Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Saturday condemned Israel as a racist state, warning activists that there is an organized opposition against progressive critics of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians.
The sharp criticism from the lawmaker from Washington state marks among the highest-level condemnations of Israel, as several members of her caucus plan to boycott Israel President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress later this week.
Speaking on a panel at Netroots Nation, an annual progressive activist conference in Chicago, Jayapal was addressing pro-Palestinian attendees interrupting the session.
She’s correct. Fuck Israel. (inb4 someone calls me an antisemite bc they conflate hating the nation of Israel to hating Jews which is the dumbest fucking thing ever, bc I am American and I hate the American government so I guess I hate myself and everyone who lives here?)
Kicking people off their land so your own people can move in has a term, it’s called ethnic cleansing. It is considered a crime against humanity under the genocide convention.
Damn, try to relax. I think they were agreeing with you and just adding too the conversation.
a significant amount of jews moved to mandatory palestine before israel was even established, due to the loose immigration laws. the other portion of the israeli population arrived as refugees in the 50s after several states in the middle east expelled their jewish populations post independance. the people kicked out of their homes are not being kicked out for forigners to move in usually, but rather for native israelis to move into, though there are some small american groups in the west bank settler movement. (i am not pro israel or pro palestine, just trying to educate people)
Look up Theodor Herzl. He is the father of Zionism and is buried in Israel’s national cemetery.
Right. Let me kick you out of your house that you’ve had for generations because I can “claim” the land as mine as my ancestors resided there a thousand years ago. This is the dumbest argument to justify ethnic cleansing. Stop trying to pass this revisionist idiocy off as “education”.
People use antisemitism accusations to defend the evil the Israeli government does. It’s not antisemitic to recognize that kicking people out of their homes and having an open air prison city based on religion is evil.
Jews are generally cool people, and I’m friends with just about every single one I’ve ever met. Israel is a racist state actively and gleefully committing genocide. It’s pretty annoying that Israel constantly using antisemitism as a shield effectively forces all criticism of Israel to immediately and preemptively justify itself as not being anti-Jew. You can, in fact, hate Israel without hating Jewish people. It’s tragically ironic that Israel ended up becoming a fascist state committing ethnic cleansing when Jews are the most well-known contemporary victim of genocide. But Israelis themselves seem perfectly fine with the hypocrisy.
I am firmly anti-Russia, but I don’t hate Russians. I am anti-China, but I don’t hate Chinese people. I am anti-Israel, but I don’t hate Israelis or Jewish people.
I doubt the vast majority of Americans would bat an eye at the first two statements. Why is the third one somehow more problematic than the first two?
As a secular Jew in the diaspora, I do wish Zionists would keep me out of their political games, but frankly, there’s a contingent of people who conflate diaspora Jews, or Jews in general, with the Israeli state. I encounter this frequently with a Pakistani friend of mine, but the mindset is widespread among religious and political dogmatists of many stripes. This type of thinking long predates the establishment of Israel, and has flared throughout history in some terrible ways, so it’s understandable why Jews would be sensitive to it, and Jews who support Israel would be just as incapable of separating their religious identity from Israel as antisemitic conspiracy theorists are. The land is part of our identity, and the Zionist project is (for many) a triumph of Jewish national identity and a beacon of hope for safety from antisemitic violence. The fact, then, that Zionism has always, since the latter half of the 19th century, gained at the violent expense of Palestinian Arabs, is a cruel irony, and utterly unconscionable for any Jew with a shred of ethical fortitude.
In short, it’s hard for many reasons and for many people, Jewish and otherwise, to separate Israel from Jewish identity. When Jews do it, it’s counterproductive to the cause of eliminating antisemitism. When non-Jews do it, it provides Jews with another reason to continue to be on high alert. One reinforces the other.
It’s a bit of a conspiracy theory, maybe, but I definitely feel that Israel and Zionists don’t necessarily do absolutely everything they could to prevent people conflating Jews and Israel.
I’ve heard other diaspora Jews complain before that they feel Israel is a bit too presumptuous in speaking for them.
It is almost unheard of for US representatives to publicly criticise Israel. Is she quitting next election or something?
Trump upset the balance. Support for Israel used to be bipartisan, but Trump was so extreme in his pro Israel support that Democrats took the opposite position.
Edit: not sure why people are downvoting for this. Support for Israel used to be nearly unanimous in Congress before Trump. The Squad and others came into office as a result of Trump, and they weren’t afraid to criticize Israel. Trump told Israel to ban them and they did, blocking Rashida Tlaib from visiting her family and causing a wave of criticism in Congress, creating a visible rift between the parties. Democrats weren’t punished for criticizing Israel and the Israel lobby wasn’t able to pressure them as much anymore for fear of angering Biden.
Maybe it’s less about Trump and more about Netanyahu and his very conservative buddies dismantling the only checks to his power while stepping up settlements. There are lots of reasons to criticise Isreal that have nothing to do with American political divisions. The Israeli’s themselves were protesting in large numbers just last week.
Far right trolls everywhere damn. We need a feature that hides severely downvoted comments.
The Democratic Majority for Israel has been killing progressive primary candidates with attack ads who might even challenge US support for Israel while it continues to expand settlements and oppress Palestinians. These attack ads never speak about the candidate’s policy on Israel. And it’s a Super Pac, so it doesn’t have to reveal its donors or how much they donated although the PAC version showcases that the PAC at least is being largely funded by a person who donates to Republican senators. Yay for Citizens United! </sarcasm>
Mellmann, the creator of the Super PAC and PAC doesn’t believe that the US and US politicians should ever be critical of Israel, Israeli policies, or Israeli treatment of Palestinians, should ever make the $3.8B sent there annually have any sort of strings attached, and that there should be any sort of movement against Israel’s illegal occupation and refusal of Palestinian refugees right to return (ethnic cleansing 101) akin to the movement against South African apartheid.
Look, Israel is the birthplace of Judaism (and Christianity). It is and always will be the home of Judaism and its followers. I think whatever happens in the future, that should be a cardinal rule. But a theocratic democracy is not possible, especially one where you’re freaking out about becoming a minority and seem to think people of a certain religion or ancestry are more privileged in law and the courts.
But do you know who else has been in Israel-Palestine and the rest of the Canaanite region since the Bronze Age (the same as the Ancient Israelites)? Palestinians. Israel-Palestine is just as much their home as it is for any descendant of the Ancient Israelites (and so this should be another cardinal rule whatever happens in the future). Just because their religion today is Islam and their language is Arabic instead of some sort of Canaanite religion doesn’t mean they deserve their home any less.
Like people didn’t stay there and change religions and languages after Rome took out the Jewish government in AD 70 and people warred over the region over the next couple of millennia.
And even if they weren’t descendants of Canaanites, they would have been living there for nearly 2000 years, longer than Israelites can traced as a distinct people before AD 70. And even if it wasn’t 2000 years, but just 200 years, you don’t get to displace or oppress people whatever their ancestor’s relationship to the land is. The reality is that they’re there and that’s all they’ve ever known. And that’s enough whether Palestinian, Uyghur, Rohingya, or Jewish in Europe and America and Middle East over the millennia.
