Did...did the other kids have to eat a bug too?
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Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 05:09:51 PMI do have people who represent my views on the Palestinian and diplomatic issues in Knesset, just not many and none in the coalition.
Thanks, Verbal Mike. I found this exchange educational and find nothing to disagree with. I did not know and find it alarming that your views don't have a single voice in the Knesset. Why did you decide to move to Israel is the logical question - if you are willing to discuss it.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 05:15:11 PMI'm not interested in a discussion of semantics, but I stand by my statement that "Israel is in many ways a lot like a fascist state", while acknowledging that the other terms you have proposed are distinct from "fascist" and have bearing on the situation as well.
Also, although I think we understand each other well enough, "fascist" is not the actual term we should have been using. "Racially discriminating", perhaps, or "apartheid" would have been more accurate. Bombing civilian populations for the crime of being nationals of a country taken over by an opressive dictatorship (or indeed the tactical advantage) qualifies, in my possibly unorthodox view.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMThe Israeli regime controls the economy and lives of Palestinians in the West Bank even more firmly than it controls the lives of anyone living within the state's actual borders. Hence, the more interesting question to me is what happens with the West Bank Palestinians, not what happens with the Palestinian Israelis.Quote from: Verbal Mike on October 27, 2012, 01:49:10 PM
The Palestinians are under Israel's control even more firmly than are we Israelis. I find the statistic regarding them more interesting and important than that regarding Palestinian-Israelis.
I don't get this bit. Can you explain it? I re-read the OP article, and see no 49% wishing to deny the vote to Palestinians for any group. Am I being dense?
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMYou linked the ADL article in the same post as that in which you slammed the Dialog poll based on its sample size. Hence my questions on the matter.
I acknowledge your point, though I do note that one country (Norway) has a significantly smaller population, while Austria and Hungary are rougly on par. However, the point I was trying to make is that surveys indicating widespread anti-semitism in Europe are published. At that time I did not look at the sample sizes.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMPolling is often biased, for sure. But there's a kind of science behind it, the goal of which is to base polling data on representative samples. So good, honest pollsters actually know what exactly it takes to make a sample representative at minimum cost. That's their job. As far as I can tell, the sample size is not unusual and the truth is likely not far off from the survey results. Still, the article doesn't cite the margin of error, which is kinda clumsy of them.
I've always wondered about these opinion polls, though. How do you make a sample of 500 people representative of 8 million?? Isn't there bias already in the fact that you are only going to interview people who are willing to talk to pollsters? As I noted, the pollsters in this country, coming out with results that often differ for a particular political party by 10 or even 15 percent for the same period, all claim to be using representative samples. So, I think, even if the polling firm in question is a reputable one and there is good reason to rule out intentional distortion, there is still the question of unconscious or indeed random bias.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMOkay, well, in my experience, it is very common for Israelis to be of the opinion that other nations (as whole nations, not as individuals – Israelis often see the world that way) (a) have a strong opinion about Jews and about Israel and (b) it is negative. The general sentiment is that some countries hide it better than others, but you're all flaming antisemites. Foreign individuals one meets who are nice and seem not so racist are explained away as outliers or as very good liars. This is reflected in the way the media talks about any comment on or portrayal of Israel in foreign media or discourse.
People buy into media that is easy to consume for them and which they find entertaining. The general population doesn't have many strongly held views on political and international affairs and is easily swayed by the media. This has been and is being amply demonstrated basically everywhere. Previously, we were not discussing international disagreement with Israeli state policy, but the hypothetical question of what would happen if a similar survey was published in an European country about Jews.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMThat's a very difficult questions, especially as I am part of a marginalized political minority and thus spend more time thinking about how to sway public opinion here than what to have the state actually do. I have no effect on what the state does, because I am not represented by a single person in government on these issues.Quote from: Verbal Mike on October 27, 2012, 01:49:10 PM
And yes, the Arab regimes are awful, that much is obvious. As you already noted, it's also kinda irrelevant in a discussion about Israel's treatment of minorities. Also obvious is the difficulty in resolving the conflict.
It's kinda irrelevant alright, but there is a bit of an indirect link, don't you think? I mean, those Arab regimes, they support the anti-Jewish variety of terrorism in Israel, don't they? I'm putting this as a non-loaded question: what would you like to see Israel, as a state, do?
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 03:39:42 PMThat's true, to a point, but people generally don't form overarching political-historical analyses of different regimes. Instead they respond to what the media tells them is going on, and for some reason Israel is an object of fascination across the Western world. Israel is in many ways a lot like a fascist state, even if some people only say so for the wrong reasons.
I think the Western liberal summary of "Israel is a fascist state" boo-hoo is a bit of a misleading and extremely simplified gloss. As long as these people also acknowledge that the Allies, for instance, were fascist states for bombing the fuck out of large civilian populations during WWII, that can be alright. But, in my experience at least, the animosity is often directed exclusively at Israel. That I find hypocritical.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 01:15:43 PMThe Palestinians are under Israel's control even more firmly than are we Israelis. I find the statistic regarding them more interesting and important than that regarding Palestinian-Israelis.
I am referring to this sentence from the article linked in the OP:
"A third of respondents believe that Israel's Arab citizens should be denied the vote"
I think it is quite clear
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 01:15:43 PMYou cited an ADL study with the same size of samples in much larger countries. You have not addressed this inconsistency.
The OP also states that this "survey" is based on 503 that is five hundred and three persons being questioned.
Laughable, I think. Here in Hungary, each political party has its own pet political polling company, and they all publish wildly different political polls, all based on "representative samples" about once every two months. Even their samples are twice to four times the size of this one.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 01:15:43 PMThis is true, to an extent. But It's also true that people buy into media that tells them what they want to hear, and the popularity of Yedioth and Ma'ariv speaks volumes about the currency of the views they print. That other views, possibly even prevalent ones, are marginalised, is obvious. But from my experience of actual Israeli people, the outrage over any international disagreement with our state is commonplace. My disgust at it is marginal, unusual, and gets me scorn.
I appreciate and defer to your experience of the jingoisation of the Israeli mainstream media. But I do not believe that mainstream media is a good indicator of the sentiments and opinions of a people. It is a good indicator of the sentiments and the opinions that the power elite would like the people to have. As has been discussed a great deal on this board, in the American context. Israel is no different.
Quote from: holist on October 27, 2012, 01:15:43 PMDuring the 47-48 War of Independence (an-Nakba, "the disaster"), whole villages were massacred/scared off/destroyed, whole areas of the country cleansed of Arabs. After the war ended, the Palestinians within Israeli got their citizenship, but were kept under martial law for about a decade, while property left behind by Arabs was handed out to Jews, and more and more Arab land was expropriated for Jewish use. There was, in fact, so much Arab land to redistribute, that the Jewish National Fund had to be given control over it to administrate its distribution. Many forests now cover the traces of what were once Arab Villages. The JNF continues its work to this day, and to my knowledge has never taken a break. I'm fuzzy on the specifics of the period between the end of martial law and the beginning of the Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (about a decade) but the dispossession and slow ethnic cleansing that began almost immediately after their conquest is relatively well-known and is currently still accelerating.
Also, while i agree that the sort of ethnic cleansing you refer to has been practised far too long, I am not so sure about the "uninterrupted". I am pretty sure, on the other hand, that the extremists and the mainstream media you describe has its mirror images in the Arab world. Which, let me add, does not exonerate Israel the least bit... but, given that all those Jews are now there (and I wish they opted for Brazil in the heydays of zionism), what to do with the situation is something of a conundrum.