Oddbean new post about login | logout Am I an anti-semite? Anti-American? Anti-Zionist? None of these labels apply to me. I am firmly against using one definition of a group of people (the label) and then assigning more properties to that label. It would be a statistical near impossibility for such to be accurate. Some Jews are evil. Some aren't. Some Americans are evil. Some aren't. Some Zionists are evil. Some aren't. If you are confused by that last one, my view is that "the river to the sea" ain't gonna happen for Palestine. No matter how wrong the initial act of displacement was, it can't be corrected at this stage without creating even more wrongs. Think about it: Should all the Americans go back to Europe and leave America to the natives? It ain't gonna happen. So I believe in a two-state solution. I think I'm going to use the label "the bad guys" or "the evildoers" now to talk about people that I think are bad and doing evil because the misunderstandings from smaller minds are prolific. Certain groups of power have been captured by the bad guys. The Israeli war cabinet, the US executive branch, the US CIA. The actions of these groups are more often than not distinctly evill. But even as that is true, even many people within these groups are not evil people. All those people on the other side insisting that "no Mike, it is the Jews" can please shut up now. That cannot be true when some Jews are Nazis even here on Nostr (you know who I am refrering to) and when Rabbis distance themselves from Zionism and Israel. Am I pro-Russian / anti-Ukrainian? No. I don't like evil, that's is all. I call it out where I see it. That includes Russia flattening entire villages. Some people in Russia making decisions are evil. I reckon that some people in Ukraine are evil toop. Evil does not justify more evil. The only solace I can take is that some evil people are killing some other evil people, which means less evil people in the end. I stand for keeping everybody alive, application of Justice, and a return to a normal world that isn't run by blackmail of violence followed by the carrying out that violence en masse. And if sometimes I say something wrong or even extremist sounding, I don't mean to. I just want the madness to end, just like many of you do. 🫂
Understandably all Americans can’t go back to Europe. Too many, too huge a task, too late etc How about all of Israel moves to America which is huge and already very defensive of Israel? Wouldn’t the benefits of that by far outweigh the losses? For the sake of peace.
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So while I sort of see where you're going with this, anti-Zionism isn't about being hateful of people who are Zionists. It's about being against the establishment of a state of Israel, which, in itself, disenfranchises the people who have lived in Palestine for centuries. I'm okay with the idea that redemption is possible, and that people can disagree with me about things and that it doesn't make them awful people. However, when it comes down to our stances and the courses of actions that those stances drive, sometimes there's gonna be some clashing. To the extent that clashing can be dealt with diplomatically, I do tend to prefer keeping violence to a minimum, but at the end of the day, if there's still no seeing eye to eye, and the stance is still important enough, then a violent conflict is what's left when all else has been tried. And even then, it's to neutralize the outcome, not the people, insofar as the two can be separated. War waged in anger is war waged poorly, and usually unjustly. Whether it's a global conflict or a fistfight in the park.
Second reply here. Two state solution...well, best of luck there. I don't see the state of "Israel" to likely be a thing in 5-10 years, as they seem pretty hellbent on self destruction. But that's speculation after watching quite a bit of analysis, and it's certainly not a sure thing, nor worth much argument. My ideal would be a single Palestinian state without the apartheid system, which is the stated goal of the various resistance factions. Though I have to say after this genocide it's going to be hard to bury the hatchet and stay neighborly. Post-apartheid South Africa wasn't without it's bumpy ride (and still isn't), and that was without the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, forced displacement, and utterly inhumane living conditions. It'll likely take some brave Jews to stick around and try to help patch things over once the state falls, if that is to be the path. Strange things do happen sometimes though.
I don't think either side will cease to exist. And I don't think they can live intermixed given how extreme the cultures have become. So there needs to be a thick DMZ between them policed by a 3rd party. Either that or eternal violence, which is actualy still most likely. But events often suprise us all... maybe the Israelis will all disperse after seeing how unsafe they actually have made themselves by pissing off everybody they could possibly piss off.