Do you think Israel is a de facto fascist state?

Hmmm….. Yes and no….. They vote, their people enjoy lots of freedoms despite some controls, and the people are largely nationalistic of their own will. I’ve met a few Jews from Israel, and they tend to be very respecting of other peoples/countries, but very proud of their nation (with good reason if you think about it).

BUT, they do have some fascist qualities about them.

But nearly a century of war will do that too ya.

@westy81585 in some ways i prefer, the good old jackboot, jutting chin in the air, variety, all this, are they? aren’t they? they spend more on the PR i’ll give ‘em that

If you were to check out the organization Ameinu (Liberal Values/Progressive Israel) you would see the leftwing side of Israel and it is very positive indeed. You’ll also see how Ameinu’s President had a face-off with Netanyahu in D.C. this week and called for a two-state solution. Check out Ameinu.net:

Ameinu, the leading progressive Zionist organization in the United State, is dedicated to promoting a negotiated peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, and to social and economic justice for all in Israel and America. Ameinu reinforces Jewish continuity through support for Habonim Dror, the Labor Zionist youth movement, and the Union for Progressive Zionists national campus organization.

Internal freedoms do not make it okay to attempt genocide on a indigenous population.

Yes, genocide indeed. Check out the population demographics for the Palestinian territories. The population is growing rapidly (hardly a genocide), and in fact, the life expectancy in both the West Bank and Gaza is equal to most Western countries.

In contrast, there is a real genocide being perpetrated in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Of course, this is being perpetrated by the Arab Janjaweed militia supported by the Sudanese government, but we hear almost nothing about it? Why? Could it be that the world only cares when the Jews have power? Where is the African League of Nations in all this? Why aren’t the Arab states complaining. Oh, right. This is genocide perpetrated by Arabs. Go figure.

No, Hamas created a fascist system. As did the Taliban or the Wahhabists in Saudi-Arabia.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Terrorists are criminals. Short-term Israel has to act, like the police has to act when criminals start killing people. The world had to act when the Taliban allowed criminals to be trained so that they can eventually fly airplanes into buildings. But mid-term and long-term we need to complement the strategy and not just be the police. We want less criminals on our planet. The problem with islamist extremism is that new terrorists and future suicide bombers are born all the time. I’m very sympathetic when it comes to Palestinians getting their own country. They are allowed live in peace and must behave peacefully. Israel deserves to live in peace. You know that I’m a moderate liberal, looking for a balanced view. But what is really going on in Gaza?

Hamas represents an ideology of intolerance and hatred. In a way they represent a modern form of facism. Hamas, like Iran, denies Isreal the right to exist. They randomly fire rockets into residential areas. They don’t want to negotiate. They brainwash school children. They teach hatred. Hamas ideology is as perverse as that of the Taliban or Iran’s or Saudi Arabian ‘religious’ leaders. It’s really close to fascism or Nazism. The Hamas ideology wants to erase pluralistic societies. They want to introduce religious policing, like Saudi Arabia or Iran. Ultimately our free and tolerant societies are at stake. How can anyone in the civilized West be sympathetic with Hamas’ cause? I’m not. The civilian voters in Gaza made a big mistake voting for Hamas. They were voting for confrontation and hatred and death and suicide. Democracy is a responsibilty. Voting is a responsibility. Voters will get what they elect.

Of course there are also extremists on the Israeli side. An example are fanatic ultraorthodox Jews and settlers preaching hatred, and there are terrorists like Baruch Goldstein, an American born Israeli physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque within the Cave of the Patriarchs, and wounding another 150 in a shooting attack.But I think we are talking about far less than 10% of the Israeli population, who engage in this kind of extreme thinking and hatred. Hamas was elected by more than 50% of the Palestinian people. The really sad thing is that actually a majority democratically elected terrorists. Even Hitler only got 43.9 %. Democracy is not only a gift but also a responsibility. Not voting is irresponsible behavior. Voting for extremist parties is irresponsible behavior. The majority of the people in Gaza is guilty of that. The Israeli voters should also not vote for extremist parties. I’m no fan of the new Israeli government. Like I said earlier, this still means that Israel has to be more creative to allow the moderate Palestinians to live in peace and prosperity.

At some point the circle of violence has to be replaced by something more intelligent. In Europe the Germans and the French killed each other for centuries and there are examples of other countries. Today there are regular student exchanges. People fall in love with each other, have parties together, innovate together, use the same currency and so forth. Daniel Barenboim came to fame as a pianist but now is as well-known as a conductor, and for his work with an orchestra of young Arab and Jewish musicians, based in Seville, Spain, called the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-founded with the late Palestinian-American intellectual and activist Edward Said, whom Barenboim called his best friend. Barenboim has also been an outspoken critic of the Israeli settlements.We need more ideas like that. Look at what Queen Rania is doing. Weapons alone won’t solve all the problems in the Middle East. You can’t order people at gunpoint to create a democracy, see the question

http://www.fluther.com/disc/45126/how-many-people-think-we-can-force-democracy-down-someones-throat/

We need human imagination and innovation to solve the conflict. We need to try new things.

@mattbrowne Hamas have sling shots and arrows, hardly a fair fight

@mammal What does their armament have to do with their politics? Actually, nothing. In fact, they have way more than sling shots and arrows. Suicide bombers killing 20 people per attack, short range rockets (and they are getting longer range ones from Iran, much like Hezbollah) and explosives.

@shilolo maybe they should just roll over and capitulate to the inevitable, another culture wiped of the face of the globe, by the irresistible force of a technologically advanced people with strong materialist instincts….who knows

Or maybe they should accept the fact that there have been ample opportunities for settlement, all of which have been discarded by the Palestinian leadership. Either way, you can be a fascist with a penknife or a nuclear bomb. The weapons are meaningless to the ideology.

By your response, I guess you support suicide bombings. How precious.

@shilolo what a crass presumption…

@mammal Maybe you should lay off the histrionics. For example, feel free to provide evidence of “another culture wiped of the face of the globe” with respect to the Palestinians. As I noted above, not only are they not being “wiped out”, but the population is growing, rapidly.

The double standards advanced by people critical of Israel is remarkable. The list of atrocities manifest by Arab regimes against each other, their own peoples or others far exceeds any by Israel, yet these anti-Israel forces are mute on the subject. Here is just a short list:
1. Iraq uses chemical weapons on the Kurds
2. Iraq uses chemical weapons against Iran
3. Iraq suppresses a Shiite uprising in 1991 with massive killings
4. Iraq invades and loots Kuwait
5. Syria occupies Lebanon for decades, and participates in the murders of rivals
6. Syria massacres its own citizens in Hama (1982)
7. Jordan kills thousands of Palestinians during Black September (1970) and expells the PLO
8. Genocide in the Sudan

@shilolo

1. Iraq armed by America
2. Israel armed by America
3. Must i continue

Please do. I don’t understand your point. It seems an attempt at obfuscation.

@shilolo the point being, that tribal conflicts are a fact of life, don’t give one side the capacity to annihilate the other because they give Uncle Sam a blow job, pretty simple really, despite all the obfuscation

Let’s see. From 1948-present, the US has supported Israel. From 1948–1991, most of the Arab states were likewise supported militarily by the USSR (Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq). The Cold War is over, and the Israel-USA alliance won. So, the Arab states lost their primary benefactor. When you back the wrong horse in a race, you don’t get your money back at the end.

@mammal – Are your political convictions really compatible with this?

- women walking around in mobile prisons called the burka
– religious police roaming parks to accuse young men and women of flirting
– leaders creating political agendas to exterminate Jews, homosexuals and other “undesireables”

Do we really want the Hamas, Taliban and Wahhabist ideas to spread? We can still criticize certain Israeli actions, but we must be aware of the grave dangers related to their most aggressive opponents. As far as I am concern those folks are also our opponents.

@shilolo: 1. ”... to attempt genocide…”. As a scientist you know that producing a lot of
young is a natural response to threat of annihilation. Fact remains that Israel has been trying to contain, impoverish, marginalize and starve out Palestinians for a long time. I completely agree with you that the Palestinian leadership has been insanely uncooperative. Not sure that justifies loss of life and quality of life occasioned by Israeli weaponry/policy.

2. Darfur is another place where genocide is occurring, yes; and does this Arab-incurred genocide pardon other genocides?

I’m asking you. Asking. Not sarcastic.

@susanc Please explain how the ongoing and historical conflict qualifies as genocide. This haphazard use of the word is demeaning to all the true genocidal events in history. As much as the Pro-Palestinian propaganda machine would like for it to be viewed as such, it clearly is not genocide. Not only is there no evidence of mass deaths or an organized structure to enact such events (in contrast to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur), but in fact there is massive growth of the Palestinian population.

You are right that the the Arab incurred genocide should not pardon others (but as I said above, the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn’t qualify). My point is that there is a massive double standard in simply speaking up about the events worldwide. Israel is attacked during human rights conventions sponsored by the UN by the same countries which have the worst human rights records imaginable. One can only take away from this that there is a global view to focus, harass and otherwise marginalize Israel (a global manifestation of anti-Semitism).

@shilolo I’ll do the best I can.

I believe that, besides keeping Israel safe from suicide bombers, the crackdown on desperate Palestinians displays a clear intention of tightening the noose until the organism chokes and dies. The fact that it’s not working says more about peasant/agriculturalist values than about Israeli mercy.

I don’t have to call this “genocide” if you don’t want me to.
I’m very familiar with the genocides you cite, and yes, they’re more upfront.

But tell me: what is the intent of keeping peasant Palestinians sequestered in waterless, hospital-less, schoolless, jobless dustheaps, which they can be moved out of at a moment’s notice in any case, via illegal “settlement” , whenever someone notices they still have an olive tree left standing?

I agree that anti-Semitism is alive and healthy globally. This, too, is something to fear.

@shilolo anti-Semitism! the knee jerk reaction to every criticism of Israeli Policy, if you find Israeli Fascist tendencies, distasteful you are a Nazi sympathiser, personally i find the Nazi and the Israeli government equally disturbing.

@mammal Your comments are consistently predictable and laughable. Your insights are limited to name-calling when you have no idea about the actual policies they define. If you really believe that the Nazi government, which put into place an actual system of murder which killed >10 million people (and >6 million Jews) is equal to Israel, then there is something wrong with your thought processes. This is par for the course for pro-Palestinian individuals. Can’t argue the facts, and as such resort to loose rhetoric. Learn some history before you come back.

@shilolo sadly your head is so replete with facts and figures, and data and other meaningless clutter, that you have lost the ability, to make sensible observations, based upon a more worldly understanding of the human condition, you would probably argue a factual point to destruction rather than admit to an injustice. All of this from your lofty position a long, long way from all the trouble, somewhere comfortable where you can enjoy the status quo :)

@mammal Sorry to argue using “facts and figures”. Too bad that facts are the only thing of value. Otherwise, you can make up all the bullshit you want, as can I. And, I don’t think you are “close to the trouble” either.