Why is it wrong to criticize Israel?

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Sure hope you don't work as an interpreter because I didn't say anything of the sort!

It'd be nice to see society Fully acknowledge the wrongs that have been committed against Indigenous people and begin making amends while fully integrating survivors into society vs. marginalizing the few remaining survivors of a near complete genocide. The internet didn't tell me s**t - I know these people in real life. Get out and meet some and learn about the people who originally inhabited wherever you live. Chances are some of them are still around.

Meh, considering all the self-loathing shaming and blaming that goes on in North America all I gotta say is I hope the diabetes I have does me in so that I won't live long enough to see what awaits us both in the future.

We're probably all going to implode on ourselves. I really hope I'm dead before that day comes.

Humans have induced the beginning of the 6th mass extinction of the planet. Most of us are going to die off in the centuries ahead - Maybe even all of us.

Twisty has a point. Hawaiians suffered a worse fate than Palestinians but nobody cares, whereas every day we hear demands for us to show compassion for miserable Palestinians.

It's not true that "nobody cares." Some in this thread are acting like people are and have criticized Israel but nowhere else. In my experience, people who care about atrocities in one locale often care about atrocities that have occurred in others if they are informed about them. They might not talk about them as much if they aren't currently occurring and have the potential of ending. Depending on a few factors, public opinion can have a lot of influence.

With that being said, I don't feel collective guilt for things that my country has done, just like I don't feel guilt for atrocities that humans have committed elsewhere in the world or for despicable acts my ancestors engaged in. I don't see the world that way. It's not hypocritical to point out injustice elsewhere just because one's country has engaged in hurtful behavior. Suffering, no matter where it occurs, is wrong and needs to stop.

I've always thought that borders were somewhat arbitrary and don't consider myself an American. We all descended from the same location after all, and it wasn't America or Israel.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 12 Dec 2023, 12:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

TwilightPrincess is absolutely right on this. Why the hell should I be forced to feel guilty about anything? Because I pass for white on the outside? I'm descended from both Colonizers AND victims of Colonization. Yet its my voice that gets ignored by both sides.

People alive now don't need to feel guilt over the past. Their guilt does nothing to undo historic evils and rarely serves to motivate them to do anything about the ongoing impacts of those historic evils. It often largely seems like something they do for themselves in order to feel better.

One doesn't need to feel guilt or shame to voice their criticism however, and criticism seems like the bare minimum for developing a reasonable understanding of the colonial era and it's impacts.

It's not bashing a country to point out it's history. When there's bad things in your history, being reminded of them serves as a reminder to not repeat those mistakes. It isn't bashing Germany to discuss the Holocaust and it isn't bashing America (and Canada) to mention the unsavoury bits of their histories either.

Germans, Americans and Canadians don't need to sit around feeling guilty over actions their great-grandparents or further back did, but they should be familiar enough to say never again and mean it.

Uuuh, some of the perpetrators of residential school system abuses are still alive. Like nazis that have been hunted for decades, they should all die in jail.

Descendants should acknowledge the wrongs of the distant, and recent, past and do the work it takes to make "systemic amends," with the people who've been harmed. Without something like this, victims of intergenerational trauma remain outsiders to general society, trapped in ghettos & cycles of abuse.

Plenty of people care about the suffering of indigenous Hawaiians . (I say that, but "plenty" is nowhere close to "enough"). Any time I see somebody go "Oh, you care about [group]? Well what about [other group]?", I want to respond "Yes, I care about them too. Do not change the subject."
Palestine/Israel gets far more attention because it has far more to do with geopolitics. Whether the historical injustices faced by indigenous Hawaiians are rectified is (to be blunt) not as relevant to the international community as Israel/Palestine. Israel is a colonizer state installed by the US and its allies to serve as (more or less) a military base to protect the interests of the US and its allies in the near east. This (unsurprisingly) pissed off just about everyone in the international community who does not benefit from increased US presence in the Near East. It is a contentious issue about ongoing military occupation and apartheid--that is why it gains so much more international attention than the suffering of indigenous Americans and Pacific Islanders.
The international community should care more about the suffering of native Americans and Pacific Islanders, but I struggle to recall the last time it was brought up outside the context of trying to shut up Americans who voice concern over injustice abroad. Many nations also would not be at all happy if there were an actual precedent set in the US or Canada or wherever that actually saw the government make visible, serious steps to address historic injustices suffered by native populations. You think any conservative (or even liberal) government in eg: Latin America or Australia wants that kind of precedent? None of them want the US to actually use its influence to push for native justice at home or abroad. They do the same things the US does: downplay historic and modern suffering of these people; rationalize the mass murder and displacement of natives by the settlers whose ancestors control the levers of power; smear anyone who calls for meaningful action on these issues as a dangerous radical or terrorist; and deflect onto other issues any time the topic is brought up.

!	Cornflake wrote:
	A series of argumentative and off topic posts has been removed. A reminder - the topic is "Why is it wrong to criticize Israel?".

It's perfectly acceptable to criticize a specific country.

A more accurate question would be: Should anti-semitic rhetoric espoused by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah be condemned to the same degree as that espoused by groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers?

Pretty sure all of us will be dead in the centuries ahead. Most of us won't last a single century.

Yes.

But we should also recognize that not all anti-Israel, or anti-Israeli actions rhetoric is antisemitic.

It's hard to imagine why ongoing events receive more attention in the news than historical ones.

This is even more so in our going viral shorter attention span world. That is why zionists can say “What about 10/7?” over and over again and it will have no effect on them getting pummeled in the “propaganda war”. Israel used to have a deserved reputation as masters of setting the narrative. Now the Palestinians are running circles around them, most things they try to do to counter the Palestinian narrative implicates them.