• Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    A Racism so institutionalized that it’s written down on the Constitution isn’t Liberalism and denying the vote to the millions who used to live there (and some who still do) by denyng them citizenship isn’t Democracy.

    • What could make a racism so institutionalized it’s written into the Constitution liberalism? What about a constitution that would allow such provisions to be amended? I agree they are outmoded in purpose and spirit and should be amended. I won’t go so far as to say they existed for no reason or for an offensive reason ab initio. Even if I did believe that, it’s irrelevant to reality: Israel is there and it began as an ethnostate.

      The logical conclusion to your position is that you believe Israel doesn’t have a right to exist / defend itself, unless and until it amends the offensive provisions of its constituon. Is that your belief?

      I don’t find arguments about who lives there now and who used to live there compelling at all. They fall apart just at face value when the earliest historical record has the land occupied by Hebrew-speaking bronze-age people called Judites. That is to say the land records are a total crapshoot of lands changing hands, peoples changing identities, cultures changing over time, and shifting borders. It’s also futile because, again, Israel is there now, is a nuclear power, and any plan forward must realistically account for this (Israel is going to defend itself).

      Suppose Israel amends the offensive provisions, annexes all the disputed borderlands, and naturalizes every person therein with full rights and privileges, but then Iran and others in the region don’t stop funding terrorism at Israel’s borders and don’t stop carefully cultivating a culture of martyrdom and anti-western and anti-liberal violent extremism? Are we not right back where we started?