Jewish Currents

You're right, I am making a bigger argument. That's because pbiggar's point about voting is impossible to understand without it. It's a symptom, and you are trying to discuss it while pretending the disease i.e a system of apartheid, as defined by international law, is "irrelevant". And this system isn't just a feature of the occupation. It is foundational to the state itself, a reality even zionists are forced to admit. As a Jerusalem Post op-ed concedes, "No honest Israeli citizen can claim that the Palestinian citizens of Israel live as equal citizens in the State of Israel."[0]

Your apologia that Israel is "simply following international law" is perverse. Everybody knows that Israel has never in its entire history, since its inception, ever given a fuck about international law, which makes your apologia extra comical. Furthermore, you are elevating a single procedural rule above one of the gravest prohibitions in the entire legal order, the crime against humanity of apartheid. The rule you cite is not a shield against this crime, it's a tool used to facilitate it. By forbidding political integration, the system enforces the very demographic separation required to maintain an apartheid state. Your claim that "other countries do the same" is a baseless false equivalence that ignores the unique permanence and stated demographic goals of the Israeli apartheid system. And your deflection that we should "change international law" is an unserious diversion. The international…

If it were intentional, to conflate all Jews with all of Israel is intellectually, ethically, and morally bankrupt. If it were unintentional, then it would be extremely ignorant for a supposed "diversity head."

I hope he instead meant "instances of the Israeli military shooting unarmed civilians across an international border, led by extreme Zionist leaders who want to 'drive [Palestinians] into the sea.'" even if unable to articulate it in a professional, nuanced, and sensitive manner.

--- The larger issue that keeps getting lost ---

Zionist != Jew; Anti-Zionism != Anti-Semitism. There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews and allies; Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky, IIRC, are anti-Zionists. Alan Dershowitz[0], Fox News, and Likud all peddle the same fallacy: anything anti-Zionist is exactly the same as anti-Semitic. Furthermore, Likud and its allies have repeatedly targeted American universities with overt and covert anti-BDS and anti-Zionist disruptive social/political/intelligence-gathering/free speech activities[1,2,3,4,5], which 45 got behind to condemn BDS with the weight of the US government to the extent an executive order can (an EO is an "executive wish," in many cases).[6] They hide behind the shield and sword of crybully shouting down and labeling anyone anyone who isn't with them as "anti-semitic," and in doing so, are making the term irrelevant and meaningless for actual instances of anti-semitism ("the boy who called 'wolf.'")

0. The Case Against BDS: Why…

> I’m not sure why you’re pointing specifically to American Jews

They weren't. They were referring to prominent American Jews. They probably have specific statements in mind, by specific individuals but for the sake of brevity, didn't include them.

Also, I'd subtract the people who just lapped up all sorts of dehumanizing, sanctimonious propaganda, such as the stuff which even Joe Biden simply parroted: https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-reported-israels-fake-news-as-fact/

What some people think they are supporting and what they are supporting are vastly different.

As for the "military operations" and "urban warfare":

https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1743296706576269446

https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1731772261848264771

> For all those asking why there is no education Gaza. Oops, we've had a missile fall on them. That sucks. Ohhh, too bad. That's how you'll not be engineers anymore.

-- Israeli soldier standing before Al-Azhar university, https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1743411493813575711

https://www.972mag.com/israel-torture-camp-gaza-detainees/

And then there's the murder and attacks on civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, too. Or the bulldozing of a cemetary. I'll spare you posting dozens and dozens of pieces of proof each of which belie the claim of calling this a "war", much hiding the arbitrary, cruel attacks on civilians under the cover of "urban warfare".

As for "productive" discussions, for the…

To place this in context, in turn, "The Holodomor" the way the West describes it has no historical support, and is basically a dishonest attempt (a "political football") which attempts to equate the Communist civil war of collectivization and Nazi colonial ethnocide, while conveniently sweeping Western-colonial genocides (American-Indigenous, British-Indian, etc.) under the rug.

See Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole and Kai Struve, in Shared History, Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939–1941 (2007):

>The overwhelming majority of historians in contemporary Ukraine interpret the famine as a genocide planned and consciously directed against the Ukrainian people by the Soviet leadership. In the public debates as well as in some monographs on the famine published since the 1990s, the genocide is called the “Ukrainian Holocaust.” This term was introduced and first popularized by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America before Ukraine became independent. In those monographs, very often the term “Holocaust” is not explained at all. The term is nationalized and thus the memory of the Jewish Holocaust is eclipsed. […] Through a victimized national narrative as well as the presentation of the Great Famine of 1932-1933, they have tried to compete with the Jewish narrative in order to obscure the “dark sides” of Ukraine’s national history and to counter accusations that their fathers collaborated with the…

So, you're literally a genocide denier. So is Ben Kiernan.

That's horrific bro.

Heinous semantic quibbles aside - 30,000 people have been killed. PEOPLE. Lives ended.

ZERO senior Hamas leaders have been killed.

ZERO hostages have been rescued.

75% of all homes have been destroyed, for 2.3 million people.

This result cost 11 figures.

And you and Ben Kiernan say you're not sure if there's enough intent to call it a genocide! Buddy, Israeli state TV have a bunch of schoolkids singing about "total annihilation" of Gaza. There's HD video of too many war crimes and atrocities to list. These people are filming unimaginable horror, and you're cherry-picking one genocide researcher's statment from 2 months and 20,000 murders ago. That's a yikes dude.

The list of genocidal statements from Israeli leaders is looooong - I already posted it. You dismissed it as "from an advocacy group", even though it's fully sourced. The less said the better about the UN?? Why - because Israel have killed more UN workers than any conflict in history?!

You are literally a genocide denier. You're helping ethnic cleansing happen. You are. Deny it, call it what you like, that is what you are choosing to do with your one life on earth. God help you.

0 - https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

A lot of these flyover country bigots you speak of have no clue who is part of the Jewish faith and who is not. Most American Jews do not have accents or wear religious garb that would make them stand out, as may have been the case in the world portrayed in Portnoy's Dilemma based in 1920s New York City. Post-WWII, many of those that immigrated to the United States are of European heritage (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian, Russian). In fact, there is a long tradition of efforts (pre-WWII) made by American Jews to force immigrants to hide their Jewish roots and cultural traditions to "help" them avoid the kind of discrimination faced by other European groups (Irish, Italians) by the majority culture. There is an excellent article delving into the history of Jewish perceptions in the US in the magazine Jewish Currents:

https://jewishcurrents.org/our-white-supremacy-problem