The USA and Israel

[accelafine]

Conspiracy nuts are all the same. They have no interest whatsoever in facts, so there's no point in presenting them with any. Complete energy-wasters. I would rather do some pruning.

[Gary Childress]

Conspiracy nuts are all the same. They have no interest whatsoever in facts, so there's no point in presenting them with any. Complete energy-wasters. I would rather do some pruning.

So I take it you think Israel should continue until it destroys Hamas? And when Hamas is destroyed, will that solve the issue? Before that, Israel was fighting Hezbollah. Before that, it was the PLO. I tend to identify with Israelis more so than Arab peoples, however, I don't think the hardliners in the Israeli government are helping matters by pursuing their agenda of colonizing the West Bank and then trying to destroy every vestige of opposition among the people in the occupied territories who are pushing back against it. As much as I identify more with Israelis, to be fair and objective and not pick favorites just because of personal prejudice, I think Israel would do well to get its hardliners out of their government who are allowing and even pushing settlement of the West Bank. They're destroying Israel's security and stoking the ego of Hamas.

It might solve the issue if Palestinians simply folded and gave up and allowed Israel to continue what it's doing, however, I can't say that I would do the same thing if I were in the shoes of the Palestinians. I don't think I'd want to be marginalized to the point of non-existence.

If I were the Israelis, I think I would like it if Palestinians would relent, however, it seems to me that the Palestinians have the more justified claim here. They want to survive, Israel wants to flourish. Survival always trumps flourishing.

[Gary Childress]

What you are saying is actually: If Palestinians give up their will to resist there would have been no conflict. If they were to have surrendered their land without resistance there'd have been no conflict.

Well, here's the Jewish explanation of that:

After 2000 years of longing, the result of the Holocaust – a Nazi movement which sought to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews by systematically exterminating us – was that the international community granted us a sliver of that ancestral homeland. It was to be shared, partitioned into a Jewish state & an Arab state. The Arabs rejected the partition & attacked the Jews when they declared the state of Israel in 1948. The Jews won. Arabs who remained in Israel became citizens with full rights & freedoms. 20% of Israel’s population today is Arab. They fight in the army, they are doctors, lawyers, members of Parliament & supreme court judges. There is no apartheid. Israel’s Jewish population consists of Jews from Arab lands, whose parents or grandparents were kicked out when the state of Israel was formed, & of descendants of refugees from Eastern Europe, Holocaust survivors who had no homes to return to. Some are more recent refugees from Europe, Russia, & the Americas who either returned to Israel for religious reasons or because the Jew-hatred in their communities grew too excessive & they decided to emigrate, to head for the one place in the world Jews can go if their neighbours or governments turn against them.

The West Bank & Gaza strip – along with refugee camps that still exist in Lebanon, Syria, & Jordan -- were the places that the Arab nations who attacked Israel at its founding told the Arabs living in Palestine (later to be known as Palestinians) to flee. It was supposed to be temporary, because the plan was to “push the Jews into the sea.” When the plan didn’t work out, all of these states refused to absorb the Palestinians. They wanted to keep them in camps because they still planned to annihilate Israel & the Jews that lived there & then the Palestinians could return. The West Bank was in Jordan & Gaza was in Egypt until 1967, when the Arab states tried again to push the Jews into the sea. Their failure this time ended with Israel capturing these territories. When Israel tried to exchange land for peace & give Gaza back to Egypt, Egypt didn’t want it. And so the territories remained in Israel. In 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza & left it to govern itself. Most of the West Bank is also self-governing, but not all because of the high number of suicide bombers & other threats to Israel’s existence fomenting there, so Israel hasn’t been able to fully remove itself. The current awful Israeli government has allowed religious fanatics, “settlers,” to build settlements there, which makes everything worse. And you see what I did there? I criticized Israel’s government. I can do that, & still support the existence of a Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. When you say “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” this is a call to ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland, from the only state in the entire Middle East that would look remotely familiar to you in terms of basic rights & freedoms & a democratic system if you were to visit the region. When Hamas supporters – like those who led you all in a rally on my home campus today – talk about Jews as “occupiers,” they don’t mean Gaza. They mean the whole state of Israel. They want Jews eradicated from the entire land.


Where is that incorrect?

That is all correct in some senses, however, it's an incomplete story seen through the lens of Israeli hardliners and therefore a subjective interpretation of the situation. To be objective it would have to take more of the situation into account, including why the Palestinians are pushing back, why Hamas has the power it currently does over Palestinian affairs, etc.

As iwannaplato has also pointed out several times, it's a complex situation.

[Immanuel Can]

What you are saying is actually: If Palestinians give up their will to resist there would have been no conflict. If they were to have surrendered their land without resistance there'd have been no conflict.

Well, here's the Jewish explanation of that:

After 2000 years of longing, the result of the Holocaust – a Nazi movement which sought to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews by systematically exterminating us – was that the international community granted us a sliver of that ancestral homeland. It was to be shared, partitioned into a Jewish state & an Arab state. The Arabs rejected the partition & attacked the Jews when they declared the state of Israel in 1948. The Jews won. Arabs who remained in Israel became citizens with full rights & freedoms. 20% of Israel’s population today is Arab. They fight in the army, they are doctors, lawyers, members of Parliament & supreme court judges. There is no apartheid. Israel’s Jewish population consists of Jews from Arab lands, whose parents or grandparents were kicked out when the state of Israel was formed, & of descendants of refugees from Eastern Europe, Holocaust survivors who had no homes to return to. Some are more recent refugees from Europe, Russia, & the Americas who either returned to Israel for religious reasons or because the Jew-hatred in their communities grew too excessive & they decided to emigrate, to head for the one place in the world Jews can go if their neighbours or governments turn against them.

The West Bank & Gaza strip – along with refugee camps that still exist in Lebanon, Syria, & Jordan -- were the places that the Arab nations who attacked Israel at its founding told the Arabs living in Palestine (later to be known as Palestinians) to flee. It was supposed to be temporary, because the plan was to “push the Jews into the sea.” When the plan didn’t work out, all of these states refused to absorb the Palestinians. They wanted to keep them in camps because they still planned to annihilate Israel & the Jews that lived there & then the Palestinians could return. The West Bank was in Jordan & Gaza was in Egypt until 1967, when the Arab states tried again to push the Jews into the sea. Their failure this time ended with Israel capturing these territories. When Israel tried to exchange land for peace & give Gaza back to Egypt, Egypt didn’t want it. And so the territories remained in Israel. In 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza & left it to govern itself. Most of the West Bank is also self-governing, but not all because of the high number of suicide bombers & other threats to Israel’s existence fomenting there, so Israel hasn’t been able to fully remove itself. The current awful Israeli government has allowed religious fanatics, “settlers,” to build settlements there, which makes everything worse. And you see what I did there? I criticized Israel’s government. I can do that, & still support the existence of a Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. When you say “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” this is a call to ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland, from the only state in the entire Middle East that would look remotely familiar to you in terms of basic rights & freedoms & a democratic system if you were to visit the region. When Hamas supporters – like those who led you all in a rally on my home campus today – talk about Jews as “occupiers,” they don’t mean Gaza. They mean the whole state of Israel. They want Jews eradicated from the entire land.


Where is that incorrect?

That is all correct in some senses,

What does "all correct in some senses" mean?

Be specific: what, that it says, is untrue?

[Gary Childress]

Well, here's the Jewish explanation of that:

After 2000 years of longing, the result of the Holocaust – a Nazi movement which sought to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews by systematically exterminating us – was that the international community granted us a sliver of that ancestral homeland. It was to be shared, partitioned into a Jewish state & an Arab state. The Arabs rejected the partition & attacked the Jews when they declared the state of Israel in 1948. The Jews won. Arabs who remained in Israel became citizens with full rights & freedoms. 20% of Israel’s population today is Arab. They fight in the army, they are doctors, lawyers, members of Parliament & supreme court judges. There is no apartheid. Israel’s Jewish population consists of Jews from Arab lands, whose parents or grandparents were kicked out when the state of Israel was formed, & of descendants of refugees from Eastern Europe, Holocaust survivors who had no homes to return to. Some are more recent refugees from Europe, Russia, & the Americas who either returned to Israel for religious reasons or because the Jew-hatred in their communities grew too excessive & they decided to emigrate, to head for the one place in the world Jews can go if their neighbours or governments turn against them.

The West Bank & Gaza strip – along with refugee camps that still exist in Lebanon, Syria, & Jordan -- were the places that the Arab nations who attacked Israel at its founding told the Arabs living in Palestine (later to be known as Palestinians) to flee. It was supposed to be temporary, because the plan was to “push the Jews into the sea.” When the plan didn’t work out, all of these states refused to absorb the Palestinians. They wanted to keep them in camps because they still planned to annihilate Israel & the Jews that lived there & then the Palestinians could return. The West Bank was in Jordan & Gaza was in Egypt until 1967, when the Arab states tried again to push the Jews into the sea. Their failure this time ended with Israel capturing these territories. When Israel tried to exchange land for peace & give Gaza back to Egypt, Egypt didn’t want it. And so the territories remained in Israel. In 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza & left it to govern itself. Most of the West Bank is also self-governing, but not all because of the high number of suicide bombers & other threats to Israel’s existence fomenting there, so Israel hasn’t been able to fully remove itself. The current awful Israeli government has allowed religious fanatics, “settlers,” to build settlements there, which makes everything worse. And you see what I did there? I criticized Israel’s government. I can do that, & still support the existence of a Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. When you say “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” this is a call to ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland, from the only state in the entire Middle East that would look remotely familiar to you in terms of basic rights & freedoms & a democratic system if you were to visit the region. When Hamas supporters – like those who led you all in a rally on my home campus today – talk about Jews as “occupiers,” they don’t mean Gaza. They mean the whole state of Israel. They want Jews eradicated from the entire land.


Where is that incorrect?

That is all correct in some senses,

What does "all correct in some senses" mean?

Be specific: what, that it says, is untrue?

I told you in the next couple of sentences which you seem to have ignored in your reply.

[Immanuel Can]

That is all correct in some senses,

What does "all correct in some senses" mean?

Be specific: what, that it says, is untrue?

I told you in the next couple of sentences which you seem to have ignored in your reply.

No, you didn't. Instead, you said, "it's an incomplete story seen through the lens of Israeli hardliners." It was actually through the eyes of a liberal university professor living in the West, albeit a Jewish one. So you got that wrong...completely. He wasn't a "hardliner," and you didn't say what was "incomplete."

Or, if you think it was "incomplete", you can now "complete" it for us. But don't talk rubbish or vague dismissals. If his story was "incomplete," say exactly what he missed that you think needs to be added.

If you can't, then you can't.

[Immanuel Can]

Conspiracy nuts are all the same. They have no interest whatsoever in facts, so there's no point in presenting them with any. Complete energy-wasters. I would rather do some pruning.

The only antidote to the lies is truth.

What's the old saying? "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." You may not be getting the response you want, and if they want to persist with the deception, they will...but don't let them do it easily and cheaply. Speak the truth.

[Iwannaplato]

What part of 'Hamas filmed what it did' does the Jew-haters on here not understand?

If that's meant to be a reply to me, it's not relevant to any of the words I wrote.

accelafine is a like a partially deaf or partially blind person. He senses out lines, possible words. If it strikes him in any way at all as not fitting his absolute support of Israel that you are an anti-semite, nazi, woke person who thinks Jews should just roll over and die.

Just as someone who sees mostly shadows may see monsters and threats everywhere - if they're paranoid.

[Iwannaplato]

Conspiracy nuts are all the same. They have no interest whatsoever in facts, so there's no point in presenting them with any. Complete energy-wasters. I would rather do some pruning.

The only antidote to the lies is truth.

What's the old saying? "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." You may not be getting the response you want, and if they want to persist with the deception, they will...but don't let them do it easily and cheaply. Speak the truth.

So, what part of Flannel Jesus' post do you think that was an appropriate response to on accelafine's post.

[Immanuel Can]

Conspiracy nuts are all the same. They have no interest whatsoever in facts, so there's no point in presenting them with any. Complete energy-wasters. I would rather do some pruning.

The only antidote to the lies is truth.

What's the old saying? "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." You may not be getting the response you want, and if they want to persist with the deception, they will...but don't let them do it easily and cheaply. Speak the truth.

So, what part of Flannel Jesus' post do you think that was an appropriate response to on accelafine's post.

I didn't say anything about FJ's post. I said, "Speak the truth." Anybody who has a problem with that advice has bigger problems than me.

[Gary Childress]

What does "all correct in some senses" mean?

Be specific: what, that it says, is untrue?

I told you in the next couple of sentences which you seem to have ignored in your reply.

No, you didn't. Instead, you said, "it's an incomplete story seen through the lens of Israeli hardliners." It was actually through the eyes of a liberal university professor living in the West, albeit a Jewish one. So you got that wrong...completely. He wasn't a "hardliner," and you didn't say what was "incomplete."

Or, if you think it was "incomplete", you can now "complete" it for us. But don't talk rubbish or vague dismissals. If his story was "incomplete," say exactly what he missed that you think needs to be added.

If you can't, then you can't.

Fair enough. Jews appropriated the land of the Palestinians against the will of people living there in 1948.

And they're still doing it by settling the West Bank (which, to my understanding, is counter to International accords and agreements). Is that not also true?

[Iwannaplato]

The only antidote to the lies is truth.

What's the old saying? "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." You may not be getting the response you want, and if they want to persist with the deception, they will...but don't let them do it easily and cheaply. Speak the truth.

So, what part of Flannel Jesus' post do you think that was an appropriate response to on accelafine's post.

I didn't say anything about FJ's post. I said, "Speak the truth." Anybody who has a problem with that advice has bigger problems than me.

So, you have no idea what he was responding to and attacking, but you wrote a post supporting him. You talked about 'their' deception, so it seemed like you had an idea of the context. But here you seem not to have. And you said a bit more than Speak the Truth. Pretty disingenous.

[Gary Childress]

I mean, here's the view of someone who wrote a wiki article. Is the information below not true?

The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War.[a] The status of the West Bank as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court.[1] The official view of the Israeli government is that the laws of belligerent occupation do not apply to the territories, which it considers instead "disputed", and it administers the West Bank, excepting East Jerusalem, under the Israeli Civil Administration, a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.[2][3] Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable" conflict,[6][c] the length of Israel's occupation was already regarded as exceptional after two decades, and is now the longest in modern history.[7][d][8][9] Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as claimed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.[10]

Israel has controversially, and in contravention of international law, established numerous Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank.[11] The United Nations Security Council has consistently reaffirmed that settlements in that territory are a "flagrant violation of international law", most recently in 2016 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.[12] The creation and ongoing expansion of the settlements have led to Israel's policies being criticized as an example of settler colonialism.[13][14][15][16][17][e]

Israel has been accused of major violations of international human rights law, including collective punishment, in its administration of the occupied Palestinian territories.[f] Israeli settlers and civilians living or traveling through the West Bank are subject to Israeli law, and are represented in the Knesset; in contrast, Palestinian civilians, mostly confined to scattered enclaves, are subject to martial law and are not permitted to vote in Israel's national elections.[g] This two-tiered system has caused Israel to be accused of committing apartheid, a charge that Israel rejects entirely.[23][h][24][25][26] Israel's vast military superiority, with a modern army and air force, compared to the Palestinian use of guerilla and terrorist tactics, has led to accusations of war crimes on both sides, with Israel being accused of disproportionality and the Palestinians accused of indiscriminate attacks.

The occupation also has numerous critics within Israel itself, with some Israeli conscripts refusing to serve due to their objections to the occupation.[27] The legal status of the occupation itself, and not just the actions taken as a part of it, have been increasingly scrutinized by the international community and by scholars in the field of international law, with most finding that regardless of whether the occupation had been legal when it began, it has become illegal over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_o ... %20illegal

[Alexis Jacobi]

After 2000 years of longing, the result of the Holocaust – a Nazi movement which sought to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews by systematically exterminating us – was that the international community granted us a sliver of that ancestral homeland. It was to be shared, partitioned into a Jewish state & an Arab state.

[snip]

Where is that incorrect?

First point is in this: It is simply not possible to resort to the argument that, at some point in history, God gifted a land to a specific people. So the *longing* for Israel or Jerusalem, though I do not deny it as such, cannot be seen as a viable rights-giving to the land of Israel.

Secondly, it is not a viable argument to suggest that because Jews inhabited the region at one point that this grants them eternal *homeland* rights. For reasons of history they were expelled though this does not mean that some Jews remained and that Jews returned from time to time. In fact Jews lives beside Palestinian Arabs in relative peace for significant periods of time.

Zionism, which predated the Shoah by many years, is a diseased political movement. The origins of it can be examined in that light. My understanding is that Christian Zionism anteceded Jewish Zionism. But the important point is that Christian Zionism is a religious movement and it's only argument for a Jewish return is linked to Jewish and Christian religious mythologies.

You are a Christian Zionist, and you share belief in the realness of these mythologies so it is not surprising that you ensconce yourself in these irrational arguments.

My research has pointed to the fact that, taken on the whole, Jewry had no good faith intention of 'sharing' a state with the Palestinian Arabs. Were that the case they would not have undertaken what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba: a military operation that killed many, dispossessed many, and was the first step in the process of conquest and establishing the Israeli state. Certainly the most dedicated Zionist guerrillas had no intention to share the land of Israel. For the same reason that you see and describe Israel as an eternal gift by God, so did this idea operate in them, even though many of them were atheist-types.

There are a dozen sound reasons why Palestinian Arabs and Arabs in surrounding states resisted the intrusion of the Israeli state and sought to block it. It looked to them like a foreign intrusion -- a colonial outpost -- and indeed it turned out to be just that.

The state of Israel has been nothing but trouble for the region. And America's *support* of the Israeli state, and the wars that have been waged in the region, and the destabilization, have brought nothing of good or of value to the people of the region. Just endless trouble. And the trouble has not ended and will not end soon. I have wondered how the region would have proceeded and what it might have attained if Israel had not come and created such disturbance.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The only antidote to the lies is truth.

Amen to that, brother!