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Comment by walkhour | Hacker News Reader

Most comments here are attacking the decision, or just quoting the decision, and following it up by a "wtf". Just being shocked is not an argument.

Jews are or have been persecuted in all middle eastern countries. What would happen if they were a minority in a democratic state in the Middle East? Why would it be different than in the other democracies in the Middle East?

Laws like these lower the probability of Jews becoming a minority in Israel. Do you think the probability of them becoming a minority is zero? And the probability of them being persecuted provided they become a minority is zero? Unless you think both probabilities are very low you must understand their concerns.

You may agree with their concerns or not, I don't, but this is what must be addressed when criticizing these laws. Saying this is apartheid means nothing because the situation is not analogous.

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Advocates for Israel like to use other middle eastern states to excuse all sorts of behavior.

The problem is that they try to have their cake and eat it to with these comparisons.

“Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East!” -but the systematically control the non Jewish population.

Israel wants to display itself as the image of a society that has the same values as western states, while practicing the same things that are supposedly abhorrent by it’s neighbors.

So which is it? Is Israel a democratic state, or a Jewish nation state? Because it can’t be both.

Sure, but these are the arguments used to justify a Western nation not being able to exist in the Middle East because of having too inclusive values.

What I'm looking for is an argument of why the two probabilities that I mentioned are small enough so that persecution is not a concern. If persecution is a concern, why should Israel care about being inconsistent? Being inconsistent in how Israel displays itself would then be at the back of the line of their concerns.

Israel seems to care quite a bit about its image in the west, which is why every time news such as this comes out you see the same arguments trotted out over and over about how this is what’s necessary.

Is western oriented propaganda and it’s important that it is seen for what it is.

Now, as to your point about persecution. I do care about the safety and well-being of all involved in this. But your argument boils down to one of two things: either there is something inherent in middle eastern culture writ large that makes people utterly incapable of living peacefully together, or the Israelis have mistreated the Palestinians so much that they have opened themselves up to terrifying revenge.

Now for the latter case, that is simply no excuse for continuing said behavior. And as to the former, it simply is not true. The Middle East has been a melting pot for centuries and it hasn’t been remarkably more violent than other regions of the world is one takes a longer historical view (not to mention the significant conflict over oil resources with the west)

> there is something inherent in middle eastern culture writ large that makes people utterly incapable of living peacefully together

By any means this is the case, but in the current state of affairs, given the amount of hatred in the region, if Israel was a region of Palestine with no sovereignty, I don't think it would fare well for the Jews. How do I know this? This is publicly routinely announced by the Palestinian government, who, granted, are not the Palestinians, but you just need a minority for a persecution to happen. Of course peace and living along together is eventually possible.

There is no unified Palestinian government. I’m going to assume you are referring to hamas, who hasn’t faced election since the mid 2000s in Gaza (though to be fair they would probably win again today).

I’m not asserting there is any clean path forward, but at the same time the hypothetical you are offering wouldn’t happen overnight either.

The question is whether we are able to justify actions as they are now. Will Israel work towards reconciliation and restitution or will it continue with its current policy of colonialism and expulsion?

> There is no unified Palestinian government. I’m going to assume you are referring to hamas, who hasn’t faced election since the mid 2000s in Gaza (though to be fair they would probably win again today).

I'm referring to whoever de facto is the ultimate authority in the region, there may be several individuals/groups that have the authority.

> I’m not asserting there is any clean path forward, but at the same time the hypothetical you are offering wouldn’t happen overnight either.

Agreed.

> The question is whether we are able to justify actions as they are now

Agreed.

>The Middle East has been a melting pot for centuries

No it hasn't. It's been an explicitly Islamist supremacist (sometimes under Arab dynasties, sometimes Persian or Turkish ones, but certainly never Jewish ones) imperial dominion for centuries, and was until 1924. Do you not know what dhimmi status was?

I’m not sure why you’re using Dhimmi as if it’s a trump card in this argument. It explicitly granted legal protections for non Muslims.

Compared to its contemporaries under Christian rule in Europe, the Muslim world was quite progressive in that respect. You can observe the difference as it played out in Christian Spain after the reconquista.

Ok, so would you get in the time machine to go back and become a dhimmi? Why should we have liked on purely comparative grounds?

Because that’s the context of the conversation?

The reality of the situation is that 90% of Palestinians do not encounter any Jews or Israelis at all in their daily life. Gazans live under Hamas. And Arabs in West Bank mostly live under Palestinian authority in areas negotiated in Oslo in the 90s.

Really the only place they touch is Jerusalem.

> Just being shocked is not an argument.

Most people don't feel the need to argue against openly legislated apartheid; we can just be shocked. If I see a car crash, I don't argue with it either.

Everybody understands that laws like this are essential for building up an ethnostate, but most people don't think that's a defense.

Don't get me wrong, I'm shocked as well, I just think that's not enough, you have to at least be able to justify why the two probabilities that I mentioned before are small, which in my opinion, is a hard thing to do.

I think most of us are so used to the principles of pluralism and minority rights, accepting it as an axiom, that it doesn't occur to argue that an ethnostate is desirable, necessary, and worth the cost to the displaced ethnicities.

Doesn't occur is maybe the wrong word, it occurs as an alien and dangerous idea, like gazing into the maw of a tiger. Does it not feel dangerous to you, to even start weighing the needs of one ethnicity against the needs of another?

> Does it not feel dangerous to you, to even start weighing the needs of one ethnicity against the needs of another?

It does, I think Israel and its neighbours are in a very dangerous position.

>I think most of us are so used to the principles of pluralism and minority rights, accepting it as an axiom, that it doesn't occur to argue that an ethnostate is desirable, necessary, and worth the cost to the displaced ethnicities.

The shock is not so much from a "shaken faith" in pluralism as it is from the hypocrisy and historical irony on display.

The situation is very much analogous to South African Apartheid. In both cases, an insecure population at the helm of an ethnostate sought to further deprive their state's already-disenfranchised co-residents of legal rights, in an effort to achieve security for themselves. White South Africans made the exact same arguments as Israelis, and in fact collaborated extensively with Israeli security services because they understood that the exact same groups opposed to South African Apartheid were the most potent opponents of Israeli apartheid. The Israelis remained staunch allies of the South Africans long after the rest of the world had decided to isolate them, because the Israelis understood implicitly that they were engaged in the same policies.

As to your question, I don't think a wise Israeli government would make every Palestinian a citizen tomorrow, but I think it is deeply unwise and immoral to further entrench the current policy of legal apartheid. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end in either ethnofascism and ethnic cleansing or some form of reconciliation, and this is a step towards ethnofascism.

There are also differences between Israel and a South African Apartheid. Israel is in a constant state of war and danger of losing its sovereignty. No such justification existed in South African Apartheid.

> but I think it is deeply unwise and immoral to further entrench the current policy of legal apartheid. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end in either ethnofascism and ethnic cleansing or some form of reconciliation, and this is a step towards ethnofascism.

I agree it's unwise. My point is that these policies should be gaged in terms of probabilities. I take you believe the probability of this ending in an ethnic cleansing instead of reconciliation has increased, I do as well. I also think the probability of Jews becoming a minority in Israel and being persecuted has decreased. Whether this was good/bad/worth it it's a different issue.

> Israel is in a constant state of war and danger of losing its sovereignty. No such justification existed in South African Apartheid.

That's not historically correct. Violence was absolutely a stated reason / pretense of South African apartheid, especially violence between different Black tribes. I'm not sure if that should be considered "war" or not, but it's as much war as what presently goes on between Israelis and Palestinians.

> Jews are or have been persecuted in all middle eastern countries.

Jews have been prosecuted on many parts of the world and on different timelines of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews

They have also found refugee in Muslim community from Christian prosecution multiple times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...

> Laws like these lower the probability of Jews becoming a minority in Israel.

It doesn't. The children still remain Isreali citizens. Which means this is an inconvenience to the spouse and a quite racist law.

> And the probability of them being persecuted provided they become a minority is zero?

History shows that their prosecution, demographics, and geography are not that related. Jews got prosecuted because they held significant wealth in a certain societies. It's a power/wealth grab in certain cases; and finding an easy scapegoat in other cases.

> Jews have been prosecuted on many parts of the world and on different timelines of history > They have also found refugee in Muslim community from Christian prosecution multiple times

Nevertheless persecution seems more likely now in the Middle East than in in non middle eastern countries. In any case, the fact that they have been persecuted by everyone wouldn't be an argument against them being less worried, on the contrary, they should be terrified then.

> It doesn't. The children still remain Isreali citizens. Which means this is an inconvenience to the spouse and a quite racist law.

Note I find this abhorrent, but inconveniencing mothers or possible future mothers does lower the probability of Jews becoming a minority. And yes, inconveniencing here is an euphemism.

> History shows that their prosecution, demographics, and geography are not that related. Jews got prosecuted because they held significant wealth in a certain societies. It's a power/wealth grab in certain cases; and finding an easy scapegoat in other cases.

You're making the case that Jews shouldn't allow impoverished migrants into their land, again, I don't see why this should diminish their concerns.

>They have also found refugee in Muslim community from Christian prosecution multiple times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...

Got some really lovely apologia for Islamic imperialism in that page:

>Jews under Islamic rule were given the status of dhimmi, along with certain other pre-Islamic religious groups.[1] Though second-class citizens,

Leaving what you consider Islamic imperialism aside, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how dhimmi status compared to how jews were treated in other parts of the world at that time.

Since dhimmi status extended into the 1800s, and even the 1900s in some areas, it compares pretty damn disfavorably to full emancipation and citizenship. Going back into earlier periods of history, I don't really care to tell you whether a Muslim boot or a Christian boot tastes better, since, being Jewish, I'd rather not have either one stamping on my face.

> What would happen if they were a minority in a democratic state in the Middle East? Why would it be different than in the other democracies in the Middle East?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Parliament_religious_m...

Thank you for the link, why did the Jewish population go from at least 25,000 in 2000 to less than 9,000 today in Iran? Is it a common occurrence for a religious group to dwindle by half in two decades in a country?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Jews

Serious question coming from a place of relative ignorance- are Jewish people today more persecuted in western democracies like the US than in Israel? There are certainly attacks, but I don't know how that compares to the sustained state of quasi-war that Israel exists in.

> Laws like these lower the probability of Jews becoming a minority in Israel. Do you think the probability of them becoming a minority is zero? And the probability of them being persecuted provided they become a minority is zero? Unless you think both probabilities are very low you must understand their concerns.

I think I understand their concerns but worry that this creates a new persecuted minority by race, ensuring Jewish security by persecuting native Arabic peoples. This is maybe an overly American lense, but "never again" to me means that we should have stringent minority protections above just "never again" for the Jewish people .

> Serious question coming from a place of relative ignorance- are Jewish people today more persecuted in western democracies like the US than in Israel? There are certainly attacks, but I don't know how that compares to the sustained state of quasi-war that Israel exists in.

Just by the numbers, Jews are better off in Israel, because baseline violent crime rates are actually lower in Israel. This is made starker by the next largest Jewish population being in the United States, which has an unusually high rate of baseline violent crime. It's actually a question of "do you want fewer but more horrifying terrorist attacks, or more and more normalized mass shootings?"

Fewer than 1 in 400 homicide victims in the US is killed in a mass shooting. Conflating the danger from baseline violent crime rate with that from mass shootings is silly.

And of course, the violence in the USA is extremely unevenly distributed, so the baseline number tells you very little about the actual danger to Jewish Americans.

I don't know the answer to the GP's question one way or another, but this line of reasoning doesn't answer it.

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