The other day Saif Ammous analogized the Zionist project to a British Christian coming to the U.S. and solving the country's problems by making it Christian. Ralph Seliger then criticized the analogy. Now Ammous is responding:
Ralph Seliger is unfortunately engaging in an entirely predictable and
typical Zionist debate tactic: "pretend you're not smart enough to
understand the question, it'll go away.' I will nonetheless indulge him and elaborate slowly for him my
argument, so that he will have a tougher time pretending not to
understand it in his next reply.
America, by law, is a secular
country. Its majority is Christian, but none of its laws discriminate
against non-Christians. Also, it currently does none of the crazy
stuff that Israel does under Zionism.
Seliger as a proud progressive surely finds this secular state of
affairs in America to be good. He surely opposes any attempts to make
this a Christian nation by law. He would surely oppose it if the US
government banned non-Christians from buying land, or built
Christian-only roads and Christian-only settlements on stolen
non-Christian land. He would surely oppose it if non-Christians were
forced to live behind a "security fence" with all their movements
controlled by an army of teenagers.
Seliger's opposition to all of this is of course a principled
progressive stance for which he deserves to be saluted. But his
hypocrisy lies in his opposing all of these things in America, because
he is in the non-Christian minority that would suffer under them; but
supporting stuff like this in Israel, because his group has the
upper-hand there.
So, my challenge to Seliger is: why exactly does he support a
system inextricably built on discriminating, ethnically cleansing and
disenfranchising non-Jews in Palestine, while opposing laws that
discriminate against non-Christians in America? Surely, if you agree
to the Zionist logic in Palestine, you can't complain if America
becomes a Christian Nation and ethnically cleanses non-Christians from
its land a la Israel. What's good for the gander is good for the goose.
I'll over-over-elaborate and over-over-simplify: Would Seliger
support the US government using US taxpayer money to build
Christian-only colonies and roads in America? Would he support banning
non-Christians from owning land in America? Would he support
ethnically cleansing half of America's non-Christians out of America?
And if this ethnic cleansing happened, would Seliger oppose the
right of these American non-Christians to return to their lands and
properties because it might weaken the Christianity of the Christian
nation? I would like him to answer these exact questions but after
substituting "Israel" for "America" and "Jewish" for "Christian". And then to discuss the discrepancy in his answers.
Also, doesn't the fact that he is an American supporting this
racism in MY country, while he wouldn't agree to it in HIS country make
him feel like a racist hypocrite? He not only supports the Israeli government carrying
out such actions with Israeli citizens' tax money, he also supports
doing it with American citizens' tax money. It's like me paying
billions to fund a Christian Nationalist militant party in America that
advocates the ethnic cleansing of American non-Christians.
As for Seliger's bizarre contention that Palestinian opposition
to Gun Zionism is the CAUSE of Gun Zionism, this is frankly too silly
to refute. I presume Seliger also believes that the Algerian
resistance to French colonialism is the cause of French colonialism. And surely, he believes that it was the Black Panthers who brought about slavery and segregation in America. And surely, he must believe it was the ANC's terrorism that was the cause of apartheid in South Africa.
