Robert Tulip wrote: A key theme here is political attitudes toward cultural relativism, the idea that all cultures are equal, something only supported on the left as part of political correctness. For cultural relativism, the existence of the state of Israel is obnoxious due to Israel's rejection of equality between Jews and Arabs for existential security reasons. Conservatives tend to see Israel as a beacon of modernity in a backward region of the world, while leftists focus on the assumption of cultural equality, against which Israel's security policies are unacceptable, with progressives often tending to ignore the widespread overt Arab anti-Semitism.
I don't think cultural relativism usually asserts that all cultures are equal. Rather the idea is to oppose the pervasive process by which the "winners" write the history and the interpretations and the justifications. Power doesn't determine truth. Cultural relativism, to my understanding, was and is centrally aimed at assessing behavior within a cultural context, and it may or may not apologize for behavior we would rate as unacceptable in our own culture.
Is it wrong for calligraphy quality to help determine whether a scholar should be given a role in power? Is it wrong for Asians to be excluded from opportunities in the economy of America? Is it wrong for resources to be legally assigned as property of whoever first seizes them, rather than in the interest of the general public? Cultural factors can help us make sense of such actions, and we can decide whether we agree with the cultural choices, or indeed whether we approve of the practices, independently of understanding them. What would be fairly shortsided is to impose disapproval of foreign practices simply because they disagree with ours. Some deeper reason is required.
Robert Tulip wrote:The problem here is that people find it impolite to discuss cultural differences. This situation then means that false assumptions fester, while efforts to address festering problems cannot gain political traction. For example Arab illiteracy seems to have roots in Islamic culture, but the taboo on cultural criticism means this major problem is little understood or discussed.
I think you exaggerate the taboo. Among specialists I would be very surprised if anything of significance remains little understood or discussed. Among the general public, such discussions are likely to be largely about emotional expression rather than about gaining understanding.
Robert Tulip wrote:The result is that an evidence-based theory of change cannot be widely discussed, there is wide ignorance of facts, and when people look at the Middle East they jump to the simplistic conclusion of blaming Israel. Together with the growth of simplistic socialism, the result is that anti-Semitic prejudice now finds a natural home on the political left, as seen by the discomfort of Mr Corbyn in straddling the fence of contradictions that this all produces for British Labour.
I think it is only natural to hold the more powerful side in a conflict to a higher standard. "Because we can" is not a valid moral reason for behaving unjustly, but it is quite common for human groups to take that mistaken option, justifying themselves emotionally rather than morally. There is no question that Israel created an ethnic cleansing campaign at its birth, the Nakba. Nor that propagandists created an alternative version in which the village massacres were fictions created by Arab radio and the exodus of Arab Palestinians was entirely voluntary out of ginned-up fear. There is no question that Israel continues to dominate the water resources of the area and allocate them to Jewish farms. There is no question that Israel excludes land sales by Jews to Arabs, preventing the same kind of gradual change in the land status that was effected by Zionists in the first part of the 20th century, or that illegal settlements continue, and continue to be authorized and enforced by Israel on the West Bank.
Some of that is excused by desperation. But the claim that it is all necessitated by defensive needs has long since passed into lack of credibility, functioning as a rhetorical talking point like the original claims that the ethnic cleansing was an Arab fabrication. These talking points have now come to include branding anyone who is critical of Israeli "security" policy as anti-Semitic. I think it is often fair to label such criticism "one-sided", but to then evoke anti-Semitism is not nearly as credible. The criticism should be addressed directly, and if it is one-sided, explain why that is a reasonable conclusion. But unless the criticism of policy can be associated with antipathy toward jews and Judaism, regardless of the policy issues at stake, then it will rightly be seen as just rhetorical overstatement.
I have seen maps of "Judea and Samaria" that include parts of Jordan (across the Jordan river from the West Bank), Lebanon and Syria. This is the land that extremists believe they are entitled to. And that people like Netanyahu's father believe Israel must take possession of to be secure. Needless to say this means depriving the Arabs in these lands of the right to vote, if not ousting them outright. Just as there are Arab extremists, who get a lot of attention from the pro-Israel commentators, so there are Israeli extremists (which a lot of Israelis know first-hand) who include the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. We should be doing all we legally can, for the sake of Israelis, to separate these extremists from power. And their enablers, who label any criticism of policies that enable these extremists as anti-Semitic, should be refuted thoroughly.
Robert Tulip wrote:That is not to ignore the problem of right wing extremism, only to note that neo-Nazism is a tiny problem by comparison to broad cultural trends that should be analysed at the level of mass opinion. My impression is that the current cultural and political trends are pushing Jews more into alliance with conservative politics, even though 71% of American Jewish voters supported Clinton in 2016.
One could as easily claim that current cultural and political trends are pushing Gentiles into resisting AIPAC and all other lobbying groups that are pro-Israel. It really depends on how far-sighted or paranoid each group behaves. Claiming that defensiveness is forced, and even more that deceptive rhetoric is forced, puts up a high bar of evidence to be satisfied. But then, that is the ace that extremists keep in the hole - the more they provoke, the more the equally short-sighted response gives them credibility. So far American Jews have been, in my opinion, exceedingly patient and far-sighted. Others see the matter differently, I expect.