Israel is justified by being a sovereign state that commands the loyalty of its citizens, not by the precedents of antiquity. Ditto for the United States and every other state, whatever the nature of its origins. History is lived forward, not back, and the goal of politics and diplomacy is to make life as livable for as many people as possible, not to re-adjudicate ancient rights or wrongs.
~ Brett Stephens via The New York Times
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Whatever else it is, Jewish nationalism — that is, Zionism — is the oldest continuous anticolonial movement in history, starting well before the Romans sought to de-Judaize the area by calling their Levantine colony Palestina. Hanukkah, the festival of lights, is one such reminder, celebrating the recovery of Jerusalem from colonizing Greeks in the second century B.C.E.
~ Brett Stephens via The New York Times
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It’s fine to oppose settler colonialism, but in that case, one also must be consistent and principled. To say that Israel alone must be eliminated on grounds of settler colonialism while giving a pass to other cases of settler colonialism is a double standard that is hard to describe as anything but antisemitic.
~ Brett Stephens via The New York Times
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A former colleague of mine liked to say that there are certain ideas that vanish in the presence of thought. Among those ideas is settler colonialism — or rather, the invidious, hypocritical and historically illiterate way in which it is often denounced in anti-Israel polemics and protests.
~ Brett Stephens via The New York Times
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