14 Aralık 2005 Çarşamba

Ahmadinejad moves Israel yet again

Ahmadinejad moves Israel yet again

On live TV, he called for Europe or North America - even Alaska - to host a Jewish state, not the Middle East.




In which case this moose menorah might be useful.

Don't get me wrong, I've got some serious problems with Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial. (I also have problems with western European states that make Holocaust denial illegal - the best way to expose an idiot idea is to EXPOSE it, not silence it.) But amidst the rhetoric, there's a point to consider:

Since the de facto raison d'etre for the state of Israel is the Holocaust, why isn't it the states that committed the Holocaust that give up territory for a Jewish state? And while we're at it, wasn't it the Romans who initiated the Diaspora in the first place? Doesn't somebody owe someone a piece of Italy?

(Latin and French in one sentence. Pretty pretentious, no?)

The first Jewish "state" (or territory) was the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia. Granted, that was a cynical propaganda ploy by Stalin, but back in the early days of Zionism, Theodor Herzl himself proposed a Jewish state in Uganda. Just like today, a very European answer: "we feel guilty about historic wrongs, so we'll give you a piece of someone ELSE's land."

All this reduces the argument to the absurd.

Which is my point. I really have no right to have any say over this unless I book the next flight back to Sweden. There have been a lot of holocausts and my ancestors are responsible for some. But I'm not doing that. Some historic wrongs can't be fully corrected or atoned. They must be acknowledged, and never forgotten. But trying to make up for it with land just creates new injustices. My consistent belief is that people should be able to live and work where they want, in equality under the law, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, or even Mexican (a whole 'nother set of issues...)

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