Is it too much to ask why?
Airman doors won’t say.
There’s already at least one whole thread on the matter. Feel free to do a Search.
You see no basis for objective comparison on such factors as literacy, voting rights and civil rights? This strikes me as a disingenuous effort to avoid admitting that Israel can do some things right.
We’re just likable, I guess.
NVM.
Didn’t Isreal pull settlers out of the Gaza strip in 2005?
I seem to remember seeing video on the American news networks of Isreali families being forcibly removed by the Isreali army. (Including the use of water hoses.)
I’m not sam, but I’ll take a shot.
I support Israel, as they are a democratic state, with a free market economy.
I support Israel because they have earned, through blood, my respect as a military power that is more than equal to the task of defending themselves from the aggressions of their neighbors.
I support Israel because while it would be easy to solve their Palestinian problems by forcing them all out or killing them (as their neighbors would do), they don’t.
I support Israel because they haven’t given into extremists (and likely won’t) who would create a theocratic state, which is by definition anathema to democratic rule.
It would be simple to remove the mosques and other holy sites, and then deal with the brief uproar. They don’t do this, as they respect the history they are stewards of, which earns my respect.
This is why I support Israel.
All very good reasons. At least nobody in this thread has tried to defend the preposterous notion that the Jews have a historical claim on the land that trumps the Arabs’. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Israel’s modern claim to the land (at least, west of the Green Line), having been established through a combination of possession, conquest, cessions, treaties and negotiations, is as sound as any other modern state’s claim to its territory.
All files in PDF…
Lebanon- http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/Lebanon2006.pdf
Turkey- http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/Turkey2006.pdf
Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates- http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/UnitedArabEmirates2006.pdf
As in this thread, f’rinstance.
Sevastopol, thanks for the question. The figures are from the Polity database cited above.
The POLITY4 database has no entry for Dubai. They also don’t have recent figures for Lebanon, the latest being
Lebanon 0 (1989)
Turkey rates as +7 in 2004.
w.
UPON EDIT - shakes his fist at Captain Amazing, who was there firstest with the mostest …
But are you aware of that the number of jewish settlers on the West-bank have increased with over 150% since the Oslo Accords 1993 to 2006.
In the 90’s, the annual settler population growth was **more than three times ** the annual population growth in Israel. In the 00’s, the large settler population growth continues.
God forbid anyone should move.
If the Palestinians wanted a two state solution, they should have taken it when it was offered in 1948. Instead they turned it down, many of them left so that the Arab armies would have free reign to slaughter the Jews. Unfortunately the Jews were harder to slaughter than they thought and, well, it sucks to be them. Those that stayed got citizenship with full rights (and an exemption from mandatory military service) including representation in Knesset. Too bad, so sad, cry me a river, they shouldn’t have left in the first place. If you abandon something, your descendants don’t get to claim it back from the people who took it over and made something of it.
Weirddave, do you have a citation for the number who left voluntarily, vs. those who were driven out?
w.
Does it really matter? I mean, countries have always been built on the bloodshed of another, and Israel has as much if not more of a legitimate reason to exist than any other nation.
There are, to be frank, no solid numbers.
Some left because they were driven out, although the figures are political and politicized, and the cause, nature and scope of fighting at any villages will be difficult, at best, to determine accurately.
Some left because they had legitimate fears of war.
Some left because the Arab governments told them to in order to facilitat the ethnic cleansing of the region.
Even the overall number of refugees of the '48 war is, itself, in dispute.
When I say that there are no solid numbers, I’m not bullshitting you. [
Which is to say, there’s no simple answer.
But to be honest, the question as to numbers is only part of the full question. The Ottoman system of land ownership, in specific specifically delineated between public land and state land. As such, many Palestinian tenants were occupying miri land, not mulk. Although they held rights to it by cultivating it, they didn’t legally own the land once they left it fallow for some time. Israel is, as well, obliged to respect the laws of the region which were in place, and as the Ottoman Empire was the previous soverign power, their laws governing land usage still hold sway.
On the contrary it looks to me like a disingenous attempt to corner me into statements sympathetic to Israel.
I’m happy to accept that if you belong to Israel’s privileged class of persons, life there can be fine and dandy. Full of opportunities for leisure and such other pleasures as may take your fancy. It’s the plight of people on whose sufferring Israel’s indulgences are built that troubles your rosy picture.
Support per se is one thing. The real question is how did that ‘support’ come to be unconditional? Indeed pathological.
Plainly, in recent history many circumstances have merited a firm rebuke to the Israelis, conceivably involving fatalities. To refrain because the subjects are Jewish: Why, that’s equally bad to a killing of them soley on account of the fact they are Jewish.
Actually don’t worry. No disrespect to Captain Amazing but I was able to locate those tables. Thanks to him too, in fact.
What I had trouble deriving was the ultimate single-digit rating for each country.