Re: Are you suggesting that the Jews, the most persecuted group in the Western world, do not deserve a national home, while Dutch and Spaniards and Slovenians do?
DESERVE?!? Which planet are you from? Who told you that a "nation-state" was an award? PERSECUTION DOES NOT END AFTER YOU'VE FIXED A FLAGPOLE IN THE GROUND!!
You wave Spain and the Netherlands as showpieces of safety... Do you include Basques? And Belgium's Flemings? Mr Louis Tobback, mayor of Leuven (Belgium) and former Interior Minister said offhandedly that Belgium should never have been granted independence from the Netherlands in 1830... Indeed, if Belgium had been left under Dutch rule no linguistic/ethnic tensions would ever have occurred (in Belgium). The class-warfare element in the language war would have been defused since the Dutch bourgeoisie was... Dutch-speaking!
If anything, the creation of Israel has AGGRAVATED anti-Semitism worldwide.... Besides, when one thinks about the Jews' cultural legacy to mankind, it's clear that the ghetto lifestyle didn't hamper their genius --from Spinoza to Freud to Marcuse to... But what --or rather, who-- did the State of Israel bring to the Jewish pantheon so far?? War criminals, jackboot politicos, far-rightist rabbis, and Russian mobsters! That lot is Israel's added value so far...
The XIXth-century nation-state is no shelter from bigotry and persecution because it is essentially a geopolitical artefact: minorities --whether religious, ethnic, or linguistic ones-- were just swept under the carpet of a brand new "nationality". Hence the devolutionary dynamics spreading across Europe: from Italy's Bossi calling his fellow southerners "Africans" to the UK's Scottish breakaway.
Gus. |
