BandTenHut, here's how your argument sounds in reverse.
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There are many, many, many people in America who are eager to equate any criticism of Israel as anti-American and/or anti-Semetic.
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Many around the globe are taught to equate support of Israel with racism and imperialist oppression.
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The prevalence of this attitude has led to a blank check in the court of American public opinion on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
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Unchallenged presentations of anti-Israeli sentiment are abundant. Israelis have lived under a state of constant seige since l948, characterized by Arab embargo (closing of the Suez canal), raids across borders, sniper-fire, kidnapping of soldiers and civilians, launched missile attacks and homicide-bombers.
To defend against such attacks, territory was occupied for military strategic purpose (West Bank, Gaza, Sinai desert, Golan heights). Sinai and Gaza were abandoned, at one point Sinai in a hope for "land in exchange for peace" and Gaza because the occupation was an impossible heartache for everyone. During occupations in Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli soldiers were frequently attacked in street riots by young boys in an Intifada (revolt) fueled by nationalist propaganda exemplified by Yasser Arafat. Arms were smuggled in from other Arab nations who funded this intifada.
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Israel has committed many, many human rights abuses against the Palestinians. This is fact.
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For example, Israel created checkpoints along its highways where the occupied territories end and mainland Israel begins, to check incoming cars for smuggled weapons and suicide bombers. Sometimes the checkpoints close off completely, especially after a rainshower of katusha missiles launched by Palestineans in Gaza or the West Bank into mainland Israel. Sometimes, Palestineans endure long wait-times at checkpoints while their vehicles are searched for bombs, particularly in the days immediately after scores of Israelis are killed on the mainland, eating pizza or clubbing on the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, observing Passover in Haifa, or having a wedding in Netanya. Sometimes the Israeli soldiers yell at the Palestineans at theses checkpoints or shoot at the backs of cars that try to speed through without stopping to be checked.
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Criticizing Israel is such a politically incorrect thing to do that we hold them completely unaccountable for it.
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Israel is readily criticised for self-defensive moves. The United Nations originally voted in l948 to establish the modern State of Israel, 3 years after the end of WWII and Nazi concentration camps in Europe. In l948, the U.N. expressed the world's post-war realization that a modern Jewish state was essential to Jewish survival. Subsequently, votes cast by nations eager to appease Arab nations were quick to condemn Israeli actions that would have been deemed "self-defense" by other
nations. England and America were the rare dissenters to these U.N. votes.
Not all of the world's criticism has foundation in fact, however. For example, when Israel was criticized by Palestineans for not allowing their ambulances through checkpoints into Israel, Israel had to explain to the world how, during previous weeks, Palestineans had been using ambulances as cover. They smuggled weapons and suicide bombers, hidden in carved out spaces beneath the floorboards of ambulances.
If you heard about Israelis stopping Palestinean ambulances at checkpoints, but never knew why (I just told you why), then you're a victim of unbalanced reporting.
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It's not about the history of the Jewish state or Zionism, it's about how Israel's unexcusable treatment of Palestinians.
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War creates human displacement on both sides. Following the establishment of the modern State of Israel in May, l948, approximately 800,000 Jews voluntarily left their homes in Arab nations from Morrocco to Iraq to come to Israel, and were given immediate citizenship as Israelis. That was the whole point of a Jewish state: to be in charge of the government, to open up immigration for Jews living in oppressive regimes worldwide. As the Jews left these Middle Eastern and North African countries, their homes and businesses were taken by the governments of the Arab nations they left, but good riddance.
The fate of Palestineans was quite different. Some went abroad, some to Jordan. Jordan and Egypt, rather than accommodating their Muslim brethren through immigration, told them to stay put on the border of Israel to continue the struggle against the new nation of Israel. Their temporary refugee camps in Gaza and parts of the West Bank have become permanent homes now for 3 generations of Palestineans. The crowding and poverty are terrible. The Arab nations of the Middle East have never been held accountable for their failure to absorb these refugees.
Giving up on the hope of absorption of Palestineans by other Arab nations, within the past l5 years or so, the Israeli government has declared its readiness to exist side-by-side next door to a Palestinean nation, but with two preconditions: recognition of Israel's right to exist as a sovereign nation, and the government taking steps to halt the violence by Palestineans against Israelis.
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