[Buddha-l] anti

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:58:41 -0700 (PDT)
  Elihu Smith <elihusmith at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Being "anti-Israel" is indeed anti-Semitic - 
> unless your anti-Israel is accompanied by anti-Egypt,
> anti-Germany, anti-Cuba, anti-Iran and anti every
> other state. 

I can't quite follow your reasoning here, but never mind. 
The stance that makes most sense to me is to be neither 
pro- nor anti-Israel, at least not without qualifications. 
In general I cannot endorse any state anywhere that is 
based on religious claims. The very idea of an Islamic 
republic, a Christian nation, a Jewish state, a Hindu 
state or a Buddhist state strikes me as backwards in the 
extreme, so I cannot endorse any of them. But so what. 
Such entities pretend to exist. And as long as they exist 
I can see no course of action that makes sense, from a 
Buddhist point of view, than to show discernment, 
criticizing some policies and endorsing (or remaining 
neutral about) others.

> There is a difference between being anti-
> specific policies of the state of Israel and being
> anti-Israel. It is the inability to make this
> differentiation, or trying to cloak the unwillingness
> to make it (even with phrases like "anti-zionism"),
> that shows the anti-Semitism. 

While I agree wholeheartedly with that statement, I wonder 
(and this really is a question, not a statement in 
disguise of a query) whether anti-Zionism does not have 
the meaning of being opposed to the very idea of seeing 
legitimacy in a claim that a particular piece of land was 
given by God to Jews to have for all perpetuity. I tend to 
view Zionism as a claim that God gave a chunk of turf to a 
particular tribe some time ago and that everyone who 
claims to be a descendant of the members of that tribe are 
entitled to live on that chunk of turf. I find such a 
claim, whatever one may call it, preposterous. I also 
regard the claim that God created the native Americans in 
the Americas preposterous. But I would claim that in 
finding those views preposterous I am not in any sense of 
the world either anti-Jewish or anti-Amerindian. Can one 
not both love a people (through, say, the practice of 
metta-bhavana) and love the truth? Or must one define love 
in such a way that it means endorsing every preposterous 
claim made by the person loved.


Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico