On Why Zionism Dehumanizes Its Enemies
by Lawrence of Cyberia
"When Zionists get an attack of the vapors over some nefarious deed the Palestinians are accused of doing, but are then found to have done the very same things themselves, it is important to point this out. And not just to show that Zionists are a bunch of hypocrites, or because it's fun to say neener neener neener, you do it too.
The reason for crying foul when Zionists carry out the very same actions that they condemn as beyond the pale in others is that Zionists select and publicize these specific actions by their opponents in order to portray those opponents as "people not like us". Israel needs to portray the Palestinian people under its rule as people not like us, because it does not wish to be held accountable for treating them in ways that defy accepted standards of international law or even simple human decency. And the way to get away with treating subject peoples in a manner that defies normal human conventions is to demonize them as not quite human like us. The problem then lies not in "our" failure to observe common human decency, but in "their" failure to be properly human.
Zionism and its supporters have woven a hateful narrative that says Israel doesn't have to respect any of the safeguards and conventions that protect civilized people when it deals with Palestinians, because they're not civilized people. They're a fundamentally different sort of people, which makes it impossible to apply normal humanitarian standards in dealing with them.
The real reason why Israel cannot treat Palestinians according to normal humanitarian standards is that its own Zionist ideology requires that the non-Jewish population under its rule be treated inhumanely. This is very difficult for Zionist Israelis - raised on a narrative of their own essential and eternal victimhood, and of an honorable Jewish ethical tradition - to acknowledge. Zionism has always sold itself as simply an innocent, humanitarian project for Jewish self-determination. The aspect of Zionism that Zionists inevitably fail to come to terms with is that it involves pursuing Jewish self-determination in a land where other - overwhelmingly non-Jewish - people already live, and live in such numbers that it is impossible to establish an exclusive Jewish right to self-determination without destroying the fundamental right of everyone else to equality. As there is no people on earth that is going to quietly acquiese in the establishment in its own homeland of a sectarian state that by its very nature denies them equality, political Zionism in Palestine was always going to end up in violent confrontation with the non-Jewish population under its rule.
Israel's dilemma is that it wants to be viewed as a modern, humane, democratic state; but modern democracy requires equality. And if everyone under Israeli rule - Jewish, Muslim, Christian or otherwise - is an equal human being, then that is the end of the "Jewish state" in Palestine. It is Israel's own attachment to creating a state in historic Palestine where democratic rights are reserved in their fulness to only one of the peoples who live there that requires Palestinian human rights to be trodden on. To stop treading on Palestinian human rights - to stop routinely killing, exiling, disenfranchising and dispossessing Palestinians - is to give up the very policies that are necessary to build a Jewish state in a place where most people are not Jewish. To recognize that the annihilation of one's neighbors is a central element in one's own national ideology is a difficult and painful thing to do. It is much easier to invent an alternate reality, in which the denial of any rights to Palestinians is the result of an essential defect in their own collective nature.
Israel cannot afford to acknowledge that its conflict with the Palestinians arises out of its own ideology and the policies necessary to realize that ideology in Palestine, because then ending the conflict would require that Israel change its own behavior and re-examine its own core beliefs. So the reason for the conflict has to be found elsewhere. And the elsewhere where Israel and its defenders want to locate the source is in the very nature of the people it is fighting. "People like us" are peaceful, well-meaning, democratic, modern, Jewish; "people like them" are violent, malevolent, tyrannical, primitive, antisemites. So they fight us - and cannot be reasoned with - just because that's how they are."
This, pure and simple, is 'master race' thinking. Most Israelis have had this pounded into their skulls for so long that it's ingrained into their thought processes. It's interesting to note that when you point out their brutish, psychopathic behavior toward the Palestinians they're astonished that anyone would care.
"A million Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail" Rabbi Perin
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more" Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000
signs in Jerusalem have arabic names stickered over or painted
"When Zionists get an attack of the vapors over some nefarious deed the Palestinians are accused of doing, but are then found to have done the very same things themselves, it is important to point this out. And not just to show that Zionists are a bunch of hypocrites, or because it's fun to say neener neener neener, you do it too.
The reason for crying foul when Zionists carry out the very same actions that they condemn as beyond the pale in others is that Zionists select and publicize these specific actions by their opponents in order to portray those opponents as "people not like us". Israel needs to portray the Palestinian people under its rule as people not like us, because it does not wish to be held accountable for treating them in ways that defy accepted standards of international law or even simple human decency. And the way to get away with treating subject peoples in a manner that defies normal human conventions is to demonize them as not quite human like us. The problem then lies not in "our" failure to observe common human decency, but in "their" failure to be properly human.
Zionism and its supporters have woven a hateful narrative that says Israel doesn't have to respect any of the safeguards and conventions that protect civilized people when it deals with Palestinians, because they're not civilized people. They're a fundamentally different sort of people, which makes it impossible to apply normal humanitarian standards in dealing with them.
The real reason why Israel cannot treat Palestinians according to normal humanitarian standards is that its own Zionist ideology requires that the non-Jewish population under its rule be treated inhumanely. This is very difficult for Zionist Israelis - raised on a narrative of their own essential and eternal victimhood, and of an honorable Jewish ethical tradition - to acknowledge. Zionism has always sold itself as simply an innocent, humanitarian project for Jewish self-determination. The aspect of Zionism that Zionists inevitably fail to come to terms with is that it involves pursuing Jewish self-determination in a land where other - overwhelmingly non-Jewish - people already live, and live in such numbers that it is impossible to establish an exclusive Jewish right to self-determination without destroying the fundamental right of everyone else to equality. As there is no people on earth that is going to quietly acquiese in the establishment in its own homeland of a sectarian state that by its very nature denies them equality, political Zionism in Palestine was always going to end up in violent confrontation with the non-Jewish population under its rule.
Israel's dilemma is that it wants to be viewed as a modern, humane, democratic state; but modern democracy requires equality. And if everyone under Israeli rule - Jewish, Muslim, Christian or otherwise - is an equal human being, then that is the end of the "Jewish state" in Palestine. It is Israel's own attachment to creating a state in historic Palestine where democratic rights are reserved in their fulness to only one of the peoples who live there that requires Palestinian human rights to be trodden on. To stop treading on Palestinian human rights - to stop routinely killing, exiling, disenfranchising and dispossessing Palestinians - is to give up the very policies that are necessary to build a Jewish state in a place where most people are not Jewish. To recognize that the annihilation of one's neighbors is a central element in one's own national ideology is a difficult and painful thing to do. It is much easier to invent an alternate reality, in which the denial of any rights to Palestinians is the result of an essential defect in their own collective nature.
Israel cannot afford to acknowledge that its conflict with the Palestinians arises out of its own ideology and the policies necessary to realize that ideology in Palestine, because then ending the conflict would require that Israel change its own behavior and re-examine its own core beliefs. So the reason for the conflict has to be found elsewhere. And the elsewhere where Israel and its defenders want to locate the source is in the very nature of the people it is fighting. "People like us" are peaceful, well-meaning, democratic, modern, Jewish; "people like them" are violent, malevolent, tyrannical, primitive, antisemites. So they fight us - and cannot be reasoned with - just because that's how they are."
This, pure and simple, is 'master race' thinking. Most Israelis have had this pounded into their skulls for so long that it's ingrained into their thought processes. It's interesting to note that when you point out their brutish, psychopathic behavior toward the Palestinians they're astonished that anyone would care.
"A million Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail" Rabbi Perin
"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more" Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000
signs in Jerusalem have arabic names stickered over or painted
posted by nolocontendere at 8:12 PM
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