i grew up in it and i have close family in the thick of it that i speak to all the time and I regularly spend a month+ there annually.

so yeah. i know what's going on.

but i do tend to try to pre-empt counterarguments so perhaps i miss on a few of those and act a fool.

This was my experience earlier in this thread. I made a totally non-partisan comment and then got a hyperpartisan attack of a response back that strawmaned what I had said into some militant anti-israel guy.

The need to get hyperpartisan - on both sides - of this issue is a huge part of the problem and Gamblor is absolutely contributing to that.

I respect Gamblor's right to believe what ever he wants. But the accusations of what I have read and watched being pure lies and propaganda has made me LOL a bit.

Remember this post so we never have to discuss it again:

This post is exactly the proof-by-assertion that anti-israel activists (and make no mistake - you are anti-israel and not pro-palestinian; no matter the perpetrator, the only target of your anger is israel, the most blameworthy party is always israel. you pay lip service to arab crimes against other arabs, but the only party that must concede is israel) love.

Apartheid, per the ICC definition under the 1998 Rome Statute:
so the requirements are:
1) inhumane acts (paraphrased as - per paragraph 1: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation/forced population transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution based on a number of enumerated grounds (look up the list), enforced disappearances, apartheid, inhumane acts intended to cause suffering mentally and physically).
2) in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic repression
3) by one racial group over any other racial group
4) committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

One must satisfy all of these requirements in order to be guilty of the crime of apartheid.

The "West Bank" is not a politically defined area, and the "Green Line" is not a recognized political border. So the fact that you call it "the West Bank" as if its a legally defined term is another example of an invented argument.

UN General Assembly Resolution #58/292 of May, 2004 resolved that the Palestinian people have sovereignty, but UN General Assembly Resolutions are non-binding and are politically determined by a vote of the nations and have no legal or moral basis except if you assume that majority vote = moral decision making, which is obviously does not.

Continuing: Israel's military control of the "West Bank" (defined as the east side of the line drawn by two generals as a cease-fire line, and in any event not a legal boundary) has nothing to do with citizenship, and ethnic Arabs within Israel proper do have full representation and suffrage. Therefore, divisions are not based on racial grounds per the requirement 3) above.

Conclusion: Not Apartheid

Excuse me? What the hell is this sentence?
In any event, Israel does not have exclusive control of West Bank Water aquifers. Per COGAT:
Read the FAQ to address your baseless accusations.

In any event, the agreement determines water-usage, not any apartheid or racist policies.

Conclusion: Not Apartheid

Israel collects taxes per its responsibilities under Annex V, Article V of theOslo Accords. The tax collection policy has nothing to do with race, oppression, or any of the 4 requirements of apartheid above. Further, any refusal to transfer tariff collections have been a direct result of the 2006 PA elections which elected Hamas into power. It is not in question that Hamas proudly refuses to accept, as a matter of principle, virtually every Palestinian obligation of the Accords, and Israel has no responsibility to transfer tax income to an entity that has no interest in abiding by the agreed-upon rules.

That said, there is still nothing in this issue that suggests violation of any of the above 4 requirements.

Conclusion: Not Apartheid.

Borders between Israel and the PA have not been defined as shown to you above: the argument above. Israel has no control over the border between Egypt and Gaza. And its military presence in the West Bank is based on security requirements. Israel has not Annexed the West Bank, so there is simply no argument that the Israeli intention is to maintain the regime per requirement 4). Further, entry to Israel via Jordan is not racially based, and Israeli Arabs are entitled to entry with the same procedures as Israeli Jews, which eliminates the racial-discrimination argument per 2).

Conclusion: Not Apartheid.

What does this even mean? No matter, Israeli Arabs have full suffrage and representation in parliament and have standing to sit as judges.

Conclusion: Not Apartheid

so there is no official racial discrimination as a matter of civil rights beyond immigration preference, which is a standard, accepted right of nations. Nations that provide ethnic preference for immigration include virtually every European nation, including Italy.

In any event, true or not, this doesn't violate any of the requirements for the crime of apartheid above.

[/QUOTE]

Neither of these has anything to do with the crime of apartheid, true or not (hint: they aren't, but that's not what we're trying to prove).

See? Instead of actually looking at the definition and making a fair argument, you simply just make assertions and pick and choose whatever facts you like to support your pre-made conclusions.

So yes, you are simply a hater. your arguments have no basis in fact whatsoever, and they do not come close to "proving" apartheid.

So, to reiterate: Apartheid requires:
1) inhumane acts (paraphrased as - per paragraph 1: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation/forced population transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution based on a number of enumerated grounds (look up the list), enforced disappearances, apartheid, inhumane acts intended to cause suffering mentally and physically).
2) in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic repression
3) by one racial group over any other racial group
4) committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Israel has not Annexed the west bank, and per the Oslo Accords, is subject to Final Status Negotiations, therefore #4 is not satisfied.
Israeli Arabs, racially indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs, have full suffrage and civil rights. So #3 is not satisfied. #2 is questionable and an argument for another day, as security rationale vs. policy rationale is a long argument. And #1 is simply a joke. Palestinian deaths during the conflict, though each - at least, of innocents - a tragedy, are minimal when compared to other conflicts worldwide between similar population sizes and time frames.

So once again, the Apartheid label is nothing more than a scam intended to demonize Israel and has no basis in law or fact.

ive made my arguments showing you why much of it is. you simply assert otherwise. well? lets go: prove me wrong.

Is not Israeli soldiers in West Bank an occupational force?

There may be incidental distortions of fact in reporting. But what you claim is that distortions are purposeful lies to spread agendas. People misspeak or get confused. Like I did with the Gaza strip and West Bank. It does not mean that an argument is entirely invalidated. That documentary shows both sides of the story. From the perspective of settlers and palestinians.

ps - The interview/reporter does not hold as much interest to me as the Jewish settlers and Palestinians talking about what is going on.

My, Gamblor, that's a stunning flurry of double talk and misdirection. The only argument that actually makes sense is that apartheid is defined as racial oppression. That's of course semantic niggling and does not change what is done to people.

To take one example of wall-to-wall double talk, there's your strawman that Israel does not have "exclusive" control over West Bank water. You're right! Its only 4/5, according to the Jew-hating World Bank:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-water-dispute

So you would be in agreement if it were called "water discrimination," instead of "water apartheid?"

Okay, I get it. You're fully entrenched on one side of the argument and you're very much locked in. But I have talked to people who act in a similar hyperbolic fashion from the other side and it is similarly counter productive.

More importantly, I do know many people you'd call "settlers". And I can admit some of them buy into some pretty serious ethnic-stereotypes of Arabs in general. But they see the ideal solution as all of them living side-by-side in peace and quiet. But their arguments in favour of Israeli control and exclusivity are based on the assumption that the Arabs will never accept them there and if its one or the other, it will have to be them. Its not based on some ideology that requires ethnic purity or any such nonsense - even Kahana believed that ethnic segregation was a response to Arab terror and rejectionism, not an ideal in and of itself.

These I know to be facts because I talk to these people when their guard is down and without political posturing.

Even more importantly, I see all the changes made, and the direct deaths that result from arming the PA via Oslo, or opening border crossings, or relaxing security. They lead to more Israeli deaths, not less. We have no desire to rule over them, no desire to harm them, 99% of Israelis feel the same way, and I can't speak for the black hat crazies, but most of them don't care about them either. But if our army is forced to kill a few of them in order to save lives, so be it. We accept that cost grudgingly.

Contrast that with Palestinian celebrations at every terrorist attack. The more deaths, the happier they are. And if they're not celebrating, they think its some Israeli false flag or conspiracy.

This is how we see it. This is how Bibi sees it too, according to a friend who's dad was in the army with him. Obviously that's not too reliable, but its more reliable to me than conjecture by self-professed "experts".

Is this not exactly what you have done in this thread, only with the positions reversed?

This is pretty sad. It is the perfect example of the "us vs them" mentality. Heck, you even explicitly use the pronouns. What you have done in this gem of post is try to cast "your" side as these benevolent lovely people well "they" are these despicable ****ers hoping for and praising every israeli death.

The need to perpetuate this false us vs them dichotomy, to draw these sweeping generalizations that paint the one side as amazing people and the other as the scum of the earth is, frankly, both disgusting and likely a huge part of the problem.

We can argue about that and what's right and wrong all day, but you're the one that's been calling it "apartheid" and therefore you're the one that has to justify your accusations. And you have failed per your own admission. So we can throw that out the window, along with some non-trivial amount of your credibility.

In an incredible display of lack of self-awareness, you replied to direct legal and factual analysis with inane non-sequitors and emotional triteness ("stunning display of double-talk" lol), thereby proving the exact point I've been trying to make - that almost all anti-israel arguments are based entirely on trite platitudes ("herp derp occupation apartheid illegal etc etc") without actually analyzing the meaning of those words and whether they apply.

In any event, at least you're capable of admitting that there's no apartheid, so we can put that canard to rest; I'll operate on the assumption that you have some integrity and won't be bringing that accusation up again going forward.

Onward.

Another exact example of the brutal misrepresentations in the news and in your arguments.

So you're suggesting that Israel has control over 4/5 of the water, when in fact the article you posted doesn't even say that. It says:
So Israel takes 4/5 of the water being extracted; it does not control 4/5 of the water available in a shared aquifer.

There are lots of reasons for this that don't include racial or even national discrimination: not only did you fail to consider them, but the article itself does (of course, in true Guardian stylen, it buries it in the third-to-last paragraph, long after casual Israeli-Palestinian conflict hobbyists such as yourself have stopped reading):
Where is all that aid money going? Someone check Suha's bank accounts!

The PA source for that quote mentions that Israel hasn't granted permits, but Israel doesn't have the authority to grant permits in Area A or B, because those areas are under PA civil jurisdiction!

And, in the coup de grace, Israel strongly disputes the numbers themselves.

So Israelis get more water per capita, because Israel has developed better infrastructure, while the Palestinians resort to their standard "Israel is at fault" explanations.

Did you even read the Cogat repost in my previous post?

I appreciate your opinion here because I've don't ever hear your viewpoint. I'm not hateful but I'm ignorant (uneducated).

I'm curious about this point, whether or not you think this means we should come to the table:

informed to the max and therefore biased,
completely uninformed and therefore with no bias.
or a mix.

And I you. You are entitled to your own opinions. You are NOT entitled to your own facts.

But lets look at some recent history:

Hamas' Ismail Haniya said in English to the Guardian:
Except, March 30, a couple months before that speech, in Palestine Times (you'll need Google Translate):
And a month before that:
[Palestine Times:
And the accompanying image on the website:


And in May, the Palestine Times again reports:
Now let's look at the Palestinian Bureau of Central Statistics, who said in its annual nakba report:
Leaving aside the conspiratarding, it ignores the fact that, had the Arab states (including the Palestinians) accepted the partition plan, none of this would have happened.

But moving on:
The number is actually about 1,000. The total number of Palestinian Arabs killed in 64 years by Israel is about 15,000.

More lies:
Another lie; the PBCS must not know about Macau, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar.

Let's look at the Palestinian Adameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Foundation, whose head, Sahar Francis, said that:
Simply absurd. That would mean that there were, on the average, over 23,000 new prisoners a year since 1967, or 500 a week. That testimony is from July 2009; but exactly one year earlier, Adameer submitted to the UN that 700,000 prisoners had been held - that's 50,000 in one year; given about 8,100 at the current time, that's beyond absurd. It's a whopper of a lie.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights publishes weekly reports on the number of Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces, without regard for the reasons for their arrest (which invariably include the planning of terrorist acts against Israeli civilians, among other petty crimes like auto theft). None of the last 6 months of reports have had numbers greater than a few dozen in a week.

Almost certainly the past eight years have seen the largest number of PalArab prisoners in Israeli prison history because of the intifada. Yet even if you assume that each prisoner is detained for only a single year and only arrested once, these past eight years add up to less than 50,000 prisoners; extrapolated to 1967 it would add up to under 200,000.

Of course, the Israeli Prison Authority, Adameer's source, claims that 60% of prisoners are repeat offenders.

The numbers are literally made up out of thin air.

Which is fine, if people were to recognize that.

Unfortunately, UN Rapporteur John Dugard testified to these numbers and accepted them uncritically as fact.

As did Jimmy Carter.

Time Magazine also quoted a similar number, 650,000.

These fake numbers are all over the Internet, usually with the addition (as Carter added) that this means that supposedly 24% of the Palestinian Arab population has been arrested at some point of their lives (again making the false assumption of one arrest per person, layering lies upon lies.)

I could go on forever.

it was a meaningless platitude to dismiss the previous point. it doesn't mean anything.

the point of the saying is that if you know the real facts, you tend to favour one side or another.

nope.

the reason I use "us" and "them" is obvious and has no value judgment attached to it whatsoever.

i have only defended israel from the accusations in this thread via proof that the accusers are liars. It doesn't mean that all Palestinians are liars, nor does it mean that all Israelis are perfect angels.

But Israeli government decisions are indeed based on a foundation of reason, fact, and decency, and not the desire to make anyone else miserable.

Palestinian decisions are, well, a mishmash of random decision makers that more-often disagree with each other, because the PA itself has no real power over the multitude of NGOs, terrorist groups, and whoever else decides to say or do whatever they want. So its not nearly as simple as "palestinians bad". But Israel must deal with threats as they come, regardless from whom.

stop projecting.

I realize it was said in jest, but I completely agree with it and the statement below you made:

Its seems like an obvious truth to me.

I wonder if each side feels then that they should bring facts to the table and therefore bias, or leave facts in order to leave bias?

Or should we bring some facts so only some bias?




Also on an unrelated note, how many sides do you see to this issue (I apologize for calling something so complex one 'issue')?

2 because Israel/Pal? Or 3 because outsiders, or 4 because outsiders on both sides, or more?

The apartheid rebuttal was a pretty solid post however the stereotyping "dem arabz be celebrating terror yo" is really letting you down.

Lol. Perhaps you should be more critical of the US government since IT is a mishmash of random decision makers that more often than not disagree with each other and have a range of various interests and hardly some bastion of reason and fact.

But this is just one more example where you write all this prose about how wonderful israel is with all this and, yet again, just how bad palestine is. It is reaffirming once again your us vs them mentality where even in a post that directly calls you out on it you cannot help yourself going off on a new tangent about why israel is good and palestine is bad. It seems to fit this description perfectly, with the parties reversed:
[QUOTE] Oh I have no doubt you have all sorts of complex sophistry to elaborate on "palestinians bad, israelis good, grunt".

on the topic of the silly platitude, I always liked "the truth has a well known liberal bias"

there's a reason for this...

why would people listen to a gov't body that is subservient to another one in which they have no representation?

itt we have what is known as denial

See. I never called anyone settlers. The cliff notes on my stances on this whole thing is: religion...lol. I don't have any skin in the game. But I do enjoy reading about it on a very limited basis.


I don't know how to respond to this wall of text. I don't think there is a perfect solution or anything. I think Israel has essentially been at war since their inception. That does not make them evil. And I think that the palestinians are only getting arab community support because they are next to Israel. But I still support the creation of a palestinian state and a potential step towards making this a more livable arrangement. Peace and harmony? I have no clue how to make that happen...well I do...just no one would listen to me about it. Cliff notes: religion lol.

Unless someone else makes the religion argument, I never bring it up beyond insisting that each person have the right to serve his deity in wahtever way he sees fit, with the usual caveats and limitations.

Citing religious imperatives is pointless and simply bad argument.

I cite national, legal, and historical rights.

Religion, lol.

I usually don't like to put too much emphasis on religion over other social, economic, and geopolitical factors, but not should it be ignored as it clearly has descriptive relevance outside of just the normative claim that gamblor made. Namely, large amounts of people on both sides do see it as a religious conflict and are motivated by their religious beliefs to the point of thinking that their various geographical claim are divinely motivated. As I say, it isn't the only factor to be sure, but it is certainly relevant in realizing some of the entrenchment of this conflict on both sides and is ignored to our own peril.