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0 pointsToucanLoucan2y ago0 comments

> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries

Two thoughts on this:

Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.

Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.

Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.

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pessimizer2y ago

> Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses.

My favorite one of these is when South Africa would say that the only reason people were angry about Apartheid was their obvious "anti-Boer prejudice." Which sounds stupid, until you remember that the British rounded up Boers and put them into concentration camps. It's still stupid, but if you accept the premise that being abused gives you the right to abuse, it's a claim as legitimate as any other of that type.

> My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon.

They could have just torn down the walls, and still can. Israelis can call the resulting country Israel, and Palestinians can call it Palestine. It only requires both groups to give up any dreams of theocracy. What made the PLO and Arafat so distasteful to Israeli power players was the fact that they were secular, reasonable, and making moral arguments, not theological ones. People whose goal was to wipe out the Palestinians vastly preferred Hamas.