Because this criticism is too often intertwined with attacks not on israeli policies, but on Israel's right to exist. And yes, saying that jews don't deserve a nation state is definetly anti-semitic.
> So often it feels like proponents of questionable Israeli policies seem to use the Holocaust, Israel's fight for survival through the endless wars from its creation through the 1970s to justify an aggressive and hostile stance.
Because fight for survival and hostile stance are directly related.
Ask yourself: is average citizen of a country neighboring yours sees you as an enemy? Have he or his parents gone to war against you? Will he help you if you get attacked? Or may he'll be glad to see you die?
Being peaceful and trusting is a privilege that Israel can't afford.
But in the US and Canada, as far as I know, native Americans/first nation are welcome to be first party citizens, no longer forced to live on reservations? Not without an ugly history of oppression; but the "nation state" is mostly a fascist fiction anyway.
Few native people of the artic claim that they deserve to build a "nation state" - at the same time they organise for other rights, and today work quite well with the various states that govern the area.
The most sane parallell to the state of Israel is probably South-africa: it has shown that it is possible to move from an apartheid state to a more modern state that acknowledge all resident cultures. But as with South Africa, as long as the international community largely supports oppression, a peaceful coexistence is likely to remain out of reach. But hopefully popular opinion will turn in Israel before the genocide is complete; I've already heard former a Israeli helicopter pilot mentioned how he became a conscientious objector after fly-overs of the Gaza strip brought home the similarities to stories he'd been told about the Warsaw getthoes.
As for your examples; most of those are true for Europe (not being seen as an enemy, perhaps, but the war part). And would also apply to South Africa. And yet peace could be an option.
The occupied West Bank is land that was formerly claimed by--no, not by "Palestine", that wasn't actually a thing--the State of Jordan which also included the territory of Israel in its claimed territory; the state of Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank when the people living there (according to them, "Jordanians", but people you know as Palestinians) were politically destabilizing to the government of Jordan. To stave off the political threat (look up Black September), the state of Jordan gave up its claim to the West Bank (and to Israel).
Israel only occupied the West Bank when Palestinian lawlessness and terrorist antipathy toward Israel resulted in numerous bloody attacks on the civilian population of Israel. Israel has a much better case for occupation/pacification than Russia does of its occupation and annexation of Ukraine. I (a non Jew) do believe that anti-Semitism is the root cause of so much more anger directed at Israel than is directed at (say) Russia. Think of other disputed territories around the globe. Only in the case of Israel is there so much bitterness by outsiders toward one side, the less violent side, the side that is actually a civilized democracy and obeys rule of law.
And now that I mention it, do you even know what Morocco has been doing for many years in Western Sahara? Look it up, look up Polisario... it's an ethnic conflict. People will read about that and tut-tut and say, wow, that's terrible what the Moroccans have been doing, but quickly return to condemning Israel. And they look at the Hutus and Tutsis and say "well, there is blame to go around on both sides", and now we turn our attention to the tiny state of Israel, largely surrounded by barbarous dictatorships who don't even treat their own citizens well, and low and behold, it's those terrible awful Israelis who are to blame, much moreso than the Russians or Moroccans. Somehow it doesn't seem like there is plenty of blame to go around in this case, eh?
I believe that there are two reasons for bitterness toward Israel.
1) anti Arab racism motivates the belief that "we can't expect Palestinians to behave any better" (hey, maybe we can't, but if you don't want me to accuse you of anti-Semitism, come out and say it)
2) anti Jewish racism motivates the belief that "still, that doesn't justify the way those people are reacting", even though we see plenty of other "peoples" around the world defending themselves.
What are the Israelis defending themselves against? Click around wikipedia for awhile and look at the sheer number of Palestinian attacks directed at Israel month in and month out every year for the past 35 years. Would you put up with that directed at you and yours?
Yes, but families are split along the borders and checkpoints that have been drawn up by Israel. As long as the territories are occupied, Israel, as the occupier, is responsible for basic human rights and needs in the occupied area. Especially when they stop trade going in, like the attack on ships headed for Gaza.
> 1) anti Arab racism motivates the belief that "we can't expect Palestinians to behave any better" (hey, maybe we can't, but if you don't want me to accuse you of anti-Semitism, come out and say it)
Look, the jews were right to use terrorist tactics in the Warsaw ghettoes, and I can understand why Palestinians (also Semites, by the way) resort to such tactics in the current conflict. ANC wasn't peaceful in South-Africa, and it can be argued that non-violence wouldn't have been able to, on its own, create the civil rights reforms we've seen in the US.
> 2) anti Jewish racism motivates the belief that "still, that doesn't justify the way those people are reacting", even though we see plenty of other "peoples" around the world defending themselves.
This is a little bit like saying the Nazis were worse, so why should we criticise how the British behaved in the Boer wars.
Israel is arguably a functioning, rich state with a strong military. It has the power to approach the situation differently than putting minors in indefinite detention for throwing rocks, for example.
Israel is no failed state - the main reason we think of the holocaust as terrible, isn't (in my mind) just the death toll and suffering, but the systematic nature of it. This isn't millions killed in ravaging civil war, but calculated atrocities.
Just because I want a peaceful resolution to the situation concerning Israel, doesn't mean I won't (or haven't) spoken out against Turkey or Iraq on the situation with the Kurds - to give another example. Or that I don't condemn the US for their many dirty wars.
> Only in the case of Israel is there so much bitterness by outsiders toward one side, the less violent side, the side that is actually a civilized democracy and obeys rule of law.
"The less violent side"?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/15/world/middleea...
30 (mostly civilan) deaths to each Israeli? Yes, this is what you expect when you attack a mostly civilian population with trained soldiers armed with modern weapons.
I can accept that some people will argue that this is a "necessary" or "justified" response. But "less violent"? That is harder to accept. If this is "less violent" what would a "stronger" response look like?
> Because this criticism is too often intertwined with attacks not on israeli policies, but on Israel's right to exist. And yes, saying that jews don't deserve a nation state is definetly anti-semitic.
Can you explain this to me please? My roommate (who happened to be Jewish) and I in college always used to talk about this and generally disagreed with the common view. He never struck me as anti-Semitic.
It isn't necessarily a matter of "deserving" a nation state, but of displacing native peoples from their homeland to do so. If it was barren desert I'm not sure it would be such an issue.
In theory, criticizing a country and country's right to exist are different things.
In practice, usually people who are most vocal critics of Israel don't think it should exist in the first place.
> displacing native peoples from their homeland to do so
Which is an ugly half-truth. To put things in this way would require either ignorance of the region's history or some ugly dose of bias.
While I agree with you that believing that #1 shouldn't exist is anti-Semitic, I don't see how #2 is necessarily anti-Semitic, especially if the person expressing that view is Palestinian. I believe the Kurds also deserve their own state, but I don't see how that means that, say, the United States is obligated to give them Texas to start one in order to not be anti-Kurdish.
In any case, I, personally, don't believe in any country's "right" to exist. I'm not against any particular country's existence, I just don't think the term "right" applies to it. So am I anti-Semitic for extending that general belief to Israel, too?
You actually did not address how being against Israel's right to exist is equivalent to anti-Semitism, which was the intent of my question.
> Which is an ugly half-truth. To put things in this way would require either ignorance of the region's history or some ugly dose of bias.
Or simply disagreement. 'Bias' implies that your perspective is not itself similarly influenced by bias.
