Another factor which I had not appreciated until this week is the ethnic composition of Israel now. An Israeli-Canadian friend of mine who is unapologetically Zionist but troubled by what is happening in Gaza explained to me the significance. In much of the world, we still think of Israel as being fundamentally a nation state of European Jews, and it really isn’t that anymore. The majority of Israeli citizens now descend from populations from the Middle East and North Africa, and the prism through which they view the Palestinian Nakba is more akin to the Partition of India than any colonization framework. Equally, they all have similarly brutal family histories that don’t make them particularly sympathetic, and generally have not come from societies with even weak democratic traditions.
Throw in a sprinkling of the nutjob ultra-Orthodox Americans, and the balance is completely different from when he was growing up in Israel. As he simply put it, despite growing up with the active terrorism of the PLO/PFLP/etc. and being traumatized by Munich, he simply doesn’t have the same deep well of hatred driving his thinking.
The Islamic countries , when expelling their Jews did a whole lot of harm to themselves.
I don’t think Israel can equate themselves to India and it’s partition. If they have to equate themselves to a country , they should be looking at equating themselves to Pakistan. A Country founded purely as an artificial construct based on religion.
Even including how quite a large percentage of India’s population has been tilted to the right wing. That’s been more to do with internal issues and injustices (perceived or otherwise) rather than the partition of India as such.
I get Indians equating themselves to supporting Israel (yeah , the islamophobia bit ). But Israeli’s equating themselves to the Indian scenario just isn’t true.
I heard/read a slightly different version. The right ward shift in Israel coincided with the collapse of USSR & the Communist Block and the exodus of Jews from those countries. Coming from authoritarian countries they have little/no respect for tolerance and reconciliation. Also, they didn’t have much/any religious freedom. These two combined, they have now become the Jihadists/Crusaders of Jews supremacy.
The descendants of non Western European/North American Jews have the highest fertility rate and would constitute 60% of the population by 2050. Dark days.
While you are correct , you are not estimating the cost of propaganda. Every account of the Jews being illtreated in the Arab countries is only going to…
Hatred begets hatred. End of. Doesn’t matter who starts the hatred first.
The Jews being extradited from the Arab countries not only harmed the economy but also hardened the attitudes of them when they reached back to Israel.
Iftikhar is right in saying that 60% of the Jews are of European descent but the treatment of Jews in the Arabic countries does make the hatred even more stronger
Crunch time. Netanyahu now must make some sort of decision, even maybe actually decide on a plan like Gallant and Gantz (and everyone else) keeps nagging him about.
He is not talking about Israel as a country. He is talking about the perspective of the newer group of Arab Jews who have increasingly made up the Israeli population. The anti-zionist perspective of Israeli being colonial settlers is not applicable to them in the way it might be (debatably - ducks and covers) to the European Jews who primarily made up the first couple of generations of Israelis, and is who most people have in mind when thinking about Israelis. To them, the more appropriate comparison is of the India-Pakistan partition
Some what controversially to mention, the Jews in israel willing to make concessions (i.e. land for peace and real concessions) are almost always Askhenazi and generally an older (if you want, more “colonial”, generation). The ones coming from Arab countries and Russia have made Israel turn very much to the far right in latter decades. This is a paradox that few think of tbh. That it’s those you, perhaps, can attribute “colonialism” to that are actually more interested in concessions and peace, while those you may not , are generally far more hostile to those ideas, more authoritarian in mindset. It’s a bit of a hot potato and kind of a difficult subject.
“More than 111,000 people have disappeared in Syria since 2011”.
“More than 15,000 Syrians are believed to have been tortured to death by Syrian intelligence officials. More than 230,000 civilians, including 30,000 children, are reported to have been killed in the conflict.”
Truly staggering numbers , and fair dues to France for trying to bring those responsible , including Assad himself , to justice.
He was one of the four people who were responsible for the execution of up to 40000 political prisoners in Iran in 1988 and is hence labeled the “death committee”.