Why is the Green Party so anti-Israel? I understand the issue of Middle East peace is very complicated and there are many articles on all sides of the issue, but what I do not understand is the raw importance those on the left place on Israel/Palestinian issues.
It troubles me.
If you do a Google search on the Green Party (www.gp.org) website, the word "Israel" appears 79 times.
That seems innocent enough. But to put that in context, the word "Medicare" appears just 43 times. In fact, many issues that you would expect the Green Party to care about have a lot less play than Israel. Here are a few:
"Osama" – 14 results
"Iran" – 22 results
"gay marriage" – 24 results
"China" – 25 results
"social security" – 41 results
"minimum wage" – 41 results
"greenhouse" – 41 results
"abortion OR pro-choice OR pro-life" – 42 results
"Medicare" – 43 results
"Afghanistan" – 62 results
"Palestinian OR Palestine" – 78 results
"Israel" – 79 results
"Iraq" – 315 results
Does this make sense? Is Israel really more important to the green party then abortion? Or greenhouse gases (which is essentially why the Green Party was formed)?
The only explanation for the focus on Israel I can conclude is one that borders on anti-Semitism. Why else would the issue of Israel be so much more important to members of the Green Party then social security, gay marriage, or Osama bin Laden?
You cannot seriously equate discussion of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinian question as anti-semitism? To do so would equate the Democratic Party of racism by how many times it discusses affirmative action or the Republican Party of militarism by how many times it discusses national security. The Israeli/Arab conflict is not about race or religion. It is about resources (water, land, oil), to say anything else is betraying the political science background I know you have.
That is a purely statistical analysis and holds no truth or consequence by itself. You may draw any conclusion you wish from those numbers. If you found anything in American Green Party literature that indicates anti-semitism, you may form an argument from there. No deep truth has ever been found from statistical analysis. Mathematical relationships that are the basis of physical truth and facts in our universe are not based on probability, but actuality. It is this reason that science is successful, because it can predict the future. You seem to have adopted a philosophy that incorporates statistics, without inherent meaning.
The other comments miss some troubling points – in looking at Green Party and other alternative party activities and discourses, there is a very strong degree of apparent anti-semitism, as well as a number of troubling associations. I base this in large part on readings about anti-war protestors, of which the Green Party was active.
For much more detailed and serious research into this see:
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/france.htm (mostly about France, but discusses the Green Party and other far-left parties more broadly)
as well see: http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/general-analysis.htm for general analysis
Also for a coherent discussion (amidst a not always coherent one) on Antisemitism and the left see http://listserv.utk.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0311&L=rpa-list&T=0&F=&S=&P=18686 it is among the archives a mostly left leaning mailing list – found via google)
In essense there is an issue with antisemitism in the far left (and in the far right). Not, to be sure, with everyone of the left, but a significent number (and anecdotedly it seems to be increasing) of people on the left seem to give higher priority to the Palistinian cause than to the right of Isreal to exist.
I am ethnically if not religiously Jewish – so this is an issue of some importance to me. The casual disregard for Israel that many on the left seem to have, as well as the easy association with groups who are more virulent in their support for the Palistian cause has the effect of turning me away from the radical left (of course as a firm capitalist and political centrist, I’m not exactly of the far left most of the time, though socially I tend to be in agreement with the Left and even the “far” left)
Also, the line “no deep truth has ever been found from statistical analysis” is hogwash. Quantum mechanics – very much about the deep understanding of the universe is precisely what happens when mechanical systems break down and statistical methods have to be applied to understanding the universe. Quantum Mechanics has, in turn, lead to the application of statistical methods and processes to many other fields – offering the possibility of studying in the abstract systems that are impossible to study mechanistically. Much of modern math and modern science is based on statistics – it is how you deal with issus of probability, with issues of unmeasurability, with complex, evolving, systems (and with the majority of systems that attempts to measure also impact and change).
Further, if you look at modern math and chaos theory it very much argues against the very simple test that prediction of the future is the only measure of success of a theory – many of the theories, in fact, argue that 100% “accurate”, long term predictions of the future are literally impossible. This does not mean that understanding the future is impossible – but that since chance is involved as well as lots of precurser states only approximate predictions can ever be made (think weather forcasts, especially long range forcasts).