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Israelis Don't Care that We Hate Them

(Spectator-UK) Brendan O'Neill - Last year, a BBC World Service global survey found that Israel was the fourth most "negatively viewed" nation in the world, after Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. Out of EU nations, 72% of Brits surveyed felt negatively about Israel. Israel is the state that it's super hip to hate. But why? The most interesting explanation I hear for Israel's unpopularity comes from Richard Pater, a political analyst from Britain who has lived in Israel for the past 15 years. "The lesson many in the West took from the Holocaust is that nationalism is bad; the message Jews took from it is that nationalism is necessary." What many Westerners seem to find most nauseating is that Israel is cocky, confident and committed to preserving its national sovereign rights against all-comers. It's a lot like we used to be before relativism. I think that Israel reminds us of our pre-EU, pre-green days, when we, too, believed in borders, sovereignty, progress, growth. Now it's de rigueur in the right-thinking sections of Western society to be post-nationalist and multicultural, to be fashionably uncertain about one's national identity.
2014-03-14 00:00:00
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