The Logical Inconsistencies of Antisemites and Israel Bashers

Like any other extremists, antisemites and Israel bashers (and really, I can stop pretending there is any distinction there) have an extraordinary capacity for doublethink.  Doublethink was George Orwell's term for happily believing who mutually contradictory things at the same time.  Lately I've been pondering some of these things that antisemites and derangers believe and claim in tandem, which elementary logic dictates cannot be true in combination.

Not that logical consistency is a hallmark of antisemites and Israel bashers, but consider:

1) Jews aren't a people / Israel is racist

Denial of Jewish peoplehood is a staple of antisemites and Israel bashers.  We see it constantly on internet forums such as Daily Kos, HuffPo, and elsewhere that antisemites congregate in any numbers.  The fact that Jews are a people is supported by every shred of genetic and historical evidence.  But denial of such is so prevalent that it is functionally the "gateway" opinion to full fledged antisemitism.  If there is one thing in this world that David Duke, Hamas, and the Green Party of Australia agree on, it is that Jews are not a people.

Which is quite puzzling considering that often the very next thing out of their mouths is that Israel - sometimes its practices but usually its very existence - is "racist."  Such a charge can only mean that Israel advantages one ethnic group or race over others.

So if Jews aren't a people, then what ethnic group or race is allegedly "racist" Israel advantaging over others?  Am I supposed to believe that Israel just assembled a random collection of unrelated Khazars, Yemenis, and Ethiopians and decided to grant them privileged group status?  Ridiculous.

At this point Israel derangers might think they have an out by claiming that "racist" can mean favoring a particular religion over another, and while Jews are not a people in their minds they are a religion.  However such a dodge can be taken down trivially:  Israel is full of secular and atheist Jews who do not believe in Judaism the religion at all.  Even the great deranger "right wing" boogeyman Avigdor Lieberman is a secular atheist, and in fact has a political party based on that position.  And yet in spite of not being adherents of Judaism, these people are supposedly part of the advantaged segment of Israeli society.  Can you think of any theocracy or religious based state in the world where atheists are included in the privileged class?  Of course not.

The only way Israel can be "racist" is if Jews are a people or a race.

Now of course, I believe that Jews are a people and that Israel is not racist, which is logically consistent if one considers Israel to be a nation-state like most in the Old World, no different than Italy or Greece in that regard.  But for both of those to be untrue simultaneously is a logical impossibility.

2) Israel is a military juggernaut / Israel is a paper tiger utterly dependent on the USA

This one just makes me laugh.  In one breath we are regaled with all of the terrible sins of Israel's seemingly all-powerful endlessly ass kicking military - how they bomb innocent Gazans to smithereens, pre-emptively attack everyone under the sun, and even have nuclear weapons.  Not to mention that they militarily conquered and occupied all of this land in 1967.  Then in the next breath we are told how Israel would be nothing without America and always gets America to "do its fighting for it".  The later obviously ignores the many times that Israel achieved stunning military victory against much larger powerful neighbors with no outside help, such as in the 1948 war, the Six Day War, and so on, but whatever.

So which one is it, bashers?  Cuz it obviously can't be both.

3) Jews are an alien presence in Eretz Israel / The Dome of the Rock is on the site of The Temple

The later is not generally in the circle of concern of Western antisemites, but their Islamist allies are fond of it.

But let's look at the former first.  We constantly hear from the likes of Hamas - and misguided Western useful idiots (but interestingly not usually right wing antisemites) - that Jews are a foreign presence and don't belong in Israel, and will have to return to their "countries of origin."  This is fairly representative of Islamist (and even some secular Arab) extremist attitudes toward Israelis.

Yet somehow they have no problem maintaining that the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock sits is the genuine site of the ancient Israelite temples, not to mention many other episodes mentioned in The Bible.  This is just absolutely inconsistent with the position that Jews are usurpers living in Israel, since all of these episodes are obviously associated with Jews.  But hey, as we are seeing, consistency is not their strong suit.

4) The Green Line is an international border / Israel is not recognized as a state

Whatever your feelings about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, it is clear that anti-Israel rhetoric constantly appeals to the pre-1967 Green Line as an international border between two polities which was violated and then occupied.  We are told that Israel must evacuate its illegal settlements from beyond the Green Line, as this is conquered land, and return everyone to behind the line.  Fair enough, as far as it goes.

But for the Green Line to actually demarcate one state from another, that would necessarily mean that there was a state on both sides.  However, until 1979 no Arab state recognized Israel as a state within any borders, the Green Line or otherwise.  No diplomatic relations, no name on maps, nothing.  The armistice that ended the 1948 war which established the Green Line in the first place, on Arab insistence, made it clear that the Green Line was only a cease fire line, and did not imply any sort of permanent border.

Even today, only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, recognize Israel as a state.  For the rest, and for all of their sympathizers in the West, since Israel isn't a state, how can the Green Line have any significance?  Logically, there should be no difference between one side of the Green Line and the other.

(on the last point, we know this is what they truly believe, but they rarely come out and say it directly to a Western audience)

5) Israel is a theocracy / Israel promotes homosexuality and promiscuity

Israel bashers like the Iranian regime and others in the Middle East frequently attribute the presence of sexuality and other libertine behaviors that they don't like to the nefarious influence of Israel.  Big, bad, sinful, satanic, atheist Israel.

And yet we are regaled all the time, by their sympathizers in the West, with charges that Israel is a theocracy or religious-based state, largely from people who don't or can't grasp the concept of Jewish peoplehood.

So which is it?  Is Israel a theocracy or a decadent secular Sodom.  Cuz logically it can't be both!


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So there you have it, a sampling of idiotic, inconsistent doublethink when it comes to Israel.  It is strange because there is plenty of ammo if derangers wanted to rhetorically assault Israel, which, while being incorrect and misleading, at least would not be inherently logically inconsistent.  All they would have to do is pick one item from each of the pairs I mentioned and disregard the other.  They would be wrong, but at least they would be consistent.
 
But they can't even do that.  Sometimes even the most jaded among us can be surprised by the depths of mental laxity some people are capable of.