Spanish Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has joined Slovenia’s national broadcaster in threatening to withdraw their country’s participation in Eurovision 2026 if Israel is not banned.View on euronews
It’s a supposedly Democratic nation, so unless it has been totally controlled by a very tight elite for 8 decades, the project’s “britishness” has long been diluted by a society which is by now overwhelmingly composed of people with a totally different cultural background than British.
Even if that’s not the case, the British culture back when that project started in the early 20th century (so, even before WWII) was as imperialist and racist with complete disregard for human life as Russia was at the time it was the greatest source for new Israeli nationals (mid 20th century and onwards) - remember that Britain itself commited several Genocides in their Empire, including one by none other than Churchill in India, and until the NAZIs invaded Poland the British elites loved the NAZI ideology.
In my experience with immigrants from my homeland, and looking at examples like the Afrikaners in South Africa (who are descendant of 17th century Dutch immigrants), little islands of the culture of a nation when detached from the “motherland” stop evolving alongside the culture of the “motherland”.
Absolutelly, the cultural values in such “islands” do evolve, just not in the same direction as those in the “motherland”.
Israel has, at best, late 19th Century Western European values heavilly influenced by mid 20th Century Russian values.
I supposed you could call it a Western Project in the Historical sense, but the idea that it still is a Western Project (as in, guided by Present Day Western values) is a lot harder to justify given that they’ve detached from it almost a century ago and almost all of the cultural influences it has incorporated in the last 8 decades aren’t those of the West.
Their cultural drift is a moot point given that it is an ongoing settler-colonial project with virtually unlimited material support from its Western originators who also continually supply new settlers.
Ok so your argument is that the western societies have by now better values that israel is not living up to? I can, in part, agree to that.
My biggest complaint however is that we ourselves are not living up to our own values. For the last decades it was no problem to bomb civilians in the name of fighting terror. And thats what Israel also tells everyone.
Two lies do not make a truth
More specifically my point is that most Western societies have by now better values than Israel.
There’s a lot of West in the West and most Western countries do seem to have evolved beyond the values they had back when pretty much all of them though that white colonialists had a right to take whatever land they wanted anywhere they wanted and if the “savages” in those lands were “violent” then any and all means to suppress them were valid.
Note that I’m not saying that most of the West has actual Humanist values (as you well point out, they don’t, or at least the elites holding most of the power in the West don’t), what I’m saying is that the values in most of the West are beyond the white-colonialist (and even NAZI-like) values that Israel has, especially amongst the broader population.
You will notice that most of the public opinion in Europe is by now against the Genocide by a large majority (the Politicians, on the other hand, are still their usual sociopathic selves, at best being “pragmatic” about it since the US supports Israel which means at the very least refusing to act in any way form or shape against Israel and its interests). Compare this to how in Israel over 80% of the population is in favor of the Genocide.
I would say that a better segmentation would separate the US from the rest of the West and then the elites from the broader population, as all the resulting 4 segments seem to have quite different moral views on this subject from each other (that does mean that I think the majority of Americans have different moral values than the majority of Europeans).
It’s a supposedly Democratic nation, so unless it has been totally controlled by a very tight elite for 8 decades, the project’s “britishness” has long been diluted by a society which is by now overwhelmingly composed of people with a totally different cultural background than British.
Even if that’s not the case, the British culture back when that project started in the early 20th century (so, even before WWII) was as imperialist and racist with complete disregard for human life as Russia was at the time it was the greatest source for new Israeli nationals (mid 20th century and onwards) - remember that Britain itself commited several Genocides in their Empire, including one by none other than Churchill in India, and until the NAZIs invaded Poland the British elites loved the NAZI ideology.
In my experience with immigrants from my homeland, and looking at examples like the Afrikaners in South Africa (who are descendant of 17th century Dutch immigrants), little islands of the culture of a nation when detached from the “motherland” stop evolving alongside the culture of the “motherland”.
Absolutelly, the cultural values in such “islands” do evolve, just not in the same direction as those in the “motherland”.
Israel has, at best, late 19th Century Western European values heavilly influenced by mid 20th Century Russian values.
I supposed you could call it a Western Project in the Historical sense, but the idea that it still is a Western Project (as in, guided by Present Day Western values) is a lot harder to justify given that they’ve detached from it almost a century ago and almost all of the cultural influences it has incorporated in the last 8 decades aren’t those of the West.
Their cultural drift is a moot point given that it is an ongoing settler-colonial project with virtually unlimited material support from its Western originators who also continually supply new settlers.
Ok so your argument is that the western societies have by now better values that israel is not living up to? I can, in part, agree to that. My biggest complaint however is that we ourselves are not living up to our own values. For the last decades it was no problem to bomb civilians in the name of fighting terror. And thats what Israel also tells everyone. Two lies do not make a truth
More specifically my point is that most Western societies have by now better values than Israel.
There’s a lot of West in the West and most Western countries do seem to have evolved beyond the values they had back when pretty much all of them though that white colonialists had a right to take whatever land they wanted anywhere they wanted and if the “savages” in those lands were “violent” then any and all means to suppress them were valid.
Note that I’m not saying that most of the West has actual Humanist values (as you well point out, they don’t, or at least the elites holding most of the power in the West don’t), what I’m saying is that the values in most of the West are beyond the white-colonialist (and even NAZI-like) values that Israel has, especially amongst the broader population.
You will notice that most of the public opinion in Europe is by now against the Genocide by a large majority (the Politicians, on the other hand, are still their usual sociopathic selves, at best being “pragmatic” about it since the US supports Israel which means at the very least refusing to act in any way form or shape against Israel and its interests). Compare this to how in Israel over 80% of the population is in favor of the Genocide.
I would say that a better segmentation would separate the US from the rest of the West and then the elites from the broader population, as all the resulting 4 segments seem to have quite different moral views on this subject from each other (that does mean that I think the majority of Americans have different moral values than the majority of Europeans).