Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(05-21-2021, 11:12 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: Asking people to not bring anti-Semitism up would seem to obscure facts, not bring more to light. Discussions aren't some zero sum game and the conversation doesn't have to be about either one thing or the other. Larger contexts can include both perspectives. For instance, you are able to post what you have, and I can add to conversation some evidence of how Israel is treated unfairly by some world organizations (which then creates more negative popular sentiment in a sort of feedback loop). And this is important contextually because world sentiment abroad actually still does get driven in part by real old fashion anti-Semitism to this day and you can see this in certain international organizations.

Example 1: The UN Human Rights Council spends more time looking at Israel than any other country. Say what you will about Israel, hopefully we can agree they are not the worst human rights offenders in the world and are nowhere close to North Korea, Eritrea, Sri Lanka, the Central African Republic, Iraq, and Nigeria (Boko Haram). These latter entities are only just now starting to get attention from the UNHRC, but still Israel gets way more time and denounciation:

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/UNHRC_Country_Specific_v1.pdf

"Thirty-one of the 802 [country-specific reports submitted to the Human Rights Council] between 2006 and 2015 concerned Israel/Palestine, by far the most for any one country."

https://time.com/3060203/united-nations-human-rights-council-israel/

"Since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC has released a total of 103 resolutions. Astonishingly, 56 have focused on criticizing Israel."

Example 2: UNESCO claiming the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount are not Jewish (I realize the sources aren't unbiased but the facts are verifiable):

https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/UNESCO-No-connection-between-Temple-Mount-and-Judaism-470050


https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/11/01/unesco-decision-jerusalem-temple-mount-distorts-history/5Mn4mz83yuGKwB44hwtXWO/story.html

"The United Nations’ animus toward Israel took a truly deplorable turn last week with the passage of a resolution implicitly denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to the holiest site in Judaism."

"That site is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, so named for the two Jewish temples that stood on the site for almost nine centuries — the first built by King Solomon nearly 3,000 years ago, the second destroyed by the Roman legions under Titus in 70 A.D. One needn’t be a Bible scholar or a historian to know that the cultural, religious, and emotional bonds that link the Jews to Jerusalem are unparalleled. For millennia, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been central to Jewish self-awareness — and thus to Christianity as well, since the Temple figures prominently in the Gospels’ account of the life of Jesus."

"Alas, that didn’t stop the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO — the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — from adopting an Orwellian resolution on the status of conservation in Jerusalem that pointedly ignored Judaism’s connection to the Temple Mount. By a 10-2 vote, with eight abstentions, the committee approved a document that not only accuses Israel of endangering the revered compound, but also refers to the site throughout solely by its Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif. This was no innocent oversight. An earlier draft of the resolution had even more aggressively airbrushed the Jewish ties from Jerusalem’s Old City. For example, it had identified the Western Wall by its Islamic name, while placing the far more familiar Jewish title in quotation marks."

How about China?   China is easily a far greater abuser of human rights, I suppose certain people only care about Muslims when it's the Jews "oppressing" them.

(05-21-2021, 11:50 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: A LOT of videos floating around today that are from Pro-Palestine protests in NYC yesterday.  

I have to be honest, if they're trying to get people to be sympathetic to their cause or to raise awareness some of them doing an absolute terrible job of it.  They're doing more harm than good, and if I were an actual Palestinian, living in Palestine then I'd be incensed that these people are representing me.

I thought about posting some of them here but I figured that wouldn't be totally fair or relevant to the thread.  I don't know who makes up all these groups and of course there's obvious examples of assholes across the debate.  But some of these vids are pretty shocking.

Examples of what I've seen:  Going up to diners who sitting outside eating, and spitting on them.  10 on 1 beatings.  Chasing people down with cars.  Hitting people with flags.  Pulling people out of the cars.  and on, and on, and on....

I'm sure many will disagree but these are many of the same issues I had with the BLM movement.  Even if there's loads of people there with the best intentions, who aren't causing problems, people like this can really derail your entire message.  It's no wonder some Americans become unsympathetic when they're met with these acts.  I think these organizations or the people who are apart of them really need to call this shit out and put a stop to it.  They're only hurting the cause.

I'm sure Dill will defend it because of "power imbalance".  You have to understand, they don't have power so throwing temper tantrums and beating up random people is the only way they can express their dismay.

[BoomerFan]

(05-21-2021, 11:20 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: So here is my question, though. How much of it is anti-Semitism (which I hate using this term for all this because the Palestinians are also Semites) versus how much of it is the UN focusing hard on Israel because Israel is a creation of the international community/UN? I could argue that one reason the UN would take so much interest in what happens there is because that body holds a lot of responsibility for what happens in that territory.

Interesting. I actually hadn't thought of that as a reason. That could explain some of the additional focus I suppose. Has this ever been stated explicitly in UN statements or prefacing reports which contain these criticisms?

And you're right about the term anti-Semitism. Palestinians are absolutely Semites, but even if it is technically not accurate in common usage language the term generally is taken to mean the Jewish people. 

(05-21-2021, 02:27 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: How about China?   China is easily a far greater abuser of human rights, I suppose certain people only care about Muslims when it's the Jews "oppressing" them.

Oh yeah, from what little I know about it China's human rights record has been bad to Muslims and other peoples. I mean, literal re-education camps? WTF China.

[Belsnickel]

(05-22-2021, 07:49 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: Interesting. I actually hadn't thought of that as a reason. That could explain some of the additional focus I suppose. Has this ever been stated explicitly in UN statements or prefacing reports which contain these criticisms?

Not that I know of, but I don't look a ton at foreign policy stuff like that since it's not my wheel house. It's just one of those things that makes sense to me. Israel was a product of the UN, really its first major act. What happens in Israel reflects on the UN in a major way. Here is this grand idea put into action and if it fails to live up to the ideals, well, that's a black eye for the UN.

[Dill]

(05-21-2021, 11:50 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: A LOT of videos floating around today that are from Pro-Palestine protests in NYC yesterday.  

I have to be honest, if they're trying to get people to be sympathetic to their cause or to raise awareness some of them doing an absolute terrible job of it.  They're doing more harm than good, and if I were an actual Palestinian, living in Palestine then I'd be incensed that these people are representing me.

I thought about posting some of them here but I figured that wouldn't be totally fair or relevant to the thread.  I don't know who makes up all these groups and of course there's obvious examples of assholes across the debate.  But some of these vids are pretty shocking.

Examples of what I've seen:  Going up to diners who sitting outside eating, and spitting on them.  10 on 1 beatings.  Chasing people down with cars.  Hitting people with flags.  Pulling people out of the cars.  and on, and on, and on....

I'm sure many will disagree but these are many of the same issues I had with the BLM movement.  Even if there's loads of people there with the best intentions, who aren't causing problems, people like this can really derail your entire message.  It's no wonder some Americans become unsympathetic when they're met with these acts.  I think these organizations or the people who are apart of them really need to call this shit out and put a stop to it.  They're only hurting the cause.

With you for most of this, Wes. I just want to qualify the bolded a bit. 

Most Americans have been indifferent or hostile to Palestinians since the founding of Israel. That only changed a bit in the late 1980s with the first Intifada, as nightly news and CNN broadcast images of the IDF brutally suppressing children. Since then, the cultural/media front has been very important to Israel. Bush '41 refused Israel a loan to help repatriate Russian Jews after the fall of the USSR, unless they moved on issue of Palestinian self- determination. Keeping the US media and Congress on Israel's side is a major foreign policy goal. Has been since the '67 war,

The bad behavior you refer to only amplifies that already existing hostility. On Fox News, those videos have become the face of the Palestinian movement, with dots to BLM, Critical Race Theory, and "cultural Marxism" properly connected for Fox viewers who don't have much time for independent research.
Left ignores wave of anti-Semitic hate crimes
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ingraham-violence-against-jewish-americans-erupts-across-the-country

The group most likely to be turned off by the behavior in the videos are young voters just coming to these issues for the first time, who don't remember the Intifadas or previous Gaza wars.  I very much hope the police find and arrest the perps, so we find out who they really are.

[Dill]

(05-21-2021, 11:12 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: Asking people to not bring anti-Semitism up would seem to obscure facts, not bring more to light. Discussions aren't some zero sum game and the conversation doesn't have to be about either one thing or the other. Larger contexts can include both perspectives. For instance, you are able to post what you have, and I can add to conversation some evidence of how Israel is treated unfairly by some world organizations (which then creates more negative popular sentiment in a sort of feedback loop). And this is important contextually because world sentiment abroad actually still does get driven in part by real old fashion anti-Semitism to this day and you can see this in certain international organizations.

Sorry I am late getting back to this. I was offline for 3 days.

The "ask" here is that when people bring up the historical record and international law in defense of Palestinian Human Rights, they are not immediately tagged as "anti-Semitic" in order to deflect discussion. One is not anti-Semitic for defending an oppressed groups human rights. Sometimes on international discussion lists, trolls strive to obfuscate discussion by personally attacking the motives of people participating. Criticizing Israel for war crimes and human rights violations is not the same hating Jews, many of whom very much disagree with its treatment of Palestinians.

So what I was criticizing in my reference to anti-Semitism was a tactic, not a "perspective" or "the other side," but ideologically motivated attempts to obfuscate and otherwise hinder informative discussion/analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (China whataboutism functions in much the same way as reflexive charges of anti-Semitism.) 

Of course you can "add to the conversation" with evidence of international criticism of Israel. No one is (or at least I am not) trying to limit evidence put forth, in good faith, to add another voice or perspective to the discussion.  You can very well be right that real, old-fashioned anti-Semitism motivates some criticism of Israel--just not ipso facto .

Thus I'm happy to see your contribution here, which seeks to rest your argument on quality evidence. I am working on a more detailed response to it right now.

[Dill]

(05-21-2021, 11:12 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: ...I can add to conversation some evidence of how Israel is treated unfairly by some world organizations (which then creates more negative popular sentiment in a sort of feedback loop). And this is important contextually because world sentiment abroad actually still does get driven in part by real old fashion anti-Semitism to this day and you can see this in certain international organizations.
Example 1: The UN Human Rights Council spends more time looking at Israel than any other country. Say what you will about Israel, hopefully we can agree they are not the worst human rights offenders in the world and are nowhere close to North Korea, Eritrea, Sri Lanka, the Central African Republic, Iraq, and Nigeria (Boko Haram). These latter entities are only just now starting to get attention from the UNHRC, but still Israel gets way more time and denounciation:
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/UNHRC_Country_Specific_v1.pdf
"Thirty-one of the 802 [country-specific reports submitted to the Human Rights Council] between 2006 and 2015 concerned Israel/Palestine, by far the most for any one country."
https://time.com/3060203/united-nations-human-rights-council-israel/
"Since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC has released a total of 103 resolutions. Astonishingly, 56 have focused on criticizing Israel."

Ok, here I am going to treat example 1. 

To start, Let me make sure I understand your point, Boom. There are international organizations which treat Israel unfairly, one of which is the UN, specifically its Human Rights Council.  This unfairness manifests itself 1) the selection of Israel for censure over other supposedly more egregious and frequent violators, and 2) in the greater volume (number) of censorious resolutions. This bias in selection and volume, you maintain, establishes "real, old fashioned antisemitism."   

1. I'm going to argue this example falls rather short of establishing anti-Semitism, but that means first off granting some problems with the UN itself. The UN Commission on Human Rights, in operation from '46 to '06, often included countries regularly flagged by international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as having the worst human rights records in the world: Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Myanmar, and Sudan among them. This consequence of this has been such countries reach a tacit understanding not to criticize each other--especially those formerly under European colonization. So muck up the selection process when it targets them, but not Israel, a colonizer. Since 2006, when the UN Human Rights Council replaced the UNCHR, the record is better, and EVERY country gets a mandatory HR review very 4 1/2 years now. 

Also Russia and China are among the 5 permanent members of the Security Council. Very difficult to condemn one of the 5, especially the U.S. China was condemned in one resolution that I know of.* I cannot think of any since '71, but UNHRC members have "called out" China for its treatment of Uighurs. 

2. Another issue here, Israel is almost a "normal" western-style democracy with regard to its own citizens,** with among the most admirable social services in the world. That separates it from Nigeria or SA or Myanmar or North Korea. It's scholarship and journalism and government transparency are such that I rely heavily on them when criticizing Israeli policy. In that sense, their values reflect my own and those of most Americans more than any other state in the Middle East. There'd be few or no current condemnations of Israel's handing of human rights, were it not also occupying other people's land, people who are not its citizens (in contrast to China's Uighurs), people whom it does not intend to incorporate into its body politic, and whom it will not allow to have their own sovereign state, intending to keep them indefinitely under military rule subject to summary arrest and collective punishment for resisting that occupation/military control. Transparency ends at the occupied territories, where the brutality of that control is difficult for Westerners to imagine when imposed by people who seem so much like us. Nevertheless, the violations of Human Rights are in fact real, ongoing, not made up, and high in "volume." 

3. Bels' insight into Israel's unique history with the UN bears some working out here. Its admission to the UN was conditioned upon it's signing the May (1949) memorandum  agreeing to UN Res. 194, that Palestinian refugees of Al Nakba be allowed a right of return or at least receive compensation for property and homes seized by force during the ethnic cleansing of '48. So of course Israel signed. But once admitted to the UN, it was as a sovereign state with control over its own policies and didn't have to keep that agreement. That has been a pattern.

In effect, and in contrast to, say, North Korea, Israel has been signatory to numerous treaties, agreements, resolutions, accords and conventions (not least the Geneva Conventions) which it has violated.*** In contrast to, say, Nigeria, the many resolutions condemning Israel flowed from expansionist conflict --'48, '56, '67, '73, '82, 88-89, 2000, 2008, 2014--which put the region at risk to larger war and (during the cold war) super power confrontation.  This, more than anything I think, explains the  "volume" and visibility of condemnations Israel has received and their prominence on the UN agenda. Burkina Faso's human rights violations just don't harm so many people, and implicate so many countries with so many Global consequences as Israel's. 

So it's not that the UNHRC is like a county traffic authority constantly ticketing Israelis for going 40 in a 35 mph zone (DWI) while winking at Saudis and North Koreans who run red lights. Israeli traffic violations cause accidents and consequent jams at major intersections and accesses and draw greater county attention/resources. The Chinese are drag racing and jacking cars, sure, but only on their own block. There are certainly countries which "hate" Israel and will hurt their interests in the UN if they can, but I have trouble casting this as "traditional anti-Semitism," given the "hate" only came into existence after war and various other humiliations, which would arouse "hate" in Americans, Jews, anyone.

*But that was during the Korean War, before it was a UN member. The People's Republic was only admitted to the UN in '71. That means it was not until then a signatory to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
**The exception, of course, are its Arab citizens.
***Americans as a group still don't quite grasp the policy of provoke and retaliate which Israel has practiced since '49, as a largely pro-Israel press frames retaliation as "self defense" against Arab "aggression." 

[Dill]

(05-21-2021, 11:12 AM)BoomerFan Wrote: Example 2: UNESCO claiming the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount are not Jewish (I realize the sources aren't unbiased but the facts are verifiable):
https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/UNESCO-No-connection-between-Temple-Mount-and-Judaism-470050
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/11/01/unesco-decision-jerusalem-temple-mount-distorts-history/5Mn4mz83yuGKwB44hwtXWO/story.html
"The United Nations’ animus toward Israel took a truly deplorable turn last week with the passage of a resolution implicitly denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to the holiest site in Judaism."
"That site is Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, so named for the two Jewish temples that stood on the site for almost nine centuries — the first built by King Solomon nearly 3,000 years ago, the second destroyed by the Roman legions under Titus in 70 A.D. One needn’t be a Bible scholar or a historian to know that the cultural, religious, and emotional bonds that link the Jews to Jerusalem are unparalleled. For millennia, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been central to Jewish self-awareness — and thus to Christianity as well, since the Temple figures prominently in the Gospels’ account of the life of Jesus."

"Alas, that didn’t stop the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO — the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — from adopting an Orwellian resolution on the status of conservation in Jerusalem that pointedly ignored Judaism’s connection to the Temple Mount. By a 10-2 vote, with eight abstentions, the committee approved a document that not only accuses Israel of endangering the revered compound, but also refers to the site throughout solely by its Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif. This was no innocent oversight. An earlier draft of the resolution had even more aggressively airbrushed the Jewish ties from Jerusalem’s Old City. For example, it had identified the Western Wall by its Islamic name, while placing the far more familiar Jewish title in quotation marks."

Now for Example 2: especially the bolded, which I assume is your wording--"UNESCO claiming the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount are not Jewish . . . the facts are verifiable." 

Here I'll be disputing that UNESCO claimed the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount are not Jewish," and situating the battle over names in the larger context of the site's recent political history. (Remember, the military action which became this thread topic was initiated when Israeli troops fired tear gas and flash bangs into Muslim worshippers at Al Aqsa.) 

And I'll be referring directly to the document in question to guide discussion, not "reporting" about it. 
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000246215

Starting with  1.A.4. [The Executive Board] Deeply regrets the Israeli refusal to implement UNESCO previous decisions concerning Jerusalem, particularly 185 EX/Decision 14, notes that its request to the Director-General to appoint, as soon as possible, a permanent representative to be stationed in East Jerusalem to report on a regular basis about all the aspects covering the fields of competence of UNESCO in East Jerusalem, has not been fulfilled, and reiterates its request to the Director-General to appoint the above-mentioned representative;

5. Deeply deplores the failure of Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City, and reiterates its request to Israel, the occupying Power, to prohibit all such works in conformity with its obligations under the provisions of the relevant UNESCO conventions, resolutions and decisions;

The "excavations" referenced in 5 refer to archeological projects seeking to uncover ancient Jewish structures by digging through the Muslim sites above them. The relevant "conventions, resolutions and decisions" referenced here were intended to align with the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), the "contention for the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972)--not to mention the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. (E.g., See this 2010 document, point 14.2 Jerusalem and the implementation of 35 C/Resolution 49 and 184 EX/Decision 12 (185 EX/14; 185 EX/52 Rev.) https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000189993.nameddest=14.) 

Remember that Israel took Jerusalem in the '48 war and East Jerusalem in '67. As an occupying power, it has absolute control over the Temple Mount/Al Haram Al Sharif (up till 2000, it allowed a Muslim Foundation, Al Waqf, to act as custodian of the site). That means Israel decides who gets to worship where and when, allowing Israelis and Jews free access to Jewish holy sites, while frequently limiting Muslims and interfering with their worship (flashbangs!?!). The Second Intifada was sparked when Arial Sharon visited the Temple Mount/Al Haram in 2000 with a train of security personal to affirm it would remain under Israeli control, regardless of any Olso Accords.

So in my view, the UNESCO decision to reference the Temple Mount by its Muslim name in that 2016 document was possible "pushback" for Israel constantly thumbing its nose at UNESCO, refusing any oversight (despite being a signatory to the conventions mentioned above), failing to protect Muslim worshippers and holy sites from Right Wing Israel extremist attacks, and the blocking of routine care of their sites.  (Read the incredible list of violations in 1.B.1, 1.B.2, and 1.C.)*  Recalling Israel to the responsibilities which devolve upon occupiers in control of World Heritage Sites hardly "airbrushes" Israel completely out of the picture. Further, 1.A.3 refers to Al Haram al Sharif's importance for the "three monotheistic religions" which worship there, so it's hardly a "verifiable fact" that the document claims that the Temple Mount is "not Jewish."  Notice that your Jerusalem Post and BG source do not mention the goal of the document, which is to create greater access for all three, as existed before 2000, when the Muslim Waqf was granted authority over the site. 

Absent any knowledge of this history, of course--which might include the "anti-Semitic" UNESCO'S work on preserving memory of the Holocaust and guidelines for teaching it**--it again sounds like Israelis are just being picked on, bullied for being Jewish--attacked even--by those nefarious 3rd world countries. So Haters gonna hate--and presto: we are discussing "anti-Semitism" not occupation and human rights violations. Your BG editors don't get to invoke Orwell here.

*This is an old problem. Check out this UN doc from 1985, with a similar laundry list of violations/provocations. 
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000065318?posInSet=22&queryId=8d442b38-e49e-4a8e-a0c4-3428742dd1d9. Can you find any Boston Globe editorials on those violations/provocations?
**https://en.unesco.org/themes/holocaust-genocide-education

[CarolinaBengalFanGuy]

Dill you need to put your shit in to bite sized chunks if you want anyone to read it. **** I didn’t come here to read a book.

[*jason*]

(05-25-2021, 01:39 PM)CarolinaBengalFanGuy Wrote: Dill you need to put your shit in to bite sized chunks if you want anyone to read it. **** I didn’t come here to read a book.

Gimme a quickie.

- Donald J Trump

[Mickeypoo]

(05-25-2021, 01:43 PM)jason Wrote: Gimme a quickie.

- Donald J Trump

Quickies are great!

- Everyone