Hasbara! Hasbara! Hasbara! It’s stupid, it’s dumb, it’s everywhere.
One need only to cough a word like “Israel“, “Palestine”, “hummus” and hasbara will appear faster than a spambot selling “1OO L3g1T V11^GR^ 4 0nl1 $19.99!” to tell you how wonderful Israel is and how terrible Palestinians are.
I thought it would be nice to go through some of the more annoying claims one is likely to encounter.
“We have a right to self-determination like anyone else” Self-determination means, in Zio-talk, an ethnically homogeneous state. Where is this right to an ethnically homogeneous state exactly? It doesn’t exist, quite the opposite. Everyone else has a right to such a state? No they don’t. This is just a way to frame racism as something acceptable and normative, it isn’t, there’s no such right and no other state claims such a right.
If we had a state for every single ethnic/religious/racial/national group out there, we would have thousands if not tens of thousands of states, and a complete mess of territorial boundaries (and probably a nuclear war or 10). Imagine separating America into people groups and assigning each a state.. now imagine that worldwide. We should be striving for greater acceptance of diversity, not indulging in Hitler’s wet dream.
There is no “right to self-determination” the way Israel phrases it, as an ethnically-pure state for one people. Israel is denying the Palestinians their rights of self-determination.
“We have an [Palestinian] Arab on the Supreme Court” – Yes, there is one, the second in the entire history of the existence of the Supreme Court (the other one served a whopping 9 months) this totally eliminates the existence of racism and apartheid, just like electing Obama ended racism in the United States once and for all. There are also Palestinian Israelis in the Knesset, and due to the nature and racism of the Knesset, they have never been invited to be part of any coalition government which means they exist only as token figures with no real power.
“There has been a [2,000/3,000/4,000/We circumcised the dinosaurs] uninterrupted Jewish presence in Palestine.” Yes, some Jews have lived in the area that is known as Palestine for a long time. They lived there along with other groups, they intermarried, some converted to Christianity and Islam and other religions. None of that gives you a right to kick out people who were living on that land because you want an ethnically pure state and they interfere with that.
We aren’t ethnically cleansing people to revive the Roman empire, the Mongolian empire or any other empire.
“Living in equality = genocide” – This is an exceedingly dumb claim that is constantly put out by Zionists and White Genocide morons. Yes, living in a multicultural society where everyone has the same rights regardless of race/ethnicity/religion/sexual orientation/gender = genocide. With Zionists, it’s usually “They’re going to throw all the Jews in the sea!!!!!!!!!!”
OK, first, many Palestinians have not even had any access to the sea, I wager the first thing they will do when they can access the sea is go for a swim themselves. Second, “Jews” you mean all the Jews who don’t live in Israel are going to be magnetically pulled there and thrown into the sea? No, you mean Israelis, some of whom have been complicit in occupation for decades, who aren’t going to be thrown into the sea but may face tribunals for war crimes that they have committed(teh horrorz!!!).
There is no reason Palestinians and Israeli Jews cannot live side by side. They did so for centuries. Yes, decades of occupation will breed some hostility. No, you don’t get to claim “Jew hatred” for people being pissed at how you’ve treated them.
Racism is bad. You don’t have a right to a racist state. Get over it.
Oh and the notion that Jews are some special sort of human that can’t coexist with other groups is racist as hell and channels the worst anti-Semitic tropes of the last few centuries.
“Israelis invent lots of stuff” – 1. This claim is completely exaggerated. 2. If I invent something, is it OK for me to move into your house and shoot you and your family if you object? No? Why are you trying to delegitimise me? There is nothing about ending the occupation that would preclude Israeli Jews from continuing to invent stuff (unless it is war stuff and they’d like to test that war stuff on Palestinians before marketing it to violent regimes, in which case, I think we’re better off without it).
This is but a small sampling of what you may encounter in HasbaraWorld. Please stay tuned for more instalments where we will cover such gems as “Israel needs to torture teenagers for self-defence” and “Islam: it has nothing to do with the land dispute in Palestine but lets bring up bigoted stereotypes anyway.”