was beating old men up in the street.

street?

Check Galloway's response to Bibi's slaughter of the Palestinians. Then check the responses to his comments.

an excuse for those who get their jollies comparing Jews to the people who tried to exterminate them.

And I despise Israel's govt .

Ah yes. Much like the "lone crazy gunman" every time someone opens fire in a Church's Chicken or something. 100% totally unconnected to anything. We needn't examine the assailant's beliefs or opinions - he was "crazy," case closed, why are we still talking about this? Right? Just get it under that rug ASAP.

would come out looking a lot better than other sectarian denominations in Europe in terms of propensity towards religious violence.

This seems not terribly different from what Pam Geller says about Muslims.

You ARE aware that zionism does not equate jewish, right? Unless you want to tell me John Hagee is Jewish...?

is a serious problem within Europe?

How many acts of violence by Zionists vs Islamists?

You very well know the answer to that one.

There are many cogent critiques of Zionism. This episode is not one.

Most clearly demonstrated in the ongoing war against the Palestinian people and the unending, unthinking, howling, happy support for the killing and abuse and oppression of these people. Occasionally it manifests as we see here, or as we can see in attacks by the JDL (or any of their fascist allies, like the English Defense League).

When you have an entire philosophy predicated on the abuse and murder of those without the power to effectively resist, on the basis that they are "less" than you by virtue of birth, violence is going to be what happens.

Just ask Joan Rivers, if she ever wakes up again - Otherwise nice lady, except for the part where she said Palestinians deserve to be dead and cited eugenics ("At least the ones that were killed were the ones with low IQs.&quot Where the fuck did that come from? From her belief that Israel is always right, and all who gt in its way deserve death and privation; Zionism, in a nutshell.

There's a lot more (by a factor of at least, what, 100) Islam-motivated violence in Europe than there is Zionism- motivated violence. Jewish museum shooting, beheadings in London streets, Toulouse and Montauban, cartoon riots.


Not to mention white supremacist violence.

You really, really don't want to play this game.

Jews/Zionists are about the least violent people in Europe.

I'm not however - despite your constant efforts to pretend so - so I'm afraid the comparison falls flat. Now if you wanted to pick out a brand of Islamic nationalism - say, ad-Dawlah l-ʾIslamiyyah - and draw comparisons with Zionism from there, that would be apt.

And I'm finding it very interesting that you are using violence from other sectors, to justify and defend violence from Zionism. Why is that? And how, exactly, is it a counter-argument to what I'm saying?

Merely pointing out that nut picking is not a valid way to evaluate a religion, ideology, or other belief system.

In this case, part of what is notable is that Zionist violence is so rare outside the Mideast.

Galloway was pretty high profile...was.

I'm not saying that Zionism is a violent philosophy because this guy clobbered George Galloway. I'm saying this guy clobbered Galloway because Zionism is a violent philosophy. I'm defining the individual by the philosophy, rather than the philosophy by the individual.

Would you say white supremacism is a violent ideology? I would. And yet, most white supremacists never attack or assault anyone. Maybe due to fear of arrest, or of getting their asses kicked, or just because they still have at least that much decency, who knows, but they do manage it.

But when you peek into their sections of the web and see them jerking and grunting over the killing of black kids by white cops? When you see them talking about race war? Expressing wishes for purges of inferiors and "mud people"? Talking about how they wish an outspoken anti-racist white woman would get gang-raped by "ghetto thugs"?

So too with Zionism. When Israel is turning thousands of people into corpses, and the first thing Zionists around the world do is march in the streets cheering the slaughter? When every Zionist voice in the media is telling us we need to bomb the shit out of someone, or blockade someone, or go to war with someone? here on DU, where the Zionists have nothing but an endless flood of support for any amount of brutality and violence against the "Racial undesirables," where they pretend all footage of Arabs being brutalized is "fake" - to the point where a dead child isn't really dead and if he is then his father murdered him to make Israel look bad?

Zionism is a violent philosophy, and its adherents are violent people. This doesn't mean they're running around slugging old men in the street every day, no. Most zionists, like most white supremacists, manage to contain themselves. But as we see, every now and then, one pops up to remind us what's going on under the surface.

\

You have not supported your claim that Zionism is a violent philosophy with any kind of factual predicate. Nor have you offered any proof that Zionism, rather than psychological or personal issues, caused this guy to lash out. And below, you do attempt to define the philosophy by the individual.

It is argument by assertion, not by reason.



This discussion is about Zionism, not white supremacy. Cute attempt to interject that as a parallel, but again unsupported. Yes, there are obnoxious, violent, respulsive white supremacists. So what?



There do exist racist, vicious, eliminationist Zionists. But you again are engaging in the fallacy that because there are some Zionists who show undesirable traits, that means all Zionists share those traits. And that they are that way because Zionism makes them so.



Replace "Zionists" with "Muslims" and this paragraph could have been written by Pam Geller or the lovely people at Jihadwatch. Replace "Zionists" with "Palestinians" and it could have been written by Avigdor Lieberman or Moshe Feiglin.

Zionism is failing because it's incompatible with basic aspects of how states are supposed to relate to those they govern. When people go beyond that into broad-based smears and demonization, all it does is make anti-Zionism look like the product of prejudice instead of principle.

Weren't you the one who brought up white supremacists earlier? After you brought up islamists?

So it's cool for you to try to draw comparisons, but not me? What's up with that, Geek tragedy?



What particulars they hold in their hearts is unknown, yes. However, when someone decides to identify themselves by a politicl grouping, you can make some pretty good guesses about what's going on there. If I told you I were a socialist, and you knew nothing else about me, you would still have a pretty good idea of where I probably stand on several issues, yes?



"Muslim" is a religion. "Palestinian" is a nationality / ethnicity. Neither is comparable to "Zionism" which is a political philosophy, like libertarianism or liberalism or Antidisestablishmentarianism. You've tried this trick three times now, and I'm afraid it hasn't gotten any smarter via repetition.

Interestingly? All of the people you just cited - Gellar, Jihadwatch's staff, Lieberman, Feiglin - are very outspoken zionists. Just saying, if you want to compare me to awful, violent people because I say zionism is an awful, violent philosophy, try to make sure those awful, violent people aren't also zionists, yeah?

like Islam is. You're drawing distinctions without a difference there. Especially since every majority-Muslim state is governed to some degree by Islamic law.

You'd be on much stronger ground if you were claiming this about Jewish supremacists, but you're not, you're making it about anyone who supports a Jewish homeland.

I will add that, as someone who is deeply suspicious of Zionism and all other ideologies that fuse religion with nationalism, people who constantly rant about how evil all 'Zionists' are give off a distinctly un-progressive vibe as it is eerily similar to those who talk about Congress being "Zionist Occupied Government" etc.

yes, they are all "belief systems" - buuuuut... some belief systems are extremely broad, and others are extremely narrow. Most political ideologies trend towards the "narrow' end of the spectrum simply because they need to. Political systems have specific goals and agendas and thyus need relatively narrow focus. A religious system, on the other hand, will trend towards the "very broad" end of the spectrum - the larger of the religion, the broader it gets.

If someone tells me they are a christian, then all I know about them is that they believe in Jesus. If, on the other hand, they tell me they are a dominionist, then I know very well what their position is in regards to democracy, minority religions, gay and women's rights, even economics and international affairs.

And how exactly does that homeland come into being, without the necessity of purging non-Jews from it? Of forcibly wresting territory from the undeserving hands of "racial inferiors?" of oppressing those inferiors in order to maintain racial dominance? of "mowing the lawn" around the borders in order to keep those dirty amaleks cowering and destabilized?

Racist violence is inherent to the ideology. Both for establishment and maintenance. I suppose it could be argued that there were alternatives. But those alternatives weren't taken, and so they aren't particularly relevant.



I don't think zionists are "evil" - "evil" is a big word that I'm reluctant to apply in general. I believe that Zionism is wrong, and that so are its adherents. I feel the same about Libertarianism - which I also hold to be a pretty violent ideology (though, in a more passive-aggressive way than Zionism)

Also, don't try to lob that "ZOG" bullshit on me. Really, you can stop with these underhanded "I didn't say what you know I'm saying" jabs.

You in turn are conflating the abhorrent but fairly standard trappings of nationalism and statecraft with the philosophy of Zionism.

the application of Zionism has been brutal and unjust, but that just makes it like everyone else's nationalism--Serbian nationalism, Croation nationalism, Japanese nationalism, Chinese nationalism, Russian nationalism, US nationalism, Palestinian nationalism etc etc etc.

And let us not ignore the role that Israelis and Palestinians have provoked the other towards violence through the cycle of violence and retribution throughout the decades. Yes, Israel bears the brunt of responsibility as the party with power. But, enough bombed seder dinners and buses and murdered children and rockets will induce in people more violent and hateful responses than might otherwise exist.
Both sides have practiced terrorism against each other, then act all astonished when the other side hates them.

Let alone "all who gt in its way deserve death and privation."

The strangest misconceptions sometimes pop up on this topic. I am not even a Zionist; I take Edward Said's critique seriously, among others. But at least figure out what the issue is. There are Zionists of a wide variety of political stripes with vastly different assessments of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saying that it is "violent" categorically is difficult to justify, given that. Saying that it is like Nazism is just Jew-baiting. (Yes, Jew-baiting. No, not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Jews are Zionists, but Zionism is overwhelmingly the dominant position among organized Jewry of all political affiliations, and probably among American and European Jews in general too. That is so for understandable reasons, though, as I've said, it's not a view I share.)

It's just that the majority are irrelevant. Modern Zionism is almost wholly defined by the revisionist brand of political zionism - Jabotinsky, et al. This is the brand of Zionism dominant in Israel, and thus among Israel's supporters. This is mixed then with a heady dose of bigotry and hatred - Against Arabs and Muslims of course, but more so against anyone that might not fit the Zionist "Purity Test."

Look, the product of zionism is Israel. Israel installed itself through a violent takeover and ethnic cleansing. It maintained - and to a great deal still does maintain - an ethnically stratified society where Jews are on top and everyone else is garbage. It has for the past forty years maintained a brutal occupation of Palestine, where it engages in whimsical violence and oppression just to show it can. it just slaughtered over two thousand people in Gaza - again - the majority of whom were civilians - again - and what did Zionists do around the world? They rallied for Israel. They cheered the killing, just as they cheer the occupation, just as they cheer the ethnocide, just as they cheer any and all acts of brutality perpetrated by Israel.

And anyone who is not cheering is labeled, of course, an antisemite. A Nazi. a self-hating Jew. An enemy. And what must be done with enemies? Well, look at what happened to Galloway. Or perhaps look back to 2009, and the death threats against Richard Goldstone.

It doesn't matter what Zionism was back in 1890 or whatever, only what it is today. and what it is is a philosophy of hate and violence.

Just for starters:

1. It's not even remotely true that "Modern Zionism is almost wholly defined by the revisionist brand of political zionism." That is not true in Israel and it is even less true in the US. Even if you take Likud to represent Revisionist Zionism, which is true historically but somewhat less true today, it and the parties to its right don't even command a majority of the Knesset, let alone an overwhelming one.

2. It's true that Israel's society is institutionally racist against Arabs. But that's not "Zionism" per se. Plenty of Zionists think Israel has failed rather dreadfully at justly treating its Arab minority. Likewise, for example, you can recognize that the United States throughout its history and to this day is structured in part around white supremacy, and still not think that the American Revolution was a bad idea.

3. Your view that Israel's operation in Gaza amounted to "whimsical violence and oppression just to show it can" is deeply distorted. Israeli Jews, and most American Zionists with them, overwhelmingly supported the operation in Gaza because Israeli Jews faced a serious and massively disruptive risk to their safety at the hands of Hamas, an organization that has continually shown itself willing to slaughter Israeli civilians at will when it has the capacity to do so, and whose ideology is anti-Semitic and aims at the destruction of Israel. You can oppose the operation--you should oppose the operation, which bought a marginal short-term increase in security at the expense of an extraordinarily disproportionate cost to Palestinian civilian life and well-being--but that doesn't mean it was "whimsical." Like many opponents of Israeli policy, you don't seem to have much interest in empathizing with or understanding Israelis or Zionists, as opposed to pathologizing them with simplistic caricatures.

(Note, for what it's worth, that despite what I've said, some Zionists opposed the Israeli operation in Gaza.)

4. You proceed to accuse Zionists (as a collective entity? are they a hivemind now?) of attacking anyone who disagrees with their assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anti-Semites, Nazis, self-hating Jews, etc., who apparently think violence is appropriate to silence their critics. That's an obvious case of extreme overgeneralization. Give it up. (Edit: I note the irony of you making this accusation in a thread whose purpose is to analogize Zionists to Nazis, and in the context of an argument where you seek to cast all Zionists in the mold of the most extreme right-wing racist version of Zionism.)

Last edited Sun Aug 31, 2014, 03:20 PM - Edit history (2)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world

Comparing the raw numbers of acts of violence committed by a group that is almost 1/4 of the world's population to any other much smaller group is bad math. You can selectively find Muslims will fare far worse in just about any category when using dishonest math.

Pound for pound, the level of oppression and violence committed by Israel is far worse than most nations. Over its entire history, there are few nations in the world that compare to Israel for its war mongering. The far larger US does murder many more people in our wars and the US is arguably the worst war mongering nation in the world.

As measured by this list, not one Muslim nation appears in the top ten of the 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

The worst atrocity so far this century is the Iraq War, started by the US.

from one individual to everyone who shares a belief system with that individual is a bad idea.

You are not even trying.

Including by his own admission, Israeli people.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28687233

For context.

Obviously, physical violence is never the solution to the kind of hate Galloway advocates. I wonder if the guy who assaulted him is an Israeli living in Britain. I don't think anyone would have a good reaction to being told the town they live in ought to be cleansed of their presence.

I think it's legitimate to compare the actions of Israel to, for example, apartheid South Africa, but it's clearly not sensible to compare them to Nazism.

and you're comparing that to what the nazi's did? Are you fucking kidding me with this? You are seriously someone in need of perspective. You aren't to be taken seriously.

Check his opinions on other stuff.
Check out his anti-gay Iranian stuff .
And comparing Nazis with Zionists because of one action is ludicrous.
It's pretty fucking clear what you're saying here, and the Israel-Gaza situation just gives you a good opportunity to disguise it.
also.

I hope it remains as an example of where some DUers are coming from.

this is not merely grossly inaccurate, it's complete assholery. the nazis aren't just some idle example out there, they are quite specifically the example that committed genocide on the jewish people, the very people this comparison attacks.

it's ridiculous to hold a group accountable for the actions of every last person in the group anywhere on the planet, especially when there's not even any formal group here, just common political views. and then to leap all the way to the nazi comparison?

oy vey.

go ahead, for an encore, compare me to hitler because i don't eat meat.

I try to keep negative comments to myself, but this post is so incredibly ridiculous, I felt the need to call it out. I am going to alert the post as it violates the terms of this website.