Haha, are you kidding me? Do you have experience with being unable to hide your ethnicity in order to be "safe"? To have your skin mark you as a slave or someone who needs to be segregated from others or a "thug" or an "affirmative action hire"? Are we really going to play oppression olympics here? Because I find that game extraordinarily boring.
Most Jews, even in Israel (yes, I've been to Israel), blend in. As Alan points out in the comment above, most Israelis are secular, as are most other Jews around the world. And there are many communities around the world where Orthodox/ Hasidic Jews live harmoniously with people of different faiths. My girlfriend lives in one.
And sure, let's do that math again. I asked you to, in fact. But you haven't presented any math here. 1200 Jews were killed in a single day in Israel. Many more have been killed in Israel over the past two decades. I'm betting plenty of Israelis are currently living in fear. I'm unaware of anything close to this anywhere else in the world in the same time period. So I'm asking you, on what basis do you say Israel is the only place it's safe to be a Jew?
Yes, some people hate Jews. Some people hate black people too. But to pretend that you're in danger everywhere you go or that "nobody cares about you" or that the world has an "ever present hatred of you" is not true. Not for you or for me. I don't know why so many minority communities are so in love with the notion that they're on the verge of being genocided recently.
I didn't say we were disagreeing about the blockade. You asked me what I thought and I told you. But I've spoken to several people, some in the comments of this article, who believe lifting the blockade is impossible. Ad it's certainly difficult. But Hamas, as I'm sure you know, is a problem that Israel helped create.
We agree completely that Hamas can't be reasoned with. But as I think I've said to you (I've said it so many times a this point I've lost track), I don't believe Hamas can be bombed out of Gaza. Not only because obliterating an ideological group with force is next to impossible, but because every dead Palestinian radicalises new Palestinians into hating Israel. And there are currently a lot of dead Palestinians. Yes, Hamas need to be removed from power. But I think the best way to do that is to work with the Palestinian people.
There will likely be people in the region who hate Israel for many years to come. There are bad, antisemitic reason for that. But there are also understandable, non-religious reasons for that. Israel has killed an awful lot of fathers and mothers and children. To change that hate, Israel needs a new approach. And needs to recognise that all objections to Israel's behaviour over the past decades are not antisemitism.
