De-Zionize the American Mind?

[Guest]

As you ignored this aspect of my comment, I will restate it in revised form to isolate the part you ignored:

People who say things like "De-Zionize the American Mind" are pitifully ignorant about America. There are 300 million people in America of every race, religion and ethnic background. There is no monolithic "American mind."

I disagree. The assumptions of the article are wrong on most points, however if they were correct then the title would be accurate. The USA does have a, monolithic to use your word, "face" we provide to the world which is recognizably USA. The fact the face we provide is so often that of a bullish, greedy and ignorant child is beside the point. Most other countries have far worse public "faces". You can blame the media for our face if you want. I do.

[jojo22]

Piffle

Orthodox Jews are anti the Zionist regime as well - they know that land was taken unfairly and they don't support it - good on them for standing up for what is right. Their stance - zionism is un-jewish. If I was an anti-semite then I would be anti all Jewish people - I'm not, I'm anti Zionism and the fact that generations of Palestinian children have grown up in refugee camps in their own land.

This business of if you don't agree with everything Israel does - you're an anti-semite is just BS. It's just a means of shutting dissenters up and allowing Israel to continue treating Palestinians in any manner they see fit.

In principle it's true that Orthodox Jews should oppose Israel, much like Catholics should oppose the manufacture of condoms.

Not all Orthodox Jews are against having a state of Israel. There is a vocal minority of Orthodox Jews, mostly in the USA interestingly enough, that oppose a state of Israel under the assumption that it shouldn't exist until -after- the messiah comes. There is a larger anti-zionist group which contains radical Orthodox Jews, but shouldn't be mistaken for being Orthodox themselves.

Holding Israel to a higher standard of conduct is not unfair however. If they wish to become yet another rogue state, they can, but not with western funding.

Thank you for that information - I stand corrected in that I had assumed a wider generalization to cover all orthodox jews - I should know better than to presume homogeneity.

[Guest]

Thank you for that information - I stand corrected in that I had assumed a wider generalization to cover all orthodox jews - I should know better than to presume homogeneity.

Also, you should be aware that there were several waves of Jewish immigrants into Isreal, or Palistine, depending on the date you're talking about. Much of the land of Isreal was actually bought outright by Jews. Why this happened in a very short paragraph is that there was no Ottoman law allowing collective ownership of land in Palistine (there certainly is one under Jewish law,) so individual land owners slowly found themselves bankrupt over time and their land held by wealthy Arabs in the cities, Jews bought the essentially worthless (to city bankers anyway) land and settled.

The point is that the story of immigration and the creation of Israel can not and should not be summed up in a sentence such as:

"- they know that land was taken unfairly and they don't support it - "

[jojo22]

I am aware that there was a slow migration of jewish people into palestine over time. The fact remains though - it was not the land of the Jewish immigrants to take and rule, nor was it the right of the Brits to mandate they had the right to take it. Where were the palestinians rights and voice in all of this? They were slowly encroached upon and then held to curfew and 'ghettos' in their own land. Way to learn humanity from the past.

[Guest]

Jews were in Palestine all along. It wasn't really a slow trickle it was spurts. By the time Israel was created many Jews had already fled one regime change or another in one country or another. In the late 1800's for instance anti-Semitism was rampant in Europe and Jews found themselves jobless and many worked their way from port to port until they settled in Israel. Later 600,000 alone came in from Europe, half from death camps, after WWII. Many others ran from persecution in Sudan and Ethiopia in Africa for example. Almost a million more came from the USSR after it fell.

To quote "The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of the exiles..." That was the main idea.

As far as why Palestine? Well Africa was considered as it also had a large population of Jews. Argentina was considered too. Ultimately Palestine was chosen for what was considered a good reason. With the rise of the Atlantic powers the Mediterranean region was marginalized. At the time of the creation of Israel, most of the world, the Atlantic world that is, thought Israel was virtually unpopulated. Documents from the time refer to Israel (and other places such as Greece) as wastelands that needed Europeans to come in and fix.

What wasn't really an option, if you know Jewish history, was to let things stay as they were.

There's a great lecture on tape called "Palestine, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" by James Gelvin which you might find interesting. It's no longer sold by the company, due to the sensitive nature of the topic these days, but you can find a torrent for it.

[Guest]

I -should- note that it's also no longer sold because Gelvin developed very strong anti-Israeli views that make him controversial. The lecture is good however.

[Guest]

Yay Jo

Interesting and informative, thanks for posting it, I enjoyed reading it. May I repost it on myspace?

You don't have a clue about reality.