I don't want to beat the dead horse again, but please stop this act of being the impartial observer only reacting to others as if you do not have a very specific agenda on this forum of unrelenting defence - and unsolicited offence - on the part of Israel. You are not fooling anyone. But I will say that this:
is not true in any of its parts.

And I find your claims about racism pretty laughable given your repeated unjustified claims about me hating israel. Seems like you are more than willing to dish it out.

You are either terrible at reading comprehension or terrible at articulating your points in a written argument.

Either way, please consider any replies I make to your posts as directed to -and for the benefit of - lurkers and readers.

Someone here has actually accused Israel of "genocide?" By your interpretation, or they actually used the word?

Before I address this:

1) If I am incorrect and in fact, one of that list of accusations against Israel has not been made, does that render the main point of my post incorrect? Are you suggesting that it is untrue that the overwhelming majority of those accusations have been made (least of all by yourself)?

2) If I do pull up a post that in fact does accuse Israel of genocide, will you concede the argument, or will you dismiss it with a wave of the hand and then change the subject?

IF someone does or at some point in the past has said that, it doesn't help your hyperpartisanship. You would be correct in pointing out the idiocy of that statement and I highly doubt you would be alone in it. But the existence or nonexistence of some example of someone being particularly egregious does NOT justify your hyperpartisan behaviour ITT, and there is no point in bringing it up unprompted. So to answer your questions, the veracity of someone actually saying this does not change the incorrectness of your main point in either the sense of question 1 or 2.

I wonder if this holier-than-thou condescension comes about because you seem to genuinely think (or just flippantly say) thing like this:
or
which are just blatantly false.

I had a whole post with links to specific posts from the archives and the current site, and then hit a link by accident and now its gone.

I'm not typing it out again at length, so you can either take my word for it or not. If you simply don't believe me, tough **** for me I guess.

I specifically included the proviso that many posters not actually making the accusation per se are relying on sources that make accusations of genocide (via the ethnic cleansing argument), including your BFF Ilan Pappe. More prominent are Al Jazeera, RT, and even mainstream Western media outlets that have given platform to contributors, editors, columnists, and journalists accusing Israel of genocide (i had links to these too), and these outlets have been cited as reputable sources for news.

But past 2+2 genocide accusers (in the literal meaning of the word) have included, iirc from the post:

-intheireye??
-zasterguava
-One other person accused only the settlers of being genocidal, I can't recall who.

I then discussed the many people that first (explicitly) equated other crimes with genocide, such as ethnic cleansing, or extended the definition of genocide to "cultural genocide" and "indiscriminately killing civilians"; and the list of accusers grew to include cwocwoc, fafax, and a whack of other posters dating as far back as 2004, such as Cyrus and nicky g, who are both long gone.

But you're the new prime Israel-hater round these parts. Congratulations, I guess.

Oh you had a link from the archives and from the new forums? csb

I don't know which is more amusing, that you dug back to 2004 to find as extensive a list of people who had ever said or implied genocide (as if that helps your hyperpartisanship) or that it got deleted. If the guy from 2004 comes back and starts talking about genocide well then have at it hoss. But digging it up is just being silly and I highly, highly doubt you would have ever put in all that effort (so much you can't even retype it) to find examples of the worst things ever said on this forum about Arabs or used the fact that some people say disgusting things about Arabs as meaningful in any sense.

Unfortunately, given your recent attempt to quote and link people who aid all settlers were bad was, four for four, you misconstruing them and not showing what you were trying to show, I don't think we can take you at your word that these examples were all legit.

Several. There are 2 separate 2+2 archive sites.

The current site (forumserver.twoplustwo.com) has threads going back to 2008 or so.

There are archived sites as well (http://www.twoplustwo.com/archives.php) and (http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/ubbthreads.php).

I started with a search for "israel genocide". Then went to google to site-search the same for the old ubbthreads forums.

Like I said, the first 3 names made explicit accusations and are both in the current forums. There was a thread during the Gaza war in '08 that tried to suggest Israel was indiscriminately killing any Gazans it could, which certainly implies genocide.

Another thread about building homes in "West Bank" explicitly accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, and in the course of the discussion, suggested that ethnic cleansing is a form of genocide, citing the wiki page for ethnic cleansing.

In any event, the thrust of my argument is that people also rely on sources for news that give platform to people making such accusations.

Gamblor:

In your estimation, what are three key things that Israel could do to improve the situation?

Let's take a step back.

Generally, I'd like an economic policy that shares the wealth. That makes everyone happy, that eliminates rich and poor, that provides services for everyone that needs them. That's a nice world. But the real world isn't like that - people take advantage, they are self-interested, they need incentive to innovate and the right to voluntarily transact. So I'm also a realist.

In a perfect world, my answers would be very different from what are below. I'd like a secular state where everyone can live happy and it doesn't matter Jew or Arab, all equal, all together, where religion, or nationality or race or whatever doesn't matter.

But its not a perfect world, and I can only deal with the reality as it is. Given the reality, this is how I think Israel should act going forward, in the short term.

1) Better documentation and dissemination of the facts on the ground, especially consideration of the optics from an international perspective. Israelis are notoriously self-absorbed. Much of the mentality in Israel is that we are so obviously "right", that anyone who disagrees must hate Jews or just be an idiot. The Palestinians are masters of PR. The army has done a better job of documenting on video its activities, but its always on the defensive, i.e. responding to accusations. It needs to be out in front of accusations.

This includes dispelling myths about the "Green Line" (its not, nor never has been a border), disseminating coherent legal arguments for the right to settle Judea and Samaria as much as Tel Aviv. ally with the far east.

2) At the same time, Israel must be prepared to ignore the anger of the international community to enforce zero tolerance for attacks on her civilians. zero tolerance for any violence. Hundreds of rockets have rained down on Israel in the last couple months, with only a handful of operators taken out (while in the act of launching rockets). The army and government must not be afraid to be aggressive against those who would harm Israelis, and it must be protective of every last settlement, outpost, and city. What keeps this conflict going is the Palestinian leadership's realization that as long as they are in the spotlight, and as long as Israel is prepared to back off when everyone else screams at her, they can continue to incite and promote terror as a means of maintaining their corrupt positions. Abbas is in the 9th year of a 4 year term.

FM Lieberman, (who is a blowhard himself), said yesterday that the Palestinians should hold elections. Of course, in typical fashion, this was their response:
what a ridiculous propagandist. only in the Arab world is a call to end a president's reign a death threat, and only in the arab world is a letter like that a source of "full responsibility" for abbas' life. Once again, a PR masterpiece. take a stupid letter and blow it up into a death threat, and restore the official Palestinian narrative: victimhood.

We cant control them. All we can do is wait for either Abbas to simply die (since that seems to be the only way he will leave office) or the Palestinians to find a leader that wants peace.

Only when the Palestinian terror groups realize that violence will get them nowhere, will there be a chance. The Palestinian "street" knows it already, and the usual sentiment to terror attacks is anger at the terrorists for bringing the israelis into town. This sentiment needs to grow until they beg their leaders for peace - and we will be happy to oblige. in the meantime, the economy in the west bank is booming its quiet save for the usual rhetoric. hamas is happy strangling and stoning and starving their own people in gaza. we have a status quo that can hold for the time being, from israel's perspective.

3) End US aid. Israel is by now a self-sustaining economy. US "aid" is slightly over 1% of GDP. The reality is that this "aid" is not aid, it is in fact financing for foreign countries to buy US-made military equipment, meaning that its less aid to Israel and more a subsidy to US military manufacturers like Boeing. Even though it is virtually meaningless to the US economy, and the aid is more about access to US military equipment than the dollar value, the optics of it alone are simply bad PR. Just sell us the damn equipment at a reasonable price. And tell your media that any joint technology development projects are joint, not "aid".

Bonus
4) Develop the Leviathan, Tamar, Noa natural gas fields and defend them vigorously. Most of EU lip service to the Palestinian cause results from a desire to keep Arab oil producers happy. Israel is sitting on three of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The haters will hate. That's what they do. But this is a game-changer.

Everything is about economics.

Thanks Gamblor, that was interesting reading.

Will also be interested in hearing others' thoughts on the way forward, such as uke_master

Well we certainly agree that this mentality is really, really, bad and results in exactly the kind of predictably unproductive conversation we have had.

Oh you won't hear much from me because I don't, to be frank, feel very comfortable pretending I have the solution, or even small portions of a solution, to what appears to be a relatively intractable problem. One of the reasons I stick to identifying and condemning over the top hyperpartisan rhetoric is because I can say something with reasonable confidence on that subject, but not necessarily on others.

Is Gamblor's response what you had in mind when you asked what would improve the situation? An entirely Israel-centric answer? I'd expect that by 'improve the situation' a person would expect something about moving a peace deal along.

So, I'll ask:

Gamblor, is there any bend that Israel can make to move the peace deal along?

Of the many parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa, the most important for us to realize is that, just like South Africa, Israel will continue to kill and displace people until it's master, United States, stops helping them do it.

Yes, we helped the South African apartheid government just like we help the Israelis apartheid government and we did so under the guise of opposing terrorism. In fact Nelson Mandela was on the U.S. terrorism watch list (yes your government tried to pretend that this Nobel peace prize recipient was a terrorist until we made them change): http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...atchlist_N.htm

But just like with South Africa, if we apply enough pressure and succeed in the divestment campaign, our government will have no choice but to stop supporting the inhumane, murderous and criminal Israelis government.

I participated in the divestment campaign, but am not so sure public pressure moved our government much. Wasn't it more the fact that Washington knew apartheid was doomed, and adapted? Would like to be proved wrong.

Israel is a tougher nut to crack, since its proximity to oil makes it much more of an interest. It also is pretty effective at quieting apartheid talk with the Holocaust and the Muslim menace.

I also think you are overstating the US role. It would take a lot more than just "stop helping them" carry out apartheid. I don't think Washington supports Israeli apartheid in the sense of welcoming it. It could probably arm twist an end to it, though. In South Africa, world condemnation was important, but the end of apartheid was primarily something accomplished by South Africans.

Bill Haywood and uke_master, I rest my case.

Literally every single word of this post relating to Israel is disgusting, false, nonsensical rhetoric, without any factual or logical merit.

If this isn't a perfect example of the disgusting, mindless, literally asinine and insane accusations I referred to above, I don't know what is.

The existence of hyperpartisan idiots (and this guy is much more egregious than you are to the point that there is really no point in even responding to him) does not justify hyperpartisanship on your behalf.

btw, I am surprised you ignored the "hate or idiot" post since that was about the biggest slam dunk example of hypocrisy down to the nearly the exact wording that you are ever going to get in a forum debate.

Is this your modus operandi?

You make blanket accusations and demand evidence for accusations of genocide, and then run and hide when challenged on them? You make a half-assed admission that there is no apartheid in Israel, after I absolutely demolish that claim (and I demolished your ****ty water argument too), and you crawl back into your hole. I even addressed you directly, and you failed to respond.

Then you slither out of your hole, ignore my arguments, and when someone else comes and posts drivel like this, suddenly the apartheid accusation is back on the table.

Truly pathetic.

One of my greatest pleasures is watching the mindless bleating of the racist, anti-semitic BDS movement that Bill Haywood and Deuces McCracken support so dearly.

As if the US government or oil had anything to do with your hilariously pathetic BDS movement. The BDS movement targets private organizations, and powerless ones at that - local food co-ops, for example.

And make no mistake, it is an epic, epic, failure; it has not even been able to convince food co-ops in major cities - the bastions of leftism - to not carry Israeli products. It has, however convinced a co-op here and there. What the effects of such a boycott?

The Guardian:
Right now, if Palestinian Arab farmers want to export their goods to Europe, they use Agrexco as their distributor. They even have their own brand: Coral.

Agrexco provides quality control, and an existing infrastructure for refrigeration, transportation, marketing and other services to Palestinian Arab farmers. In other words, the Co-op is now boycotting Palestinian Arab farmers who have no other means of distributing their goods to the West. Tomatoes and other produce grown in Gaza will be affected as well.

Here's what BDS says about Agrexco:
To achieve their political goals, BDS has told this person to essentially go to hell:
Now, anyone truly supportive of the Palestinians could have argued that this is not good in the long run for the farmers. They could be advocating for an alternative distribution channel that would bypass Agrexco and presumably leave more money in their pockets. They could be proposing a five year plan to migrate these farmers to a better solution, without losing anything in the meanwhile, and in the end cutting out Agrexco. They could be pushing the expansion of existing small but growing alternate, non-Israeli channels for export to other markets (something that the Israeli government is actually supporting!)

Hurting Israeli companies is more important than helping Palestinian Arabs who have no alternative means to market their products to the West. And this is the hypocrisy that shows that BDS cares not one bit about the people they pretend to be helping, and to do so, they cite NGOs and others to back their causes.

To see what actual, living, breathing Palestinian Arabs want, look at the PA companies who attend Israeli trade shows, and agricultural fairs, like Taybeh Brewing Co ("Our goal is to make the Taybeh Beer brand very famous in Israel"), the Jenin-based Canaan Fair Trade ("Nasser hopes to find Israeli partners and start selling in the country, which represents a huge market."). Real Palestinians, like people everywhere, act out of self-interest - and if that self-interest coincides with Zionist interests, that is not a problem to them.

People blinded by hate, however will reflexively push any policy that they believe hurts Israel in the naive hope that eventually they can destroy the state. They have no conception - none - of trying to find solutions that can benefit everyone. For all the thousands of words they churn out, their message always comes down to nothing more nuanced than "Israel bad."

Anti-Zionists pretend that their hate is meant to help Palestinians - which is the biggest lie of all. BDS, of course, has resorted to outright lies even when they are obvious. For example, claiming that the TIAA-CREF fund has divested from caterpillar, when it still has tens of millions invested in caterpillar, and has in fact explicitly said it will not divest.

And if you want to look at government, specifically, the Western "government" that has been most critical of Israel, the European Union: And what about Arab governments, who are supposedly the most Israel-hating of all?
Slate Afrique reports:
To put this in perspective, this means that every year, a single, medium sized Arab country buys about 100 times the amount of goods from Israel that the British Co-Operative supermarket chain did from the Israeli companies it decided to boycott. The increase in goods sold to Morocco alone this year alone will be far greater than the amount Israel might lose from any conceivable BDS action.

If you are truly involved in the BDS movement, you are an epic, fantastic failure as a human being and jew hater. If I were you, I'd keep your involvement in that monumental failure of a movement quiet - it must be awfully embarrassing at this point.

BDS does not support peace. It is not pro-Palestinian; it is simply a vehicle to hate Israel.

I didn't, I just forgot to respond (when i checked 2p2 this am, Deuces/Bill required the lengthy post above) that you proved my point exactly:

My argument was that Israel must do better at disseminating the facts. The reason they don't, is because they dismiss anti-Israel people as either idiots or haters, and ignore the third possibility: genuine ignorance. If you're giving any serious weight to the side of the story that ****s on Israel, its because Israelis aren't properly presenting the facts, then Israel - and I - must do better at showing you what's actually going on.

Dude, YOU were the one implying I was an idiot and hater. Repeatedly. Then you apologized when you realized you had the wrong guy. And then a week alter you repeatedly and explicitly called me either an idiot or a hater in those exact words again. Repeatedly.Something, btw, which you have not apologized for (although you really should). Now yes, I agree people should not go around calling others haters and idiots, especially when it is not justified, but this starts right here with you apologizing for what you seem to be acknowledging in this round about way is both a mistake and part of the number one thing Israel should be doing differently!

And it isn't just that you should be better at informing people. You should also stop calling them haters and idiots! Which was my entire point throughout this thread that your rhetoric is overblown and you kept pushing back yet seem now to have entirely capitulated to my point.

i dont understand this entirely. but i've apologized and maintain that apology for confusing you with the other guys who do make the accusations enumerated in the post before.

I'll say it again: If you (the general you, not uke_master you) agree with any of the above, you are either 1) an idiot (i.e. ridiculous logic), 2) a hater (wilfully blind, dismissive of fact, etc), or 3) you did/are not hearing the facts. my point was that israelis (and i guess I as well) tend to discount #3.

If someone said genocide, then they said it. Is there any sentence that won't make you hyperventilate?

Your demolishment of apartheid occurred in your mind. To take the water example, your argument was:

That's a distinction without a difference. This was the West Bank, where you are outnumbered. If the Palestinians love you so much as to give a minority 4/5 of "shared" water, then why not make them citizens?

Didn't read beyond your first paragraph. No matter what you said, I agree.