Indeed a “bare description”- bare and partial. It was not “the Israeli president delivering a speech at the Western Wall” but rather the opening ceremony for Memorial Day when Israel remembers the soldiers killed in its wars. And unfortunately the Mosque has a “tradition” of broadcasting the call to prayer at full volume at times like this. Just saying.
Esther – I was going to point out the same thing. Thank you for making the case so eloquently.
Simon Webster
2 years ago
When it comes to peddling pseudo-intellectual garbage Maçaes has form. But it’s in his writings on Israel that his bias really shines through. To Maçaes, the sign that Israel is an ethno-nationalist state is that its flag is emblazoned with a Star of David and that its Law of Return favours Jewish applicants for citizenship. Of course, as a good European he’s fully aware that Denmark and Finland have similar laws and that their flags – like every flag in Scandinavia – are emblazoned with a Christian cross. But you won’t find a similar (fatuous) argument about Denmark or Finland … because Jews are that uniquely bigoted, ethnocentric people.
You’re mistaken re Finland and Denmark. Their immigration laws do not say that only people whose ancestors were ethnic Finns or Danes or are Christians have the right to immigrate; ethnic Swedes who were citizens of those two countries qualify, as do Jews whose ancestors where citizens. They do not say that if you had ancestors there two thousand years ago you have any rights now. They say that if you have relatively recent ancestors who were born there that you have the right to immigrate. The equivalent for Israel would be a law which said that anyone who has ancestors born in the British Mandate of Palestine would have the right to immigrate, which they most certainly do not have at present. And people whose ancestors never lived in Palestine or did not do so for centuries would have no special rights.
Re the flag, roughly half the population ruled by the Israeli government is not Jewish. Either have a fair coherent two state solution, or the flag is simply wrong.
Last edited 2 years ago by William MacDougall
JP Martin
2 years ago
Because not allowing religious zealots to shout into electric amplifiers at the top of their lungs while the president addresses a crowd on a national holiday is unreasonable. Genius take. This is the sort of conclusion that an otherwise intelligent person can only reach when their brain is under the influence of a deep prejudice.
Last edited 2 years ago by JP Martin
Peter LR
2 years ago
“ Only in an independent Jewish state could the Jews fully pursue the paths opened by Judaism”
Theodor Herzl who conceived the Jewish homeland idea was no believer. His motivation was the avoidance of European persecution. His vision was of a homeland which would provide safety for Jews. He even considered offers of land in Cyprus and Uganda. He was responding to Russian pogroms and the notorious Dreyfus affair which had the supposedly liberal French crying “Death to the Jews” in the streets.
Sadly, although the conflict in Israel has religious roots it is still a matter of Jewish survival rather than religious hegemony.
Addie Schogger
2 years ago
The speech by President Rivlin was not the cause of the Israeli action in al Aqsa. The immediate cause was the hurling of boulders, stored in the mosque, from the Temple Mount onto Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below.
I am surprised that a political commentator buys the line that this caused the Hamas attacks on Israel. I suppose he believes that assassination of Archduke Ferdinand caused the first world war.
“I suppose he believes that assassination of Archduke Ferdinand caused the first world war.”
Didn’t it? Sure, there were many, many other factors at work. So many that it becomes impossible to single out just one. In which case, the most directly proximate cause is as good a candidate as any, especially considering the shady context behind the assassination itself — the presence of a rogue state (Serbia) on the borders of “the lynchpin of European security”, the salience within that state of an aggressive, semi-official terrorist organisation (think Hamas/Palestine, almost), and the way Russia was providing resources, diplomatic support and encouragement to said terrorist organisation. It turns out that a lot of the Great Power dynamics usually cited as the “real” causes of the war, to which the assassination was supposedly incidental, are actually embodied in the assassination itself.
Might I make the suggestion that Jerusalem be turned into an independent city where all religions can go? The visiters, guides etc would have to be checked first ( incase of weapons or explosives etc)and stay on the outskirts in hotels. The city could be guarded by UN troops ( who don’t belong to any three main religions involved ) because at the moment noone is happy with the situation.
People of all religions CAN go! This was not the case before 1967 when Jews were forbidden to enter the old city. Thousands of Muslims regularly enter the temple mount complex with restrictions only in periods of tension. The Palestinian ‘president’ has already said that he doesn’t want ‘filthy Jewish feet’ on the temple mount. this does not augur well for the future if this ‘moderate’ Palestinian were to gain control of the eastern half of the city.
But if I drop a lighted match into the tinderbox – especially if deliberately – then that is the cause of the explosion. If FF had not been shot that day, then things might have turned out differently. If only.
with respect, I don’t think so. Something else would have happened real or iagined.
Gandydancer x
2 years ago
“The act, shocking and brazen even in this bare description…”
Um, no it’s not. Your right to swing your fist ends short of when it hits my nose, and your right to pour noise into the commons is similarly limited. I don’t know anything about this incident, but if you want to convince me that it was shocking or brazen a “bare description” will not suffice.
Your right to swing your fist ends short of when it hits my nose, and your right to pour noise into the commons is similarly limited.
Glad you made that point.
People seem to have no trouble understanding why physical violence is unacceptable, yet appear incapable of grasping the fact that noise can be an even more violent aggression against one’s neighbour.
ForcIng one’s noise into the public arena is a form of mind control, affecting the soul at deep levels. This applies equally to invasive calls to prayer as to playing loud rock music through your open window into your neighbour’s home.
And of course, Israel as a civilisation state would in my view be able to free itself from the logic of an existential conflict with its Arab citizens or the Palestinians outside its borders. These groups may appear as a threat to the idea of Israel as a nation. They would not be a threat to the historical project of carrying Jewish civilisation into the future.
The man is delusional. Without stating it, he is proposing all jews leave what is the state of Israel and the West Bank.
Abe Stamm
2 years ago
I’m unfamiliar with Bruno Maçães, but to say that “the rise of Naftali Bennett suggests religious Zionism is no longer a priority” is idiotic and exposes the fact that the author has no real understanding of the Jewish Homeland, Zionism, and modern day Israel. Whether politically left, middle or right-wing leaning, the average Jewish-Israeli citizen, from the secular to the religious ultra-orthodox, will always vote for national security as a their primary ballot box concern. Bennett is a Zionist, a nationalist, and a militarist… he is little concerned with a resolution of the Palestinian “problem”, the majority of whom live in 3rd and 4th generation refugee camps in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. When’s the last time the major media outlets covered the squalid lives of the 2.5 million ethnic Palestinians residing in Jordan, peoples who have no rights of citizenship? The 20% of the Israeli citizenry who are not Jewish have ALL rights of citizenship, and are represented in all aspects of Israeli culture and business, including the upper echelons of the military and as members of the Knesset, being Israeli’s version of Congress.
Stani Huepfl
2 years ago
“But liberalism is something that Israel has defeated. It is hardly a coincidence that illiberal thinkers such as Leo Strauss learned their political philosophy in the school of Zionism, since every line of Theodor Herzl is proof of the fact that liberalism failed to solve the Jewish question in the 19th and 20th centuries… Herzl went much farther. Liberalism meant for the Jews the very real danger of spiritual and physical death.”
Interesting article. However I am very confused by this claim. Herzl indeed criticised the European states of his time for failing to protect their Jewish minority, but he was a liberal thinker through-and-through. Any good faith reading of his works confirms this. So to present Herzl and by extension Israel as uniquely illiberal seems misleading.
You clearly know more about Herzl than I do but, as I had understood, wasn’t his criticism directed at European nationalism rather than European states qua states? Certainly that would have been a typical experience for minorities living through the dissolution of Austria-Hungary as its constituents embraced forms of nationalism that would be in tension with the identities of their minority residents.
Yes – sorry my comment was poorly worded. Similarly I’m no expert on Herzl. However I get the impression that his criticism had many parts – on one hand, populist politicians’ tendency to stir anti-semitism among the masses, and on the other, social Darwinists and their (widespread) claim that the Jewish race was inferior. In many ways I think it was not a criticism so much as a realisation that the Jewish people couldn’t live in safety due to the omnipresence of anti-semitic attitudes in Europe. So yes it was not directed at ‘states’ to the best of my understanding but rather the growth of anti-semitism among their people. Thank you for pointing this out.
“If Israel were to become a civilisation-state, its anchor would be the long and manifold Jewish tradition. It would be the state which today represented that tradition in all its aspects. Such a state might well have a territory and a people, but it would not be defined by them.”
So it might NOT have a territory and a people? How is this a State?
Penelope Lane
2 years ago
I found this article difficult to understand. It seemed to me to be confused and confusing.
Is the term “civilisational state” an accepted term in political science? If so, what does it actually mean? What is its relationship to physical occupation of territory?
I’m not a political scientist, so could someone help me out here please?
Matthew Freedman
2 years ago
By the way universalism doesn’t exist in the Western Democracies or anywhere. To get anywhere minorities have to integrate. The traditional collective history of most Western Democracies is the one that is taken as the history of the country, not other more recent residents.
A lot European countries have crosses on the flag, have bank holidays on christian days and the majority cultural language is christian. None of this makes this British Jew not feel at home here. It is home.
Many Muslim countries have crescents on the flag, in their constitutions have statements about sharia being a guide to the national law and also statements about Islam being that the state religion and people belonging to the Arab people, in the Arab homeland. A country like Turkey doesn’t even recognise the culture of the Kurdish minority who has no other cultural representation.
Why talk about the star of david and the blue strips excluding Muslim, when crescents on flags appear everywhere road the region. Israel is the most liberal country in the region, that’s why you get pride there. The new religious muslim coalition partner in government has said it will block pro-LGBT legislation suggested by the ultra-liberal party Meretz. It makes mockery of self described LGBT supporters, who mock Israeli pride events. Intersectionality puts LGBT rights very low in the hierarchy.
Last edited 2 years ago by Matthew Freedman
rj5555366
2 years ago
…Just become another multiple
Cultures sham of a nation like those in Western Europe, with their ever deepening divisions and libtard self hatred… seems to be the sum of this
Harry Potter
2 years ago
Every country considers nationalism a good idea to promote and instill into their children’s heads, except those one in the West. Yet it seems no justice fighters in the West is willing to pay attention to (let alone critique) this common sense prevailing outside their echo chamber.
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Israel is the new Sparta, tough, laconic, organised.
The Palestinians on the other hand are the new Helots.
Someone has to be, it was, and always will be thus.
Indeed a “bare description”- bare and partial. It was not “the Israeli president delivering a speech at the Western Wall” but rather the opening ceremony for Memorial Day when Israel remembers the soldiers killed in its wars. And unfortunately the Mosque has a “tradition” of broadcasting the call to prayer at full volume at times like this. Just saying.
Esther – I was going to point out the same thing. Thank you for making the case so eloquently.
When it comes to peddling pseudo-intellectual garbage Maçaes has form. But it’s in his writings on Israel that his bias really shines through.
To Maçaes, the sign that Israel is an ethno-nationalist state is that its flag is emblazoned with a Star of David and that its Law of Return favours Jewish applicants for citizenship. Of course, as a good European he’s fully aware that Denmark and Finland have similar laws and that their flags – like every flag in Scandinavia – are emblazoned with a Christian cross. But you won’t find a similar (fatuous) argument about Denmark or Finland … because Jews are that uniquely bigoted, ethnocentric people.
A blind spot and an obsession that is far too common. It has warped his brain.
You’re mistaken re Finland and Denmark. Their immigration laws do not say that only people whose ancestors were ethnic Finns or Danes or are Christians have the right to immigrate; ethnic Swedes who were citizens of those two countries qualify, as do Jews whose ancestors where citizens. They do not say that if you had ancestors there two thousand years ago you have any rights now. They say that if you have relatively recent ancestors who were born there that you have the right to immigrate. The equivalent for Israel would be a law which said that anyone who has ancestors born in the British Mandate of Palestine would have the right to immigrate, which they most certainly do not have at present. And people whose ancestors never lived in Palestine or did not do so for centuries would have no special rights.
Re the flag, roughly half the population ruled by the Israeli government is not Jewish. Either have a fair coherent two state solution, or the flag is simply wrong.
Because not allowing religious zealots to shout into electric amplifiers at the top of their lungs while the president addresses a crowd on a national holiday is unreasonable. Genius take. This is the sort of conclusion that an otherwise intelligent person can only reach when their brain is under the influence of a deep prejudice.
“ Only in an independent Jewish state could the Jews fully pursue the paths opened by Judaism”
Theodor Herzl who conceived the Jewish homeland idea was no believer. His motivation was the avoidance of European persecution. His vision was of a homeland which would provide safety for Jews. He even considered offers of land in Cyprus and Uganda. He was responding to Russian pogroms and the notorious Dreyfus affair which had the supposedly liberal French crying “Death to the Jews” in the streets.
Sadly, although the conflict in Israel has religious roots it is still a matter of Jewish survival rather than religious hegemony.
The speech by President Rivlin was not the cause of the Israeli action in al Aqsa. The immediate cause was the hurling of boulders, stored in the mosque, from the Temple Mount onto Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below.
I am surprised that a political commentator buys the line that this caused the Hamas attacks on Israel. I suppose he believes that assassination of Archduke Ferdinand caused the first world war.
“I suppose he believes that assassination of Archduke Ferdinand caused the first world war.”
Didn’t it? Sure, there were many, many other factors at work. So many that it becomes impossible to single out just one. In which case, the most directly proximate cause is as good a candidate as any, especially considering the shady context behind the assassination itself — the presence of a rogue state (Serbia) on the borders of “the lynchpin of European security”, the salience within that state of an aggressive, semi-official terrorist organisation (think Hamas/Palestine, almost), and the way Russia was providing resources, diplomatic support and encouragement to said terrorist organisation. It turns out that a lot of the Great Power dynamics usually cited as the “real” causes of the war, to which the assassination was supposedly incidental, are actually embodied in the assassination itself.
“Didn’t it?”
No. Nothing more than a pretext
A pretext for whom? And what, then, was the real cause?
Imperialism, nationalism and economics. The system of alliances didn’t exactly help. Europe was a tinderbox just waiting for a spark.
Might I make the suggestion that Jerusalem be turned into an independent city where all religions can go? The visiters, guides etc would have to be checked first ( incase of weapons or explosives etc)and stay on the outskirts in hotels. The city could be guarded by UN troops ( who don’t belong to any three main religions involved ) because at the moment noone is happy with the situation.
People of all religions CAN go! This was not the case before 1967 when Jews were forbidden to enter the old city. Thousands of Muslims regularly enter the temple mount complex with restrictions only in periods of tension. The Palestinian ‘president’ has already said that he doesn’t want ‘filthy Jewish feet’ on the temple mount. this does not augur well for the future if this ‘moderate’ Palestinian were to gain control of the eastern half of the city.
But if I drop a lighted match into the tinderbox – especially if deliberately – then that is the cause of the explosion. If FF had not been shot that day, then things might have turned out differently. If only.
with respect, I don’t think so. Something else would have happened real or iagined.
“The act, shocking and brazen even in this bare description…”
Um, no it’s not. Your right to swing your fist ends short of when it hits my nose, and your right to pour noise into the commons is similarly limited. I don’t know anything about this incident, but if you want to convince me that it was shocking or brazen a “bare description” will not suffice.
Your right to swing your fist ends short of when it hits my nose, and your right to pour noise into the commons is similarly limited.
Glad you made that point.
People seem to have no trouble understanding why physical violence is unacceptable, yet appear incapable of grasping the fact that noise can be an even more violent aggression against one’s neighbour.
ForcIng one’s noise into the public arena is a form of mind control, affecting the soul at deep levels. This applies equally to invasive calls to prayer as to playing loud rock music through your open window into your neighbour’s home.
It’s a common form of torture, actually
And of course, Israel as a civilisation state would in my view be able to free itself from the logic of an existential conflict with its Arab citizens or the Palestinians outside its borders. These groups may appear as a threat to the idea of Israel as a nation. They would not be a threat to the historical project of carrying Jewish civilisation into the future.
The man is delusional. Without stating it, he is proposing all jews leave what is the state of Israel and the West Bank.
I’m unfamiliar with Bruno Maçães, but to say that “the rise of Naftali Bennett suggests religious Zionism is no longer a priority” is idiotic and exposes the fact that the author has no real understanding of the Jewish Homeland, Zionism, and modern day Israel.
Whether politically left, middle or right-wing leaning, the average Jewish-Israeli citizen, from the secular to the religious ultra-orthodox, will always vote for national security as a their primary ballot box concern. Bennett is a Zionist, a nationalist, and a militarist… he is little concerned with a resolution of the Palestinian “problem”, the majority of whom live in 3rd and 4th generation refugee camps in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. When’s the last time the major media outlets covered the squalid lives of the 2.5 million ethnic Palestinians residing in Jordan, peoples who have no rights of citizenship? The 20% of the Israeli citizenry who are not Jewish have ALL rights of citizenship, and are represented in all aspects of Israeli culture and business, including the upper echelons of the military and as members of the Knesset, being Israeli’s version of Congress.
“But liberalism is something that Israel has defeated. It is hardly a coincidence that illiberal thinkers such as Leo Strauss learned their political philosophy in the school of Zionism, since every line of Theodor Herzl is proof of the fact that liberalism failed to solve the Jewish question in the 19th and 20th centuries… Herzl went much farther. Liberalism meant for the Jews the very real danger of spiritual and physical death.”
Interesting article. However I am very confused by this claim. Herzl indeed criticised the European states of his time for failing to protect their Jewish minority, but he was a liberal thinker through-and-through. Any good faith reading of his works confirms this. So to present Herzl and by extension Israel as uniquely illiberal seems misleading.
You clearly know more about Herzl than I do but, as I had understood, wasn’t his criticism directed at European nationalism rather than European states qua states? Certainly that would have been a typical experience for minorities living through the dissolution of Austria-Hungary as its constituents embraced forms of nationalism that would be in tension with the identities of their minority residents.
Yes – sorry my comment was poorly worded. Similarly I’m no expert on Herzl. However I get the impression that his criticism had many parts – on one hand, populist politicians’ tendency to stir anti-semitism among the masses, and on the other, social Darwinists and their (widespread) claim that the Jewish race was inferior. In many ways I think it was not a criticism so much as a realisation that the Jewish people couldn’t live in safety due to the omnipresence of anti-semitic attitudes in Europe. So yes it was not directed at ‘states’ to the best of my understanding but rather the growth of anti-semitism among their people. Thank you for pointing this out.
Thanks for taking the time to reply!
“If Israel were to become a civilisation-state, its anchor would be the long and manifold Jewish tradition. It would be the state which today represented that tradition in all its aspects. Such a state might well have a territory and a people, but it would not be defined by them.”
So it might NOT have a territory and a people? How is this a State?
I found this article difficult to understand. It seemed to me to be confused and confusing.
Is the term “civilisational state” an accepted term in political science? If so, what does it actually mean? What is its relationship to physical occupation of territory?
I’m not a political scientist, so could someone help me out here please?
By the way universalism doesn’t exist in the Western Democracies or anywhere. To get anywhere minorities have to integrate. The traditional collective history of most Western Democracies is the one that is taken as the history of the country, not other more recent residents.
A lot European countries have crosses on the flag, have bank holidays on christian days and the majority cultural language is christian. None of this makes this British Jew not feel at home here. It is home.
Many Muslim countries have crescents on the flag, in their constitutions have statements about sharia being a guide to the national law and also statements about Islam being that the state religion and people belonging to the Arab people, in the Arab homeland. A country like Turkey doesn’t even recognise the culture of the Kurdish minority who has no other cultural representation.
Why talk about the star of david and the blue strips excluding Muslim, when crescents on flags appear everywhere road the region. Israel is the most liberal country in the region, that’s why you get pride there. The new religious muslim coalition partner in government has said it will block pro-LGBT legislation suggested by the ultra-liberal party Meretz. It makes mockery of self described LGBT supporters, who mock Israeli pride events. Intersectionality puts LGBT rights very low in the hierarchy.
…Just become another multiple
Cultures sham of a nation like those in Western Europe, with their ever deepening divisions and libtard self hatred… seems to be the sum of this
Every country considers nationalism a good idea to promote and instill into their children’s heads, except those one in the West. Yet it seems no justice fighters in the West is willing to pay attention to (let alone critique) this common sense prevailing outside their echo chamber.
Israel is the new Sparta, tough, laconic, organised.
The Palestinians on the other hand are the new Helots.
Someone has to be, it was, and always will be thus.