My sympathies in the Middle East are heavily with the Christians, both Arab and Israeli, who aren't wanting to perpetuate the bloodbath, but keep on getting caught up in it anyway.
As regards the various conflicts themsevles, I know both sides are to blame and do awful things, but what leanings I have are towards Israel, for the following reasons:
- Israel seem as if they would be happy to live peacefully alongside the various Arabs. The Arabs who fight Israel (not all of them by any means) want nothing less than total eradication
- When Israel kills civilians, it's an accident. Hezbollah, etc are happy hiding behind their own civilians and aiming to kill Israeli ones.
- There seems to be a heck of a lot of anti-Semitism around, mostly in disguise in the West, though it's blatant in the Middle East
- Israel seem at least halfway capable of making a decent job of running a country
4 comments:
I agree with your analysis, Custard. I have followed this situation closely over the last month or so and I have been astonished by the bias against Israel and the lack of objective reporting of events.
I prefer the term Judophobic to represent the views of the majority of our media (the BBC are an excellent example) rather than anti-semitic. The statement that it is only the Jews who are expected to act like Christians applies once again.
AC
Ok - anti-Israeli is probably a better term, as it's against the actions of the state of Israel rather than the Jews per se (or indeed the descendants of Shem, who might reasonably be expected to be a large fraction of the population of the Earth). But I can't help thinking that the hatred of Jews known as anti-Semitism (a la Germany, Cartman) has never really gone away.
I don't like the -phobic ending to mean anything other than "fear". And before you ask, no, I'm not scared of my house.
I prefer the term Judophobic over the more specific sounding anti-Israeli because the bias that is prevalent amongst much of our media is not simply anti Jews-in-Israel, but anti all Jews who do not conform to their views of the Middle-East, irrespective of where the particular Jews happen to live. Witness the slur 'neo-con' applied to any Jew who happens to be pro-Israeli within the USA. Sure, only Islamic Fascists and extreme-right and left nasties really believe in a global Jewish conspiracy, but the sentiments expressed within this philosophy are prevalent amongst much of the populations of Europe and the USA, despite Europe's history of Jewish-persecution during the last century.
To counter this, I don't believe anti-Israeli is a strong enough term. The bias against Israel runs stronger than disagreeing with the actions of a sovereign nation state: it is more indicative of a hatred against the predominant ethinic group of Israel. I don't believe it is racial, in the ordinary sense of the word, I think the major fault of the Jews in the eyes of the media is that they have been an extraordinary successful ethnic group despite the odds; and in the current cimate of venerating victims this is unforgivable.
AC
OK - makes sense.
Wasn't them being extraordinarily successful despite the odds what lay behind a lot of the Nazi propaganda? Come to think of it, a lot of the earlier stuff too...
The whole stereotype of the Jewish money-grabbing (for which read successful capitalist) businessman goes back a long, long way.
I know the church should take some of the blame - I suspect that even then it was a case of people using a spurious religious argument to do what they wanted to do anyway.
From my point of view, when God became a man, that man was Jewish. Sure the people around him rejected him and had him killed, but the English would have done the same if we could. So I don't see how Christians can be antiJewish in the classic antiSemitic sense, though I recognise that some were.
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