The comments beneath the line of Tareq Baconi’s “Only Palestinians can create a new Palestine“, CiF, Sept. 15th, included the requisite number of comments (many of which were deleted) hostile to Israel’s very existence. However, it also included this cheerful exchange among anti-Zionist allies, which has not been deleted.
So, this debate boils down to whether the Jewish state is Genocidal or merely racist, colonialist, expansionist, violent and destructive.
Actually, more than a few Guardian contributors have characterized Israel using the same or similar language, so I guess it’s fair to say that the hateful exchange between KevinYearwood and GenuineLeft would clearly not run afoul of CiF community standards.
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- Guardian reader comment of the day: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of CiF Watch Zionists (cifwatch.com)
- +972 and a revealing Twitter exchange between CiF Watch and a radical left Israeli Jew (cifwatch.com)
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3 comments
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September 17, 2011 at 3:20 am
ayal
Technically: Zionism (and its manifestation in the form of of the State of Israel) is racist, like any other nationalist project (the ideology ultimately favors Jews over non-Jews); in its realization it has been expansionist (consider the expansion of land owned/seized from early c20th, to 1947 lines, to 1949 lines, to 1967 lines…); the ongoing land grab in the Palestinian West Bank points to its ongoing colonialism; violence (e.g. state violence to subdue the indigenous Arabs, or settler violence) has been an important tool in achieving Zionist aims; and, it has been destructive in terms of destroying hundreds of Arab villages, not to mention Palestinian opportunities, lives, infrastructure, etc.
But – as a pretty standard nationalist-colonialist project (cf to some degree, Turkey’s treatment of Anatolia; European treatment of the Americas), all these elements are to be expected.
Any claim of ‘genocidal’, however, doesn’t fit the facts, despite the claims we occasionally hear of the ‘holocaust in Gaza’.
September 17, 2011 at 6:50 pm
ziontruth
“Technically: Zionism (and its manifestation in the form of of the State of Israel) is racist, like any other nationalist project”
If the idea that a nation should be safe in a state within its own indigenous territory is “racist,” then anyone who isn’t a Marxist anti-nationalist or an Islamic imperialist is “racist” and ought to wear that badge in pride, a testimony of honorable resistance against the modern oppressive ideologies of the world.
“…state violence to subdue the indigenous Arabs,…”
Israel exercises violence in Arabia? That’s a new one on me.
Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. There alone can they be rightly called the indigenous. In Palestine, the indigenous are the Jews, while the Arabs are the settler-colonist land-grabbers.
“…as a pretty standard nationalist-colonialist project…”
Nationalist yes, colonialist no. By definition, Jews cannot be colonists in Palestine, for they are the indigenous; it is as if you spoke of Hellenic colonists in Greece. The Arabs are the colonists here; for the sake of a just and viable peace, they will have to evacuate all their illegal settlements on indigenous Palestinian i.e. Jewish territory.
September 17, 2011 at 8:57 am
Harvey
Ayal
I think you took a wrong turn somewhere . Try Palestine Solidarity Campaign . I’m sure you will be most welcome there .