Your bizarre rant aside (which again seems to be something you’ve imagined and are confusing with what I actually said), I’d point out that I also never said that you Israelis are "tough, savvy, forward thinking and logical " Honestly, getting the basic facts right wouldn’t hurt.
Speaking of yet again trying to get you to address the actual facts, what treaties do you claim were violated by the Israel/SA relationship, how, and when?
By the way, you googled “morally reprehensible” yet?
You do realize that you just deliberately ignored the part where I condemned the relationship (while again repeating your imagined nonsense about me justifying it), and you’ve posted a rant because I pointed out the political calculus that was involved?
No, you didn’t. Along with “morally reprehensible”, please google “political calculus”. Hint: it doesn’t mean “absolute imperative”.
You’re asking me to define a term that you used and bears no relation to the political calculus I’ve discussed. The two options you have are to engage with what I’ve actually said, or ignore it and go on about what you’ve imagined I’ve said. I’m not sure what the middle ground is, I’m afraid, since I’m not going to engage with what you’ve imagined I said.
Anyways, I’m rather shocked that an Israeli of all people doesn’t understand the situation for your country during the 1970’s. I’ll provide you with a bit of information.
In this context it should be fairly clear why various Israeli governments engaged in the political calculus that they did and decided to engage in a morally reprehensible path in order to bolster your nation. Understanding the realpolitik considerations that supported that calculus is something that any student of history, and certainly you and your fellow Israelis, should be able to do. If you are unable to understand the historical reality because you can’t get past the moral outrage, then you are failing to understand the actual history at work due to deliberately stopping at the point of emotional outrage.
Jonseing for outrage is well and good, but when it gets in the way of understanding the world, it does nobody any service.
Why am I not surprised that you responded with a wall of text and well researched justification and analysis. That’s always the way with you.
Which goes back to my original “outrage”.
At the end of the day, nuclear weapons were offered, they weren’t supposed to be. Israel was trying to build alliances with one of the most despised regimes of the time. A regime that also “caused” a nefarious chapter in my own country’s history - a wrong that was recently righted.
Would it kill you to say “we fucked up”. Period.
Not, yeah it was bad, but we were forced into it because the rest of the world hates us.
I don’t recall you ever saying “yes Israel did bad”.
Its always a variation on “Israel did the right and proper thing considering this that and the other that you don’t understand properly” or “if you were as persecuted as Israel is, you would have done the same thing”
And also, I am not Israeli, my apologies for using imprecise (actually lazy) construction that delivered that impression. (there you see, I admitted fault and I didn’t drop dead from a lightening bolt or anything). I am a New Zealander. I’m not Jewish either (actually I pretty much hate all religions that have “god” - however you want to address him, her or it, at the figurehead)
So you’re unwilling to address let alone deal with the facts and would prefer to handwave them away as a “wall of text” and despite repeated comments by me pointing out that the course of action was morally reprehensible, you’re still sticking to your fantasy that I’m stating some sort of justification.
But okay, you seem to want to talk about certain facts, at least. Although you still haven’t offered any substantiation for which treaty you claim was broken when, and how.
I’ve already pointed out that the claims for that are thin, indeed. The article makes clear that no such official offer was made and the Israeli government would, in fact, have most likely refused such a deal. The SA memo itself states that the Jericho missiles would have nuclear warheads that were manufactured abroad or in South Africa. The article also concludes that Israel must have been offering nukes to SA because SA was “years” away from building a nuke, and almost exactly two years to the date from the memo’s creation, SA was about to test a nuclear weapon and had already begun preparing the test ground at the time the memo was written.
I’m not sure what you think the US’ role was in this, but if you’d like to discuss that maybe you should start a separate thread. As for whether or not I’ll trade a reasoned analysis of the facts for pablum? No.
That’s because you’re reading your imagination, not my posts. I’d yet again advise you to google “morally reprehensible” and see what it means.
Hint: it doesn’t mean “justified”.
Double hint: it might just mean “bad”.
Amanset, you too. Look up “morally reprehensible”. You might just be surprised to find out what it means.
I’m really sorry that you have to encountered so much well researched justification and analysis in a forum called Great Debates, but that is a threat you have to face when you attack other posters instead of actually providing your own researched analysis.
I agree that Finn’s posts are excitable and he tends to drive all his tacks with a ten pound sledgehammer, but this sort of complaint belongs in another forum.
Yet *you *immediately went on to justify it, within the same sentence. Or is this not you:“but in context it was a realpolitik decision based on the requirements of survival that were imposed on Israel.” I think that’s what he’s talking about. You couldn’t just leave it at “it was morally reprehensible”, full stop, end of post. You never can.
Why do we think that an otherwise rational (tyrannical but still rational) government would give nukes to terrorists? The reason you don’t want nukes in Iran isn’t because a nuclear Iran means a nuclear al-qaeda. The reason you don’t want a nuclear Iran is because a nuclear Iran means a nuclear arms race in the middle east and an Iran that can do whatever it wants without fear of international reprisal forevermore.
Perhaps to an Israeli soldier it is. I am going to guess that Americans in Afghanistan think American lives are more important than Afghani lives. I don’t know how you avoid it.
I don’t agree. When you strap a bomb to your chest and walk into a starbucks and blow yourself up, you are not engaging in mere military action. You are making a statement. this isn’t just assymetrical warfare, its something far more disturbing than that.
Finn Again is a stalwart defender of Israel and he has convinced himself that all his arguments are rational and that anything that conflicts with his position is based on irrationality, ignorance, or anti-semitism.
Don’t let it bother you his method of argument is only effective at getting people to stop arguing with him, its not so effective at getting people to agree with him.
Don’t let him do it. he will draw you into a debate about peripheral issues and totally ignore the issue at hand. He will pick some error you made on the margin and claim that the error proves taht youa re wrong about everything and he is right about everything.
I dunno, it could be some other reason but the main threat I have heard a nuclear Iran presents is a nuclear arms race in the middle east which will destabilize an already destabilized region. The last thing we need is for the middle east to look like sub-saharan Africa but with Nukes.
Damuri Ajashi, that’s more than enough personal commentary about FinnAgain. This is a formal warning: when you’re posting in Great Debates, attack the post, not the poster.
You do realize that the context of an event is not its justification, right?
If we’re talking about a hostage situation where a crazed methhead has a knife to a toddler’s throat and the police try to rush him, resulting in him killings the kid? Of course killing kids is still an evil thing to do. By the same token, getting all bent out of shape if someone says “Of course the guy was scum in the first place and killing kids is vile. But by rushing him, the police made the situation much worse and they should’ve waited for a sniper?”
And if someone then claimed “You’re justifying the guy killing a toddler! You can’t even say the methhead did anything wrong!”, well, most people would recognize such a response for what it was.
Wait, so in a forum called Great Debates I didn’t just leave it at simple anger with a side of “Grrrr!” and I actually discussed the complex interactions of history and circumstance which surrounded the events? That’s pretty horrible of me. I’ll try to stick to ranting instead of all this ‘contextual analysis’.
Maybe in the next discussion of the Domino Theory that I see I won’t talk about the events of the time and not only will I just say “The US did bad!” I’ll take all those folks to task who try to analyze the political calculations on both sides of the iron curtain. Because, really, who wants to read all that in a discussion about the historical nature of a series of events?
Actually, it is - if something’s really “morally reprehensible”, context isn’t going to make it any better, so the only reason to bring up context is to justify why someone would commit such an act. To excuse it or explain it does nothing about its moral status, so why bring it up when the question is simply whether it’s right or not?
Nice analogy, but Israel wasn’t the cops in that scenario, they were the knifeman. You’re justifying why he cut the throat, not why the cops did whatever.
Sometimes, you can take the justifications and leave them for a later post. IMO. Or your reputation as *just *a dittohead apologist isn’t going to go away, deserved or not.
Discussion has its place, and sometimes it doesn’t. Especially if the perception (deserved or not) is that you always, unfailingly, tack on a justification for what Israel does.
Hell, we all know there are reasons why Israel does what it does. You don’t see me tacking on “but they’re justified in feeling they have no other method of waging war because XYZ…” onto every comment I make about Palestinians, do you? I could, if you like, but it doesn’t always need saying, and sometimes I can just say “No, using suicide bombers is bad” full stop, without feeling people are going to suddenly feel I’m giving them some moral victory…