Belgian PM Says Denying Israel's Right to Exist is Anti-Semitism
It is acceptable to criticize Israel’s policies, according to Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. But when people deny Israel’s right to exist, they have moved into anti-Semitism, he said.
Verhofstadt, who spoke at yesterday’s opening ceremony of the new Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, said he did not consider the EU’s policies toward Israel anti-Semitic even though the EU often critizes Israeli policy. But “when you’re tackling and directly criticizing Israel or the Jewish community, that’s anti-Semitism,” he said.
Verhofstadt also defended Israel’s Law of Return, which applies only to Jews, because it forms “the basic idea of the foundation of the State of Israel.” He added that other countries have similar policies. “It’s not the monopoly of Israel,” he said.
With the new reality in the Middle East following Arafat’s death, Verhofstadt said, Belgium and the EU would try to advance the peace process by pressuring Israel as well as the Palestinians. Such pressure, he said, should not be seen as a threat to Israel’s security.
the Extremist Messianic Kahanist disease is spreading
Recognizing that the discrmination against a particularly Jewish national self-determination in Israel while promoting other nationalist movements is antisemitic cannot reasonably be characterized as “Extremist Messianic Kahanist.”
“[T]he restoration of human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only thorugh the restoration of national rights. The conception of human rights, based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships — except that they were still human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstrat nakedness of being human” (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951).
soooo…if we criticize say the French or the Belgians as a people, or criticize the decisions of their governments, are we necessarily either hating them or contributing (even unknowingly) to hatred of French or Belgian peoples? This is stupid. Stop playing semantic games. Jew-hatred is hatred of Jews, wishing them harm on the basis of their birth, or religious convictions. Governments, as no Jew let alone anybody with any sense of history should have to be told, are as a rule slimy, criminal, nefarious, ruthless and arrogant, even in the best of possible circumstances. Identifying (all) Jews with various governments was the basis for various destructive Brituish Empire policies and the popular delusion that later surfaced in book form as the Protocols. Identifying a people with their government is at best hatefully simple and at worst racism. It is truly disturbing that during World War Two the US took great care to specify that we sought the destruction of Hitler, of a cabal of evil conspirators that had taken Germany hostage, not of the German people or even its government (and a similar story was used for Japan, retaining the Emporer and going after Tojo), but the Israeli fans think it is helpful to connect people and the actions of a finite human government. The surest way to more trouble for Jews is 1:1 parity with any government anywhere.
“[T]he restoration of human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only thorugh the restoration of national rights.”
This is a deeply anti-American sentiment, if anything is. Is nobody safe unless they move back to their Heimat (oops, sorry Pallies, you don’t get one because you don’t exist)? The answer to racism is to give up and seek massive concentration and segregation, as indeed the KKK says? It is also a worthless statement for those who do not follow the rather religious idea that Israel or the United States for that matter has any concept of “human” rights. The paragfrasph is impenetrably bad, and in keeping with Jewish chauvenism skips neatly over the problem of the numnerous other categories that would get you into a camp: being a full-blooded German with the wrong political convictions (where’s their Heimat?), being homosexual (where’s their Heimat?), being Gypsy (where’s their Heimat?), being a Jehovah’s Witness (where can they move to, to be safe by dint of national reality?). And does Arendt seriously imagine that there was a conception of human rights in the Age of Empire? This deeply sick “humanism” breaks down as soon as race is considered. Read Sven Lindqvist.
sorry about teh bda sellping. it cannot be hpleed.
Need to chill
jeez Zionista did I have to add “and by the way I was being sarcastic”.? I mean my whole point that at least three Jewschool editors probably think he was being a Zionist extremist.
I can only see the words you write, alexbmn. If you want to inject more tone in your prose, learn how to be a better writer.
“I can only see the words you write, alexbmn. If you want to inject more tone in your prose, learn how to be a better writer.”
See, that was sarcasm.
k&y: +1 insightful,
Does this mean he expects me to recognize Belgium’s right to exist?
Because I won’t do it.
No kidding! Belgium doesn’t even have a freaking langugage: they’re like an appendix of France overlapping a lost bit of the Netherlands. They’re a British propaganda talking-point from 1914. The Belgians have never existed (except, paradoxically, in the Congo).
There is of course a difference between a right to exist, and a right to exist as a state that discriminates against minority groups
John Brown,
I submit that the crux of the arguments against Zionism boil down to holding Jews, nationally, to a higher standard of civic requirements than is otherwise expected of other nations. Which is by definition discriminatory.
In other words, if Israel’s Law of Return is unjust, then it must follow that Ireland’s, Germany’s, etc. standards of citizenship must likewise be condemned. But only such condemnations of Israel have any real voice in these discussions. As Verhoftadt was quoted, laws like the Law of Return are not unique under the principles of national self-determination “It’s not the monopoly of Israel,” he said.
One down, 6 billion to go.
“they love us, they really love us”
(non-exhaustive list on Headheeb.)