The counter factual is that when Sharon handed over Gaza the Palestinians had ceased military action against Israel and dedicated themselves to become, say oh I don't know, Singapore on Jordan.
Think of the UN/US/World Bank billions that would have been poured in.
But no - they wanted to push Israel into the sea. Perhaps giving them Gaza was seen as a victory for violence. As Abba Eban noted and how true it seems to be, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
How right Abba Eban was.
I'm not starry-eyed about the Israelis, but I'm also not sure I give a shit about the Palestinians.
Anas Sarwar would become first minister at the next Holyrood election and lead Scottish Labour to power for the first time in 20 years, a landmark new poll has found.
The resurgent party threatens to end the SNP’s grip on Scottish politics by running almost neck and neck with the nationalists at the general election. It is also on course to be the largest party by a single seat at Holyrood in a mirror image of how the SNP first came to power, according to analysis of a Panelbase poll for The Sunday Times.
How the hell did they manage to build up such an arsenal in Gaza without the Israelis knowing about it? As you’ve said, an incredible and unprecedented intelligence failure.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
There are plenty of Israelis with genocidal intentions towards the Arabs, though.
Half the Israeli cabinet, by the looks of it.
But its not in their constitution......
At the end of the day, Israel is still a kind of democracy, and I’ll defend its right to exist and indeed to defend itself.
I just don’t think the essay you cite is very helpful. There are many good, decent and innocent Arabs, and it is impossible to understand Hamas without considering the broader history of state-sponsored persecution by Israel.
The whole situation reeks of an abusive relationship. The incoherent male standing over the beaten woman saying, “look what you made me do.”
And, like a lot of men, Israel believes it to be true. A couple can separate. Two peoples who want to live on the same land? Tricky.
Israel is the woman in that analogy presumably?
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
I'm not sure it matters to the dead if they are killed by a 'professionally trained army' or not.
The counter factual is that when Sharon handed over Gaza the Palestinians had ceased military action against Israel and dedicated themselves to become, say oh I don't know, Singapore on Jordan.
Think of the UN/US/World Bank billions that would have been poured in.
But no - they wanted to push Israel into the sea. Perhaps giving them Gaza was seen as a victory for violence. As Abba Eban noted and how true it seems to be, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
How right Abba Eban was.
I'm not starry-eyed about the Israelis, but I'm also not sure I give a shit about the Palestinians.
Their complaint is not so much about oppression as about the fact they aren’t the oppressors.
No arms off the ball tackle, just a penalty....compare to Curry incident that got him sent off and banned for 3 games (which could have been 6 if he didn't have a good record and begged for forgiveness) .
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
We're responsible for messing up the region in 1948.
No we're not.
What happened in 1948 wasn't our choice.
It wasn't the UN's choice either (where correct me if I'm wrong we were from memory outvoted but didn't use our veto).
What happened in 1948 and since was the Arab state's fault. Theirs and theirs alone.
A lot of it was France’s fault 😜
They were paranoid about the Mandate being extended to cover Lebanon and Syria which they saw as their sphere of influence
So they funded both Jewish and Arab terrorists to attack the British. That led to the King David bombing by the Irgun and created the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood and ultimately Hamas
No, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt, partly as a benevolent welfare organisation and partly to oppose the British occupation of Egypt.
Part of the reason so many in the MENA region support Islamists like MB and Hamas is that they still have a strong element of welfare and education to their organisation, in places where no one else cares for the poor and government services are corrupt or non-existent. So the people are very willing to listen to their politics.
50 years ago Arab politics was secular nationalism. Those leaders created the Islamist problem by neglecting and oppressing their own peoples.
The only solution to the Israel/Palestine issue is to… make more Israel.
The strategic argument is that with Palestine as a state, Israel is too narrow.
This means that the security pragmatists in Israel align with the religious idiots.
Instead, fill in large chunks of the Mediterranean. Make more land. This will cost a few hundred billion, but will detach the pragmatists and then you have a peace - the Palestinians have their land and the Israelis have their land.
Not really feasible. The continental shelf is very narrow off Israel. It plunges very deep only a few miles off the coast, and there is no really shallow water at all.
If you blocked up the Straits of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean would evaporate.
Not sure the basin left would be terribly safe or any more fertile than the Dead Sea, but it would be mostly land.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
Not all Jews. They just want to kill those Jews who live in what they claim is Arab land.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
Sure, sounds like a good plan. Who knew that the solution was simply to wipe Palestine off the map? Seems so obvious now you mention it.
What Palestine on the map?
Egypt and Transjordan already wiped Palestine off the map in 1947.
They tried twice to wipe Israel off the map and failed both times and the disputed territory isn't Palestinian land it's ex Egyptian and Jordanian land and they've renounced their claims to it.
If they take responsibility for their actions and take the people who can't peacefully live in Israel's land, that's taking responsibility for their own history and may allow peace.
What do you mean, "what Palestine"? The country of Palestine. The one next to Israel, that one.
What country of Palestine? There is none. Egypt and Transjordan, as well as Arafat saw to that.
There is a state that has not acquired country status as part of the land for peace accords agreed with Arafat but since Arafat then rejected peace and so have Hamas they've no right to country status and don't have it.
If they lose the land they acquired from false commitments to peace and from losing a war then fair enough.
Look, I don't know why you keep talking about Arafat. Well over half the population of Palestine was born since Arafat died. Whatever Arafat did or didn't do is not their fault. And these people, these Palestinians, these humans. Where do they live? Palestine is a place. It's recognised by the vast majority of the world. It exists.
It's not their sovereign territory, it is disputed territory like Crimea which is occupied by Russia.
On 31 July 1988, King Hussein announced the severance of all legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, except for the Jordanian sponsorship of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and recognised the PLO's claim to the State of Palestine. In his speech to the nation held on that day he announced his decision and explained that this decision was made with the aim of helping the Palestinian people establishing their own independent state.[59][60]
Since King Hussein's country had lost control of that land in a war it began against a nation that was defending it's very right to exist that doesn't mean the land is Palestinian, it means it's Israels.
Now if Israel wishes to gift that land to the Palestinians that is quite generous and they've tried that for decades. If that doesn't work, then deporting those who refuse to recognise their right to exist might be a last resort.
Germany lost land to France, to Poland and others at the end of WWII. Do you think that land should be returned to Germany now?
The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII. The Arabs deserved the same after 47 and 67 but Israel were the better humans.
Nobody deserves to be deported for things that their government or the government of a neighbouring country has done. The ethnic Germans living in Poland and just getting on with their own lives weren't to blame for anything. Ordinary Arabs in Israel or Palestine aren't to blame. Don't punish the innocent.
This exchange is a perfect example of why, very sadly, when this conflict is the subject of pb I find the comments simply unreadable. You two aren’t talking to each other. At all. You might as well boil your own heads in a vat of oil for all the good it will do.
Firstly, fuck off.
Secondly, if you haven't fucked off yet, I'm responding directly and, I have to say, rather obviously to anyone with a brain cell, to this: "The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII."
The clue is in my exactly duplicating of the language: "Nobody deserves to be deported for things that..."
Thirdly, fuck off.
A very fair response considering…and apologies, it looked like my comment was directed primarily at you when in fact I pretty much agree with your position. I was trying and failing to make a wider comment rather than one directed at you.
Though your response does rather serve to illustrate my point.
Anyway, I did at least fuck off for a while, so there’s that.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
There are plenty of Israelis with genocidal intentions towards the Arabs, though.
Half the Israeli cabinet, by the looks of it.
But its not in their constitution......
At the end of the day, Israel is still a kind of democracy, and I’ll defend its right to exist and indeed to defend itself.
I just don’t think the essay you cite is very helpful. There are many good, decent and innocent Arabs, and it is impossible to understand Hamas without considering the broader history of state-sponsored persecution by Israel.
The whole situation reeks of an abusive relationship. The incoherent male standing over the beaten woman saying, “look what you made me do.”
And, like a lot of men, Israel believes it to be true. A couple can separate. Two peoples who want to live on the same land? Tricky.
Israel is the woman in that analogy presumably?
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
No they are the man. It’s a long time since Israel was the plucky David against Goliath. I was brought up reading the books of Leon Uris and had huge sympathy and admiration for Israel. But the last few decades have changed that.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
What a shock that our latest Russian troll is happy to defend those who wish to see Israel wiped off the map and the Jews exterminated.
Israel has a right to defend itself. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
They must be defeated. There is good and evil here, and it is Hamas that are evil.
Hamas must understand that open war with Israel means they lose. So if he is saying all that then its because they are backed by Iran. All those missiles got into Gaza with assistance from someone, did they not?
If this escalates then it is going to be Israel vs genocidal maniacs. And we need to back Israel. Because in a democracy vs theocracy fight there can be no prevarication. I assume that Hamas envisage the glorious martyrdom of Palestinian civilians as some kind of positive. Which itself is madness.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
Israel does not have a professional army, it has a conscript army.
Professionally trained, operating professionally. Not in the narrow sense of contracted.
England's attack has all the sophistication and deception of a ram raid attack. All world rugby teams have worked out how to put the equivalent of bollards in the way to stop it.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
Israel does not have a professional army, it has a conscript army.
Professionally trained, operating professionally. Not in the narrow sense of contracted.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
The failing of the West is, if anything, more likely due to its one-sided support of Israel. This doesn't go unnoticed around the world and likely contributes to the half-hearted nature of sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Israel has many faults.
But it is a democracy existing, surrounded by enemies with explicitly genocidal intent.
It is our duty, and our interests, to support a democracy in the Middle East
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
What a shock that our latest Russian troll is happy to defend those who wish to see Israel wiped off the map and the Jews exterminated.
Israel has a right to defend itself. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
They must be defeated. There is good and evil here, and it is Hamas that are evil.
There’s much trolling and crap spouted on this subject. Israel haters and barking mad Likudniks, I’m happy to give it, generally, a wide Berth.
Hamas must understand that open war with Israel means they lose. So if he is saying all that then its because they are backed by Iran. All those missiles got into Gaza with assistance from someone, did they not?
If this escalates then it is going to be Israel vs genocidal maniacs. And we need to back Israel. Because in a democracy vs theocracy fight there can be no prevarication. I assume that Hamas envisage the glorious martyrdom of Palestinian civilians as some kind of positive. Which itself is madness.
Hamas must know they cannot win an open war with Israel so what is their strategy and end game here ?
Some people on social media speculating it’s to stop the deal,between the Saudis and Israelis.
What is clear is Israel looks weak and their intelligence has had a colossal failure. This skirmish will probably Peter out but that chronic failure should concern Israel more than anything else.
I think the strategy (as far as it exists beyond bloodlust) is to suck Israel into a similar situation as they were in Southern Lebanon that Hezbollah did. An intractable war with hostage taking that saps the will of Israels conscripts to continue the fight, and for other counties to support that fight. Classical asymmetric warfare.
On Israel and Palestine I think a lot of people have instinctive sympathy for the latter which is justified because they are clearly the side without significant power.
One problem, and is far from the biggest problem for them, is how loonier elements use that as a springboard for far wilder positions, which can undercut galvanising that sympathy.
McTominey saves his manager’s job in 3 minutes and added time. Being interviewed, he says “At this club you never give up, I have been here since I was 5 years old and I know it better than anyone.”
Which raises the question of why Ten Hag spent most of the transfer window trying to off load him. Players who feel like that and care like that ARE your team. I really hope he sees that.
Not if they’re crap players they’re not.
He isn't crap though - he's a classic battling midfield grafter. That Cafe Haag doesn't get him is the crap bit. Watch how the national team uses him - a great player.
He isn't crap, but someone simply feeling that way is not in itself useful if they are.
The basic problem for some on the left I think is that there's a romantic view of anything on the Palestinian side being a liberation movement that basically wants rights and dignity, and that's of course partly true. But of course others - who over the last couple of decades have become dominant in the 'cause' thanks to Iranian cash and arms - aren't that. They're Islamic fundamentalists who don't give a jot for peace or the good of the Palestinian people, they want Jews out of the Middle East and what would in effect be something like a Caliphate of Islamic fundamentalist states spanning the Middle East. Hence why they do things like continually firing rockets at civilian targets in Israel. Absolutely pointless as a military strategy, and entirely futile even as a gesture of resistance now with the Iron Dome. But not if your main goal is stopping any chance of peace by ensuring restrictions that Palestinians resent aren't going to be lifted. Or that no one's going to get around a table because they fear what will happen if they do and that they'd be putting civilians at risk of a terror group that's armed to the teeth and whose charter calls for their extermination.
On Israel and Palestine I think a lot of people have instinctive sympathy for the latter which is justified because they are clearly the side without significant power.
One problem, and is far from the biggest problem for them, is how loonier elements use that as a springboard for far wilder positions, which can undercut galvanising that sympathy.
McTominey saves his manager’s job in 3 minutes and added time. Being interviewed, he says “At this club you never give up, I have been here since I was 5 years old and I know it better than anyone.”
Which raises the question of why Ten Hag spent most of the transfer window trying to off load him. Players who feel like that and care like that ARE your team. I really hope he sees that.
Not if they’re crap players they’re not.
He isn't crap though - he's a classic battling midfield grafter. That Cafe Haag doesn't get him is the crap bit. Watch how the national team uses him - a great player.
He isn't crap, but someone simply feeling that way is not in itself useful if they are.
The basic problem for some on the left I think is that there's a romantic view of anything on the Palestinian side being a liberation movement that basically wants rights and dignity, and that's of course partly true. But of course others - who over the last couple of decades have become dominant in the 'cause' thanks to Iranian cash and arms - aren't that. They're Islamic fundamentalists who don't give a jot for peace or the good of the Palestinian people, they want Jews out of the Middle East and what would in effect be something like a Caliphate of Islamic fundamentalist states spanning the Middle East. Hence why they do things like continually firing rockets at civilian targets in Israel. Absolutely pointless as a military strategy, and entirely futile even as a gesture of resistance now with the Iron Dome. But not if your main goal is stopping any chance of peace by ensuring restrictions that Palestinians resent aren't going to be lifted. Or that no one's going to get around a table because they fear what will happen if they do and that they'd be putting civilians at risk of a terror group that's armed to the teeth and whose charter calls for their extermination.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
Sure, sounds like a good plan. Who knew that the solution was simply to wipe Palestine off the map? Seems so obvious now you mention it.
What Palestine on the map?
Egypt and Transjordan already wiped Palestine off the map in 1947.
They tried twice to wipe Israel off the map and failed both times and the disputed territory isn't Palestinian land it's ex Egyptian and Jordanian land and they've renounced their claims to it.
If they take responsibility for their actions and take the people who can't peacefully live in Israel's land, that's taking responsibility for their own history and may allow peace.
What do you mean, "what Palestine"? The country of Palestine. The one next to Israel, that one.
What country of Palestine? There is none. Egypt and Transjordan, as well as Arafat saw to that.
There is a state that has not acquired country status as part of the land for peace accords agreed with Arafat but since Arafat then rejected peace and so have Hamas they've no right to country status and don't have it.
If they lose the land they acquired from false commitments to peace and from losing a war then fair enough.
Look, I don't know why you keep talking about Arafat. Well over half the population of Palestine was born since Arafat died. Whatever Arafat did or didn't do is not their fault. And these people, these Palestinians, these humans. Where do they live? Palestine is a place. It's recognised by the vast majority of the world. It exists.
It's not their sovereign territory, it is disputed territory like Crimea which is occupied by Russia.
On 31 July 1988, King Hussein announced the severance of all legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, except for the Jordanian sponsorship of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and recognised the PLO's claim to the State of Palestine. In his speech to the nation held on that day he announced his decision and explained that this decision was made with the aim of helping the Palestinian people establishing their own independent state.[59][60]
Since King Hussein's country had lost control of that land in a war it began against a nation that was defending it's very right to exist that doesn't mean the land is Palestinian, it means it's Israels.
Now if Israel wishes to gift that land to the Palestinians that is quite generous and they've tried that for decades. If that doesn't work, then deporting those who refuse to recognise their right to exist might be a last resort.
Germany lost land to France, to Poland and others at the end of WWII. Do you think that land should be returned to Germany now?
The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII. The Arabs deserved the same after 47 and 67 but Israel were the better humans.
Nobody deserves to be deported for things that their government or the government of a neighbouring country has done. The ethnic Germans living in Poland and just getting on with their own lives weren't to blame for anything. Ordinary Arabs in Israel or Palestine aren't to blame. Don't punish the innocent.
This exchange is a perfect example of why, very sadly, when this conflict is the subject of pb I find the comments simply unreadable. You two aren’t talking to each other. At all. You might as well boil your own heads in a vat of oil for all the good it will do.
Firstly, fuck off.
Secondly, if you haven't fucked off yet, I'm responding directly and, I have to say, rather obviously to anyone with a brain cell, to this: "The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII."
The clue is in my exactly duplicating of the language: "Nobody deserves to be deported for things that..."
Thirdly, fuck off.
A very fair response considering…and apologies, it looked like my comment was directed primarily at you when in fact I pretty much agree with your position. I was trying and failing to make a wider comment rather than one directed at you.
Though your response does rather serve to illustrate my point.
Anyway, I did at least fuck off for a while, so there’s that.
I apologise for jumping down your throat quite so much, but I felt like in my replies to Barty I was addressing things he was saying quite directly, acknowledging that some of what he said right but really wanting to say that other things he was saying were beyond the pale. I maintain that view, and I was working hard to contain quite a considerable amount of anger that he (and, sadly, others too) are talking openly about ethnic cleansing as a viable "solution" to this.
The reason I jumped at you was because I was really working so hard to contain that anger and address the points and I felt that was wholly unacknowledged when you seems to be accusing me of not listening to him. You ended up being the conduit for that anger I was holding back, but you didn't really earn that response so I apologise for the tone.
How the hell did they manage to build up such an arsenal in Gaza without the Israelis knowing about it? As you’ve said, an incredible and unprecedented intelligence failure.
Iranian and Russian smuggling by boats and tunnels from sinai
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
That is nonsense. Conflict in the British Mandate between Palestinians and Jewish settlers started in the 1920s, well before the Nazis were in power.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved by going over past wrongs. Peace will only come when (as in NI) people put history behind them and look to the sort of future that they want for their children.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
I'm not sure it matters to the dead if they are killed by a 'professionally trained army' or not.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
Israel does not have a professional army, it has a conscript army.
Professionally trained, operating professionally. Not in the narrow sense of contracted.
I’m well aware of the pros and cons of the IDF.
But not, apparently, of its structure.
Of course I am aware of the structure.
I was issuing professional in its alternative sense.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
There are plenty of Israelis with genocidal intentions towards the Arabs, though.
Half the Israeli cabinet, by the looks of it.
But its not in their constitution......
At the end of the day, Israel is still a kind of democracy, and I’ll defend its right to exist and indeed to defend itself.
I just don’t think the essay you cite is very helpful. There are many good, decent and innocent Arabs, and it is impossible to understand Hamas without considering the broader history of state-sponsored persecution by Israel.
The whole situation reeks of an abusive relationship. The incoherent male standing over the beaten woman saying, “look what you made me do.”
And, like a lot of men, Israel believes it to be true. A couple can separate. Two peoples who want to live on the same land? Tricky.
Israel is the woman in that analogy presumably?
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
No they are the man. It’s a long time since Israel was the plucky David against Goliath. I was brought up reading the books of Leon Uris and had huge sympathy and admiration for Israel. But the last few decades have changed that.
No, Israel is the woman still and is still the David.
The Arab world that surrounds them is the Goliath.
Israel has no desire for conflict or to exterminate the Arabs. The same can not be said in reverse, the policy of those attacking them, uninterrupted from the Nazis to today, is quite openly and literally their extermination.
Just as they don't allow themselves to be exterminated, does not make themselves an aggressor.
Your logic is like saying if a woman is consistently attacked by a man who is openly seeking to rape her, but she knows Krav Maga and can overpower him every time, that makes her the aggressor.
No, she's still the victim. As is Israel. If people stop trying to wipe Jews and the only Jewish country on the planet off the map that may change, but it's never changed yet.
The attitude of those seeking to wipe Israel and Jews off the planet is like the IRA saying "we only need to be lucky once". Israel has every right to defend herself.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
Nice story Mike of a different time. If any of my kids had wanted to go to Gaza as students I think I would have had heart failure. Of course, they didn't. Several parts of the world are now just too dangerous, even for adventurous types. The available world is getting smaller.
Though bigger too. Places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were off limits once, as were Algeria, Colombia, even China when I was young. All on the tourist trail now.
I missed out on Kashmir in 1990 when the troubles blew up, and wished that I had got there a year earlier.
What Hamas are up to is barbaric, but the history of mutual atrocity in Israel and Palestine has shown that no atrocity is too brutal. No doubt the Israeli revenge will be taken on women and civilians too.
Once again.
Equivalent between brutal terrorists torturing women and a trained professional army.
There are very likely to be civilian casualties as a result of any Israeli action. That will be unfortunate and we can argue that Israel should do their best to minimise them. I am sure they will, within the constraints of their military calculus (which is different to ours)
But this is not “revenge”. It is not “torture”. It is not an “atrocity”.
Your false equivalence is the failing of the West. It enables the evil that is Hamas.
You should be ashamed
Israel does not have a professional army, it has a conscript army.
Professionally trained, operating professionally. Not in the narrow sense of contracted.
I’m well aware of the pros and cons of the IDF.
But not, apparently, of its structure.
Of course I am aware of the structure.
I was issuing* professional in its alternative sense.
Or 'incorrectly,' as it is sometimes also called.
The whole point of the Israeli army is that it *isn't* professional. It may be professionally trained, but that is a rather separate issue.
You could almost make a case that in this war it's Hamas actually has the professional army, but its actions are hardly a model of professionalism.
*I'm assuming this is autocorrect having fun at your expense.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
2 state solution is a bit of a misnomer.
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan? Israel and Egypt? Israel and Iran? Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
Is there still a war raging in Bosnia? Are the Serbs and Bosniaks (and Croats) still lobbing rockets and/or tank shells at each other? One-state solutions can work.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
Is there still a war raging in Bosnia? Are the Serbs and Bosniaks (and Croats) still lobbing rockets and/or tank shells at each other. One-state solutions can work.
They can, but Israel is not going to accept a state where Jews are a minority.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
2 state solution is a bit of a misnomer.
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan? Israel and Egypt? Israel and Iran? Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
Israel and Palestine.
Or do you deny that Palestinians are a nation with national consciousness?
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
Is there still a war raging in Bosnia? Are the Serbs and Bosniaks (and Croats) still lobbing rockets and/or tank shells at each other. One-state solutions can work.
They can, but Israel is not going to accept a state where Jews are a minority.
Which is one reason why it seems highly possible Netanyahu will use this as an excuse to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Do that, and the demographics* look altogether more encouraging for his goal of a one state-solution.
*For some reason, autocorrect made that 'Democrat hicks.' I have no idea why.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
Sure, sounds like a good plan. Who knew that the solution was simply to wipe Palestine off the map? Seems so obvious now you mention it.
What Palestine on the map?
Egypt and Transjordan already wiped Palestine off the map in 1947.
They tried twice to wipe Israel off the map and failed both times and the disputed territory isn't Palestinian land it's ex Egyptian and Jordanian land and they've renounced their claims to it.
If they take responsibility for their actions and take the people who can't peacefully live in Israel's land, that's taking responsibility for their own history and may allow peace.
What do you mean, "what Palestine"? The country of Palestine. The one next to Israel, that one.
What country of Palestine? There is none. Egypt and Transjordan, as well as Arafat saw to that.
There is a state that has not acquired country status as part of the land for peace accords agreed with Arafat but since Arafat then rejected peace and so have Hamas they've no right to country status and don't have it.
If they lose the land they acquired from false commitments to peace and from losing a war then fair enough.
Look, I don't know why you keep talking about Arafat. Well over half the population of Palestine was born since Arafat died. Whatever Arafat did or didn't do is not their fault. And these people, these Palestinians, these humans. Where do they live? Palestine is a place. It's recognised by the vast majority of the world. It exists.
It's not their sovereign territory, it is disputed territory like Crimea which is occupied by Russia.
On 31 July 1988, King Hussein announced the severance of all legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, except for the Jordanian sponsorship of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and recognised the PLO's claim to the State of Palestine. In his speech to the nation held on that day he announced his decision and explained that this decision was made with the aim of helping the Palestinian people establishing their own independent state.[59][60]
Since King Hussein's country had lost control of that land in a war it began against a nation that was defending it's very right to exist that doesn't mean the land is Palestinian, it means it's Israels.
Now if Israel wishes to gift that land to the Palestinians that is quite generous and they've tried that for decades. If that doesn't work, then deporting those who refuse to recognise their right to exist might be a last resort.
Germany lost land to France, to Poland and others at the end of WWII. Do you think that land should be returned to Germany now?
The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII. The Arabs deserved the same after 47 and 67 but Israel were the better humans.
Nobody deserves to be deported for things that their government or the government of a neighbouring country has done. The ethnic Germans living in Poland and just getting on with their own lives weren't to blame for anything. Ordinary Arabs in Israel or Palestine aren't to blame. Don't punish the innocent.
This exchange is a perfect example of why, very sadly, when this conflict is the subject of pb I find the comments simply unreadable. You two aren’t talking to each other. At all. You might as well boil your own heads in a vat of oil for all the good it will do.
Firstly, fuck off.
Secondly, if you haven't fucked off yet, I'm responding directly and, I have to say, rather obviously to anyone with a brain cell, to this: "The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII."
The clue is in my exactly duplicating of the language: "Nobody deserves to be deported for things that..."
Thirdly, fuck off.
A very fair response considering…and apologies, it looked like my comment was directed primarily at you when in fact I pretty much agree with your position. I was trying and failing to make a wider comment rather than one directed at you.
Though your response does rather serve to illustrate my point.
Anyway, I did at least fuck off for a while, so there’s that.
I apologise for jumping down your throat quite so much, but I felt like in my replies to Barty I was addressing things he was saying quite directly, acknowledging that some of what he said right but really wanting to say that other things he was saying were beyond the pale. I maintain that view, and I was working hard to contain quite a considerable amount of anger that he (and, sadly, others too) are talking openly about ethnic cleansing as a viable "solution" to this.
The reason I jumped at you was because I was really working so hard to contain that anger and address the points and I felt that was wholly unacknowledged when you seems to be accusing me of not listening to him. You ended up being the conduit for that anger I was holding back, but you didn't really earn that response so I apologise for the tone.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
That is nonsense. Conflict in the British Mandate between Palestinians and Jewish settlers started in the 1920s, well before the Nazis were in power.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved by going over past wrongs. Peace will only come when (as in NI) people put history behind them and look to the sort of future that they want for their children.
The NI peace process isn’t about putting anything behind anyone.
It’s about
1) the Men Of Violence on both sides were thoroughly infiltrated. 2) the infiltrators killed those against a peace process, claiming they (the hard liners) were actually British agents. 3) this created a tipping point where opportunists on both sides signed up to a deal where everyone gets a six figure salary, if there are no killings*. 4) in return, the criminal element are allowed to launder their money, sell drugs etc. but not too much! 5) the theory is, in a generation or two, they’ll have forgotten how to torture and murder….
For some light relief among the grimness, this it gloriously unselfaware:
MOSCOW, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Russia expresses its most serious concern at the sharp aggravation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
"We call on the Palestinian and Israeli sides to implement an immediate ceasefire, renounce violence, exercise the necessary restraint and establish, with the assistance of the international community, a negotiation process aimed at establishing a comprehensive, lasting and long-awaited peace in the Middle East," she said in a statement.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
Sure, sounds like a good plan. Who knew that the solution was simply to wipe Palestine off the map? Seems so obvious now you mention it.
What Palestine on the map?
Egypt and Transjordan already wiped Palestine off the map in 1947.
They tried twice to wipe Israel off the map and failed both times and the disputed territory isn't Palestinian land it's ex Egyptian and Jordanian land and they've renounced their claims to it.
If they take responsibility for their actions and take the people who can't peacefully live in Israel's land, that's taking responsibility for their own history and may allow peace.
What do you mean, "what Palestine"? The country of Palestine. The one next to Israel, that one.
What country of Palestine? There is none. Egypt and Transjordan, as well as Arafat saw to that.
There is a state that has not acquired country status as part of the land for peace accords agreed with Arafat but since Arafat then rejected peace and so have Hamas they've no right to country status and don't have it.
If they lose the land they acquired from false commitments to peace and from losing a war then fair enough.
Look, I don't know why you keep talking about Arafat. Well over half the population of Palestine was born since Arafat died. Whatever Arafat did or didn't do is not their fault. And these people, these Palestinians, these humans. Where do they live? Palestine is a place. It's recognised by the vast majority of the world. It exists.
It's not their sovereign territory, it is disputed territory like Crimea which is occupied by Russia.
On 31 July 1988, King Hussein announced the severance of all legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, except for the Jordanian sponsorship of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and recognised the PLO's claim to the State of Palestine. In his speech to the nation held on that day he announced his decision and explained that this decision was made with the aim of helping the Palestinian people establishing their own independent state.[59][60]
Since King Hussein's country had lost control of that land in a war it began against a nation that was defending it's very right to exist that doesn't mean the land is Palestinian, it means it's Israels.
Now if Israel wishes to gift that land to the Palestinians that is quite generous and they've tried that for decades. If that doesn't work, then deporting those who refuse to recognise their right to exist might be a last resort.
Germany lost land to France, to Poland and others at the end of WWII. Do you think that land should be returned to Germany now?
The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII. The Arabs deserved the same after 47 and 67 but Israel were the better humans.
Nobody deserves to be deported for things that their government or the government of a neighbouring country has done. The ethnic Germans living in Poland and just getting on with their own lives weren't to blame for anything. Ordinary Arabs in Israel or Palestine aren't to blame. Don't punish the innocent.
This exchange is a perfect example of why, very sadly, when this conflict is the subject of pb I find the comments simply unreadable. You two aren’t talking to each other. At all. You might as well boil your own heads in a vat of oil for all the good it will do.
Firstly, fuck off.
Secondly, if you haven't fucked off yet, I'm responding directly and, I have to say, rather obviously to anyone with a brain cell, to this: "The only difference is the Poles deported the Germans en mass. Which they kind of deserved after WWII."
The clue is in my exactly duplicating of the language: "Nobody deserves to be deported for things that..."
Thirdly, fuck off.
A very fair response considering…and apologies, it looked like my comment was directed primarily at you when in fact I pretty much agree with your position. I was trying and failing to make a wider comment rather than one directed at you.
Though your response does rather serve to illustrate my point.
Anyway, I did at least fuck off for a while, so there’s that.
I apologise for jumping down your throat quite so much, but I felt like in my replies to Barty I was addressing things he was saying quite directly, acknowledging that some of what he said right but really wanting to say that other things he was saying were beyond the pale. I maintain that view, and I was working hard to contain quite a considerable amount of anger that he (and, sadly, others too) are talking openly about ethnic cleansing as a viable "solution" to this.
The reason I jumped at you was because I was really working so hard to contain that anger and address the points and I felt that was wholly unacknowledged when you seems to be accusing me of not listening to him. You ended up being the conduit for that anger I was holding back, but you didn't really earn that response so I apologise for the tone.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
Is there still a war raging in Bosnia? Are the Serbs and Bosniaks (and Croats) still lobbing rockets and/or tank shells at each other. One-state solutions can work.
They can, but Israel is not going to accept a state where Jews are a minority.
President Biden is set to Deliver Remarks to the Nation regarding the ongoing War in Israel from the White House today at 2:30pm EST.
I wonder if this could this have any effects on the impending government shutdown? If the US needs to give Israel lots of aid, the GOP aren't going to want to interfere with that.
President Biden is set to Deliver Remarks to the Nation regarding the ongoing War in Israel from the White House today at 2:30pm EST.
I wonder if this could this have any effects on the impending government shutdown? If the US needs to give Israel lots of aid, the GOP aren't going to want to interfere with that.
Can an interim speaker oversee the House passing a budget?
If not, seems unlikely it will make any difference.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
The only reason that there's no Palestinian state is that Egypt and Transjordan (not Israel) invaded in 1947 and murdered it at birth, while trying to murder Israel at birth in the immediate wake of the Holocaust. Thank goodness they failed.
They then tried to murder Israel again, in 1967. Again thank goodness they failed.
Arafat had the opportunity for peace. He turned it down.
Hamas, Iran etc still demand Israel's destruction.
The only way peace may ultimately be attained is if those who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist are relocated to Egypt or Jordan (who after all are the nations responsible for Palestine not existing) or Iran.
It's unpleasant but increasingly the only viable path to peace. And that's not Israel's fault, they're the victims here.
I don’t think that’s the only reason, no. Without Zionism and the support of the British for Jewish migration to the area, there wouldn’t ever have been the thought to divide Palestine into two states and an independent Palestine would probably have emerged at the same time as Lebanon, Syria etc. Of course, the British were only there because of the choices made by the Ottoman Empire to ally with Germany in World War I, and the British and French betrayal of the people of the region in not giving them independence after that war.
We also have to look at the way the British departed and the lack of any international willlingness to enforce the 1947 UN plan on both sides. By the way, you say Israel didn’t invade in 1947, but the Israeli military moved with force into areas that did not have a Jewish population and were not allocated to Israel in the 1947 plan, and they forced out at gunpoint the local (Palestinian) population. I’m not certain what to call that if not “invading”.
And, of course, as you allude to, it is the Holocaust and prior European anti-Semitism that drives Zionism and its success over Bundism.
So, it’s a long, complex history. There is not an “only reason”, and it’s naive to claim as such. There have been many atrocities committed by all sides through that history, but the vast majority of the population of Israel and Palestine today weren’t even born in 1947 and are not responsible for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers.
Moreover, the suggestion that people be cleansed from an area for their views is to propose a crime against humanity. I think peace does need people to recognise Israel’s existence, but I fail to see why those who disagree should be expelled from where they live. What about those in Israel who don’t think Palestine or Palestinians should exist. Will you expel them too?
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
2 state solution is a bit of a misnomer.
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan? Israel and Egypt? Israel and Iran? Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
Israel and Palestine.
Or do you deny that Palestinians are a nation with national consciousness?
Yes.
They are Arabs that were part of Jordan and Egypt when Israel took the land off Egypt and Jordan.
If a peaceful solution can be agreed then great, I'd love that. But if it can't, they should return to Egypt and Jordan and Israel should live in peace as the sole state on that land.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
That is nonsense. Conflict in the British Mandate between Palestinians and Jewish settlers started in the 1920s, well before the Nazis were in power.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved by going over past wrongs. Peace will only come when (as in NI) people put history behind them and look to the sort of future that they want for their children.
The NI peace process isn’t about putting anything behind anyone.
It’s about
1) the Men Of Violence on both sides were thoroughly infiltrated. 2) the infiltrators killed those against a peace process, claiming they (the hard liners) were actually British agents. 3) this created a tipping point where opportunists on both sides signed up to a deal where everyone gets a six figure salary, if there are no killings*. 4) in return, the criminal element are allowed to launder their money, sell drugs etc. but not too much! 5) the theory is, in a generation or two, they’ll have forgotten how to torture and murder….
*not too many, that is.
Obviously the paramilitaries were a key part of the Good Friday Agreement, but it was a much broader based process than that. Hence the referendum as featured in the final Derry Girls.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
2 state solution is a bit of a misnomer.
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan? Israel and Egypt? Israel and Iran? Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
Israel and Palestine.
Or do you deny that Palestinians are a nation with national consciousness?
Yes.
They are Arabs that were part of Jordan and Egypt when Israel took the land off Egypt and Jordan.
If a peaceful solution can be agreed then great, I'd love that. But if it can't, they should return to Egypt and Jordan and Israel should live in peace as the sole state on that land.
Palestine declared independence in 1988, and 139 UN member states recognise it.
An impossible situation with no good outcomes. But thank God Trump isn’t in the White House today.
Those of us who have always hoped for a negotiated two state solution should probably give up on the idea.
A one-state solution where both communities can live and pray where they want. Crazy idea, I confess!
Israel wouldn't accept that. While around 21% of Israelis are Arabs, addition of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million in Gaza would give a 52% majority of Arabs in the single state created.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
2 state solution is a bit of a misnomer.
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan? Israel and Egypt? Israel and Iran? Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
Israel and Palestine.
Or do you deny that Palestinians are a nation with national consciousness?
Yes.
They are Arabs that were part of Jordan and Egypt when Israel took the land off Egypt and Jordan.
If a peaceful solution can be agreed then great, I'd love that. But if it can't, they should return to Egypt and Jordan and Israel should live in peace as the sole state on that land.
In that case a large number of nations are not legitimate by these criteria, including Ukraine.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
That is nonsense. Conflict in the British Mandate between Palestinians and Jewish settlers started in the 1920s, well before the Nazis were in power.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved by going over past wrongs. Peace will only come when (as in NI) people put history behind them and look to the sort of future that they want for their children.
The NI peace process isn’t about putting anything behind anyone.
It’s about
1) the Men Of Violence on both sides were thoroughly infiltrated. 2) the infiltrators killed those against a peace process, claiming they (the hard liners) were actually British agents. 3) this created a tipping point where opportunists on both sides signed up to a deal where everyone gets a six figure salary, if there are no killings*. 4) in return, the criminal element are allowed to launder their money, sell drugs etc. but not too much! 5) the theory is, in a generation or two, they’ll have forgotten how to torture and murder….
*not too many, that is.
Obviously the paramilitaries were a key part of the Good Friday Agreement, but it was a much broader based process than that. Hence the referendum as featured in the final Derry Girls.
If it had been up to the UUP and the SDLP there would have been Sunningdale-for-slow-learners decades before.
But a few hundred killers on each side had the veto. Retro active abortion on the right killers opened the way to a deal.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
There are plenty of Israelis with genocidal intentions towards the Arabs, though.
Half the Israeli cabinet, by the looks of it.
But its not in their constitution......
At the end of the day, Israel is still a kind of democracy, and I’ll defend its right to exist and indeed to defend itself.
I just don’t think the essay you cite is very helpful. There are many good, decent and innocent Arabs, and it is impossible to understand Hamas without considering the broader history of state-sponsored persecution by Israel.
The whole situation reeks of an abusive relationship. The incoherent male standing over the beaten woman saying, “look what you made me do.”
And, like a lot of men, Israel believes it to be true. A couple can separate. Two peoples who want to live on the same land? Tricky.
Israel is the woman in that analogy presumably?
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
If it is an abusive relationship, there is abuse on both sides. The Palestinians have been beaten and attacked consistently from the Nakba and before. Increasingly many Israeli politicians deny the right of Palestine to exist, and deny Palestinians even exist.
This is not to excuse the recent attacks. But peace is not achievable by a one-sided writing of history. Those who have been abused can turn round and become the abusers, as with the current situation with Azerbaijan and the country’s Armenian minority.
Just catching up. It would have been helpful if posters could have indicated more clearly whether they were talking about the England Rugby team, Hamas, or the Israeli state. It all got a bit confusing.
This is a pertinent clip from Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies.
The moral difference comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?
TRANSCRIPT:
The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them......
There are plenty of Israelis with genocidal intentions towards the Arabs, though.
Half the Israeli cabinet, by the looks of it.
But its not in their constitution......
At the end of the day, Israel is still a kind of democracy, and I’ll defend its right to exist and indeed to defend itself.
I just don’t think the essay you cite is very helpful. There are many good, decent and innocent Arabs, and it is impossible to understand Hamas without considering the broader history of state-sponsored persecution by Israel.
The whole situation reeks of an abusive relationship. The incoherent male standing over the beaten woman saying, “look what you made me do.”
And, like a lot of men, Israel believes it to be true. A couple can separate. Two peoples who want to live on the same land? Tricky.
Israel is the woman in that analogy presumably?
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
No they are the man. It’s a long time since Israel was the plucky David against Goliath. I was brought up reading the books of Leon Uris and had huge sympathy and admiration for Israel. But the last few decades have changed that.
No, Israel is the woman still and is still the David.
The Arab world that surrounds them is the Goliath.
Israel has no desire for conflict or to exterminate the Arabs. The same can not be said in reverse, the policy of those attacking them, uninterrupted from the Nazis to today, is quite openly and literally their extermination.
Just as they don't allow themselves to be exterminated, does not make themselves an aggressor.
Your logic is like saying if a woman is consistently attacked by a man who is openly seeking to rape her, but she knows Krav Maga and can overpower him every time, that makes her the aggressor.
No, she's still the victim. As is Israel. If people stop trying to wipe Jews and the only Jewish country on the planet off the map that may change, but it's never changed yet.
The attitude of those seeking to wipe Israel and Jews off the planet is like the IRA saying "we only need to be lucky once". Israel has every right to defend herself.
There has been an obvious solution to the Palestinian problem for decades. And a fairly easy one, as the September 9th issue of the Economist reminded me. Turns out that a Muslim nation, Uzbekistan, once had a substantial Jewish population, about 200,000. They fled Muslim and Communist persection, and now about half of them are in the US, half of them in the UK.
The same is true of many Arab nations; they once had substantial Jewish populations, but do no longer. Now it is true that none of these nations particularly want the Palestinians, but they should take them in, anyway.
This solution follows the "aggressor pays" rule, which is a good one, in general.
The only reason that there's no Palestinian state is that Egypt and Transjordan (not Israel) invaded in 1947 and murdered it at birth, while trying to murder Israel at birth in the immediate wake of the Holocaust. Thank goodness they failed.
They then tried to murder Israel again, in 1967. Again thank goodness they failed.
Arafat had the opportunity for peace. He turned it down.
Hamas, Iran etc still demand Israel's destruction.
The only way peace may ultimately be attained is if those who refuse to recognise Israel's right to exist are relocated to Egypt or Jordan (who after all are the nations responsible for Palestine not existing) or Iran.
It's unpleasant but increasingly the only viable path to peace. And that's not Israel's fault, they're the victims here.
I don’t think that’s the only reason, no. Without Zionism and the support of the British for Jewish migration to the area, there wouldn’t ever have been the thought to divide Palestine into two states and an independent Palestine would probably have emerged at the same time as Lebanon, Syria etc. Of course, the British were only there because of the choices made by the Ottoman Empire to ally with Germany in World War I, and the British and French betrayal of the people of the region in not giving them independence after that war.
We also have to look at the way the British departed and the lack of any international willlingness to enforce the 1947 UN plan on both sides. By the way, you say Israel didn’t invade in 1947, but the Israeli military moved with force into areas that did not have a Jewish population and were not allocated to Israel in the 1947 plan, and they forced out at gunpoint the local (Palestinian) population. I’m not certain what to call that if not “invading”.
And, of course, as you allude to, it is the Holocaust and prior European anti-Semitism that drives Zionism and its success over Bundism.
So, it’s a long, complex history. There is not an “only reason”, and it’s naive to claim as such. There have been many atrocities committed by all sides through that history, but the vast majority of the population of Israel and Palestine today weren’t even born in 1947 and are not responsible for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers.
Moreover, the suggestion that people be cleansed from an area for their views is to propose a crime against humanity. I think peace does need people to recognise Israel’s existence, but I fail to see why those who disagree should be expelled from where they live. What about those in Israel who don’t think Palestine or Palestinians should exist. Will you expel them too?
The C4 Kosminsky drama ‘The Promise’ is well worth a watch for a take on the origins if the conflict, cleverly interspersing scenes from the late 1940s with present day (when it was made) Israel. As well as being Claire Foy’s first leading role, before she was famous.
Comments
In any case, Hitler was not put off signing the Haavara Agreement with Zionist German Jews.
The greatest British filmmaker of all time. That’s all.
The resurgent party threatens to end the SNP’s grip on Scottish politics by running almost neck and neck with the nationalists at the general election. It is also on course to be the largest party by a single seat at Holyrood in a mirror image of how the SNP first came to power, according to analysis of a Panelbase poll for The Sunday Times.
Despite falling short of a majority, it is an open secret in the Scottish parliament that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would lend Labour the support it needed
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anas-sarwar-on-track-to-be-first-minister-says-poll-vcpfkqf28
They have been the ones beaten and attacked consistently from the Holocaust through to today without interruption by those who deny their right to even exist.
Rugby rules are a mess.
And Kubrick if you can count him as a honorary Brit.
It's a lie regardless how many clips at an advertising company's website say otherwise.
You write as if it's not possible to be an enemy of Israel (which let us recall is an ethnic-supremacist regime) without wanting to kill all the Jews. Utterly crazy rabid talk.
This insane idea is essentially what's conveyed in the neo-Nazis' "14 words".
If you're interested in past genocide, though, and its present-tense relationship to denying large numbers of people the right to live where they come from, by expelling them, take a look at Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
Curiously this is Muslims doing it to Christians and yet still the opinion formers in the largely Christian west aren't causing any sections of their home populations to be appalled by it or even to notice it much.
Yeah..
Part of the reason so many in the MENA region support Islamists like MB and Hamas is that they still have a strong element of welfare and education to their organisation, in places where no one else cares for the poor and government services are corrupt or non-existent. So the people are very willing to listen to their politics.
50 years ago Arab politics was secular nationalism. Those leaders created the Islamist problem by neglecting and oppressing their own peoples.
Not sure the basin left would be terribly safe or any more fertile than the Dead Sea, but it would be mostly land.
Though your response does rather serve to illustrate my point.
Anyway, I did at least fuck off for a while, so there’s that.
Israel has a right to defend itself. No ifs, no buts, no equivocation.
There is a direct line of those seeking to exterminate Jews from Nazi Germany, to Egypt and Transjordan, to Hamas today.
They must be defeated. There is good and evil here, and it is Hamas that are evil.
Here's a proper source:
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/07/Battle-has-moved-into-heart-of-Zionist-entity-Hamas-leader-says
I’m well aware of the pros and cons of the IDF.
But it is a democracy existing, surrounded by enemies with explicitly genocidal intent.
It is our duty, and our interests, to support a democracy in the Middle East
Give me Chris Farlowe’s version anyday.
The reason I jumped at you was because I was really working so hard to contain that anger and address the points and I felt that was wholly unacknowledged when you seems to be accusing me of not listening to him. You ended up being the conduit for that anger I was holding back, but you didn't really earn that response so I apologise for the tone.
The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved by going over past wrongs. Peace will only come when (as in NI) people put history behind them and look to the sort of future that they want for their children.
The perfect score would have been Samoa by 2 (due to Owen Farrels farting around and missing 3 pts)
New poll in The Times puts Anas Sarwar in line to be the next First Minister.
I was issuing professional in its alternative sense.
The Arab world that surrounds them is the Goliath.
Israel has no desire for conflict or to exterminate the Arabs. The same can not be said in reverse, the policy of those attacking them, uninterrupted from the Nazis to today, is quite openly and literally their extermination.
Just as they don't allow themselves to be exterminated, does not make themselves an aggressor.
Your logic is like saying if a woman is consistently attacked by a man who is openly seeking to rape her, but she knows Krav Maga and can overpower him every time, that makes her the aggressor.
No, she's still the victim. As is Israel. If people stop trying to wipe Jews and the only Jewish country on the planet off the map that may change, but it's never changed yet.
The attitude of those seeking to wipe Israel and Jews off the planet is like the IRA saying "we only need to be lucky once". Israel has every right to defend herself.
There is no way Israel would accept Palestinians as fellow citizens. A two state solution is the only viable one, but they cannot be Bantustans and walled ghettos.
The whole point of the Israeli army is that it *isn't* professional. It may be professionally trained, but that is a rather separate issue.
You could almost make a case that in this war it's Hamas actually has the professional army, but its actions are hardly a model of professionalism.
*I'm assuming this is autocorrect having fun at your expense.
https://archive.ph/D99VM
Which 2 states should they be?
Israel and Jordan?
Israel and Egypt?
Israel and Iran?
Israel and Saudi Arabia?
And what do you intend to do with the other states that already exist?
Or do you deny that Palestinians are a nation with national consciousness?
*For some reason, autocorrect made that 'Democrat hicks.' I have no idea why.
It’s about
1) the Men Of Violence on both sides were thoroughly infiltrated.
2) the infiltrators killed those against a peace process, claiming they (the hard liners) were actually British agents.
3) this created a tipping point where opportunists on both sides signed up to a deal where everyone gets a six figure salary, if there are no killings*.
4) in return, the criminal element are allowed to launder their money, sell drugs etc. but not too much!
5) the theory is, in a generation or two, they’ll have forgotten how to torture and murder….
*not too many, that is.
MOSCOW, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Russia expresses its most serious concern at the sharp aggravation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
"We call on the Palestinian and Israeli sides to implement an immediate ceasefire, renounce violence, exercise the necessary restraint and establish, with the assistance of the international community, a negotiation process aimed at establishing a comprehensive, lasting and long-awaited peace in the Middle East," she said in a statement.
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-calls-israel-palestinians-cease-fire-2023-10-07/
Pity it was needed in the first place.
That's a bit like being offered a choice between being slow sliced, boiled alive or buggered to death by a giant rhinoceros.
If not, seems unlikely it will make any difference.
We also have to look at the way the British departed and the lack of any international willlingness to enforce the 1947 UN plan on both sides. By the way, you say Israel didn’t invade in 1947, but the Israeli military moved with force into areas that did not have a Jewish population and were not allocated to Israel in the 1947 plan, and they forced out at gunpoint the local (Palestinian) population. I’m not certain what to call that if not “invading”.
And, of course, as you allude to, it is the Holocaust and prior European anti-Semitism that drives Zionism and its success over Bundism.
So, it’s a long, complex history. There is not an “only reason”, and it’s naive to claim as such. There have been many atrocities committed by all sides through that history, but the vast majority of the population of Israel and Palestine today weren’t even born in 1947 and are not responsible for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers.
Moreover, the suggestion that people be cleansed from an area for their views is to propose a crime against humanity. I think peace does need people to recognise Israel’s existence, but I fail to see why those who disagree should be expelled from where they live. What about those in Israel who don’t think Palestine or Palestinians should exist. Will you expel them too?
They are Arabs that were part of Jordan and Egypt when Israel took the land off Egypt and Jordan.
If a peaceful solution can be agreed then great, I'd love that. But if it can't, they should return to Egypt and Jordan and Israel should live in peace as the sole state on that land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine
But a few hundred killers on each side had the veto. Retro active abortion on the right killers opened the way to a deal.
This is not to excuse the recent attacks. But peace is not achievable by a one-sided writing of history. Those who have been abused can turn round and become the abusers, as with the current situation with Azerbaijan and the country’s Armenian minority.
It would have been helpful if posters could have indicated more clearly whether they were talking about the England Rugby team, Hamas, or the Israeli state. It all got a bit confusing.
THE DEPARTURE OF SCOTLAND AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE MOMENT IN A TOURNAMENT