I’m also disgusted by the rhetoric and new fascist antisemitism “definition”. I’m not uninformed or pro-Israel at all.
But I definitely consider “Palestine has no right to exist” as hate speech and would demand censoring / banning that. Because there is a clear implication. We can not afford to allow tolerance towards intolerance.
The only thing I would say in favor of OP is that because Palestine is currently weaker and the oppressed victim, and rightfully outraged, it’s not fair to demand higher standards from them and is therefor hypocritical.
The trick here is that “Palestine” does not refer to any state*; as such someone saying “Palestine has no right to exist” can be only talking about the population, and promoting ethnic cleansing. That’s why it’s hate speech.
On the other hand “Israel” can refer to both “the Israeli population” and “the state of Israel”. So, every bloody time you attack the later, you get people misrepresenting your attack as if it was against the population. And Zionists have been exploiting this for ages, to silence anyone who speaks against it.
*Palestine does have a state (or something close to one), but people typically call it “Hamas” instead of “Palestine”.
During WWII I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say, “Germany doesn’t have a right to exist,” but if you said “Poland doesn’t have a right to exist,” that would be pretty different. The latter is justifying subjugation of the country but the former is objecting to the state doing the subjugating.
I’m also disgusted by the rhetoric and new fascist antisemitism “definition”. I’m not uninformed or pro-Israel at all.
But I definitely consider “Palestine has no right to exist” as hate speech and would demand censoring / banning that. Because there is a clear implication. We can not afford to allow tolerance towards intolerance.
The only thing I would say in favor of OP is that because Palestine is currently weaker and the oppressed victim, and rightfully outraged, it’s not fair to demand higher standards from them and is therefor hypocritical.
The trick here is that “Palestine” does not refer to any state*; as such someone saying “Palestine has no right to exist” can be only talking about the population, and promoting ethnic cleansing. That’s why it’s hate speech.
On the other hand “Israel” can refer to both “the Israeli population” and “the state of Israel”. So, every bloody time you attack the later, you get people misrepresenting your attack as if it was against the population. And Zionists have been exploiting this for ages, to silence anyone who speaks against it.
*Palestine does have a state (or something close to one), but people typically call it “Hamas” instead of “Palestine”.
During WWII I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say, “Germany doesn’t have a right to exist,” but if you said “Poland doesn’t have a right to exist,” that would be pretty different. The latter is justifying subjugation of the country but the former is objecting to the state doing the subjugating.