Those first two are pretty much deal breakers, alright. 
But I bet they would bat an eye if Japan or Germany refused to have any dealings with countries that did not refer to them as “The Shinto State” or “The Lutheran State.”
Seriously, can you come up with other examples of a country being told that it can call itself whatever it wants, do whatever it wants within its own borders, and yet makes as big an issue as Netanyahu has over insisting that it be called an unofficial name with no legal status?
In any case, people here certainly seem to be batting an eye over Abbas’s alleged analogous statement. And since he has talked about the establishment of a Palestinian state constantly for years, and yet nobody has produced a single quote from him saying he would expel all Jewish residents (even the very tendentious editorial that someone cited claimed it in its headline, but its direct quotes referred only to “Israelis,” not “Jews”), I would guess that the one quote about Jewish soldiers (if correctly translated) was a “heat of the moment” misstatement.
And note that the PLO charter specifically accepts the concept of Palestinian Jews, albeit that was not in the context of a two-state solution.
I know I keep coming back to this, but if you reflect on the unbelievably racist things said about the Japanese by Americans during WW II, then you can have hope that things will simmer down when the Palestinians actually get their own country under favorable terms.
Misstatement ? Mistranslation ?
Since you are guessing, what do you think he meant ?
Because I’m fairly certain that Abbas is fairly certain that there are no Israelis in Nato armed forces. Definitely Jews though, no mistake about that.
Why should they negotiate? A simple statement that ‘This is ours, that is yours’. Why should Israel have the responsibility as to whether Palestine is viable or not as its own country? They can join Egypt or Jordan or Lebanon for that matter. Not all countries are contiguous.
As to right of return. The Palestinians left because their Muslim brothers told them to get out of the way of their invasion. So, who’s responsibility should it be to take care of them now?
Not indefinite responsibility, of course, but I think most people would agree that there is no point in a two-state solution if Palestinian viability is pretty obviously doomed from the beginning.
That has been disputed even by Israeli historians for some time now — most notably, Benny Morris, an ardent Zionist (as self-described in 2004) and a professor of history at Ben-Gurion U. To quote the Wikipedia article on him:
“In his first The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988), Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli military attacks; fear of impending attacks; and expulsions. He argues that there was no centralized expulsion policy as such, but expulsions were ordered by the Israeli high command as needed. This was a controversial position when Morris first wrote of it; the official position in Israel was that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, or under pressure from Palestinian or other Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including cases of rape and torture. The book shows a map of 228 empty Palestinian villages, and attempts to explain why the villagers left. In 41 villages, he writes, the inhabitants were expelled by the IDF; in another 90, residents fled because of attacks on other villages; and in six, they left under instructions from local Palestinian authorities. He was unable to find out why another 46 villages were abandoned”
Morris is far from a Palestinian sympathizer; he just strives to report the facts. When an interviewer in 2004 called it “ethnic cleansing,” he responded, “There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”
A brief excerpt from that interview:
"AS: What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hardhearted.
BM: I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish State here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.
Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.
AS: And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?
BM: That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."
Obviously. I’m not suggesting that a lifetime of opposition has left him free of anti-Jewish prejudice. I’m suggesting that it was something that he didn’t mean to say, and would not necessarily follow up on if doing so would cost him a chance at a permanent peace settlement.
And as you correctly stated, I am guessing.
Maybe you can tell me: does the US or NATO honor Saudi Arabian wishes about women soldiers not driving on public roads? I’m not equating the two; I’m just curious.
Again, why two states? Palestinians have never had their own state within living memory. They can be part of a larger Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria. No need for a separate state that isn’t viable. Just because they want it doesn’t mean they can have it or realistic. Frankly, even if they get all they want (minus Israel disappearing) it will be a basket case for the foreseeable future.
Do the Saudis honor our wishes that they not wrap their disobedient daughters in chains and toss them into the swimming pool?
This is not true. Or, at least, not the whole truth. Some Arabs certainly left in advance of the war because they thought it would be a victorious slaughter and they could just move back in once the untidy business of genocide was finished. Others left because of fighting in or around their homes. Still others left because they were actually driven out. Most (reliable) evidence seems to point to the clear majority of Arabs leaving because of fighting in or around their homes, however.
I hesitate to ask… but you are aware that being the Jewish State, and therefore having the Law of Return available for Jews the world over, is hardly an issue of mere semantics or negligible legal import? -
No other nation on the planet is bordered by a territory controlled by Hamas, who thinks that the nation should be subjected to genocide, who explicitly rejects any long-term compromise and who endorses, in writing, the idea that paradise can only come about once ever Jew on the planet has been exterminated.
And again I’m not sure if your comment is disingenuous or ignorant, but of course not every other nation on the planet has such an enemy within short range rocketing distance of every single population center they have, such a claim is absurd and makes me think that either you don’t understand the basic geography at work in the I/P issue, or you know that you’re beaten and have tried to shift the goalposts.
Treating Hamas as a problem you can simply handwave away, especially once it’s fully armed with open borders and set up within range of every single Israeli man, woman and child, and then demanding that the Israeli government do the same… is either tragically Pollyanna or wilfully ignorant.
You’ve just tried to switch the topic from the Bridging Proposal to Camp David II (and I’m not even going to get into discussing that). The fact remains that it was the Bridging Proposal that Arafat turned down (opting instead for war) and that refusal was what Bandar called a “crime”.
Not only did he reject them, he responded with the Second Intifada.
Not only was the Second Intifada launched, it was planned. Not only was it planned, it was long before Clinton’s last round of talks began, let alone broke down.
How is it you’re talking about this issue and you don’t know that simple fact?
Even though the same statement could apply to many, many countries before they were formed, including relatively recent examples like Germany and Italy (neither of which was a unified, integral country until the 19th century), I have never heard it used as an argument against statehood in any context but that of Palestine. And it has never made any sense to me. My own failing, I’m sure.
I don’t see the “separate state” part having much to do with its viability. I see the lack of control over its own borders, its own water, its own capital, and its own internal travel as much larger obstacles.
That passage was put in place merely so they could pretend that they weren’t violently anti-Semitic.
The guy who drafted it freely proclaimed “we will push the Jews into the sea” and Arafat later was recorded angrilly proclaiming "“The Jews at work! Damn their fathers! Dogs! Filthy! Dirt!”.
Well, I’ve been known to be wrong before, but in for penny, in for a pound as they say:
Fighting that was the result of Israel defending itself from aggressors. Who’s responsibility is it to then care for the dispossessed, the defenders or the aggressors?
Oh, I’d certainly agree that the lion’s share of blame rests with the aggressors, and I’ve long pointed out that the conditions many Arab nations keep their Palestinian populations under are as bad if not worse than anything happening in the Territories. I also believe that, in an ideal world, the resolution of the I/P issue would have just compensation for both Palestinian and Jewish refugees, and the regional Arab world would make amends for their wave of expulsions…
But that being said, I just wanted to clear up the myth. Yes, some fled because they were told to, but not all. And, after all, discussions like this should be based, ruthlessly, on facts.
What part of “swift and devastating response,” is Pollyannish? Oh wait, you must not have seen that part when you were deleting it for your fucked-up straw man attack.
You know what, fuck this. Nobody important is reading this, and you guys obviously don’t want to hear it, so have fun.
Then you fundamentally misunderstand the Irgun and Fatah.
The Irgun was always a despised minority repeatedly condemned by the leadership of the Yishuv during the Mandate period.
Furthermore, during the Israeli War of Independence the Irgun was virtually useless and most of the fighting was done by the Haganah.
By contrast the political leaders of the Palestinians have always been people and groups who, were we to classify the Irgun as “terrorists” would also have to be considered “terrorists.”
Fatah committed vastly more extreme actions than anything the Irgun did and they have easily been the most moderate of Palestinian leaders.
Now, for your initial statement to have made sense you’d have to be able to point to some Palestinian groups and leaders significantly more popular and more influential than Fatah and Abbas.
Please list them.
To make another comparison, since you brought up the bombing of the HQ of the British military intelligence it’s worth noting that this action was condemned by Ben Gurion and the leaders of the Yishuv.
Please give me the names of some Palestinian leaders who condemned the Munich massacre. I assume you’re familiar with Abbas’ role in it.
Moreover, I’m a bit surprised you didn’t mention Dir Yassin. That was a far greater atrocity than the King David Hotel bombing.
I certainly hope you were familiar with it because if you didn’t know about the most infamous massacre of Palestinians and the most bitter atrocity the Palestinians ever faced other than the Naqba, Sabra and Shatilla and the ethnic cleansing from Kuwait in the early 90s, then that doesn’t say much for your genuine interest in the suffering of the Palestinians.
The fact that you think with the US or the UN or NATO or the Tooth Fairy at the helm, it would go any better than the times when Israel has used targeted attacks to take out militants who didn’t have the benefit of being at the helm of a sovereign state and open borders/free movement. Perhaps the fact that you don’t understand that in order for a country that isn’t attacked to respond with “swift and devastating” anything, it would need UNSC authorization under Chapter VII. Good luck getting that passed.
Bonus points to you both for ignoring the heap of refutations against your position in order to focus on this tidbit, plus calling your own, quoted, cited words a “strawman”.
Lord knows Bibi isn’t my favourite politician, but the quote from him in your post isn’t about making a big deal about being called an unofficial name. It is about Palestinian leaders accepting that, just as he has accepted Palestine will be an ethno-nationalist state based on Palestinian nationalism, Israel is an ethno-nationalist state based on Jewish nationalism. Ur is about accepting reality as it is, not about the names - rather expressly so.
Just look at the quote.
I’m not seeing anything objectionable here - in fact, this is a rare case of Bibi being reasonable.
That’s because his statement isn’t about Palestine being a state based on Palestinian nationalism (a point that, indeed, nobody bats an eye over). It is bout ethnically cleansing that state of "Israelis’, which in this context very obviously means Jewish Israelis (does anyone seriously believe Arab Israelis would be turfed from the new state of Palestine?)
I would guess he meant that “settlers” would be expelled.
Not so. It accepts those Jews who were there ‘before the invasion’ as citizens. A tiny minority of elderly folks by now, as the vast majority of the Israeli population has either imigrated to Israel since, or been born since.
Jews have not done well trusting to such hopes in the recient past.
It’s also full of weasel room. Is the good ol’ invasion '48? How about Balfour? When the mandate was established…?
Why is intl law lopsided?
I don’t think anyone believes that Iran is ready to wage nuclear
To be fair you cite employed quite a few weasel words. “apparently…” “it has been said that”. Those are words you use when you have no proof. We don’t dredge up Italy’s past association with the nazis (or even the Germans) but somehow a dead shah’s alleged association with the nazis makes them more likely to commit antisemetic genocide? Actually, it doesn’t even sound like you are making the argument that antisemitism was behind the shahs alleged alliance with the nazis
Because both sides were going to use their nukes as soon as they got them. Even you admit that Iran will not.
You do realize that you’re insulting Ehsan Yarshater, one of the leading if not the leading authority in the US on Iranian history.
If you’re going to do that, you ought to give us some reasons to judge your own knowledge and understanding of Iranian history.
In prior discussions you’ve insisted that everything you knew about the Middle East came from wikipedia and actually got angry when people suggested that you might want to read up on the subject.
So, have you ever read any books about Iran, visited Iran, or even had discussion with academics regarding Iran?
I certainly hope you have some standing to insult one of the World’s foremost historians on Iran.
That’s bullshit.
I simply have stated that I doubt Iran will attack Israel.
That being said, Iran is officially at war or at least in a state of belligerency against Israel and has sponsored attacks targeting Jewish civilians both in Israel and outside of Israel.
I can certainly understand why Jews who’ve seen Iranian backed attacks on Jewish community centers and pizza parlors would think differently.
Now, if you can’t understand why Jews would be terrified of a virulently anti-Semitic government who has sponsored a number of attacks on Jewish civilians then you are clueless regarding the history of both the Jews and the Middle East.
Really, exactly why did we know that Germany was going to “use their nukes as soon as they got them”?