Why do so many People Hate Zionism?

[Raven]

MarxRaptor: I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Israel is indeed possessed of many characteristics of a religious state.

Consider the following:

From the Jewish Daily Forward:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that a break between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, particularly its American variety, is fast approaching. The reason for this is that Israel is slowly but inexorably turning into a conservative theocracy while the Diaspora is largely dedicated to liberal democracy.

The strategy of the “pro-Israel” camp among American Jewish organizations and neoconservative pundits has been, so far, one of avoidance of unpleasant facts coupled with unpleasant insinuations about the loyalties of those who insist on taking them seriously. But denial can work in only the short term, and only with an American Jewish population that identifies closely with Israel and relates all threats back to the Holocaust. These conditions, like the generation that sustained them, are not long for this world. Once this aging constituency is gone, the truth will prove unavoidable and it will be too late to deny it any longer.

Link to article:
http://forward.com/articles/147521/israe...theocracy/

You can split hairs about it all you want, but the disproportional influence of the ultra-Orthodox factions is indeed there.
MJ Rosenberg observes:

It turns out that President Shimon Peres will not be attending the Olympics because he would have to travel on the Shabbat. Peres is not religious, not kosher and enjoys a nice pork rib almost as much as Ariel Sharon did. Israel has never had a religious prime minister, including Menachem Begin who liked to play at looking religious without being observant.

So why the pretense? Because this is how Israel has evolved due to the stranglehold religious parties have on government. This is not going to change either because the condom-free Orthodox population will keep growing by leaps and bounds while secular Israelis will keep their families at a reasonable size.

Peres’ hypocrisy, shared by the ultra-secular Prime Minister Netanyahu, explains why Palestinians are ready to recognize Israel but not “as a Jewish state.” After all, how can Arabs inside Israel ever expect to be full citizens in a state that enshrines Judaism in much the same way Iran enshrines Islam.

After all, what Jew would want to live in America if it was defined as a “Christian state?”

The hypocrisy of Peres, who calls himself a socialist, also is a reminder of why the Christian Right here is so horrifying. Imagine if a U.S. President had to observe the Sabbath, and could not travel or work on Sunday. Imagine if he invoked Jesus to pander to an ultra-religious minority. Imagine if such issues as evolution, homosexuality, and abortion were decided not on the constitutional merits but because of the inordinate clout of fanatics.

Imagine if Santorum was president.

The good news is that, thanks to our Constitution, it is not as easy to ram religion down everyone’s throat here as in Israel or Iran.

Poor Peres. I’m sure he is pretty depressed knowing he will miss the games and all the delicious unkosher food he loves so much.

Such is life in a theocracy. Theodor Herzl, who didn’t even have his son circumcised, is spinning. (Herzl is way too secular even for me).

The Israel I love is the Israel of the kibbutz, of the socialist pioneers who built the state (the right built exactly nothing), the people like Ben Gurion, Rabin, and Golda Meir who thought that religious Orthodoxy of any kind is bunk.

Actually, Peres is one of those guys. But, unlike them, his middle name is hypocrisy.

For the record: the old socialists were not very enlightened on the Palestinian issue. In fact, some of them were quite terrible. But that is for another day.

Link:
http://mjayrosenberg.com/2012/07/10/isra...theocracy/
From Haaretz:

The storm over remarks made by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is in many respects a tempest in a teapot, which has for a long time taken on holier aspects than it seems. Neeman wants Torah law, or in other words, he wants Israel to be a country governed by Jewish religious law, halakha. In any event, Israel is already a semi-theocracy. The Israelis who were frightened by the minister's remarks and who love viewing their country as liberal, Western and secular are forgetting that our life here is more religious, traditional and halakhic than we are prepared to admit.

Between Stockholm and Tehran, Israel of 2009 is much closer to Tehran. From birth to death, from circumcision to funeral, from the establishment of the state to the establishment of the last of the illegal outposts in the West Bank - we are operating in the shadow of the commandments of religion. We should be honest with ourselves and admit it already: The country is too religious. Neeman just wanted to take this one step further, something one can and must come out against; but the religious-nationalist campaign began a long time ago, and it is still going strong.

It begins, of course, with the fact of our presence here. Among other things, it is based on theological reasoning. Abraham the Patriarch was here, so we are, too. He bought the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, so we, too, are in Palestinian Hebron. People who are entirely secular also cite religious and biblical explanations for the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. We can't even say whether Judaism is a religion or a nationality - and in any event, there is no other country in the Western world where religion has its holy iron grip on the state as it does in Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opi...acy-1.2438


Are three enough, or do you require even more? It's not like they aren't there.