microbet

"I think any way of ranking military capability that puts Israel ahead of Russia is not a very good way of measuring things."

That's not the point I was making. The point I was making is that Israel is a massively powerful military state whose security would not be threatened if they agreed to a nuclear free zone.


//What does that mean ? Are they not entitled to the same as the Israelis ?//

"Life is not perfect and not everyone gets what they want"

But Israelis should come first at the expense of the Palestinians ? That sounds a bit one-sided.

"The Jews (and maybe Romany) are the ones he made a reasonably good effort at eradicating."

Hitler had no control over most of the world so "eradication" is something of an exaggeration. Hitler was quite happy to make peace with Britain after he had conquered Europe so it was not any kind of priority. You should put this into the context of the times. The bigger European countries had empires so racism and massacres were rife. I have already posted about the avoidable Bengal famine which took millions of lives and to which Churchill's response was something about Indians breeding too much.

"No doubt they all got ****ed. Israel isn't asking for, say Germany, which would be more fair, just 8000sq mi of mostly desert."

And how is that fair to the millions of Palestinian refugees who would have had their own country ?

"I'm just suggesting that the anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) people should understand that Jews have reasonable concerns if they don't maintain political control at least somewhere"

To seek impose the control of one ethnic group over a country is racist. The apartheid South Africans did that when they maintained white rule over South Africa. Jewish people have no reasonable concerns. Black people usually seem to cop it first and then Asians. Over time the Jewish and other minorities will assimiliate as it's not viable to keep an alien culture going forever and everyone is becoming more secular.

Ironic that now suddenly you value mainstream news sources, which you so often accuse of being biased against your beliefs. Another logical fail.

In any event, Ha'aretz, never one to be sympathetic to Israel, lists rocket attacks for the past 6 months. I can go back farther if you want:
Sept 2011: 13 rockets fired toward Israel
October, 2011: 56 rockets fired toward Israel as response to release of former captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit
Nov 2012: 9 rockets fired toward Israel
Dec 2011: 18 rockets fired toward Israel
Feb 2012: 30 rockets fired toward Israel
March 2012: Some 200 rockets fired toward Israel after the IDF assassinates the leader of Popular Resistance Committees

Now lets see those who the IDF has nailed:

Mahdi abu Shawish
Mansour Kamal Abu Nuseira
Hussain Barham al Breim
Ahmed Hanani
Zuhir al-Qaisi
Ahmad Deeb Salem

Islamic Jihad:
Fayiq Saad
Muatasim Hajjaj
Ahmad Hajaj
Shadi Sayqali
Ubeid Gharabli
Muhammad Maghari
Hazim Qureiqi
Muhammad al Ghamry
Muhammad Harara
Mahmoud Najim

Well, I did read that some civilians were killed, just saying.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...055832181.html

Regardless, I find it interesting that all this went down when Bibi was in the States for an important meeting with Obama and AIPAC. I don't think all of these things are unrelated.

of course they are, if they'd just stop hoping for a return to the early 1900s when they could just kill the jews if they were annoyed with them.

So? There are a few hundred thousand Israelis that lived through the holocaust, and a few million who've listened to their parents and grandparents tell them the stories. You think 6 million people dead and countless others forced into ghettos, out of a worldwide population of 12 million, just ups and forgets that?


Discrimination of all forms is intolerable. And there are problems in Israel, where Ashkenazis view the Mizrahi and others as less cultured, less developed. You've missed the point of Israel entirely: we are allowed to have our *******s just like the UK is allowed to have their *******s. We work to teach people - ads and flyers at soccer games, for example, have anti-racism slogans and messages. But the fact that there are racists does not make the state itself any less legitimate, any less than the UK is illegitimate.

The first major wave of immigration to Israel was in the late 19th century, before Hitler was out of diapers. Herzl wrote his seminal Der Judenstaat in 1896 in response to the Dreyfuss Affair in France in 1894. Jewish prayer liturgy had been almost singularly focused on Jerusalem and Israel since time immemorial, and a continuous Jewish presence has been in Israel since ancient times.

So maybe the Holocaust was the final straw, but to suggest that Israel was just a place to dump some refugees is pretty laughable.

"back"? First, there was never a "country" in the modern sense, but I'll grant you that many Palestinians are no longer living in Israel when they once were. But the vast, vast, vast majority of the "refugees" have been refugees their whole lives, born in the camps. They've simply never set foot in Israel.

I'd almost be okay with the return of the original refugees if it wouldn't be viewed as a victory that would embolden the terrorists to demand more and more.

A proper solution would be for the younger (63 years since the war) ones to be settled in their places of residence, be granted full citizenship, and resume normal lives in a middle east that co-operates with Israel instead of blames it.

I note you count rockets on one side and dead people on the other. It is not helpful to "nail" men, women and children. It would be helpful to stop settlement building/expansion as requested by President Obama as a precursor to starting peace talks.

I know we've discussed this before, but don't you think this is a bit disingenuous? I mean you can't just move grandmothers and grandfathers of large families back to Israel and isolate them from their families. Also, as always in these types of situations, part of the reason there are so many refugees who are younger is population explosion that typically comes with the horrible living conditions and situations that these people are in. It happens everywhere in the world where people are forced into a small area with poor economic outlooks and nowhere to go.

cwocwoc

"On the whole I'd say black people have always copped it worse than Jewish people even during the war millions of Indians were starving to death. The pictures from the concentration camps actually look very similar to the pictures from the streets of India at the same time"


I suggest you google the Bengal famine 1943 because you appear to know nothing about it. Here are a few photos. There are worse ones.

http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2009/1...43-part-2.html

Sure, it appears 1.5-4 mil out of a population of 60 mil might have died (we'll take the average of 2.75 mil, which is 5% of total population). Reasons for this seem to be disputed. That is awful, of course.

Just some facts about the Holocaust because you appear to know nothing about it:

1. 6 million Jews killed in Europe via a direct and specific plan designed to kill them.
2. There were 9 million Jews in Europe at the time.
3. That means that 2/3 or 66% of the Jewish population of Europe was systemically eradicated.

Let us compare the two:

66% of a group specifically targeted and killed because of their religion/ethnicity
5% of a group died from famine because of poor planning and a strong possibility of corruption by the local government

Neither is excusable and both are awful things, but they are simply not comparable. I know it's tempting to do whatever it takes to play down the Holocaust these days, but come on now. I'm the farthest thing from a strong supporter of Israel as Gamblor can attest to, but this blatant anti-Semitic crap you are posting is ridiculous and out of line.

Also, how is the Indian famine relevant? Just because it's another tragedy?

Speaking of Indians and tragedy, millions of Native Americans were killed in the new world and in the US there are now racist reservations where only Native Americans can live. What about that? There's a single Navajo reservation in Arizona that is 4 times as big as all of Israel.

You have just done the latter with the Indian holocaust. They happened at the same time and they were because of cruel Imperial rule.

Millions dead are millions dead I don't know why you want to work out percentages. The overall point I was making was that these kinds of massacres happened under Imperial rule.

You also seem to object to this :

"On the whole I'd say black people have always copped it worse than Jewish people"

That's my experience living in Britain and what the history looks like. Lots of Africans, South Americans and Native North Americans etc copped it in the last few centuries.

It happened at the same time and millions died because of the Imperialist rule. If you were a camera man the pictures from the concentration camps and the streets of India were pretty much interchangeable.

I don't know how the reservations run but at least the Native Americans always lived there and millions of refugees haven't been created as a result of the policy.

that's why you dont forcibly move the survivors. you give them the choice of israeli citizenship or citizenship of their adopted homeland. but you only get citizenship of israel if you ever actually lived there.

maybe its not perfect, but given the 100 years of bad blood, terrorism, etc., you'd think the palestinians would meet us halfway. No two state solution, even your lauded Saudi peace plan, has ever solved the refugee problem - in fact, it called for the forced transfer of about 5 million refugees (I won't even get into the ridiculous and historically unique definition of "refugee" they use) into Israel. Not one, and that's why its never been considered seriously as anything other than a stunt. A Palestinian Arab state next door and 5 million more Arabs into Israel? Seriously?
and even if you make a peace with the PA, what do you do about Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. etc.? Their whole existence is based on the promise that Israel will one day disappear and the Islamic Republic will rise.

And what do you do about the 100 years of constant promises of returning? Do you just tell these people nope, sorry... If Abbas did that, he knows he'd go the way Sadat did.

If you can't see the difference between failing to understand or simply being ignorant of the effects of imperialism and poor management on a local population and the systematic murder of millions because they are "inferior vermin", I don't know what to say.

You can argue the effect is the same, but to equate those is ridiculous.

Also, can we PLEASE move this hijack? as usual, it all starts because one half of the discussion insists on making it all about israel's tentacles which apparently reach into every dispute on the planet. just insane.

Churchill regarded the Indians as inferior. There is speculation that Churchill's intention was to punish the Bengal leader who was not toeing the British line to Churchill's satisfaction.

That's what I've done. The effects look very similar.

Most of the Palestinians don't want to return if there is an independent Palestinian state. It's just a right which is negotiable.

If you are talking about Palestinian refugees in refugee camps, they are regarded as second-class citizens by other Palestinians (this is in the West Bank, dunno about Gaza) and would snap accept the offer to move back to Israel (assuming full Israeli rights, peace, etc.) if they could take their families with them.

If you are talking about the Palestinian diaspora around the world, those people have settled elsewhere and many of them would not want to return, that is correct.

Source? Find me a quote where Churchill lays out a plan to exterminate Indians and MAYBE you'll have a viable comparison. Otherwise, the two are still extremely different situations. How can you not see this? Hitler's personal desire was to wipe every Jew off the face of the planet simply because they were Jewish and he used the military and economic strength at his disposal to do so, even jeopardizing his country's military strategies occasionally because he felt killing Jews was more important.

I am highly skeptical Churchill ever said or did anything remotely close to that.

One of the points about the holocaust and Israel is the part about "never again" or at least hopefully not.

A Jewish state, a tiny tiny tiny Jewish state, is a place where Jews can go if they are ever put in that situation again. Perhaps places like the US are open for Jews with some money from Russia or something, but Israel is open for poor Jews in Ethiopia or Iraq or Syria or wherever.

Indians may have had a similar death toll, but their situation was very different. They did end up in a somewhat similar situation though with a British territory that got divided up between two religious groups who still fight about it.

There are many Churchill quotes disparaging the Indians.

Millions die though starvation and related diseaes because of Imperial cruelty. It sounds similar to me and it was for the millions who died.


He knew this was impossible. He wanted peace with Britain after he had completed his invasion of Europe.

There have been many genocides and massacres since and there were many before.

Those places are troubled for everyone living there. We have many people in Britain who have been granted entry from Ethiopia and Iraq. The solution was not to put the Palestinians into a similar position. Where's the "never again" for them ? If the Americans wanted to help the Jews during and after WW2 they should have taken more of them into the US. They were only willing to take a few thousand displaced Jews after WW2. Israel might be tiny but Palestine is even tinier and it's getting tinier all the time. If the Israelis moved back to the 67 borders then we would have peace.


Thr Indians always lived there that's why they are still there. Re fighting your comments are uninformed. The Kashmiris are fighting for their freedom. The British botched that up. The Sikhs (that's three religions now if you're counting) would like an independent state as well. There are other issues elsewhere in India.

I didn't mean the kashmiris, I meant Pakistan/India.

What is your source on peace with the 67 borders? (I assume you mean pre war)

I take it your source is not hammas, hezbolla, or the president of Iran.

The Palestinians put themselves in that position when they rejected the original two-state solution (the Partition). Accepting that would have meant two states, side by side, in peace. The question is now why should we believe that they are suddenly interested in peace and co-existence after all these years? After all, we won the war. They lost. The onus shifts to them to prove to us that they're serious about peace.

This a meme that's never been shown to be true. The only people who say this are Western politicians and pro-Palestinian activits.

There is, however, lots of evidence to suggest that the Palestinians themselves don't consider the Green Line as relevant at all.

If you mean "If Israel returned to the 67 borders and absorbed 4 millionish Arab refugees and offered citizenship to any Palestinian citizens who wanted it and gave up any claim to Jewish monuments in the Judah/Shomron region and signed over Jerusalem" then yes, you might have some sort of temporary peace.

I have no doubts that you'll disagree with me, and it doesn't matter, really. All I've ever argued is that Israel does not take the actions she does out of some desire to oppress the "Arabs", or commit genocide, or out of some inherent racism. You could debate whether Israel's actions are prudent or not, advance peace or not, etc. All I tried to show in this whole thread is that Israel is a functioning, proper state that may not conduct its affairs perfectly, but it does at least (in context) to a reasonable degree of Western liberal values comparable to other modern states. I think I've far surpassed that standard at this point, given that you've been ignoring my posts wholesale and simply addressing particular snippets and details vis-a-vis the conflict.

The Indians and Pakistanis are fighting over Kashmir. Please inform yourself. The Palestinians accepted the 67 borders when they applied to the UN for recognition as a full state recently. Those are the borders on which they asked for recognition.

Right, except, as I pointed out, no provision was made for the refugees, who they still insist must be re-absorbed into Israel. In fact, the bid explicitly denied the refugees citizenship in the new Palestinian state (and every other Arab state as well)!

How is that to be interpreted as anything but a ridiculous stunt to gain attention? Did they really believe that was a step towards peace? Why was there no international and media condemnation the way there is when some Israeli developer builds an apartment building in a Jerusalem suburb?

Here's the reality: If the Palestinians raise a stink about something, anything, if they simply make it up, you buy it as a symptom of Israeli oppression and racism and hatred. Its instantly newsworthy. You view every stunt they pull through rose-coloured glasses.

Israel? Just a massive propaganda machine. Which is simply amazing considering the iron grip the PA and Hamas have on the news outlets there.