this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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How is Israel a dictatorship? They have a multiparty democracy that regularly changes who is in control.
They are are a parliamentary democratic state that has a system of apartheid which is not at odds with liberal democracy as other liberal democracies have had apartheid states eg the USA until 1964-ish.
Can't really have a democracy and an Apartheid. None of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation have any voice. Any opposition by Arab Israelis (Palestinians who survived the Nakba) are violently cracked down on
You can have a flawed or failing democracy and have one. Those that can vote still have a choice which is why it is not an autocracy like China or Saudi Arabia currently are.
It's an Ethnocracy.
Saudi Arabia is a Monarchy. China is a Republic.
Yes and both are authoritarian. KSA is a monarchy whose legitimacy comes through Allah. China is an authoritarian republic. Republics derive their legitimacy from the masses rather than from a god or a familial line. Republics aren't inherently democratic.
If you are going to reply that China isn't authoritarian pleade explain why the people cannot choose to shift the state from Maoism should they want to.
China is mostly authoritarian, only Democratic on local levels and people have limited influence on policy despite the crackdowns and censorship.
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/political-participation-china-whats-allowed-under-xi
Still a far cry from the human rights abuses of the Absolute Monarchy of Saudi Arabia and certainly the Apartheid State of Israel, which has always been a fascist nation.
Israel has free and fair elections. It has always been an opressive/imperialistic nation but it is not in any way fascist unless your definition is "government I don't like"
Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing and has never stopped being an Apartheid. Zionism has always been a fascist ideology. Elections are not free and fair when huge amounts of the indigenous population under the government's control have no representation.
Quote
Page 8, The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
10 myths of Israel by Ilan Pappe, summerized and full book
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
1967 war: Haaretz, Forward
Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations practiced in the occupied territories after 1967
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades.
Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
(Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ).
The settlements have created hundreds of isolated bantustans within the West Bank, preventing any two-state solution that may have been possible before the Israeli occupation in 1967
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Historian Works on the History
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
You keep using the term "fascism" and its derivations incorrectly, why? Are you completely unfamiliar with what the philosophy is or is it hard fir you-to realize democracies can be bad too?
I'm not. Zionism is a fascist ideology. If you think ethnic cleansing isn't inherently fascist, I don't know what to tell you besides you're wrong. There is no rigid definition of Fascism
Why do you think Einstein and Arendt considered the actions of Zionism fascist?
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/albert-einstein-and-hannah-arendt-warn-against-fascism-in-israel/
Ethnic cleansing is an action humans have engaged in since they recognized ethnicity as a concept. Fascism is a political philosophy that comes about as a response to Marx's works. There are thousands of years of ethnic cleansings that have nothing to do with fascism.
Fascism is authoritarian in nature and Israel is not a fascist state. There are no fascist democracies.
What a physicist thinks of a political system has the same value as a political philosopher's take on physics.
Edit: you are entirely misrepresenting what the 1948 NYT letter was about which is a rejection of a singular party in Israel and not the state of Israel. Your link does not have Arendt calling Israel fascist but comparing a specific party to fascists. Why are you misrepresenting the truth here?
"free and fair elections" that half the population aren't allowed to vote in.
Lol, China is more democratic then Israel: at least everyone gets to vote in China.
part of the purpose of this war is for benjamin netenyahu to have the pretenses he needs to do what he's wanted since 2021: to subvert the will of his people and establish himself as dictator. until peace terms are reached, he will retain special wartime military powers, and if you think he's going to restore power you haven't been paying attention to who he is or how israel operates. mark my words, october 7th is when all pretenses of the israeli democracy you're describing eroded entirely.
Israels genocide has overwhelming domestic support. He's not subverting the will of the people, he's following it.
yes. he has support for war and genocide but not his general rule. the war is a pretense for him to cease power. then longer the mass killings go and the less accountability in the upper echelons of other governments, the less likely he is to face consequences for a coup to avoid any accountability for his own corruption. the israeli people remind me a lot of russians and us citizens in this regard, turning to their big corrupt daddy to save them from the problems manufactured by their big corrupt daddy because their view of the world is too narrow to see the bigger picture that once an ethnic cleansing reaches its end, it just doesn't. there's always some next group to cleanse. today it's Uyghurs, Rohingens, Ukrainians, Palestinians, Masalit, and Congolese. Tomorrow it's Latinos, Native Americans, Georgians, trans kids, and African Americans. The day after that it's Jews, Koreans, women who talk, subcontinental Indians, and men who seem a little too in touch with their emotions.
It's disgusting that you'd equivocate long since discredited atrocity propaganda like the "Uyghur genocide" narrative, which even the western media abandoned years ago, has failed to produce any documentary evidence, or even a single confirmed death, in over a decade, and for which the only primary sources are themselves rabid supporters of Israels genocide, with the undeniable mass carnage we've had directly live streamed to us, while it's perpetrators have openly stated their intentions.
And while Ukrainians are the victims of a brutal war of aggression, it is no more a genocide than the invasion of Iraq.
This is why Westerners are always so docile about allowing their governments to commit unspeakable acts: because their first instinct when there own governments do it is to desperately try to find any way to justify saying "well everyone else is doing it too"
Don't take this badly, but that's tribalism in general, which is not at all specific to "Westerners".
I don't disagree with the rest of what you said, but your point about "Westerners" is really just you showing your prejudices, is a pretty good indication that you too are tribalist, just aligned with a different "tribe" and weakens your argument because it makes it seem like it's just the defense of a different side (the same thing you accuse "Westerners" of doing) instead of being a side-agnosting principled take and critique of a certain style of Propaganda common in the Western Mainstream Media (especially American).
See? Exactly what I was talking about; when faced with an accusation against them that they can't deny, Westerners reflexively jump to "But everyone does it!"
My point is about you, not "everybody".
You're the one making claims about entire groups of people, which means you think "they're all the same", which makes you a Racist just as much as the people who say Chinese are this, Arabs are that or Black are thus.
I happen to agree with your points and happen to think most Western societies are bullshit and controlled by manipulators and hypocrites, but, damn, you had to go full on racist and claim it was an inherent issue of everybody born in the West.
Then you doubled down on Racism 101 by claiming that my point on YOUR behaviour was me doing some kind of race defense and attacking "everybody" - exactly how racists react to personal criticism if they think it comes from somebody of a different ethnicity (they Project their own drives and motivations onto the argument of the other person so in their Racist mind the point made by the other person must be some kind of Race-defense reaction because that's exactly what they themselves would do).
You have outted yourself as a racist, not just a mild one but a full-blown one, with the same kind of mindset and drive for making those arguments as the racists in the West have for theirs.
It's a shame because you had a good point even if driven to make it by racial prejudice.
Bahahah. Fucking hell. Genocide supporting Westerners are a parody of themselves. Anyway, not reading the rest of your absurd screed.
Your race-generalizing just confirms my point that you're nothing more than Racist and the fact you deployed it against me shows you're also intellectually challenged in addition to being a Racist since I was actually agreeing with most of your points.
Only a total idiot, extreme Racist or both would not just persist but actually double-down twice on the Racism when face with somebody agreeing with them in overall and only disagreeing with the racist generalization part.
Lol, you're adorable.
My response: https://youtu.be/0TsNb1Rgr_w
Yeah you're going to need really stellar sources to back up a claim that is this far from the common position which is that he needs to keep the war going to avoid sentencing in the charges he was found guilty of just before the war started.