Comment by hypeit
1 year ago
You're making a lot of assumptions about my position. I most certainly do think we owe both indigenous people and Black people massive amounts of land reparations in the US.
Israel can be disbanded just like South Africa was disbanded. It has less support than ever before politically.
Several additional problems with your argument past what D.C. just said:
1. Israel has in fact immense support, far more than the South African government ever had.
2. Apartheid South Africa was a system of minoritarian rule, which does not exist within the 1967 borders of Israel (further, Arab Israelis have nominally full citizenship rights, and in fact fight for the IDF; they are a minority, unlike the victims of Apartheid, but they're also not living under an apartheid system).
3. For a majority of Israeli Jewish people, there is no other place in the world for them to go. There is no prospect of a negotiated settlement that forecloses on a Jewish state. Their BATNA is war. That wasn't the case with the Boers.
In these kinds of discussions I feel like people conflate the situation in Gaza and the West Bank with that of Israel proper. Continued Israeli occupation of Gaza probably is untenable! That occupation will eventually be disbanded, the way South African Apartheid was. But here we're talking about the entire state of Israel. Like I said, start with Texas, because that'll happen first.
> Apartheid... which does not exist within the 1967 borders of Israel
It isn't formal, but Arabs are marginalized and discriminated against. In West Bank, E Jerusalem, and Hebron, all that supremacy is dialed upto 11.
> Israel has in fact immense support
Fear and intimidation isn't support. Besides, I don't see this support lasting long outside of the US and Germany if the Oslo-process continues, which it will because for the Israeli right Judea and Samaria are too good to give up.
> talking about the entire state of Israel
I think folks mean the one-state reality but not total exodus of the Jews, though, it might come to pass if they let their guard down, now that there's genuine animosity to fuel a feud for another century.
I'm assuming you just missed the previous comments where I agreed that the Palestinians have a powerful moral argument about Gaza and the West Bank. If you read the thread, I think you'll see we might not have much to disagree about.
> Israel can be disbanded just like South Africa was disbanded.
South Africa wasn't disbanded, not even close. Apartheid ended more-or-less peacefully; non-whites were given the vote; and more-or-less democratic elections have been held ever since.