Yeah, like all that great intelligence we got about Iraqi WMD development before the Iraq war…
Just wondered if ralph124c had wandered back in to take part in one of his “debate” threads. Nope, just post and run, as usual.
How about taking part in one of your threads for a change, ralph?
Israel Perplexed After Stinging Rebuke From US
Rocket science, it seems, is a lost art with these guys, or perhaps they just got used to pissing on George Bush whenever they felt the need to go.
Netanyahu needs to learn the meaning of the term respect.
Ah yes, the “Jewish settlement expansion”, I guess after the fiction of “Jewish only roads” was exposed as a malicious fiction, some in memesphere needed a new line. Not all of the planned housing expansion will even be built in generally Jewish neighborhoods in any case, nor are they “Jewish only” apartments. But hey, if spices up the story…
As for plummeting relations and Israel (as a nation, we expect) being “perplexed”… okay.
Actually, the Jordanians signed a peace treaty with the Israelis. So did the Egyptians.
You mean like arming the PA’s security forces, placing the supermajority of Palestinian citizenry under the control of the PA’s jurisdiction, agreeing to massive land swaps and a phased withdrawal that would wind up with the PA holding approximately 97% of the territory that they wanted, their own sovereign state, and peace? I can see how that’d be pretty humiliating.
I stated things that ought to be obvious.
But since you cannot comprehend the obvious, here goes:
If Israel wants to be honest, they should publish their intentions (as far as building housing, and staying in the “occupied territories)’”.
The US should state its opposition, and withdraw the funding (that allows Israel to build).
Simple, right?
Instead, we get this elaborate kabuki theatre, where everbody pretends that everything is a surprise.
No, it doesn’t. This is now the second time you’ve attempted to put your disagreement with facts into the form of an argument about logic. You were wrong the first time, as I demonstrated, and you’re wrong for the same reason this time. So I’ll make one last attempt to get this through:
You disagree that settlement expansion inexorably makes peace harder to achieve. That’s fine. I’M NOT DEBATING THAT POINT.
That’s an empirical argument, based on your view of facts. My sole point is that you cannot shoehorn that into something that is true by a matter of mere tautology, or logic, because one thing can be the cause of another without the relationship being a logical necessity. YOU CANNOT PROVE YOUR POINT BY LOGIC ALONE.
If I tickle my wife, she will laugh, but I can’t prove that to you starting from first principles. If you disagree that my wife will laugh, we have a disagreement over facts, not logic.
Kabuki Theatre! 
You know I would think sanctions are in order at this point but is the US is so soft we are going to let them get away with it? This is the type of thing that makes the United States look weak. Israel is baiting The Palestinians like Elmer Fudd with a carrot and we are supposed to act like we don’t like it but do nothing.
If it were up to me and it isn’t, I would cut off the funding and let whirling dervishes, whirl.
Did anyone read that famously conservative, anti-Semetic newspaper the New York Times the other day?
“Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country,” - Tom Friedman, NYT.
Good job there Paul. I always find it interesting to see how fast someone will chime in with the "nobody can ever criticize Israel without being anti-semitic!’ meme. We got a whole 27 responses into the thread before someone felt the need to point out that someone voicing criticism of Israel wasn’t (gasp!) anti-Semitic. Ah well.
Just so we’re clear: sanctions for what? Are you talking about expansion in the West Bank, or are you talking about sanctions for Israel building housing in its own annexed territory that the PA has expressed a desire to own in the future but which it never owned and most of which was never privately owned by Palestinian citizens? If so, what is the cause/logic behind those sanctions?
And, ironically, as I already cited;
[
](http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155639.html)
Your ignorance is not their dishonesty. There have been plans to expand in East Jerusalem (not occupied territory but an annexed part of Israel proper) for years now. They’ve also been quite clear that they’ll negotiate on the status of the disputed territories as, after all, not all of them are the Palesitnians’ by ownership rights and the final map has yet to be determined through negotiation.
Again, your ignorance is not someone else’s dishonesty. There was an announcement of a specific block of housing that would be built in an orthodox neighborhood that was made at a very embarrassing time for Biden. That was the surprise, not the simple fact that Israel has never made a secret that they plan on building more housing in their country.
You demonstrated nothing other than that you can use a false analogy for whatever reason you’re still trying to use it. That reason is not to prove a factual or logical point.
The fact is that you are attempting to claim that there is some sort of causal relationship where none exists. And you are comparing that to causal relationships in order to demonstrate that the non-causal relationship should really be considered causal.
We know, through tautological, logical necessity that there can be no valid peace negotiations in the face of ongoing violence, and there can be no peace in the face of ongoing war. This is causally true as war invalidates peace. On the other hand, some are trying to rhetorically twist the truth, that the PA may choose to cease negotiations if they do not get what they want before the pesky phase of negotiating for it with offers and counter-offers. Those folks are instead claiming that, rather that it being a choice, that they are being caused to stop/slow/whatever negotiations.
That is fictional and a rhetorical dodge. It changes “There is no reason why negotiations cannot continue and the PA can demand that the new housing becomes its property/the inhabitants be removed from its territory/a new negotiating platform be reached that doesn’t include that area” into “ZOMG, Israel has caused a stop to negotiation!” It’s a cheap rhetorical trick that aims to shift the burden of action all onto one side, leaving only one group active and the other totally and completely passive even when the issue is making up their own minds or speaking their own demands. It’s an argument that seeks to blame something other than the Palestinians for their own choice as to whether or not they will negotiate and what negotiating platforms they will use and accept, and which phrases it as a matter of causality rather than free choice.
You’ve proven nothing and provided nothing other than an object lesson as to why it’s so important that we stick to the facts rather than letting point-scoring-rhetoric rule the discussion.
Rather than going to such an extreme, it might be better if the US simply “forgot” to use its seat on the Security council to quash the next UN resolution to come up condemning Israel for some atrocity or other.
We could say “oopsy, my bad”, and Netanyahu could tell us “it’s OK, everyone gets a little spaced out at times.”
Nah, much more fun to let things continue…some possible dialog:
(Biden): “Benjamin, I’m SHOCKED, shocked I tell you …to discover construction is going on here!”
(Netanyahu): “uhh.sorry Joe, this sorta slipped my mind…”
(Biden): “well, what am I supposed to tell Congress?”
(Netanyahu): “well, that extra $500 million you sent us…tell em we just needed some construction jobs”
(Biden) “OK, but let this be the last time”
Yet-a-gain, the shock was not that construction was going on, but that a 1,600 strong housing section was being built in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood was announced at an inopportune time.
And you have yet to justify why Israel shouldn’t be building housing within its own country.
Care to take a stab at that, Ralph?
I don’t care what Isarel does, as far as constructing housing.
I just don’t want to pay for it.
Well, that appears to have no connection to your OP.
So your argument is, pretty much, if Israel builds any housing in any of its territory then we should remove all aid, even if that aid isn’t used to finance the construction?
Or is there some nuance I’m missing?
Ok, I’ll explain it (so you can understand it better).
I’ll give you $50.00, to add to the $50.00 in your purse.
I gave you $50.00 to buy groceries with…that means you can spend your original $50.00 on crack.
See? That way I’m not giving you any money to buy drugs!
I think what makes it controversial in this case is that the housing is going to be built in East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed, but which the international community doesn’t recognize the annexation of. This is especially true, because this is Ramat Schlomo, which wasn’t part of Jerusalem until the municipal borders had been expanded to include it. If there had been apartments approved in Eliat, for instance, I don’t think anyone would care.
In my opinion, supporting Israel is very much part of US foreign policy in the middle east, and to a large part in order to play nice with the rest of the arab world.
If you think about it, US foreign aid is what’s got Israel’s ear tuned to the wind. During Desert Storm the IAF was rearing to take the war back to Iraq, but the US had them stand down, because doing so would lose the US support of the surrounding arab states. I doubt that the US ever threatened killing financial aid as a threat, but it at least made sure that Israel knew who their friends were. By extension, it wasn’t until the US started aiding Israel (after 1967) that it had any effect on Israeli policy at all.
Same policy goes for Egypt, the PA and anybody else in the region who the US wants a direct line to.
Actually, I have multiple times specifically disclaimed that I was making such a claim.
I see where you’re getting that, because in my first post I used the word “does,” when showing how causation is not a question of logic but of fact. But since then, I’ve been pretty clear that my only point is that you cannot defend your position using logic alone. Indeed, I’ve even put it in all-caps for you, since I recognized you were having trouble understanding that point.
Instead, you bulldoze through with your first-formed perception of what I’m arguing, instead of actually reading the posts. Good luck with that.
According to the Friedman column:
That's about right though this is true of the entire US-Israel relationship and not just this housing decision. Israel is a deadweight on US foreign policy damaging its reputation around the Muslim world making it more difficult for it to operate on the ground in such countries. It's ironic that Israel's most stalwart supporters in the US: the neo cons were the ones agitating for the Iraq invasion because the reality is that the more entangled the US becomes in these Muslim countries the more sensitive it needs to be to their public opinion. This means putting a distance between itself and Israel especially when it flagrantly violates international law. Of course in terms of US politics the Israel lobby will fight tooth and nail to prevent this from happening. This contradiction between the good policy and interest group politics is IMO the central challenge facing Obama's foreign policy team and right now they are doing a pretty poor job of meeting it.Cool it with the personal remarks, please.