“Pro-Israel” people aren’t actually pro-Israel and Israel critics aren’t actually anti-semites
The Right Wing and even PEPs (Progressives Except on Palestine) like to perpetuate the lie that any criticism of Israel is essentially or practically anti-Israel or Anti-semitic. This is an absurd argument for many reasons.
1) Being a hawk does not make you patriotic: When the argument comes from PEPs, it’s dishonest or delusional, because as any “progressive” or liberal knows, it’s more than possible to be critical of a government without being against its people. In the case of the war in Iraq, for instance, people who opposed the war are not “anti-American.”
2) Being a hawk on Israel is anti-Israel and anti-Israeli: It could easily be argued, in fact, that the people who did not want America to enter into a war based on lies, which would create more anti-American sentiment abroad, kill and maim and sicken American soldiers and cost trillions of American taxpayer dollars are more “pro-American” than the “USA! USA! USA!” “pro-American” patriots who supported the war. It’s a fairly straightforward and simple concept. And one that PEPs should get. And when they defend Israel by asking, “What would the United States do?” I always respond, “They would do something similarly atrocious and you, yes, you would go to a demonstration in Union Square or Washington DC to protest it. But, because it’s Israel, you don’t.”
3) Zionism requires criticism of Israel. Although many of my cohorts on the Left would disagree, you can, I would strongly argue, be a Zionist and be critical of Israel at the same time. I have problems with J Street, the (relatively but not really) left alternative to AIPAC, especially since they have refused to condemn Israel’s attack on Gaza. But I think their goal of being “pro Israel, pro peace,” is a good tactic and a legitimate position, at least in theory. But the existence of Israel and the safety and security of its people is possible only with a two state solution, which is impossible under occupation. As the late Holocaust survivor, Zionist and pro-Palestinian, honorary French ambassador Stephane Hessel said,
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/06/pro-israel-people-arent-actually-pro-israel-and-israel-critics-arent-actually-anti-semites/
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and I agree that one should, then those who try to equate what is happening in Gaza with the Holocaust (with a capital "H"
or events occurring during the Holocaust, such as the Warsaw Ghetto, deserve all the criticism and condemnation one can muster, since in terms of proportionality, there is no comparison.
Some history.
While there was a long on again/off again history of anti-semitism in Germany, the rise of the Nazis and their persecution of the Jews of Germany and Europe started around 1933. These are the early stages of which you speak:
1933 -- Jews are barred from being in the government.
1934 -- Hitler takes control. Laws are passed (1)preventing marriage or even sexual relations between "Aryans" and Jews; (2) denying Jews citizenship (even if they were only "one-quarter" Jewish), thus Jews were denied the right to vote
1936 -- Jews barred from holding professional jobs (such as doctor, lawyer, etc.)
1938 -- Ban on awarding government contracts to Jewish businesses.
1938 -- Aryan doctors are barred from treating Jews. Since Jews cannot hold professional positions, finding a Jewish doctor is problematic to say the least.
Nov. 1939 -- at the government's urging, Kristallnacht occurs, with the destruction of thousand of Jewish homes and businesses, and the rounding up of some 30,000 German Jews to be sent to concentration camps. At these camps, the Jews are forced to engage in slave labor for the Nazis. They do not own property. They have no rights. Thousands die of starvation or are killed by the Nazis.
After that, it got worse.
Now, let's consider how this is supposed to be "eerily similar" to the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.
1.5 million Palestinians live in Israel. They have the right to become citizens. They have the right to serve in government, in the military, on the judiciary. They can be doctors, lawyers, etc. There are around a dozen Palestinian-Arab Israeli citizens in the Knesset. Palestinian Arab has been sitting on the Israeli Supreme Court for more than a decade. When an attempt was made to deny poltical parties whose goals or actions include denying the right of Israel to exist from participating in elections and to bar a specific Palestinian Arab from sitting as a member of the Knesset, those actions were reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court. Over a decade ago, the Israeli government established as a policy that every state-run business must have at least one Palestinian Arab Israeli citizen on its board of directors.
Admittedly, it is different when it comes to the occupied territories. Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem have the right to Israeli citizenship and the right to vote. But Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are not entitled to Israeli citizenship. However, they are entitled to, and have, their own government (the PA in West Bank and Hamas in Gaza). While free movement by Palestinian Arabs is restricted in the occupied territories (limited by a permitting requirement in the West Bank and to essentially barred in Gaza) Palestinians in the occupied territories own property, can have businesses, can marry and have sex with non-Palestinians. They are not forced to engage in slave labor on behalf of Israel. While the economies of the West Bank and Gaza unquestionably suffer because of the Israeli occupation, and the economy of Gaza will suffer even more greatly due to the Israeli assault, these areas have actual economies: according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (the official statistical bureau of the "State of Palestine" reported that the GDP of the combined West Bank and Gaza territories increased from $1.17 billion in fourth quarter 2008 (an annual GDP rate of $4.68 billion) to $1.73 billion in fourth quarter 2012 (an annual rate of $6.92 billion). The increase, fourth quarter 2011, to fourth quarter 2012, was 3.5% in Gaza and 5.9 percent in the West Bank. The PCBS also reported increases in GDP, employment and other economic markers during the first three quarters of 2013, albeit at a slower pace than the increase the previous year. If you think the situation for Palestinians in general, or even for Gazans is "eerily similar" to the bans that the Germans placed on the Jews in the early stages of Nazi rule I don't know what to say. When Jews were deprived of their homes and property they were transported to and confined in concentration camps where they were forced to engage in slave labor. If you think something "eerily similar" to that is occurring in the occupied territories, I don't know what to say.
The situation in the occupied territories is tragic. Israel has, in my opinion, violated international law in any number of respects. But that does not make their actions "eerily similar" or even remotely similar to the actions of the Nazis. What the Nazis did was singularly horrific. You say you don't mean to minimize the "holocaust". But your arguments do exactly that. Even your presumably unintentional use of the lower case in referencing the Holocaust minimizes it. Check any dictionary. The actions of the Germans against the Jews and others are known as the "Holocaust" to distinguish those actions from other genocidal actions.
The tactics used by the Israelis against Gaza and the conditions in which the Palestinians find themselves are not "eerily similar" to the tactics used by the Nazis and the conditions faced by Jews, even in the "early stages" of the Holocaust unless one closes one's eyes to virtually all of the facts. Sadly, what the Israelis tactics are similar to are the tactics that are unfortunately engaged in by armies in every war: the use of military might against ostensible military targets that in fact cause civilian deaths in number that cannot be justified. Demonizing the "enemy" -- again, something engaged in by armies throughout history. During WWII, the US went out of its way to demonize the Japanese -- to dehumanize them as "Japs" and the "Yellow Peril" and to depict them in the most unflattering ways possible. Thousands of US citizens of Japanese origin were rounded up and sent to internment camps. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet I cannot recall anyone here ever suggesting that the tactics of the US during WWII could be compared in the same breath to the tactics of the Nazis. I've never heard the US called a "murderer" for using the Atomic Bomb or that Truman should have been charged with a war crime. Dresden: twenty-five thousand German civilians killed by the Allied bombing. Was it disproportionate? It could be argued that it was, but I 've not heard the British Government and the US Government called murderers or compared to the Nazis for having engaged in such tactics. That comparison seems to be reserved for the Israel.
I doubt I will ever convince you, which is sad. Because when what the Germans' did becomes just a more efficient version of what all armies do -- unique only as a matter of degree, not as a matter of kind -- then history has been defiled.
