Old thread got tired and drifted away.

Compelling op-ed in the Times by a guy named Avraham Burg who argues that the secular founders of Israel have forgotten, replaced by a narrow religious state. He says it's time for a constitution, among things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/op...nted=2&_r=1&hp

Isn't there already an Israel containment thread?

I don't really give a **** about foreigners and their constitutions USA #1.

"by a guy named avraham burg"

lol, you post screed after venomous screed demonizing israel and israelis, and you aren't even aware of a person who is a former speaker of the knesset and representative for the major left wing parties, and was an activist in shalom ahshav and major leftist organizations. You know, the kind that only people outside israel pay any attention to.

the article is also nonsense and not worth even addressing.

The guy is just an anti-Netanyahu activist. israel doesn't need saving from itself. it continues to be the best thing that has happened to the jewish people in 2000+ years, it continues to be world-class in terms of education, life expectancy, medical and technological breakthroughs, environmental sustainability, economic strength.

By virtually any conceivable measure, israel is an astounding, unmitigated success.

bill haywood likes to make sure his israel-hatred is on the front page.

so i'm guessing its okay to start reducing the level of sweet, sweet aid moniez?

I also think its interesting that you have the strongest military in the region but dont even use it to your advantage (geo-politically ofcourse). With the kind of strength you have, it must be very tempting to sabre rattle, but you never seem to.. whats up with that?

There has got to be a pill for people like you, by this point. Isn't there?

Israel is a lot like South Africa was in the eighties in terms of being an explicitly racist nation that makes human rights violations their stated policy. But even though South Africa was interdependent with the rest of the world (an interdependence which ultimately helped bring apartheid to an end) Israel, on the other hand, is entirely propped up. Without the U.S., Israel would be nothing. So you have racist, religious nutcakes who can't stand on their own feet. Far from a success, they are a country that most of the world is against.

Do you have any idea what would happen to Israel if Ron Paul was just a tad more electable? But should that never happen Israel is on the clock anyway. When the oil is gone from the middle east so will be our friendship and with that, Israel's security.

false.

false.

false.

unequivocably false.

he isn't, so it doesn't matter much, does it?

the us doesn't get its oil from the middle east, and im not sure how the alliance betwen israel and the US has anything to do with oil anyway (hint: it doesn't).

as usual, anti-israel rants are punctuated entirely by mindless assertions and emotional argument, rather than logic, reason, and fact. you basically have rehashed every anti-israeli propaganda nonsense without saying anything factual. it sounds to me like you read some anti-israel editorials or other garbage in some newspaper or on some website and are repeating it here.

so, just to help bring your ignorance to light, i'll leave this document here.

you'll first have to talk to all the employees, managers, and shareholders at boeing and lockheed, who are the recipients of that aid money. or are you completely ignorant of the nature of the United States' FMF program? hint: its financing, not a gift. But it doesn't matter because you prefer to hate Israel, not deal with reality.

lol. this post is ridiculous.

Lol i just ask a question and you automatically consider me to be a bigot. I don't "hate" Israel and find your comment offensive.

Do you often post in a sarcastic tone and make passive aggressive accusations about sabre-rattling (among other nonsensical buzzwords designed to impute guilt) about countries you don't hate?

So let me get this straight, according to you, someone asking a question about why Israel (in consideration of the capacity of its military) shows so much restraint, is confirmed to be a passive aggressive bigot?

By your logic i assume that all Israeli citizens who disagree with any action of their government are in your view, haters of Israel. Can you please confirm this?

I'm kind of new to this subforum. I didn't know.

The article's argument was that the secular founders have been displaced by theocrats. Is that not true?

This statement lacks awareness of US diplomatic history since WWII. True, US gets just 10% of its oil from ME. But its main competitors, Japan and Europe, get 90%. The US very consciously sought control of the world's #1 energy zone after WWII. This provides immense leverage over the rest of the world. People who can read a map will see a vast network of military bases in the ME. Oil is where it's at, and the relationship with Israel is subordinate to that. Israel's value to the US is that it is a jagged piece of glass pointed towards the Muslim necks who might seek local control over the oil.

In the past 30 years, the Israeli lobby has gained enough influence to insure tolerance for the country's most extreme actions, but the relationship is still founded on oil. The other explanation would be a Jewish conspiracy.

Theocrats is a strong world,Israel's population has indeed embraced more religous/traditional values.

Do you mind provide examples or rational for that statement?
Jewish conspiracy lol.

Bill Haywood is right in that a major reason the US backed Israel so strongly early on was to ensure that there would be a US-friendly port on the Mediterranean to get the oil from what was then a major US ally in Iran. However, the overriding concern was that the Soviets would gain influence in the region and the US would be screwed. There was a very real possibility that if Truman didn't back Israel strongly initially, the USSR would have and the Cold War spheres of influence in the Middle East would have been flipped.

I don't think this question of oil is really all that important any more, as Gamblor points out the US doesn't get a ton of oil from that area and there are so many pipelines and alternate routes now Israel's ability to provide a friendly port isn't all that revelent.

I don't think the region was called "The Fertile Crescent" and "The Cradle of Civilization" because there was oil there. I don't think the Crusades were about oil. I don't think Ramses II took 4 armies to fight the Hittites for oil. I don't think Sumer, Hatti, Akkad, Mitanni, Babylon, Assyria, Kadesh, or any of the other cities, states or powers in the region over the last 11,000 years or so were there for oil...

As soon as we're able to make a system work that will protect the cultural diversity of the people of the region, a secular state will be the answer. But that doesn't appear to be possible at the moment. It sucks. It's a very tough question, but then, geopolitics ain't easy.

To summarize the article: lol secular liberal Israelis for underestimating the ability of crazy religious people to reproduce in large numbers.

I'm looking forward over the next 20 years or so to watching the sane Israel defenders jump ship. The amount of time it takes them to do will basically serve as an aptitude test.

I mean, liberal Israelis are awful as well, but by the standards of modern Israel they almost look not racist.

Do the buses run on Saturday? Can you not get pork and shrimp in Tel Aviv?

That statement is patently false and Israel is still a democratic country. It faces tensions, sure, and they have been well documented. You could even argue that the religious have too much say in some civil areas (mainly the ongoing battle against the Tal Law and marriage/divorce law). But they have absolutely no say in the military, foreign policy, or anything else you love to criticize israel for. So your point is trite and meaningless, and is calculated entirely to try to demonize the state and lump her in with the Islamofascist regimes such as Saudi Arabia. And its bull****.

lol, no. and nice try to characterize this as US vs. Muslim, so you can get everyone all riled up about religious hatred.

I posted before about the ex-Soviet historian that publicized thousands of Soviet documents that proved that the entire accusation of colonialization, imperialism, and the rest of that nonsense is a Soviet propaganda invention intended to drive a wedge between israel and the US/Western powers, which would allow socialism (not democracy) to flourish in the middle east:

Oh yes, the shadowy, infamous, "Israel Lobby". First we killed Christian babies, then we control the financial system, then we manipulate puppet governments in our favour.

Surely its impossible that the US sees immense strategic benefit to israeli partnership, including a keen awareness and understanding of islamic terrorism, an intimacy with the regimes that control the arab world, and an intelligence network in the arab world that the Americans aren't as established in. After all, who was it that warned the Americans about 9/11, again?

The reason the Soviets were a concern was because of the oil. Saying the issue was a "port" is super narrow.

Also, Truman's initial decision to instantly recognize Israel had a strong element of partisan politics. Remember the Dewey beats Truman headline? HST had to have the Jewish vote to win in 1952. Democratic sentiment evaporates without strong interests.

The really significant military support for Israel does not come until after 1967, when Tel Aviv shows its military potential, especially in trouncing Nasser's pan-Arabism. And its ability to stand up to Soviet-backed regimes. (for Hadis especially)

The suggestion the oil is not all that important because it's just 10% of US consumption flies in the face of the stunning amount of military infrastructure. What does Champstark think the archipelago of bases, Iraqi invasion, endless war, support of the Shah and Saudi Arabia and Israel are about? It's to control everybody else's oil.

The suggestion that the US support for Israel is primarily a sentimental one because it is supposedly democratic is very weak. Why does the US support the worst dictatorships in the region? Since when does sentiment trump reasons of state? The State Department's post WWII planning documents referred to the Mideast as the "greatest material prize in history" (quote by memory). That has been the consistent rationale from jump.

As the US deindustrializes, it loses traditional economic clout. For this reason, military control of energy will get more and more important, even if none of it is consumed in the US. The whole military buildup in Africa is for the same reason.

The dominant significance of Mideast oil is foreign relations 101, it is a fundamental observation held by historians left and right. Even the historians with a paragraph about shared values with Israel will have two pages about oil, the Shah, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Michael Klare or Daniel Yergin are good places to learn the basics of post-WWII US policy.

That's the explanation YOU are left with. My eyes are on the geo-strategic power issues. Lol at Soviet conspiratarding.

To bring everyone back to the real world,

Dozens more rockets rained down on Israel today from unoccupied Gaza.

It's only a matter of time before the military goes to root out these rocket launchers, civilians are hurt in the process, and the world well get another chance to gleefully scream at Israel and pass resolutions and pay lip service to impartiality (and completely invert fact and fiction) by demanding that "both sides" stop the "cycle of violence."

Many experts want to go back to the Pre 1967 borders just to start things off. Many jews inside of Israel are in support for Palestine to be a Independent state, as it is currently occupied

Below our some interesting numbers to look at from both Israel and Palestinian viewpoints


A recent poll by the Center Against Racism (2008) found a worsening of Jewish citizens' perceptions of their Arab counterparts:

75% would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents.
More than 60% wouldn't accept any Arab visitors at their homes.
About 40% believed that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote.
More than 50% agree that the State should encourage emigration of Arab citizens to other countries
More than 59% think that the culture of Arabs is a primitive culture.
When asked "What do you feel when you hear people speaking Arabic?" 31% said they feel hate and 50% said they feel fear, with only 19% stating positive or neutral feelings.[89]


A 2007 poll conducted by Sami Smooha, a sociologist at Haifa University, found that:

63.3% of Jewish citizens of Israel said they avoid entering Arab towns and cities
68.4% of Jewish citizens of Israel fear the possibility of widespread civil unrest among Arab citizens of Israel
49.7% of Arab citizens of Israel said Hezbollah's capture of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid was justified
18.7% of Arab citizens of Israel thought Israel was justified in going to war following the kidnapping
48.2% of Arab citizens of Israel said they believed that Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel during that war were justified
89.1% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed the IDF's bombing of Lebanon as a war crime
44% of Arab citizens of Israel said they viewed Hezbollah's bombing of Israel as a war crime
62% of Arab citizens of Israel worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state
60% of Arab citizens of Israel said they are concerned about a possible mass expulsion
76% of Arab citizens of Israel described Zionism as racist
67.5% of Arab citizens of Israel said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip


A 2010 Arab Jewish Relations Survey, compiled by Prof. Sami Smoocha in collaboration with the Jewish-Arab Center at the University of Haifa shows that:

71% of Arab citizens of Israel said they blamed Jews for the hardships suffered by Palestinians during and after the “Nakba” in 1948.
37.8% of Arab citizens of Israel denied the Holocaust.
11.5% of Arab citizens of Israel support the use of violence against Jews to advance Arab causes (up from 6% in 1995).
66.4% of Arab citizens of Israel say they reject Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state.
29.5% of Arab citizens of Israel opposed Israels existence under any terms.
62.5% of Arab citizens of Israel saw the Jews as "foreign settlers who do not fit into the region and will eventually leave, when the land will return to the Palestinians

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac..****ers-1.339538

Jewish settlers do inflame the situation themselves. And they are a big part of the problem in Gaza.

I am not defending either side for the antagonism that goes on.

ok listen, i don't mean this in any way as an insult. i think youre posting in earnest and honestly, and i can respect that.

but let me get this straight
you have an opinion on this subject strong enough to post about it, and you are completely unaware that no israeli has set foot in gaza in 4 years, and no israeli civilian has set foot in gaza in 7?

who told you these settlers are such evil people? a newspaper reporter?

Here is reality:

Israeli Settlement hosts peace conference, invites Palestinians. (translated from makor rishon)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-UN-envoy.html

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012...acks-as-terror

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ish-extremists

Who told you that Settlers are 100% innocent of not adding tension between the two sides?