I disagree. A lot of people make untrue and misleading claim without hating. They can simply be misleading themselves, or simply being blind for the other side argument without "hating the folk".
But beside that, you did not coutner the argument that I had that disliking or even heck hating a country policy does not mean you hate the folk. Unless they admitted somewhere they hate the folk, or you can read their mind, it is just a thrown conjecture from you.
When the claims are outrageous; genocide, apartheid, piracy, organ harvesting...and they're made again and again even after evidence is shown to the contrary...it's really hard to see a motivation other than hate behind it.
As an analogy, I have a friend at work named Tom who hates Obama. I used to tease him about it, I'd say,
"Tom, Obama is a secret Muslim" and he'd get this fierce look on his face and say,
"There's nothing secret about it!" and that would lead to a rant. And when I say "rant" I mean
rant. His face gets bright red, veins on his neck and forehead pop out, spittle flies from his lips, all that.
He was serious too. Not just about Obama being a secret Muslim, but he believes all the other crazy stuff. Obama wasn't born in the United States, his college friends were secret terrorists, he's a "Manchurian candidate" who either wants to destroy the United States or bring on socialism. He also wants to take our guns and destroy our economy, all the while setting himself up for great riches or never-ending power or whatever. He even quit his church, saying that supporting Obama was "incompatible with the principles of Christianity." He was able to find a more conservative church.
I've tried to argue rationally with Tom. I've listened to his rants, identified some of his key points, quietly did a little research showing him certain things are not true. It doesn't help. He may drop that one specific point, for a while, but it only inspires rants on other Obama related topics. Later he will still repeat that point that was proven wrong. Something that's pretty common in these Israel/Palestine debates too.
So Tom hates Obama.
I can only guess at why. There may be a racist element. I've never seen evidence of racism in Tom, but maybe while he's okay with black equality subconsciously he has a problem with black leadership. Maybe 9/11 scared him so bad he's just afraid of having someone in the White House that
isn't like GWB. Maybe it's just that Tom is an older guy, and taking an extremist stance helps him to feel relevant in a world where his experience and intelligence (he is intelligent in other ways) isn't appreciated as it should be. Or maybe Tom hates Obama for some combination of those reasons, or reasons I haven't thought of.
The why of Tom hating Obama is conjecture, but the fact of his hate isn't. Not to anyone who's met Tom.
Someone could say that hating Obama's policies does not mean you hate Obama himself, and that would be perfectly true. It's also perfectly true that Tom hates Obama's policies. It does not follow, however, that Tom and people like Tom are exonerated from hating Obama just because they direct
some of their criticism towards Obama's policies. Clearly an important distinction there is exactly what is being criticized and how.
And frankly, I see a lot of "locked" in position from both side on this forum, and a lot of "ignoring" what the "own" side do bad on both side.
If you witnessed Tom and I talking about Obama, you might come away thinking I'm a big fan of Obama. Why? Because I'm disagreeing with everything negative Tom says about him. You might even think I'm completely blind to his faults.
The truth is I'm not that big an Obama fan. I don't hate him, but I didn't vote for him, and I can think of a lot of legitimate criticisms. They're not going to come up in my discussions with Tom because when Tom is telling me his crazy theories of what Obama was taught in that Indonesian Madrassa, it's going to be pointless for me to bring up how sad it is that Obama is dragging his feet on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of our military or that he shouldn't have supported the bank bail out. Crazy drowns out the rational discussions.
I think if you took a half-dozen of the most ardent Israel supporters from this board, myself, Skeptic, Wildcat, Stout, Bigjelmapro, and a few others, threw us all in a room, gave us some beer and had us talk politics for a few hours, you'd find a wide variety of opinions on Israel, including lots of criticisms. I don't think any of us are under the illusion that Israel is perfect, it's run by politicians just like any other place.
You could then take that group and add a couple interested but objective neutrals such as DC or ANTpogo, and you'd still have a lively discussion where many interesting insights are exchanged, and everyone would go home respecting each other. But add the anti-Israel polemics, the crowd that's always coming up with the latest "outrage" from Israel, and what you would get is exactly what you see in these forums. It would be outrage after outrage followed by the same old droning,
"No, when Hamas purposefully endangers civilians, they are responsible when those civilians get injured or killed. No, the Mavi Mamara raid was not `piracy'. No, building a fence to keep out suicide bombers is not 'apartheid'." because just like with Tom and I, it's the crazy that drives the discussion and makes the rational dialog impossible.
