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I'm in a year-long program on the modern middle east right now and we're talking about Ariel Sharon this week. I showed the Book of Ariel to a fellow student, who showed it to his friend, and now there are several non-goons enjoying Avshalom's beautiful poetry. There really can be peace in the middle east after all.
Dusty Baker 2 fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 04:53
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peace and, goats
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Mar 9, 2016 06:06
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Israeli Arabs are far more likely than Israeli Jews to see a peaceful two-state solution as possible. However, that number has dropped drastically over recent years - from 74% in 2013 to just 50% in 2015. Among Jews, the number hovers around 43%. Secular, highly-educated Jews are more likely to believe in the two-state solution, while religious and uneducated Jews are more likely to see it as impossible. Disturbingly, younger Israeli Jews are more likely to believe the two-state solution is possible, although since Pew evidently thought age was unimportant and split it into just "under 50" and "over 50", it's hard to draw solid conclusions on how support for these things varies by generation. Still, the rising pessimism among Israeli Arabs is the most alarming factor for sure. This poll happened before the elections and the stabbing epidemic, too; I imagine the numbers are only worse now in both sides. Israeli Jews mostly believe that the Palestinians are not genuinely seeking peace, and are just about evenly split on whether their own government is genuinely seeking peace. Israeli Arabs (including Christians and Druze) mostly believe that the Israeli government is not genuinely seeking peace, and are just about evenly split on whether the Palestinian authorities are seeking peace. In other words, skepticism and cynicism are running high, neither ethnicity trusts the other ethnicity's authorities, and they barely trust their own ethnicity's authorities. The numbers are similar across every demographic spectrum except for settlers and political self-identification. Israeli Jews who self-identify as leftist have drastically less faith (just 23%!) in the Israeli government's commitment to peace and significantly more faith (37%!) in the Palestinian government, while self-identified right-wingers are far more likely (70%) to believe that the Israeli government is genuinely seeking peace and significantly less likely to have any faith (7%) in the PA's intentions. Not exactly shocking, but the sheer size of the gap compared to other demographic differences is notable, as is the fact that left-leaning Jews appear to have more faith in the PA's peaceful intentions than in their own government. Unfortunately, they also appear to be a relative minority view, as at least 50% of every other demographic in the survey (including secular Jews and college-educated Jews) believes that the Israeli government is sincerely pursuing peace. Settlers are closer to the right-wing numbers than to the general population's numbers. They also tend to be more likely to believe that settlements help Israel's security (how????) rather than hurt it, although about half of all Israeli Jews hold that view. A bit over half of Israeli Jews believe that the US is not supporting Israel enough, while three-quarters of Israeli Arabs believe it is giving Israel too much support. No surprises there. When asked whether they were Jewish or Israeli first, a bit less than half of Israeli Jews answered "Jewish", about a third answered "Israeli", and about a fifth answered "Neither/both/don't know". 59% of secular Jews answered "Israeli", but only 17% of Masorti, 6% of Dati, and 2% of Haredi considered themselves Israeli before Jewish. When Israeli Jews asked what things they personally considered essential to Jewish identity, the leading answer was "Remembering the Holocaust", the only option to be chosen by the majority of respondents, and the only option to have at least 50% support among every single demographic polled (except for "people who speak Yiddish at home" and "people who received a Jewish education rather than secular"). If you can't tell from those signs, the demographic least interested in the Holocaust was the Haredi, who had a bare 50% support for that answer - every other religious group had at least 60% support. It appears to be a particularly major factor in the identity of secular Jews, since the only other answers that more than a third of them agreed on were "live an ethical and moral life" plus the write-ins "have a sense of belonging to Jewish community" and "pass down Jewish traditions to our children". It's also interesting how many answerers associated moral qualities with Jewishness - 47% of answerers said "live an ethical and moral life" was essential to Jewish identity, and 27% said "working for justice and equality". The survey also asked what might disqualify people from being Jewish. That is, it asked what things someone can do and still be Jewish. 87% of Israeli Jews said that someone can work on Shabbat or be critical of Israel, yet still be Jewish. 71% said that someone who does not believe in God can still be Jewish. By contrast, only 51% of Israeli Jews said that someone can support a Palestinian right of return and still be Jewish. Also, while it might be overshadowed by that shocker, only 39% of Israeli Jews (mostly the secular ones) believe that someone converted by a non-Orthodox rabbi is a real Jew. This is actually very important, because most American Jews are not Orthodox. One of the more intriguing ideas the researchers raise later is that the different religious groups have entirely different conceptions of who "American Jews" mean, since some of them reject the vast majority of American Jews as "not real Jews" to the point where they don't even consider them Jewish at all. Also, a similar question was asked to Israeli Arabs, where majorities of both Muslims and Christians said that accepting Israel as a Jewish state and rejecting a Palestinian right of return did not somehow disqualify a person from their religion.
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Mar 9, 2016 16:59
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Main Paineframe posted:When asked whether they were Jewish or Israeli first, Were there analogous questions for Israeli Arabs?
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Mar 9, 2016 19:38
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http://www.salon.com/2016/02/18/pro...usly_decimated/ i'm sure this guy is going to get his tenure stripped straightaway
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Mar 9, 2016 19:43
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Muscle Tracer posted:Were there analogous questions for Israeli Arabs? No. The "Are you X first or Israeli first" question was asked only to Jews, as was the "What do you consider essential to Xish identity" question; however, all groups were asked at least one "can someone still be an X if they do Y" question.
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Mar 9, 2016 20:43
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Main Paineframe posted:Israeli Arabs are far more likely than Israeli Jews to see a peaceful two-state solution as possible. However, that number has dropped drastically over recent years - from 74% in 2013 to just 50% in 2015.. Yes, the same has unfortunately been true for Palestinians as well. It's only within the last year or so that for the first time ever less than half of Palestinians supported a two-state solution.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:01
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team overhead smash posted:Yes, the same has unfortunately been true for Palestinians as well. It's only within the last year or so that for the first time ever less than half of Palestinians supported a two-state solution. The data I've seen doesn't indicate they support a one state solution, either, so it creates this weird situation on both sides where neither really believe peace is likely to occur. To be clear, I'm not trying to make one of those 'everyone's to blame' arguments, just saying that there's not much optimism from anyone on peace in the near future.
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Mar 10, 2016 00:10
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Xandu posted:To be clear, I'm not trying to make one of those 'everyone's to blame' arguments, just saying that there's not much optimism from anyone on peace in the near future. Way to ignore history, Xandu. 
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Mar 10, 2016 00:22
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icantfindaname posted:http://www.salon.com/2016/02/18/pro...usly_decimated/ Except that if you actually read the article, he did not say that and explicitly argues against it. And you're really going to deny Cohen's point that anti-Zionist rhetoric is in some cases bleeding into, or used as a cover for anti-Semitism? This is the same Cohen who of course apologized for the second class treatment of Jews in Iran.
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Mar 10, 2016 04:34
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I feel like Israel has gone past the point where even if I/P somehow gets resolved I don't see how they can put the breaks on radicalism now. I think if I was a leftist Jewish Israeli I'd be looking to leave. Rolling the anti-Semitism dice in Oceania or North America or certain parts of Europe seems seems like a better bet at this point.
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Mar 10, 2016 04:37
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Xandu posted:The data I've seen doesn't indicate they support a one state solution, either, so it creates this weird situation on both sides where neither really believe peace is likely to occur. The difference between "not wanting a two-state solution" and "thinking a two-state solution is impossible" is an important one, which is often glossed over or outright missed by reporters. It's not a decline in desire for peace (though I'm sure there's some of that too), it's a decline in mutual trust and faith. Palestinians no longer trust Israel to negotiate in good faith, and Israelis largely didn't trust Palestinian intentions in the first place. Just look at the numbers - the vast majority of people on each side don't think the other side's government is truly pursuing peace, and about half of each side don't think their own government is truly pursuing peace. And considering the state of both governments, that's not likely to change soon on either side. I went through the "religious observance" pages of the Pew study and there is barely anything interesting or surprising in them. Ultra-religious and very-religious Jews claimed incredibly high observance rates (>98%!) for basically every religious requirement, ceremony, and observance they were asked about, while secular Jews claimed low observance rates (usually below 25%) for everything except Hannukah and Passover, and the kinda-religious Jews were usually about midway between those two extremes. The "all Jews" combined total came in generally around 50% or so for most things, except the aforementioned holidays. Christians and Muslims generally had higher observance rates, around 60-70%. The only thing that really even came close to interesting was that in the Jewish population the men were far more observant and had much higher participation rates than women, while in the Muslim population the women were generally significantly more observant than the men. Next up is the rest of the political questions, I think.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:01
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Kim Jong Il posted:Except that if you actually read the article, he did not say that and explicitly argues against it. No, if you read the article he accepts and makes the case for the use of FAE weapons: "In this way, one hopes, that there be a greater understanding, if not outright acceptance, of the use of these powerful weapons, given that nothing else will do." He mentions he hopes that seeing that Israel is preparing to use these weapons will cause Hezbollah to back off so they don't need to be used, but if that doesn't happen then he explicitly supports the use of these weapons rather than using conventional methods.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:04
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Moving on to the "views on education, values, and science" part of the Pew survey. All Israeli Jews except Haredi overwhelmingly think it is important for their children to have a secular education, all Israeli Jews except the secular ones overwhelmingly think religious education is important. Haredi are significantly less interested in having a high-paying job or traveling the world. Interestingly, the more religious Jews were less likely to say that science and religion are in conflict, with two-thirds of Haredi saying that there is no conflict between science and religion. However, religious Jews overwhelmingly said that they did not believe in evolution, with an overwhelming 96% of Haredi saying that all living things have existed in their current form since the beginning of time. My best guess for the disparity, given the poor state of education among the ultra-religious and the intense self-isolation and echo chambering of highly religious communities, is that they may have an intensely distorted view of current science. Israeli Arabs generally have similar responses on all these questions to the Masorti - that is, way more religious than the seculars but noticeably less religious than the Haredi and Dati. Well, that was quick! The answers to the personal religious observance questions are just so uniform and predictable that there's hardly anything to say about them. On to the "Views of the Jewish state and Diaspora" section! I'll skip the ones that have already been discussed, like the Arab-expulsion question 61% of Israeli Jews believe that Israel was given to the Jews by God, while 12% believe that this is not true (the remaining 27% either said "don't know" or weren't asked the question because they didn't believe in God). Among Christians and Druze, only 19% and 17% respectively said that Israel was given to the Jews by God. Muslims were not asked this question. Huge majorities of every Israeli Jewish group say that the term "Zionist" at least somewhat applies to them - except for the Haredi. The levels of enthusiasm vary slightly between the other three groups, but the differences are tiny compared to how much the heavy Haredi disagreement stands out. Disappointingly, the only demographics that really rejected the word were Haredi-heavy demographics. Self-identified left-leaning people were almost as likely to answer affirmatively as self-identified right-wingers. 91% percent of Israeli Jews believe that a Jewish state is necessary for the survival of the Jewish people, with only Haredi and Yiddish-speakers (who are mostly Haredi) expressing any real opposition, and 69% say that a strong Jewish diaspora is necessary. There's about a 50/50 split on whether Jews in Israel should remain in Israel even if they could have a better life elsewhere. When asked about the biggest long-term problem facing Israel, the most popular answer among both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs was "the economy", with "security/threats/terrorism" being only the second most common answer. Many commenters have already contrasted this with the same question asked in a previous poll to Jewish Americans, who saw terrorism as Israel's biggest problem by a huge margin, while the economy ranked last place for importance in American Jews' perception of the problems Israel is facing. While both Israeli and American Jews largely feel (according to both polls) that they share many common factors, have a common viewpoint, and share a common destiny, this suggests that maybe their perception and understanding of each other is not as clear as they think. Oddly, Haredi are even more likely to feel kinship with American Jews than the other groups are, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of Americans are Reform or Conservative Jews. One explanation I've seen for that is that, since the Haredi don't recognize non-Orthodox Jews as Jews, they're only thinking of the small Haredi communities (which are also the only ones they're likely to know anything about, considering the depth of Haredi self-isolation) in America and not even considering the much larger Reform and Conservative movements when they answer that question.
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Mar 10, 2016 22:34
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Cower at the face of...terror!
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Mar 13, 2016 16:30
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Mar 13, 2016 21:15
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Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed from incarceration. Says life seems harsh and cruel under Israeli occupation. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Abu Sakha is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Abu Sakha".
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Mar 14, 2016 01:14
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Anyone have a haaretz subscription? They have the scoop on a deal to return certain West Bank cities to PA administration.
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Mar 14, 2016 17:55
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The Kingfish posted:Anyone have a haaretz subscription? They have the scoop on a deal to return certain West Bank cities to PA administration. The gist from what I read is this: In secret negotiations it was suggested that Israel return security control of A territories to the PA, with the IDF taking action in them only in case of "ticking bombs" and even then bar for who can authorize a ticking bomb scenario would be raised higher up the command chain. Ramallah and Jericho are to be test cases and should it prove successful, the arrangement would be expanded to other cities. The PA's security forces are to "act decisively" should they be given intel on terrorist activity. So far it seems negotiations came to a standstill, and now that it's out in the open all the right wing politicians are already coming out against it so I doubt anything's gonna happen.
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Mar 14, 2016 20:31
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So I never actually finished going over those survey results. I've been preoccupied with the Haredi tantrum in the Knesset, which initially looked like it could threaten the government but now seems to be going nowhere slow. For those who haven't been following it, there have been a couple of significant developments in favor of non-Orthodox Jews lately in Israel. First of all, non-Orthodox Jews were banned from many Jewish ritual baths (mikvot) by the Orthodox religious councils that ran them, but a court case challenging that went to the High Court, which ruled that the bans were discriminatory and illegal. Second of all, in response to popular demands for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall by groups like Women of the Wall (the existing prayer spot was under Orthodox rule, which pretty much froze out women completely), the government created a second, separate prayer area at the Western Wall not subject to Orthodox restrictions. For a little while it looked like the Rabbinate and the Haredi parties were willing to let the Western Wall compromise (which no one really seems to be happy with) slide, but as soon as it was actually passed into law they threw a huge tantrum about it, tried to block its implementation, and started threatening to leave the coalition unless Netanyahu meets their demands. So far, they're demanding that the Knesset passes a law banning non-Orthodox Jews from ritual baths, in a (likely futile) attempt to circumvent the High Court decision. The attorney general has declared that such a law would be unconstitutional, while the haredi MKs have countered with claims that non-Orthodox are "pretend Jews" and that it is literally undemocratic to pass laws that benefit them. And that's about where it stands right now. Back to stats. Next up: Intergroup marriage and friendship in Israel! First of all, there is virtually no interfaith marriage in Israel. 98% of married Jews, 99% of married Christians, and 99% of married Muslims are married to someone of the same faith. Even among Jewish subgroups, there's not that much intergroup marriage, with most groups (except Masorti) overwhelmingly marrying within their group. Second of all - and far more alarmingly - most Israelis are uncomfortable with the thought of their children someday marrying outside of their religious group. 97% of Israeli Jews and 80% of Israeli Christians would be uncomfortable with their child marrying a Muslim, while 82% of Israeli Muslims and 88% of Israeli Christians would be uncomfortable with their child marrying a Jew. Israeli Jews and Muslims are both only slightly more comfortable with the idea of their child marrying a Christian, and similar levels of discomfort are shown by all groups toward the idea of marrying a Druze. Once again, Israeli Jews are uncomfortable with intermarriage even between different religious subgroups, to the point where secular Jews would rather see their child marry a Christian than a Haredi. As for intergroup friendship...Israeli Jews overwhelmingly say that "all" (67%) or "most" (31%) of their friends are also Jewish. Muslims and Christians were far less likely to answer "all" but made up for it with a lot more "most" answers, so that's possibly just a consequence of their minority status. Between Jewish subgroups, it's the usual deal - Haredi mostly only hang out with Haredi, secular Jews mostly only hang out with other secular Jews, and there's a little blurring of the lines between the middle two groups. Phew. I think I've mentioned this before, but the results for some of these are so predictable that it's downright boring. Thw real conclusion of this survey, rather than any specific set of headline numbers, is "Israeli society is extremely divided and factional, with severe and irreconcilable political conflicts arising from the extreme disagreements between factions". However, there's one more section of the survey, about discrimination, and that one really deserves a post to itself, so I'm going to hold off on that one for a little bit.
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Mar 22, 2016 15:53
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I just want to thank you for these really informative posts, they are very enlightening. Can you tell if there is a difference with the interfaith marriages and interfaith friendships among the younger generations, are there useful stats about that in the survey? If yes, is the picture a bit better with younger generations?
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Mar 22, 2016 16:06
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Main Paineframe posted:First of all, there is virtually no interfaith marriage in Israel. Since there is no secular marriage in Israel, all marriages have to be handled by religious authorities, this result is not surprising.
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Mar 22, 2016 16:37
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Torrannor posted:I just want to thank you for these really informative posts, they are very enlightening. Can you tell if there is a difference with the interfaith marriages and interfaith friendships among the younger generations, are there useful stats about that in the survey? If yes, is the picture a bit better with younger generations? The survey data is only broken into two age groups: ages 18-49 and age 50+. There's hardly ever any meaningful difference between the two groups that shows in the stats, either. So it's not especially useful for looking at generational differences. Some other demographic differences that Americans might expect to matter, like level of education, are better covered by the survey data - but generally don't have that much impact unless they correlate with religious group membership somehow. I've tried to point out places where any demographic status besides religious subgroup membership (or obvious proxies of that, like Jewish vs secular education) had any real impact on the stats, but most of the time it's a tiny difference at best. The only demographic besides group membership that has any real impact in a lot of these questions (and which I wish the survey paid more attention to) is language spoken at home. Yiddish-speakers are almost overwhelmingly very religiously devout and tend to be even more likely than the overall Haredi to pick the strictest possible answer to a religious question and the most religious answer possible to a question about Jewish identity. Russian-speakers, on the other hand, generally line up with the secular Jews on religious matters and tend to be even more secular than the overall secular Jews when it comes to questions of Jewish identity. However, they both tend to be more pro-diaspora than their Hebrew-speaking neighbors. Also, when it comes to purely political questions with fewer or no religious aspects, they tend to feel differently from their overall religous group. For example, Yiddish-speakers are significantly less likely than the general Haredi group to be pro-settlements, while Russian-speakers are significantly less likely than the general secular group to be anti-settlements. Also, Yiddish-speakers were significantly less likely than the rest of the Haredi to support expelling Arabs from Israel, while Russian-speakers were significantly more likely than the rest of the secular population to support expulsion.
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Mar 22, 2016 17:26
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I'm sure it's been posted itt before however it's a huge thread that I just came in, and I was hoping if someone could point me to some info of maybe how the BDS movement garners the "anti-Semitic" label by so many pundits I see on TV, hear on podcasts, read in articles, etc. Today I was listening to Democracy Now and there was a Prof. Friedman (sp?) who went off on how BDS is attacking educational subsidies for Israelis and then he went on what seemed (to my uneducated ears at least) to be an almost bizarre tangent where he talked about millions of people dying in Syria and how China is supporting Syria and also attacking their own Muslim population.. Meanwhile I'm just sitting here thinking to myself "the amount of money that the US appears to be spending on weapons development and weapon deliveries to Israel, could literally pay for like, college for every person in the US," unless my math is really messed up. I also heard a bunch of statements from US presidential candidates who spoke at AIPAC, and it seemed kind of shocking to me that Clinton both went out of her way to talk about how we need to keep Israel's military power "second to none" (not an exact quote, but pretty close, iirc), and then she began rattling off the names of different types of weaponry.defense systems.. One of the names of the (I'm assuming) US-developed weapons she wanted to give to Israel was "The Sling of David," which made me  because holy poo poo, you're literally naming weapons from sections of the old testament, and giving them to a nation which, well, probably would take that to heart. I am definitely leaning toward pro-BDS because, at heart, I don't really see what is profiting the US from providing billions of dollars in funds and weapons every year to a nation on the far side of the globe, although apparently that makes me anti-Semitic according to many, many sources, as well as nearly every US political figure - except for, somewhat ironically to my mind, Bernie Sanders - the only actual Jew running for office.. He didn't show up for AIPAC (I'm assuming because as a jew he could afford to skip it more than any of the others, and also because he seems to potentially be more pro-BDS than any of the others on both sides of the aisle,) and talked about the unemployment rate among Palestinians, etc. I'm not a bernie supporter however, it was kind of shocking to hear all the other candidates fight over who could brown-nose the most over Israel. More directly on topic of BDS - are there any major exports from Israel which might actually harm other nations' economies? Or is it more of a "Sanction/Divest" because, well, they all seem to live in a desert and all the olive trees keep getting run over by tanks. If this is offensive to anyone I apologize in advance, I'm asking from a pure point of curiosity and presumed ignorance. I've put definitely more than a handful of hours into reading alternative media about the Israel/Palestine conflict over the last few years and I also know some pretty hardcore/rabid BDS people online, and have been known to read some potentially rabid  blogs such as http://www.richardsilverstein.com/ , so I'd really appreciate if someone could point me to some informative posts from farther back itt, or who could point me to some reliable sources which don't seem, well, borderline conspiracist.. From my standpoint, the knee-jerk "ANTI-SEMITE!!!1!!one!" responses to almost any seemingly-minor criticism of Israeli policy and actions seems both dangerous and a little absurd, and a LOT like Trump supporters' claims that protestors at their rallies are somehow conpsiring against them to cause violence and bring down the nation.I also heard an interesting sound bite on the same Democracy Now interview I mentioned above, where the pundit sitting opposite Prof. Friedman ( edit: why would moving the US embassy to Jerusalem be useful for anyone at all, except as an extra layer of pro-Israel symbolism? That part of some of the candidates' (not only Trump) statements at AIPAC really smacked of straight-up trying to pick a fight with every other nation in the region that's not allied with Israel, and I can't think of any logistical reason to do so. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 04:18
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coyo7e posted:Meanwhile I'm just sitting here thinking to myself "the amount of money that the US appears to be spending on weapons development and weapon deliveries to Israel, could literally pay for like, college for every person in the US," unless my math is really messed up. I'm afraid I have some bad news.
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Mar 23, 2016 04:58
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Dude must be one of Ben Carson's foreign policy advisors
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Mar 23, 2016 04:59
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coyo7e posted:Meanwhile I'm just sitting here thinking to myself "the amount of money that the US appears to be spending on weapons development and weapon deliveries to Israel, could literally pay for like, college for every person in the US," unless my math is really messed up. It's about 3 billion a year or so. College is $32k private, $9.5k instate and ~24k out-of-state public. Let's say $15k/year - that only would fund 200,000 students. For perspective, there's about 20 million students in college right now. So you're only off by two orders of magnitude. (The US is big) You can quibble about any of those numbers if you want, but you're not going to make up a 100x difference. quote:edit: why would moving the US embassy to Jerusalem be useful for anyone at all, except as an extra layer of pro-Israel symbolism? That part of some of the candidates' (not only Drumpf) statements at AIPAC really smacked of straight-up trying to pick a fight with every other nation in the region that's not allied with Israel, and I can't think of any logistical reason to do so. Imagine moving the US Embassy from Moscow to Simferopol, Crimea. It's not a US/Israel solidarity thing, it would be a flat-out acknowledgement that the annexation is accepted. Harik fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 05:33
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Alright that's interesting and good to know, thanks. That said, are the numbers ignoring the R&D dollars spent on weapons and defense systems that will literally never ever be used inside US borders or by US troops and rather only focusing on the dollar cost of the weapons being shipped over each annum? Or is the 3 billion per year estimate only counting the "raw" currency being given for non-military purposes? I mean what'd that new F-34 or w/e it's called cost to research, again? A couple/few dozen billion dollars? Conversely, how much is being given to Palestinians to fund their efforts at rebuilding infrastructure, education, etc? I mean I know having random weirdos trying to stab soldiers is scary and all but it still seems radically lopsided to be giving billions of dollars to a nation that, well, ought to be able to pay their own way after 70ish years, imho. I'd appreciate information to learn how I'm wrong rather than being called a ben carson supporter, thanks. I'm always intereted in learning, and if that means I'm totally in the wrong I'd rather be temporarily wrong and learn to move forward from there, than treated like an idiot. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 06:08
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coyo7e posted:I'm sure it's been posted itt before however it's a huge thread that I just came in, and I was hoping if someone could point me to some info of maybe how the BDS movement garners the "anti-Semitic" label by so many pundits I see on TV, hear on podcasts, read in articles, etc. The Economist had a nice article on BDS a few months ago (right-click and open in incognito window) addressing the criticism that BDS and its demands do not lead to peace. "The question becomes not what is likely to lead to a peaceful solution (nothing is), but whether you are willing to defend continued association with a state that works the way Israel does."
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Mar 23, 2016 06:13
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I wouldn't buy dates or peppers from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt etc either im an ethical consumer 
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Mar 23, 2016 08:35
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coyo7e posted:Alright that's interesting and good to know, thanks. The R&D isn't usually included in that, but it doesn't add up to too much comparatively. The USA has spent a few billion on such R&D projects for Israeli use, but as it spends that much on a yearly basis it isn't going to increase the annual spend by too much. However there are a number of different tricks which all add up to add significant amounts to the annually quoted figure - getting close to doubling it Perhaps most importantly Israel has almost no accountability unlike other nations that receive aid and is able to funnel the money into settlements and even their nuclear program, all things that the USA and not to mention the rest of the world, officially don't support. I gave some details on this a few weeks back in this post. The Ben Carson comment is probably just because you seemed to be plucking figures out of the air and being off from the real numbers by a significant amount.
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Mar 23, 2016 09:00
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XMNN posted:I wouldn't buy dates or peppers from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt etc either It sucks that the best dates that arent Deglet Nour come from the Gulf. God I could go for some Medina Agwa.
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Mar 23, 2016 09:14
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coyo7e posted:I'm sure it's been posted itt before however it's a huge thread that I just came in, and I was hoping if someone could point me to some info of maybe how the BDS movement garners the "anti-Semitic" label by so many pundits I see on TV, hear on podcasts, read in articles, etc. Today I was listening to Democracy Now and there was a Prof. Friedman (sp?) who went off on how BDS is attacking educational subsidies for Israelis and then he went on what seemed (to my uneducated ears at least) to be an almost bizarre tangent where he talked about millions of people dying in Syria and how China is supporting Syria and also attacking their own Muslim population.. It garners the anti-semitic label because unfortunately, many Israeli supporters can't convincingly defend Israel's actions, so they attempt to steer the conversation away from Israel's human rights record by making baseless accusations of anti-semitism, which then of course shifts the topic away from say, illegal home demolitions or the systematic use of torture on Palestinian civilians and activists and towards the motivation of the speaker. It also of course helps to deter people from getting involved; if speaking your mind about Palestinian rights can get you slimed with the label of anti-semite, a lot of people are going to keep their opinion to themselves. Check out Palestine Legal's report for more information on the phenomenon of baseless anti-semitism charges being used as a pretext for censoring pro-Palestinian activism. As to whether or not BDS is anti-semitic, of course not. There are arguments against it(the most common one being that it will only move Israeli society to the right, which I don't find particularly persuasive since Israeli society has been lurching hard to the right without BDS' help) but those who attempt to smear it as anti-semitic generally rely on the "double standards" argument which goes something like this: there are worse countries than Israel but only Israel is targeted by the boycott, hence the boycott is motivated not by concern for Palestinians but by a hatred of Jews, QED. For one thing, this was also a favorite argument of apartheid South Africa's defenders. Of course this (in many cases deliberately) misunderstands what a boycott is; a boycott is a tactic, not a movement. Boycotts don't happen because a bunch of people sit around in a room and say "I'm going to boycott something; I'll find the worst organization in the world and boycott that." Boycotts arise from a particular movement as a way to effect change for that movement. When Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association called for a boycott of California grapes, they weren't claiming that California farms were the worst working conditions in the world(working in a Soviet/East German/Chinese/North Korean labor camp would be much worse) or even that California had the worst agricultural working conditions(West Africa or Central America, among other places, have much worse working conditions); he was fighting for a just solution(union contract, fair pay) and used the boycott to pressure their adversaries into agreeing to do the right thing. Likewise, apartheid South Africa wasn't the worst human rights abuser in the world; Idi Amin's Uganda or Zaire or the CAR could easily beat SA. But the ANC and its international supporters called for a boycott until majority rule and partially as a result of that boycott, the government relented and agreed to end apartheid. BDS is hoping to accomplish the same with Israeli apartheid. BDS' conditions are threefold: and end to the occupation, full equality for Palestinians in Israel, and a recognition of the right of those Palestinians ethnically cleansed in the Nakba to return home. None of these are racist or anti-semitic; arguably, to oppose them would be racist. quote:Meanwhile I'm just sitting here thinking to myself "the amount of money that the US appears to be spending on weapons development and weapon deliveries to Israel, could literally pay for like, college for every person in the US," unless my math is really messed up. Yeah, I wish that were the case, but no. In general, foreign aid is not the cash cow that will allow all these social programs. That money is enough to buy quite a bit of violent repression and a whole lot of dead Palestinian civilians, though. quote:I am definitely leaning toward pro-BDS because, at heart, I don't really see what is profiting the US from providing billions of dollars in funds and weapons every year to a nation on the far side of the globe, although apparently that makes me anti-Semitic according to many, many sources, as well as nearly every US political figure - except for, somewhat ironically to my mind, Bernie Sanders - the only actual Jew running for office.. The pro-Israel lobby is far better financed and better connected than the pro-Palestinian lobby, which is mostly grassroots activists and intellectuals. Politics being a reflection of the balance of power, this results in a uniformly anti-Palestinian attitude in the government(even Sanders has cravenly suggested that BDS is motivated by anti-semitism, though not as directly as other politicians.) This is why for instance so many states are moving to attack free speech and criminalize BDS. But as to why they are so eager to smear their opponents as anti-semites, it's again because they know they're trying to sell a crap product; it's becoming harder and harder to present Netanyahu's Israel, especially post-Cast Lead, post-Oslo as anything other than racist and jingoistic. Hence the increasingly desperate reliance on slandering Palestinian supporters. quote:More directly on topic of BDS - are there any major exports from Israel which might actually harm other nations' economies? Or is it more of a "Sanction/Divest" because, well, they all seem to live in a desert and all the olive trees keep getting run over by tanks. I'm not sure what you mean by "harm other nations' economies"; do you mean are Israeli products harmful outside of the fact that they're produced by an apartheid state and enrich the Israeli government? No, I don't really see how(I mean, Israel isn't a major opium producer or anything.) But they are reliant on exports economically and on US military assistance. In the case of occupied Palestine, though, Israel uses its control over Palestine's borders(including the border with Jordan) to prevent non-Israeli staples from being cost effective, thus enriching Israeli businesses(in many cases, the products were grown on Palestinian land or the resources taken from Palestinian reserves) and forcing Palestinians to finance their own apartheid. quote:I also heard an interesting sound bite on the same Democracy Now interview I mentioned above, where the pundit sitting opposite Prof. Friedman ( Absolutely. Here is a defense of apartheid South Africa published by the CS Monitor. See how many parallels you can pick out between that argument and those you hear defending Israel. quote:Conversely, how much is being given to Palestinians to fund their efforts at rebuilding infrastructure, education, etc? A lot of money flows into the West Bank but unless I'm mistaken, most of it comes either from international organizations or from tax revenue that belongs to the PA which is collected by Israel(and which Israel withholds whenever the PA gets too uppity). However, it's important to note that Israel is pocketing up to 78 percent of aid money meant for Palestinians. Just another way that Israel profits off of Palestinian misery.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:45
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The Insect Court posted:I'm afraid I have some bad news. Since you're back, do you want to elaborate on your statements about the Roma? You never did address my question. The Insect Court posted:I agree that we should not attempt to erase the killings by the Nazis of disabled people or gypsies (or Slovenes or Freemasons or homosexuals or Spanish Republicans) from history. captainblastum posted:I'd be interested in hearing why you think that the idea of the Roma people being as persecuted and scapegoated as the Jewish people is "ludicrously incorrect."
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Mar 23, 2016 16:42
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Likud MKs and Ministers are still going at the "biggest idiot" award, the competition has become stiffer during this current Knesset term with the addition of MKs Oren Hazan and Miki Zohar but transportation minister Israel Katz has not given up yet: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...4b08af01be9dddb quote:“If in Belgium they continue eating chocolate and enjoying life, and continue to appear as great democrats and liberals, they won’t be aware that some Muslims in their country are organising terror, they won’t be able to fight them,” he told Israel Radio.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:49
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Likud MKs and Ministers are still going at the "biggest idiot" award, the competition has become stiffer during this current Knesset term with the addition of MKs Oren Hazan and Miki Zohar but transportation minister Israel Katz has not given up yet: In order to save the Liberal Democracy, we had to burn the Liberal Democracy?
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Mar 23, 2016 18:42
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coyo7e posted:I mean I know having random weirdos trying to stab soldiers is scary and all but it still seems radically lopsided to be giving billions of dollars to a nation that, well, ought to be able to pay their own way after 70ish years, imho. We give billions of dollars to a lot of countries, the amount we give to Israel isn't that unusual. What really sets it apart is the relaxed conditions and rules that let them do more with US aid than other countries. coyo7e posted:I'm sure it's been posted itt before however it's a huge thread that I just came in, and I was hoping if someone could point me to some info of maybe how the BDS movement garners the "anti-Semitic" label by so many pundits I see on TV, hear on podcasts, read in articles, etc. There are a lot of factors and angles on it; BDS, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, and anti-BDS are all much too large to summarize into a single pithy group. The stuff you're asking is just far too broad, so I'll focus on the accusation that BDS is anti-semitic. There's a lot of angles even on that. First, as you seem to be thinking, there's a tendency to purposely accuse any anti-Israel position of being anti-Semitic, regardless of the truth of the claim, in order to dismiss all political criticism as just senseless racism. Second, there is no doubt some actual anti-Semites in BDS, since as you could no doubt imagine, people who hate Jews aren't exactly going to be big fans of the Jewish State. Third, people may be exaggerating things in their own mind and imagining anti-Semitism where there may not be any because of their belief that anti-Semitism is particularly widespread or that the whole world secretly hates Jews - after all, persecution complexes are already pretty common in conservatives. You've actually asked at quite a good time, so now I'll cover the next section of the big Pew survey on attitudes and religion in Israel: Anti-Semitism and discrimination. First of all, touching on the topic above, 64% of Israeli Jews believe that anti-Semitism is very common around the world, and 35% believe that it is somewhat common; only 1% answered that it was "not too common". Of the 99% who gave one of the first two answers, 76% believed that the amount of anti-Semitism in the world was increasing, while only 1% answered that it was decreasing. In other words, Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believe that anti-Semitism outside of Israel is both widespread and growing. The survey also asked people how much discrimination they saw against different groups in Israeli society (Muslims, LGBT, secular Jews, religious Jews, women, Ethiopian Jews, and Mizrahi), and the results there are super interesting. First of all, Israeli non-Jews were more likely to see discrimination against every group asked about than Israeli Jews were. Yes, Israeli Arab Muslims were slightly more likely to say there is a lot of discrimination against religious Jews than Israeli Jews were. Israeli Jews simply perceived less discrimination in Israeli society than Israeli Arabs of all groups did, even when it came to non-religious groups like women and LGBTs. The biggest gap, unsurprisingly, is that one in five Jews and four in five Muslims thought there was a lot of discrimination against Muslims in Israel. However, the second biggest gap was in discrimination against women - only 25% of Jews thought it was common, vs 42% of Muslims. Also, just as many Israeli Jews (21%) saw discrimination against religious Jews as against Muslims. The group that all Israeli Jews as a whole thought were most discriminated against were Ethiopian Jews (36%), followed by women (25%) and then a three-day tie (21%) between Muslims, religious Jews, and Mizrahi Jews. However, that same question also comes with a deeper breakdown into the Jewish groups, which reveals a lot more nuance than the "All Jews" numbers suggest. First of all, let's look at the various Jewish subgroups. The more religious a group is, the less likely they are to believe there's discrimination against Muslims and the more likely they are to believe there's discrimination against religious Jews. The former is fairly minor (13% of Haredi said Muslims were discriminated against, vs 25% of secular Jews) but the latter is an incredibly drastic effect (64% of Haredi said religious Jews were discriminated against, vs only 9% of secular Jews). Also, secular Jews were noticeably less likely to see discrimination against Mizrahi than the other groups were. Lastly, Haredi were significantly less likely to perceive discrimination against every group aside from religious Jews and Mizrahi. Aside from those things, the answers were about the same among the other three religious subgroups. Ultimately, the Haredi and Dati said that the group that faced the most discrimination in Israel was religious Jews, followed by Ethiopian Jews in second place. The Masorti saw Ethiopians as the most discriminated against, followed by the Mizrahi. Secular Jews said that Ethiopians faced the most discrimination, followed by women. There are also other demographic differences among the Israeli Jews in the answers to that question (sadly, no demographic breakdowns for the non-Jewish groups). Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews were more likely than Ashkenazi Jews to see discrimination against Mizrahi and religious Jews, and less likely to see discrimination against Muslims. Women were more likely than men to see discrimination against women, and somewhat less likely to see discrimination against religious Jews. Israeli Jews under the age of 50 were more likely than the 50+ demographic to see discrimination against every group except Muslims. More educated Jews were less likely to see discrimination against secular, religious, and Mizrahi Jews. College-educated Jews were most likely to see discrimination against Muslims and LGBT, but Jews who had a high school degree but no college were less likely to see discrimination against those groups than Jews without a high school degree were. Russian-speakers were far less likely to see discrimination against anygroup except secular Jews, and Yiddish-speakers basically thought that no one was discriminated against in Israeli society except religious Jews, which a huge majority felt were persecuted.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:06
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Most excellent, thanks for all the helpful posts! I realize now that my knee-jerk guesstimations and the example I threw out (paying for everybody's college) were way off however, right now I'm going back to (community) college and my average tuition is like ~$1500 a semester, rather than the 20k or 40-50k which appear to be the national average per annum (and good lord, close to 20 million people are in college at any given moment? That speaks to me of an entirely different problem of young people possibly being pressured into going into college despite them not knowing what they're getting into, or what they even want to do..) coyo7e posted:If this is offensive to anyone I apologize in advance, I'm asking from a pure point of curiosity and presumed ignorance. I've put definitely more than a handful of hours into reading alternative media about the Israel/Palestine conflict over the last few years and I also know some pretty hardcore/rabid BDS people online, and have been known to read some potentially rabid I've got lots of reading to go back through itt, thanks again
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Mar 24, 2016 03:03
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Harik posted:Imagine moving the US Embassy from Moscow to Simferopol, Crimea. It's not a US/Israel solidarity thing, it would be a flat-out acknowledgement that the annexation is accepted. No one disputes Israeli sovereignty over West Jerusalem besides BDSers. It's a temper tantrum over Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem. Gobbeldygook posted:The most common argument is whataboutism. Since they are calling only for BDS of Israel instead of <other bad/worse/ countries>, it must actually just be a cloak for anti-semitism. It's de facto, functional anti-Semitism using the logic of progressivism. If a policy has a disparate impact towards Jews, it's functionally anti-Semitic even if that's not the hypothetical intent - per that reasoning. Of all the human rights offenders, they're only targeting the Jewish one, the same people who have been systematically targeted by (in those cases clearly and explicitly) anti-Semitic boycotts throughout history. It's literally thousands of people spending 100% of their energy on Israel and not uttering a peep about worst offenders, or in cases like Syria, in some cases actively apologizing for them. coyo7e posted:I am definitely leaning toward pro-BDS Do you know what BDS as defined by Barghouti entails though? It's not boycott Israel until they stop they occupation. It's Israel must cease to exist, followed by the overwhelming likelihood of a civil war and waves of ethnic cleansing and human suffering. The idea that BDS is non-violent is absurd and laughable. Kim Jong Il fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 03:03
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Kim Jong Il posted:It's de facto, functional anti-Semitism using the logic of progressivism. If a policy has a disparate impact towards Jews, it's functionally anti-Semitic even if that's not the hypothetical intent - per that reasoning. Absent an accusation of latent/concealed racial animus, does this argument amount to anything beyond tu quoque?
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Mar 24, 2016 03:11
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