"South Africa must always remain a White state." - white supremacist
"The United States must always preserve its White majority." - white supremacist
"Israel must always remain a Jewish state/preserve its Jewish majority." - noooo that's not Jewish supremacist!!!
It really is telling, innit?
You're not interested in good faith debate on the issue so I'm not answering for you, but rather for other people.
The Jews are a unique cultural and religious group that existed for thousands of years. After facing the most horrible persecution and genocide that any group experienced in documented history, they've decided to seek a nation state for Jews- just like many other groups have their own nation states. Where will Jews turn to if France or the United Kingdom or Russia or the United States elect an antisemitic authoritarian leader? Can they trust other countries to accept them, after during the holocaust German Jews were turned away in many countries? No, we clearly can't trust non-Jews to protect us.
This is why Israel and zionism are necessary, and this is why (unlike criticisms of Israel's actions), denying the very existence of Israel is antisemitic. And this is why comparing the necessity to keep a Jewish majority in Israel- the only way to ensure Jews have their own country- to neo-nazism and white supremacism is deploreable and filthy.
Jewish self-determination doesn't have to be incompatible with other people's self-determination.
Bingo. This is why leftist activism on the issue today is so flawed- you hear the word "occupation" less and less, even though that right there is the big issue that we should be talking about. Instead, you're hearing hyperboles such as "apartheid" and even the extremely antisemitic accusation of "genocide", meant to delegitimize the very *existence* of Israel. When they say Palestinian liberation, they don't mean the two state solution or equality- they mean ending the only Jewish state in the world. Just like the world turning its back on German Jews before the Holocaust or on Jewish refugees after the war, a huge chunk of non Jews continue to prove today why we can only trust ourselves.I think when talking Irish-Israeli relations and the generic European Left and how it has engaged in a tone deaf war of words with the pro-Israel camp, there is this idea that actually Israel's raison d'etat went from being a self-determination and Labor Zionist movement to a combination of deeply cynical Darwinist survival of the fittest ideology and generic ''Arabs can't decide for themselves, only Judeo-Christian peoples can...just look at Gaza!'. I think you are being a bit naive if you don't think such views are now pretty mainstream in the pro-Israel camp. I know you don't hold them, but essentially I'm trying to show you where the origin of the rather extreme language comes from from the other side.
I agree the apartheid analogy is flawed, Arabs can be power brokers in Israel, that was never the case in ZA. I still think its worth examining why that analogy came to be though, because there are some valid criticisms of the way the Israeli security doctrine decided to make Gaza an example (a sort of Bantustan) without realising the deep social and political problems there are entirely symbiotic with a failed counter-insurgency strategy by the Israeli government.
I've already said my view (from the little that I know on it) is that the main drivers of the occupation status quo are elements of the Israeli military and right-wing that know that their sources of currency (money for testing arms and votes from a fearful populace) would dry up. Its not even an ethnic issue anymore, there are so many grifters on the gravy train on both sides that ending the occupation would be a political and economic disaster for people with way more cynical outlooks than ''your self-determination movement is less important than my self-determination movement''.
