Daily Kos already has a policy banning some of the more toxic and outrageous views floating around in the blogosphere. Conspiracy theories are out on Daily Kos and for good reason. This site is devoted to electing more and better Democrats. That’s the goal. And it is for this reason that theories suggesting that the US government, for example, was behind 9/11 are verboten here. Not only is the suggestion pretty much ridiculous on its face, it is entirely counterproductive toward the purpose of the site and would undermine Daily Kos’s reputation if such theories were allowed to gain traction at the Big Orange.
I would like to propose that advocacy for the elimination of Israel be likewise banned. There is nothing the least little bit wrong with advocating for justice for the Palestinian people. There is also nothing the least little bit wrong with criticizing Israel, so long as one recognizes the difference between criticism and defamation. However, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state are on another level entirely and are deeply offensive to most Jewish people.
It’s simply unacceptable. Jews have essentially gotten our asses kicked on and off for about 2,000 years. We were a despised minority in other people’s homes. We were scapegoated and locked into ghettoes. But that is all history and there is not much reason to go into the details here. Suffice it to say that after the Holocaust the world-community recognized that Jews have a right to self-determination and self-defense and thus welcomed the Jewish state into the community of nations with UN 181 in 1947.
Since that time, there have been any number of people who have wanted to see Israel destroyed. In 1948, 1967, and 1973 Arab governments sought to drive the Jews into the sea, but failed. Now there is a movement among some on the western liberal-left who are calling for the so-called “single-state solution” to the Israel-Arab conflict. The single-state solution is nothing less than a call for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. It means that despite getting our asses kicked for 2,000 years, and despite the devastation of the Holocaust in which fully a third of our number were wiped out, that Jews must, yet again, live as a minority among people who may, or may not, tolerate us.
I would request that Markos and the administrators recognize that such calls for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state are not only threatening to Jewish people, but entirely counterproductive for Daily Kos. When someone, for example, suggests that Israel must allow full “right of return” into Israel for the children and grandchildren of those who sought the destruction of Israel in 1948, it is a call to eliminate the Jewish character of the Jewish state. It is nothing less than a call for the end of Israel.
Demanding the end of Israel is an entirely radical and toxic position and it should not be tolerated on a blog that seeks to influence, and bolster, the Democratic Party. The only possible outcome for continued calls to eliminate Israel within Daily Kos is flames, flames, and more flames. Calls, within Daily Kos, to eliminate Israel are entirely alienating for Jewish people, friends of Jewish people, and supporters of Israel, who are still in the majority within the Democratic Party and, even more so, within the American public, at large.
Just as Daily Kos disallows conspiracy theories, so Daily Kos should disallow calls for the destruction of Israel. It’s in the best interest of the site, as well as in the best interest of the Democratic Party.
You should consider it.