Sort of in the middle on this one.
Yeah, the caricature was extreme, but the difference is not so great when you consider what the IDF actually is. I know some, too...
Which has zilch to do with Israelis or Jews. You get similar talking points from US cops, as you well know.
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It's not just what he said, it's the whole performance of it.
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And I suspect they *are* racist towards Israelis, but in much the same way as a Nazi is racist towards me, with my overly Norwegian features.
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The twistiness of American conservatives' "philo-semitism" is how it is a love for Jews as we are or Israelis as they are but rather a lot of their fantasy of what the imagine Israelis to be ... an invention that emerges from their anti-semitism.
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Not sure if I can follow your priors for that final clause.
I do understand what you mean about fantasies, of course. I've had creepy racial traits projected on me by "well-meaning" fascists more times than I'd like.
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The Israelis of conservatives' imagination do not really exist; they reflect a shallow understanding of real Israelis filtered through their unconscious antisemitism.
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An even more extreme example: a White US minstrel show audience in 1910 imagines that they are seeing some kind of portrayal of Black people as they are, because their anti-Black bigotry makes the differences from real people invisible to them.
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the general Israeli population is pretty extreme now. Almost half the population now believes in ethnic cleansing, for example, and the bigotry is off the charts. A bill is likely to pass which institutes formal (as opposed to informal) apartheid.
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Yeah. was on the money about the IDF types. I've met more than my fair share.
Apocalypse Now-levels of gung-ho weren't the only stereotypes on display, though.
But I also think neocons are racist towards Everyone. You are only varying degrees of less "American".
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The culture in Israel is indeed in a very bad place. So Erran Morrad's Islamophobia (to my knowledge) is not necessarily too implausible.
But the totality of the character still is absurd.
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