeup of a Palestinian state as anything GW Bush has to say about the issue. When the Palestinians had partial civic control in Jordan it was essentially Arabs gone wild, whether they would have changed that if they took the entirety of Jordan is questionable.
I'll point you to Yasser Arafat's wiki, section 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
Also, what you're saying is that Lebanon was stable when it had a mostly homogenous christian majority. This is true of pretty much every state that had a mostly homogenous christian majority after WWII.
Zionism is unnecessary. The Jews, as a group, do not need protecting from everyone. It is a testament to how powerful the group was even during the most recent example of persecution that they're the ones that got their own country. The UN didn't mandate the creation of Gaylandia or Gypsystan, just Israel. I worry about Kurds, Tibetans, and ethnic groups in Africa being wiped out. On my big list of groups to worry about, I put Jews a little below the Amish, but somewhat above Lutherans and people with brown hair. None of those groups need their own state to flee to, and neither do Jews. There's no reasonable expectation of widespread persecution of Jews in the Western world.
Even if there was, creating your own country will not guarantee any sort of safety if your group is as hated as the Jews seem to feel they are. It just makes for a more concentrated target, putting all your Jews in one basket, so to speak. Survival of a minority involves reaching positions of power in democratic governments in order to enact legislation that benefits your group and removes the possibility of persecution. It's already happened plenty in the US, and all the UN resolutions that Evander's posted have only gone to show that Jews have UN support.
Even if this wasn't the case, creating a country for the sole purpose of preserving some sort of ethnic or religious majority is a backwards move in the modern world. It's isolationist in an era when national pride and lack of understanding across ethnic and religious boundaries are causing conflict as technology makes the world smaller. It's virtually guaranteeing future instability because Nationalism is already a destructive force. Couple Nationalism with self-indentifying as a persecuted religion or ethnic group, and you're just asking for trouble.
That's why, independent of Zionist being discriminatory, I think it's a horrible and unneccessary idea.
The funny thing is, I don't think it is Nationalism. And that's what makes alot of people confused/nervous. It's more like Tribalism or Ethnicitism (that even a word?).
Look at the Right of Return. Regardless of what you think of it, it targets Jews around the world. Whether they be American or Yugoslavian, their seen as Jews, because their parent(s) and their grandparent(s) were and so on back down the line.
The whole idea is around basing your identity on your ethnicity (ie - what your parents are) rather then your nationality (ie - the country your from). They then decided to go off and form their own country, for the safety of their own ethnic group. And they're determined to keep themselves in charge of it.
And the thing is you can't join an ethnicity, your born into it. America had tons of Irish and Italians and such immigrating a few generations ago. And not all of them were welcomed with open arms (see Gangs of New York). But now their Americans. Because Nationalism is the way most people, in the 1st world anyway, identify themselves. Your American, or your Canadian, or your Irish or your a kiwi or whatever. Zionism still identifies people by their ethnicity, saying "Your Jewish!" and then attempts to make of those people a nation. And then tries it's best to keep that ethnicity in charge of that nation and favors the immigration of people of that ethnicity over others. It's a dated idea that most people of today aren't familiar with, because we live in an age of nationalism.
What Zionism started out as and what Zionism has become are two totally different things. If it isn't nationalism now it certainly started out that way.
Zionism started out with a bunch of wealthy jews in Europe going "You know what, Europe is getting dicey with all of these anti-semetic nationalistic movements, maybe we should have one of our own." Pretty much every jewish immigrant who moved to Palestine from 1900 to 1948 came from Europe (with a few sprinkled in from America) and were influenced by these ideas.
And you say that Nationalistic movements didn't have to do with heredity? It had everything to do with Heredity! There was "German" blood, "Russian" blood, "French" blood, and the moronic eugenics that went with deciding that someone had such and such blood. It was obvious that Jews, as "others", clearly did not have the right blood, and as such did not belong in the nation. This lead to heavy persecution of Jews, resulting in the holocaust. This gave the Jews the moral superiority to get the hell out of Europe.
Quite frankly, Judaism doesn't really get new converts that often, since Jews don't proselytize outside of their own religion. If you're a Jew, then you're much more likely to have been born into a Jewish family then if you're Christian or Muslim. That, and the constant persecution over the last 2500 years gave Jews a sense of other, a sense that they shouldn't belong in the nationalistic movements, so conversion into common society was rather low.
Also, you might be interested in the fact that most of the immigrants via the Right of Return today are Russians, and yes, it does tend to piss Palestinians off when their land that they have farmed on for hundreds of years is being monitored and eventually taken by people who haven't even been there 5 years.
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
What about Turkey? Why hasn't our president been overthrown yet?
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
What about Turkey? Why hasn't our president been overthrown yet?
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
What about Turkey? Why hasn't our president been overthrown yet?
It seems like I'm agreeing with your main points but disagreeing with some side notes again.
What the PLO said on its inception is about as relevant to the conflict today and the possible makeup of a Palestinian state as anything GW Bush has to say about the issue. When the Palestinians had partial civic control in Jordan it was essentially Arabs gone wild, whether they would have changed that if they took the entirety of Jordan is questionable.
I'll point you to Yasser Arafat's wiki, section 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
Also, what you're saying is that Lebanon was stable when it had a mostly homogenous christian majority. This is true of pretty much every state that had a mostly homogenous christian majority after WWII.
I noted that what the PLO originally said is omething that someone can choose to take on good faith, or not. Personally, I believe they did intend to have an inclusive liberal democracy, but probably would not have been able to maintain one. Their actions in Jordan, like you mentioned, seem to cast doubt on their ability to maintain such a state.
You missed the point of why I brought that up, though. I only mentioned it to draw a comparison between the PLO's original political goals, and their modern ones. I.e., their original ideals was to create a liberal democracy which would have included the Jews; their modern ideal is to create a "second state" which would essentially a foil to Israel - i.e. a ethnocracy where a Palestinian cultural majority would pretty much be maintained. It speaks for how Zionism can be such a dangerous force that it even corrupts Palestinian state theory.
Also, Lebanon has always had sizable Muslim and Druze populations, and has always been an essentially Arab country (even if, for a long time, the majority was Maronite Christians). But Lebanon has never been a "homogenous Christian" (homogeneity =/= majority) country, though it has pretty much always had Arab homogeneity.
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
What about Turkey? Why hasn't our president been overthrown yet?
Most likely because Turkey's migration to a more modern nation occurred before the Cold War and the era of proxy nations. Therefore, there was less need to turn it into an easily manipulated proxy. And by the time we DID get to war by proxy, the fallout from doing that to Turkey, not to mention the lack of ease in which to do it, made it unfeasable.
Actually, I don't see much problem with the Jewish stance that they want control over their nation because it is in line with the goal of creating the nation in the first place.
I don't either; and I also think it's awesome that Arabs who get married to non-Israeli Arabs can't get their spouses to live with them in Israel, but a Jew born in America can live in Israel if he can afford the ticket, because hey, fuck Arabs.
It's awesome that I am not allowed to visit Mecca, because even though it is an important historical site to the history of the entire world, one group of people has decided that no one else can go there.
Israel is like Saudi Arabia? This is supposed to make my opinion of it go up?
Yeah, Evander, you don't get to say "Israel is better than every other country in the region," then hold them to the standard of every other country in the region.
I like how not getting to visit a city is exactly the same as not being allowed to bring your spouse to live with you in your home country. Also, apples = oranges.
Indeed, but still, Saudi Arabia? A sterling example of governance, that is.
Christianity has a built-in theological argument against theocratic rule, in the "render unto Caesar" line.
Islam has no such line to my knowledge, and rather has some explicitely theocratic messages built into its traditions.
This doesn't mean that Christendom wasn't a far worse theocracy than pretty much anything to take place in muslim-controlled areas, nor does it mean that muslims can't have a secular ideal for government, which many do.
I do think you'd agree that literalism is far more prevalent among Muslims and that the Qu'ran, if read with a literalist perspective, pretty much dictates that secularism not exist.
Christianity, as you noted, has arguments for and against theocratic rule even when read literally.
So in practice and in scripture, Islam is biased toward theocratic rule. The prevalence of Shariat law should be one indication. Also, there was literally no push for secularism in Islamic political philosophy that did not come from outside philosophies. Modern Muslim secularists draw more from Western philosophical traditions than from Islamic ones when justifying the need for a secular state.
Loren, I completely agree that many Muslims do have secular ideals for government. However, having worked with some such thinkers, they do admit that there will always be dissonance between Islam and secularism due to the content of the Qu'ran. These thinkers also tend not to be literalists. Unfortunately, they are in the minority.
Oh, and here's another point to consider - why do we continue to support a nation that has been caught spying on us not once but twice?
Every nation spies on us.
Yeah, but they got caught. Should the US really be supporting incompetent nations? With the amount of money given them, they should be able to do better then that.
Christianity has a built-in theological argument against theocratic rule, in the "render unto Caesar" line.
Islam has no such line to my knowledge, and rather has some explicitely theocratic messages built into its traditions.
This doesn't mean that Christendom wasn't a far worse theocracy than pretty much anything to take place in muslim-controlled areas, nor does it mean that muslims can't have a secular ideal for government, which many do.
I do think you'd agree that literalism is far more prevalent among Muslims and that the Qu'ran, if read with a literalist perspective, pretty much dictates that secularism not exist.
Christianity, as you noted, has arguments for and against theocratic rule even when read literally.
So in practice and in scripture, Islam is biased toward theocratic rule. The prevalence of Shariat law should be one indication. Also, there was literally no push for secularism in Islamic political philosophy that did not come from outside philosophies. Modern Muslim secularists draw more from Western philosophical traditions than from Islamic ones when justifying the need for a secular state.
Loren, I completely agree that many Muslims do have secular ideals for government. However, having worked with some such thinkers, they do admit that there will always be dissonance between Islam and secularism due to the content of the Qu'ran. These thinkers also tend not to be literalists. Unfortunately, they are in the minority.
Oh, I agree completely. It's much easier to be a literalist, as it were, as a Muslim than as a Christian. The bible is hilariously nonsensical when examined as a whole. The Koran has significant problems of its own, but it was, so far as I know, written (or at least dictated) by a single person.
Christianity has a built-in theological argument against theocratic rule, in the "render unto Caesar" line.
Islam has no such line to my knowledge, and rather has some explicitely theocratic messages built into its traditions.
This doesn't mean that Christendom wasn't a far worse theocracy than pretty much anything to take place in muslim-controlled areas, nor does it mean that muslims can't have a secular ideal for government, which many do.
I do think you'd agree that literalism is far more prevalent among Muslims and that the Qu'ran, if read with a literalist perspective, pretty much dictates that secularism not exist.
Christianity, as you noted, has arguments for and against theocratic rule even when read literally.
So in practice and in scripture, Islam is biased toward theocratic rule. The prevalence of Shariat law should be one indication. Also, there was literally no push for secularism in Islamic political philosophy that did not come from outside philosophies. Modern Muslim secularists draw more from Western philosophical traditions than from Islamic ones when justifying the need for a secular state.
Loren, I completely agree that many Muslims do have secular ideals for government. However, having worked with some such thinkers, they do admit that there will always be dissonance between Islam and secularism due to the content of the Qu'ran. These thinkers also tend not to be literalists. Unfortunately, they are in the minority.
Oh, I agree completely. It's much easier to be a literalist, as it were, as a Muslim than as a Christian. The bible is hilariously nonsensical when examined as a whole. The Koran has significant problems of its own, but it was, so far as I know, written (or at least dictated) by a single person.
Didn't Islam do that 'sit there nodding while the Prophet is talking, but don't actually write anything down until he's already dead and you can't get divine wisdom on demand any more' thing?
Checking Wikipedia to be sure, it says that a lot of it was just memorized, and only collected into a single document later.
Didn't Islam do that 'sit there nodding while the Prophet is talking, but don't actually write anything down until he's already dead and you can't get divine wisdom on demand any more' thing?
Checking Wikipedia to be sure, it says that a lot of it was just memorized, and only collected into a single document later.
It's been a while since I cared to research Islam, but that sounds reasonable. Either way though, it's (assuming Muhammad existed, which I think is pretty likely) still an oral tradition from a single source, rather than the relative schizophrenia of the bible.
Posts
Well, Evander, is it acceptable for IDF soldiers to tear gas mourners for no particular reason, or not? I'm hoping that your silence is not an implicit 'yes it is acceptable'.
The thing is that your sentiment is not shared my most Israelis. If you read Evander's comments, there's an underlying thread - Zionism is necessary as we cannot trust any non-Jewish society to protect the interests of the Jewish people. This is why Israel institutes such policies so that it remains mainly Jewish.
Thank you, totally agreed.
There is not a long history of democracy and pluralism in the region. Islam is, by its nature, non-secular. It was designed to encompass everything, from personal spiritualism to law. Shariat law is still practiced and enforced, combined with local customs, in many, many parts of NA and the ME. Suddenly allowing a group who fundamentally oppose the freedoms of others and equal rights under the law (Islam makes it very clear that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and have special rights) would inevitably degrade the status of Jews in Israel if there were a Muslim majority.
Yes, I realize consociationalist democracy isn't the end-all-be-all form of government for states like Israel, I realize that it wouldn't magically solve all of Israel's problems, and I realize that it, like any other form of government, could fail. I also realize that, given Israel's bullheaded resistence to anything resembling a one-state solution, it's pretty much impossible that we'd see this form of government over a two-state solution, anyway (at least not over the next 50 years).
The point is that Evander, and damn near every Zionist I argue this with, says, "Well fine, Zionism has some faults, but can you imagine any other form of government that would grant Jews, as an ethnicity, the political, civil, and economic control over their own fates that they desire - and one that might work better than Israel's current form of government?" This has always been my answer to that question.
In a perfect world, Israel would be a functioning consociationalist state, with Jews, Palestinians, Druze, and probably even Christians representing constituent minorities. In a less perfect world, Israel and Palestine would exist alongside each other, and both would be consociationalist or liberal, but have different distributions of their minorities. In the real world, that probably won't happen, because (and this is what I have been arguing all along), Zionism seems to encourage ethnic exceptionalist democracies not only in Israel, but also in Palestinians.
(side not as an addendum to that last comment: the PLO, at its inception, called for a liberal democratic Palestinian state where Jews and Palestinians would be fully equal in every respect. It would have made Palestine one of the more liberal countries in the region. Depending on who you are, you can either take these promises in good faith or discount them as rhetoric. Regardless, they have since abandoned such promises in favor of becoming a state resembling more of a Palestinian Israel - ethnic democracy for Palestinians).
Also, those comments towards Lebanon are a little unfair. Lebanon, before 1970, was easily the most stable democracy in the entire region - more so than Israel - and was deemed the "Switzerland of the East" by a lot of Europeans. It was only with the influx of Palestinian refugees, Syrian organizations like Hezbollah, and IDF influence that the military factions leading to the civil war emerged. Even accounting for the civil war, Lebanon had been doing pretty well for itself over the last 10 years before Israel bombed it back another 20.
Even if there was, creating your own country will not guarantee any sort of safety if your group is as hated as the Jews seem to feel they are. It just makes for a more concentrated target, putting all your Jews in one basket, so to speak. Survival of a minority involves reaching positions of power in democratic governments in order to enact legislation that benefits your group and removes the possibility of persecution. It's already happened plenty in the US, and all the UN resolutions that Evander's posted have only gone to show that Jews have UN support.
Even if this wasn't the case, creating a country for the sole purpose of preserving some sort of ethnic or religious majority is a backwards move in the modern world. It's isolationist in an era when national pride and lack of understanding across ethnic and religious boundaries are causing conflict as technology makes the world smaller. It's virtually guaranteeing future instability because Nationalism is already a destructive force. Couple Nationalism with self-indentifying as a persecuted religion or ethnic group, and you're just asking for trouble.
That's why, independent of Zionist being discriminatory, I think it's a horrible and unneccessary idea.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Islam isn't any more or less secular "by nature" than Christianity is.
Iran was almost a secular democracy. Do you know what the USA did? We had the CIA overthrow their president. Egypt was a secular democracy. Do you know what we did? Undermined them in every international forum until they began to become more conservative, i.e. fundamentalist. Iraq was almost a secular democracy. You know what we did? Helped Saddam get into power and become president for life (but even after that, Iraq was a pretty secular state...til Bush overethrew it). Palestine was almost a secular democracy, but then Israel never allowed them the state they had a right to...
Seeing a pattern here? Muslims don't have secular governments because we don't like it when they do. Secular governments in countries outside of the USA and Europe are icky, sometimes they do stuff like focus on their own economic well-being and sell their oll to the highest-bidder (China), not us. We don't like that. Fundamentalist theocracies are so much easier to deal with and control from the outside.
Well, I should say, were. Political Islam has thrown a wrench in all that, as you can see.
Islam has no such line to my knowledge, and rather has some explicitely theocratic messages built into its traditions.
This doesn't mean that Christendom wasn't a far worse theocracy than pretty much anything to take place in muslim-controlled areas, nor does it mean that muslims can't have a secular ideal for government, which many do.
The funny thing is, I don't think it is Nationalism. And that's what makes alot of people confused/nervous. It's more like Tribalism or Ethnicitism (that even a word?).
Look at the Right of Return. Regardless of what you think of it, it targets Jews around the world. Whether they be American or Yugoslavian, their seen as Jews, because their parent(s) and their grandparent(s) were and so on back down the line.
The whole idea is around basing your identity on your ethnicity (ie - what your parents are) rather then your nationality (ie - the country your from). They then decided to go off and form their own country, for the safety of their own ethnic group. And they're determined to keep themselves in charge of it.
And the thing is you can't join an ethnicity, your born into it. America had tons of Irish and Italians and such immigrating a few generations ago. And not all of them were welcomed with open arms (see Gangs of New York). But now their Americans. Because Nationalism is the way most people, in the 1st world anyway, identify themselves. Your American, or your Canadian, or your Irish or your a kiwi or whatever. Zionism still identifies people by their ethnicity, saying "Your Jewish!" and then attempts to make of those people a nation. And then tries it's best to keep that ethnicity in charge of that nation and favors the immigration of people of that ethnicity over others. It's a dated idea that most people of today aren't familiar with, because we live in an age of nationalism.
I like how not getting to visit a city is exactly the same as not being allowed to bring your spouse to live with you in your home country. Also, apples = oranges.
The thing is that Zionism is a nationalist movement that was created in response to the growth of nationalism in the late 1800s, where you saw countries strengthening their internal structure by pushing a common identity. The problem was that these movements were indeed exclusionary, and there was a strong sentiment that Jews, among other ethnicities, could never really be true citizens of the state - their loyalties were divided, as the logic of the time went. (Read up on the Dreyfuss Affair for a good example of how this logic worked.) So in response, leading Jewish thinkers of the time followed the same train of thought, and called for a Jewish state. This was eventually warped by religious leaders that joined Zionism into a restoration of the historical Jewish nation in its historical borders.
The problem with this, however, is that the movement that prompted the birth of Zionism is in of itself discredited. While you do still see pushes for nationalism, in the west, they're no longer focused so much on racial aspects as they are on other commonalities like language and history. That's not to say that the classic xenophobia has gone completely away, as we can see with the way the wave of Muslim immigration has been handled in Europe. On the same token, the US didn't suffer from these issues quite as much as we're a nation of immigrants...and besides, it became easy to reclassify Jews, Irish, Italians, and such as "white" with our own internal issues with race (How The Irish Became White is good reading here.)
It seems like I'm agreeing with your main points but disagreeing with some side notes again.
What the PLO said on its inception is about as relevant to the conflict today and the possible makeup of a Palestinian state as anything GW Bush has to say about the issue. When the Palestinians had partial civic control in Jordan it was essentially Arabs gone wild, whether they would have changed that if they took the entirety of Jordan is questionable.
I'll point you to Yasser Arafat's wiki, section 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
Also, what you're saying is that Lebanon was stable when it had a mostly homogenous christian majority. This is true of pretty much every state that had a mostly homogenous christian majority after WWII.
What Zionism started out as and what Zionism has become are two totally different things. If it isn't nationalism now it certainly started out that way.
Zionism started out with a bunch of wealthy jews in Europe going "You know what, Europe is getting dicey with all of these anti-semetic nationalistic movements, maybe we should have one of our own." Pretty much every jewish immigrant who moved to Palestine from 1900 to 1948 came from Europe (with a few sprinkled in from America) and were influenced by these ideas.
And you say that Nationalistic movements didn't have to do with heredity? It had everything to do with Heredity! There was "German" blood, "Russian" blood, "French" blood, and the moronic eugenics that went with deciding that someone had such and such blood. It was obvious that Jews, as "others", clearly did not have the right blood, and as such did not belong in the nation. This lead to heavy persecution of Jews, resulting in the holocaust. This gave the Jews the moral superiority to get the hell out of Europe.
Quite frankly, Judaism doesn't really get new converts that often, since Jews don't proselytize outside of their own religion. If you're a Jew, then you're much more likely to have been born into a Jewish family then if you're Christian or Muslim. That, and the constant persecution over the last 2500 years gave Jews a sense of other, a sense that they shouldn't belong in the nationalistic movements, so conversion into common society was rather low.
Also, you might be interested in the fact that most of the immigrants via the Right of Return today are Russians, and yes, it does tend to piss Palestinians off when their land that they have farmed on for hundreds of years is being monitored and eventually taken by people who haven't even been there 5 years.
What about Turkey? Why hasn't our president been overthrown yet?
Cold War's over.
They're too chicken?
I noted that what the PLO originally said is omething that someone can choose to take on good faith, or not. Personally, I believe they did intend to have an inclusive liberal democracy, but probably would not have been able to maintain one. Their actions in Jordan, like you mentioned, seem to cast doubt on their ability to maintain such a state.
You missed the point of why I brought that up, though. I only mentioned it to draw a comparison between the PLO's original political goals, and their modern ones. I.e., their original ideals was to create a liberal democracy which would have included the Jews; their modern ideal is to create a "second state" which would essentially a foil to Israel - i.e. a ethnocracy where a Palestinian cultural majority would pretty much be maintained. It speaks for how Zionism can be such a dangerous force that it even corrupts Palestinian state theory.
Also, Lebanon has always had sizable Muslim and Druze populations, and has always been an essentially Arab country (even if, for a long time, the majority was Maronite Christians). But Lebanon has never been a "homogenous Christian" (homogeneity =/= majority) country, though it has pretty much always had Arab homogeneity.
Most likely because Turkey's migration to a more modern nation occurred before the Cold War and the era of proxy nations. Therefore, there was less need to turn it into an easily manipulated proxy. And by the time we DID get to war by proxy, the fallout from doing that to Turkey, not to mention the lack of ease in which to do it, made it unfeasable.
Indeed, but still, Saudi Arabia? A sterling example of governance, that is.
Israel: Saudi Arabia does it, too!
If you're going to claim you're a better governed nation, don't be surprised when you're held to a higher standard.
I do think you'd agree that literalism is far more prevalent among Muslims and that the Qu'ran, if read with a literalist perspective, pretty much dictates that secularism not exist.
Christianity, as you noted, has arguments for and against theocratic rule even when read literally.
So in practice and in scripture, Islam is biased toward theocratic rule. The prevalence of Shariat law should be one indication. Also, there was literally no push for secularism in Islamic political philosophy that did not come from outside philosophies. Modern Muslim secularists draw more from Western philosophical traditions than from Islamic ones when justifying the need for a secular state.
Loren, I completely agree that many Muslims do have secular ideals for government. However, having worked with some such thinkers, they do admit that there will always be dissonance between Islam and secularism due to the content of the Qu'ran. These thinkers also tend not to be literalists. Unfortunately, they are in the minority.
Every nation spies on us.
Yeah, but they got caught. Should the US really be supporting incompetent nations? With the amount of money given them, they should be able to do better then that.
Yes, but again, supposedly, we're BFF with Israel.
Oh, I agree completely. It's much easier to be a literalist, as it were, as a Muslim than as a Christian. The bible is hilariously nonsensical when examined as a whole. The Koran has significant problems of its own, but it was, so far as I know, written (or at least dictated) by a single person.
Didn't Islam do that 'sit there nodding while the Prophet is talking, but don't actually write anything down until he's already dead and you can't get divine wisdom on demand any more' thing?
Checking Wikipedia to be sure, it says that a lot of it was just memorized, and only collected into a single document later.
It's been a while since I cared to research Islam, but that sounds reasonable. Either way though, it's (assuming Muhammad existed, which I think is pretty likely) still an oral tradition from a single source, rather than the relative schizophrenia of the bible.
Maybe we should start a new thread discussing Arab Nationalism and the effects of Political Islam on modern Middle Eastern geopolitics?