Both sides of this divide would like us to respect their long and devout religious ties to this land.
They worship the same God, a God that dictates they should treat their enemies like brothers, a peace loving God.
Yet they continue, for 2000 yrs, to sacrifice generation after generation, of their children, to loathing and hatred. They pursue conflict and war with relish and pride. They deserve exactly what they have, in many ways.
Thanks for contributing.
This is refreshing to hear. Now could you please bring your friend **FinnAgain **in line? You have just described his behaviour to a tee, and as you point out, it does such a disservice to your cause. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.
I’ve seen you refer to anti-Semitic bigotry in discussions on this board (and typically justifiably so), so the contemptuous references to “people crying ‘victim’” come off as odd and indicative of a misplaced superiority complex on your part.
It bears repeating (ad nauseaum, sorry to say) that the refrain about how “whenever you criticize Israel you’re accused of anti-Semitism” is bullshit. When virulent, one-sided denunciations of Israel are accompanied by classic anti-Semitic phraseology it’s very hard to view the “critics” as anything but bigots who use their supposed concern about the issue as a semi-respectable cover for their hatred.
A problem on this board is general reluctance to acknowledge such bigotry unless you have a flaming Stormfronter stomping around yelling “I HATE JEWS!” We have none such here (they’d wind up banned in relatively short order), but our obvious cases like ivan astikov and Sevastopol and others over the years have been able to spew for long periods without getting consistently called on their garbage. The lower-level bigots are even safer from general condemnation and marginalization. This would never happen if equivalent bigotry was directed at African-Americans (just as Helen Thomas’ defenders would have shrunk to near zero if she’d urged all American blacks to go back to Africa). Just one of the pecularities of how bigotry is viewed here.
Speaking of doing “disservice” to a cause - if we could stop making excuses for and overlooking the anti-Semites who’ve glommed on to Middle East issues, the outlook for a just settlement and peace would be greatly enhanced.
I don’t see you as anything. I haven’t had enough interaction with you to say one way or another. But you have not exactly been a shining example of tolerance and wisdom in this thread. It was your post that made my irony meter explode a few pages back. Remember? The one about…well, I’ll just quote it (so much easier, no?)
What was that again about the Palestinians being free to leave their ghettos anytime, but NOT allowed back to the land they’ve been on for centuries? Sounds like exile to me. Hmmmm.
Hmmmm. I don’t really see that. I see Israel as needing a focus–a scapegoat that can stand in for all the other, much more powerful enemies it has. But of course, Israel’s (very) poor treatment of the Palestinians is one of the reasons for the local intense hatred of Israel… and round and round we go.
See your quote above. Irony meter is broken; but my disingenuousness gauge is working overtime.
And that settles that nicely. Status quo is maintained, but now you can wring your hands and weep over the tragedy of it all. And still Palestinian and Israeli children will die. Tsk, tsk. Such a shame, but what can you do?
Noted, but…How do you explain this, then?
To the best of your knowledge doesn’t add up to much. It looks to me like your just as “obsessed” as your American cousins. I realize you’re one person and don’t have a whole of control over any of what goes on, but the least you could do is stop with the bullshit here. It’d be a start.
elbows is entirely correct, and yet you snark at him. Why is that? Why so defensive? How can the truth make you so defensive? Or is it you don’t want to see that truth?
It may be the same God, in name, but the God of the OT is not the same as the God of the NT. And I’m not too familiar with the Koran, but I’d be surprised if the God of that book was the same as the other two, in temperament.
I think you have a very Christian-centric view of what God is.
It also seems that the purest, hottest passion pro-Israelism can be found among people who somehow are not quite committed enough to it to actually go live there, doesn’t it?
Just curious: Didn’t you start a GD thread during the last election asking for guidance as to whether or not you should vote in the US, given that you have dual citizenship? What happened to make your sentiments change to the point where you can now say you’re an Israeli and nothing but?
That was an entire FinnAgain post? THAT?
To be fair, the views of God are not really even internally consistent within the Old and New Testaments. There are peaceful, compassionate views of God in the Hebrew Bible and violent, vindictive visions in the NT (particularly in the very last book of the NT).
Ostensibly, though, all three religions worship the same God, and Judiasm and Islam do mutually recognize each other as worshipping the same God. They even have the same kosher laws. Who, precisely, that God is cannot exactly be nailed down, even by respective scripture, sinc the scriptures, the interpretations of those scriptures, and non-scriptural authorities are not perfectly consistent.
I would actually suggest that, at the end of the day, “God” is ultimately so personal and subjective that no two individual on earth really envison or worship it the exact same way.
If the United States had a long running ethnoreligious war with Mexico that involved suicide bombings, occupation, and so forth, then I don’t think I would have any problem with that.
FinnAgain, this is why people hate dealing with your voluminous participation in threads related to Israel. I don’t know if you didn’t read my posts or if you are simply lying about what I said, but it’s one or the other. (I expect a wall of text in response with the usual sentence-by-sentence out of context hack job in response to this post.)
Here’s what I actually said:
And in typical FinnAgain style - you are factually knowledgeable but uniquely skilled at missign the forest for the trees - you are saying I suggested Israel should be destroyed, “presumably by military force.” Even though I repeatedly said the opposite.
Probably not. And yet the improvements in lifespan continued. I did say elsewhere that refusing to allow these people to rebuild their homes is cruel.
Actually, it’s neither. You’re being stupid, Marley.
And as you’ve made a big stink about it, I’m going to point it out. Which, I suppose, is indeed a reason why many people don’t like me. Funny that they’re always people who can’t keep the facts straight. Anyways, to keep you on the straight and narrow:
I said:
You claimed that I had somehow nefariously neglected to quote an irrelevant portion of your text, and so I responded and tried to explain to you why it was irrelevant, and:
Your immediate response was:
So yes, you were the one who brought up the destruction of Israel, presumably by military force while I was talking about ending it as a nation whether or not violence was involved. Exactly as I said and you’re now calling the truth a “lie”.
So you’ve accused me of lying for pointing out your own words, now you’re claiming I said something that I never did, and which you can’t quote anywhere because it’s simply not true. But you’re willing to display your bias and prejudice against me which, rather obviously, totally obscures your ability to be rational where I’m involved. To the point where you can no longer tell the difference between “you brought that up” and “you are advocating for that.”
Glad you felt safe to show your true colors, at least.
Which I said I opposed.
…
Forest for the trees indeed. Yet again: you can no longer tell the difference between “you brought that up” and “you are advocating for that.”
What actually happened is that I pointed out that the one state “solution” is a back-door method for people to argue that the state of Israel should end. You responded, (going off of your prejudices against me), that I was ignoring your caveat about military force because I was making “another effort to claim someone who was arguing with you would like to see Israel destroyed.” Except I never said that. I pointed out to you that I had not, in fact, even brought up military force but you had, you tried to claim I accused you of advocating the use of that military force. When rather clearly, of course you were the one who brought it up and I never said you’d advocated it.
It’s funny, you distorted my actual argument and claimed I was saying anybody had suggested the use of military force, and then when I pointed out that not only had I said nothing about it but that you were the one who brought it up, you claimed that I was accusing you of advocating military force. You are obviously letting your personal feelings get in the way of reading my text, and that is not a good thing.
Okay, okay, compromise. We can do compromise. One-state solution, but we call it Palestein.
Eh? Eh?
I chuckled. 
Which was obviously not what I was suggesting. So that left me wondering why you bothered to make this pronouncement in the first place.
I don’t have “prejudices” against you. I objected to something you said.
Anyway, the problem with the “one state solution” is, as always, getting from here to there. It would be a wonderful solution if it were at all possible to achieve, without considerably more violence and worse problems than those that exist at present.
Much like the “one state solution” for Yugoslavia, it just isn’t practical with the current population at this time, without some sort of oppressive gov’t beating the folks into line and forcing 'em to get along or else.
Often, the “one state solution” is used as a mere rhetorical device, meaning opposition to the currently constituted Israeli state on the part of outsiders. This doesn’t mean any mention of it is used for this purpose, but generally, the suggestion is not a serious or practical one - that boat sailed long ago.
I take the point that states founded on ethno-nationalism are silly, because discrimination of people on the basis of ethnicity is silly. However, that “silliness” isn’t always the fault of the state’s inhabitants or founders. The foundation of Israel is a case in point. No doubt the majority of those making up the population of Israel would have been perfectly happy to continue to consider themselves “Poles”, “Germans” or even “Syrians”, and in a perfect world, they should have been. They were not, however, given that choice. Until the world at large ceases to find any validity in ethno-nationalsim, it makes no sense to condemn the silliness of one group for finding validity in it.
I don’t disagree with any of that, Malthus.
[quote=“FinnAgain, post:309, topic:542299”]
Yep, you’ve created your own personal definition.
“Zionism did not have a uniform ideology, but a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, National-Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, etc.”
So Zionism seems to take several forms and some of those forms are not offensive to me but there is at least one form
“The letter written by Albert Einstein compared Revisionist Zionism streams to “Nazi and fascist parties”, and was signed by Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other prominent American Jews not known for their support of Zionism in general.”
There already is full citizenship for all Israeli citizens and asking the Jewish homeland to not grant a guaranteed safe haven to Jews is an absurdity.
So how’s all that safety working out for you?
I don’t think people mind the preferential immigration treatment of Jews so much as the discriminatory treatment of palestinians
I was pointing out that it’s not a serious track for peace talks as it’s neither endorsed by Israel nor by Palestine, and it’s most often used as a back door, as discussed. It would be like someone talking about how Jordan should just absorb the parts of the West Bank Palestinians live on and Egypt should absorb Gaza and we should be done with it.
Your claim was not “I don’t know why you’re bringing it up with me” but that I was accusing you of advocating violence. Interesting that you can’t even admit you were wrong.
:rolleyes:
So, as I said, you’re prejudiced when it comes to me and your (rather distorted) views how I post have lead you to imagine claims that you had argued for violence against Israel, which you won’t retract even now that you were shown to be wrong. Shame, really.