• ebc@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    I think you’re conflating 2 other things: Religion and culture.

    Jews as a religion should absolutely not be allowed their own nation state, just as Islam shouldn’t and Christianity certainly shouldn’t either. In fact, there should be no religion-states at all. One of the fundamental values in democratic societies is freedom of religion; people should be allowed to believe whatever religion they want. Any state that interferes with that right is in violation of one of the basic human rights, and a religion-state is by definition violating that right.

    Jews as a culture should absolutely be allowed their own nation state, in fact, that’s what Israel is. Such a state is indeed allowed to have interests, but “exterminating all non-Jews in the country” isn’t a legitimate interest. In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country. Such a state is also allowed to defend itself, but I think it’s normal for a persecuted people to resort to terrorism when other avenues for ending their persecution failed. That doesn’t give the right to the persecuter to persecute even more. You’ll note that we also heavily criticize the US for their “war on terrorism”, and rightly so. Gaza is also not an existential threat to Israel the way Russia is to Ukraine either. There’s a world of difference between the 2 conflicts.

    So yeah, I guess I agree with you in part (there’s a difference between Jews in general and the Israeli government), but I really disagree with you on the “Jewish nation” part.

    That said, I’m just a random dude from the other side of the world, and I don’t know anything about the specifics of the situation in the country, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      In fact, you’ll recall that a world war was triggered because a country wanted to exterminate a specific ethnic / religious group not only within their borders but also in their neighbors’ country.

      WWII was triggered by Nazi Germany’s attempt to take over the world. Ending the Holocaust was just a fortunate side-effect of beating back the Germans and removing the Nazis from power. Nobody in power have a shit about Jews until people started seeing images from the death camps after they were liberated.