How about you tell us what nationality you are a member of, and we can decide for ourselves exactly how much you do or do not resemble the Third Reich? Sort of like how you go around offering unsolicited opinions on the character of other nationalities. Fair is fair, no? If your nationality is so pure, you have nothing to fear - it's not like anybody here would ever make cheap, inflammatory statements about other nationalities, or anything. Okay, then: do the math on that. We note that victimhood has a brutalizing aspect - and so it is dangerous to uncritically side with whatever victim, as the resultant brutality will be empowered. You don't get peace by picking sides, you get peace by learning to love one another. That - and not counter-brutality - is the antidote for the cycle of violence. Judging others and salivating over the imminent comeuppance, is war discourse. Do you want peace, or do you want victory for some faction? /facepalm There are parallels between the Nazis and every modern nation state. That's why Nazism is so scary. The appropriate razor for assessing the value of a comparison, is whether it is instructive in some way. What insight do we gain from this comparison? Do we learn anything about how the problem arose, and how it can be fixed? Or do we just get a raging hard-on of self-righteous indignation? Is there any substance to this perspective, or is it just so much overheated fist-pounding? The potential problem with making certain comparisons has been spelled out quite clearly by Godwin, long ago. Too bad you refuse to read up on such a basic aspect of internet discourse. What you've been told, is that you shouldn't make certain comparisons without carefully thinking them through. Again with the cheap dichotomy - My anger at Israel is RIGHTEOUS, and those who question it ARE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE EVIL THAT IS ISRAEL GRAR!!!!!!!11111
I'll point out that a certain portion of the glee evident in the making of Israel=Nazi comparisons stems exactly from a desire to subvert that kind of thing. Which, okay, understandable - but that path is the road to trolldom. It just further debases every side to engage with that stuff. Puzzled by the apparent sarcasm there - but, honestly, I do find the narrow focus on Palestine in some quarters to be troubling. Perspective is valuable. Again, not liking the sarcasm. All I've asked for is some awareness of these pitfalls, and an corresponding maintenance of critical perspective. Do you disagree that that comparisons at issue generate a whole lot of heat but very little light? Do you disagree that such is a problem? Because I'm not seeing where we learned anything from all the Nazi name-calling, but I am seeing where it poisons the atmosphere. Did I miss something? Side-point, but it's also a pet-peeve of mine that "concentration camp" has somehow come to denote "death camp." Comparing Gaza to a concentration camp (in the correct definition, which is what's actually used to make that comparison you quote) is not particularly controversial to me. But the correct definition doesn't have the Auschwitz connotations - applies as much to any number of other countries, which don't tend to get much heat for it. It's the elision to imply "death camp" where that one goes off the rails. Is "ghetto" not a sexy, Nazi/Jew-inverting enough comparison? You're onto a much better avenue for this sort of thing, there - if you can find instances wherein Israelis are visibly, specifically expressing their internalization of the brutality of the Holocaust, you have an instance wherein the comparison can be both instructive (since the mechanics of the cycle of violence are exposed) and much less inflammatory (since the comparison is fundamentally being advanced by the object itself). Come on man - you really think that relocating these Bedouin is meaningfully comparable to the Holocaust? That I'm splitting hairs to complain about that? If so, then tell me why we never hear Holocaust comparisons made when similar actions are undertaken by various other countries (and they are - this kind of thing is not exactly rare). Hey, be as sarcastic as you like. I stand my ground on this basic point. Okay, fair enough - my point was that the lessons of Nazism are generally applicable to any and all nation states (and specifically, those employing ethnic nationalism), after all. Let's just note that you can go one further: ________ is a modern, developed country, full of civilized people who think themselves moral and upright, and considered their nationalism just and civilized. A few key maniacs like _____, _______, _______, ________, ________, _______, _______, ________, _______, _______ aside, the ________s are not monsters or psychopaths Not quite how I would have put it - I don't consider it a "failing" of a nationality when it doesn't conform to some airy set of moral expectations. They're political entities, after all. What's being projected, is the discomfort of specific individuals with the moral compromises required by allegiance to their nationality. They want to have their identity politic and their purity too, and this causes lots of cognitive dissonance. Israel - and the USA - end up being the sin-eaters for the world. As long as you're marching against the Root of Global Evil, you're on the right side and don't have to worry about it, no? Not necessarily less dramatic, just more internal and psychological. Sure, I recognize that it's a psychological theory. But do you not note a certain insistence on the purity of the respective identity groups, coming from those who tend to pursue this kind of thing? I find it to be rather explicit most of the time, myself. A more informative perspective is to come at it from the other angle - not what interest or responsibility they may feel, but to what extent a pundit stands to actually suffer the consequences of their rhetoric. It's all fine and good to sit on the other side of the world and reject empathy in favor of confrontation and self-righteousness. You don't have to live there, so who cares if it's counter-productive? It sure feels good. Meanwhile, notice how we never see any actual Israelis or Palestinians showing up here and going in for this stuff. Or how nuanced and appreciative of the downsides even the most energetic dichotomizers here become, when the subject turns to conflicts near their homes.
I'm pretty sure I've been rather explicit and lengthy on that specific question. You can feel free to read that material, and respond to it. Paucity of empathy abounds. Easier and just pick a side and start giving out hand-jobs to allies, and throwing rocks at enemies. Feels good, right? The analogies offend me as a citizen of SciForums - it's our discourse here that you're shitting in, and the fact that the world isn't fair to Palestine, is no reason to firebomb SciForums, alienate a bunch of people who basically agree with you, and meanwhile accomplish absolutely nothing in the way of Palestinian justice. My basic complaint has always been that the overheated self-righteousness is counterproductive. It just drives the war discourse, and subverts the peace discourse. The war discourse doesn't lead to justice for Palestine. Wars are determined by power, and Palestine got into this mess for a lack of such. This stuff isn't helping Palestine - it's catering to your own ego, your desire to dress up as Speaker For Palestine and use SciForums as a stage to play out a fantasy wherein you have the power to fix everything, if only those nasty apologists would stop resisting you. Distaste for your gutter approach isn't complicity with Israel, exactly because you do not represent Palestine. This conceit that you speak for Palestine is exactly what throws all this stuff off the rails, screws up your understanding of who you're addressing, etc. The notion that anyone who disagrees with anything you say, is necessarily helping Israel is just blatantly self-serving, wrong, and offensive. What's actually happening here, is that you are an aggressor against the level of discourse at SciForums. See, there you go again: you seem to be addressing Israel, as if Israel is participating here. It isn't. Israel is out there, in the real world. You're addressing people like yourself, who sit at computers in other parts of the world, and have no particular agency with respect to the conflict. If you could at least distinguish an actual Zionist from someone who basically agrees with you but finds your rhetoric corrosive and counterproductive, then you could maybe get somewhere with this sort of emotive approach. Instead, you end up spending tons of time and energy trying to convince yourself that I'm a pro-Israel propagandist and so it's your duty to resist and defy my complaints about your behavior and approach. When in fact I basically agree with you on the actual problems supposedly at issue here. I just can't abide your embrace of cheap, nasty rhetoric and self-gratifying refusal to go the productive, adult route. You do get that you could have me as an ally on this stuff, if you'd drop the nationality-baiting and divisiveness and trolling? I've said it before, but I want to be clear that I expect better from you, and will respond accordingly if you ever summon the willpower to rise to the occasion. Except I'm starting to think you really aren't interested in that - that your priority is not actually to encourage a consensus that is pro-Palestine and powerful enough to steamroll any actual Zionist apologists that do show up, but rather the maintenance of your own pretense to personally speak for Palestine here. And if that results in an endless debased stalemate, so much the better, it would seem. The thing to understand is that venting such opinions on the internet doesn't accomplish anything. Most people figure that out around age 20, after they spend a year or two carrying the Torch of Palestine on some forum or another. It always ends up like this - debased personal drama dressed up in somebody else's identity politics, with a bunch of people who should be coming together over shared empathy instead flinging shit over who's the most revolutionary. This being exactly how I developed my perspective on the subject.
Come on man - I never went that far. In the first place, nobody here is asking the Palestinians to do or not do anything. I'm asking armchair pundits from thousands of miles away to keep the larger phenomenon in mind, particularly if they're going to traffic in analogies that invoke such specifically. If you've got some evidence that Palestinians consider such advocacy an integral, needed part of their cause, then I'll reconsider. I suspect they are less than thrilled with this stuff, though. In the second place, the insight there should be something about the danger of the cycle of violence, and the pitfalls of supporting current victims uncritically. The only way out is actual peace, and that requires both sides to see each other as fundamentally the same, and to let the air out of the self-righteousness and refuse to indulge their feelings of grievance. Didn't Ghandi and MLK have a lot to say along those lines? We frequently hear South Africa invoked in this context - both to compare Israel to Apartheid, and to insist that what is advocated is peaceful reconciliation along the lines of a Mandela-type model. But, would Mandela have approved of such divisive rhetoric as Nazi comparisons? The thing about Nazi comparisons, is that total war is understood to be the appropriate, necessary response to Nazism. That's the exactly opposite of peace and brotherhood. Speaking of which: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/14/dark_clouds_rainbow_nation
Oh, the irony. I think quadraphonics was probably indoctrinated at an early age to believe unquestioningly in the goodness and righteousness of the Zionist agenda. It's why he only has cheap shots at other people's nationality in his own agenda. But, for the record, the country I live in does admittedly indoctrinate young people and recruit them into a state vehicle. It's called rugby. The government invests quite heavily in this state-sanctioned activity, much to my shame. Right now this "rugby" has taken it's indoctrinees to the brink: there are people wandering around drunkenly, celebrating the latest win of their state-sponsored team, spending lots of money and propping up businesses of all kinds as if there's no recession. It's just disgraceful.
And I developed mine, first, through initiation to the victimhood status of Israel at sciforums which was very surprising to me - its the kind of thing you don't realise is endemic until you come up against it and later on through dialogue with Israelis and Zionists - much as you might deplore the analogies, you should understand that the entire national character of Israel and Israelis is defined by Nazism and it is the standard by which they [and others who support them] measure their performance i.e. where are the ovens? In fact, I would go so far as to say that they usually only comprehend the extent of damage of the occupation when you point out the parallels with what happened. As for whether the Bedouin transfer has a Nazi parallel, well it is how the victims feels - like they are undergoing a nakba again - and they determine what they feel and they should be free to express what they feel without requiring permission from those who protect and thus enable their aggressors. I recently read this somewhere and I think it has become the truth. At one time, anti-semitism was a word for people who hated Jews, today it is a word for people that Jews hate. And those people who take the position that opposing the state of Israel and its policies is antisemitism are not doing them any favours by flinging the word around as a shield over the occupation. See: Negev's Bedouins: A New Nakba in the Making http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/negevs-bedouins-new-nakba-making And yes its all well and good that you want to protect the Israelis from the repercussions of their actions - that you expect the Palestinians to take the high road and love one another. But you cannot expect anyone to love the person who is holding their head under water, while they are doing it. Supporting the victimhood status of the aggressor while actively ignoring the real victims does not endear Israelis to Palestinians What I would like to see, on my part, is an honest discussion of the policies. For example, if you feel that the transfer of Bedouins is not a parallel to the Nazi actions, why not point out the differences you see in the picture? On my part, I have been fairly astonished by the degrees of similarilty - for example - to begin with, I had no idea about lebensraum when I became involved in this issue I don't know if the Israeli plan to destroy the Palestinians as a people is a conscious emulation of the Nazi philosophy, but it is undeniably a parallel - by removing the Bedouins and squashing them into ghettos, then replacing them with not Germanic but Jewish peoples, the Israelis are following the process of lebensraum. Now the funny thing is, this process visibly failed under the Germans and led to the Third Reich becoming the analogy for evil across the western discourse - so, why do the Israelis emulate a built-to-fail policy? And now that they are well on their way to becoming unpopular around the world, why is it that they are incapable of pulling back?
They would have to convert and somehow become rich as well. There are poor Christians being persecuted for their religion in other countries. Only a few people object, most probably the same people who object to Israeli race crimes. Mass forced rehousing is a tried and trusted method used by many brutal dictators.
There are plenty of rich/famous Palestinian Christians. You must have heard of Edward Said. And that irreverent Hamas supporter, the Christian Mayor of Bethlehem. From an Israeli source:http://www.israeltoday.co.il/ There are over 100,000 Palestinian Christians in the US who would probably move back if the Israelis left the OPT.
that is some jaw dropping shit Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! really? you were a virgin? who were the folks you had a dialogue with? i need to congratulate them Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes as far as IP goes, I have to say that 5 years in Saudi Arbia and 2 years in the US were nothing compared to 6 months on sciforums. I don't recall exactly how it started, I will have to look back but I lay the blame solely at the feet of GeoffP and JamesR who introduced me to ze Joos and opposition to Israeli policy is antisemitism tropes, respectively. I had far less issues with Israelis here - because I always make allowances for people who live in turbulent societies. I will honestly say that I had some vague notion of Palestinians as some people supported by Indira Gandhi [big fan of Arafat] and I recognised that they were under occupation like the Kashmiris. It was only after my attempts to debate the issue were received with cries of bigotry and antisemitism that I began to wonder what the fuss was all about. Before that I considered Palestinians in the same light as I considered Kashmiris or the Inuit or the native Americans. Indigenous peoples under occupation. I was very surprised to learn that it was Israel that was considered the victim. I would say that between June 2006 and June 2007, I had received a massive education in the western discourse on Israel. Thats around the time I started reading on the topic at any rate. If it wasn't for sciforums, I don't think I would have watched the Gaza war as I did, because I did not have the background to appreciate what was happening there. I would say that it was definitively the Gaza war - I watched it for 14 days during the Xmas break - that set the seal on my opinion of Israeli policy.
Where have I taken a shot, cheap or otherwise, at anyone's nationality? Okay, I've been guilty of a few off-color comments directed at Canada, the UK and Australia over the years. But I hope those were all understood to be in good fun. As for my own nationality, I confess to preferring expensive shots. Did you see my recent thread on America's Islamophobia network? I admit that it kind of went down in flames, but still. When it comes to rugby, I say "GO FIJI!!!" Which causes me some conflict lately, since I have a South African brother-in-law. But I'm more of a sevens fan anyway, so whatever.
yeah, sam an indian anti-semite /snort ------------------------------------------ lemme play with the quad quote....... So your issue is not with the actual argument, but with how sam presents herself? That's pretty superficial and pointless. inspired by.......... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Its not that Indians are incapable of racism because tolerance does not exclude the ability to have notions of superiority or inferiority [as we have proved with our extensive and long lived caste system]. And yes, I do devise arguments which can be termed mischievous, by using a western frame of reference for Islam or Arabs or Muslims or Asians or blacks and inverting them to produce blatant generalisations which can be termed offensive. But I always explain it when I do or at least after I do so and I don't consider that form of argumentation as ill advised. I'll admit, its one of my favourite forms of debate and I've used it in many forms not the least of which was to argue atheism vs religion on this very forum. I think it was water who saw through my stratagem of putting "the opposition" in the unenviable position of providing me with the arguments to defend my position and discussed it somewhere
true enough, but to me, indian anti-semitism is a product of abstraction for the most part rather that for any practical considerations i mean, what is there? the goa inquisition? what else?
Also, the more I think about it, the more this one sticks in my craw: The point is not sit around rank-ordering who is the biggest victim (what kind of excuse for a moral program is that?). But rather, if the problem in question is western colonialism, and the audience being addressed are a bunch of westerners, then why are we reaching past all the major instances of western colonialism (and decades of post-colonial theory) for the Holocaust? To subvert Jewish self-righteousness in the most spiteful possible way? There's no Jews being addressed here, and the problems presented by Israel are not the problems presented by the Nazis - there's no great power bent on annexing an entire continent with tanks and millions of soldiers, requiring the world rally to mobilize a total war in response. Rather, what we have is the problem of how "colonists" and "natives" are to work out their differences and move forward. This being a central, ongoing problem in all colonial states - USA, Australia, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, etc. And nationals of said places happen to constitute most of the audience here - so why not compare Israeli actions to the much-better parallels in those societies? In addition to being less inflammatory, the audience will be able to identify with the issues in a far more meaningful, productive way, as these are issues that our nations continue to struggle with right here at home. Going for the Nazi analogy is, ultimately, cheap. The spot the Nazis occupy in the audience's consciousness doesn't go anywhere - they Nazis are evil, we have to bomb them to death and congratulate ourselves for doing so. And then we get to run the now-ruined world, and create a bunch of new problems out of that hubris (like Israel, or so we're told, no?). Sure, it's sexy and generates a reaction, but it's debased. If that was going to work, it would have by now. One other thought on all that - I've long noticed a troubling elision between "western" and "European" in this discourse. The European perspective on colonialism is very different from that in the rest of the West, for obvious reasons. I wonder if the over-emphasis on Nazi analogies isn't driven by a corresponding over-emphasis on Europe as it figures into the west (and the audience here).
Not following why that is supposed to be a preposterous proposition. Especially with the advent of anti-Semitism as a rallying point for Muslim identity politics in recent decades - i.e., since the founding of Israel. Particularly, Muslim identity as it relates to politicized internet debates. It's not like we're discussing a Hindu here (not that that would be incompatible with anti-semitism, to be clear, but still). It's fun to point out double-standards and all, but this all begs the question of the equivalence between posters here and countries in the real world. Participants here have an obligation to the community discourse, which political entities out in the real world do not. How a poster here chooses to present themselves at SciForums, has a direct impact on the quality of discourse at SciForums, for which said poster is answerable to the rest of us here at Sci. How a country presents itself to the world has a corresponding impact on the quality of geopolitical discourse - but not one that they are particularly answerable to the Sci community for. If there's a point to the ideal of a "scientific community," it must be that the level of discourse there is maintained at a more rational, humane level, from which we can effectively gain insight into the debased power discourse of raw geopolitics. If this community is to be no more than a reflection of larger, debased power politics, then it serves no defensible end. It's just a spectacle of masturbatory, adolescent rage.
There is a reason why I do not use this particular analogy of American and Australian colonists vs natives - its the same reason that the Israelis use it from what I can tell of my analysis of their arguments. Its because Westerners who live in such lands have normalised the occupation in their minds and by drawing a parallel to Israeli occupation vs US occupation of native Americans, the Israelis seek to normalise their occupation of Palestinians. Because that puts the Palestinians firmly in the place where the Israelis want to put them, with some uneducated foreign tribe that needs to be brought up to western standards of acceptability IOW, Americans and Austaralians and New Zealanders and Canadians do not see themselves as ethnic cleansers the way they view the German occupation of Austria or Poland or France. And I do not see the point of pursuing Palestinians as barbaric backward people who are not up to scratch. By using the European alternative of colonialism, I approach the concept of different but equal. No one in the west [at least officially] disagrees with the ethics of German occupation, it is the only European enterprise in colonialism which has never been normalised. You would never ever have an German senator who used this example about the Germans [never mind what the truth actually might be] If you read spidergoats arguments in support of the transfer of Bedouins by Israel, you may understand what I mean.
There are poor Christians being persecuted for their religion in other countries. I didn't say Palestine. They are too busy hating Jews to hate Christians.
