Is Israel that much different? It seems like if you're committed to empowering all BIPOC you would not restrict their access to the weaponry needed to defend their homelands.
Why should the US allow Israel to have nukes when we spend so much energy preventing Iran from doing the same?
Also, the what-about-ism is not a great defense of anything geopolitical btw.
Also, "pulling out" is too simplistic. There are not only troops on the ground, but also military bases, joint exercises, weapon sales, commercial ties, industrial ties, scientific collaborations, cultural influences, and so on and so forth. Short of disappearing from the globe the US cannot just 'pull out'
> full rights for women, minorities, and LGBTQ
So not full rights for religious minorities. Moreover, conversion is quite difficult and the process is made much easier if you have a parent who is Jewish (which generally forms an ethnic group). Only recently were non-Orthodox conversions recognized for this purpose: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/middleeast/israel-j...
Also, if you are from Palestine or Iran, you are excluded from citizenship via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Isr...
ie. specifically on the basis of your ethnicity &/or national origin.
I find it hard to take seriously claims of equal & full rights for minorities when those rights require converting to a different religion or being of a different ethnicity in order to apply to you.
Empowering BIPOC isn't about expecting all the same things. It's about giving BIPOC the resources they need for their ethnic and cultural self-determination.
It's too bad Afrikaners didn't try harder to "preserve the traditional and culture" of minority rule in South Africa as well.
Historical persecution doesn't justify enthnostates in my mind, I didn't realize this was a controversial opinion.
e: Since you've now edited your comment to include the statement about "BIPOC", Jewishness is orthogonal to "BIPOC" and most Jewish people are white.
I say that as someone of Sephardic descent.
"a small amount of ethnic homogeneity" seems like a deliberate minimization.
Israel is an apartheid state that has been persecuting based on ethnicity and religion for decades.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/10/15/...
Of course the right of return is just for Jews. Every country gets to set its own rules for citizenship. But Israeli citizens enjoy a reasonable democracy, with advanced civil rights, and respect human rights of others, too. Of course not at 100% but way better then all of their neighbors
Israel grants privileges for being Jewish and denies citizenship if you are from Palestine.
I'd liken it to something like Country X giving special immigration privileges if you have ancestry from country X.
They don't deny citizenship if you're palestinian, granted it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country
> it's as difficult if you were trying to get citizenship coming from any other country
Nope, it's more so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Isr...
In general, I am opposed to ethnostates and granting nationality based on what bloodline you come from. I think it is ironic that there is a right of "return" for Jewish people, but no such right of return for people who were displaced during the Nakba.
I'll be honest - I'm also opposed to "ethnostates" in general, and would much prefer the world moved beyond looking at each other based on ethnicity.
But given the fact that Israel was kind of explicitly created because the world hasn't moved past looking at ethnicity, I'm not sure what my solution is. I'm an Israeli Jew - I know that if Israel wouldn't exist, my life would be far more dangerous. And that's not a hypothetical - a huge chunk of my family were murdered for no other reason than being Jewish. The only guarantee I have that this won't happen again is that there is a strong Jewish state.
Do I like that the world is like this? No! Not at all. But that's the way the world is. And considering that most other groups do have effectively their own countries, I don't see a reason that Jews shouldn't also have their own country.
(This is all talking about the concept of an "ethnostate" in specific, not getting into the question of whether Israel being founded in the location it is was wrong in the first place - the arguments above would work just as well if Israel had been founded anywhere else.)