I was just reading about how a current Israeli war minister’s son died in combat and it made me wonder that if Israeli’s politicians who make these decisions know their family will be affected by it personally and directly, does that lend towards the suggestion that it is more likely they are making genuinely ethically and morally correct decisions to engage in war stuff given their personal skin i the game?
It would seem totally different from American politicians like Cheney who create bullshit geopolitical conflicts knowing full well their progeny will never be touched by it…
Edit: I’m assuming they actually care/give a shit about their offspring and family, even if only just for appearences
I’m not Israeli - but I grew up in a disturbingly similar political environment, Apartheid-era South Africa. In theory, conscription applied to all white males of “military age” (ie, a kid that’s physically capable but still too dumb to resist the brainwashing). However, in reality, the children of the rich and powerful could buy their way out of it through various means (such as Phony Stark famously skipping South Africa right before his 18th birthday despite the fact that he wasn’t as allergic to white supremacism as he claimed to be), while working class whites couldn’t. I’m willing to bet that it pretty much works the same way in Israel.
There are lots of reasons why the children of the rich and powerful could end up on the front lines in wars that are still mostly foisted onto the children of the poor - an abusive father might gaslight their children into it, or it may simply be a case that not participating in all the jingoism might have an effect on careers later on (which might be the case in Israel, considering that militarism is so entwined in politics over there that it would have seemed insane even in Apartheid-era South Africa). It could just be that Snot’s head has been filled with militarism and wouldn’t dream of not participating. But the rich do get a choice in whether their children will be “boots on the ground” or not.
And no… the Israeli political establishment is no more making “ethically and morally correct decisions” than Apartheid-era South Africa’s was - it is, after all, a white supremacist settler-colonialist state. The only way to make “ethically and morally correct decisions” is to not serve the Israeli war machine in any way whatsoever.
As a South African i couldn’t have said it better myself. Israelis and israeli apologists i notice get very offended when you compare israel to Apartheid South Africa, i mean the parallels are so clear to see.
No, I take offense to comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa because it’s dumb. Not even saying it’s wrong, it’s just a dumb comparison.
Read again what the person you replied to said - it’s basically “I don’t have any information about Israel that’s relevant to the question, but I’ll just go ahead and assume Israel and Apartheid South Africa are the same thing and reply based on that. This will show Israel and Apartheid South Africa have a lot in common”.
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The plight of Ethiopian Jews in Israel
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Good point about “white supremacy” being the wrong term used here. I agree that calling it xenophobia/racism is more correct in this case.
Are you talking about the European Jewish people who dominate Israel’s political and economic establishments? Have you noticed that Netanyahu doesn’t look Ethiopian, perhaps?
No, Clyde… it’s perfectly obvious who it is that doesn’t know what it is they are talking about, and it’s the people doing apologetics for white supremacism. Ie, you.
I don’t support the state of Israel, but I hate this bullshit argument so much - where do you think the European Jews came from to Europe, and why?
They came from Israel (the region, not the state, which didn’t exist then) which they were expelled from, over generations, again and again, buy actual colonisers. And only wanted too return after centuries of pogroms that culminated in the holocaust, which was perpetrated by actual white supremacists.
Are racism, xenophobia, islamophobia and colourism all happening, and are influenced by white supremacy? Yes. Can Jews ever really be considered white supremacists? Not by any actual white supremacist, so no…
Is the state of Israel and the illegal settlements it supports now occupying some lands that aren’t theres and oppressing the Palestinians whos lands those are? Yes.
Should they give those lands back and let their rightful residents live on them in peace (and be willing to share the places that are culturally and historically to both)? Yes.
Is Israel an apartheid state that discriminates against its Arab citizens? Yes.
Do Palestinians deserve freedom? Yes.
Does any of this erase thousands of years of history and mean that Jews, from wherever the fuck they were expelled to in the diaspora don’t also have a rightful place on the land or are in any way comparable to actual colonisers who went to foreign lands they nor their ancestors had never set foot on and take them over? Absolutely fucking not.
More people really should actually study the history before making such ignorant claims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_Judaism_in_the_Land_of_Israel
I don´t often see reasonable and differentiated takes like yours. Must be tiring to argue right wing Israelis and Israel haters at the same time. Remember to take a break sometimes to not get burnout my dude :)
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I know you better than you think, Clyde… we were pretty much raised drenched in the same kind of propaganda. After all… Apartheid-South Africa and Israel were besties, weren’t they? And despite the fact that the National Party took their white supremacism (and their antisemitism) straight from the nazis, too - imagine that?
Of course it isn’t! For sure! You have that in common with every other white supremacist colonialist project out of sheer coincidence… totally not because the people sitting at the top of Israel’s political and economic establishments learned their white supremacism from the best in the business - ie, the west.
You know… the west? The people who invented antisemitism right before they invented white supremacism?
“pretty much” being the key words, since the white people who colonised SA had never set foot there before nor had any history or claim to the land, while that absolutely isn’t the case for Jewish people returning to their homeland.
Neither has the Europeans who colonised Palestine and created Israel, Clyde.
European Jewish people’s “homeland” is Europe, genius. You know… the place where they were born and lived for more than a millenium before western antisemitism drove them out?
There is no valid Zionist “claim” to any part of the middle-east - never was, never has been. You might just as well “claim” Jerusalem as “western” because the Crusaders massacred it’s population once.
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Do tell… why can’t they be safe in the place European Jewish people came from? You know… Europe?
Do tell… how well is non-European Jewish folk represented at the top of Israel’s economic and political establishments, eh? Maybe put on your sunglasses before checking… it’s white enough up there to burn your retinas clean off.