Israelis march against far-right government's effort to take over courts

Discrimination is just those people’s way! I’m sure nobody there has thought to object to it, not like us Westerners. :roll_eyes:

6 Likes

Everyone but white Europeans are bigots, which is why white Europeans should control the world! /s

5 Likes

I really didn’t. I’m just pointing out, Israel is called a “democracy”, but it’s very far from being a western liberal democracy. It’s a “democracy” the same way the US was a democracy… 100 years ago. I’m showing the arguments they make for how “democratic” Israel is, but they run into some other details, especially the status of Palestinians, that are usually not explained.

Yes I’m aware of the Druze and their special status. The IDF has high-level non-Druze Arabs as well, although I’m not sure if generals.

I’d suggest rereading your earlier post, but this time pretend someone else wrote it, and you’re looking for antisemitism.

Note that I’m the last one to conflate criticism of Israel as antisemitism, but the whole trope of “those people just can’t get along” is a bigoted one going back centuries; maybe millennia.

5 Likes

Also, whether a country is democratic or authoritarian or totalitarian isn’t really a major factor in who the US counts as allies. Saudi Arabia has been a staunch ally for a very long time, for example. The main factors are whether the alliance benefits US corporate interests and can they be trusted not to betray them.

When they do, the US is merciless - Cuba and Iraq are prime examples - unless the country in question is a major power itself.

6 Likes

First, you very much called that person an Arab, not a Druze. Second, you did very much excuse it.

Israel doesn’t get to have it both ways… they can’t tout themselves as the “only” democracy in the Middle East (which they very much do) and have an apartheid society. America was not a democracy, nor was SA until they ended their apartheid practices.

it’s been a major excuse for imperialism for a long time now.

6 Likes

I think you wouldn’t disagree with this, but, I don’t think we can honestly call a country where a presidential candidate gets 3 million fewer votes and still wins (in 2016), or where a rigged “Supreme” court steals the election for its favored candidate (in 2000), or where all sorts of election-tipping voter suppression happens on the regular, a democracy. Just sayin.

3 Likes

I do agree, but it was far closer to a democracy after the voting rights act, then it was before. Things certainly improved markedly on that front, and many Black Americans have embraced the right to vote, and in fact take it far more seriously than people who have had the right to vote all along. But i’ll certainly agree it still was not a full democracy, even as it was much closer than before…

But of course, since the end of pre-clearance, we are getting further from being a real democracy.

3 Likes

Schitts Creek Comedy GIF by CBC

2 Likes

And I apologize and really didn’t mean that trope. The Middle East is just a place of terrible conflict and I’m sad about it. The most costly of those has been the centuries-old Sunni Shiite conflict, which is creeping towards turning into a nuclear conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Israel, which would be a horrendous tragedy for the world. At the more micro level, you can see the pettiness of these kinds of conflicts in the scuffles the monks have with each other in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I don’t mean to perpetuate any tropes about that and I wish they could find peace at all levels.

You could substitute several regions in the US for “The Middle East” in that sentence without losing accuracy. The US as a whole has more mass shootings than the West Bank or the Gaza strip. You could probably zoom in to an equivalent population area in Florida or Texas and that would still be true.

2 Likes

Then maybe don’t say it? Not difficult to avoid that well-known and dehumanizing trope…

Since when is this all about you and your feelings? It’s an critical region of the world geo-politically with conflicts there driven in part by those in power on the ground, and by external powers like the US and Russia. Much of this is about power and resources, and trying to pin the blame on people’s religious or ethnic identity hides far more than it illuminates.

And there you go again… Please read a history book. It’s not always conflict, and it’s usually driven by many other factors than just some people unable to “control” themselves because they are of the “wrong” relligion. Much of the history of the ottoman empire, for example, includes relatively peaceful coexistence within the empire, and plenty of religious autonomy for Shia Muslism within the empire… Much of the current wave of conflict is not out of “age old” hatreds, it is out of the past century of imperial intervention into the region in order to reshape the region as the west sees fit.

There is currently only ONE nuclear power in the region. I’ll let you guess which one that is… And who is likely to be second, thanks (probably) to Trump…

Once more, you’re leaning heavily on that trope. Just stop doing it.

4 Likes

Maybe a malfunctioning democracy?

2 Likes

… whether something “is” or “is not” a democracy might be less important than whether it’s becoming more democratic or less democratic

7 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.