It might have been an example of Poe’s Law, but based on other submissions by that poster, I suspect that it is just a demonstration of profound ignorance wrapped in hatred.
The alt-right explanation comes closest, regardless of the author’s nationality.
I would suggest not engaging as there does not appear to be anything to be learned from or any opinion to be changed by such a discussion.
well most Israel-haters are of the far-left or Islamist variety, well at least in America; the rest are usually paleo-cons or alt-right types.
I don’t believe this at all. And I don’t know why you’re going with “paleo-cons” or “alt-right” instead of “neo-nazi” and “white supremacist”.
the last two groups fit into the alt-right, for the most part.
The biggie is recognizing Israel as a nation, and to stop making attacks against its citizens.
“Extereme” is in the eye of the beholder, neh?
We’ve seen this same dynamic when we see terrorism in the United States. People point to our drone program and torture and all sorts of other shit soon after they condemn the terrorist act itself.
So how has silence and lack of criticism during the decades prior to the fairly recent American criticism of Israel contributed to the welfare of Palestinians? AFAICT, the far right didn’t start exerting power because we started criticizing them. We started criticizing them because the far right started exerting power.
Are you saying that Hamas would be the ruling party in a unified Israel?
Or are you saying that Hamas will continue to have all the support they have right now after everyone is an equal citizen in the eyes of the law?
The track record of hard core Zionists is better but still not very encouraging.
Israel won 1973? I thought people thought of it as closer to a draw and a moral victory for Egypt.
“Though the war reinforced Israel’s military deterrence, it had a stunning effect on the population in Israel. Following their victory in the Six-Day War, the Israeli military had become complacent. The shock and sudden reversals that occurred at the beginning of the war inflicted a terrible psychological blow to the Israelis, who had hitherto experienced no serious military challenges”
“For the Arab states (and Egypt in particular), Arab successes during the war healed the psychological trauma of their defeat in the Six-Day War, allowing them to negotiate with the Israelis as equals. Due to the later setbacks in the war (which saw Israel gain a large salient on African soil and even more territory on the Syrian front)[not in citation given], some believe that the war helped convince many in the Arab world that Israel could not be defeated militarily, thereby strengthening peace movements and delaying the Arab ambition of destroying Israel by force.[364]”
I don’t know that this unrest among the Arab states is good for Israel in any way shape or form. ISTM that having stable government, even antagonistic stable governments in place is much better than having a bunch of failed states full of people who blame Israel for everything wrong in their lives. If the Palestinians had a stable government, we might have had peace in the middle east decades ago.
I misspoke. I meant UN resolutions that were blocked by the US as a permanent member of the security council, not UN security measures. The notion that Europeans would place their soldiers between Israelis and Palestinians is far fetched. The notion that they would boycott Israeli products and embargo sales into Israel is less far fetched, still not likely but more likely than blue helmets in Palestine.
That’s the problem. Everyone seem to have their own ideas of what constitutes a reasonable solution.
I would never advance the argument that criticizing Israel lead to the Right Wing exercising power.
Rather, I’m advancing the argument that the lack of criticism of Palestinian intransigence, leading in part to a lack of progress in peace negotiations (not absolving the Israeli Right here, who have also demonstrated intransigence) helps the Israeli Right.
Why? Because they are able to paint their counterparts as being fundamentally unable to negotiate in good faith, and being supported in this by those who should be helping the process along - so why should Israel negotiate?
No, but clearly Hamas believes so. Remember, they are not exactly dedicated to democratic formalities - they don’t have to have a majority of support to seize power.
Again, I don’t think so, but clearly Hamas does.
The notion that Hamas is only popular because of Israeli abuses isn’t credible. Hamas had two fundamental bases of popularity, neither has anything to do with Israel at all:
It is part of a much wider movement of Islamic radicalism and revival - it’s an offshoot of the “Muslim Brotherhood”. This has gained popularity throughout the ME, and its popularity is due to factors internal to the Arab world having little to do with Israel.
It gained a reputation for relative honesty and pursuing social justice issues (as in the funding of charitable organizations). This, in contrast with the corruption of the PA. Again, this has nothing to do with Israel.
The two aren’t really comparable. “Hard core Zionists” are merely Jewish ethno-nationalists. Hamas is, at base, a religious organization. The difference is that the one can be pragmatic or not, as the case may be; the other cannot compromise, because it claims religious sanction.
A “moral” victory perhaps, but a “physical” defeat certainly. Remember that what is at stake for the Israelis is survival as a nation. They can lose a thousand “moral victories” to their opponents, but never a single “physical” victory.
In propaganda terms perhaps a “moral” victory is important: but in matters of life or death, “physical” talks, “moral” walks.
Not at all, where those stable governments have armies intent on wiping you out. The Syrians right now can hate Israel all they want, blame it for all their problems (if they are dumb); but what they can’t do, is go to war with Israel. Because their country is a pile of ruins and their people are fighting each other.
In what universe is a united Syria dedicated to Israel’s destruction actually better for Israel?
True, it would be better if Syria was a united country intent on normal peaceful relations. But when was that happening?
Syria went to war against Israel - twice - with the intent of wiping it from the map. As late as 2007, Israel was smashing Syrian attempts to build nukes:
Notably, no-one protested (because no-one wanted Syria to have nukes).
Looks like that won’t be happening again any time soon - a net gain for Israel (though at a horrible cost to the people of Syria).
Again, that may hurt Israel, but is unlikely to deter it. Sanctions alone have a pretty spotty record of enforcing good behavior. Has Ukraine got Crimea back yet?
You expressly asked me for mine.
So its not that there is too much subtle endorsement of the sentiments that give rise to terrorism, its that there isn’t enough condemnation of the terrorist act itself? And this means that their counterparts are not only unable to negotiate in good faith but being encouraged to negotiate in bad faith by Americans? I don’t get it.
I always thought that the reason Israel’s counterparts weren’t able to negotiate in good faith was because their counterparts only represented those that were willing to negotiate in the first place. The Hamas types are never at the table.
ISTM that until you can either undermine the Hamas types to the point that their absence is irrelevant or get them to the table somehow, you can never have a counterparty that can deliver on anything you would want.
You try some concessions and they don’t really get you a lot of love and affection from the Palestinians (perhaps because they believe that they effectively forced the concessions out of you, or because the concessions were not large enough to change hearts and minds). You try beating the shit out of them and homemade rockets come out of the woodwork. Why shouldn’t you try negotiating with the ones that are willing to negotiate?
I find it appalling that Israelis are taking land from the Palestinians who seem most willing to negotiate.
The organized military of IDF is much more powerful than Hamas (like by several orders of magnitude), the average Palestinian does not have this advantage over Hamas. Hamas can’t seize jack shit, they can blow shit up but they can’t control anything.
Well not ONLY because of Israel.
And this greater movement has little to do with Israel? There seems to be a lot of focus on Israel in this wider movement considering Israel has so little to do with it.
Wasn’t Hamas initially encouraged (by Israel) to grow as a counterweight to PA? that seems to have something to do with Israel.
Was Hamas much of a factor before 1988 when Fatah renounced terrorism? Didn’t Hamas pick up where the PLO left off? Would there be this continuing thirst for something like pre-1988 PLO or present day Hamas but for Israel? Is any of that desire for an organization like Hamas due to Israel’s actions?
Are there other factors? Sure, certainly more than I can name. But isn’t Israel’s policy a large part of why Palestinians still support oufits like hamas?
Lets switch shoes and say that Israel is not Jewish state but is in fact majority arab and a lot of Jews are crammed into the Gaza strip and the West Bank. Are those hard core Zionists going to be much better than Hamas? Weren’t the hard core Zionists before the creation of the Jewish state comparable to Hamas (or at least the old PLO)?
I would suggest that if Hamas was the one with all the tanks and jets and the Jews were living in refugee camps for the last 70 years, the hard core Zionists would create an organization comparable to Hamas.
Yes but when you are huge favorites to win the superbowl and you win by a field goal in overtime, it changes the odds going into the next season. That propaganda attracts funding, and makes you appear vulnerable. Sure, its much much better than being driven into the sea but the arabs beat the spread on that one.
How dedicated was the Assad regime to the destruction of Israel? IIRC the Assad regime was negotiating with Israel before the country imploded:
“Assad has indicated that the peace treaty that he envisions would not be the same kind of peace treaty Israel has with Egypt, where there is a legal border crossing and open trade. In a 2006 interview with Charlie Rose, Assad said “There is a big difference between talking about a peace treaty and peace. A peace treaty is like a permanent ceasefire. There’s no war, maybe you have an embassy, but you actually won’t have trade, you won’t have normal relations because people will not be sympathetic to this relation as long as they are sympathetic with the Palestinians: half a million who live in Syria and half a million in Lebanon and another few millions in other Arab countries.””
That doesn’t sound friendly but it doesn’t really sound dedicated either. Who knows what will sprout from the chaos there?
It seems like the answer to that rested at least in part on the resolution of the Palestinian refugee crisis.
So did Egypt and Jordan.
And they may yet get nukes.
Does South Africa still have apartheid? Does Iran still have an active nuclear program? I don’t mean that Israel will be brought to its knees begging for mercy if we stop buying their oranges or selling them iphones but it’s not meaningless.
True.
You didn’t answer the question. What would you do if the state was stealing your land with no viable legal recourse?
The point of asking the question is to hopefully get people to try and understand a different point of view. What would you [third-person “you”] do in such a situation?
I am not arguing that the Palestinian response is moral or pragmatic. Israel has set up a situation where no other response is viable. Which is why I ask: how would you respond if your land was being stolen and there was no legal way to get it back? Would you just take it? Move out? Or (eventually) react in frustration and despair? IMO, people who think Palestinians should do something different haven’t given a real alternative.
I don’t have to answer those questions because Israel’s Supreme Court already has: they ruled that the land belonged to the Palestinians and its seizure was illegal. If you think you are a better authority than the Israeli supreme court then we have nothing further to discuss.
Some people think that “just taking it” is a viable alternative because the other alternative they offer is being killed. And in fact most people do just this. The vast majority of Palestinians don’t strap bombs to their chest and blow up cafes in Jaffa. They might egg on the ones that do but most of them “just take it” because they want to live.
The problem is that the Palestinians who are willing to “negotiate” insist on two demands that the Israeli side can never agree to: an unlimited “right of return”; and handing over Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian negotiators know that these demands are impossible, yet their Western supporters apparently feel differently, because they put no pressure on the Palestinians to give them up.
Starting negotiations with impossible demands and refusing to budge on them is handing a gift to the Israeli Right, who can quite reasonably point out that negotiations are pointless.
I agree. The chances of Hamas actually taking power, at least in anything like a reasonable timeframe, are near zero.
But that doesn’t stop them from thinking it is possible.
The black and white thinking of Westerners on the subject of the ME is astonishing. You get the impression here that everything that happens in the ME is a reaction to Israel.
Israel is simply a safe subject for propaganda, it doesn’t mean that the average person in the ME goes around thinking about Israel all the time, or that every political movement in the ME is ‘about’ Israel.
The Israelis originally misjudged Hamas as basically a harmless religious and social organization, and so did not attack it. They were mistaken.
This explanation fails to account for the facts. There were lots of splinter Palestinian groups that refused to follow the PLO’s lead - notably, that lead by George Habash, the PFLP. Yet the PFLP basically vanished in influence, even before their leader’s death.
If violence against Israel was what Palestinians “wanted” but did not get from the PLO, why did the PFLP fail? It had been very active in the '70s with terrorism; it rejected the Oslo accords. Why did they not attract recruits?
The reason: the tide of Arab opinion abandoned them. The PFLP was an Arab nationalist, socialist revolutionary group - very “'70s”. Arab nationalist socialism was “out” almost everywhere in the ME, and revolutionary movements based on Islam were “in”. (George Habash was also a Christian by ethnicity, BTW).
Well, no, and thereby hands an instructive tale.
Prior to the creation of Israel, the “hardcore Zionists” were largely organized under a proto-government, with a proto-army, the Haganah (I guess you could call them comparable to the PLO). There existed splinter groups - such as Irgun - who insisted on terrorism. During WW2 and after, the Israeli proto-government insisted on supporting the British (the equivalent I guess of the PLO supporting the Israeli government). When Irgun insisted on anti-British terrorism, the “hardcore Zionists” of the Haganah, famously, hunted them down in what was known as the “hunting season”.
They cooperated with the British in handing over Irgun terrorists to the authorities.
Why did they do it? Not, to be sure, because they loved the British. Rather, because they had their eyes on the prize - nationalism - and realized that Irgun terrorists running about killing people were pissing in their punchbowl.
This suggests that a successful nationalist movement ought to do what the Israelis did - violently suppress the terrorists on their side, to gain legitimacy, to gain unity, and ultimately, to gain a country.
If the PLO was following this successful Israeli playbook, they ought to have abandoned techniques that don’t work and embraced those that do. Fact is, by the time of the Hamas revolt it was too late.
If Hamas were the ones with all the tanks, there wouldn’t be a Jew left in Israel, so the point would be moot.
The Egyptians did so well that they kept doing it and eventually won? No, they stopped and made a peace deal.
This was just the usual bull - a “peace deal” that is just a “truce” (meaning, Syria was too weak at the moment to actively fight). Even Hamas deals in “truces” with Israel. They mean nothing because there is no commitment to not resuming the fight the moment it appears opportune.
That’s like the saying ‘I’ll get to it when the work’s all done’. It’s a ritual form for saying ‘never’, because the Palestinian “refugee crisis” will never be resolved as long as Israel exists.
The difference is that Egypt actually made a peace deal.
Never happening, now. The Syrian government doesn’t have a few billion to spare.
It is, if they believe it is an existential matter.
I don’t need to address hypotheticals, because it actually happened to lots of my relations (and much more recently, my relations by marriage). So I can look and see what they actually did in situations much worse than those the Palestinians find themselves in.
My mother in law, for example, was kicked off her family’s land by the Soviets, who also murdered most of her relations in the late 20s early 30s (she was originally a Ukrainian by birth).
The Soviets kicked her family off its land for no particular reason, other than that they needed some Slavs to move into the lands the Soviets had cleared of ethnic Germans.
What did she do - devote the rest of her life to killing Russians? No, she escaped - moved to another country, built a new life elsewhere. So did the ethnic Germans uprooted by the Soviets (well, those that survived).
It isn’t justice, but it is what people tend to do. Except Palestinians. Why is that? Well, for one, because those supposedly ‘on their side’ won’t let them - they would rather Palestinians stay for more than 60 years in ‘refugee camps’.
Hence a poster immediately upthread refers with a straight face to the Syrian government talking about a “Palestinian refugee crisis” - meaning, that the Syrians kept Palestinians in refugee camps literally for decades.
The UN aids in this task, creating a specialized refugee agency for Palestinans alone:
The whole point of this agency is to keep Palestinians as ‘permanent refugees’. They aren’t allowed to join other countries, as has happened with other, far worse diasporas of the 20th century (including the really huge ones, like those following the end of WW2 in Eastern Europe, or India/Pakistan partition – all three are of basically the same vintage, in that they all happened in the late 1940s).
So to answer your statement - “IMO, people who think Palestinians should do something different haven’t given a real alternative” - the facts are that Palestinians aren’t allowed to have an “alternative”, namely the very same “alternative” everyone else (including my in-laws) afflicted by 20th century calamities have followed: to leave the conflict behind and become a citizen of another country, rather than pursue a totally hopeless and suicidal battle, or rot in idleness in “refugee camps”.
Who hasn’t allowed this? Why, the alleged friends of the Palestinians–the other Arab countries and the UN. If my mother in law was a Palestinian, no doubt she’d be in a “refugee camp” at this very moment. Yet those who support Palestinian rights never acknowledge this reality, let alone seek to do anything about it.
When my own country - Canada - offered to accept Palestinian refugees and make them Canadian citizens, you would think that would be awesome - who would rather rot in a refugee camp in the ME than be a Canadian? Yet:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/palestinian-refugees-scorn-canadian-offer-of-refuge-1.290638
This of course doesn’t absolve the Israelis for unjustly displacing Palestinians in the first place (in those cases where they have), but the violent pressure-cooker is a deliberate creation of non-Israelis, and of exaggerated Palestinian hopes.
But violence isn’t viable either.
Okay, yeah, maybe I’d flip out and become an insane terrorist, and try to kill everyone who’s now living on “my” land. I can’t promise that I’d be rational and reasonable; maybe I’d go completely wiggy and grab up a meat-cleaver.
Is that something we’re supposed to accept? It’s insane. Firing rockets leads to more deaths on their side than on their enemy’s side!
If they can afford rockets, then they can afford to start up a small business, and that’s what I’d recommend. Try to make Gaza into an economic zone. Make it worth Israel’s time to trade with them.
Makes sense to me, but if I may take another swat at a dead horse. This is the kind of statement HAMAS members have made:
***“We love death more than you love life”
I wonder why some crazy “radicals” like me find it all a bit death cultish.
If I lived in Israel and had to deal with people like that as my potential “partners” for peace, I’d be wary and lack trust as well. It’s literally like trying to make a deal with the goblin armies from lord of the rings, or the Aztecs.
Too far, I know, too far. They are not all like that, just enough to keep the population under their thumb and project power and prevent any meaningful peace deal because they would not adhere to it.
I was under the impression that Fatah supported a two state solution. It was my understanding that they would be happy to accept the 1967 borders and this was one of the reasons why the settlements were so pernicious to the peace process.
This includes the partition of Jerusalem.
So you think they will commence blowing shit up in their bid to take power? Well, things are different in a one state solution where you have police patrolling the streets rather than sanctuaries from which they launch mortar attacks.
[quote]
The black and white thinking of Westerners on the subject of the ME is astonishing. You get the impression here that everything that happens in the ME is a reaction to Israel.
Israel is simply a safe subject for propaganda, it doesn’t mean that the average person in the ME goes around thinking about Israel all the time, or that every political movement in the ME is ‘about’ Israel.[/quoe]
And how did they become a safe subject for propaganda?
OK, so there were other options and Hamas won. So that means that Israel had nothing to do with it? Are you saying that Hamas is driven more by religious fanaticism than by grievances over Israel’s actions? :dubious:
You mean like Menachem Begin? Wasn’t Irgun assimilated into the IDF? In any event, there is a difference between what Zionists did in the effort to create a Jewish state and what they would do if they were made to suffer all the indignities that Palestinians have suffered over the better part of a century.
Do you honestly think the hardcore Zionists would “just take it” if Hamas took over tomorrow and subjected Israeli Jews to all the indignities suffered by Palestinains over the better part of the last century? I suspect they would organize something like Hamas pretty quickly.
This is not to excuse the behavior but you can no more blame the Palestinians for their reaction to Israel’s behavior than you can blame Israel for their reaction to terrorism.
“violent suppression”???
Wasn’t Menachem begin the leader of irgun? Didn’t they elect Menachem Begin prime minister if Israel at some point?
“Subsequently, protests increased among the Yishuv against the [hunting] Saison and by the end of March the Agency aborted it. In May 1945 the Irgun resumed its activities against the British, although to a lesser extent. In late October 1945 the Jewish Resistance Movement was established, joining Haganah, Irgun and Lehi together in a violent struggle against the British Mandate.”
History may not be as you remember it.
Lets just say for the sake of argument that Hamas found it politically convenient to let the Jews live in refugee camps for some reason. Perhaps their legitimacy as a sovereign state depended on avoiding genocide and they cared enough about that they were willing to abstain from genocide.
IIRC both sides made a peace deal. Israel did not dictate the terms of the deal, the terms were negotiated.
Is there ever?
[quote]
That’s like the saying ‘I’ll get to it when the work’s all done’. It’s a ritual form for saying ‘never’, because the Palestinian “refugee crisis” will never be resolved as long as Israel exists. [/quoe]
So there is no way that the Palestinian refugee crisis could end without the destruction of Israel? Then why does Fatah think that a two state solution would be a solution to the refugee crisis?
And Syria was on the verge of doing so as well. Its not like Sadat and Begin signed a deal and became allies.
That’s probably true.
And if they don’t believe that being shitty to the Palestinians and engaging in settlement activity is an existential matter?
So on the one hand other Arab nations and the UN are keeping the Palestinians down by forcing them to stay in refugee camps and on the other hand the Palestinians are spurning offer to live in a place that is a fair sight better bumblefuckistan, middle east. Maybe they aren’t being forced to stay there by their mean arab cousins.
Some people would call that unjust displacement, the precipitating factor. Of course not everyone was unjustly displaced.
I happen to be a Hebrew and support true Orthodox Judaism who stand behind Holy Moses, but not the so called Jews who are lost in the evil of Talmudic or radical Zionist, who worship the Golden Calf.
I am a Catholic, not a Roman Catholic ? and I don’t support fundie Christian Jew haters at all, under the banner of fundie there are many types of such, some fully support the Jews as well you know and some can even go as far as wanting to cause WW3 as they see themselves as wanting or working to bring 2ed coming about themselves and I see just them as working for Satan and just lost and in slaved by demons who support radical Zionist agendas.
Such radical Zionist are not of God at all but just doing the will of Satanic mad men.
I am totally against communism and don’t support Islamist at all and look down on extreme right wing just as much as I do the extreme left wing.
Anyone who supports communism is a moron !
Anyone who supports Islamist is a moron !
Anyone who supports the extreme left or right is just a mongrel cunning low life bastard in my books or a fool.
I don’t support the so called Jews ? that’s the ones who reject Holy Moses, because they are not of Gods people. thing is I know the difference.