That you use such excuses to avoid accepting responsibility.
Irony is delicious. Elvis imagines an alternate reality in which someone demands unilateral surrender as a precondition for negotiations, and then turns around and, in actual reality, states that a spectrum of views about what land (that was never Palestinian in the first place) is important to hold and what should be negotiated for is “responsible” for problems. Obviously implying that the only way to not be ‘responsible’ for those problems is to unilaterally agree to all of the PA’s demands and give them whatever land they want, whether or not they have any valid claim to it.
It’d be amusing if it wasn’t quite so… odd.
You can answer this any time now.
Both of you tone it down. ElvisL1ves, please leave the personal digs out of your dealings with other posters; FinnAgain, please refrain from implying other posters are lying anti-Semites.
What do you expect me to say - that it’s the vast majority of Israelis who don’t support a full retreat to the Green Line who are the problem? Maybe it is to you. But that’s not going to change. I know that plenty of Americans expect foreigners to change their beliefs to suit American purposes, but that hasn’t happened in Afghanistan, it hasn’t happened in Iraq, and it won’t happen in Israel.
Hell, you guys can’t even convince your own country to accept a no-brainer like government health care - the kind of thing only a complete idiot would oppose - and you expect *us *to change *our *deeply-held beliefs?
Hillary reportedly called Netanyahu and chewed him out for 45 minutes. That could not have been pleasant. I think it was made clear to him that Obama is not some kind of pussy who’s going to let himself (and the US) get punked like this. Israel’s tone changed from one of the usual arrogant dismissiveness to near-abject contrition pretty quickly. I think they needed to be reminded who the sugar daddy was here. Without the good will (and financial largesse) of the US, there is no Israel. Israel is a cute little American project that can be abandoned at any time.
I didn’t imply he was an anti-semite, and I don’t know where you’re getting that.
But please tell me what options are open to me when people simply invent positions and claim I hold them? Seriously. What verbiage is acceptable for me to point out that people are inventing positions that I do not hold and then assigning them to me? If I’m not allowed to “imply” that their statements are fictional, how then can I point out when people make claims about me that are fictional?
Or are people simply allowed to make stuff up about me if they’d like?
Essentially, yes. But add to that the overarching attitude you report, that it’s perfectly to continue to expand the occupation into land that could have been that of a peaceful neighbor’s, in the quest for lebensraum. They lost, fuck 'em, let 'em go away, not our problem, right?
Then you have no right to continue to expect subsidization from anybody else. A responsible approach would involve being aware of the reasons you’re being told by so many, many others how wrong you are. If you won’t do that, you’ve chosen yet more generations of war instead. That’s no one else’s fault but yours. Good luck surviving on only your own resources, and may God have mercy on your souls.
First of all, Israel did fine before the U.S. started supporting it and will do fine if it stops. It’s the rest of the region that will suffer if we start feeling less secure.
Second of all, have you noticed that basically the only country in the world Obama has been putting any pressure on is Israel? Sure, he can pick on us to “prove” he isn’t a pussy, and then get right back to sucking up to just about everyone else. We’re an easy target, because he knows we won’t fight back.
"Why not “Finn drinks baby blood!” sounded like a bordeline blood libel comment. If that wasn’t your intent, fine, but it’s still a provocation that does nothing to further the debate. Other posters shouldn’t misrepresent your arguments, and you shouldn’t misrepresent theirs.
Huh? When was that?
As compared to today? Really?
No. :D:D:D Cite?
Or maybe he’s trying to promote peace, and is working on the obstacles to it.
No. The actual Israeli attitude - and not your straw man - is twofold:
First, that there are 250,000 Jews in the West Bank, and we can neither force them all out nor can we abandon them. The first is physically impossible, and the second goes against our nation’s most fundamental principles.
Second, that most Israelis believe that the Palestinians, and the Muslim world as a whole, will not give us peace even if we withdraw from all of the territories, and that they will continue to attack us until they’ve destroyed us completely.
In other words, most Israeli believe that full withdrawal is (a) impossible and (b) pointless. Can you prove us wrong?
Interesting. Thanks guys.
PM him a response Ralph, as it really isn’t relevant to the OP…
1948 to 1970 or so.
In fact, now that the Arabs don’t have the Soviet Block to arm them, we need the U.S. even less.
Oh, things can get a lot worse. Israelis could be killing as many Muslims as the U.S. is.
You know what president made a lot of progress with peace in the Middle East? Bill Clinton. You know why? Because we *liked *him. We liked Bubba more than we liked most of our own Prime Ministers at the time. Whenever he criticized them a lot of us were on his side.
But Obama? Dude won’t even talk to us.
Who has Obama “sucked up to” (unless sending predator drones into Pakistan counts as “sucking up”), and how has he “picked on” Israel? Biden went there to praise Israel and proclaim US support, not to pick on you, and you guys pissed in our faces. What makes you think you can keep giving us the back of your hand like that and still expect us to keep picking up your checks?
What principle is that, racial entitlement?
This strikes a lot of us over here as a rather conveniently unfalsifiable and self-justifying belief.
You can at least stop expanding, and stop actively supporting new settlements (I know that this current project isn’t technically a settlement, I’m just saying in general).
What do you envision happening to the Palestinians in a best-case scenario. Where are they supposed to go if Israel keeps expanding indefinitely?
Fine, let’s go back to 1970, when Israelis themselves were still working toward a two-state solution.
Fine. Let’s zero out the subsidy.
Leaving the tu quoque aside, what the hell do you think that would accomplish for anyone? Is that something you really propose as a plausible approach? If not, what do you want that real people might be willing to work with you on?
Clinton had that skill with everyone who wasn’t already bitterly opposed to his party, and it was one of his greatest assets, no question. So?
What was Biden doing over there, then? Just wasting his time, because Israel won’t listen to anybody but the Leader of the Free World himself in person, and not his #2? The President has nothing better to do with his time? Get over yourselves already.
As for your earlier post, I don’t say this often, but Dio answered it as I would have.
Huh? What progress did Bill Clinton make when it comes to Middle East peace? The whole situation was blowing apart just as he left office. The US Presidents who made progress in the Middle East were Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush both of whom put serious pressure on Israel. Come to think of it, you could also put Eisenhower on that list.
I will agree that I don’t think Israel needs the US for its survival though for some reason this is widely believed both by supporters and critics of Israel. What the US does do is provide Israel the financial and diplomatic cushion to pursue its expansionist fantasies in the occupied territories, something which benefits neither the US nor in the long run Israel.
The principle is not standing by when Jews get slaughtered, and not abandoning its citizens to its enemies. Alessan is right in that there’s no way that Israel will ever abandon the settlers to Palestinian jurisdiction, no matter what government is in there and how they feel about peace. A government that tried that would be lucky to escape lynching.