this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Let's set aside the multiple issues with "I think one of my distant ancestors lived here 2000 years ago, or maybe just other members of my religious group, therefore I have a right to live here today" and assume that yes, that sort of historical/ancestral claim gives comtemporary Jewish people a right to live in Palestine. Even in the most generous light imaginable, it would not give them a right to build an ethnostate by committing genocide on the current inhabitants. Israel is so far past anything that could be reasonably granted from ancient Jews living in Palestine that there is no possible defense along those lines.
Yes, that's what people mean when they refer to Israel as a colony of Europe/the U.S.
Did apartheid South Africa have a right to defend itself? Did Rhodesia? Did French Algeria?
No. Regimes like these have one right: The right to be thrown in the dustbin of history and to be replaced by a more just order.
There has been zero sincere criticism from the West. If you circumvent Congress to give Israel more money and openly state you are unconditionally supporting it, I don't buy it if you leak a story about being furious with them behind closed doors. You shouldn't, either.
Why should they have a right to defend themselves? It would be more ethical if they all killed themselves.
The giant gaping hole in calling Israel a "western colony" is that it has no homeland. It's not a British colony, or a French colony, or a colony of any other country. If Israel as a country stops existing, the vast majority of its citizens don't have citizenship in any other country and have literally nowhere else to go. Therefore it's not a colony and it's not colonialism, it's an independent country.
Oh like Palestine?
Yes, like Palestine. I don't believe that was in doubt.
When the British expelled criminals to Australia they couldn't return home. Was Australia not a colony? A ton of European immigrants to the American colonies intended their journeys to be one-way trips, and were functionally barred from returning by cost. Does that mean there were no colonies in the Americas?
Besides, throughout history you almost never see settlers leaving en masse when colonial administrations end. Sure, some recent arrivees may turn around, and some administrators who moved there mostly to work in the colonial government may leave, but you really never see the main body of settlers leave. You didn't even have this in South Africa. They simply have to live under a government where they can't shoot the locals with impunity.
That doesn't really address the point though... Israel is independent, and was so from the start. It's not bound to any other western country's rule, which is the first requirement for being a colony.
It directly refutes this.
If you're leaning on Israel being formally independent, they're about as independent from the West (particularly the U.S.) as a college freshman getting their tuition paid by Mom and Dad. No one here is talking about Israel being independent on paper, we're talking about how it interacts with other countries in reality.
No country is fully independent. Not even USA.
Your point?
My point is that Israel is not a colony and has a right to exist.
I am not excusing what is being done to Palestinians. I strive for peace, and Israel is showing no signs of it anymore, though it absolutely did just a few decades ago. But no one is saying all of Russia doesn't have a right to exist because it attacked Ukraine. No one is saying USA or Canada don't have a right to exist because of how they historically treated and are still treating native Americans. And no one should be saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist.
Coexistence is the only solution. It seems impossible today, but it's the only possible solution that could possibly work. Anything else is even more detached from reality.
"No country is fully independent" says nothing about whether Israel is properly classified as a colony. It's a platitude.
Another platitude. What do you mean by this? Israel's current actions are indefensible. Many of its past actions are indefensible. Its policy of neither recognizing a Palestinian state nor granting equal citizenship to Palestinians is indefensible. It must either fundamentally change or be replaced by a government worth supporting, like South Africa before it.
It certainly does not have a right to continue existing in its current form, no more than Nazi Germany did.
Sure I was born in Britain with British citizenship, but I identify as Middle Eastern so I should be granted somebody else's land where they are currently living.
These people should be blasted into fucking space if they need a homeland so badly. Zionism cannot even exist without the antisemitic belief in a fifth column. Are Jews an alien element in Western society, or do they belong to the societies in which they were born?
I will tell you this: Middle Eastern people do not eat schnitzel.
What the fuck is wrong with you
I try to understand reality, not fiction. What about you?
Edit: actually I do try to understand fiction quite often, but it usually doesn't pretend to be reality
Get ratio'd by these cats:
And by this owl:
And also by this penguin:
"Your honor, I only stole some of what I'm accused of stealing, not all of it" is not a great defense
Zionist “A land without a people for a people without a land” bullshit.
You know that many Israelis did come from anglosphere or now-EU states, right? It's not like it's just a new social formation of people who already lived in the region.
We've got a mental gymnast here
Germany never underwent denazification.
Elaborate.
The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
There were still nazis in positions of government who held their positions until they died.