Judith Butler describes the October 7 attacks by Hamas as "armed resistance"

At least 15,000 of that reported number have been Hamas 'operatives'. The military aim was not to wilfullly kill civilians, it was to destroy Hamas. Hamas uses its own people as foils and shields - they say so themselves - and builds terror tunnels under hospitals and schools. I'm imagining the number of Gazans killed by misfiring rockets and other Hamas acts is not insubstantial, either.

That's not to say that the deaths of civilians is nice, or good, or even acceptable and the issue of how successful the miltary campaign has been in achieving its goals is another matter.

Israel is not "ever expanding". Israel withdrew 10,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005; the recent West Bank Settlements are an issue, but they have not happened in vacuum; they have happened in the absence of a two state solution. Israel has shown it can withdraw settlers before, and I'm sure it could do so again - if it meant a longer term and workable solution .

A comparison is based on nothing if you arbitrarily exclude everything on one side. You have decided to take into account the things that have happened in the Middle East in the last year while excluding the things that have happened in Europe in previous decades, which while longer ago have been even more appalling in their scale (millions rather than thousands).
If you were considering where you personally felt safer and decided that you were only going to take recent events into account, that would be your prerogative. But other people are going to take a longer historical perspective and give some weight to earlier events.
Implying as you have done that Jewish people can’t possibly reckon that on balance they feel safer in Israel and must therefore have some other dark motive for wanting their own state shows a surprising lack of empathy.

Well, precisely.

I used to work for a woman, not much older than I was, whose father was a Holocaust survivor. His first wife and their children all perished.

'always incomparably safer in the US or Europe'?

Um....

Jewish people will feel safer where they have an army that will reliably be on their side.

As if said, @puffyisgood maybe your historical perspective needs some work. There is plenty of reading matter out there on the history of the Jews.

With respect I think "absolutely nothing" is a stretch on your part, It's been a good while since over a thousand people were killed on UK soil in a single day's attack with, in response, over 30,000 immediate neighbours/quasi subjects killed in retaliatory response.

Anyway, I should have signed out of this thread quite some time ago, adiós.

How can you possibly make claims about what is going to happen in the future whilst paying no attention at all to the past? You are making claims about the safety of Europe in the future, based on absolutely nothing!

I'm primarily comparing the UK in 2024 onwards with the middle east, specifically an ever-expanding Israel, in 2024 onwards. If you wish to argue that the latter is on balance likelier to be safer that is of course your perogative. A thread that wasn't about a very recent multi-thousand person slaughter in the latter might be a more convincing place to do it, though.

In around 2000 I was living in a mainly Muslim inner city area which had a synagogue right in the middle of it- people always assumed it was a mosque as it had a dome but it had been built by former waves of immigrants, about 100 years (I think) earlier who had since moved on.
That had a police presence outside it on Jewish holidays and I remember seeing the police checking for explosives under cars parked nearby. It wasn’t the norm then.

Recently I went to a bat mitzvah at a synagogue in a normal suburban area with a high Jewish population. It wasn’t just the security that struck me (gates, fences, security men) it was the fact that it was trying to be discreet- no big sign boards or banners the way there were outside churches and mosques.
The idea that in modern Britain people do not feel safe practicing their religion openly is shocking and I see why people would feel frightened.

‘regardless of your creed you'll always be incomparably safer in the US or Europe than the middle east.’
— well, that’s patently not true, is it? The Holocaust happened within my parents’ lifetimes and after Jewish people felt they had been safe in Germany for decades.
It’s entirely a matter of how long your historical perspective is.
And also how broad geographically - in 2005 a group of 15 members of the Russian Duma called from Jews to be banned from Russia.
Europe, including the UK, has a history of fluctuating between tolerance and antisemitism. If you live in York the second biggest landmark, Clifford’s Tower, is the site of an atrocity in which 150 Jews were massacred or died by suicide to prevent themselves falling into the hands of the mob. History has repeatedly shown that things can change very fast.

I've been upset and deeply unsettled by seeing that local synagogues, where I live, now have a police presence outside of them; and yes, what is going on at university campuses around the country is appalling. It seems the student body has turned its sights from picketing women speaking about the conflict between gender ideology and women's rights towards screaming anti semitic slogans and intimidating jewish students who dare to stand up and be counted.

It seems free speech and the right of protest is only applicable to them - but beware anyone who has an Israeli flag, wears a Star of David, or who dares speak up for Israel.

The motives are to do with wanting to be with other people who understand and share your culture, and in a state which is supportive of that, rather than feeling a perpetual outsider who always has to justify it. The natural human desire for a sense of home.

In their minds, a Jewish state is the most secure place for them.

but, I mean, that's objectively wrong, isn't it? this thread is about the aftermath of a single attack that caused a thousand deaths, many hostages, the works, and tens of thousands of deaths in reprisal attacks. those are middle east style numbers. regardless of your creed you'll always be incomparably safer in the US or Europe than the middle east.

Bloody right you should apologise, and thank you for doing so.

Israel is the only majority Jewish country in the world. The only one. Arab countries have a long history of Jew-hate, as do European ones.

Think for a moment of the Jewish friends I mentioned. The husband is Mizrachi, his parents were forced out of a Middle Eastern country with a couple of suitcases, leaving behind most of what they owned. A large part of the wife's family perished in the Holocaust. In their minds, a Jewish state is the most secure place for them.

And now they have DC at university, and we know what university campuses are like for Jews at the moment.

I'm utter appalled at what is going on. There is no excuse for it.

I accept that my talk of marches was somewhere in the flippant/crass range and apologise, but I also hope you understand my instinct that the idea of moving to the Middle East in search of safety and tolerance sounds counter -intuitive at best. It seems like there must be other motives at work.

Yes, there were lots of competing interests in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and not just inter-tribal arab conflict but also Russian, Western, Iranian.

You mean Muslim 'ethno states' in which minority groups are relentlessly persecuted, and in which Jewish peoples had been persecuted for centuries before being expelled?

Many Jewish people have recently started to feel the stirrings of Zionism due to what is happening on the streets of Britain, the US and other Western countries. It had always been there as a reassuring even if quiet voice, but now it is calling.

Have you ever asked why it is that surrounding Arab countries have not been more supportive of the Palestinians, after all the West Bank was Jordanian territory until 1967 and Gaza was Egyptian?

I thought you were posting in good faith but seeing how you are ignoring actual security threats to European Jews (leading to synagogues requiring security) and misrepresenting this threat as people being worried about ‘some pro Palestine marches’ it is clear where you are coming from.

Much of the land in the early days was purchased from Ottoman landlords.

Who were of the Islamic faith and when there was tension between Turkish Muslims and Arabic ones and tension also between different Arabic kingdoms all of whom were desiring to fill the void once the Ottomans pissed off.

Don't those facts make you wonder just how under threat many Jews feel? Not even for a second?

Israel now exists as a functioning and productive nation

I think this is a problem for a a certain type of person @RebelliousCow While 'the Jews' were plucky underdogs they had a degree of support. There was certainly some among Western 'progressives' when they were seen as 'fighting the British'. Now not so much. I think they prefer their minorities to be victims in need of white saviours.

Israel, slap in the middle of any number of Muslim majority states, the site of a in incredibly recent, war crimes-laden massacre, entirely consistent with its location in the perpetually wartorn middle east, as a "necessary refuge" from some pro-Palestine marches in Western Europe? Seems legit.

@mirax
If I were a jew, I wouldn't be terribly confident of living in the west and Israel is a necessary refuge, the only one in the world.
Jewish friends of mine have recently said to me that they thought the west had largely got past antisemitism but look at what is happening now....

Britain looks less safe for Jews now than it has ever done in my lifetime. It's appalling that synagogues require security guards. They didn't in the 80s, but they have done for the last 15-ish years.

Much of the land in the early days was purchased from Ottoman landlords.

Israel now exists as a functioning and productive nation, just like any number of other relatively recently formed nation states ( some of which are much more recent). People need to accept this and move forward, instead of nurturing false hopes of 'return' and further perpetuating the radicalised and hateful refugee identity.

Settlers have moved onto the West Bank due to the continued absence of a Palestinian state ( which has been rejected on numerous occasions). There were no settlers on the West Bank prior to 1967 - and yet in all that time no agreement was found to create a Palestinian state.

The creation of a Palestinian identity has been a political project - nurtured as much by left wing activists in Europe and the west,as by baathist Arabs who worked in conjunction with them. This region has always been at the centre of competing powers and empires - and it remains so.

Don't over-look the malign influence of Russia in the region, and of Iran - it is not just 'the West' ( Ie America). Stalinists began to nurture antipathy to Israel because it had the audacity to form relationships with american Jewry. And people like Jeremy Corbyn and all of the other Left wing radicals come from that tradition. Stalinist flags are often a feature of Left wing rallies.

Not quite! I was surrounded by Left wing activists in the 1980's ( I lived on peace camps, in squats, did all of the marches and protests...) and being anti Israel was a rite of passage; an article of faith. You were suposed to wear a shemag and boycott Israeli produce, and be a 'Friend of Palestine'. No further questions asked. No research. Just absorbing mantras and ideological positions about 'capitalism' and 'imperialism' and the 'Rothschilds'.

Nobody could be a 'Friend of Israel' - in fact the 'Friends of Israel' was formed in response to the continual anti zionist rhetoric and sentiment. Personally, I was always a bit bemused by this necessary antipathy in left wing circles. I didn't buy it then and I am not buying it now. What I, for one, have attempted to do is to provide some kind of redress to thhis relentless negativity and hatred - complete with falsehoods, misinformation, and ignorance.

Everything is easy in hindsight. You seem to be advocating for the annihilation of Israel?

The Holocaust put paid to the idea that anti semitism and jew hatred was a thing of the past - and we still see it continually bubbling both above and under the surface in mosques and in Left wing rhetoric today.

The land did not belong to the tribes that lived there pre 1948; It was part of the Ottoman Empire. The semi nomadic peasants who eked out a living had to pay land taxes to the Ottomans. The wealthier arabs lived in the cities of Beirut, Damascus and Aleppo - the region was seen as a backwater - with a large area of infertile land ( the Negev desert).

There are not 100% conscription rates. But even if there was, so what - lots of countries implement national conscription (or service) including Switzerland, Denamrk, Turkey to name a few; and in fact the EU has recently floated the idea of bringing back conscrption to everywhere in Europe in the face of a growing likelihood of war with Russia.

The plan was always a two state solution - but that was rejected on numerous occasions, and until the leaders of 'the Palestinians' accept the existence of Israel and stop with the fantastical idea of " from the River to the Sea" there can be no peace. It would not involve displacing anyone other than the current Israeli settlers on the West Bank.

I am removing the post as it was meant for another thread.