There is no other country on Earth, as far as I'm aware, that affords rights to people on the basis of their religion/ethnicity. If I were a Muslim, could I simply claim citizenship in any other country? Are non-Muslims discriminated against there simply because they're not Muslim? If so, then yes, I absolutely would describe that as an ethnostate and absolutely criticise it. As I would if this were the case for Christians or Hindus or Zoroastrians.

And, of course I would apply far harsher criticism to an Islamic caliphate. But even the most minor attempt to create one would receive almost universal condemnation in the West. So I probably wouldn't need to expend much energy convincing people of how wrong it was. That Sisyphean task is reserved only for the Jewish ethnostate it seems.

Bad hypothetical about Thrugood Marshall's country. Because the Palestinians don't say this. And the only reason they are attacking Israel at all is the aforementioned land theft. You can't just ignore this massive injustice and say "Look! They're firing rockets at us!!" as if they're doing it for no reason and Israel is totally blameless or hasn’t killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians than the other way around.

No. Gaza isn't an ethnostate. It's barely even a state, remember? An ethnostate is not simply a state that is ethnically homogenous. It's a state that affords (and denies) rights and status on the grounds of ethnicity. And given that — in case you need to be reminded — Gaza is homogenous because the people there cannot leave, this is a pretty silly comparison.

There's lots that I'd criticise about many Muslim countries. And, indeed, many other countries. And while you seem to be confusing authoritarianism with ethnic supremacy here, yes, I abhor them both. I remain humble by reminding myself that it was only a few decades ago that the West's record on civil and gay and women's rights wasn't looking so great. Still, I think the progress we've made puts us in a superior position to where we were and to anybody who hasn’t made it. I'd advocate the same progress for the entire world.

But my criticisms of Muslim culture as it currently stands and religions in general do not make me sympathetic to people who murder innocent Muslims.

I'm not giving Gaza bonuses for the suffering they brought on themselves (or more correctly, that Hamas brought on them). If Israel had engaged Gaza after October 7th with a realistic, measurable plan to save the hostages and stop Hamas, despite the various precipitating factors Israel is guilty of, and even if some number of civilians died in the process, I'd have said nothing. I did say nothing, for months.

But it was very quickly obvious that there was no such plan. It was obvious that there was no concern for the thousands of innocent Palestinians they were killing. It was obvious that they weren't really interested in rescuing the hostages. And it was obvious that the war would drag on for ages because it wasn't really about anything but Netanyahu protecting himself and his extremist fascist government stealing land and killing "human animals."

Here we are, a year later, everything I was saying ~9 months ago is proven right, and I'm still arguing with morons (not aimed a you) denying the evidence of their own eyes. Still claiming that this is about rescuing the hostages or stopping Hamas. Still justifying the pointless slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people. Still acting as if the horrific actions of one day balance the scale of a year of absolute devastation and the decades of oppression that preceded it.

This year has taken a toll on me like no other. It has truly shaken my faith in human nature. Because if we can't recognise injustice when it's this clear, regardless of whether we like the country committing it, if we can find no empathy for the innocent men, women and children who did nothing wrong except be born on the land the Zionists decided was theirs or into the prison camp they created for them, what even are we?