Short question on Israel
Yesterday an anonymous reader left a comment on the "minor parties" post: "Quick question: You claim to be an atheist and pro-Israel. How can an atheist be supportive of any country established by or for any religion?" I deleted it in moderation since it was off-topic. However, just in case there's anyone to whom the answer isn't obvious: Jews are an ethnic group, many (perhaps most) of whom don't practice the Jewish religion. Israel was established to provide a secure future for that ethnic group after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. This is a worthy goal (though it would have been more just if Israel had been established on territory taken from Germany rather than from the Arabs). Also, even though minority parties have imposed some religious laws -- as mentioned in the post -- Israel is still a much more secular state and society than almost anywhere else in the Middle East. For more on my view of Israel, see here.
Fair warning: If anyone wants to post a bunch of the standard anti-Israel stuff in the comments, don't bother. I've heard it all before and I'm not interested in an interminable rehash of old arguments.
Fair warning: If anyone wants to post a bunch of the standard anti-Israel stuff in the comments, don't bother. I've heard it all before and I'm not interested in an interminable rehash of old arguments.
posted by Infidel753 at 4:25 AM
2 Comments:
All the Israelis on the kibbutz I was a volunteer at near Bet Shean were hard atheists. Heck, one of our leaders even worked in the fields, like usual, on Yom Kippur!
The guy wrote, "How can an atheist be supportive of any country established by or for any religion?"
Like you wrote, he needs to learn some Israeli history. Nearly all of the early modern Jewish settlers in Palestine from Russian and Europe were secularists, not religious at all.
I can't figure out this left-wing glorification of Muslims and vilification of Israelis. Very weird. Any objective study of Israel versus the Palestinian Authority, or even worse HAMAS-controlled Gaza ought to wake them up.
But for some reason these leftists are blind to their extreme bias.
I get the impression that bloggers who specifically identify mainly as atheist or gay are more supportive of Israel, because they're more aware of the danger Islam would represent to them if they lived in a society where it was dominant. As for the obsessives who relentlessly attack anything done by the only Jewish country in the world, while ignoring the much worse crimes of neighboring regimes (often also US-supported), I can't imagine why they do that. I mean, you'd almost think it was part of some sort of deep-rooted pattern of bigotry going back more than a thousand years in Western history or something.
Post a Comment
<< Home