!['a significant percent of the population [...] are protected fully as equals under Israeli law.'](https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/f465d0ba-3177-4f09-842e-2028e2965373.png){kind=link}
[Transcript]
If Israel is an ethnostate, I frankly fail to see how it’s fundamentally different than almost every other state in the world, which have all favored their “ethnic” population through immigration standards, expulsions, massacres, and oppression.
How is every single other country in the Middle East not an ethnostate by the definition used for Israel, when they’ve expelled all Jews, violently enforce Arabization, and most of which ban religions other than Islam?
What about even countries like Germany, who allow for massive immigration, but still require learning German? They’re not ethnically homogenous, no — but neither is Israel.
Or Japan, which has a violently xenophobic population and extremely strict immigration laws?
Israel is neither ethnically nor culturally homogenous, it does not force conversion to Judaism, it includes Arabic as an official language, and a significant percent of the population is not Jewish, and are protected fully as equals under Israeli law. There are a hell of a lot of criticisms, but being an ethnostate is not one of them.
This is what I’m saying. If you don’t like ethnonationalism, you don’t like nationalism (lowercase n) in general. Frankly, I think it’s important to move towards an end to nationalism, but singling Israel out in that is always what’s odd to me. Of course I don’t like states, I hate all states! But if Bobby gets a cookie then so do I!
(Source.)
Just a sec, googling to see if the Arab country I live in has a church; hey, yes it does! Now, googling to see if Saudi Arabia has a church, and no it doesn't, but apparently people are allowed to practice their faith in private and they do in fact actually have Christians in Saudi Arabia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Saudi_Arabia. Googling to see what Bahrain has, and hey! They have a synagogue! And several churches! Syria also has (multiple?) churches! Lebanon is literally one third Christians and also has churches! As does Egypt! Also since Iran apparently despises Jewish people these must be non-Jewish synagogues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_synagogues_in_Iran, probably like Buddhist synagogues or something (not an Arab country but the children who say the stuff in that post wouldn't know the difference, even though it's mostly as simple as 'they don't speak the same language'). I don't really understand this Arabization thing but I wish it was a thing; I'd easily give up my passport for one from here any day.
Japan however is famous for being violently xenophobic; my sister and her husband had to dodge samurais and pledge their loyalties to the local shogun when they went there on vacation. The shogun TV show was loosely based on their travels. Also there are churches in Japan. Also synagogues. Also mosques. Also one of their political parties once got violent in (whichever political place they were at; maybe their parliament or something) for the sake of allowing immigration because of.....I don't know, maybe their ageing or declining population.
Huh. I guess the world in fantasyland looks a lot like Middle Earth, but I think the people they're complaining about are talking about the real world.
Also I recall a badempanadah video about the expulsions of Jewish people and there's some stuff a lot of folks don't know about (I certainly didn't): apparently while Jewish people were expelled from Algeria, they were expelled under FRENCH Algeria, also at the behest of Israel. Additionally Iraq didn't want their Jewish population to leave, they even made laws against going to Israel to try and stop Jewish people from leaving, but Israel sent terrorists to terrorize the population and claim the Arabs were behind it (Avi Shlaim also talked about it). Iran also still has a Jewish population, which I notice no one seems to mention, probably because it's very inconvenient. The treatment of Jewish people in the Middle East probably got really bad after the formation of Israel, but not every Middle Eastern country expelled Jewish people and nor did they consider them unwelcome, only Israelis are unwelcome.
They're literally typing all this on the internet; they could've made a simple google search to avoid looking stupid. Do people not get that slight doubt anymore that tells them maybe they're wrong and perhaps they should do a little research?
In private, aka in secret
Honestly, not being able to proselytize it? Good.
I really don't think kids actually understand the religion they're learning. Most christian religious schools are a form of indoctrination, using the fact that they are young in order to get them to question less. The teaching methods I've seen in the past seven years (at least where I am) amount to nothing more than memory reinforcement and subtle threats of divine punishment that a younger child can interpret/understand and sets them up with a long life of guilt and fear; thus reinforcing the beliefs they were taught not to question at a young age. In other places, they're quite literally built on graveyards of the indigenous.
Is this the same for every religion? Perhaps not, I am not aware of how religious schools for children are handled in different faiths other than just Christianity, but that was the topic at hand here.
In most places it probably depends more on the school than the country, society, or even the religion in question. I'm from a place that most would say is religious, and most people here have some faith of some kind, but if you go to a religious school, you'll get a much more faith based upbringing than if you go to an international school. My school wasn't an actual religious school, but we did have religious lessons once a week. Although nobody really took it that seriously, not even the teachers, they just treated it as mandatory curriculum and most of my classmates turned out not too religious after graduating, and I was openly atheist and nobody seemed to mind. My father went to a full on catholic school even though he wasn't from a very religious family, and he did take religion seriously when he was young at least.
Again, this sort of characterization risks becoming cartoonish, Saudi Arabia is a shitty place, but nothing is going to actually happen to you if people find out you're a practicing Christian. It's not some big scary secret as if you're Jesus and his followers being persecuted by the romans, which is the kind of imagery western chauvinists are trained to associate Christian's treament in the middle east, China, DPRK etc. with.