No. of Recommendations: 4
What explains the outpouring of protest against Israel and the concurrent hatred toward Jews
I see these as two separate issues that must be dealt with separately. And I'll take the second one first.
There is no excuse for a blanket hatred of Jews for any reason. None. We've tried that several times throughout history, and they've all been wrong. Every last one of them. And this is no different. It is wrong, full stop.
Protesting against the nation Israel for it's response to the Gaza attack is fair game. To say the issue is complicated is to not even begin to scratch the surface. In my overly simplified view, the question is a matter of finding a balance between the right of Israel to protect its national sovereignty and the right of the Palestinian non-combatants in Gaza to live. Both sides are basically espousing a genocide against the other. Neither of those goals is tenable. Neither can be allowed to happen.
Protesting against the current state of Israel's response is, in the USA, an important part of our right to free speech. But when that speech crosses over into hate speech against people with no connection to this current fighting between Israel and Hamas, the right to free speech is exceeded. When the protest becomes violent or destructive, it has exceeded the bounds of the right to free speech.
I find this writer's attempt to conflate things further by introducing capitalism silly at best and potentially disingenuous.
The writer is right in that the problem is in the human heart. But that problem isn't capitalism.
--Peter
