Israel is a third rail in American politics. Criticize what they have done in Gaza and you automatically support Hamas.
Making it appear that you, in any way, have empathy for the Palestinians and you're automatically an anti-Semite.
This is the rabid, black and white, through the looking glass horse manure that is the official US government position turned into a bludgeon by Bill Maher on his HBO show.
Maher is a great example. He has long supported Israel's fascist detention of Palestinians, so it's no surprise he's now cozying up to Trump and supporting his domestic incarcerations.
Untrue. You just can't be pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas too. Hamas offers the Palestinian people nothing but misery, religious coercion, gender apartheid and eternal conflict.
Hilarious. Let's look at you for a second. You are pro-Hamas, but are you pro-Palestinian? Let's examine the issue, shall we?
1. You would happily condemn Palestinians to living in Hamastan under Hamas religio-fascist rules, but you yourself would not live for a single second in Hamastan under Hamas rules. That double standard makes you an asshole. Good enough for brown-skinned A-rabs but not little 'ol @Lucius Sorrentino. LOL. Pathetic. Racist much?
2. And just how many Palestinians are you willing to see killed to achieve your bloodthirsty fantasy (shared with Hamas) of 10 million dead or displaced Israelis? Fifty thousand? Hundred thousand? A million? All of them? Yeah, whatever the number is, you ain't pro-Palestinian.
I'm guessing, based on the evidence, that you are just an ignorant, self-centered mentally ill anti-Palestinian poseur asshole. Hamas is catnip for losers and lunatics like you.
Rabid batshittery, on the other hand, along with MAGA style vile personal attack, appears to be your métier. You've got nothing but your own deeply misguided delusion and hate.
Pretty much! They use the term to distinguish themselves from the American/Israeli right (mostly Netanyahu), but it's an oxymoron. Zionism is racism. There's no anti-racist version of it.
It sure doesn't provide individual freedom for Palestinians. Although I guess you can say they offer Gazans freedom to die early by bombing, starvation or disease.
Excellent analysis. “This is why liberal Zionists like Tufts Friends of Israel have no right to pretend to oppose Trump’s suppression of pro-Palestine speech without first apologizing for their own behavior.”
Truth & reconciliation is sequential FiRST TRUTH. First apologize for your own behavior. As in … the start of this problem was the Zionist incursion & taking of Palestinian lands … until that’s acknowledged moving toward a lasting peace is impossible.
I couldn't agree more. I despise analysis that portrays the Israel-Palestine relationship as cyclical violence with both sides going back and forth. In reality, Israeli aggression is the source of the conflict.
If the international institutions have any meaning, and it is questionable for how long, we cannot allow Israel to escape the legal consequences of their war crimes. The Hind Rajab Foundation has, among other things, filed a case with the ICC against 1,000 Israeli soldiers for war crimes in Gaza.
They have taken further steps in recent days, and vacations are becoming a lot more difficult for IDF soldiers, worldwide. The Hind Rajab Foundation can use our help. Please join me in making a contribution.
To know more about The Hind Rajab Foundation, there are a couple of really good interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland for the crime of speaking about Palestinian rights::
DAWN has urged the ICC prosecutor to investigate and prosecute former President Biden, State Secretary Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin for their personal roles in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza as part of his ongoing investigation into the situations in Palestine since 2014.
Let’s give them our support. Maybe they will expand their complaint to include this latest US administration, and include all the leaders of the western nations supporting this genocide.
Perhaps this is a good faith argument by TFI since like most college students they seem incapable of distinguishing “words I don’t like” from actual violence?
Be realistic. You can’t open your mouth in the US - let alone run for office - without first uttering the standard “I am not a Nazi” oath to Zionism ahead of every statement.
"I fully agree that to stop the genocide of Palestine, it’s going to take a big tent coalition."
Difficult to have a big tent coalition given Palestinianism includes Islamist desire to expel the Jews. Let's put it a different way, imagine tomorrow the Israelis say "enough, let's have a single state with equality between all", would the Jews be allowed to live there or be given the option to choose between the coffin or the suitcase?
Even Hamas has said they'd accept a single democratic state. But that's beside the point because you're making the same argument every genocidaire does: we have to do it to them before they do it to us. It was said by the Nazis, the British, and the Americans.
Nice response to someone else’s question. If Israel is abolished tomorrow are the Jews allowed to live there in peace and equality with the Palestinians?!
One problem of course is that Hamas decided to target and kill left wing pro-peace Israelis. If the most left wing Israeli Jew is a target for death then it is hard to see how the Jews are allowed to stay in a Palestinian State.
I think by most definitions I would be labeled a Liberal Zionist. However, I completely agree that the West Bank is being run as an apartheid state, and moreover I agree with your thesis that the erosion of legal principles in the United States has partial origin in the refusal to enforce international law in the Occupied Territories. From there, the same authoritarian ideals leaked into Green Line Israel, where hundreds of thousands went into the streets against Bibi's "judicial reforms" without recognizing that the Israeli Right was simply importing the disdain for the Rule of Law that had prevailed in the Territories for two generations.
Then the lawlessness came home from our Middle East Mini-Me: the hideous features of Trump lawlessness, such as detention without trial, have occurred in the West Bank without our objection for decades.
I don't think this means that I (or people who think like me) have to start agreeing with the statements of various college Students for Palestine, only that no one should be disciplined for them. I find many naive, and most unrealistic. Certainly some of SJP's language could be seen as anti-semitic. There was something pathetic about the Columbia protestors’ hassling Norman Finkelstein, who had suffered far more for his anti-Zionist beliefs than any of them (with the exception of those who are actually Palestinian).
While I appreciate your opposing punishment for speech, I still don't see how you can reconcile liberalism with Zionism. If Israel is to be a "Jewish state," that is inherently racist, as non-Jews will be discriminated against. If you believe that, then you've adopted the belief that there are genuine reasons to separate and distinguish between races (or religions or ethnicities). That will always bleed into domestic politics.
There's discrimination in law, and then there's discrimination from being a minority. The latter happens all over. I had to take vacation days for Yom Kippur. In Israel, of course, that's a day off, but Christmas is a workday. I rather like the thought there's a place that is majority-Jewish, where Jewish customs are the default. Other than the Law of the Return, I don't support the various legal advantages that exist for Jews, even within Green Line Israel. And as far as the Territories go, that is a crime.
Now, I also have a very open mind about the Basques, the Irish, the Kurds. I don't think it's a coincidence that most European separatist movements collapsed with the growth of the EU. When you have supranational organizations that can guarantee fair treatment of minorities, it's less important to create a state of your own. (Look how Brexit did more towards Irish reunification than a century of violence!) Too late for this with the Jews.
One reason for the Gaza uprising was that the Arab kleptocracies were interested in peace with Israel without doing anything for the Palestinians. I think that trial balloon has sunk. The Egypt/Saudi peace plan envisions normalization of relations with Israel in return for proper treatment of Palestinians, creating a Middle East where rights, including land rights, are respected. Now, are these countries sincere? Maybe not, but it's a better play than the depopulation of Gaza to build Trump Tower Rafah.
"I rather like the thought there's a place that is majority-Jewish, where Jewish customs are the default."
This is a massive problem with liberal Western Zionists. You like the "thought" of Israel. Israel isn't a thought. It's an imperialist ethno-state currently undertaking genocide. The Israel Zionists imagine doesn't exist. This is the reality, and we can either be against it or support it.
I find that simplistic. No one suggests that other ethnostates with nasty habits simply be liquidated. Russia is also an imperialist ethno-state where people of European descent are privileged over Asians. The Balkans are mostly ethno-states, and they've been warring with each other for a long time over it. The Chinese Uighurs and Tibetans?
I'm opposed to offensive weapons sales to Israel. I think we should be sanctioning settlers routinely. Etc. I don't think we should be dreaming up a world where Israel disappears.
I (and many other people) absolutely argue that ethno-states, both past and present, should be dismantled.
Your statement says ethno states are bad, but then concludes with defending one. That's the incoherence I'm talking about. Either we're against ehtnostates or not.
A perfect way to summarize this: do you think the anti-apartheid movements that dismantled South Africa's ethno-supremacy were good? Would you reverse them if you could?
No, I do not wish to restore South African apartheid. Ethno-supremacy on the apartheid scale is not entailed by ethno-statehood.
A great many countries are ethno-states in the sense that they are ethnically homogeneous or nearly so. I don't support breaking them up. Looking at the conflicts in Africa where colonial powers drew boundaries across ethnic lines shows that isn't a cure-all.
Now, was the original establishment of Israel a good thing? Maybe, maybe not, but I don't see it as reversible. I'd suggest one of many lost opportunities that brought the world to this mess is that the *Arabs* also adopted the concept of an ethno-state in the period after WW One. With a different attitude towards the future, they could have had a state with a large Jewish *minority*. Human capital (that is, Jewish refugee immigrants) was, unfortunately, becoming available. The Jews could have had the cultural benefits in the areas where they were a majority of the population, something like Quebec. That was on offer in the 1920s and 1930s. But a part of the world that, frankly, could have used more doctors and engineers and agronomists, also wanted ethnic homogeneity and refused immigration.
“Effectively no difference? My point was that there are no “Good Zionists”. No “liberal” or “rightest” Zionists. Zionists should be shunned and ostracized from society, just like racists, murderers, pedophiles, sadists etc.
So why do they ALL take money from AIPAC? Is that a character trait of “liberal” Zionists? So “good Zionists”? The same Zionist money that was used to defeat Cory Bush, Jamal Bowman and tried to defeat Omar.
Liberal Zionist, Liberal Pedophile, Liberal Nazi, Liberal Racist, Liberal Murderer, Liberal Abuser, Liberal Torturer. All phrases that have no Good side vs Bad side. There is no GOOD SIDE to any of them. Hitler didn’t have a “Liberal” side. The same applies to ZIONISTS.Trump tried that with Charlotte White supremacists, when he said there were good people on both sides. Name me some “Good Zionists” name me something Good that Zionists did.
Israel is a third rail in American politics. Criticize what they have done in Gaza and you automatically support Hamas.
Making it appear that you, in any way, have empathy for the Palestinians and you're automatically an anti-Semite.
This is the rabid, black and white, through the looking glass horse manure that is the official US government position turned into a bludgeon by Bill Maher on his HBO show.
Maher is a great example. He has long supported Israel's fascist detention of Palestinians, so it's no surprise he's now cozying up to Trump and supporting his domestic incarcerations.
Untrue. You just can't be pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas too. Hamas offers the Palestinian people nothing but misery, religious coercion, gender apartheid and eternal conflict.
You most certainly can be pro-Palestinian and ant-Hamas. And I never said otherwise.
Hilarious. Let's look at you for a second. You are pro-Hamas, but are you pro-Palestinian? Let's examine the issue, shall we?
1. You would happily condemn Palestinians to living in Hamastan under Hamas religio-fascist rules, but you yourself would not live for a single second in Hamastan under Hamas rules. That double standard makes you an asshole. Good enough for brown-skinned A-rabs but not little 'ol @Lucius Sorrentino. LOL. Pathetic. Racist much?
2. And just how many Palestinians are you willing to see killed to achieve your bloodthirsty fantasy (shared with Hamas) of 10 million dead or displaced Israelis? Fifty thousand? Hundred thousand? A million? All of them? Yeah, whatever the number is, you ain't pro-Palestinian.
I'm guessing, based on the evidence, that you are just an ignorant, self-centered mentally ill anti-Palestinian poseur asshole. Hamas is catnip for losers and lunatics like you.
Reading comprehension not your thing, obviously.
Rabid batshittery, on the other hand, along with MAGA style vile personal attack, appears to be your métier. You've got nothing but your own deeply misguided delusion and hate.
Dunno baby, your attack being in exclusively on me sounds like a full confession. You Palestinian hating poseurs are transparent.
Liberal Zionist? Is that anything like “good Nazi” or “good Oligarch” or “good Billionaire?
Pretty much! They use the term to distinguish themselves from the American/Israeli right (mostly Netanyahu), but it's an oxymoron. Zionism is racism. There's no anti-racist version of it.
Roland Kreuger? Isn't that the same as "ignorant moron"? It sure is!
The term "liberal Zionist" strikes me as an oxymoron. Full stop.
It sure is!
Compare Israeli society to that of any Muslim country and it is very obvious (no hyphen) which one provides more individual freedom.
It sure doesn't provide individual freedom for Palestinians. Although I guess you can say they offer Gazans freedom to die early by bombing, starvation or disease.
Hilarious. Like smart socialist. Doesn't exist.
Excellent analysis. “This is why liberal Zionists like Tufts Friends of Israel have no right to pretend to oppose Trump’s suppression of pro-Palestine speech without first apologizing for their own behavior.”
Truth & reconciliation is sequential FiRST TRUTH. First apologize for your own behavior. As in … the start of this problem was the Zionist incursion & taking of Palestinian lands … until that’s acknowledged moving toward a lasting peace is impossible.
I couldn't agree more. I despise analysis that portrays the Israel-Palestine relationship as cyclical violence with both sides going back and forth. In reality, Israeli aggression is the source of the conflict.
If the international institutions have any meaning, and it is questionable for how long, we cannot allow Israel to escape the legal consequences of their war crimes. The Hind Rajab Foundation has, among other things, filed a case with the ICC against 1,000 Israeli soldiers for war crimes in Gaza.
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/perpetrators/hind-rajab-foundation-files-historic-icc-complaint-against-1000-israeli-soldiers-for-war-crimes-in-gaza
They have taken further steps in recent days, and vacations are becoming a lot more difficult for IDF soldiers, worldwide. The Hind Rajab Foundation can use our help. Please join me in making a contribution.
https://buy.stripe.com/cN228hbY5g7jaM84gg
To know more about The Hind Rajab Foundation, there are a couple of really good interviews that Glenn Greenwald did on his Rumble platform, and Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, did with the head of this organisation, Dyad Abou Jahjah. It was very informative.
Here's a petition calling for accountability for the arrest of Ali Abunimah in Switzerland for the crime of speaking about Palestinian rights::
https://chng.it/8D4pkxPhWS
Please sign the petition and share widely.
Sorry you lost me at Glenn Greenwald.
DAWN has urged the ICC prosecutor to investigate and prosecute former President Biden, State Secretary Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin for their personal roles in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza as part of his ongoing investigation into the situations in Palestine since 2014.
https://dawnmena.org/latest/
Let’s give them our support. Maybe they will expand their complaint to include this latest US administration, and include all the leaders of the western nations supporting this genocide.
Petition for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention
Free Rumeysa Ozturk. Tufts PhD student snatched from the street by unidentified, masked men, from HHS/ICE.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/free-rumeysa-ozturk/?source=group-just-strategy&referrer=group-just-strategy&redirect=https://secure.actblue.com/donate/nc4j_free_ozturk&link_id=3&can_id=a707410023f29d0530df1e255f3edf18&email_referrer=email_2694599&&&email_subject=speaking-out-is-not-a-crime-stop-the-deportation-of-rumeysa-ozturk&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_2694599
Join Us on April 17, 2025 to Fight for Higher Education
https://www.dayofactionforhighered.org
Tell Universities: Protect Student Rights, Reject Trump's Order
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protectstudents?source=direct_link
Perhaps this is a good faith argument by TFI since like most college students they seem incapable of distinguishing “words I don’t like” from actual violence?
Perhaps. But ignorance shouldn't be an excuse.
Be realistic. You can’t open your mouth in the US - let alone run for office - without first uttering the standard “I am not a Nazi” oath to Zionism ahead of every statement.
I’ll do you one better “liberalism bears responsibility for the rise of fascism (again)”.
"I fully agree that to stop the genocide of Palestine, it’s going to take a big tent coalition."
Difficult to have a big tent coalition given Palestinianism includes Islamist desire to expel the Jews. Let's put it a different way, imagine tomorrow the Israelis say "enough, let's have a single state with equality between all", would the Jews be allowed to live there or be given the option to choose between the coffin or the suitcase?
Even Hamas has said they'd accept a single democratic state. But that's beside the point because you're making the same argument every genocidaire does: we have to do it to them before they do it to us. It was said by the Nazis, the British, and the Americans.
Nice response to someone else’s question. If Israel is abolished tomorrow are the Jews allowed to live there in peace and equality with the Palestinians?!
One problem of course is that Hamas decided to target and kill left wing pro-peace Israelis. If the most left wing Israeli Jew is a target for death then it is hard to see how the Jews are allowed to stay in a Palestinian State.
Again, this is exactly what the Nazis said about Jews. "We need to do it to them before they do it to us."
I think by most definitions I would be labeled a Liberal Zionist. However, I completely agree that the West Bank is being run as an apartheid state, and moreover I agree with your thesis that the erosion of legal principles in the United States has partial origin in the refusal to enforce international law in the Occupied Territories. From there, the same authoritarian ideals leaked into Green Line Israel, where hundreds of thousands went into the streets against Bibi's "judicial reforms" without recognizing that the Israeli Right was simply importing the disdain for the Rule of Law that had prevailed in the Territories for two generations.
Then the lawlessness came home from our Middle East Mini-Me: the hideous features of Trump lawlessness, such as detention without trial, have occurred in the West Bank without our objection for decades.
I don't think this means that I (or people who think like me) have to start agreeing with the statements of various college Students for Palestine, only that no one should be disciplined for them. I find many naive, and most unrealistic. Certainly some of SJP's language could be seen as anti-semitic. There was something pathetic about the Columbia protestors’ hassling Norman Finkelstein, who had suffered far more for his anti-Zionist beliefs than any of them (with the exception of those who are actually Palestinian).
While I appreciate your opposing punishment for speech, I still don't see how you can reconcile liberalism with Zionism. If Israel is to be a "Jewish state," that is inherently racist, as non-Jews will be discriminated against. If you believe that, then you've adopted the belief that there are genuine reasons to separate and distinguish between races (or religions or ethnicities). That will always bleed into domestic politics.
There's discrimination in law, and then there's discrimination from being a minority. The latter happens all over. I had to take vacation days for Yom Kippur. In Israel, of course, that's a day off, but Christmas is a workday. I rather like the thought there's a place that is majority-Jewish, where Jewish customs are the default. Other than the Law of the Return, I don't support the various legal advantages that exist for Jews, even within Green Line Israel. And as far as the Territories go, that is a crime.
Now, I also have a very open mind about the Basques, the Irish, the Kurds. I don't think it's a coincidence that most European separatist movements collapsed with the growth of the EU. When you have supranational organizations that can guarantee fair treatment of minorities, it's less important to create a state of your own. (Look how Brexit did more towards Irish reunification than a century of violence!) Too late for this with the Jews.
One reason for the Gaza uprising was that the Arab kleptocracies were interested in peace with Israel without doing anything for the Palestinians. I think that trial balloon has sunk. The Egypt/Saudi peace plan envisions normalization of relations with Israel in return for proper treatment of Palestinians, creating a Middle East where rights, including land rights, are respected. Now, are these countries sincere? Maybe not, but it's a better play than the depopulation of Gaza to build Trump Tower Rafah.
"I rather like the thought there's a place that is majority-Jewish, where Jewish customs are the default."
This is a massive problem with liberal Western Zionists. You like the "thought" of Israel. Israel isn't a thought. It's an imperialist ethno-state currently undertaking genocide. The Israel Zionists imagine doesn't exist. This is the reality, and we can either be against it or support it.
I find that simplistic. No one suggests that other ethnostates with nasty habits simply be liquidated. Russia is also an imperialist ethno-state where people of European descent are privileged over Asians. The Balkans are mostly ethno-states, and they've been warring with each other for a long time over it. The Chinese Uighurs and Tibetans?
I'm opposed to offensive weapons sales to Israel. I think we should be sanctioning settlers routinely. Etc. I don't think we should be dreaming up a world where Israel disappears.
I (and many other people) absolutely argue that ethno-states, both past and present, should be dismantled.
Your statement says ethno states are bad, but then concludes with defending one. That's the incoherence I'm talking about. Either we're against ehtnostates or not.
A perfect way to summarize this: do you think the anti-apartheid movements that dismantled South Africa's ethno-supremacy were good? Would you reverse them if you could?
No, I do not wish to restore South African apartheid. Ethno-supremacy on the apartheid scale is not entailed by ethno-statehood.
A great many countries are ethno-states in the sense that they are ethnically homogeneous or nearly so. I don't support breaking them up. Looking at the conflicts in Africa where colonial powers drew boundaries across ethnic lines shows that isn't a cure-all.
Now, was the original establishment of Israel a good thing? Maybe, maybe not, but I don't see it as reversible. I'd suggest one of many lost opportunities that brought the world to this mess is that the *Arabs* also adopted the concept of an ethno-state in the period after WW One. With a different attitude towards the future, they could have had a state with a large Jewish *minority*. Human capital (that is, Jewish refugee immigrants) was, unfortunately, becoming available. The Jews could have had the cultural benefits in the areas where they were a majority of the population, something like Quebec. That was on offer in the 1920s and 1930s. But a part of the world that, frankly, could have used more doctors and engineers and agronomists, also wanted ethnic homogeneity and refused immigration.
“Effectively no difference? My point was that there are no “Good Zionists”. No “liberal” or “rightest” Zionists. Zionists should be shunned and ostracized from society, just like racists, murderers, pedophiles, sadists etc.
So why do they ALL take money from AIPAC? Is that a character trait of “liberal” Zionists? So “good Zionists”? The same Zionist money that was used to defeat Cory Bush, Jamal Bowman and tried to defeat Omar.
Liberal Zionist, Liberal Pedophile, Liberal Nazi, Liberal Racist, Liberal Murderer, Liberal Abuser, Liberal Torturer. All phrases that have no Good side vs Bad side. There is no GOOD SIDE to any of them. Hitler didn’t have a “Liberal” side. The same applies to ZIONISTS.Trump tried that with Charlotte White supremacists, when he said there were good people on both sides. Name me some “Good Zionists” name me something Good that Zionists did.