Honesty: try applying a little honesty to the situation. Your gloss is as disingenuous as any I’ve seen recently, and then some.
You are pretending that democracy is magic, and that other nations are not allowed to react to the choices a democracy makes. If Canada elects someone who declares war on the US, then the US can’t respond because, gorsh darn, it’s democracy! If the UK elects someone who believes that the French should all be put to the sword, and then starts launching rockets at French population centers, for France to react defensively is to deny democracy itself!
Something tells me that were this issue removed from your anti-Israel position, you might analyze it a bit closer to see whether or not your logic makes any sense, at all.
Likewise, you might want to use a definition of racism that means “hating a race of people” and not “waging war”. Just a suggestion.
And still you haven’t addressed any of the actual issues or challenges involved, merely repeated your rhetoric that to disagree with your suggested course is to support genocide. Go figure.
… nothing has “blown up in my face” once, and although Texas considers itself somewhat unique in the American mix, I’m pretty sure I’m still in America proper. Your kind concern is touching, though.
Finn, I am pretty sure that “come back to” was used in the sense of Israel “coming back to” the U.S. for further support, not a call for you to emigrate and then wait out your doom.
This thread is tedious enough with further misinterpreting what has been posted.
They did. For instance, before the elections, a member of the American embassy in Israel made the statement, “As a matter of policy, we don’t talk to terror organizations. We haven’t dealt with Hamas and we won’t deal with Hamas members who are elected to the Palestinian legislature or who are in the Cabinet.”
A spokesman for the National Security Council said of Hamas’s participation in the elections, “We do not believe that a democratic state can be built when parties or candidates seek power not through the ballot box but through terrorist activity” and said that, even if Hamas won the elections, the US would not negotiate with a victorious Hamas unless it renounced terrorism.
Israel also made the statements before the elections that they wouldn’t deal with a Hamas led government. Before the elections, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said, “If the Hamas was ever to become a dominant force in Palestinian politics, that would be the end of the peace process,”
And in September of 2005, Sharon made comments to US journalists, “We will never agree that this terrorist organization, this armed terrorist organization, will participate in the elections,” and “An armed organization doesn’t become democratic once they participate in the election”
Even that notoriously hard right winger Yossi Beilin said that Hamas’s participation in the election “is a gross violation of the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement” and that “it would be surprising indeed if Israel, paradoxically, were to acquiesce in the legitimization of a terrorist organization under its very nose”
It’s bs for Israel to claim they can’t make peace with Hamas. Israel has had a policy of actively promoting ever more extreme elements of Palestinian society for decades, Hamas amongst them, so that they undermine any existing Palestinian leaders and so that the Israelis can claim “look at all these extreme groups, there’s no way we can make peace with them!”. Israel have just as extreme political groups on the fringes of their democracy, people who can’t even mention the Palestinian territories and instead talk about Judea and Samaria. And it’s this extremist position which basically forms Israeli policy to the Palestinian territories, i.e. that they want to keep them. Hamas have already said that if good faith negotiations ever look likely from Israel that they’ll declare a 100 year truce which basically means (at least to everybody but the most paranoid bedwetting elements of Israeli society) they’ll quietly forget about the whole holy war thing once peace is established. But Israel will continue to insist that there’s no partner for peace and continue to provoke the situation at crucial moments to make sure that there never is any opportunity for peace. And like some people in the thread say and various Israeli politicians admit, that means Israel will eventually destroy itself.
The facts show your argument is simple false.
Hamas has stated, many times, that they refuse to make peace, refuse to honor peace agreements, and will only treat peace treaties as a temporary measure until they can wage war again.
You are actually arguing that it’s BS for someone to say that they can’t make peace with a partner that explicitly says it will not make peace. Somewhat disingenuous.
Not only is this fictional, it’s an absurd conspiracy theory.
While Israel did use Hamas to draw support away from the PLO, it’s simply untrue that they did this so they could claim that they couldn’t make peace with the PLO. The PLO was founded before the 1967 war and was founded with the goal of destroying Israel. Your disingenuous claim that the PLO was somehow a reasonable faction that they could make peace with is just nonsense that you’re using to prop up your rhetoric. What actually happened was that Israel used a religious genocidal faction to remove support from a secular genocidal faction so that no one group would be able to operate without opposition… and you’re casting this as a deliberate move to frustrate peace talks. :rolleyes:
This too is fictional.
And not only is it a fiction, it’s a fiction that’s already been debunked in this thread.
I have replied to all the assertions that require a reply. There are darn few of them. The military situation is such that Israel is doomed in the mid-term. Call it 2050 or so. If the Israelis continue plant winds, they shall harvest the storm.
You simply advocate the present policy because … well I don’t know why.
Ah, you’re from Texas? I would have thought you were an Israel. Why are you so concerned about some strange foreign country? Israel is not the business of the US. Leave them to their own devices.
Feel like retracting your comments, Tom? Next time when I’m right perhaps you won’t be so quick to call it a “misrepresentation”, perhaps?
Of course, it’s also not a misrepresentation to note that Paul, not an Israeli, takes an interest in this subject as proven by his comments. Any number of non-Israelis also take an interest in this subject, as proven by their comments. But Paul has decided to make it an issue that I argue against his position, and therefore I am overstepping my bounds and somehow making Israel “the business of the US.” The double standard itself is interesting, as is the tacit accusation that there’s something strange about my arguing a position that contradicts his since it shows I am “so concerned about some strange foreign country” while he is simply a level headed pragmatist.
To say nothing of the jabberwockian claim that the focal point of much of the tension in the single most strategically vital region on the face of the Earth is suddenly not the US’s concern.
Sure you have, and I’m sure you mean “facts which rebut your claims” and not “assertions”. I’m sure such mistakes just happen. I’m just as sure, then, that you can point out where you discussed, for example:
-How someone can make peace with a faction that explicitly says it repudiates all past peace agreements, repudiates the concept of peace in general with its enemy, repudiates the concept of peace at any future point, and actively endorses the genocidal removal of its enemy.
-How a ‘peace plan’ that places the group in question within range of every single target they wish to hit, with no phased withdrawal, no precautions to maintain security and no ability to interdict the flow of ordinance is a plan for peace rather than enabling an even bloodier war. In short, how your call for a war is really a call for peace.
-How it is that Israel has been outnumbered demographically by several thousand percent for more than 60 years now and its imminent annihilation hasn’t come to pass yet, but now you’re claiming that a unilateral deal must be acquiesced to by Israel or they’ll either be exterminated or have to exterminate the Palestinians.
-Why it is that you claim that Israel must unilaterally acquiesce to a demands which are a ‘peace’ plan in name only and a recipe for war, in fact… but the Palestinians have no obligation to return to the negotiating table and accept less than their full demands.
Of course, all those are quite substantive and as you say you’ve addressed everything that requires a response, I’m sure that you’ve responded somewhere and I missed it. Unless, of course, you didn’t even handwave them away and instead just ignored them.
I might even point out that you’re also ignoring any number of other possibilities, like Israel negotiating with Fatah and then later dealing with Hamastan.
Doooomed, dooooooomed!!!
Unless they follow your politics. Then they just go to war with Hamas and end up at the same place they are now, only with more dead people at the conclusion of the war. But doooooomed, dooooooooomed!!!
So you propose to reach victory how? I see you do not. You call for more of the same. Do you really think that will work? The future will be just like the past?
No Paul, you do not see that because that’s not the case. Just like disagreeing with you (and pointing out the reasons why you’re wrong, which you have yet to address let alone refute) doesn’t mean someone is supporting genocide, disagreeing with your set of choices consisting of “nothing at all changes / one side (that just happens to be Israel) unilaterally gives in to a set of demands that almost immediately leads to war / genocide” does not mean that they actually fall into those narrow little conceptual boxes.
I already pointed out the flaws in your claims, I’ll reiterate them:
-How someone can make peace with a faction that explicitly says it repudiates all past peace agreements, repudiates the concept of peace in general with its enemy, repudiates the concept of peace at any future point, and actively endorses the genocidal removal of its enemy.
-How a ‘peace plan’ that places the group in question within range of every single target they wish to hit, with no phased withdrawal, no precautions to maintain security and no ability to interdict the flow of ordinance is a plan for peace rather than enabling an even bloodier war. In short, how your call for a war is really a call for peace.
-How it is that Israel has been outnumbered demographically by several thousand percent for more than 60 years now and its imminent annihilation hasn’t come to pass yet, but now you’re claiming that a unilateral deal must be acquiesced to by Israel or they’ll either be exterminated or have to exterminate the Palestinians.
-Why it is that you claim that Israel must unilaterally acquiesce to a demands which are a ‘peace’ plan in name only and a recipe for war, in fact… but the Palestinians have no obligation to return to the negotiating table and accept less than their full demands.
Much like you haven’t addressed the facts which refute your position, you also didn’t address my comment that “I might even point out that you’re also ignoring any number of other possibilities, like Israel negotiating with Fatah and then later dealing with Hamastan.” I could elaborate on my position, which I’ve explained in detail on this site several times, but until you actually address the facts at hand there really isn’t much point. You can maintain that arguing against your conclusions means I support genocide or eternal war, or whatever, but it’s rather unpersuasive to say the least.
New alliances are being made in this region right under the noses of the USA and Israel.
It will be interesting to see where the US and Israel go from here when Turkey last night brokered the deal with Iran.
That’s not going to go down well with the White House or Knesset.
Why has Clinton not been on TV saying how great a job Brazil and Turkey have done?.
Why is that not all over Fox and CNN?
What will Netanyahu do now?:eek:
Make up another story about Iranian arms shipments :rolleyes:
For those not following along with the cite laden and content-packed posts, Turkey and Brazil agreed to a nuclear fuel swap of LEU between Iran and Turkey.
Obviously, this doesn’t address Iran’s HEU program, nor does it address the IAEA’s persistent and repeated statements that Iran is actively blocking a full analysis of its nuclear program and the peaceful nature of its program and non-diversion of nuclear material cannot be certified until Iran ceases its obstructionism and agrees to the Additional Protocols. Nor is it all all clear as to why this bit of PR should be particularly upsetting to anybody. Likewise, the current deal still has Iran producing weaponizable HEU.
And of course it goes without saying that it was on CNN and on Fox.
Where are the press conferences from her and Netanyahu?
I would have thought the very least would be a short press statement from both of them congratulating Erdogan on doing what they failed to do.
Poor old Erdogan. Now he’s on the US and Israeli chopping block:rolleyes:
All the rest is speculation. There is no proof. Mere hearsay.
If you understood Arab culture and Middle Eastern Culture at all you would realise that threats rarely work. That is why they defy you.
This culture’s disputes are often resolved peacefully and quickly with no loss of honour by simple negotiation by a mediator. It can be over in minutes.
Something which would involve a room full of attorneys and a court in the US would rarely happen here. It is not the way.
Honour and pride play a huge role.
I’m sure that Paul in Qatar or is it Saudi? can explain that to you.
Your lack of that basic knowledge (and one which Erdogan and Lula De Silva do have) is you do NOT go threatening someone to get what you want or them to comply.
The US needs to take some classes in Middle eastern culture before they start meddling in it’s affairs.
They are not like you. You cannot make everyone change their culture to suit yours.
Iran has every right to nuclear technology. There is no proof of the accusations.
The US and Israel doesn’t not want Iranian influence here. Tough. Get over it. The people here living under dictators paid by the US have more respect for the Iranian leader and his stance than their own leaders and after all a country is not just it’s leadership.
There is another element to this you simply don’t get.
Men from the Middle East do not take kindly to butch American women like Clinton threatening them or telling them what to do. That alone would get up any Arabs nose so not a wise choice by Obama in selecting a woman to represent you in Middle eastern affairs.
or was that intentional
It’s different here. You need to do your homework.
Please tell us more about the rampant sexism you believe possesses men from the Middle East and elaborate on how Israel controls the US and which wars, exactly, it’s made us fight.
