One thing about me is that I constantly seek out opposing viewpoints and new sources of information, and reevaluate my opinions if warranted.
Profound issues that I have changed my mind on over the course of my life include gun control, affirmative action, the death penalty, and vegetarianism. Of those, I have moved in what would be considered the more stereotypically "conservative" direction on three, and the more stereotypically "liberal" direction on one of them. My point here is that I am very open minded about issues.
--------------------
Before around 2005 Israel did not occupy a large part of my thought space. When it did, I was a firm believer in a two state solution based on the 1967 borders, and would have probably, if asked, said that I thought there was plenty of blame to go around on both sides.
Around that time, Israel began to loom much larger in my life because I began to be exposed to virulently anti-Israel rhetoric at the blog Daily Kos. As I've discussed here many times, this rhetoric was often explicitly antisemitic.
As the Israeli-Arab conflict started to loom larger, I started exploring many of the common anti-Israel resources. This included popular websites, lectures, and videos.
-----------------------
What I found back then, and what I have continued to find since then, has been profoundly disappointing. The anti-Israel side just simply doesn't have much of a worthy case, or if they do, they are certainly not making it.
The main problem is that a huge portion of anti-Israel rhetoric is based on pseudo anthropological nonsense. Rather than new and interesting perspectives on, say, the Six Day War or the Oslo Accords or somesuch, what I have encountered is mostly ill-informed babble and transparently ridiculous analogies. If this is what the anti-Israel side has to make their case, then their case is simply not worth making.
The most common of these are appeals to Arabs being "indigenous" and Jews being otherwise, like they are Amish in Bolivia, which completely misunderstands the millennia of Jewish connection and presence in The Land, not to mention the complex patterns of migrations in the Levant with the ebb and flow of empires over the past 200 years. There is also incessant simplistic and incorrect application of very particular mid 20th century American racial paradigms to places where it doesn't belong. There are constant - apparently straight faced, self confident, and seriously intended - references to "brown" and "white" people, revealing that those who peddle these notions have never been to Israel or the territories and have no idea who lives there.
I have been shocked at how many times I have seen anti-Israel discussions refer to Arabs as being "the real Semites" or somesuch. This is conjuring a ridiculous and self-parodying pseudo-anthropological notion out of thin air. There is no such thing as a "Semite" - Semitic is simply a language family that includes the highland Ethiopian languages, Hebrew, Arabic, and Maltese. Nobody creates such false categories out of other language families, such as claiming that Hungarians are the "most Ural-Altaic" people, since such things are transparently absurd. Languages are simply languages, and mean nothing more.
Then there is the constant embrace of anti-scientific garbage such as the Khazar hoax, which continues to stump me. It is like debating with creationists or climate deniers, no amount of evidence will sway people from their factually indefensible position. It is a profound truism that if your position depends on disproven nonsense, or even if you perceive that your position is dependent on disproven nonsense, then your position is not valid.
When actual historical events are discussed, they are almost always done so with apparently no understanding of important context. What I have seen makes me doubt that most anti-Israel people are aware of very important and basic facts such as the UN Partition plan and the Jewish acceptance thereof, or the Peel Commission report, or other important events in the history of the region.
This is all not even mentioning the explicitly and unambiguously antisemitic content, such as the USS Liberty Hoax that is an unavoidable staple of anti-Israel advocacy, and the constant Holocaust revisionism, recently laid bare by the Greta Berlin episode.
---------------------
The bottom line is that while I began my search for opposing viewpoints several years ago with a largely open mind, what I found has shown to me that apparently the anti-Israel position has little of serious value to offer. If there is a valid case to be made there, they are not making it.
What began as an exploration of an issue that previously had little sway for me has moved me toward being a very committed pro-Israel partisan. The case for Israel that I have seen is based on the decades-long quest on the part of the Jewish side to reach a mutually acceptable solution, going back to the Peel Commission report, and the constant moves by the Arab side not to accept anything but complete victory and even genocide. Nothing I have encountered among anti-Israel viewpoints, in now several years of searching, has made a worthwhile case. Instead, I have mostly seen transparently silly pseudo-anthropological nonsense and Farrakhan-esque ranting devoid of any relevancy to the actual situation.
In spite of my considerable efforts to find it, there really seems to be no serious there there on the anti-Israel side. Therefore, I have become a committed pro-Israel partisan. So much so that I now seek out wine from the Golan Heights, and buy my chick peas from halfway around the world. And of course I had to finally go there. It is an irony that this whole path began with my initial online encounters with the anti-Israel side, half a decade ago.
Showing posts with label Zionist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zionist. Show all posts
Friday, November 23, 2012
Monday, October 10, 2011
Do Zionists Help Restore the Tuba-Zangaria Mosque? Yes, Zionists Do
Cross Posted from Blue Truth by Dr. Mike
As many of you know, last week a mosque in the Arab village of Tuba-Zangaria in the Galilee was attacked by arsonists, presumably extremist Jews (because of the "price tag" graffiti left at the site). One suspect has been arrested.
Not only is this act repulsive on many levels (and was immediately condemned in the strongest terms by both Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by Israel's Chief Rabbis), but it also took place in an Arab village whose residents fought alongside the Palmach during Israel's War of Independence, whose young men commonly enlist in the IDF, whose village leaders decided they would not participate in the Arab riots in October 2000, and whose village sports center is named after Yitzhak Rabin.
And just yesterday, Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa were vandalized with similar graffiti left at the sites of the desecrations.
And while I don't always agree with Bradley Burston, I think his eloquent column in Haaretz about this is completely on the mark.
Those of us who are Jewish have just completed our prayers on the Day of Atonement. The centerpieces of that day's prayers are the community confessionals, the Vi'dui and the Al Het, in which we all request forgiveness for the sins that, though we may not have committed them ourselves, fall upon us because members of our community did commit them. This Yom Kippur, the desecration of the mosque of Tuba Zangaria was prominent in my mind during those prayers.
The "price tag" phenomenon is a dangerous one for Israel in many ways. These acts are those of vigiliantes who openly challenge the rule of law and the authority of the state of Israel. Up until now, these attacks have only taken place on the West Bank. There, they attack not only their neighbors, but also IDF soldiers (on whom, ironically, they depend for their own safety in their West Bank settlements). They undermine the authority of the state, and they feed into the mostly false stereotypes created by anti-Israel activists, of violent settlers attacking peaceful Palestinian villagers who want nothing more than to live in peace; that false impression creates more international pressure to force Israel to withdraw from the very land which the settlers want to keep for their own. When these attacks take place within the state of Israel itself, it challenges one of the fundamentals of Israeli society that we proudly hold up as a response to those who maliciously misrepresent Israel's status as a Jewish state-- that Israel's Arab citizens have full political, civil and religious rights equal to the Jewish citizens, and far better than the rights enjoyed by Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. If Israel's Arab citizens, especially those who express friendship and support to their Jewish neighbors, are the subject of acts of terror such as this, then it is not only those Arab Israelis who suffer, but the Jews of Israel as well.
We also make the argument that Israel acts more morally than the Palestinian leadership that turns terrorists into heroes, and that broadcasts an incessant stream of venal anti-Semitic propaganda . And we correctly point out that the terrorists of Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Islamic Jihad openly celebrate the slaughter of children in their bedrooms, because "itbach el-Yahud" ("kill the Jew") has been a rallying cry for Arab rejectionists since the days of the Grand Mufti (and can be heard even on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area) .
It is therefore vital for those of us who support the existence of a Jewish state of Israel, to stand with what we know is the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora against such vile acts done by an extremist minority in our community; even the leadership of the settler movement condemns these terrorists. Our enemies routinely distort "Zionism" into a hateful caricature; this is an important opportunity for us to stand up for the Zionism that we know and to reclaim it from those who use it as an epithet.
This is not about settlements, nor about borders, nor about negotiations (or lack thereof) between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This is about standing with the Israeli citizens of Tuba-Zangaria and elsewhere, just as we stand with Jewish Israelis who have been the victims of religious and political acts of hatred.
Israel's Declaration of Independence states:
"WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
The people of Tuba-Zangaria answered that appeal in the affirmative. It is time now for us to honor that.
In the spirit of atoning for the sins of others in our community, the Association of Reform Zionists of America, in partnership with the Israel Religious Action Center, is raising funds for the refurbishing of the Tuba mosque. It's the Zionist thing to do. Please join me in donating.
As many of you know, last week a mosque in the Arab village of Tuba-Zangaria in the Galilee was attacked by arsonists, presumably extremist Jews (because of the "price tag" graffiti left at the site). One suspect has been arrested.
Not only is this act repulsive on many levels (and was immediately condemned in the strongest terms by both Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by Israel's Chief Rabbis), but it also took place in an Arab village whose residents fought alongside the Palmach during Israel's War of Independence, whose young men commonly enlist in the IDF, whose village leaders decided they would not participate in the Arab riots in October 2000, and whose village sports center is named after Yitzhak Rabin.
And just yesterday, Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa were vandalized with similar graffiti left at the sites of the desecrations.
And while I don't always agree with Bradley Burston, I think his eloquent column in Haaretz about this is completely on the mark.
Those of us who are Jewish have just completed our prayers on the Day of Atonement. The centerpieces of that day's prayers are the community confessionals, the Vi'dui and the Al Het, in which we all request forgiveness for the sins that, though we may not have committed them ourselves, fall upon us because members of our community did commit them. This Yom Kippur, the desecration of the mosque of Tuba Zangaria was prominent in my mind during those prayers.
The "price tag" phenomenon is a dangerous one for Israel in many ways. These acts are those of vigiliantes who openly challenge the rule of law and the authority of the state of Israel. Up until now, these attacks have only taken place on the West Bank. There, they attack not only their neighbors, but also IDF soldiers (on whom, ironically, they depend for their own safety in their West Bank settlements). They undermine the authority of the state, and they feed into the mostly false stereotypes created by anti-Israel activists, of violent settlers attacking peaceful Palestinian villagers who want nothing more than to live in peace; that false impression creates more international pressure to force Israel to withdraw from the very land which the settlers want to keep for their own. When these attacks take place within the state of Israel itself, it challenges one of the fundamentals of Israeli society that we proudly hold up as a response to those who maliciously misrepresent Israel's status as a Jewish state-- that Israel's Arab citizens have full political, civil and religious rights equal to the Jewish citizens, and far better than the rights enjoyed by Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. If Israel's Arab citizens, especially those who express friendship and support to their Jewish neighbors, are the subject of acts of terror such as this, then it is not only those Arab Israelis who suffer, but the Jews of Israel as well.
We also make the argument that Israel acts more morally than the Palestinian leadership that turns terrorists into heroes, and that broadcasts an incessant stream of venal anti-Semitic propaganda . And we correctly point out that the terrorists of Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Islamic Jihad openly celebrate the slaughter of children in their bedrooms, because "itbach el-Yahud" ("kill the Jew") has been a rallying cry for Arab rejectionists since the days of the Grand Mufti (and can be heard even on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area) .
It is therefore vital for those of us who support the existence of a Jewish state of Israel, to stand with what we know is the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora against such vile acts done by an extremist minority in our community; even the leadership of the settler movement condemns these terrorists. Our enemies routinely distort "Zionism" into a hateful caricature; this is an important opportunity for us to stand up for the Zionism that we know and to reclaim it from those who use it as an epithet.
This is not about settlements, nor about borders, nor about negotiations (or lack thereof) between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This is about standing with the Israeli citizens of Tuba-Zangaria and elsewhere, just as we stand with Jewish Israelis who have been the victims of religious and political acts of hatred.
Israel's Declaration of Independence states:
"WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
The people of Tuba-Zangaria answered that appeal in the affirmative. It is time now for us to honor that.
In the spirit of atoning for the sins of others in our community, the Association of Reform Zionists of America, in partnership with the Israel Religious Action Center, is raising funds for the refurbishing of the Tuba mosque. It's the Zionist thing to do. Please join me in donating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)