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Comment by tanderson92 | Hacker News Reader

> > I think what bothers me the most about all of this is how criticism of the national policy of the state of Israel is reworked by certain opponents as anti-Semitic attacks.

> Because this criticism is too often intertwined with attacks not on israeli policies, but on Israel's right to exist. And yes, saying that jews don't deserve a nation state is definetly anti-semitic.

Can you explain this to me please? My roommate (who happened to be Jewish) and I in college always used to talk about this and generally disagreed with the common view. He never struck me as anti-Semitic.

It isn't necessarily a matter of "deserving" a nation state, but of displacing native peoples from their homeland to do so. If it was barren desert I'm not sure it would be such an issue.

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> Can you explain this to me please?

In theory, criticizing a country and country's right to exist are different things.

In practice, usually people who are most vocal critics of Israel don't think it should exist in the first place.

> displacing native peoples from their homeland to do so

Which is an ugly half-truth. To put things in this way would require either ignorance of the region's history or some ugly dose of bias.

> In theory, criticizing a country and country's right to exist are different things. > In practice, usually people who are most vocal critics of Israel don't think it should exist in the first place.

You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question.

> Which is an ugly half-truth. To put things in this way would require either ignorance of the region's history or some ugly dose of bias.

Or simply disagreement. 'Bias' implies that your perspective is not itself similarly influenced by bias.

> You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question.

I must've misunderstood it then. Well, isn't it obvious? If you don't deny other ethnicities their nationhood and state, but somehow think that jews don't deserve the same treatment, how can it be not anti-semitic?

And again, if nobody lived in Palestine (the geographical region) then you would have a point that there is an equivalence.

Otherwise, you need to argue that there is a higher moral value to giving the horribly oppressed Jewish people a state than the immorality of taking away the land of indigenous peoples. But that is a matter of judgement (esp. given anti-Semitism in the UK/US, esp. the UK, at the time leading to us not accepting them all as political refugees), not bigotry.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immig...

Pretty much every country on this planet is not populated by people "native" to that country. So saying Israel has no right to exist based on this argument while applying that argument only to Israel is discriminatory. This is before we even address the question of whether this claim is even true or how it is to be judged. If someone's political opinion is that everyone should move back to where their ancestors lived at some specific time in history and they apply it to everyone equally then I would think that's weird and not going to happen but I'd be fine with that.

Typically I don't like to engage in political discussion about the middle east because most people have no clue about the history of the region and interpret what's going on over there through some lens with a very shallow depth of field. That tends to apply to Israelis as well. That said I think antisemitism is still a concern that we have to speak out about and definitely some modern incarnations of antisemitism are directed towards Israel. That doesn't mean that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic but it's just something that makes things more complicated.

Thanks for this. It's a good explanation which addresses the point I was thinking about. You raise some good points which I'll have to think more about.

Just quickly, I am thinking that the fact there are Palestinians alive today who have been displaced renders the question much more urgent and potent than the problematic elimination of Native Americans >100 years ago, for example.

It seems like there's two potential definitions of "Israel" here that you're confusing: 1. "A Jewish state" 2. "A Jewish state located in the area formerly known as Palestine"

While I agree with you that believing that #1 shouldn't exist is anti-Semitic, I don't see how #2 is necessarily anti-Semitic, especially if the person expressing that view is Palestinian. I believe the Kurds also deserve their own state, but I don't see how that means that, say, the United States is obligated to give them Texas to start one in order to not be anti-Kurdish.

In any case, I, personally, don't believe in any country's "right" to exist. I'm not against any particular country's existence, I just don't think the term "right" applies to it. So am I anti-Semitic for extending that general belief to Israel, too?

Countries exist based on their willingness and ability to use force to acquire and defend territory. That's the way it's always been.

In this case (and in some case in Europe) this right was given by the superpowers. Making some hotels explode has never made a country.

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