196

"They get more freedoms and a better quality of life than anywhere else in the middle east. In the written law at the very least, they have equal rights."

This is a hell of a statement to make.

For an interesting point of view, I recommend a book called "The Hundred Years War on Palestine." It starts in 1917 and discusses the origins of the state before 1948. It then continues until 2017. I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts if you read it.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Hundred-Years-War-on-Palestine-by-Rashid-Khalidi-author/9781781259344

Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?

Ya nailed it. See, the thing is here, both of you are citizens of nations where you don't have a lot of actual personal choice in what your government does to "represent" you, despite both ostensibly being "representative government."

They're both apartheid states. I live in one, I didn't choose to. You live in one, you didn't choose to.

However, in the case of the US, we don't keep them all in one single, open-air prison with a giant fence between us and them, and bomb the living shit out of all of them if one of them does something fucked up. Usually, we prosecute that individual.

I'm not saying the US is better, it's not. Just look at Guantanamo Bay.

But I am saying the situation with Israel and Palestine is way more fucked up, based on the close proximity, how long this has been going on, and things like Netanyahu probably funding Hamas. Netanyahu is just like US conservatives, he's willing to fund his enemies just so he can keep using them as scapegoats. Netanyahu has been a fucking piece of shit for over twenty fucking years in Israeli politics, and just like the US, we seem to be unable or unwilling to deal with criminal fucking scumbags like him.

there were no "No Irish Allowed" signs during The Troubles either. This conflict, as with all other competing ethnic quarrels, is complex. But it isn't any more complex than those conflicts. In fact, I'd say that the ongoing conflict in Malaysia is more complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also to address the whataboutism, yes, I'd argue that the US is an apartheid state against the natives. Palestinians are living in a genocidal apartheid state. The treatment of Palestinians by the settlers in the West Bank are a clear sign of this. What recourse do the Palestinians have when an Israeli squats on their house while running out for groceries?

USA is a fascist state and always has been, that does not justify what Israeli settlers and the IDF are doing currently

I’m not religious in the slightest and I barely see myself as part of the Jewish nation - but I do, just barely. It is unfortunately true that anti-semitism is alive and well, and will be for the foreseeable future. Even if I don’t view myself as Jewish, some anti-semites will, and we all know where that could lead. So Israel is the only country in the world where we can know for a fact that the government (police) will protect us from anti-semitism, not to mention won’t take part in it.

Which is the chicken-and-egg problem of ethno/theostates, isn't it? If most/all of a group are isolated to one geographical location, and largely absent from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for hate to spread in that rest of the world, because nobody there has lived experience, can have that moment of "but I know Elsa/Ahmed/Luna/whoever, and they're decent person" to challenge propaganda when they hear it (and anyone who's a minority where they live has at least one story of being the cause of such a realisation). But if you're a group that lives in those little geographical pockets, it becomes that much harder to move out, because you give up your support network and move into an area of potentially hostile people.

And of course, bigots know about this and weaponise it. Speaking as a trans person and noticing the current wave of vile legislation against us in the shit parts of the US, it sure as hell feels like the objective there is to force anyone who can leave to do so, and punish those who can't, specifically to prevent a sufficient mass of trans people building up that those same deradicalising experiences can happen (hence why the use of a stereotypical trans name in above example). But in a way it's both better and worse for us, because we aren't just born into certain bloodlines or cultures, we emerge almost everywhere, so and have to fight to make the whole world queer-friendly, rather than just being able to set up somewhere in a small pocket and let the whole world slowly become most hostile to us in response.

Forgive me for going on the offensive, but since you're American... How exactly is your govenment making up for the atrocities committed to the native Americans? A very quick search says it's not all sunshine and roses either... Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?

The US was founded on a genocide that didn't fully stop until the late 20th century. That much is true. We're not an apartheid state because we don't have a population of Native Americans who aren't allowed to leave their designated areas. We do have areas called "Indian Reservations" where Native Americans have limited sovereignty (somewhat comparable to that of a US state), but the people who live there are free to leave and many of them do.

We might very well be an apartheid state if the native population hadn't been genocided to the point that nobody sees them as a threat, so I'm not claiming any kind of historical moral superiority. And the US government still treats Native American groups badly in a lot of ways, but they're at least not treated badly enough to inspire them to form terrorist groups, and it's not because Native American cultures are inherently pacifistic—native attacks on white settlers were quite common in the 1700s and 1800s.

The lesson I take from it is that even people with the worst historical grievances are willing to set them aside if they're given the same opportunities as everyone else.