To think being anti Israel isn't the same as being anti semetic

[JazzAnnNonMouse]

Just like being anti extremist terrorist isn't the same as being anti Muslims.

FairPhyllis, thanks for responding without patronising.

Not sure what planet I have been on to not realise that Israel as a state was still disputed.

To be honest I am not entirely sure I do believe Israel has a right to exist as a country where is it now
Why were the Jewish people given a home nation right in the middle of their traditional enemies? Is there a genuine historical reason why Israel is where it is? I did do this at school many years ago but I can't remember, all it can remember is being taught that Isreal was created partly out of guilt at the rest of Europe either standing by or trying to destroy them as a race and partly because of the backing of wealthy American Jews .
If there are other reasons please can someone tell me as I honestly don't know.

I accept your apology quint ;)

There is a lot of history here but basically the UK, when they ruled the area, promised the land to a number of peoples. It was granted after WWII to solve the crisis of where Europe's displaced Jewish population would go.
Many of the younger Jews and survivors disliked the pre-WWII Jewish attitude of appeasment and decided they would defend themselves going forward.
Israel would bomb less schools and hospitals if Hamas did not base their rocket silos in them. Also note that not one report I have read says the number of Hamas dead - oddly they become innocent civilians as soon as they die.

I also don't know hopping, I also don't know why it is seen as anti Semitic (sorry I've spelt it wrong up till now - Ty poster up thread!) if people are disputing the right of Israel as a state?
Is there a big reason that Palestinians and Israelis can't co exist? Many countries are multicultural now? I'm uneducated about it all but would like to learn more!

Hopping, to simplify it a lot, there was already a growing Zionist movement and migration of Jews to that part of the world in the late 19th century thanks to the fact that they were already facing persecution in Europe back then (nothing on the scale of the Holocaust of course, but that didn't happen in a vacuum). After WWII there was a huge amount of immigration, largely illegal, to the region, which was at that point under British mandate, with many Jews calling for an idependent state. There was violence between the Jews and the British, who were coming down hard on the immigration, and between the Jews and the Arabs, who weren't particularly happy about the immigration either, and in the end the UN decided that the best way to sort it would be to partition the land into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.

A lot of people tend to think of the creation of Israel as something that was just decided on after the Second World War, with the existing Arab population being forcibly moved out and Jews being shipped in to replace them, but in reality it was more like the conclusion to a process that had been going on for decades already (I don't know if conclusion is the right word as obviously a lot of things happened after that, but that's probably how it was thought of at the time).

Its not about right to exist, its about NOT VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW. Nobody said "Lets dismantle Israel, Jews are free to leave"

I do think some use it as an excuse for anti semitism. I've definitely heard anti Semitic remarks in regards to this issue,but I don't think the majority are. The increase in anti semitism in Europe is extremely worrying though.

A friend,Jewish, lost a very close friend to a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv some years ago,which devastated her,but she still doesn't agree with what Israel are doing,while detesting Hamas. She's far from being the only Jewish person who feels this way.

It's complicated,but personally I don't think either Hamas or the Israeli officials really care about their people,but instead their agenda/politics.

Actually it goes back a couple of millennia -- Jerusalem and the holy land are the ancestral home of the Jewish people, going back thousands of years. Many of them were killed or expelled by Roman times but there has always been a Jewish community in Palestine. It became a predominantly Arab/Muslim territory after the 7th century, when the Arabs expanded across the region from the Arabian peninsula. Decolonisation and Western guilt in the 1940s created the mess we have today.

This is why the conflict is fundamentally unresolvable -- both sides can claim ancient and vital links to the same territory. It can't be split in a way people will like, and decades of conflict means there's no trust for living together in peace.

As for the right of Israel to exist where it does... in hindsight (always a wonderful thing of course), maybe we can look back on it and say the creation of a Jewish state was always going to lead to trouble in the region and it should have been handled differently. But we're stuck with it now, so we can only decide what to do with what we've got. Kicking all the Jews out of Israel obviously isn't an option, so you're left with the idea of a 'one-state solution', as Jazz is suggesting, where Israelis and Arabs coexist under a single government (as opposed to a 'two-state solution', which is the idea of keeping Israel its own state and having Palestine be an independent state as well, which seems to be what we're very slowly heading towards).

The main problem with that is the fact that it won't get rid of the existing tensions between Jews and Muslims - arguably it will lead to better conditions for the Palestinians, although tbh I don't know much about what they're like now, but there are still a whole lot of historical issues to be resolved. One is the fact that a lot of Muslims in the region don't think the Jews should be there at all, but there'll probably also be demands for the Palestinians to be allowed to return to properties that they were forcibly removed from decades ago, for example. And as the Jews will essentially be an ethnic minority in their own country, the worry is that they'll again face persecution from a largely Muslim government, negating the whole point of Israel's creation, and there'll be a return to the violence and maybe civil war.

(Sorry, this is all a bit off-topic but hopefully someone will find it interesting!)

dreamingbohemian you're right of course, it does go back millennia, but a lot of people don't see that as a valid reason for Israel to be formed there now - many people have the idea that it was the Jewish homeland in ancient times, after which few or no Jews lived there for thousands of years, then suddenly at the end of WWII it was decided arbitrarily that the Jews should have a state there based on spurious historical reasons. I was just trying to correct the perception that the modern history of Jews in Israel only began when the state was created

Is there a genuine historical reason why Israel is where it is

I will assume this is a serious question and not a wind up.

Because historically that is where Israel was in ancient times. Whilst some dispute this it is generally accepted that Israel was established somewhere around 1400BC-1200BC and the area continued, albeit under Roman occupation from 63BC, until around 150AD. There continued to be a strong Jewish presence in the area. Indeed, the Jews helped the Arabs to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders in 1099AD.

I think it is on topic Aswad because it explains some of the pitfalls in talking about Israel.

It's easy enough to criticise the violence -- the hard part is, what should be done to resolve the conflict? The two state solution, many now say, is dead in the water. That leaves the one-state solution, which Israel will never go for because realistically it means the end of the Jewish state (if you abide by democracy and demography).

If you were to ask many people protesting against Israel what they think should happen, they would probably support many of the principles of the one state solution (end of settlements and occupation, return of refugees, equal rights, etc.) That sounds good in theory but it would pretty much spell the end of Israel, which is what Hamas and lots of anti-Semitic people want. So it's very tricky.

Prh47bridge
No, not a wind up at all.
I was asking about the historical background to why it was decided to create Israel where it is today.
I knew there had to be a good reason why it was situated somewhere that on first sight would look like a very bad idea!!
I could have just googled it but I thought people on here would know

x-post Aswad -- I think you explained it very well

Interestingly, the Jewish people fared much better under Muslim rule than they did when the Crusaders came to town. People tend to think Jews and Arabs have hated each other from the beginning but it's not the case. I think a one-state solution could have worked if that had been the plan from the beginning but naturally the colonial powers messed it up.

I do find it disconcerting that people are making such important judgments about Israel's right to exist and the overall conflict without even a basic knowledge of history though. It doesn't excuse what Israel is doing but it shows there is plenty of blame to go around. Note that countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are hardly rushing to protest the war against Hamas either.

To answer the original question - finally! - yes it is of course possible to be anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic. In fact I once had a (charming) acquaintance tell me my family deserved to be killed by suicide bombers because he mistakenly believed that they lived in Israel, but as it wasn't to do with them being Jewish I wouldn't even consider him to be anti-Semitic based on that comment just a cunt. Perhaps some people would, though?

Of course one can be anti Israeli policy and indeed anti Zionist and not anti Semitic.
I think that some people may be more restrained in their critisism of the Israeli government towards Palestinians and illegal land grabs because they are concerned about being accused of anti semitism.

I'm trying to learn more about this situation too - I don't know a lot - have looked around the internet but not sure what to trust as balanced instead of one-sided information. Where is a good place to start?

I've seen a lot of illustrations of land ownership in the region - all basically showing the same thing: an initial map of Palestine, shaded green, and then subsequent maps showing Israel's appearance, in white, with each map showing more white and less green until we get to today where it's mostly white with what would look like 'settlements' almost of green. Are these maps accurate?

Cheers dreaming I lived there very briefly some years ago so I got very interested in all the history of the region, but it's a bit rusty now as I haven't looked at it in a while!

Incidentally, one of the few things I learnt about the whole situation from being there myself was that it's very hard to make any kind of judgement about what's right and wrong there without actually experiencing it first-hand. I left the UK with a solidly pro-Palestinian view and came back having realised that the majority of Israelis are normal people who just want a life that doesn't involve constant war, or the fear of suicide bombings or nuclear annihilation within decades. The place I was working in was near the wall between Israel and Gaza, and most of the Israelis I met didn't like the fact that it was there and agreed that it was probably even worse for the Palestinians. But then they also told me about how they remembered the time before it was built, how they were afraid to even leave their houses because there were so many suicide bombings in the area, and asked what else should they have done, and I didn't know the answer. The same with Israeli soldiers - at home I had heard reports of them killing and mistreating Palestinians and thought they must be horrible people, but when I got there and remembered that my close friends who were the same age as me were going to be conscripted soon I realised that most of them were just normal young people who genuinely believed they were doing the only thing they could for their country.

It's very easy to sit in the peace and safety of the UK (or wherever) and say 'Israel is inhumane, they should do X' or 'the Palestinians are terrorists, they should do Y' when you've never had the experience of being constantly afraid for the safety of yourself and your loved ones, or feeling like your basic rights are being denied by another country's government. When people are in that situation they do what's best for them, and maybe to the rest of the world it looks terrible (complicated further by the fact that it's also a propaganda war, and nothing either side says can be trusted), but for them it's the only choice they can see.

MilkAndCereal, I completely agree with your last sentence.

I think the current Israeli policy of heavy missile fire is heavy-handed and frankly quite disgusting and indiscriminate. But I also wonder how many English people would be so restrained if quite suddenly hundreds of rockets started being fired across our border from, say, Wales. Would we want immediate negotiations? Would we quite rightly be livid and demand immediate military action?

It is such a complex and long-running dispute, with plenty of terrible acts on both sidessuicide bombings on buses by the Palestinians, land grabs by Jewish settlers in the West Bankthat it's hard to imagine a way forward.

One thing I wonder: can someone tell me how Arabs living within Israel feel? Marginalised and second-class? Fully-integrated? We've seen protests from Palestinians within the West Bank, but nothing (far as I know) from within Israel itself.

happytalk, Wikipedia is actually a surprisingly good source of fairly balanced information (from what I've seen, I haven't read all the related articles as there are loads!) You can also look at the talk pages to see which parts people are disputing in terms of neutrality. It's quite in depth though, so if you don't know anything about the conflict then you might find it easier to start with basic timelines for example and work from there.

Of course you are not being unreasonable.

I was however quite shocked earlier today when a long-term 'snetter described as "well balanced" a post which said

"they are a branch in a big tree of Jewish extremists who are responsible for the mass murder of torturing and killing innocent people who don't believe in their views in other countries"

and

"Israel would like to see every Muslim person on this world killed and after that they would probably like all the Christian people and people of other faiths killed."

Except that I have changed the word "Muslim" for "Jewish" and "Israel" for "Hamas"

There are certainly racists and bigots on Mumsnet.

stopgap it's a complex issue wrt the Israeli Arabs, not least because they aren't a homogeneous cultural group - they're largely Muslim, but there are also groups like Arab Christians, nomadic Bedouin Muslims and Druze, who for religious reasons have strong loyalty to the government of the country they are citizens of, even if it means going to war against other Druze. Some Arabs are fully integrated but many also live within their own communities in majority Arab towns.

Technically they have the same rights as Israeli Jews (apart from that they're not not conscripted), but there are still a lot of tensions between Israeli Arabs and Jews, partly just because they're an ethnic minority which tends to come with issues anyway, but also because they're generally worse off economically than the Jews and have less government money spent on them and so on. There's also a lot of outright racism from both sides, with the government making some stupid remarks that led to resentment among the Arab population and a large amount of Holocaust denial from Arab citizens.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of Arabs who feel that life is better for them in Israel than it would be in any of the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East (for example because it's the only real democracy in the region), and of course they are also put in danger by attacks from the Palestinians. The majority of Israeli Arabs also believe in the right of Israel to exist as an independent state. So as with most political issues it depends on who you ask!

I'm not any kind of authority on any of this by the way Just having a slow day, and it's a topic that interests me...