One group sought to expel and irradicate a perceived enemy within. The other group travelled to a foreign land and did the same to its occupants.
Who are those groups? Germany eradicated Jews both in Germany and in the lands it conquered. Israel certainly didn't "travel to a foreign land" to eradicate the untermensch or anything like that, and it never tried to expel or eradicate a "perceived enemy within". It was, and still is, trying to defend itself from people who are openly (and might I add, proudly) trying to destroy it.
I would say they are both terrible, and neither is "better" or "worse".
Are you really comparing the Nazi genocide to the tiny regional conflict that is Israel/Palestine?
The very idea is so outlandishly stupid that I have nothing to tell you but... read a history book. Get a little perspective. By demonizing small (alleged) crimes, you're condoning colossal atrocities.
It's impossible to argue about what you really meant, but your post clearly implies that the difference between Israel and the Nazis is that at least the Nazis weren't colonists in their own land. That is, you're painting the Israelis in a bad light, and the Nazis look good in comparison.
You have to be pretty naive to think otherwise. If I say "Curtman and Hitler are not the same... Hitler actually had charisma, Curtman was just a slashdot troll", then I'm implying (jokingly perhaps, but while being a bit of a dick), that you're just like Hitler, but without the charisma.
But you know what, if you insist, let's chalk it up to poor writing skills and not (as I suspect) to backpedaling from an obviously stupid assertion.
A number does not identify a physical person. A tattoo code does. A photo/name combination does. A lonely number identifies nothing:)
Ah... Maybe, but what's your point? Israelis have a national ID, that includes a photo, a name, and all kinds of other details, including a unique ID number.
It seemed to me that the GP was mostly upset by the "ID number" aspect, so I pointed out that it already exists...
You also occasionally see posts on here about "Niggers" and "Frosty Piss". There's a lot of stupid things said in an open forum. You don't blame the forum though.
True, but irrelevant.
A person who calls people "niggers" is a racist fuck or an asshole, who likes to use racist language to annoy people. You don't start making excuses for him, saying that he was only "criticizing the politics of black separatists".
There is no excuse. It's exactly the same thing. Except for the religion.
I'm not sure what you mean... care to explain?
In any case, I've often heard the the problems in Africa/Middle East are caused by the decades of European colonization, and I've never heard anyone saying that Africans/Arabs should be held to a higher moral standard than everybody else (because they are victims of oppression, and should know better, etc.).
Well, that's just like saying that "Germany was reacting to threats of regular military attacks" after they occupied neighboring countries.
No. Hitler was bent on world (or at least, European) domination. He never tried to hide that fact.
Israel just tries to keep its own, tiny territory (try to find it on a world map, I dare you - it's a tiny speck of color). Comparing it with the Nazi world domination scheme is ludicrous to the point of being offensive.
Fast forward, Israel invades Palestine. Palestine and its allies fight back. Israel wins
Wrong. Israel can't invade Palestine, if only because there was no "Israel" outside of mandatorial Palestine. The second reason is that Arab countries didn't consider Palestine to be a distinct entity - for the "Palestinian Allies", Israel was occupying Western Jordan (before that, Southern Syria). And the third, most important reason was that the Arab countries started the war! No one, including the Arabs, claims otherwise. Israel was created as part of a UN resolution, but the Arab countries wouldn't let Jews to have even the tiniest bit of land for themselves, so they tried to eradicate Israel, but failed miserably.
How you managed to turn that into "Israel invaded Palestine" is a mystery.
As for ubermensch and undermensh, I'm pretty sure the idea behind the occupation of Palestine is to completely remove the Arab population and substitute them with a Jewish population. Not much of a difference there, eh buddy?
No. The original idea was for a Palestine to be divided between an Arab and a Jewish state, coexisting peacefully. The Jews accepted the idea, but the Arabs wouldn't accept anything but a 100% Arab Arabia, so they tried to destroy Israel by force. After that, the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs became pretty hostile. But even then, over a million Arabs remained in Israel (~20% of Israeli population is Arab), receiving full rights as citizens. How's that "completely removing the Arab population"?
When you invade a neighboring country
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about. Ah, wait, you mean the six-day war? You do realize that the "neighboring country" (or rather, countries) was Jordan and Egypt, who later relinquished their claims to that land?
a couple things happen: a) people start violently resisting the occupation and b) your other neighbors suddenly hate you and make a military move against you.
I'm sorry, but at this point I have nothing to tell you but "read a history book". The hostilities between the Arabs and the Jews started way before 1967. Even the PLO was formed in 1964, back when what you seem to call "Palestine" was still a part of Jordan and Egypt.
I love it when people are reduced to personal insults. It means they realize they are wrong.
Of course it does. Like, if I say that your mom is a crack whore, and you'll tell me to fuck off, that would be obvious proof that your mother does, in fact, suck dick for crack.
The moment you start implying that Israelis are worse than the Nazis, the rational debate is over. I have nothing to add to the discussion (I'm not going to prove to you that the Nazis were much much worse than the Israelis - read a history book), aside from pointing out that you're being an asshole.
Aah, so not by law. I should be able to track that down. In that case it will be a diffuse system of requirements that in effect makes it near impossible for israeli arabs to join.
Not true. I personally know a Muslim (of mixed Bedouin-Falakh ancestry) that was in the army. There are whole Bedouin clans that regularly join the army, and they don't seem to have much of a problem.
The main reason that there aren't many non-Bedouin Arabs in the IDF is because (pretty understandably) Israeli Arabs don't want to fight their Palestinian brothers. There was a huge uproar in the Arab-Israeli community when the government proposed civilian service as an non-military alternative for Arabs. The reasoning was that it was a slippery slope, a gateway to recruiting Arabs to the army (even though there wasn't a shred of evidence for this).
The rubble that was the city of Beirut disagrees with you.
You mean, the rubble that was the Hizbollah-built Dakhie neighborhood, that's only a small part of Beirut. Oh wait, you mean you didn't know that all of these gruesome photos come from a small part of the city? Tsk tsk.
In any case, what the hell does it has to do with human rights in Israel or the fact that the Israeli/Arab conflict is blown out of proportion?
If you want to draw a tie between Nazis and the Israeli State, you're going to have to work harder.
Yeah.. The Nazis were already in Germany. The Israelies stole the land of their undermensch and forced them out.
That is, the only difference between the Israelis and the Nazis is that Israelis were colonists as well.
I know that you might've just said it because you thought it's a cool rhetorical device, and that you don't really believe that. But guess what, when making outrageous quips, you are making outrageous claims. The only difference is that you're also being a dick about it.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot, the home of rabid antisemitism
I don't see a lot of antisemitism here. I see a lot of outrage and disgust at the injustices that go on in that part of the world, and at the Western nations blindly supporting the aggressor.
Since the GP was only talking about the Jews, never actually mentioning Israelis, the parent post's claim is much more logical than your own.
I think the reason is because the people there went directly from being oppressed to doing the opressing. They should know better.
I seriously doubt that. If only because many people who compare Israel to the Nazis are also holocaust deniers (I'm talking about Arab countries/Iran, where "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is still a bestseller).
To be honest, I think the actual reason is actually pretty complex. For example, I wrote a paper about anti-Israeli cartoons in the Soviet Union, and I discovered that the Soviets probably invented that whole Israelis=Nazis idea, back in the 1960s. In fact, while constantly describing Israelis as Nazis, they stopped using Nazi symbolism (swastikas etc.) to describe actual, historical Nazis, describing them as simply stereotypical Germans (lederhosen, iron crosses). The Soviets' reasons were pretty complex, ranging from the attempt to cast US/Israel as the new "national enemy" (you have to remember that the Nazis are remembered as bitter enemies in Russia), to the obnoxious use of traditional antisemitic feelings and symbolism, and of course, there was also the implicit holocaust denial (official Russian sources never mentioned that the Jews had any special connection to the holocaust. the offical claim was that "Russian, Polish, and others" died in the camps).
As for the adoption of this demagoguery by some supposedly free-thinking people, I can't say. Maybe it makes them feel better about their own, often deeply antisemtic past, maybe it makes a good story, and maybe it's just a "big lie" phenomenon. I don't know.
What I can say is that holding people to a much higher standard just because they were oppressed/massacred just 60 years ago makes no sense, and if that's the case, it's applied only to the Jews (look no further than the elaborate excuses we make for the victims of European colonization).
You also have to conveniently forget their conflicts with Lebanon, Egypt, etc though. The Israeli/Palestine conflict involves much more than just Isarael -vs- the Palestinian people.
OK, let me correct myself.
More people have died as a result of the current Iraq war than in the whole Israeli/Arab conflict since 1948.
Roughly two to ten times more, according to Wikipedia.
You'd also have to be a geopolitical novice to not realize that, from a geopolitical point of view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perhaps the most important conflict currently occurring.
It is disproportionally important, but so what?
Well that depends on whose human rights you are talking about.
No it doesn't. Even convicted terrorists get much better treatment in Israel than any given Jew in Nazi Germany.
This thing will not pass. Most people here read 1984 =).
You know, I wish that was true. But think about it, SHAS can pass all kinds of wonderful anti-porn laws, simply because there is no real liberal, civil-rights-oriented block in the Knesset. Kadima? Labor? You must be kidding me. Merets? Maybe Zehava Gal'on can vote against it, if she remembers to show up.
I think only thing that can stop it (that is, aside from the Supreme Court, that allowed all kinds of crap in the past) is the simple fact that it takes time and money, and if there's anything Israeli officials hate is wasting money on anything but short-term political stunts (and padding their own pockets of course).
I think the law will pass, but it will languish in implementation hell, just like the Tel Aviv subway.
How long until some uniformed Israeli soldier struts up to a family and arrogantly demands, "Your papers. Immediately!"
You seem to be under the impression that Israel doesn't already has a national ID ("papers"). Actually, Israelis always had "papers". The biometric ID is meant to complement the already existing paper ID.
I should also note that the fear of an official national ID is a strange Anglo-American phobia. Western European countries, such as Belgium or Germany have those, and they seem to be doing very well. In fact, they seem much more "free" than the paranoid War-on-Whatever-we-feel-like USA or the surveillance-happy UK to me.
PS. The current Israeli government may suck, but calling the Kadima-Labor coalition "right-wing" just makes you looks ignorant.
Dude, it's not the Israeli Jews who will suffer here. It's the indigenous population. The Palestinians.
They are the ones who will suffer.
Says who?
From what I've heard, the biometric ID will supplement Israel's already-existing national ID. Its stated purpose is to combat forgery and identity theft (...), as well as convenience (you don't have to carry your ID/driver's license around all of the time). So, at the very least, The Jews are are going to suffer from this.
As for the Palestinians... well they don't have Israeli IDs since they are not Israeli citizens (the PA issues its own IDs). However, most of them have to go to Israel to work, or to visit family members, so they need a special Israeli permit. Now, you'd say that biometric measures would be added to those permits as well, and I think you'd be right. But the question here is, how is that going to make them suffer?
You see, one of the crappier parts of being a Palestinian is that a tiny piece of paper is basically your life. It can be stolen, it can get lost, it can be taken away by asshole soldiers. With biometry, you don't need that piece of paper.
Of course, it might hurt the Palestinians' privacy a bit. But remember that we're talking about people who can have their houses searched, and themselves arrested for arbitrary periods of time, without any real warrant or justification. I don't see how biometric ID can make it worse.
And while Israel's policies toward Palestine are not identical to Nazi Germany's toward the Jews, there sure are depressing similarities.
No. Not really.
You could find much better analogies in the USSR (or even modern-day Russia), Belarus, various Arab and Central Asian (Uzbekistan, Turkeminstan) countries, China, South Korea and so on.
And yet, Israel is compared to the Nazis more than any of those.
You want objectivity? The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a tiny and relatively bloodless regional conflict.
More people died in the current Iraq war than in the whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict since 1948. Hell, I think more people died in the first two months of the Iraq war than in the whole 2nd Intifada. And that's just one example. I'm sure that I could find dozens of others (Russia/Chechnya springs to mind...)
Saying that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is anything like Nazi Germany is the furthest thing from "facts" or "objectivity". It's a crazy hyperbole, a cheap (and indeed, offensive) rhetoric trick.
But what does taste have to do with it? Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?
Very simple. The comparison isn't apt. It's ludicrous.
You have to be a hardcore holocaust denier to claim that the Nazis' genocidal campaign comes close to the tiny regional conflict between Israel and Palestine. You have to be incredibly ignorant (or incredibly biased) to claim that human rights in Israel are as bad as they were in Nazi Germany.
And yet, this stupid meme lives on.
Why? Maybe because it creates a nice narrative symmetry. Maybe because it makes some people feel better about their own, often deeply antisemitic history. Maybe because it's outrageous enough to make the evening news.
Needless to say, these are not good reasons. The automatic comparison of Israel with the Nazis is primitive demagoguery and an outrageous lie.
Slashdot Mirror
One group sought to expel and irradicate a perceived enemy within. The other group travelled to a foreign land and did the same to its occupants.
Who are those groups? Germany eradicated Jews both in Germany and in the lands it conquered. Israel certainly didn't "travel to a foreign land" to eradicate the untermensch or anything like that, and it never tried to expel or eradicate a "perceived enemy within". It was, and still is, trying to defend itself from people who are openly (and might I add, proudly) trying to destroy it.
I would say they are both terrible, and neither is "better" or "worse".
Are you really comparing the Nazi genocide to the tiny regional conflict that is Israel/Palestine?
The very idea is so outlandishly stupid that I have nothing to tell you but... read a history book. Get a little perspective. By demonizing small (alleged) crimes, you're condoning colossal atrocities.
It's impossible to argue about what you really meant, but your post clearly implies that the difference between Israel and the Nazis is that at least the Nazis weren't colonists in their own land. That is, you're painting the Israelis in a bad light, and the Nazis look good in comparison.
You have to be pretty naive to think otherwise. If I say "Curtman and Hitler are not the same... Hitler actually had charisma, Curtman was just a slashdot troll", then I'm implying (jokingly perhaps, but while being a bit of a dick), that you're just like Hitler, but without the charisma.
But you know what, if you insist, let's chalk it up to poor writing skills and not (as I suspect) to backpedaling from an obviously stupid assertion.
A number does not identify a physical person. A tattoo code does. A photo/name combination does. A lonely number identifies nothing :)
Ah... Maybe, but what's your point? Israelis have a national ID, that includes a photo, a name, and all kinds of other details, including a unique ID number.
It seemed to me that the GP was mostly upset by the "ID number" aspect, so I pointed out that it already exists...
You also occasionally see posts on here about "Niggers" and "Frosty Piss". There's a lot of stupid things said in an open forum. You don't blame the forum though.
True, but irrelevant.
A person who calls people "niggers" is a racist fuck or an asshole, who likes to use racist language to annoy people. You don't start making excuses for him, saying that he was only "criticizing the politics of black separatists".
You have to assume that the current Iraq war isn't just an extension of this same stupid conflict
You mean the Iraq war is part of the Israeli/Arab conflict? That's the first time I've heard of that bizarre idea.
and that people are starting to forget what they are even fighting about anymore.
What do you mean? Are you talking about Israel/Arabs or the Iraq war, or...? And in any case, so what?
There is no excuse. It's exactly the same thing. Except for the religion.
I'm not sure what you mean... care to explain?
In any case, I've often heard the the problems in Africa/Middle East are caused by the decades of European colonization, and I've never heard anyone saying that Africans/Arabs should be held to a higher moral standard than everybody else (because they are victims of oppression, and should know better, etc.).
Well, that's just like saying that "Germany was reacting to threats of regular military attacks" after they occupied neighboring countries.
No. Hitler was bent on world (or at least, European) domination. He never tried to hide that fact.
Israel just tries to keep its own, tiny territory (try to find it on a world map, I dare you - it's a tiny speck of color). Comparing it with the Nazi world domination scheme is ludicrous to the point of being offensive.
Fast forward, Israel invades Palestine. Palestine and its allies fight back. Israel wins
Wrong. Israel can't invade Palestine, if only because there was no "Israel" outside of mandatorial Palestine. The second reason is that Arab countries didn't consider Palestine to be a distinct entity - for the "Palestinian Allies", Israel was occupying Western Jordan (before that, Southern Syria). And the third, most important reason was that the Arab countries started the war! No one, including the Arabs, claims otherwise. Israel was created as part of a UN resolution, but the Arab countries wouldn't let Jews to have even the tiniest bit of land for themselves, so they tried to eradicate Israel, but failed miserably.
How you managed to turn that into "Israel invaded Palestine" is a mystery.
As for ubermensch and undermensh, I'm pretty sure the idea behind the occupation of Palestine is to completely remove the Arab population and substitute them with a Jewish population. Not much of a difference there, eh buddy?
No. The original idea was for a Palestine to be divided between an Arab and a Jewish state, coexisting peacefully. The Jews accepted the idea, but the Arabs wouldn't accept anything but a 100% Arab Arabia, so they tried to destroy Israel by force. After that, the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs became pretty hostile. But even then, over a million Arabs remained in Israel (~20% of Israeli population is Arab), receiving full rights as citizens. How's that "completely removing the Arab population"?
When you invade a neighboring country
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about. Ah, wait, you mean the six-day war? You do realize that the "neighboring country" (or rather, countries) was Jordan and Egypt, who later relinquished their claims to that land?
a couple things happen: a) people start violently resisting the occupation and b) your other neighbors suddenly hate you and make a military move against you.
I'm sorry, but at this point I have nothing to tell you but "read a history book". The hostilities between the Arabs and the Jews started way before 1967. Even the PLO was formed in 1964, back when what you seem to call "Palestine" was still a part of Jordan and Egypt.
I love it when people are reduced to personal insults. It means they realize they are wrong.
Of course it does. Like, if I say that your mom is a crack whore, and you'll tell me to fuck off, that would be obvious proof that your mother does, in fact, suck dick for crack.
The moment you start implying that Israelis are worse than the Nazis, the rational debate is over. I have nothing to add to the discussion (I'm not going to prove to you that the Nazis were much much worse than the Israelis - read a history book), aside from pointing out that you're being an asshole.
"every other nation in the region has a free pass to do anything they want without anyone even looking in their direction"
Free pass? Israel is quietly the most prolific violator of UN resolutions, violating more than all other Middle Eastern nations combined.
Ahm. You do realize that you're just confirming the parent post's claim?
Aah, so not by law. I should be able to track that down. In that case it will be a diffuse system of requirements that in effect makes it near impossible for israeli arabs to join.
Not true. I personally know a Muslim (of mixed Bedouin-Falakh ancestry) that was in the army. There are whole Bedouin clans that regularly join the army, and they don't seem to have much of a problem.
The main reason that there aren't many non-Bedouin Arabs in the IDF is because (pretty understandably) Israeli Arabs don't want to fight their Palestinian brothers. There was a huge uproar in the Arab-Israeli community when the government proposed civilian service as an non-military alternative for Arabs. The reasoning was that it was a slippery slope, a gateway to recruiting Arabs to the army (even though there wasn't a shred of evidence for this).
The rubble that was the city of Beirut disagrees with you.
You mean, the rubble that was the Hizbollah-built Dakhie neighborhood, that's only a small part of Beirut. Oh wait, you mean you didn't know that all of these gruesome photos come from a small part of the city? Tsk tsk.
In any case, what the hell does it has to do with human rights in Israel or the fact that the Israeli/Arab conflict is blown out of proportion?
I didn't say it. You did.
Oh really? Let me see...
If you want to draw a tie between Nazis and the Israeli State, you're going to have to work harder.
Yeah.. The Nazis were already in Germany. The Israelies stole the land of their undermensch and forced them out.
That is, the only difference between the Israelis and the Nazis is that Israelis were colonists as well.
I know that you might've just said it because you thought it's a cool rhetorical device, and that you don't really believe that. But guess what, when making outrageous quips, you are making outrageous claims. The only difference is that you're also being a dick about it.
To quote the P [slashdot.org]:
Oh wait, this is Slashdot, the home of rabid antisemitism
I don't see a lot of antisemitism here. I see a lot of outrage and disgust at the injustices that go on in that part of the world, and at the Western nations blindly supporting the aggressor.
Since the GP was only talking about the Jews, never actually mentioning Israelis, the parent post's claim is much more logical than your own.
I think the reason is because the people there went directly from being oppressed to doing the opressing. They should know better.
I seriously doubt that. If only because many people who compare Israel to the Nazis are also holocaust deniers (I'm talking about Arab countries/Iran, where "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is still a bestseller).
To be honest, I think the actual reason is actually pretty complex. For example, I wrote a paper about anti-Israeli cartoons in the Soviet Union, and I discovered that the Soviets probably invented that whole Israelis=Nazis idea, back in the 1960s. In fact, while constantly describing Israelis as Nazis, they stopped using Nazi symbolism (swastikas etc.) to describe actual, historical Nazis, describing them as simply stereotypical Germans (lederhosen, iron crosses). The Soviets' reasons were pretty complex, ranging from the attempt to cast US/Israel as the new "national enemy" (you have to remember that the Nazis are remembered as bitter enemies in Russia), to the obnoxious use of traditional antisemitic feelings and symbolism, and of course, there was also the implicit holocaust denial (official Russian sources never mentioned that the Jews had any special connection to the holocaust. the offical claim was that "Russian, Polish, and others" died in the camps).
As for the adoption of this demagoguery by some supposedly free-thinking people, I can't say. Maybe it makes them feel better about their own, often deeply antisemtic past, maybe it makes a good story, and maybe it's just a "big lie" phenomenon. I don't know.
What I can say is that holding people to a much higher standard just because they were oppressed/massacred just 60 years ago makes no sense, and if that's the case, it's applied only to the Jews (look no further than the elaborate excuses we make for the victims of European colonization).
You also have to conveniently forget their conflicts with Lebanon, Egypt, etc though. The Israeli/Palestine conflict involves much more than just Isarael -vs- the Palestinian people.
OK, let me correct myself.
More people have died as a result of the current Iraq war than in the whole Israeli/Arab conflict since 1948.
Roughly two to ten times more, according to Wikipedia.
You'd also have to be a geopolitical novice to not realize that, from a geopolitical point of view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perhaps the most important conflict currently occurring.
It is disproportionally important, but so what?
Well that depends on whose human rights you are talking about.
No it doesn't. Even convicted terrorists get much better treatment in Israel than any given Jew in Nazi Germany.
But they have the same bureaucratic effect: reducing the person to a number.
This is a non-issue. Every Israeli citizen already has a unique national ID number.
This thing will not pass. Most people here read 1984 =).
You know, I wish that was true. But think about it, SHAS can pass all kinds of wonderful anti-porn laws, simply because there is no real liberal, civil-rights-oriented block in the Knesset. Kadima? Labor? You must be kidding me. Merets? Maybe Zehava Gal'on can vote against it, if she remembers to show up.
I think only thing that can stop it (that is, aside from the Supreme Court, that allowed all kinds of crap in the past) is the simple fact that it takes time and money, and if there's anything Israeli officials hate is wasting money on anything but short-term political stunts (and padding their own pockets of course).
I think the law will pass, but it will languish in implementation hell, just like the Tel Aviv subway.
How long until some uniformed Israeli soldier struts up to a family and arrogantly demands, "Your papers. Immediately!"
You seem to be under the impression that Israel doesn't already has a national ID ("papers"). Actually, Israelis always had "papers". The biometric ID is meant to complement the already existing paper ID.
I should also note that the fear of an official national ID is a strange Anglo-American phobia. Western European countries, such as Belgium or Germany have those, and they seem to be doing very well. In fact, they seem much more "free" than the paranoid War-on-Whatever-we-feel-like USA or the surveillance-happy UK to me.
PS. The current Israeli government may suck, but calling the Kadima-Labor coalition "right-wing" just makes you looks ignorant.
Israeli arabs can serve in the army? I didn't know that. Are you sure? Note, I don't mean druze.
They can volunteer. AFAIK all Arabs can join, but only the Bedouins actually do it.
If you want to draw a tie between Nazis and the Israeli State, you're going to have to work harder.
Yeah.. The Nazis were already in Germany. The Israelies stole the land of their undermensch and forced them out.
Wow, you're right, the Israelis are actually worse than the Nazis. And to think that I actually cried while watching Schindler's List...
Asshole.
Dude, it's not the Israeli Jews who will suffer here. It's the indigenous population. The Palestinians.
They are the ones who will suffer.
Says who?
From what I've heard, the biometric ID will supplement Israel's already-existing national ID. Its stated purpose is to combat forgery and identity theft (...), as well as convenience (you don't have to carry your ID/driver's license around all of the time). So, at the very least, The Jews are are going to suffer from this.
As for the Palestinians... well they don't have Israeli IDs since they are not Israeli citizens (the PA issues its own IDs). However, most of them have to go to Israel to work, or to visit family members, so they need a special Israeli permit. Now, you'd say that biometric measures would be added to those permits as well, and I think you'd be right. But the question here is, how is that going to make them suffer?
You see, one of the crappier parts of being a Palestinian is that a tiny piece of paper is basically your life. It can be stolen, it can get lost, it can be taken away by asshole soldiers. With biometry, you don't need that piece of paper.
Of course, it might hurt the Palestinians' privacy a bit. But remember that we're talking about people who can have their houses searched, and themselves arrested for arbitrary periods of time, without any real warrant or justification. I don't see how biometric ID can make it worse.
And while Israel's policies toward Palestine are not identical to Nazi Germany's toward the Jews, there sure are depressing similarities.
No. Not really.
You could find much better analogies in the USSR (or even modern-day Russia), Belarus, various Arab and Central Asian (Uzbekistan, Turkeminstan) countries, China, South Korea and so on.
And yet, Israel is compared to the Nazis more than any of those.
You want objectivity? The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a tiny and relatively bloodless regional conflict. More people died in the current Iraq war than in the whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict since 1948. Hell, I think more people died in the first two months of the Iraq war than in the whole 2nd Intifada. And that's just one example. I'm sure that I could find dozens of others (Russia/Chechnya springs to mind...)
Saying that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is anything like Nazi Germany is the furthest thing from "facts" or "objectivity". It's a crazy hyperbole, a cheap (and indeed, offensive) rhetoric trick.
But what does taste have to do with it? Shouldn't all that matters be the aptness of the comparison?
Very simple. The comparison isn't apt. It's ludicrous.
You have to be a hardcore holocaust denier to claim that the Nazis' genocidal campaign comes close to the tiny regional conflict between Israel and Palestine. You have to be incredibly ignorant (or incredibly biased) to claim that human rights in Israel are as bad as they were in Nazi Germany.
And yet, this stupid meme lives on.
Why? Maybe because it creates a nice narrative symmetry. Maybe because it makes some people feel better about their own, often deeply antisemitic history. Maybe because it's outrageous enough to make the evening news.
Needless to say, these are not good reasons. The automatic comparison of Israel with the Nazis is primitive demagoguery and an outrageous lie.
Do you have to be an antisemite to disagree with the politics of Israel?
To quote the GP:
The creatures outside looked from nazi to jew, and from jew to nazi, and from nazi to jew again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
He didn't even mention Israel.
And this silly knee-jerk reaction modded +5 Insightful... bleh.